Four Gloamings - Campaign (Relaunch) Primer

23 Jan, 2026

A setting primer in the format of PRIMEUMATON's challenge

Only a narrow band of the world is illuminated fully - not by any sun, but by an orbiting band of satellites repurposed from the engines of a halted interstellar vehicle.The band illuminated by these artificial suns precesses very slowly around the world, making a full rotation every fifty years¹ - a Jubilee.

The speed of the precession, and the width of the illuminated band, is such that a given point on the equator will experience six months of long-dawn, one year of "days" - full illumination, and six months of long-dusk. Then it will experience forty-eight years of darkness. The Long-night.

Half of the great circle is overflown by the artificial suns, thus there are twelve hours of illumination and twelve hours of dark - short-day and short-night.

This world is called Wel, and it orbits a rogue substellar object - Gar. Gar's emissions are primarily infrared - in the visual spectrum it casts a baleful, monochrome wine-red. You cannot read by it, but you can navigate and survive - mariners do. It spends thirty days above the horizon, and thirty below.

The Circuits

Humanity migrates constantly to remain within the Days. Most peoples do so along circuits - the inheritance of past generation's travails and efforts. Circuits overcome known obstacles, hit known farmland, and have infrastructure laid down over centuries to avoid known obstacles. Of course, all the world beyond the Days are subject to incredible change: Glaciers expand and obliterate, land slides, outburst lakes change regions, and the bridges and caches lain down at such cost disappear.

Entire peoples can find themselves on dead end routes, trapped by the precession of the Days, and face uncaring annihilation: Regions can fail to have expected farmlands. Mountain passes can be changed to labyrinths, intractable in the Days and impossible in the night. Forests depended on to provide fleets can be found absent, the people trapped on darkening shore.

Wayfinders who brave the long night are indispensable. So too are the elite workers, who rush into the long dawn to build needful bridges, cultivate fallow forests in expectation of their year of growth, or clear tunnels and passes.

Stone cities of foundations and framework buildings wait the long years in the dark for light and life to return to them.

But mishap or opportunity can see rivals adjust their migrations, and enter the circuits of their neighbours: Strife often follows. There are places in the world where rivals rush ships through the long dawn to secure vast shores before others, and do battle before the suns see what has happened. Those delayed by mischance burst from the dusk on those ahead, seizing what they do not have time to grow.

The general process, travelling west to east, is scouts into the dark, then elite workers and warriors to reoccupy key locations and emptied cities in the dawn. Then the people en masse, the farms, the herds, the life: Plants enter the resurrected soil, forests are seen to grow. Works are done. Noon passes and the day wanes: Harvests, preparations for movement, monuments and records are enplaced. Caches and hoards are laid. Then the uprooting and the movements. Long dusk comes, the last leave, except for the very few - selected by resolution, or condemnation - who choose or are compelled to stay. Long night comes.

This is the ideal: The practice varies considerably. Routes sometimes must be hunted for as the long day goes past, or fleets and bridges rushed to completion. Enmity can force rerouting.

It is said in the uttermost north there is a land where night is unknown, only twilight. Beyond that is a paradise where the days never end.

The Wine Dark World

The night is not empty. It is a horror of glaciers and barren mountains, dormant jungles and empty cities. Creatures dewll in it.

Man cannot live forever in the baleful light of Gar, but while it is in the sky they are not helpless.

The Campaign

Rules coming soon™.

This is to be a generational game, a la Pendragon - players take on the lineages of leaders of the people, or master-apprentice chains, or the the generations of disciples of various schools of scouts or dusk-looter criminal fraternities, or night-captains and their shipboard successors. They adventure once a season, and make domain-level decisions. New places and problems are constantly uncovered.