The Long Night -- monsters, mystery, magical abilities, unreasonably slow planetary rotation

[DeltaV]

We're still accepting! Head here instead.

[VampireOracle]

@DeltaV This looks interesting. I'll be keeping an eye on it, and if there are enough other people interested, there's a 90% chance I'll join. Just one question, will you get to choose between playing a civilian or hero, or are you only allowed to play one or the other?

[Dannyrulx]

I'll be looking as well.

[DeltaV]

@DeltaV This looks interesting. I'll be keeping an eye on it, and if there are enough other people interested, there's a 90% chance I'll join. Just one question, will you get to choose between playing a civilian or hero, or are you only allowed to play one or the other?

@VampireOracle

I was expecting everyone to be playing a hero, but if people want to I don't see why they couldn't make a character more mundane. I'd still recommend that they be in a position of some amount of power, though (so that they have a reason to get caught up in the events that will be going down).

Good to see that there's some preliminary interest in any case.

[Dead Cruiser]

Yes, I'm very interested in this. A few ideas I have floating currently are a barbarian/berserker type, and maybe some kind of half-dragon(?). These will be refined when more information is available, obviously.

[Silver Carrot]

Interested. I will be keeping an eye on this!

Edit: Nevermind. I thought I was in the Casual interest checks >.>

[Bishop]

Maybe..

[Naril]

Oookay. I'm intrigued by this, but I have some questions! I always have questions. :3 I'm also sick, so if I've managed to memory-hole something that's in the first post, please forgive me.

- The wording of "rising once more..." is more than a little ambiguous. Have these heroes of legend been resurrected before? Are the protectors of this world typically made up of new heroes and the stewards of previous nights, brought back from the grave?

- In the same vein as the above, are our characters expected to be the dead heroes from long ago, returned to fight against a greater enemy than the world has seen, or new people with the powers and abilities of the fallen, or wholly new heroes, normal people who are given the strength to save their world?

- There's a little bit of inconsistent tone in exactly how the day-night cycle destroys nations, and the nature of those civilizations. The primary destructive force seems to be Big Monsters that show up on the night side, which is fine. At the same time, though, your "Places..." hider suggests that there are nations that have survived several cycles (and, in fact, I would argue that conceit is necessary for the narrative), but the introduction seems to much more strongly suggest that nations are wiped out categorically during the day-night cycle, leaving everything to start anew. Is it just the nations that don't wind up with heroes who get wiped out? Is there some arbitration or council whose job it is to decide which nations are given the power of the heroes (and are more likely to survive the night) and which are not?

I feel like this wouldn't be a case of the "Ant and the Grasshopper" - there's no question that night is coming, and there's no question that it hasn't come before. Depending on how good timekeeping is, there may not even be a question of what hour night will come. Preparing for that seems like it would be an integral part of any culture that survives longer than one night. While a nation filled only with foppish lordlings and simpering sycophants certainly would not survive a night cycle, it feels...weird that there would even be one - or, indeed, many, like the introduction seems to suggest.

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- Are we ready for Naril Talks About Science For A While? I hope so! :3

Leaving aside some of the finer points of how a planet with such a long day-night cycle would behave in the purest technicalities, there are some neat pieces of atmospheric science that could make this place very interesting, and play very directly into the cycle of destruction that happens during the night (and, indeed, again during the transition to day, all being even).

At the extremely macro level, and with a little bit of hand-waviness (because I don't want to do the math - narratively it wouldn't actually be important, and I'm an engineer, not a planetary scientist :3), a planet that rotates very, very slowly would have some fascinating characteristics.

For example, the idea of a very long growing season isn't completely weird. The planet would, necessarily, have plants on it that have adapted to be in sunlight all the time (many plants on Earth do require periods of darkness for optimal growth), and agriculture would necessarily have taken advantage of that. But! On a planet with a slow rotation, you wind up with a condition where the "warm" side of the planet is constantly evaporating water out of the soil (no condensation period at night to squeeze it back out as dew, and very little precipitation), and atmospheric action will tend to take that moist, warm air to the back side of the planet, where the water rains down. If the planet were completely tidally locked, this would inevitably mean that all the water would eventually wind up on the "dark" side in a huge ice sheet and the "light" side would wind up as a purely desert environment.

