Living After The Sun Died

[Nifft]

Energy was always my problem with the Underdark.

Just the Underdark? Fantasy realms have huge energy problems. How do you sustain such large populations of man-eating monsters, even on the surface?

Magic is the usual hand-wave, and it works fine for the Underdark, too.

- Beholders eat raw magical chaos energy. That's what their big eye does, suck in and consume ambient magical energy. Their skin, which constantly flakes off, leaves a dusting of reasonably fertile (if odd-smelling) soil wherever they go.

- Some deep denizens commonly eat the microscopic trans-planar "plankton" that drift and migrate from the Prime to the various Elemental planes and back. This keeps them from starving, but doesn't taste great, so these critters are always hungry for more substantial (material) food.

- Darkvision clearly works off some kind of radiation, right? So how about a plant that feeds on that radiation. Perhaps some plants have evolved to synthesize energy using neutrinos.

- Death Energy. What happens to the souls of the dead when you bury them? Maybe they become food for monsters in the Underdark. (This would make for a rather dark campaign setting.)

Cheers, -- N

 

[WayneLigon]

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.

Very small amounts of life, and most of those are supported by life that is dependent on the sun. Ecologists are not just jerking your chain when they refer to life as a web, with everything tied to everything else.

Geothermal energy is only going to come through in a very few select places and might be able to keep a few survivors together for a little while. About the only thing you'll have living might be tube worms down around the geothermal vents, until those vents close. And we know very little about them. Some trace but nessesary element of their diet might come from decaying life from the higher ocean; without that, they die as well.

But that's not the issue. Sunlight is. You cannot power photosynthesis without sunlight, and that's what powers the entire life cycle of the planet. When the ocean phytoplankton die, the rest of the planet follows not so long afterwards. If we're assuming this is a fairly sudden event, evolution won't even have a chance to try out some variants that might work.

The sun has other less-noticed effects. Just as an example, a lot of animals rely on the level ambient light to tell them when to breed (most animals are not always in heat like we are; they don't just breed anytime they please). Take that away, and they simply stop breeding. Same thing with seasons, heat levels, amounts of rain: all these and more serve as breeding triggers to something. No sun, no seasons, no weather, no breeding. Mass extinctions follow, taking the predators with them.

Knock out any of the large pillars that support life and the entire house of cards follows over the next hundred years or so. About the only thing that could possibly save life on a planet without a sun would be magic, or the conversion to forms of life that are not as we know it.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Just the Underdark? Fantasy realms have huge energy problems. How do you sustain such large populations of man-eating monsters, even on the surface?

Magic is the usual hand-wave, and it works fine for the Underdark, too.

Oddly enough, magic works better as a hand-wave for the Underdark than it does for the surface because the Underdark monsters are so weird. When you start asking what all those dire bears and assassin vines are eating, the answer is probably not magic.

Still, I tend to think that a realistic ecology is possible so long as the really big predators are sufficiently rare. I mean, once upon a time, there were many extremely large carnivores and herbivores living on the earth under essentially the same light conditions that we're living under now. If there's enough energy to keep Albertosaurus in meat, there's probably enough energy to keep a bulette alive.

There are so many factors involved in the stability of food webs that I can, from an ecological perspective, use those instead of magic as my hand-waving factor to explain the generally predator-heavy environment in a D&D world. Of course, it helps if you have large tracts of uninhabited land. It's easiest to maintain believability if I set up the geography of the world myself.

- Darkvision clearly works off some kind of radiation, right?

That's demonstrably false, although I don't want to derail the thread to prove it.

So how about a plant that feeds on that radiation. Perhaps some plants have evolved to synthesize energy using neutrinos.

That might actually work if we throw magic into the equation. There's a ton of energy in neutrinos, but there's this problem that they don't interact with matter, so you can't use the energy. If you had a magical "neutrino trap", it might provide energy on an order similar to that of visible light, although I don't have the numbers with which to calculate the neutrino energy flux at the earth compared to the photon energy flux at that distance.

 

[Nifft]

If there's enough energy to keep Albertosaurus in meat, there's probably enough energy to keep a bulette alive.

One of them has a slightly less efficient means of locomotion...

That's demonstrably false, although I don't want to derail the thread to prove it.

Ah well, can't use that then. I'll look for the discussion thread -- Rules forum?

That might actually work if we throw magic into the equation. There's a ton of energy in neutrinos, but there's this problem that they don't interact with matter, so you can't use the energy. If you had a magical "neutrino trap", it might provide energy on an order similar to that of visible light, although I don't have the numbers with which to calculate the neutrino energy flux at the earth compared to the photon energy flux at that distance.

Well "magic" was my whole point.

Plant life which extended into the transitive planes could be interesting, especially as protection against certain high-level spell effects.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Very small amounts of life, and most of those are supported by life that is dependent on the sun. Ecologists are just just jerking your chain when they refer to life as a web, with everything tied to everything else.

