Post by Catsmate on Aug 21, 2014 12:12:01 GMT
By Bruce Munro aka QuantumBranching (link), originally inspired by one of the country descriptions in The Onion's Our Dumb World.
The nation of Moldova, lying between Romania and the Ukraine, is often referred to as “Europe’s basement.” This is partly because of the local survival of many elsewhere vanished groups of peoples, customs, and artifacts from times long past, dusty remnants of ages mostly forgotten in other parts of Europe. Here dwell the last of the Patzinaks and the Cumans, here remain traces of the old Slavic faiths elsewhere extinguished. But it is mainly known as a basement because of the local’s stubborn insistence on living underground whenever possible.
It is uncertain when the locals took up a subterranean lifestyle, but historians generally agree that the shift began during the medieval migrations: the chronicles of St. Baeticus indicate than Moldova was already well-known for its underground communities by the late 800s. In spite of its inconveniences, the constant threat of nomadic invasions along the steppe route through what would eventually become the Ukraine gave Mole Life certain advantages. More profoundly, by 1000s historical records note something of a national psychological change, a development of a sort of cultural agoraphobia that made walking under the open sky seem positively dangerous. The development of various myth-cycles about aerial and “sky demons” during this era are indicative, so is the fact that portrayals of the Heavenly City in surviving mosaics often show the structure as entirely roofed over, presaging the notion of the Afterlife as an enclosed sphere of limited circumference but infinite radius in the 16th century poems of Milescu.
By the 1100s a lifestyle based in underground fortifications with people only coming to the surface to farm had made the country essentially unconquerable, if often overrun: the use of extremely long tunnels and underground rivers meant that no section of the country could be starved into submission. The Mongols armies of Batu Khan only succeeded in forcing surrender by carrying out a country-wide process of crop destruction, sustained over a year and a half till stored supplies ran out. And the massacres inflicted as punishment for defiance were less severe than elsewhere, largely due to the Mongols underestimating substantially the total population of the country (songs are still sung about how guides took Mongol troops into the tunnels and so confused them through endless twists and turns that they never saw more than a fraction of the underground cities, yet thought they had seen them all).
Continues here. The excerpt above is about 10%.
A fascinating venue for adventures, set at any time in it's history; a country that prefers to live underground. It might be fitted into a conventional Whoniverse Earth, or relocated to a different planet.
The nation of Moldova, lying between Romania and the Ukraine, is often referred to as “Europe’s basement.” This is partly because of the local survival of many elsewhere vanished groups of peoples, customs, and artifacts from times long past, dusty remnants of ages mostly forgotten in other parts of Europe. Here dwell the last of the Patzinaks and the Cumans, here remain traces of the old Slavic faiths elsewhere extinguished. But it is mainly known as a basement because of the local’s stubborn insistence on living underground whenever possible.
It is uncertain when the locals took up a subterranean lifestyle, but historians generally agree that the shift began during the medieval migrations: the chronicles of St. Baeticus indicate than Moldova was already well-known for its underground communities by the late 800s. In spite of its inconveniences, the constant threat of nomadic invasions along the steppe route through what would eventually become the Ukraine gave Mole Life certain advantages. More profoundly, by 1000s historical records note something of a national psychological change, a development of a sort of cultural agoraphobia that made walking under the open sky seem positively dangerous. The development of various myth-cycles about aerial and “sky demons” during this era are indicative, so is the fact that portrayals of the Heavenly City in surviving mosaics often show the structure as entirely roofed over, presaging the notion of the Afterlife as an enclosed sphere of limited circumference but infinite radius in the 16th century poems of Milescu.
By the 1100s a lifestyle based in underground fortifications with people only coming to the surface to farm had made the country essentially unconquerable, if often overrun: the use of extremely long tunnels and underground rivers meant that no section of the country could be starved into submission. The Mongols armies of Batu Khan only succeeded in forcing surrender by carrying out a country-wide process of crop destruction, sustained over a year and a half till stored supplies ran out. And the massacres inflicted as punishment for defiance were less severe than elsewhere, largely due to the Mongols underestimating substantially the total population of the country (songs are still sung about how guides took Mongol troops into the tunnels and so confused them through endless twists and turns that they never saw more than a fraction of the underground cities, yet thought they had seen them all).
Continues here. The excerpt above is about 10%.
A fascinating venue for adventures, set at any time in it's history; a country that prefers to live underground. It might be fitted into a conventional Whoniverse Earth, or relocated to a different planet.