PDA

View Full Version : The Dual Nature of Dark



HoopyFrood
2008-04-29, 10:31 PM
So, I'm making a campaign. The cosmology includes the fact that Dark is an energy similar to Light, but opposite of Light. That means there is a source of Dark that illuminates the world for those capable of seeing Dark just as the sun is a source of light in our world. The problem? Loads of things:
Dark vision
Dancing darks?
Blinded by the Dark?
What happens if a source of Light and a source of Dark shine on the same object? Do they cancel (rendering the object invisible) or do they both reflect back (making the object perfectly visible to both dark and light seers) or do they dilute each other (making the object difficult to see)?

For more information, see the link in my sig. Look under "Cosmology".

Fishy
2008-04-30, 05:58 AM
And what color is something that has neither Light nor Dark shining on it?

Remember, kids, Asymmetry is more interesting than symmetry.

nerulean
2008-04-30, 07:50 AM
We have something similar in our campaign setting, and we've gone for a really rather simple way round it: everything looks normal. What you see is the product of the light energy and the dark energy present in one area. If a thing is pure, blinding, brilliant white, then there's only light energy there, and if it's 100% obfuscating black void then there's only dark energy. Anything in between these two extremes represents a mixture of the two. If it's brighter than mid-grey then light energy is predominant in an area, and if it's darker then dark energy is predominant there. If you switched from seeing via light energy to seeing via dark energy, you'd see a perfectly negative image (light blue becomes dark orange, for example).

If you want to model traditional dark vision, then call it normal light-using vision that is incredibly sensitive to even the tiniest bit of light energy, and reserve pure dark energy areas to magical effects and areas of particular importance.

Jayabalard
2008-04-30, 09:46 AM
And what color is something that has neither Light nor Dark shining on it? black of course. Black isn't the opposite of light, it's just the absence of light. The opposite of light is true darkness, which is out the other side of black... it has it's own colors.