I'm doing a homebrew multiple-breed dogfolk race, and the question has come up of how essential Low-Light Vision would be for them. For current-day Golarion, I'm thinking "not" for most breeds. They live with and work with diurnal humans, so they need other canine strengths more.
Buuuut, I'm also thinking that the Azlanti would have created & enslaved the ur-breed, and Thassilonians would have brought them to Avistan. Unless someone has a more recent suggestion for their origin, they would have been freed by Earthfall, hard-scrabbling their way through the thousand-year Age of Darkness. That would have shaped a race this malleable. A lot.
So I started wondering just how dark the Age of Darkness actually was. I did find this:
And as for the "Thousand years of darkness" caused by Earthfall, there's a bit of metaphor going on there. The "darkness" itself lasted for a relatively short time; probably only a few years, in fact, but the ice age/mayhem caused by that certainly caused a darkness of civilization and hope. THAT'S the darkness part that lasted for 1000 years.
So what are we talking about? After the few years of darkness, I mean. Definitely ice-age climate & weather. But for light vs. darkness...
-- Day/night cycles very much like what Golarion has now?-- Or days that are dim because of ash still in the air, and total darkness at night due to occluded stars/moon? (In that case, low-light would be of greater use in the day than at night!)
-- Or shorter days & longer nights than we have now? (Somehow. It would reward low-light tremendously.)
I don't need a whole sourcebook, but I hope you have a paragraph. Please.
Well, Orcs of Golarion mentions that several orcish empires formed at the beginning of the Age of Darkness which didn't crumble until the sun came back.
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Similar to shadowkras, I'd say like our polar winters, particularly around the time of solstice. Not enough to make it an extinction level event, but bad enough that it was a civilization toppling event as crop yields plunged from lacks of sunlight.
As an aside, it makes you wonder what sort of crops that Ancient Thassilon grew that went extinct post Earthfall in the years of twilight.
Ventnor, I've seen other references to "the sun coming back." But I quoted JJ because that looked a bit like revisionist history to me. Although it's from 2010, and I assume Orcs of Golarion was written rather later...
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shadowkras, those are fabulous post-apocalypse pics! Not of Golarion, it looks like, but fabulous!
A thousand years of twilight... in the daytime. Total dark at night.
Scary. "Huddle around a pitiful fire and pray" times.
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As an aside, it makes you wonder what sort of crops that Ancient Thassilon grew that went extinct post Earthfall in the years of twilight.
It's not mainly crops that I wonder about. Most of those would likely have still been cultivated on bits of land, tended by very, very small settlements of Thassis turning into Varisians. Although the extreme cold would have put an end to a lot of crops, too. Still, we have enough for our needs now.
What your question makes me wonder about are botanicals for alchemy & magic. Plants that had been carefully cultivated in gardens or even hothouses? Again, some surely went feral, but...
I wonder what players would do if, while exploring a Thassi ruin, they found a small packet of magically preserved seeds? Drat! I bet they'd immediately think "Beanstalks!" and mere herbs would spoil the game for them.
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Thank you, all! Except I now have a bonus question.
In a PF world, if you're as adaptable to conditions as RL dogs are, do you think you could develop darkvision during 1,000 years of twilight alternating with total darkness? Especially in a world with lots of orcs to give you or any orchestrating humans the idea?
It WAS hard on the plants. Everyone starved. Almost to extinction.
I'm thinking that in high summer, the sun would break through the clouds of ash enough to shed normal light, yes, at least some days. But never bright light. And in fall or spring? No, probably never better than dim light. It's a cool image.
So, let's postulate dogfolk who can adapt enough to form radically different breeds (bloodhounds vs. grayhounds). During the Age of Darkness, no one is deliberately breeding them, but... the inept definitely die, and the capable procreate. Helpful mutations are going to be passed along like at no other time! {And radiation accidents would be happening, too...} Low-light vision is necessary, certainly.
But would my dogfolk develop darkvision?
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I could see it. Think of the one place where Flora won't be impacted? Subterra. The cave misses, glowey shrooms and all the fauna that comes along with it. Domestic dogs are scavengers at best and pack carnivores at worst. They just move to the caves layer or top darklands and breed to thrive, and over a few hundred generations their llv has evolved to dv.
(...) small group of primitive mythological hero-figures referred to as the Ancestors, who lived sometime in the late years of the Age of Darkness and up to the founding of the Jistka Imperium. In the times of the first Ancestors, humans had just begun to reemerge from their protective caves and subterranean dwellings to once again walk the ash-strewn lands of Golarion. During this bleak era, perpetual clouds of soot and dust still blanketed the sky, and only those tribes of humans dwelling near the equinox[sic!] were able to stand the constant chill of a land without a reliable sun to provide light and heat.
I can definitely seen most of plant life on the surface to vanish during this time, with the expection of areas that were saved by druids and other mages (repeatedly casting control weather to clear the skies etc.). Some Varisian and other tales tell that after the Earthfall the humans hid in caves, possibly survivng only thenks to the subterrean ecosystems. After the skies cleared nature recovered spreading from these sanctuaries and by being brought back by the druids from The Circle Between.
Thanks, everyone! I've thought it over and consulted the sad fate of elves who clung to darkvision. (They lose their low-light, and are dazzled by bright light, besides!) I've decided that only specialized dogfolk who can afford the 2-RP full cost on top of low-light, no sensitivity, will keep darkvision. OTOH, I'd argued that they'd give up low-light 10K years later, and I've reconsidered.
So again, thanks for the perspective!
Frankly, it's something of a surprise that *everything* doesn't have low-light vision.
Personally I'd house-rule that even Humans had low-light for awhile during and a bit after the age, but when the sun returned those who lost the adaptation first expanded the most and fastest (an unstated 'those who lost it regained normal bright vision first) and thus it went away again.
For species like humans, adaptations like low-light vision are something that takes a lot longer than a few thousand years, so it's not really a surprise.
Dot