Re: Darksense carried by darkness, brilliant!

From: rune.writer <rune.writer_at_snx42b3JsLVQAQSVnklUrM4f6Zx1wSRqsQDDl6p2x5JwjnXVfOdw-S86TsHNy5cE>
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2007 23:37:10 -0000

> Yes, I do not recall the quotes from TrollPak, but I had always
> considered it "like sonar" rather than to be sonar.
> This insight puts the real capper on it.

I just bought the MRQ Uz book, which is written from the POV of an EWF researcher (for the culture) and a God Learner (for the religions). The book states categorically that Darksense is sonar.
>From such POVs, darkness probably wouldn't be recognized as an
element, and such statements would be an example of cultural bias. This, of course, makes for some interesting ways to mess with players who read the book and think it's all sonar.

GM: "You're in a cave and you see a troll."
PC: "Make lots of noise to confuse its sonar(Darksense)!"
GM: "You bash a lot of pots and pans together. The troll throws a rock
at your head with deadly accuracy."
PC: "Eeurgh!" followed by a death rattle. Player: "WTF?"  

> One little point:
> In the daytime there are often patches of shadows. Even out in the
> desert the uz would cast shadows. So I can imagine their darksense in
> such circumstances sort of skipping form shadow to shadow, sounding to
> them like static might sound to us. In a dense forest, where the trees
> provide a lot of shade then the static is not great--but since this is
> shadow (ie, weak darkness) then the "volume" is probably low.
> But in the desert it is probably all static, AND low volume.
>
> Oh--another thought! I've got ringing in my ears because the upper
range
> of my hearing is shot (too much standing in front of speakers at rock
> clubs inh my youth). The ringing is "filled in" by my mind to make up
> for the los range.
>
> So maybe instead of static, they have a ringing in their darksense.
> --

I would rather imagine it to be like standing in torchlight in a dark place. You can see OK where the light falls, but nothing outside the light. For a troll, Darksense would work fine in patches of darkness, but anything in full light would be (in a sense) invisible to them.

OTOH, isn't a patch of shadow (referring to my first point in this post) just the absence of full light and not darkness, per se?            

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