Tides of Grozdov
My take on world-building. And my first upload on SoFurry!
No, actually, this is what I typed out when I was testing Hackpad. Too bad Box or Dropbox devoured that hefty little thing.
Tonin said it reminds him of Zelda, because the place gets flooded then drained a few times. But I've never played it nor read any of it's lore, so I wouldn't know, right?
Floods of Grozdov
Grozdov, Moldova's capital, isn't a small city, but one might get that impression standing at the edge of the Northern Pass, just after the place where customs office used to reside back in 568. The city lies (or floats, if you will) in a deep basin, which start and ends with a ravine dug by river Domya. Nine out ten Grozdovians are didelphs, and the remaining minority are of mixed erinaceous and rodent origin. Not such a mix for a good vacation, you'd think. Oh, I've had my share of suck in Grozdov, ho boy.
But let's start from the beginning. This is what the pamphlets say. For centuries, the city's population fluctuated from ten thousand in winter, to over a hundred thousand during summer when Domya was free of ice. Situated right in the middle of Silk Road, at Eridania's threshold, the city had gently sustained itself as an overgrown roadhouse for the never-ending trade routes. Pure-blood didelphs inhabited the city center, while rodents occupied the outskirts and mountain farms. As long as the caravans brought goods and information, the Grozdov city, Moldova's capital, was at peace. Unfortunately, all of that changed with the invention of air transit. Thanks to high-attitude jet streams, goods no longer needed well trained companies to transport them; a simple helium-filled balloon could travel in a straight line, lift more than a camel or a mule, and require no food other than little ration carried by it's handler.
So, Grozdov suddenly found it's core business withering. Without gold exchanged for services to the caravans, the city's economy was reduced to bare necessity. Peasantry retreated to mountains surrounding the main town, herding cattle, growing grape-wine and tending sparse, scabby crops of buckwheat. At the turn of the century, thanks to the wisdom of Duke Fyodor Sigorsky, Grozdov switched it's economical focus to education. Sigorsky, the City's Most Beloved Father razed seven streets at both side of Domya, and ordered construction of a large campus, first in Moldova, the famous Grozdov University. The city transformed from a provincial dead-end into an educational center. Young students all over East Eridania came there to learn and improve their skills. Grozdov flourished until the Great Canid War swept it away.
Bombing raids in 487 dwindled Grozdov into a little more than a crater. Explosive charges caused two horrible landslides at Domya's exit point, effectively blocking the river from exiting the basin. The resulting flood obliterated anything that survived the bombing, and famine kept survivor count close to zero. Witnesses say that Duke Sigorsky had fled for Koleno, others say he drowned in his master bedroom. Winter of 488 brought vulpine invaders who took over the situation, taking any survivors as prisoners of war and burning what stood above water.
In 489, Grozdov was a ghost city, dreaming it's dream under a lake, that was named the same as the city, in 510. Once Rhoddia had united, the combined power of four rodent nations pushed back the canid invaders, liberating Moldova, Sikhia, and Yipland. By the time Great Canid War ended in 515, Grozdov lake was in Rhoddian territory, and post-war restoration period brought new hope to a bunch of underwater ruins. Many former Grozdov University students still remembered and wanted to preserve what was left of the city's former glory. A bill was issued in Rhoddian Ministry of Science, a plan to blow a passage in the mountains, opening a tunnel for Domya river to leave the Grozdov basin. The plan involved digging a long canal all the way to the sea, and of course, the plan was ridiculed. Grozdov Lake stood it's ground until 540, when Stan Aukley came up with an ingenious idea.
The visionary wolf's intention was to build a series of concrete slabs, supported by lighter-than-air reservoirs beneath, creating a new, floating city above the drowned one. The slabs would act as the support structure, and their finite displacement capacity would make sure that no building is taller than two stores. A paradise resort, as Stan marketed it, would be a perfect, exotic hideout place in this dull part of Eridania. An oriental place of legends, an evocative didelphi passion from two thousand and two nights resurrected by canids' raw lust for wealth and profit.
Central Gardens, Hotel Plaza, and Love Docks were finished by 560. First tourists booked their rooms in 566.
Great Depression ghosted the city again in 570.
Rhoddian investors revamped it in 582.
Don't you see a pattern? The damn place wants to have it's rest, for God's sake.
I still have two weeks left of my vacation in this shanty raft-town. So far, a 'possum rent boy told me I'm the biggest douche who walked the earth, I got kicked out of a hotel, and the Moldavian police held my passport. And here comes the punch line: there was an earthquake. It's 3 AM and the power is out, phone lines are dead, as well as the cellphone towers. I'm stuck in this stinky police station, under the charges of prostitution, and I heard the rats buzzing about Grozdov lake. Guess it's something about the water level dropping...
If it is what I think it is, they're gonna need a whole pack of lutrid rescuers. Hell no, an army. 'Cause the place is going down.