Introducing Night: Human Civilization After the Sun

Hi everyone! So, Snakebite is my main project, but it's actually not the first time I've written a world; far from it. I've been DMing since I was 11 and have created a lot of worlds and DnD derivatives. This one is my favorite; I call it Night. I figured I might as well share it with you!

 This is the introduction I gave to my players, explaining what the world was in brief and how it was different from conventional D&D. I'll follow up with more on the world and rules and even the campaign later, just so you can get a sense for my writing. 

Looking back you can see how I was already chafing against D&D and moving towards wanting a different system. My house rules, at the bottom, forbid like half of the PHB. 

As always, thanks for reading! 

Night

No one alive has seen a sunrise. 

Once, the world was bright. In the stories, and in the crumbled statues of the ancient temples, one can see a world of blazing sunlight and high desert. By the size of the old cities, armies of thousands must have marched under the banners of kings and emperors. In the oldest books, stories speak of mage-queens that could raise soaring fortresses in an instant and reduce them even faster. Life pulsed across the sun-scorched world, watched always by the sacred Sun Father and Night Mother, from their jade-encrusted palace at the heart of the world. 

Until the day it didn't. 

No one knows where the Sun Father went, or how. Rumors abound, but there is no organized reply. On a blood-red eve a thousand years past, the sun sank below the horizon, replaced by a starless sky--and then never rose again. 

All life would have ceased if not for the Night Mother, who sacrificed her worldly form, throwing herself over the world and blanketing it in endless, brilliant moonlight. Her palace sits empty at the heart of the world, but the moon has ever since glowed full and large in the sky.

The following years are lost to history. The great empires crumbled; the endless cities emptied as the populace fled starvation. Though the world was saved, the world was changed: great, quiet forests crawled up over the once-dry lands, the storms calmed into regular rains, and the people learned to grow the herbs and grasses that could sustain themselves on pale moonlight. 

A thousand years, maybe more, have passed, and the world remains blanketed in gentle night. There are no kings, few armies, and few cities. People live agrarian, candlelit lives in the country; the dead cities crack and crumble, having been picked clean over the centuries. Life is not always easy, but it is steady. 

Tying the world together is the great Church of the Night Mother, the sole survivor of the ancient age of sunlight. In the halls of the Night Mother, priests venerate her sacrifice and pray to give her strength to carry on, while her knights swear themselves to protect her children. All speak of the day the sun might be restored, but sustaining the life-giving moon remains paramount. 

And yet all of this is mere history. What captures the imagination of an adventurous spirit is not the stale stories of a bygone world, but instead always the rumors of Spirit Stones. Strange and ethereal crystals, they appear seemingly at random in the world. Some say they fall from the skies, and as such adventurers are keen to share stories of meteor showers and shooting stars. Perhaps the tales are true and the stones are the long-missing stars themselves. Perhaps they are blessings from the Sun Father, somehow piercing his captivity. Perhaps they are something else entirely. 

What everyone does know, and what makes these stones so coveted, is their power. When held in human hands, the stones pulse with light and life--and, somehow, confer supernatural abilities upon the holder. Afterwards, nothing remains of the stone, but those affected by their touch grow faster, stronger, more vital. The feeling is said to be intoxicating, and few who have felt the stone’s grace fail to seek out more. Though many in the Church caution against the use of Stones, and many towns fear them, an industry has risen around them--though it is not a world of luxury, wealth exists, and there are many willing to trade fortunes for a few shards of sunstone. 

Of course, much is rumor. You have never seen one, not a real one. Few people have. But whether you have a dream of power or simply seek a reason to leave your quaint home, you have become a seeker. For weeks you’ve traveled quiet forest trails and camped along ice-cold streams, heading east, to Chalcedon. You are not alone: slowly the deer trails and riverbanks converged into something resembling a road, though there are few merchants traveling these days. 

Chalcedon was once a magnificent, if remote, city. Set at the intersection of a deep mountain pass and the ice-cold Mirrored Sea, it was a wealthy and holy city in the ancient world, of such unique importance no army dared to assail its legendary walls. Today is but a ghost, with a few thousand souls colonizing the western edge of the ruins, sowing their crops in ancient courtyards and lining the marbled avenues with fruit trees. Stories drift from the city across fog-choked villages a world away. They say Chalcedon and its brooding ruins bear a special wealth of sunstones, that great meteor showers tear at the sky and hail dozens of stones across the dim realm.

And so you find your way towards it, seeking something greater than a contemplative life in the Mother’s light. Are the stones the key to restoring the sun? Are they lost artifacts of an epoch of unimaginable power? Are they simply natural phenomena, potent but meaningless?

You will find out.

Game Mechanics:

No Experience. Players and NPCs gain levels only through the use of Sunstones/Bloodstones, special artifacts usually found at the end of a quest. NPC “Real life” experience mostly affects judgement, tactics, and cunning.

No Sunlight. Outside, the world is bathed in dim light at all times. The moonlight is divine and potent enough for plants to exist, but there is no natural bright light in this world. 

Humans only. This is a world of humans, though they are relatively elfin, being generally smaller, thinner, and paler than is typical. 

Only Player Classes. “Classes” are an abstraction applied only to player characters. NPCs stats and rules are specific to them as appropriate for their character. 

Custom Spells. NPCs can use SRD spells, but generally have their own spell abilities. A limited number of spells function differently: generally, any related to planar travel or extraplanar beings. 

No Random Encounters. There are no “random encounters,” per se, though they can be included if desired. Planned encounters can occur at random times. 

Custom Gods. The sole mainstream religion is worship of the Night Mother, most commonly through the sprawling, institutional Church of the Night Mother. Animist and other shamanistic traditions endure, though they are all at least influenced by the Night Mother. Worship of the Sun is ceremonially incorporated into most theology, though with varying degrees of zeal.

Class Roles Differ. Player classes are abstract and need not define their social role, but they 

suggest them. 

Checks Have Fail Conditions. If a situation has no particular downside, this campaign does not require skill checks. Checks are called for only when failure produces a significant negative effect, such as missing a helpful detail, taking damage, or causing a cave-in. Bashing down a door, or picking an unguarded lock, with no pressure, will not require a check. 

Culture shift. The world of Taurica is markedly different from worlds like Faerun. Taurica is not cosmopolitan, colorful, or marked by adventure. Demons do not invade from strange portals, mages do not raise emerald spires on the clifftops, and strange men with swords make people uncomfortable. It is a quiet, shadowed, placid world: many traditional high-adventure tropes do not apply. Taverns, for one, are vanishingly rare.