Let's explore a little more this idea of a world in which a day lasts a century.
Imagine the day slowly moving from East to West. In the areas that are light, plants would grow and animals flourish. In the areas that are dark, there would be ice and petrification. In the areas between - the "morning" and "evening" where the light strikes the globe at an angle, there would be drastic spring-like and autumnal changes. In the morning, we would find a world of thawing ice, rivers which have been frozen for 100 years suddenly breaking into motion, glacial flows, and everywhere green plant life emerging. In the evening, we would find the opposite: rivers and lakes freezing over, glaciers expanding, and plants slowly dying.
In such a world, if life could move, it generally would. Almost everything would be migratory and nomadic. The animals would gradually migrate from East to West to maintain the temperature and climate that was optimal for them - this would be unending. The only exceptions would be life forms equipped to live underground (who would largely ignore this slow waltz of the passing days) and those which were able to hibernate for a century.
The humans, who live in the day, would also primarily be migratory. I am picturing nomadic cities: huge trains of carts, caravans, and herd animals which would settle somewhere for a month or year and then move on with the day. Generally, the preference for advanced "civilized" societies would presumably to be remain somewhat to the West of the noon-line, to take advantage of the maximum fertility of plant life which had been exposed to the light for many decades. But I am also picturing entire civilizations founded on animal husbandry rather than agriculture: wildebeest and reindeer herders following the great migrations of those beasts.
In the morning and the evening we would find adventurers and pioneers - especially in the morning as new lands become exposed to warmth and light. People searching for new resources, new pathways, new lands to exploit. Adventurers in the evening would be outlaws and rogues, picking over the detritus left behind in the wake of the cities migrating Eastwards.
In the night live the orcs, and many other things. As evening advances they appear, like the vanguard of the darkness, hunting and raiding. In places, they might tangle with the rearguards of retreating human civilizations - just as, in the morning, human pioneers come across straggling orcs. In the dark places the orcs mine, build, and construct - citadels, tunnels and fortresses, which in the light of day human adventurers might explore.
Orc raiders and other night-time things would also be experts at concealment, though. During the night, they would burrow down into the earth, out of sight, and wait for decades if necessary for day to come so that they could emerge to wreak havoc. Then again, maybe both sides might engage in another sort of migration - from surface to underground and back again. Maybe both humans and orcs would have constructed huge city-states extending up from the surface and deep down into the crust of the world, so that during the day or night respectively they could ascend upwards or downwards as desired? Maybe down there great wars would be fought to try to undermine and destroy each other? Maybe just as the humans were coming to the surface in the light of day, the orcs would be concentrating their efforts on tunneling underneath their cities? And maybe all of this would connect with the vast and endless Underdark that lay deeper still.
There are so many *consequences* to such a situation, it is extremely thought provoking. The climate would be constantly changing - an area could be a desert for a few decades year then become fertile again as weather patterns change.
ReplyDeleteGeography would become incredibly important. Let's imagine that this place has land masses similar to earth. Our migrating tribe starts in North America. Great! but then... they would have to somehow cross the Bering straight to get to Asia. And when many decades later they have to cross from Europe to North America again... Are we talking ship building? Can this only work with a "ring" of continent encircling the globe?
Ancalagon
And is this a planet with a straight axis or a tilt? If there is a tilt, could the poles "skip" seasons (ie spend 200 years in the dark, 200 in the light?).
Yes. Actually it completely didn't occur to me how much the sea would complicate things... It would have to involve ship building, wouldn't it? Unless people do simply hibernate - though I like to imagine a mix of migrators and hibernators.
DeleteWhat happens if civilisation meets impassable terrain? High mountains, storm wracked seas? Would there be desert wasteland in the central 'summer' lands?
ReplyDeleteGood questions. I am thinking off the top of my head as I write these posts - but maybe there would be legends about migratory routes or even records of them in the archives of the towns and cities? Although as people travelled they would discover things were not quite as they were supposed to be (orc activites and glacial movements will do that).
DeleteThis is sublime
ReplyDeleteThanks! I like playing with 'high concept' game setting ideas like this.
DeleteLeaving aside the difficulties of having a stable global circumambulatory route....
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of both the city-caravans and those (humans and orcs) who have discarded the idea. That leaves those who dig... realizing that whatever their preferred environment is, the stability of environment below the surface is preferable to being a nomad. So the orcs and humans dig, and create places they can build upon and expand.
One faction (since the species are mirror antitheses, they both have these factions) uses the "long day/night" to create outposts on/near the surface, within which they can live out the good times, all the while preparing for the long darkness to come. Much like how arctic-dwellers frantically prepare through the summer to put away provisions for the winter, only to do the same again each year. It's an unending cycle, and gives the culture a strong cyclical/anti-progress worldview, as well as an obsession toward calendar-making and record-keeping: it's vital to know how long one has to complete the lardering, and when the long night will fall and the demons will come.
Of course, both sides do this, and both sides have to deal with the perpetual waves of marauders... not just, say, the orcs who come to wash over human citadels as the gloaming builds, but also, say, human nomads of the summer who see these well-stocked human bastions as an easier way to eat than doing their own pass-through hunting and gathering.
