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« on: June 22, 2008, 03:41:00 AM »
Either a pissed off race of casters, or an irresponsible researcher, or if you're a Shyamalan fan, some angry <i>trees</i>, create a pathogen (magical, probably) that erodes a subject's ability to perceive light. The light is there, but the townfolk cannot perceive it, because they've each lost their optic nerve. This solves an obvious problem with the blotting out of the sun, wherein plant life cannot photosynthesize and the food chain dies from the grass up. It also gives you another layer, by which the protagonist and 5% of the population are immune to the pathogen, or if you like Reavers, have their visual acuity augmented tenfold. If you mean for magic to be a commodity in the world you're building, you can have someone selling an effective talisman for a king's ransom. Or perhaps the college of wizards is in for a powergrab; an environment with so much fear is just begging to be exploited.
Anyway, there are a lot of places you can take that. Just keep in mind all the ramifications of whatever path you take. If this is swords and horses fantasy, how will the peasantry know the hours of the day when the sun is gone? There would have to be a pronounced economic slowdown, when no one shows up for work when they're supposed to, and the lethargy and insomnia that usually occur when people move to the arctic circle.
Good luck with this, though. Let us know what you choose.