Hundreds of years ago, the weak red sun finally flickered out. Every remaining settlement maintains its own little sun-star, which provides daylight to an area a few miles in diameter.
Every year, a ritual must be performed to renew each town’s sun-star. The ritual uses up gold. Adventurers are sent into abandoned, dark, horrifying cities and ancient dungeons, and told, “Return with life-giving gold!”.
If adventurers become rich enough, they can generate a new sun-star and start their own Point of Light settlement.
In such a world, normal plants and animals are at a premium, while metal can be foraged from the dead cities, so metal armor might be cheaper than leather. That makes this cold world the reverse of the Dark Sun setting.
The few orchards would be carefully tended, and no one would waste valuable wood on torches. Perhaps everyone knows a ritual that causes a gold coin to burn like a torch.
In the vast cold darks, the monsters are touched with shadow or aberration. The forests are hostile, and the shadows wait for the sun-stars to die.
Neat, like a fantasy version of A Deepness in the Sky.
Have you read The Night Land? It’s a similar setting in some ways, though not all. Has some interesting bits of unexplained horrific things lurking at edges, although expeditions are considered rather unnecessary and generally a bad idea. Of course, PCs in such a setting would surely find a good reason to set out anyway, as the protagonist did.
(Anyone who hasn’t read it and is interested in doing so: do yourself a favour and just stop after the first half or so. It becomes an entirely different and less fascinating sort of horrific after that, as anyone who *has* read it will confirm.)
funny I have been running a game very similar to this concept for a year now.
The only difference is the gold feeding part.
here was my overview to the players
ALONE IN THE DARK
The brave and desperate heroes of the world rage against the dying of the light, seeking to reclaim the fading power and splendor of ancient times. – Andy Collins
One of the new key conceits about the D&D world is simply this: Civilized folk live in small, isolated points of light scattered across a big, dark, dangerous world.
Most of the world is monster-haunted wilderness and the centers of civilization are few and far between… each jealously guarding its borders from each other.
Let us take that literally, a place we’re darkness envelopes the land and people gather in isolated areas protected by ancient and powerful magic.
A malevolent force, a fog of darkness that consumes light and taints the land consuming the land of Shade. Within this sinister shroud strange creatures dwell, aberrations lurk and undead stalk those unfortunate to become lost in the abyss.
During most hours, the land is cast in shadows, a grim perpetual dusk. When night comes, and the nightmare of darkness crashes over the land. The moon and the powerful Sun Towers are the only light that seems to pierce the nightmare of that is the dark.
Very clever. There would be a lot of potential for roleplaying…
That’s great, I like that. I’m gonna stick it in my idea document.