Living After The Sun Died

[JustKim]

The sun does more than just provide heat and light. It gives life to primary producers, the bottom of a planet's food web. For every one human who exists, around 10,000 tiny animals and plants must power the most basic tier of the food web every day. If there's no sunlight, primary producers will diminish or become extinct. If the former happens, life will be very isolated around small areas where primary producers can get the nutrients they need. If the latter happens, it's game over.

The sun powers precipitation. While tides are gravitational, heat and wind evaporate water and carry it elsewhere. There would be no rain. There would be no rivers, because headwaters would not be replenished. Once the water flowed somewhere, it would stay there pretty much forever. Of course, once an icy world starts to melt there would be new headwaters and new rivers, but it's something to consider.

There would be no weather. The sun powers wind, and with no wind there is no weather. The world would be completely stagnant for as long as it had no sun.

There would be many more apocalyptic effects, but that's some idea of the changes your world would have to survive.

 

[Land Outcast]

Of course, once an icy world starts to melt there would be new headwaters and new rivers, but it's something to consider.

Think avalanches and floods

 

[Imagicka]

Interesting.

Well, here's what I believe would happen in a diminished-light world, along with a bunch of interesting postulation...

Well, it's not the fact that you don't have 'no sun for a few centuries'. From what you say, from your initial comment is that it is a broken... eaten sun. So, I would imagine that it is exploded? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that... yes... it would be darker. But with an exploded sun, the sunsets and sunrises would be spectacular. Aurora Borealis on LSD. Or perhaps as violent as Venus' great lightning storms.

Now did you want diminished light? Or no light at all? Hmm, reminds me a bit of the movie Pitch Black. If there is no light at all, a lot of people, who can't see in the dark are going to be in a lot of trouble.

This decreased light amount would cause all sorts of flora and fauna to die off in a near-extinction, in the beginning... Logically it would cause the planet to drop in temperature. As to how much is really up to you. Some people think that if you move our planet away from the sun just a little bit, it would cause the planet to drop in temperature enough that we'd be knocked back into an ice-age again. So, if you want to have an icy world... or at least large icy places of permanent-winter. Well, it's up to you.

Plants that need a lot of light would die off, like large trees, and especially broad-leaf, fruit-bearing trees. There would be lots of land-slides or top soil first blowing away creating vast dust bowls as vegetation died off. This would seriously affect animals and monstrous populations. So, yeah, lots of plants and animals and populations of races/monsters would die off. It might not be overnight, but famine and disease would set in.

No big trees, no wood. No ships or multi-story buildings. Just have to look at some cultures that have no wood in our history. Pick one, there are a few.

What changes does it bring to the weather? A cooling would probably slow-down jet streams. Perhaps the world is a place of stagnating weather patterns. Or something unforeseen caused the world to have more violent weather patterns. Or by now, everything has settled itself out, but occasionally you get these extreme weather conditions. I'm imagining icy-wasteland deserts. Water water everywhere. But it's dirty salty ice. Very cold though, the sky is filled with dancing auroras and purple-magenta lightning storms.

Why would there be a band of scorching desert around the equator? Perhaps I'm missing something, but I would think that with a temperature drop, the equator region would perhaps now become a 'cool desert'... yeah... not many plants, okay... I get it. With all the water locked up in glaciers and ice-sheets. -- A lot of creatures would learn to adapt to live on the edge of these two regions. Giving them a source of water... but also treacherous.

So, of course the ecology would change dramatically. Perhaps, with lots of trees dying off, this allows ferns and dark-loving plants to flourish. Also, I think that after an eon, the predators would have adapted (well, everything would), but what if the predators really became prevalent. Making various wilderness regions very dangerous.

Or... you could go the opposite way and little or no wilderness at all. Most of it is in wintery, deadlands. Personally, I'd try to come up with some interesting, new, wintery habitats, and the 'sudden winter'... or perhaps even a 'big chunk of sun' smashed into the world/planet. This fractured the planet, causing all sorts of tectonic plates to jar and move (not to mention the direct damage it did to the planet). Causing great chains of volcanoes to spring up and creating a thicker more protective atmosphere, combined with their ground generated heat in various locations. Pockets of 'normal' vegetation have sprung up. Or the volcanoes are holding back the icy wastes.

So, perhaps you might end up with the idea that most populations live in regions that have volcanoes bordering icy wastes. Or live along the borders of the deserts and the ice-sheets. Are your intelligent creatures nomadic? If they are nomadic, what makes them so? Do they follow food-stocks of animals? Or do they pick one geographical region that will help them sustain life. Allowing them farming. -- You seem to be thinking on similar lines as well as I am. I too thought that it would drive populations underground if the surface is too harsh an environment to live in. I always toyed with the idea of underground societies living on fungi. Food, lightning, oxygen production. (I'm mostly brainstorming without reading your post, so your ideas don't cloud my ideas... imagining what I would do first. So, please forgive me if I repeat a lot of what you thought of already.)

Perhaps with this apocalyptic event, this drove most 'underdark?' races onto the surface. Do you want to use darkelves? But most definitely, it would have drove the illithids out into the open. So, how many illithids are there, population-wise, compared to humans and whatever human-like/humanoid races you want. You throwing in elves, dwarves, gnomes and what not in there? Or are you going with strictly psionic races?