This means something interesting for the narrative, especially for farmers. It is entirely plausible that growing food would also move in cycles. With the rising sun, you would have very wet, bog-like soil, and whatever you had to grow would be things that grew well in bogs - probably lots of berries, or things like rice. The years would pass, and the bogs would get drier, becoming more like the soil you think of in the American Midwest, and now you have years of maize, tubers, sweet fruits, grains - a time of pure abundance. Once night creeps closer, your fields are dry, their water spent, and all you can grow are hardy things that grow quickly (for now you only have a few years to harvest) and use very little water. Things with spines and small, sweet fruit. This all becomes even more interesting with the idea of conservatories that can preserve some amount of plants from season to season. This is very handwavey of a lot of science, but I'd buy it as narrative worldbuilding. :3

And at night? At night, the farmers grow mushrooms in their fields drenched in darkness and the first rain in a generation. The dead stalks, stems, trunks and roots of the day's harvests yield their bounty again. I like the idea of tree-sized mushrooms, but you don't have to include any of this, I'm just thinking. :3

In terms of pure agriculture, there's a question of where the soil fixatives and nutrients for the day's field work come from, and the answer to that can be to ignore it, or to...well, to grimly point out that a lot of people die in the transition from day to night, and they've got all the things a bunch of plants really need to grow...

And what about that transition? The day-night terminator (the actual term for the transition between day and night) would be a terrifying place. Thanks to the water moving from the warm day side to the cool night side, the terminator would be a vast barrier of endless, titanic storms, turning the laws of thermodynamics into wind, rain, lightning, and cyclones. These storms could be part of what damages nations of the world so badly - they would spend (earth-equivalent) weeks or months in these bands of storms, being pummelled by hurricane-force winds the entire time before emerging into the comparative calm of the monster-filled darkness or the fresh reprieve of the light.

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Um. I suppose I should also say that I like this idea a lot, and I think you have something that could be really fun here. I'll be watching with interest!

[Hank]

Keeping an eye on this. Looks promising.

[DeltaV]

Interested. I will be keeping an eye on this!

Edit: Nevermind. I thought I was in the Casual interest checks >.>

@Silver Carrot

Oh? I'd encourage you to still stick around and keep an eye on this regardless. I promise not to hold a gun to anyone's head and force them to write five paragraphs of fluff per post.

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Oookay. I'm intrigued by this, but I have some questions! I always have questions. :3 I'm also sick, so if I've managed to memory-hole something that's in the first post, please forgive me.

@Naril

I'm flattered that someone is this interested in the idea! I'll try to answer all of your questions.

- The wording of "rising once more..." is more than a little ambiguous. Have these heroes of legend been resurrected before? Are the protectors of this world typically made up of new heroes and the stewards of previous nights, brought back from the grave?

Nope, this is very much a new thing. Each night has one individual with enhanced abilities, and when they die they're supposed to stay dead. The length of time between days is enough to ensure that, while people can grow up through the day and survive through the night long enough to see the sun again, they'd be about old enough to die of old age by then, so there's never more than one person with special powers.

- In the same vein as the above, are our characters expected to be the dead heroes from long ago, returned to fight against a greater enemy than the world has seen, or new people with the powers and abilities of the fallen, or wholly new heroes, normal people who are given the strength to save their world?

The intention was for it to be the first of those three options, but as I stated earlier people can be normal if they feel so inclined. It's a definite no on the 'new people with powers of the old guys' thing.

- There's a little bit of inconsistent tone in exactly how the day-night cycle destroys nations, and the nature of those civilizations. The primary destructive force seems to be Big Monsters that show up on the night side, which is fine. At the same time, though, your "Places..." hider suggests that there are nations that have survived several cycles (and, in fact, I would argue that conceit is necessary for the narrative), but the introduction seems to much more strongly suggest that nations are wiped out categorically during the day-night cycle, leaving everything to start anew. Is it just the nations that don't wind up with heroes who get wiped out? Is there some arbitration or council whose job it is to decide which nations are given the power of the heroes (and are more likely to survive the night) and which are not?

