17 thoughts on “Hey, John Harper – if it’s always dark in Duskwall, where does the food come from?”

  1. Well, the Dagger Isles have jungles, Severos is described as grassy plains, and Akoros (where Duskwall is located) mentions forests in its description,, so maybe the plants have adapted to the twilight?

    In addition there is the oceans. Sure its full of demonic leviathans, but there are probably more edible creates lurking within.

  4. The obvious answer is the right one: the world of the Shattered Isles is weird and doesn’t work the way our real world does. These people generate electricity from monster blood, you know. A few plants still grow — perhaps by the grace of a forgotten god or perhaps by some adaptation according to science. Scholars differ.

    See the map on page 68 of the PDF. That indicates the two main sources of food in Duskwall. More specifics about Radiant Energy crops and other food sources will be in the book (courtesy of Andrew Shields’ essays).

    Some fun other ideas are in an earlier thread, here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/114451952512667903737/posts/G3HkEtPWm1y

  6. It may be fleshed out more in a later version?  But yeah, it’s been discussed before and there are lots of good ideas.

    Anyhow, I’d tend to go with the Mistborn setting on this one – (warning, slight spoilers for the book series) the same power that shattered the world, also adapted all life within it to be able to survive in the new version.

  8. Nathan Roberts my understanding was all bodies are incinerated within the 3 day period. Doesn’t really fit with Cannibalism… My assumption was they ate plants that did not rely on the light of the sun but have possibly adapted to electroplasm light or some technology that gives them the spectrum of light they need in a mechanism. That and eating living creatures, obviously.

  9. Yes well, if your erstwhile scoundrels can get to the bodies before the BellWeather goons in gold masks do, then I say you have rather a juicy tidbit to sell to Johann the sausage vendor down in Coalridge, wouldn’t you say? 😉

  10. They are so many possibilities …

    It is well known that the Duskwall aristocracy has always had very peculiar tastes. I´m sure they can make a body disappear before cremation, and use it to make delicious meat pies for their next party buffet …but if you do not feel so creepy, they can eat plants of course.

    Real life is full of information, for example during the American Civil War there were many cases of cannibalism among slaves, and between masters and slaves when resources were scarce. Meat is meat, it is a shame to waste good meat turning it into ash, surely the nobility could feed their faithful dogs with top quality meat belonging to an unknown slum.

  13. Now just imagine how those cannibalism bits might interact with the whole “3 days = ghost” bit… do you have to incinerate the whole body? Where is the spirit/soul “stored”?

  14. A quick thought …

    Of course you can accept that the soul can be “stored” somewhere as a part of the body, as established in the true faith, in the eyes of humans for example, but perhaps the Soul / and the ghost are two different things. Do not forget, that not all ghosts have to be humans, dead animals may also give rise to a ghost, then animals have souls?

    Maybe the ghost is somehow the way the new nature of the world corrupts and rots the flesh, forget the decomposition of bodies riddled with worms, the body remains inanimate but uncorrupted as an empty shell forever. This process takes about 72 hours until the Ghost emerges leaving an empty sheath. The Church knows that, why such a hurry to cremate the bodies, it would be impossible to store or bury them!, after all, in a world with an immortal emperor and where people can live soulless almost normally, the rules of nature are no longer reliable …

  16. I doubt cannibalism is much in vogue outside of a few strange cults. From a purely practical standpoint, humans are a terrible species for meat production. Even taking into account that “The rules of nature are no longer reliable” in the Shattered Isles, it’s hard to get past the straightforward fact that Humans don’t have much meat on their bones and it takes years for them to get to adult size. Compare that to cow (1-2.5 yrs), pig (5-6 months), and chicken (8 weeks).

    As to how plants survive, I always assumed that even though the sky is always dark that doesn’t mean there isn’t some strange light coming down. Maybe it’s completely shifted into the UV spectrum and the plants have adapted to that. Maybe it’s not light as we know it all and the sky radiants some sort of ghost field aura which plants or fungus feed off of — the Whispers can sense it. These ghost field adapted plants/fungus grow like crazy near active spirit wells. Some plants could even have a symbiotic relationship where they gain some feeble amount of energy from the Duskvol farms electroplasm lights; however, that not being enough they also gain additional light from a symbiotic relationship they have with a glowing spectral lichen on the plant that feeds off of the ghost field.

  17. I heard there are gatherings of spirits on some plantations which farmers knowingly allow. And that these haunted properties have proven to quite valuable, despite the risk of disquieting the supernatural forces there, since plants and animals eerily thrive in their presence.

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