Thirty-one years ago, the sun rose dim and orange, set, and never returned — plunging Vorgath into eternal night. No one knows why; the sky is now a lid of grey cloud through which no star or moon shows.
What Happened
On the morning that would become known as the First Black Dawn, the sun rose the color of a dying ember. It hung in the sky for perhaps an hour — weak, orange, casting no real warmth — and then sank below the western hills. It did not return. Within days, the temperature plummeted. Within weeks, the first dead stirred.
No sage, priest, or astrologer predicted it. The temples of the old gods offered no explanation, and within the first year, the priests themselves fell silent — their prayers unanswered, their rituals hollow. The event is simply called the Great Dimming, and no one has a convincing theory for its cause.
What Is Known
- The sky is permanently overcast — a uniform grey-white ceiling with no visible sun, moon, or stars.
- The cloud cover produces a diffuse, directionless light during "day" hours — enough to see by, but always dim, like perpetual twilight.
- Temperatures dropped to lethal freezing within the first season and have never recovered.
- The dead began to rise within weeks of the Dimming, as though the cold itself animated them.
Theories (all unproven)
- The Ashbound Covenant claims the sun was a cage for something divine, and its release is the gods' test — the Long Dark is a crucible.
- The Hearthward Compact officially blames "the old superstitions" — claims it's a natural cataclysm and focuses on survival rather than understanding.
- Some among the Gilded Slag Union whisper that the deep mines broke through into something that should never have been opened — that the Dimming came from below, not above.
- The Long March Caravan doesn't care why — they care about what they can sell to people who need to survive it.