Dusk to dawn

For a long time the game had no real night. The light dimmed a little and everyone kept walking around. Now the day has a shape. The sun is up from 06:00 to 22:00, and after that it is properly dark, with the moon and stars out. People sleep from 23:00 to 07:00, and they sleep inside: they used to stand at their front door all night, now they go in, and a house’s windows glow warm and flicker like candles only while someone is home. You can see a street go to bed.

The night also has something living in it. Glimmers are small, pale, faintly glowing burrowers that live in the old abandoned shafts at the feet of the mountains. Between 22:00 and 06:00 they come out, one every quarter of an hour, and go for food: the wheat in the fields and the grain and bread in the stockpile. They are not dangerous yet, just a nuisance, and they are shy. They keep away from lamplight and from groups of three or more people.

That gives the street lamps a job. A lamppost with oil lights a circle around it, and glimmers will not cross it. A glimmer that bumps into one knocks it over, and it stays dark until a hauler stands it back up. Every glimmer that makes it home at dawn makes the next night a bit worse, so ignoring them does not work for long.

Watch towers built by the old shaft shoot bolts at glimmers that come out. What they drop gets carried off by haulers and goes into the economy: glow, which the rendery boils into lamp oil for the lamps, and bones, which the bone mill grinds into fertiliser that makes a farm’s fields grow faster. So the night feeds the town that has to defend itself against it.

In the video you can see the camp on the left, where a few tents still stand round the campfire, light up the same way as the cabins.