Blacken the Sun!

[Palanan]

Say you’re a variety of undead, or some other creature of darkness, and you want to rid the world of sunlight so that you and your light-hating allies can live openly in a world of perpetual night.

Without access to Wish or Miracle, how would you go about doing this? Assume that you understand the basics of orbital geometry: that the world is a small sphere that orbits the much larger sun at a great distance. Assume you know that without sunlight, most of the world will die, but you don’t care. You just want the sun gone.

I’m open to all first-party Paizo material, excluding only Wish and Miracle. How would you do this?

[ATHATH]

Do we want to rid thr ENTIRE world of sunlight, or just the area around where we live?

[Palanan]

The sun. It needs to go.

All of it, all the time. No sunlight, anywhere in the world, ever again.

[Thealtruistorc]

Apparently the sun in the PF universe is tied to a portal from the postive energy plane, so a combination of scrying and dimensional lock could potentially shut it down (or at the very least, weaken it). If that doesn't work, one could potentially just Kerbal-Space-Program a sphere of annihilation into the sun and cause it to implode.

Are you trying to actively destroy the sun or just stop it from affecting your planet, because the other solutions I have come up with depend on one of those goals rather than the other.

[khadgar567]

Apparently the sun in the PF universe is tied to a portal from the postive energy plane, so a combination of scrying and dimensional lock could potentially shut it down (or at the very least, weaken it). If that doesn't work, one could potentially just Kerbal-Space-Program a sphere of annihilation into the sun and cause it to implode.

Are you trying to actively destroy the sun or just stop it from affecting your planet, because the other solutions I have come up with depend on one of those goals rather than the other.
Or tecnicly you need the change the portal to negative energy plane then baby sit the new necro sun until it become self suffıcent. then you are free to live how you like in sun.

[Silly Name]

Are we using Golarion's rules, or is the sun an actual star in this theoretical experiment? Because that's going to change the answer a lot.

[Treblain]

Cast Curse of Night (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/curse-of-night) a few million times. Simple, right?

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Thealtruistorc
Apparently the sun in the PF universe is tied to a portal from the postive energy plane….


Originally Posted by Silly Name
Are we using Golarion's rules, or is the sun an actual star in this theoretical experiment?

I hadn’t actually known about the Golarion Special Theory for solar output, so I’m going with “actual star” for now.


Originally Posted by Thealtruistorc
If that doesn't work, one could potentially just Kerbal-Space-Program a sphere of annihilation into the sun and cause it to implode.

…what is a Kerbal Space Program?

As for other solutions, completely blocking sunlight across the entire planet is the goal. This could be done with a physical barrier positioned just inside the planet’s orbit, or a reflective field cocooning the planet, or a direct implosion of the star à la trilithium detonation. I’m open to all kinds of options.

.

[Elricaltovilla]

Cast Curse of Night (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/curse-of-night) a few million times. Simple, right?

Approximately 196.9 million times, if golarion is the same size as the earth.

With a 10 minute casting time it would take about 4,000 years to complete.

[GrayDeath]

Well, now you know what your udnead is going to do the next 2.5 Civilizational Ages ^^

[BWR]

Adapt the 2e adventures "A darkness rising" and "Masters of Eternal Night" where this is the plot. Granted, it was illithids doing that and they are cooler than undead, but it should have some salvageable ideas.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Elricaltovilla
With a 10 minute casting time it would take about 4,000 years to complete.

Everyone needs a hobby. :smalltongue:

But I’d prefer something faster-acting, ideally over months or years.


Originally Posted by BWR
Adapt the 2e adventures "A darkness rising" and "Masters of Eternal Night" where this is the plot. Granted, it was illithids doing that and they are cooler than undead, but it should have some salvageable ideas.

What was the illithids' approach?

[Lotheb]

Kill Sarenrae and hope the sun stops working the same way prophecy stops working when Aroden died

[Silly Name]

Assuming the planet you're on has roughly the same size and mass as the Earth, what is the minimum caster level to use Teleport Object (would put a link, but I don't have an high enough post count) on it to transport the whole planet to the Ethereal Plane?

[grarrrg]

…what is a Kerbal Space Program?

A video game where you design space craft and shoot adorable little alien-dudes into space (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerbal_Space_Program).
Hilarity ensues.


Approximately 196.9 million times, if golarion is the same size as the earth.

With a 10 minute casting time it would take about 4,000 years to complete.
That is assuming a single caster, and that you need to blacken the entire world to consider it a "success".

We can classify parts of the world by priority:
Habitable* landmass is priority 1.
Ocean of similar latitude to habitable* landmass is priority 2.
Uninhabitable* landmass is priority 3.

*Habitable-ness determined by standard requirements of standard flesh-bag units

If teh Googlez are to be trusted, only ~20% or so of Earth's total surface would fall under Priority 1.
And we can probably assume at least 10 casters are on board with this plan.
So "only" 80 years to complete "phase 1".

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by grarrrg
…and that you need to blacken the entire world to consider it a "success".

This assumption is correct. Every square inch of the planet needs to be free of sunlight. Oceans, icecaps, mountain peaks, all of it.


Originally Posted by grarrrg
And we can probably assume at least 10 casters are on board with this plan.

Sure, but I doubt if any of them will be able to cast around the clock. This is an eighth level spell, so they’ll be limited by available spell slots.

[Jack_Simth]

... OK to deal just that much cold damage to it?

