I'd say New Yorker, French and New Zealand simultaneously. However that works... And great to see another video Tim (and it was a nice surprise to hear you on the OSPodcast) hope you're keeping well :)
In linguistics, mountains often create residual zones - regions conducive to creating and preserving a high level of linguistic diversity. This also reflects a high level of cultural diversity. The Caucasus is a prime example.
Tim I have a question. Does the local ground temperature affect the settlement of mountains? My teacher said that in tropical climate people tend to settle more on mountains like the Incas and Ethiopia. Do you think this is a factor or are there other causes for these cities?
The alps are also a good example. I'm from Innsbruck, Austria (4:36), the town is to big to have much of a special accent - apart from the harshly pronounced "k"-letter, but every village around has it's own, and people from the next valley are usually hard to understand. For example the term "downwards" means "hinunter" in standard german and austrian german, but in Tyrol it can be "abi", "obi", "oi", "achn", "owi, "awi", "achi" (and probably a few more). Another alpine example is the survival of the Rhaeto-Romanic language, which exists nowhere, but in a small part of Switzerland...! Edit: 4:36, 4:59 and so on :-P
Would anyone else like an episode on nomads? I feel that they get misunderstood in fiction a lot (look up A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry and the series "That Dothraki Horde).
That's an awesome idea. I try to watch and read stuff about different nomadic people for my own worldbuilding, but Hello Future Me covering that topic would SAVE ME.
One interesting thing about mountains is that there is some agriculture we have in the US that's dependent on mountains to grow properly. In the temperate regions of California where the climate is stable, farmers rely on mountainsides to create growing patches for various berries that require a specific temperature range. By growing strawberries at specific elevations in mountain valleys, they can ensure that the strawberry plants have an optimal growth season for their entire growth period. Different plants have different preferred elevations in a situation like this, so any 'traditional' agriculture that occurs in a mountain settlement will likely be split across horizontal bands of diverse crops in a mountain valley.
I was thinking the same thing. There are also a lot of regional berries that only grow in mountain areas like huckleberries, saskatoon berries, etc. Go to a mountain town and they will likely have a local wild berry that you’ve never heard of before.
I live in an area where we're super dependent on the water from mountain reservoirs and the snowpack. Droughts aren't determined by how much it rains throughout the year, it's determined by how much snowpack the mountains got the previous winter.
Not to mention active volcanoes like Mt Vesuvius, that fertilise the soil and make it ideal for vineyards and other farmlands - ultimately very risky as Pompeii and Herculaneum found
Tim I have a question. Does the local ground temperature affect the settlement of mountains? My teacher said that in tropical climate people tend to settle more on mountains like the Incas and Ethiopia. Do you think this is a factor or are there other causes for these cities?
@@thefolder3086 Temperature is very important. It changes what diseases you can get and how often, what plants can you grow, what type of homes is it better to build and it also influences mindset of people a lot. Close to equator it is hot so diseases run rampant. Those are the places that are underpopulated which means that the land can feed a lot more people than the number that lives there. There is so much diseases around that this locations are the rare places that never got fully populated. In the mountains there are less diseases so death rate is lower which translates to higher population density than the one in the plains below. Those places are still underpopulated. People are seeing subsaharan Africa as overpopulated which is not true. They are blaming overpopulation for hunger while the real cause of it are wars and neocolonialism. Do you have more questions? I know a lot about this kind of things because I studied environmental science at college and would gladly answer your questions.
Mountains can also be a double edged sword when it comes to war and expansion. If your nation is surrounded by mountains on its side, those mountains may be able to protect your nation from other nations, but they may also hinder and stop your nation from expanding the direction the mountains are.
And if someone is attacking you from the other side, the mountains are a barrier limiting the possibility of retreat, migration, though they can be used to hide in for a time.
They may also just be poorly lined up with cultural boundaries over time- whilst most people have a clear understanding of Italy's land border being the alps, the Appennines were historically the harder to cross, but due to sea trade and being a peninsula (meaning that the easiest routes of navigation for traders only got you to more italy) there was still enough cultural exchange that it would eventually unify. But generally, Italy's mountains were horribly bad for it's defense, as they mostly prevented it re-assembling itself after it lost the political power of the roman empire and got divided up by a series of incomplete conquests. Similar issues can be seen in poland's history, though not with moutains, as it's only natural east-west border is in the exact middle of the country, being the river that the culture established itself around, which means that it has repeatedly suffered from 'get invaded from both sides' as a political issue, given 'the middle of poland' is that natural boundary between German and Russian forces historically, at which point it was difficult to successfully defend, despite being distinct culturally. I could imagine a similar thing with 'lonely mountain' style mountain kingdoms in fantasy, in that a good natural fortification is pretty useless if it's so centrally located it is the natural boundary between the nations further away whilst not on the boundary of your own kingdom at all.
