The Collapse

About seventy years ago the northernmost city of our world - Leda - has experienced a disaster. The ground started to sink beneath it; some areas of the city were buried entirely, others were destroyed by the ground movement. The city and the area around it ended up on the bottom of a great pit. All connection to the outside world was severed. Leda became the Ice Cellar.

All of this didn't happen overnight. Some of the people who lived in the city have simply fled, but most - hundreds of thousands - have stayed. When the Collapse was over these people had to adapt to a completely new environment very quickly.

## The post-Collapse crisis

The first thing that the people of Leda had to do after the Collapse was to find shelter. Luckily the Collapse happened in the end of spring, but a solution still had to be found very quickly. People who worked on that problem became the first bricklayers, and in order to create new dwellings quickly they built large longhouses.

During the first year after the Collapse people of the Cellar faced severe water shortages. The old water system was destroyed. At first the bricklayers tried to dig wells, but however deep they dug they never managed to hit the aquifer. In later years those wells became water-bearing, but during the first year they stayed dry. So in order to provide the city with water the bricklayers built huge rainwater collectors to the west of the old city ruins. Since that time they have been called the "rain fields".

The situation with food was nowhere near as acute as the one with water, because there were large storages of food in the old city, and they were quickly accessed after the collapse. Because of that there was no danger of hunger during the first year.

### Damages to the mills

During the Collapse many mills were lost or damaged. Since mills were created not by building, but by weaving matter, they were very durable, and the ones that stayed above ground mostly remained functional. However, they still suffered damages, and could no longer work for more than a few months every year. Today the mills are turned on in the autumn, and because of that most other activities in the Cellar are seasonal too, whereas before the Collapse the rhythm of life was much steadier.

It is possible that some of the damages suffered by the mills during the Collapse have not been discovered yet. At first most remaining mills have been made operational again, but as time went on some of them shut down for good. However, the main production chain transforming stone into food and fuel has for now remained unbroken.

### Emergence of wings

Before our city sank, people's lives were linked to giant mills. Once a person turned sixteen they would come to one of the mills in their city to help weave matter. This wasn't a mandatory rule that was enforced by the community or some institution - there was no law enforcement at that point in history. However, this wasn't the result of any internal sense of duty either. Regardless of one's feelings once a person turned sixteen and until they grew old they would come to the mills a few times every month. This only took a small fraction of each person's time, but this compulsion that wasn't a compulsion extended to everyone. On a conscious level everybody was, of course, aware, that the mills are what allows the cities to live; however, that internal compulsion wasn't conscious, and nobody knew why it existed inside their own heads.

When the city sank, this compulsion disappeared for reasons that are not understood today. At first people stopped working at the mills altogether. However, the mills were still necessary for life to go on, and after a while a small number of people went back to work. They were the ones who organized the first "wings". Whereas before the mills were used to create everything that people needed, now only fuel and food was woven. For the rest people had to turn to more simple methods of production. With time, people doing these other crafts have also organized themselves into wings.

### Emergence of palms

The political system of the Cellar emerged during the first years after the Collapse. People had to decide how to distribute resources, first and foremost - the limited operational time of the mills. Those to who were trusted with resolving disputes around these problems came to be known as palms. Until this day each wing has seven palms. They attend all meetings of the wing, listen to debates and decide in favor of one of the sides.

One of the events that helped form the political system of the Cellar was the creation of the Incubatorium.