The collapse of nations that is the planetary norm would occur, in my mind, from three main and relatively ubiquitous occurrences:
- Lack of appropriate food storage, or other loss of stocks, leading to widespread starvation and a general breakdown of order
- The general sorts of intrigues and unrest that exist in medieval fantasy kingdoms, scaled up to eleven because most people are paranoid and superstitious about the nighttime
- Spooky monsters

It is the exception that nations emerge relatively intact from a night, not the rule, but it's not entirely unknown either. The general survivability of a nation could probably be broken up into, again, three categories:
- Realms that were already not in the best shape going into the nighttime, and then collapse completely. Come dawn there is very little left that could resemble any organized government, and likely a depleted population (but usually not a completely-wiped-out one). Examples of these in the 'modern' map of Terras provided would be the Northerlands, the Free Castles, and anyone living on the Viper Isles.
- Nations in decent shape going into nightfall that have a good shot at survival, albeit not a guaranteed one. They are likely to be tested to their limits over the decades of darkness, but may emerge in a reasonably similar general shape and culture as when they went in, with a continuous governing body. If they encounter a particularly bad night they might be shattered, but there will still probably be enough people to pick up the pieces in a relatively continuous way. Examples of this one would include Miremarch and the Verdant Kingdoms -- while they might've only gotten those names and particular characteristics in the last century or so, it'd be a safe bet that before them there were similar civilizations in the same area.
- Very rarely, nation-states that manage to survive long enough to be seen by the history books as a static presence. This would require a nation to survive, without major upheaval, a good three-to-four nights at very least. While there are still no guarantees going into any individual nights, the general consensus is that they will probably survive. There would be very few instances of this in the vague history of the continent, with the most obvious past example being Varras and the only current competitor being the Iron Keep.

While having a champion on your side who can hurl fireballs at the things that go bump in the night or inspire mass amounts of people to your cause certainly improves the odds that a civilization survives the night, it's not a done deal: a nation with a hero can still succumb to the darkness, and a nation without any can survive to daybreak. In fact, it is probably more likely than not that your average hero still fails to save their people, and if their people do survive it'd better not be because of them alone, since that just means the civilization is likely to fall once the next evening rolls around.

I feel like this wouldn't be a case of the "Ant and the Grasshopper" - there's no question that night is coming, and there's no question that it hasn't come before. Depending on how good timekeeping is, there may not even be a question of what hour night will come. Preparing for that seems like it would be an integral part of any culture that survives longer than one night. While a nation filled only with foppish lordlings and simpering sycophants certainly would not survive a night cycle, it feels...weird that there would even be one - or, indeed, many, like the introduction seems to suggest.

A large portion of the everyday culture would certainly be based around preparation for the long night, but it isn't a given that everyone is going to pay attention: squabbling feudal rulers in limited-technology situations are going to squabble, overarching threat or not, and it only takes a few slip-ups before everything comes crashing down. To a degree it may also be ingrained that collapse is what is "supposed" to happen come nightfall, so while people naturally try to avoid dying there could be some resignation to fate that stops people from trying too hard. The introduction did maybe overplay the "everyone dies at night, always" idea, though.

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- Are we ready for Naril Talks About Science For A While? I hope so! :3

Oh, I'm always ready.

-Discussion on growing periods and soil humidity and whatnot-

I really like this; it seems like an excellent piece of world-building. I'd say maybe a bit less emphasis on the idea of growing giant mushrooms at night, though, since hunger is definitely meant to be a significant factor in surviving the nights, and while a sensible farmer would probably try to farm things that grow in low light I'm probably going to handwave the farmers into being slightly less sensible.