You cast Create Demiplane (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/create-demiplane/) (any variety) and Permanency (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/p/permanency/) it to get a demiplane that'll stick around until it's destroyed.
You make it Timeless - at least with respect to magic - via the "Time" option in Create Greater Demiplane.
You use Elemental Spell (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/elemental-spell-metamagic/) metamagic on Magnifying Chime (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/m/magnifying-chime/) (requires some form of metmagic reduction, or some off-list casting - such as giving a Sorcerer with UMD a suitable Page of Spell Knowledge) to get a Cold damage chime. Have a creature immune to both cold and fire hold the Chime in the demiplane (this may be hard to find).
You'll need to be immune to cold yourself, but if you're OK with getting Ashed you don't need to be personally immune to fire.
Cast Creater Greater Demiplane again, this time for the Portal option to create a permanent gate facing the sun.

What's that do?

Well, Magnifying Chime never expires thanks to timelessness. So every round, the damage and range increases by 1d6 and 5 feet (respectively). Forever. This damage propogates through the opening (in theory, at least - may not work) of the Gate that's part of the permanent portal. If that's facing the sun, eventually, the sun takes a massive amount of cold damage. Hopefully putting it out.

[grarrrg]

This assumption is correct. Every square inch of the planet needs to be free of sunlight. Oceans, icecaps, mountain peaks, all of it.

Pareto principle. 80% of results come from 20% of the effort.
Yes, _ultimately_ you want the whole world blackened. But if you can manage to black out the "human friendly" areas in a relatively short time span, then that would still be a rousing success.
Then you can take your time on the remaining parts.


EDIT: Or, if you need to go with a piece-meal plan, START in the middle of nowhere. Blackout the middle of the ocean first. Who's going to fund the adventurer's to stop that?

[Angrith]

I assume that Golarion is Earth-like. Teleport object can teleport an object that is less than 50lbs and 3 cubic feet per caster level. The density of Earth is well above 50lbs per cubic foot (345 lbs per cubic foot), but weight doesn't mean much for an object hanging in space; thus, we only need to worry about volume. The Earth's volume is 3.83e+22 (38,300,000,000,000,000,000,000) cubic feet in volume. We therefore need a minimum caster level of 1.28e+22 (12,800,000,000,000,000,000,000). The best I can come up with is to setup a wish loop wishing for orange ioun stones to boost caster level, but my knowledge is far from exhaustive. Someone else might be able to help here.

With the caster level obtained, just teleport the world into the cold void of space. Range on teleport object is 100 miles per caster level as per teleport, so you can go anywhere within 218 billion light years. As noted further up the thread, you could also go to the ethereal plane using teleport object, but then there's the chance some pesky adventured in a space suit casts dispel magic to bring you back to the sun.

Also, this seems appropriate even if the intent is different: https://xkcd.com/1503/

EDIT: Spelling and phrasing

[Jowgen]

I don't think destroying the sun itself is an efficient route.

Building something like a Dyson Sphere is way more doable, especially if we're doing it around our planet instead of the sun itself.

We're not going need the moon and it's presumably pretty uninhabited, so it can serve as our raw materials. Next we need a couple dozen Lyres of Building, Undead that can play them on the moon and while floating in orbit, and minions with a teleport self at will ability.

Half our Lyre players play 24/7 to construct wall panels that can interlock on all sides out of moon rock. Our teleporting minions pop the panels one by one over into geo-synchronous orbit, where the other half of our lyre players work on assmbly. First we build a halo to circumvent the planet, then we keep adding axes until eventually the whole planet is encased in a cozy blanket of eternal night.

Every half hour of lyre play is 300 people working for 3 days, so one full day of playing equates to 48x72x300=1.036.800 work hours, so just under 120 years of uninterrupted work. If we can get us 9 Lyre of Building, each day will be over a millennia worth of work done by one guy. If anything, the limiting factor is transporting all those panels.

Of course there are engineering concerns, dealing with interlopers from the planet, and other refinements/upgrades we could add, but on the whole I figure that with this sort of set-up it should be doable to completely encase the planet in a matter of months, if not weeks.

[Doctor Awkward]

The Elder Evil sign associated with Father Llymic in the Elder Evils book is exactly this.

If you are the DM of a campaign and don't need to worry about the logistics, just tell the players "This stuff starts happening."

If you are a player in that campaign, tell the DM you have taken up the worship of Father Llymic and want to begin the steps to his resurrection.

[BWR]

What was the illithids' approach?

Technically, while darkening suns is a worthy goal in itself, extinguishing the light of many many suns throughout the Prime was only a step on the way to their actual goal.
They built a really big psionic machine in the Deep Ethereal which through undisclosed means was sucking the life out of tons of stars. This power was to be gathered and poured into an ether gap (small holes in multiversal reality that sometimes lead to alternate timelines) in order to cause it to expand and consume the current multiverse and replace it with a version where the illithid empire never fell.

On the subject of Dyson spheres, the illithids had one here as well - sorta. It's more like a combination ringworld/discworld with gravity on both sides and the sun in the center a humungous wall surrounding the sun to cast shade on all the disc.

[Buufreak]

If my experience with the universe simulator is worth anything, potentially a few thousand walls of force would work here. Taking the mass of our sun, you can condense it enough that it crosses the threshold and immediately collapses into a black hole.

Now, what happens after that is pretty fubar, but the bright ball of light in the sky is technically gone.

[Zaq]

Cast Curse of Night (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/curse-of-night) a few million times. Simple, right?

Do Living Spells or some equivalent still exist in PF?

[Slithery D]

You want the darkness failure mode for using the Codex of Infinite Planes, repeated several thousand times. Good luck!