See : Zhuge Liang seething after his 199th attempt to conquer Wei (Northern China) failed due to overextended supply lines from Shu (Sichuan) in Romance of the 3 Kingdoms. Explaination - The man suggested the place as a base to Liu Bei due to it being a very fertile valley surrounded by mountains on all sides in the first place. Look at the map of Sichuan in China and Shu-Han's borders and you'll see.
It still all comes back to purpose and culture. Where did the underground species and peoples come from? Why did they settle in/under the mountains? What resources do they value? How does living underground affect them and their culture? How does it affect trade? What about physiological adaptations over time and how do those affect all of the above? And so on and so forth- -signed, an amateur worldbuilder who is still learning but hopefully can help a little bit
Perhaps I'm dumb, but I always thought that vast underground civilizations in a medieval-inspired world was a bit of a stretch. As far as I know, there is nothing comparable in our history (at least in scale). Without some type of magic (like Tolkien), I find it hard to believe that it could happen.
@@j.g.9045 Well, it's one thing when we talk about humans who need sunlight both biologically and psychologically (just look up how coal mining affected workers that were underground from sunrise to sunset), so a fully underground civilization is not exactly feasible in our world. But if we're specifically talking about dwarves, then we're talking about fantasy creatures that might not require sunlight, simple as that. Other solutions could be a sunlight crystal, or a material so valuable/powerful it drives people to suffer underground for it, or a futuristic technology that allows underground living - think a world in which the surface became hard to inhabit, so humans used daylight lamps to create great underground cities.
@@j.g.9045 well, it certainly wasn’t physically impossible for civilizations at that tech level to enlarge and improve natural cave systems. Natural cave systems can be quite extensive: Lascaux is a good example. Cliff face dwellings were also common, and demonstrate how people were able to carve buildings out of the rock. While humans need sunlight to grow food and also to not go insane, it is worth pointing out that we are a tropical species who evolved at our planet’s equator: so it’s no wonder we need sunlight so much. A species that could eat mushrooms we would find poisonous and which evolved in the arctic region of their planet would have a much easier time living underground. Humans are also uniquely good at thermoregulation, so we can tolerate the extremes of temperature on the surface more easily (although even we have built cities into cliffs to avoid temperature extremes: see Petra). If a species was not able to endure the day-night temperature variation on their planet, living underground would be a viable solution: especially if they also needed a humid environment.
"We get our food from flatlands....but that's not necessarily true in fiction" Ever heard of terrace farming? The Incans were masters at it and their civilization lived high up in the mountains.
There are flat parts in the mountains too. He did not tell that those are the most populous places. Quite high population density. Higher than the one in flatlands. This is where the cities are. Trade rutes are going thru those places even if there is a quicker way thru the mountain. Travelers need to eat too. It is better to travel a little longer than it is to carry twice or trice the amount of food for you and your donkeys.
One of the few recent examples of a post-post apocalyptic world building. Where new, fully developed civilizations have formed from the ashes of the old. I find this much more compelling than post-apocalyptic, where humanity is is barely surviving digging though the scraps and trash of the pre-apocalypse, a la Fallout.
Yes!! The best game I have ever played! Horizon Zero Dawn is such a perfection for me! I love everything about it. Music, gameplay, narrative, theme... etc. 🥰
@@TheNinjaDC I'm currently playing around with something similar, but without telling the reader. Like giving hints here and there, but the full picture only gradually developing. I'm not sure about that setup. Like, would people feel cheated by it? "Bruh, why is this post-apocalypse all of a sudden? I sold me Mayapunk!"
Horizon's lore and worldbuilding has some impressive depths - particularly around how the faiths, customs and environments of the game's present-day are revealed to have come about. There are some pretty solid foundations beneath the surface. From why some (and specifically only some) of the robot dinosaurs look like dinosaurs, to why the Nora's warriors are called 'braves'... the more you chip away at the story and the world, the more you find. Love that game.
Be from a super ancient, super diverse and interesting mountain civilisation and not get mentioned in a fantasy mountains video. SAD. I'm from the Caucasus mountains, it never gets talked about in any history or fantasy videos but I think its a pretty cool place. Caucasus is a mountain border between Europe and Asia between the black sea and kaspaian lake, north has the kaspian steppe and south has Anatolia. North is where all the horse people spawn from and south is where all the civilisations come from. the constant battle between East and the west takes place here, on it live ancient kingdoms and tribes. In the north, aryans, Sythians, turks, mongolians and kosaks live few days walk from each other, south there is Georgia- ancient people, predating the indo Europeans, nation states since the bronze age Armenia- one of the oldest branch of indo Arians and also an ancient kingdom Azerbaijan- 1000 year old Turkik nation. Nether of these 3 are large or very powerful, but managed to fight off multiple imperial envisions at the same time since the bronze ages. The whole land is hills and mountain and their culture is fully built around it. The mountains trap and protect people's and cultures, sythians used to rule the grasslands, terrorise the ancient world and influence both east and west, but only remnants of their kind is few thousand people in the mountain villiages.
