The Practicality of a "Moria-Like" City

[Crossroads Inc.]

Hilarious question this thread has yet to answer. Are we founding this hilariously mined out city for economic or military reasons?

Because...your utterly hilarious metaphor to Moria had an utterly priceless mineral to mine. I'm just saying. It might have been a worthwhile economic investment.

Well.... Since you asked...
The premise for it was for a Fantasy setting involving two primary individuals... Basically, the two have access to a Knowledge bank of advanced information, and are slowly using it to push the local civilization to a more advanced state. The anonymity of the facility is desired as they don't exactly want the rest of the "World" or near by powerful Kingdoms finding out where al the nifty ideas about, medicine, metallurgy, printing presses, chemistry, etc is coming from. SO the community is more like a think tank, with the "town" as an anonymous front for distributing various ideas as well las trading resources.

Finances are pretty much self sustaining due to the creation of new business. I mean, shoot, owning the first Printing Press on the planet by itself is enough to start a finical empire. Things like selling better manufactured goods is enough to make a tidy profit.

....just don't dig too deep....

Oh man, the memories, the horribly "FUN" memories.

[Broomstick]

For your purposes a mountain fortress built ON a mountain might work better, with access by things like rope bridges that can be easily cut/dropped to cut off access. Think Nepal - unless you have high altitude adapted draft animals and know the way you are going to find getting there at all extremely difficult, getting an army there would be nigh impossible. The mountain city might be partly dug into the mountain as well to help with heating the place to a comfortable level, basically earth-sheltering the living quarters and some storage areas.

[Simon_Jester]

Hilarious question this thread has yet to answer. Are we founding this hilariously mined out city for economic or military reasons?

Because...your utterly hilarious metaphor to Moria had an utterly priceless mineral to mine. I'm just saying. It might have been a worthwhile economic investment.

Well.... Since you asked...
The premise for it was for a Fantasy setting involving two primary individuals... Basically, the two have access to a Knowledge bank of advanced information, and are slowly using it to push the local civilization to a more advanced state. The anonymity of the facility is desired as they don't exactly want the rest of the "World" or near by powerful Kingdoms finding out where al the nifty ideas about, medicine, metallurgy, printing presses, chemistry, etc is coming from. SO the community is more like a think tank, with the "town" as an anonymous front for distributing various ideas as well las trading resources.

Finances are pretty much self sustaining due to the creation of new business. I mean, shoot, owning the first Printing Press on the planet by itself is enough to start a finical empire. Things like selling better manufactured goods is enough to make a tidy profit.

Exactly how do you have massive business empires starting in a town where nobody knows where it is?

Wouldn't it make more sense to put the inventors in the equivalent of Broomstick's "mountaintop monastery," a sort of medieval version of Bell Labs, and have the factories and so on located in a prominent lowland city with cheap, easy transportation and a large labor force and room to expand?

[Sea Skimmer]

As a practical matter you need a high level of social control to make an underground isolated city work. That doesn't seem to me like a great way to make an inventive community thrive trying to replicate radically more advanced technology in a short timescale. You need access to raw materials on demand and workshop and experimental space that are safe to use and not for example, extremely loud like metal forging in a tunnel would be. If you want a blast furnace that really needs to be outdoors, and powered by a water wheel.

[Gaidin]

Hilarious question this thread has yet to answer. Are we founding this hilariously mined out city for economic or military reasons?

Because...your utterly hilarious metaphor to Moria had an utterly priceless mineral to mine. I'm just saying. It might have been a worthwhile economic investment.

Well.... Since you asked...
The premise for it was for a Fantasy setting involving two primary individuals... Basically, the two have access to a Knowledge bank of advanced information, and are slowly using it to push the local civilization to a more advanced state. The anonymity of the facility is desired as they don't exactly want the rest of the "World" or near by powerful Kingdoms finding out where al the nifty ideas about, medicine, metallurgy, printing presses, chemistry, etc is coming from. SO the community is more like a think tank, with the "town" as an anonymous front for distributing various ideas as well las trading resources.

Finances are pretty much self sustaining due to the creation of new business. I mean, shoot, owning the first Printing Press on the planet by itself is enough to start a finical empire. Things like selling better manufactured goods is enough to make a tidy profit.

Not really. Because digging for the sake of mining and then setting the city in what you dig out is one thing. Digging a location out because it's a strategic location is another thing altogether. The latter you just pay for. The former pays for itself and then some, hopefully.

[Broomstick]

Think Coober Pedy, Australia - an opal mining town where most of the buildings are underground due to the harsh desert climate. Not up on a mountain so much as in the middle of a bad-ass desert.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, but places like that tend to only have whatever structures are minimally necessary to support the mining activity that is their purpose. They aren't flourishing cities or centers of scholarship and industry.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah the population density is low.

Also that kind of super shallow soft ground construction is an utter deathtrap of you have an earthquake. China had one in IIRC the 16th century where up to half a million people died largely because of large scale habitation in clay and earth caves. You want housing out in the desert okay, but this isn't a good idea to scale up.