And what about that transition? The day-night terminator (the actual term for the transition between day and night) would be a terrifying place. Thanks to the water moving from the warm day side to the cool night side, the terminator would be a vast barrier of endless, titanic storms, turning the laws of thermodynamics into wind, rain, lightning, and cyclones. These storms could be part of what damages nations of the world so badly - they would spend (earth-equivalent) weeks or months in these bands of storms, being pummelled by hurricane-force winds the entire time before emerging into the comparative calm of the monster-filled darkness or the fresh reprieve of the light.

Could be! It might be a little bit impractical to expect any sort of intelligent life to survive a situation that drastic, though, so maybe slightly toned-down. There's probably a reason that our only real-life example of a planet with living things on it doesn't have decades-long days.

Um. I suppose I should also say that I like this idea a lot, and I think you have something that could be really fun here. I'll be watching with interest!

Great! I was a little bit worried that the what-if scenario was a little bit too gimmicky (and even more worried that I'd subconsciously copied something to come up with it, and everyone would point that out in the replies) but it seems like there's a good amount of interest developing.

[Naril]

@DeltaV - Thanks for responding! I love how much thought you've put into this, and how in-depth your answers were. :3 When an OOC comes along, I'll be there!

[Dead Cruiser]

I'd be interested in some examples of the monsters we'd be dealing with; it would help my character concepts.

[DeltaV]

I'd be interested in some examples of the monsters we'd be dealing with; it would help my character concepts.

@Dead Cruiser

I left it pretty vague in the OP, I know, partially to preserve the sense of mystery and party so I didn't have to come up with what the monsters might look like, but now I guess I have to stop being lazy.

The things that go bump in the night tend to be a secondary concern for your average Joe Peasant come nightfall, as they are marginally less dangerous than the more obvious threats of starvation or general civil strife. However, it can't be denied that the world becomes objectively more dangerous as the night drags on.

The usual initial beasts take the form of exaggerated version of existing creatures: packs of huge wolves with overly-pronounced features (note that 'huge' in this case means "2-3 times the size," not "a large as a building"), flocks of giant crows with razor-sharp talons, great shaggy bears with tar-black pelts, the like. While they can definitely be deadly, these sorts of creatures are usually seen as dangerous but relatively normal creatures that can be dealt with by normal means.

As the night wears on, however, things usually become more grotesque, and what was previously an annoyance becomes a true threat. The beasts, though still usually not-quite-existentially-terrifying to look upon, stop resembling existing animals, and instead take on strange variations of their own. Corpses will rise from recent graves, blind and deaf and bloated, wandering in huge packs to tear apart whatever they encounter. Phantom horsemen ride down roads, trampling anyone in their way; faceless creatures imitate men and infiltrate villages, only to carve a bloody path through them a few weeks later.

Perhaps the rarest and most dangerous situations, occurring only once or twice each night at most, are when entire armies of armored wraiths will emerge to raze and siege with no apparent goal but destruction. Protection from these phantom forces is the primary purpose of the maintenance of standing armies in the night. While the less organized monsters can be dealt with by a few skilled individuals or a talented hero, the wraith forces require mobilization and planning on a level akin to true war.

It should be understood, however, that while every night brings these monsters, they are quite rare, and though rumors of exotic and horrifying monsters travel quickly the average person will not lay eyes upon one. On the occasions that the full force of these shadowy creatures is brought to bear, such as in the mysterious demise of Varras, the results speak for themselves -- entire kingdoms can be leveled in just a few months or years.

If one is not certain whether something is a monster borne from the night or a regular beast, there are a few telltale signs: for instance, the night creatures are usually entirely silent. A wolf will howl and a soldier's blade will screech against its sheath, but all sound seems almost muted when the creatures of the night are concerned. They also leave no tracks, be that footprints or impressions in the snow or any other physical mark of movement upon the world.

There are a few traditional methods for warding off the monsters of the night. Only the most powerful, it is said, are able to withstand the heat and light of an open flame. In cases where simply holding the darkness at bay will not do, there are very few that cannot be dispatched with enough whacks by a sharp weapon.

[Sypherkhode822]

Yes, excellent. This looks great! I am a definite yes for this

[Dead Cruiser]

@DeltaV So sort of analogous to wights and such in ASOIAF? Is there anything more fanciful or inherently magical that comes about?