And then, of course, there are those for whom even this lifestyle was but a stage, and decided to leave the surface forever, descending into the forever dark, the veins of the earth, as it were....
Great ideas. Maybe that is the ultimate origin of the derro?
DeleteOnly birds and fish could migrate unless there was a continuous, or almost continuous, land route around the world. If there was there would probably be natural choke points and wide expanses.
ReplyDeleteIf you think about North America and Asia, the humans would be spread out for the crossing of North America, everyone would know where the one crossing point was though. At some point everyone would move to the Bering land bridge. Animals as well. There would be so many animals there it would be astounding.
Tribes who have been separated for 50 years now see each other again. It would be a place of new sharing, marriages and trading. Tribes from the South would have to buy warm furs from the northern dwellers.
After crossing the straight they would again branch out again to cover the maximum areas. The conflict would be over who got the choicest migration lines. Known good places, like lakes, oases, etc, would be rushed to, putting up with a bad period at the start in order to gain the bounty later.
Some groups would no doubt build storehouses, dwellings and fortifications in traditional locations over time and they would migrate from place to place, stopping at each for 10-20 years at a time before moving on, being semi-nomadic.
Yes, it would put the great African Serengeti migrations to shame in terms of numbers and variety of animals. Predators would have a field day.
DeleteI like the idea of cyclical meetings for trade, marriage, etc. Very cool.
Choke points would be a natural point for permanent (perhaps combined with the idea of underground dwellers)fortifications that block passage, or exact a toll. This would be an interesting point of conflict as well as the possibility for trade.
ReplyDeleteYES.
DeleteMaybe this is how dwarves get so bloody rich. Dwarves don't fear the night or day, and have no interest in moving. They are the world's gatekeepers.
This is a really cool idea! I'd love to play in a world like this.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I remember reading a long time ago was about the weather on tidally locked planets. Ones where it's always sunny on one side and dark on the other. Basically, there are huge gusts of gale force winds that travel across the planet.
Maybe surrounding the area of daylight is a series of winds that act as kind of a natural barrier or deterrent. Or perhaps for the creatures that hibernate, they build special minarets with holes that make music when the wind passes over them, signifying the beginning of the day cycle.
There is a lot of great stuff with this setting. I like it a lot.
Fascinating. I love the idea of the minarets.
DeleteAnother interesting scenario would be a world where a day lasts a decade. That means you really have to keep moving and it also makes it more probable that stragglers who fall behind can be discovered ten years later, having somehow survived both the night and the day. During morning they would have maybe a year to restock supplies for the day in a world that looks like they knew it but is completely depopulated by almost all the nomadic groups being in the evening zone.
ReplyDeleteIf you survive both the night and the day, people will find you when dusk finally comes, you just have to stay put.
Not sure how much fun that would be for a game, but it could be a really cool novel.
If the world wasn't circumnavigtory, but there was a large landmass like Eurasia/Africa... One option would be for tribes to head from East to West over the course of the light period. Dawn in Far East of Russia and dusk in the Western Sahara happen about the same time, so a tribe could slowly migrate over most of the 100 year day.
ReplyDeleteThen as night begins to fall they begin the swifter and more terrifying march back to find the dawn... At a 100 miles a month it would take about 10 years. During the Daytime, tribes would hide resources for the trip in caves and underground complexes along the way... protected from orcs and other tribes by traps and guardians of course.
Perhaps Dwarven fortresses would provide a stable civilization across day and night. The migrants would trade their furs, hides and such for dwarven gold, to be safely buried for their grandchildren to recover on the Return and trade back to the dwarves for supplies. Discovering another tribes treasure map could be the difference between survival and starvation for your family... And they won't miss it since the ghoul horde wiped them out.
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html?iso=20161103T1842
And once you add magic to this then you can have magical cities that use magic to stay alive during the long winter. There is something really Sword and Sorcery about this. I love the idea of a group of travelers who need to get to the city, coming over a snowy rise and seeing the city lit up like a beacon in the cold. I imagine it being somewhat deserted as half the population moves with the sun. The half that remain might have monumental disdain for the magically weak who cannot stay over the winter.
ReplyDeleteI find the idea of the human generations cycle here pretty interesting. Only a very few would remember the former day. These folks would be the interpreters of the maps and lore. The elder folks would be treated with much reverence and respect.
ReplyDeleteI also got thinking of the waterborne folks; living on "Waterworld" - like islands that float across the seas, circumnavigating the planet, if possible, and avoiding much of the land chaos. Of course, this would also invite a race of "sea orc" - like counterpart.
Certainly this idea provides a great cosmology of two gods, the Light (Sun) and the Dark (Void). Darkness could mean peace, death, whereas Light could signify the great struggle, war, fertility, etc. Even a pantheon could fit into each 'side'.
A Moon(s) would be especially important, if one went that way too.
Question: what's the tilt? Would there be any points on the planet that are always day, and always night (similar to our earth's poles at certain times of the year)? Could there be races who have managed to set up civilizations in places that are always day, even if it's a terrible place (like the north pole)? Similarly, on the opposite end, the drow/duergar/"typical" under dark denizens could set up camp on the opposite side of the earth.
ReplyDelete