I just want a thought I might be in danger of running out of ideas he comes out with an episode entirely about mountains I don't think we're in danger of that anytime soon
I think you could use the wheel of time here too, with the Spine of the World, Dragonmount and the Aiel. The world opens up so much after the other side of the Spine is revealed. Dragonmount also serves as an ever-present reminder of the Dragon Reborn (tEotW prologue is also an awesome display of power)
Can you do a worldbuilding video on horizon zero dawn? Favorite game, and I’d love to see a deep dive on how it was set up and how the different cultures interact with each other
Something to ponder too are things like plateaus. They would have similar challenges as mountains depending on accessibility while maintaining some benefit of flat land, depending on size. I could a society considering the lowland between plateaus the functional equivalent of our seas in terms of travel and exchange; if getting up and down a plateau limits you to small pack animals or the like, it would be that much more difficult, expensive, and intentional to organize large expeditions.
A great town as an example of the trade route that has been replaced by a better one is Carburetor Springs from Cars. Route 66 was once premier and they grew as a pit stop on the journey. When the road was bypassed it died out until it was revived as a historical tourist destination by Lightning McQueen and his friends. It feels silly but it’s actually a really good example.
The bit about Tamriel and mountains also has a few other cultures native to mountainous areas. For example, there's the Orcs, who consistently build their cities in the mountains around High Rock and who tend to survive and keep rebuilding every time their cities are destroyed, and the Reachmen in Skyrim who also tend to wage guerrilla warfare in the most mountainous and difficult ground in the province.
One type of mountain city I'd add is the fortress. Specially in times of political-military upheaval, populations of the surrounding lowlands tend to flock to more defensive sites (Acrocorinth comes to mind, as well as the pair of the second Minas Tirith and Minas Ithil, Gondolin...). These population centers usually don't grow too large after the initial growth, unless the new population uses the strategical location to control trade routes, or find a new resource to explore, and may become either part of a larger city growing downwards - as Corinth - or be abandoned - as literally hundreds were in the Middle East during the early Iron Age - as the situation calms down or simply be overwhelmed by the same enemies that drove its population there in the first place (as were Gondolin, Minas Ithil). Their people also tend to have more diverse backgrownds as they literally are anyone who might want to live and get to make the journey.
Actually I really like idea of a Candy Mountain, but with the added detail of it being subjected to decay, and the effects it would have on the region.
The candy mountain that yearly melts in the heat of the summer and sends waves of thick, sticky nectar like a lava flow over the surrounding villages, carrying with it the eggs of flies the size of dragons and maggots so large that their lumpy white bodies resemble covered wagons? The candy mountain that, despite going stale and sickening, never becomes fully rotten nor allows to rot all those people, animals, and older, more terrible things that have all been trapped beneath its crystalline, cherry-flavored surface? The candy mountain in which the mad Mellified Men make their homes, burying themselves over centuries in service of their dark god the Candy Man? The candy mountain that is the infernal origin of the phrase "The sweet embrace of death"? The candy mountain that contains twenty percent more of the vile Mr. Goodbars than any other single type of candy? THAT candy mountain?
This is so relevant because I'm looking at using a mountain range in the worldbuilding I'm doing right now, and your claim at the very start about environmental determinism has me rethinking it.
Environmental determinism is only lazy world building when it's the *sole* determinant that explains everything or almost everything about a part of your world. The environment has an enormous impact on the way civilisations and nation states develop that shouldn't be discounted outright. Just make sure that the environment is tied into the culture, language, politics etc of the world you're creating and make sure that there's adequate nuance, and that there are other extraneous forces that are also shaping that workd
Mountain cities can also be built as a trade hub if the territory itself is mountainous, here in Colombia we have a city built literally in the mountains, Manizales, and whilst today is a medium size university town, it used to be an industrial and commercial hub of the region due to its central location. Nowadays, the industry has moved to the other cities and better roads have moved the commerce to other cities as well.
I'm presently worldbuilding a uniquely difficult setting; The Earthen Sky, where levitating boulders full of valuable resources crash against each other or are suspended apart by vines and plants, and are mined by dwarven airship crews, while more lush zones are full of life from massively fuzzy floating tigers to lizard-like impact-resistant birds. All this fooating miles above the sea, which is pitch black and frozen from the hundreds of miles of rock that blot out the sky. Please make a video about worldbuilding in the sky.
Now I'm wondering how much Zeal was a factor in the surface weather in Chrono Trigger. They were in an ice age already, but did the constant blizzards start before or after a magical floating island chain started dropping scenic waterfalls left and right?