No, they're not. The idea of a food web is as opposed to a food chain, which was the original concept of how energy travels through an ecosystem. A food chain starts with primary producer A, which is eaten by herbivore B, which is eaten by predator C, which is eaten by predator D, and so on. A food web acknowledges that primary producer A is eaten by herbivores B, C, and D, as well as decomposers E1 through E35, all of which are variously eaten by predators F through Q, some of which also eat each other, and all of which are eventually eaten by members of the E-series of decomposers. Energy starts with primary producers, and leaves the system as heat, but it by no means travels through a determinate pathway. Hence, the concept of a web.

As for everything being tied to everything else, as soon as you remove one species from a community, you've just freed up niche space that can be colonized by other species. This will change the community organization and may result in extinction of other species, the formation of new species somewhere down the road, or alterations in the relative species abundance in the community, as well as other effects. Remove certain "keystone" species, often predators, and you can cause the community to collapse entirely. Every species in a typical community is constrained in some way by the presence of other species, either through competition or predation, and altering the species makeup of a community will alter those constraints, either directly or indirectly. Hence, everything is tied to everything else, at least on a local level.

But if anyone does have the impression that primary producers making use of a significant source of energy are not necessary to a community because "everything's tied to everything else", allow me to disabuse you of that notion.

 

[Land Outcast]

No, they're not. The idea of a food web is as opposed to a food chain, which was the original concept of how energy travels through an ecosystem. A food chain starts with primary producer A, which is eaten by herbivore B, which is eaten by predator C, which is eaten by predator D, and so on. A food web acknowledges that primary producer A is eaten by herbivores B, C, and D, as well as decomposers E1 through E35, all of which are variously eaten by predators F through Q, some of which also eat each other, and all of which are eventually eaten by members of the E-series of decomposers. Energy starts with primary producers, and leaves the system as heat, but it by no means travels through a determinate pathway. Hence, the concept of a web.

Thanks ; I haven't heard of such a concept until now (I DID know about how it worked, but haven't gotten the idea of the "web" representation).

 

[Slife]

Two words:

Tarrasque Sandwiches

(The tarrasque can only be kept dead through a wish, and it regenerates as well. An imprisoned one would be a decent source of heat and meat.)

 

[eyebeams]

Google "ssirik akaur" (not a typo at all).

 

[Nyeshet]

There are several forms of life that can exist without the sun. Recently in Israel a cave system was discovered that had been almost completely isolated from the surface for over ten million years. The creatures lacked color or eyes, and most either grew extremely slowly or fed on a bacterial slime that formed on the lower walls. The bacteria itself, it was found, was feeding off nutrients that seeped through the rock with trace amounts of water from the surface. Something like this could work.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Scientists_discover_prehistoric_cave_with_unknown_lifeforms
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/mystery-cave-in-israel-reveals-bizarre-ecosystem-10702.html

Then there are the microorganisms, some of which live in complete isolation at the bottom of the oceans around hydrothermal vents and others of which live under literally miles of rock, feeding off radioactive isotopes instead of sunlight.

http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/061019_otherworldly_bacteria.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/20/MNGJ9LT21J1.DTL&type=printable

Lastly, what about the Underdark or Underworld or however you wish to call it? It exists without sunlight. In fact, creatures from it take a penalty from exposure to sunlight. Yet some form of edible plantlife or fungus must exist for such a variety and number of creatures to exist there. Perhaps the plantlife consumes magic or radiation or geothermal heat or some combination of these - or something else entirely. Ants farm fungus using the corpses of their dead and any miscellaneous plantlife they remove from their homes (such as sliced off invading roots).

However it exists, some plantlife and animal life has adapted to living underground on worlds where an Underdark exists. The surface may die off - perhaps even the uppermost layer of the underdark - but the middle and lower layers will likely continue to exist. Note, also, that Dragons do not need to eat - or, rather, they can eat anything - including metal, rock, and ice if necessary - so they will likely survive on the surface after most other creatures die off. Aberrations may also continue to exist, as they may or may not need to eat.

Finally, there is magic to consider. If I recall correctly Daylight is one of the spells that can be tied to a Hallowed area. Some celestials might be willing to Hallow several adjacent areas. If a heating charm can be created that can be tied to a Hallow (and I can see lots of deities allowing this, as it keeps their worshipper alive), then small isolated communities will likely dot the entire world. As their population grows the area affected could be slowly expanded with more Hallowed regions. If the communities are near enough, then they might even send dog sled runners between them - for trade, for intermarriages, to organize to deal with a local dragon or aberration menace, etc.

So it is likely that the Underdark will become the main settling region, with some small locations on the surface also holding perhaps a village level population (at most, probably less).

 

[Slife]

Google "ssirik akaur" (not a typo at all).

Your search - "ssirik akaur" - did not match any documents.

Hmm... without quotes doesn't work either.