Races of the Blind

[Ruethgar]

I recently made a character that was an Astomoi for Pathfinder, with a little fluff and a trait he fit the appearance I was going for perfectly, but then I started moving on to the RP sections, personality, background, and the thought occurred to me:

How different would a race of blind creatures’ society be? Would they ever create with color or use light magic? Would they even understand what light was? The concept of the sun or the sky? The character was designed to be a creator, but how different would his creations be when his world ends at 60ft?

I thought looking to the works and writings of the blind in real life, but that only takes you so far in grasping the concept of an entire civilization without light and how they would develop differently from the very visual focused humanity. Would appreciate any help in determining what Astomoi, or any blind race culture and society, would be like.

[LibraryOgre]

I am reminded of Rot Lop Fan.

[Manga Shoggoth]

You might also want a peek at The Country of the Blind if you can find a copy...

[Max_Killjoy]

One thing to avoid -- don't make an entire species blind and then repeatedly come up for excuses or blowoffs as to why this doesn't actually affect them.

See, the blind species in Star Wars... that can "see" others "because The Force"... and somehow is able to read computer screens and printed text... because an entire species not being able to read those outputs would have been too much work to write and too hard to play in an RPG.

[Kaptin Keen]

There is a book - The Stone Dance of the Chameleon - in which an insane ... let's call them a 'guild' of insane 'priests' progressively mutilate themselves to get closer to whatever .... at one point, sight is one of the things they destroy (they're thorough - all of the senses, the ability to speak, half their fingers - a jolly group of people all around).

They have a version of braille - string with special beads - for recording all knowledge. And they have imps to see and speak for them. And so on.

It's rather a long-ish read if you just want ideas for how the blind might do things, but it's a wonderful read if you're after some rather extreme human-on-human baseless cruelty.

[Psyren]

Astomoi might not be the best example for this - they don't see normally, but their mental blindsight still works like darkvision. This lets them do many things other sighted creatures can, like understand writing (including books and signs), recognize symbols like flags and warnings, and notice any danger signs in nature that don't depend on color like an animal raising its hackles or a plant covered in thorns at a distance. So I don't know that their society would evolve all that differently from ours, nor indeed from any other race that can function well in lightless areas due to racial darkvision.

What they can't do however is see all that stuff from far away, so some conventions like billboards and lighthouses wouldn't translate well, and there probably wouldn't be a lot of long-range things like hunting or siege weapons. But then, I don't know that they evolved so much as spontaneously came into being anyway, so maybe they skipped a lot of that in the first place.

One thing to avoid -- don't make an entire species blind and then repeatedly come up for excuses or blowoffs as to why this doesn't actually affect them.

See, the blind species in Star Wars... that can "see" others "because The Force"... and somehow is able to read computer screens and printed text... because an entire species not being able to read those outputs would have been too much work to write and too hard to play in an RPG.

Yep - and that's exactly what was done with the Astomoi, because the alternative is way too much work when you have a deadline to print your setting books.

[Ruethgar]

One thing to avoid -- don't make an entire species blind and then repeatedly come up for excuses or blowoffs as to why this doesn't actually affect them.

Guess what the Astomoi have?

Mechanically speaking it is Darkvision, which is the same as normal sight but black and white. Fluff wise they are “seeing” with their powerful psychic minds. Psychic is, however, a broad term.

They probably aren’t seeing via Clairvoyance, else it would be just regular vision for 60ft. It it probably something closer to Touchsight mixed with a bit of Mindsight but nerfed for balance reasons. In which case they wouldn’t be able to read normal ink and may focus mostly on a oral(or telepathic in this case) history more than a written one. They also might not be able to see through glass since it blocks line of effect and have lattice work for windows.

It has been mentioned before that underground would be most fitting to their lack of sight as in narrow tunnels 60ft sense is fine, plus they appear to be made of darkness so they should blend in better against sighted things at least.

Texture and shape would probably be more important in their art and architecture as opposed to color. So sculpting rather than painting which may also lend itself to a history carved in stone.

They are largely ascetic by nature so clothing and amenities are likely not to be that extravagant. But of course they would probably go for texture rather than color and design, so silk clothing if anything seems most likely. That is assuming they can get their hands on it.

Astomoi apparently also focus on enlightenment, practically made to be monks/psychic warrior tash. As such their architecture and art would probably also have some at least pseudo-religious psychic qualities. Maybe Buddha-esque statues with the chakras carved in them.

Edit: Partial Ninja

An issue with living underground is that there are a ton of dangerous enslavy things down there. So maybe partial cave dwelling with dense forests or winding narrow canyons outside. Or just enslaved.