How would you explain this for a campaign setting?

[Turanil]

I would go with several things at once:

1) Perpetual thunderstorm-clouds cover. Hence a rainy bleak land, plenty of water somewhat compensates for low light.

2) Mountainous region also helps.

3) Heavy canopy trees in forests furthermore darken some places.

4) Vampires tend to operate at night of course; when they have to go out during the day, they travel in closed coaches (with undead horses and guards and the like).

5) Lots of underground mazes in cities, for the undead and vampire to move away from any sunlight.

 

[SiderisAnon]

Individual Magic Items

Why block out the sun in the entire country? That's going to cause a lot of notice, it's going to require HUGE amounts of magical energy, and it's going to pretty much destroy the local ecology. Instead, go with individual magic items.

Each of your vampire lords can have a ring/amulet/widget that protects them from the sun. The item could either protect the individual vampire, or if you want them to be able to bring along henchmen and have a real gloomy atmosphere to them (pardon the pun), have the magic item create a permanent filed of gloom around the vampire that normal sunlight cannot pierce. Either way, the vampire lord takes his shade with him wherever he goes. It also makes them much harder for the PC's to take out with a well-placed Daylight spell.

In a campaign I ran years ago, one of my villains was a vampire with a ring that created a field of darkness around him at basically skin level. (Think ring of protection, but a darkness field instead of a deflection one.) It made him a very effective villain AND meant that when the party finally got a hold of the ring after killing him, it didn't really do them any good. (Plus made them a target for other vampires seeking the ring.)

 

[BlackMoria]

A few more ideas...

The country is environmentally normal in all aspects. The vampires keep control through their proxies and minions during the day and have no restrictions during the night. So during the day, the people put up with the vampires' taskmasters and minions, who are so numerous and/or powerful that the people can't move against the vampire lords during the day. At night, the people lock themselves up and noone travels, because this is when the vampires and vampire spawn come out to feed and look for cruel diversion....

The other idea is that the country is co-existant with the plane of shadow on a permanent or very long term (hundreds of years) basis. Therefore, the country would be full of creatures of shadow or with the shadow or shade template.

 

[Ourph]

I would put a big volcano in the center is the region that vomits a huge column of smoke and ash which spreads out to cover the region like an umbrella of miasma. All the ash fall make the region very fertile, but the lack of sulight is a problem.

I was thinking the same thing except, why not turn the presence of the volcano into a replacement for sunlight when it comes to crops. Away from the volcano, people grow mushrooms and shade-loving plants. Near the volcano, peasants grow plants and animals that feed on the heat and sulphurous fumes from the volcano (much like the plants and animals that live near deep-sea thermal vents). These might be very strange and not at all like what people in other areas eat (no cows, but everybody LOVES Tube-worm Stew) but that would just add to the freakiness of the vampire-controlled region.

In addition, if you give most of the ruling Vampires levels as Clerics or Druids they could use their control of life-giving food spells (Create Water, Purify F&D, Plant Growth, etc.) as a tool for keeping the living populace in line. A ban on all living practitioners of divine magic makes for some interesting plot-devices for your PCs and makes the vampires all the more powerful (no divine casters means no turning, after all).

 

[Desdichado]

Dang, the tidally locked small moon idea was what I had.

Crops needn't die in lack of sunlight. Maybe all the folks (and their livestock) are mushroom eaters?


Anyway, that's the semi-realistic solution; since this is fantasy, that's not strictly necessary. I kinda like the idea that the darkness came first, and then the vampires. Some ancient king offended the sungod, and he swore never to shine his light on the land again or something like that. As you cross through the border regions, the sun gradually shrinks and fades until by the time you're in the kingdom proper it's just flat out gone. If you turn around and walk the other way, it gradually comes back into view in the same place in the sky that it should be.

Realistically, it makes no sense, but it doesn't have to. In addition to the vampires, it could be a colony or trading center for all kinds of underdark races and creatures; the only place on the surface where they can congregate. A city-state or small realm ruled by vampires who trades heavily with drow in the slave market, for instance, sounds pretty awesome.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

For those suggesting some form of shadow-casting object creating a physical barrier between the sun and the Kingdom of the Vampires who are still puzzling out how you can have a shadow ecology, I suggest:

1) Use the ecology of the Underdark. In this perpetual night, the normal surface species wither, but the subterraneans can emerge and dominate the landscape.

2) Use a geothermic/chemical ecology similar to those of deepwater-trench life forms. This one could be fun because nothing there would taste right to outsiders...and outsiders might not taste right to the Vampires.

 

[Andor]

The sun is blocked out by a country wide perpetually swirling cloud of Bats.

 

[Someone]

Lots of arrows.

 

[Mighty Halfling]

The place would be teeming with fungi (plus oozes, slimes and whatnot) that are devouring the now-dead plant life.

 

[Najo]

I think I would like to explore the underdark ecology above ground, the effects of placing the area in perpetual shadow plane power and what effects that would have and then using the their minions during the day time periods that come and go. Then they protect their cities with darkness magic and tunnels underneath. How would that all work? What magic items and spells allow them to do this?