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Is there a way to make a world without a sun even halfway believable?

As a lot of you have been mentioning, this world could not scientifically exist because of thermodynamics, radioactivity, and so on. At least not without a good dose of handwavium. As this is a fantasy world, I have plenty of handwavium going on. What I was looking for were ways that I could make it feel more realistic using science and all that, I wasn't looking to go into the finer details of it all. For those, I am just going to say that magic solves those problems and leave it at that.

Well, hypothetically, dwelling underground for long periods of time without light could make a race completely blind. They might use infravision (sees gradiations of heat rather than light) or if there is a bit of light (from crystals, mosses, lichen etc...) then low-light vision. It might even cause the irises or eye themselves to become larger to take in more light when very little exists.
I did think about that and I considered making them blind but I have a few stories in that world and I just wasn't sure what I thought of doing a story from a blind person's perspective.
 

Saigonnus

Auror
Given it is fantasy, any sort of magic could work. Maybe the energy comes from the god/goddess themselves. Maybe the act of building it gave it enough energy to act like a normal planet and it takes that devotion to the god/goddess to maintain it; it could explain why the planet is failing, because their faith is failing. Not sure if you want your novel to be steeped in religion though.

Another option could be magical vortex at the center of the planet. One of my created worlds uses a collection of magical energy that mingle and can be tapped into for spells. Each of the forms of energy comes from certain things; molten, lunar, shadow, water etc... something like this could explain how the planet works. These energies form the vortex, providing the planet with a molten core (molten energy) and could be responsible for all other facets of life on the sunless planet.
 

S J Lee

Inkling
You could do what Olaf Stapledon did in Starmaker. When all the suns have gone out, civilisation will continue for a long while after through "molecular disintegration"... basically, nuclear power, some type of fission. Neutron stars are hollowed out. Gravity is immense, and the population is made of engineered swarms of flat worms / crawling carpets a millimetre tall....eventually, all matter is used up and the hollow neutron stars crumble and life ends....
 

Solusandra

Troubadour
I have a world that has no sun or moon and I need a way to make it halfway believable to support life.
If this were syfy, you could do it with a highly radioactive core and mantel convection system. The planets surface would be an icy shell, but between the crust and the glacier you could have spots of life like Yellowstone state park.
For magic, I suppose the planet could be the prison of a high tier fire elemental. That keeps the core hot despite the lack of lunar lensing or core radioactivity
There is an atmosphere, but the people live underground in natural caves to stay close to the heat.
Staying in the caves near the heat vents though would either be mutagenic, deadly or prone to releasing fire elementals. I could see fortress towns being built near in map terms, but not where the vents come out.
There is no soil, just many different types of rock. The main plants that grow there are fungi and lichen, but I would like to have more, if possible.
Lichen survive by converting rock and water-vapor into soil. soil which would be needed to grow sufficient fungi and fauna for you to have any sort of sentient, letalone sapient, population. Thought, never mind higher thought, takes a lot of energy. The average human brain hogs a full 40% of your daily food energy.
It is a fantasy setting, so the world won't have any tech or much of it at least, I don't want it to be sci-fi. It is a heavy magic world, but magic doesn't solve all the problems. There are several races there, including; humans, elves, dragonborns, vampires, shifters, dragons, and the rest are more ethereal spirit type creatures.
Add bio, or at least piezo luminescence everywhere. You could have an eye-less alien sentience vaguely similar to humans without light, but you're never going to have that list of races on a lightless world without them being portal immigrants. And light around the lava vents isn't going to cut it.

That being said, you can make a crazy alien world, you're just going to have to set up all new paradigms for... everything.
Everything, sapient or not, has a soul. Magic users are called Whisperers, and they can communicate with the souls of things. They convince the souls to do what they want. They cannot change the item or make it larger or smaller than it was before. Whisperers are born with their ability, though it is possible to learn it, but it is hard enough to do that most people don't bother.
What you're describing is normally called Shaman, but whisperers is fine. Having them be rare in the world you described though... not so much. Sentient races require lots of food. Having lots of food requires lots of soil and light. Non-photosynthetic crops exist, but they grow slowly and almost never pack carbs, sugar's or sufficient protean to keto, so your energy intake would be low as well. Your shaman soul-medium whisperers having the ability to speed things up would make them an integral part of any believable economy, no matter how difficult it is to master. If you don't, the populations simply cannot be large, and having all those fantasy races is "a wizard did it" in the extreme.
 
I'm in the "this world could not scientifically exist" camp. It would have to be a planet, and the planet would have to be revolving around a star. So, a sun.

But there could easily be a world that is not perceived to have a sun, so, for all practical purposes, does not have a sun. If all of its beings live underground, they'd never see the sky, never see the sun, and they wouldn't have any concept of it.

Even on earth, that's possible, just not for humans. Do the deep sea creatures living way down the Mariana Trench perceive the sun? Probably not.

Or it could be a planet that's covered in heavy clouds, like Venus is, and like Earth was at a certain point in its evolution. If there were life on that planet, they might not have any concept of a sun, because they'd never see it.

Theoretically, life could have evolved differently from how it did on Earth, in that it doesn't have as much need for sunlight. The tiny amount that gets through the clouds could be enough to sustain it. Even Earth has life forms deep in the ocean that don't get anywhere near as much sunlight as land.
 
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