Imagine a fantasy setting where darkness exerts pressure on the human body and prolonged exposure to total darkness is...

>Imagine a fantasy setting where darkness exerts pressure on the human body and prolonged exposure to total darkness is enough to kill a man.

What might this world be like?

It's kind of like how Drow always live, but in reverse.

It's fairly impractical for "night" to even exist in this world, since life would be unable to have even developed.

I can only imagine it would be grim
in the dark

The only life that would exist is either luminescent or able to withstand high pressure. Humans are neither.

What if the pressure-effect only affects humans as the opening post suggests?

>life would be unable to have even developed

Perhaps this phenomenon is somewhat recent then--relatively speaking.

Humans never develop as a species then. Dying at night is a very large evolutionary disadvantage.

City of Ember more or less.

Night is not total darkness. Earth's ambient light at night across a month with varying weather patterns is around 0.3 lux, more than enough to see. It may result in the death of the sick or the wounded, but this would just shift selection pressures to favouring any life capable of generating light, as the healthy would simply be wounded by the night.

I can imagine bioluminescent animals and humans with the ability to generate light, being the dominant lifeforms, with perhaps creatures resembling deep sea life attuned to the pressure of near total darkness in cave systems and the like.

>Dying at night

Couldn't you just sleep bathed in torch light or something?

HOLY CRAP, HAVE NONE OF YOU HEARD OF THE BLACK SMOKERS AT THE FUCKING BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN?????

Humanity didn't develop immediately knowing how to make fire. The moment the great apes started dying from night crushing their line would end pretty fucking quickly.

Humans aren't shellfish.

What if the humans of this planet come from another world?

Human ancestors which lived around colonies of bioluminescent insects would survive.

Dead? Populated by non-human's since someone let darkness god get away with this bullshit? Filled with edgy Villians and no heroes?

Why would I settle on a planet where being out at night kills me?

Humans who live around natural sources of light would survive. These are rare in the absolute extreme. Any form of long range travel would be impossible, which would kill humans as they relied on wide ranging to get food. We would be underfed apes until we figured out how to make light, and other apes without our FUCK HUGE disadvantage wouldn't let us just sit there around the light bugs.

>no heroes
The world would be packed full of heroes with minor magical artefacts which emit light.

Night lights for all.

I also think that light sources would be a hot commodity, seeing as its as essential for people to live as water and air.

>prolonged exposure to total darkness is enough to kill a man
So don't get stuck in a cave? There is ambient starlight at all times, even during storms on a new moon, so it'd be unpleasant and maybe damaging, but not lethal.

>Why would I settle on a planet where being out at night kills me?

It's full of precious resources and sexy monsters.

Why is no one talking about the utilitarian value? Pressure=force, so by creating a chamber of total darkness you would have an infinite supply of force with which to generate electricity, propel objects, etc. Having variable width apertures would allow you control the amount of light, thus the amount of force, available.

No, it would favor life that isn't affected by this retarded idea, not ones that waste precious energy lightly alleviating the problem.

>natural sources of light would survive. These are rare

What if natural sources of light are not rare on this world?

the characters are

>Crazed scholar rambles about infinite unbounded energy
>Soldiers of the king shoves him into a dark hole

Uh, how much pressure are we talking? And wouldn't the dark cavities INSIDE our bodies fuck us over in this case?

Obviously the Sun would be fervently worshiped as the life giver, but what role would other celestial bodies play?

The Moon could be seen as a protector entity, but its phases might add an emphasis on death and rebirth.
Stars could be interpreted as angels fighting against nighttime, showing not all hope is lost in complete darkness. A comet suggests a defeated angel and forebodes bad luck or oncoming disaster. Etc.

Then imagine when someone discovers the existence of black holes.

Then night dying is still a fuck huge disadvantage unless you make natural light so common that night dying doesn't matter.

>wouldn't the dark cavities INSIDE our bodies fuck us over

if we're talking about the many, many years that it takes for live to develop, taking planet earth as a reference, then the life would have just developed with the ability to survive the pressure changes

life's pretty hardy. they found a fungus at the chernobyl plant that feeds off of radioactivity

>Mirror relay chains carrying life-giving light from the other side of the planet

Sleep deprived

ITT: Veeky Forums forgets how to read and confuses "prolonged exposure to total darkness" causing death with "spontaneous implosion at sunset"

I remember reading this one book (if it sounds familiar pls tell me the title), but one of the main parts of the story was that lamplighters were extremely important figures since they went out in the darkness (when monsters came out) and made it possible for people to move during night. I could imagine that in this world lamplighters, or candlestick makers or anyone with a profession that involved the keeping of darkness away would be highly revered. Greedy kings would, instead of horde gold, would keep their keeps covered in braziers and candelabras and would catch luminescent creatures to keep on display in his throne room, just to keep the darkness away. I'd totally dig this setting actually.

...

Aye, plus light makes you easier to spot in the dark.

If I'm stalking somebody in the woods at night (which is certainly not a thing I do every friday) then I go sans torch and let my eyes adjust to the darkness, rods and cones take about 20 minutes to readjust from light to darkness.

A torch at night is a beacon to any predator.

Also assuming evolution. The races of this world could have been gifted fire in the time of their creation to protect them.

The waxing an waning of the moon(s) could be an effect from them the pressure of darkness, and not just being shaded on one side.

The Monster Blood Tattoo series?

The main character is named Rosamund, or something similar. Monster parts are used for industry and transportation as well as medicine, and the main character might not be human?

>The only life that would exist is either luminescent or able to withstand high pressure.
Already I'm on board. Either bioluminescence or you're tanky as fuck.

Would "darkness" be a physical substance?