The Longest Night of the Year
19
December 2009
The Solstice is nearly upon us, the longest night of the year. That might not seem like much unless you live way up in the Northern Hemisphere like I do, but trust me – getting a bit more daylight each day is a big event when you have less than five and a half hours of daylight a day.
Not too far north of us the sun is not even rising at this time of year. Barrow, Alaska has not even seen the sun since mid November, and they won’t see it again until around January 20th. Right now there is just kind of a twilight effect in Barrow that lasts about three hours. Can you say vampire heaven?
Take the basic idea of the longest night of the year and see what the muses come up with. Mine were exceptionally prolific on the subject:
A night when vampires come out for a once a year feeding frenzy before they go back to hibernation for another elven months. Muses here whisper that maybe that is what Dec 21, 2012 is all about… the night that has the longest night in hundreds of years and the vampires will wake to feed as they did in the middle ages.
A primitive tribe that has slowly migrated to a far northern region. They have huddled together for warmth and watched the sky as it got darker and darker for over a month. With no understanding that they have traveled to the planet’s northern hemisphere, and with the sun hidden day after day, how would they react to the thought that they will soon have no light at all on their world?
Is the land on the world your hero has traveled to all locked in the northern hemisphere in one giant continent that never sees the sun? How would the people of such a world have evolved? Would they have ships that travel to see the sun, maybe scientific vessels that explore the daylight side of the world? Perhaps there is a religion centered around priests that take pilgrimages out on boats to be with the great God on the other side of the planet? What would happen if one of those priests was to return? What might he have to tell of his adventures on the sunlit side of the planet?
