Interested. I will be keeping an eye on this!
Edit: Nevermind. I thought I was in the Casual interest checks >.>
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
