Tiefling
First Post
This is an idea I got for a campaign setting.
Originally the world was Earth-like. It had the same sorts of environments and forms of life. As the more advanced civilizations were entering the iron age, a bizarre event occured. Stories of this event were recorded, or alternatively passed down by word of mouth in cultures that had no system of writing. The latter versions have become quite distorted, involving appearences of deities and such, but those recorded in writing were passed down through the generations with remarkably little error. It's essentially the same across the world, although the exact nature of the disasters varies depending on local geography.
The story tells that one night a reddish star appeared in the sky that no one recognized. Like the wandering stars (planets) that traversed the night sky, this one moved, but not in the same manner as the others. Over a few months it grew in size, a great disc of colors, red and brown and orange and yellow. It was accompanied by great cataclysms. Angry seas rose and washed away coastal towns. In some areas the earth shook, demolishing cities, and in others volcanoes erupted and spewed lava and ash, burying farms and blackening the sky. As the disc shrank and left, the world cooled, plants withered, animals starved, and famine ensued. Great civilizations fell, others rose in their place and fell once more. The civilised areas of the world deteriorated to a significant degree, and in some areas the art of writing was lost. After a few years the world began to recover. Plants and animals prospered once again, and the small city-states and kingdoms that remained of the earlier empires once again began to grow and conquer each other. But something was changed. It began to get colder. Throughout the world, over periods of decades and centuries, temperatures began to drop. And so it has continued to happen for almost three thousand years since the red star came. The world has grown colder, and people, animals and plants have been forced to adapt, or move towards the equator, or both. At this point the world is in a condition similar to the middle of Earth's greatest ice ages. And it will only get worse.
That's the story. The truth is that a rogue gas giant, similar in size and mass to Jupiter, entered the world's solar system and passed near the world, on the opposite side from the sun. The rogue planet's gravity caused the disasters; tides rose higher than ever before, washing away some coastal lands and settlements; the push and pull of gravity as the world spun on it's axis caused spontaneous earthquakes and volcanic eruptions throughout the world. The eruptions spewed ash into the atmosphere, darkening the skies and thereby reducing the amount of light received by the world and plants. As plants died, so did the herbivores that fed on them, and the carnivores that fed on the herbivores. Couple that with the cooling of the world by a couple degrees due to the reduced light, and agriculture all but disappeared, causing widespread famine. Hungry citizens rebelled and destroyed many powerful civilizations. But these problems were temporary. What was far worse was that the gravity of the rogue planet deflected the world's orbit slightly away from its sun. Each year moves it about a thousand miles farther from the sun at the furthest point on its orbit, and the orbit has grown increasingly elliptical. The world grows colder by the year, and eventually its orbit will take it far enough from its sun that it will escape the star's gravity entirely, sailing off into space as another rogue planet while its inhabitants freeze to death within a day or two.
That's about it. I haven't determined geography or anything like that, but I've thought of some ways that the cold would affect culture. For example, in the winter heat would be precious and therefore people would display wealth by wasting it openly, with high ceilings and many places such as windows where warm air could escape. Little things like that, which I find interesting.
Originally the world was Earth-like. It had the same sorts of environments and forms of life. As the more advanced civilizations were entering the iron age, a bizarre event occured. Stories of this event were recorded, or alternatively passed down by word of mouth in cultures that had no system of writing. The latter versions have become quite distorted, involving appearences of deities and such, but those recorded in writing were passed down through the generations with remarkably little error. It's essentially the same across the world, although the exact nature of the disasters varies depending on local geography.
The story tells that one night a reddish star appeared in the sky that no one recognized. Like the wandering stars (planets) that traversed the night sky, this one moved, but not in the same manner as the others. Over a few months it grew in size, a great disc of colors, red and brown and orange and yellow. It was accompanied by great cataclysms. Angry seas rose and washed away coastal towns. In some areas the earth shook, demolishing cities, and in others volcanoes erupted and spewed lava and ash, burying farms and blackening the sky. As the disc shrank and left, the world cooled, plants withered, animals starved, and famine ensued. Great civilizations fell, others rose in their place and fell once more. The civilised areas of the world deteriorated to a significant degree, and in some areas the art of writing was lost. After a few years the world began to recover. Plants and animals prospered once again, and the small city-states and kingdoms that remained of the earlier empires once again began to grow and conquer each other. But something was changed. It began to get colder. Throughout the world, over periods of decades and centuries, temperatures began to drop. And so it has continued to happen for almost three thousand years since the red star came. The world has grown colder, and people, animals and plants have been forced to adapt, or move towards the equator, or both. At this point the world is in a condition similar to the middle of Earth's greatest ice ages. And it will only get worse.
That's the story. The truth is that a rogue gas giant, similar in size and mass to Jupiter, entered the world's solar system and passed near the world, on the opposite side from the sun. The rogue planet's gravity caused the disasters; tides rose higher than ever before, washing away some coastal lands and settlements; the push and pull of gravity as the world spun on it's axis caused spontaneous earthquakes and volcanic eruptions throughout the world. The eruptions spewed ash into the atmosphere, darkening the skies and thereby reducing the amount of light received by the world and plants. As plants died, so did the herbivores that fed on them, and the carnivores that fed on the herbivores. Couple that with the cooling of the world by a couple degrees due to the reduced light, and agriculture all but disappeared, causing widespread famine. Hungry citizens rebelled and destroyed many powerful civilizations. But these problems were temporary. What was far worse was that the gravity of the rogue planet deflected the world's orbit slightly away from its sun. Each year moves it about a thousand miles farther from the sun at the furthest point on its orbit, and the orbit has grown increasingly elliptical. The world grows colder by the year, and eventually its orbit will take it far enough from its sun that it will escape the star's gravity entirely, sailing off into space as another rogue planet while its inhabitants freeze to death within a day or two.
That's about it. I haven't determined geography or anything like that, but I've thought of some ways that the cold would affect culture. For example, in the winter heat would be precious and therefore people would display wealth by wasting it openly, with high ceilings and many places such as windows where warm air could escape. Little things like that, which I find interesting.