I have two basic character ideas currently. Most probable among the two is a berserker that wields a sword made from the tooth of some giant monster. The more fanciful character is a sort of sorcerer that gained his powers after eating the heart of a dragon.

[Hank]

My current character concept is an elderly man with the powers of theurgy and necromancy, capable of banishing the spirits of the restless dead and binding them to his will to be summoned later -- like a supernatural Pied Piper of Hamelin with a host of ghosts as deathly pale as ice.

Thoughts?

[Flagg]

Interested!

[DracoLunaris]

I really like this concept, it reminds me a bit of a combination of Helliconia and endless legend, though those are both season rather than day cycle based.

I'd say maybe a bit less emphasis on the idea of growing giant mushrooms at night, though, since hunger is definitely meant to be a significant factor in surviving the nights, and while a sensible farmer would probably try to farm things that grow in low light I'm probably going to handwave the farmers into being slightly less sensible.

the mushroom-idea could work quite will as an initial easing into the night so that the lack of food production problem scales at a similar rate to the monster situation(also, perhaps by coincidence, the monsters become less edible as the night goes on). There is after all only a limited amount of decaying material (either natural or food that has rotten since it's harvest) around and once that is used up they have to rely entirely on food stores.

also a few questions:

does the planet have a moon(if so how big?) or are the stars the only source of skylight at night?

what sort of technology level would the more advanced civilizations be at military technology wise? We talking plate mail armored knights and crossbows, roman legionaries or something in between?

heroes of days long past have begun to rise once more from their graves

Are the heroes undead looking as a result of this?

[DeltaV]

@DeltaV So sort of analogous to wights and such in ASOIAF? Is there anything more fanciful or inherently magical that comes about?

@Dead Cruiser

Magic of the shooting-fireballs sort isn't really what i envisioned for the monsters, no, because I'm not sure that it thematically fits the appropriate abilities of spooky creatures that only emerge at night. If enough people want your traditional dragons and whatnot then that's also fine, though.

I have two basic character ideas currently. Most probable among the two is a berserker that wields a sword made from the tooth of some giant monster. The more fanciful character is a sort of sorcerer that gained his powers after eating the heart of a dragon.

Sounds like fun! Though the second would be contingent on whether or not people want the normal fantasy monsters around (of course, you could always just put a not!dragon into the backstory).

I really like this concept, it reminds me a bit of a combination of Helliconia and endless legend, though those are both season rather than day cycle based.

@DracoLunaris

I'm glad you like it!

the mushroom-idea could work quite will as an initial easing into the night so that the lack of food production problem scales at a similar rate to the monster situation(also, perhaps by coincidence, the monsters become less edible as the night goes on). There is after all only a limited amount of decaying material (either natural or food that has rotten since it's harvest) around and once that is used up they have to rely entirely on food stores.

Maybe. I can't imagine the monsters being too tasty to eat at any point in the night (in my head I pictured them almost being slightly wispy and immaterial, such that after killing one you'd almost expect it to just fade away into fog), but it'd make sense that farmers might abandon their fields outright in response to threats and instead hope they have enough food stored to tough it out.

does the planet have a moon(if so how big?) or are the stars the only source of skylight at night?

A world without a moon would probably be pretty pitch-black at night, so that might add to why it's such a big deal when night comes. On the other hand, having a moon lets us use the word 'moonlight' or 'moonrise' or what-have-you when a paragraph is oversaturated with 'night.'

what sort of technology level would the more advanced civilizations be at military technology wise? We talking plate mail armored knights and crossbows, roman legionaries or something in between?

I don't have anything locked down yet, but I was imagining something about halfway in-between the two, with military setups being roughly analogous to the early middle-ages; arming swords and wooden shields and the occasional axe instead of tight phalanxes or pike regiments. Nations like Varras that had more stable time to invest in study of military theory might have had more advanced weaponry and tactics.

Are the heroes undead looking as a result of this?

Nah.

[Dead Cruiser]

@DeltaV I wouldn't call what I have in mind a "standard" fantasy monster. It really only resembles a dragon superficially.