Perhaps there were great wars between the two. Psionics and non-psionics, and the non-psionics won. Humans are now slaves? Pockets of resistance? Elves turn to magick to help fight their psionic masters? How are, and why are the illithids in charge? Now if there were powerful enough to put out the sun, they could have easily orchestrated the domination of their enemy races.

Perhaps the illithids are the secret masters of the world. That no one knows that they are the ones who caused the apocalypse. Sort of like the illuminati. Are you familiar with Zecharia Sitchin, and his 12th Planet theory?

Dim it? Explode it? Move it further away? -- Perhaps they might know that the planet moves around the sun, and they just figured out with magick to move the planet further in it's orbit. While everyone else thinks that the sun moves around the planet.

So, upon reading your post...

Perhaps the Aboleths had found means to perhaps access great vast underground oceans or fissures that had been created when the planet cracked itself and the oceans flooded these networks of newly created places. Or the Aboleths had figured out how to flood regions of the underdark/underworld/under-regions. Whatever you want to call it.

Once the sun returns to the sky, this would again create great geographical changes. Major flooding, which goes in line with Aboleth rebellion/conquest. There is a geological theory that vast flooding of the planet occurred not because of some great astrological disaster. But because of slow gradual climate change. Scientists first believed that when we left the ice-age, eventually the glaciers would melt away. But this new theory says that they did some receding, but for the most part, they also melted, building up vast ice-locked lakes. Then, because of the massive weight, eventually they all fail, generally all around the same time. Like massive ice-dams all over equatorial regions of our planet. Thus all the early cultures ALL had flood myths because everyone was flooded. Ahh, seems Turanil is familiar with it.

This theory also has a lot to do with the geographical region 200 miles east of Seattle called the Badlands.

My, a lot of people are thinking of the same things I did. Just goes to prove there are no true original ideas anymore. Geothermal mists... I forgot about those.

 

[Baron Opal]

I had a prime plane called Pelargrir where something similar happened. My solution was that there would still be warmth underground where the rock is warmed by pressure and the core. Also, you could make plinths of adamant sympathetically bound to a giant brick of adamant that was tossed into a active volcano or volcanic vent. So, you can have these plinths scattered about your lands, much like stelae from the game Torg. They are red hot, constantly radiating heat and a dim red light. This keeps the people alive with heat, and some form of new crop would have to be grown that doesn't need light so much as heat.

This being a fantasy game, I had a limit as to how cold the air would become. Antartic temperatures are sufficent. The dreaded winterwights were the kings of the new earth, and the illithids ruled the deeps.

Are you familiar with Zecharia Sitchin, and his 12th Planet theory?

Arrgh. His writings are so difficult to read. His grammar is awful. Much like reading the Timecube site, although his ramblings are ... intelligable.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Again, geothermal energy can give heat and nutrients. The sun isn't nessecary, it's just more readily available. If the sun went out on Earth, we'd still have life because there's life right now on Earth that the sun is mostly superfluous to.

We wouldn't have *people*, maybe. But since this is fantasy, it's not a big thing to stretch the idea of geothermal life to large parts, or even the majority of the world.

A world of volcanoes where no sun ever shines....Gehenna? Or this?

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

There was a theory put forth decades ago by Richard C Hoagland (Is this the coast to coast forums?), about possible life on the frozen moon of Europa. The theory very basically states that due to volcanoes and tidal forces from being in an orbit that an ocean would not fully ice over. Add the basic idea that life in some form may exist so long as there is liquid water, and you have a starting point.

Based of of that, perhaps all life in your world migrated back to the seas where volcanic vents and micro organisms provide the heat and oxygen.

For a fantasy based world, I would agree that arks of some sort would have been crafted. With the kind of magic available in the average D&D game, permanent orbs of sunlight would not be too hard to craft.

 

[DMH]

If the sun went out on Earth, we'd still have life because there's life right now on Earth that the sun is mostly superfluous to.

There is less than you think. The vent organisms rely in part on the organic rain from above- dead plankton and nekton that sinks to the abyssal plain. The only organisms that are totally seperated from the sun are subsurface autolitotrophic microbial ecosystems (SLIMEs)- complexes of fungi, bacteria and archae (sp?) that are within the Earth's crust.

 

[Nifft]

A world of volcanoes where no sun ever shines....

And again, this is clearly why Illithids are evil. They evolved being lit from below. With red lights. Perhaps lava lamps. Totally evil.

C, -- N

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

There is less than you think. The vent organisms rely in part on the organic rain from above- dead plankton and nekton that sinks to the abyssal plain. The only organisms that are totally seperated from the sun are subsurface autolitotrophic microbial ecosystems (SLIMEs)- complexes of fungi, bacteria and archae (sp?) that are within the Earth's crust.

Energy was always my problem with the Underdark. Where are all these drow, dwarves, illithids etc. getting their fixed carbon from? Given the population of the Underdark, they'd have to be importing tonnes of food every day, but who's going to trade with the evil races below the earth? Geothermal energy only gets you so far, because there's not much of it. Compared to the energy input of the sun, using other energy sources is like trying to grow plants by the light of a candle. It's not suitable for large-scale primary production, although with the right technology you could perhaps generate enough electricity from geothermal energy to run a small-scale farming operation.

 

[DMH]

It's not suitable for large-scale primary production, although with the right technology you could perhaps generate enough electricity from geothermal energy to run a small-scale farming operation.

That is why I mentioned the plant that magically uses heat in place of light. Go deep enough and there is plenty of heat- how deep is the deepest parts of the Underdark?