Depending on the Mountains you will have Valleys with good farmland which can sustain multiple populations. A good source for how populations in mountains act with each other is to look at the Alps during the Bronze Age.
My favorite mountain civilizations are the Nonmen from R. Scott Bakkers the Prince of Nothing and The Great Ordeal series. While men still wore skins and lived in caves they spent ages hollowing out their great mansions in order to hide from the gods and thus escape damnation through oblivion.
Innsbruck also combines the whole river crossing aspect of town growth with it's position in the mountain. The name literally translates to "Inn bridge" (inn is a river which runs parallel to the alps). Edit: It also continues it's role to this day as europe is building the Brenner base tunnel through the alps, which comes out in - you guessed it - innsbruck
I'm sure that your two+ hour video on a game that I can not, nor will ever likely play, was wonderful. But it's nice to get back to some of the bread and butter content. Thumb's up for this one.
It’s interesting that in hotter climates however mountains often serve as refugees for more centralized states. Ethiopia for example is remarkably more temperate than all lands surrounding its central mountains. Even the Andes can be seen doing this as well. It’s probably because its harder to do agriculture of mass crops like grains in a tropical climate , though there are many exceptions.
You're describing the classic tension between environmental determinism and possibilism, the bread and butter of human geographers: human environment interaction!
When I was a kid my friends and I designed mountains that would take two full days to fall from the top to the valley if you fell from the cliff. As you grow up and learn about acceleration and what not, its mind boggling how high that would have to be.
In greek myth it is sometimes said that to fall from earth into tartarus (the underworld) it would take a large block of Iron seven days and seven nights to reach the bottom
One city that’s interesting to think about in this regard is Denver, Colorado... because it’s not exactly a mountain city. It’s thought of as one, it’s the highest up major city in the USA, but it basically sits at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The foot of them. While it’d be a foolish assumption to say that Denver was founded because west-bound settlers trekked uphill for half of a continent, got there, looked up at the massive crags ahead of them and went “fuck it, here’s fine”, its not unreasonable to say that at least some settlers felt that settling for Denver instead of trying to get to Oregon or California was a good option. Because cities do still need at least some flat land. We can deal with hills and such, but if your city is going to have a seriously large number of people, it needs room to expand and grow and not have people go uphill for a mile just to deliver bread... See also Los Angeles and Orange County. There’s mountains all up here in this bitch, but people don’t live in them so much. Some build houses up in them, but the work gets done on the flatlands that are around.
In Exandria, there is a mountain range called the Ashkeeper Peaks between the imperialistic, nationalistic, expansionistic Dwendalian Empire and the theocratic dark elf kindom of the Kryn Dynasty. They've only just discovered each other and subsequently went to war of the theft of a Kryn relic but I won't be surprised if trade towns emerge on the Ashkeeper Peaks.
Nobody EVER mentions Starbound outside of a couple spaces like Steam. I legitimately had to take a moment and stop to look through the comments to see if anyone else was surprised as I was.
This video was so helpful because I am writing a fantasy epic set in a continent almost completely made up of mountains. The two major mountain-residing groups are Dwarfs and a group of Earth Elves. The Dwarfs live in complex cave systems within the mountains, complete with cities, farms, and highways that run underground. Their main source of water comes from subterranean water chambers that bubble up through the earth, and most of their crops are either fungi, root vegetables, or fruits that get photosynthesis from magic luminescent moss that grows in the caves. The Dwarfs need meat, of course, so they have selected herdsmen who take care of their cattle up top and bring them into the caves during winter, when the grass has dried up. I am proud of the Dwarfen world building, but I realized that my world building for the Earth Elves is lacking. Again, thanks for your thought provoking work.
hey man, no idea if u r going to read this but just wanted to say that I know you since the how to train your dragons times and have recently come across your chanel again, and man you've changed a lot! Hope u r doing fine and good luck with your chanel, you've really deserved it bcs you improved a lot over the years, keep up the good work
Another old mountain trade city is Megiddo in the Middle East. It’s importance caused it to be captured and burned by every army that ever marched the area. It was called Har Megiddo in certain languages which was Greekified into Armageddon. A mountain city so often destroyed that it became synonymous with destruction itself.
Excellent video. I’m glad to see that the mountain community in my own story lines up with many of the criteria you listed. They are a magically-centered community who formed the village originally as a place of learning, but slowly migrated their entire population there as relations with the non-magical community grew more hostile.
This reminded me of a podcast i use to listen to called "Our Fair City" basically the world froze over and people were forced to live underground, but it was briefly mentioned that the narrator found it baffling people use to believe in heaven being in the sky cause they thought the afterlife was farther underground because its warmer
Sometimes I don't even know a topic could be worth a video until Tim makes one and I think - uh, how interesting. Which is a good thing, because my greatest fear is that he will one day run out of worldbuilding topics. I really NEED more of this
An interesting mountain kingdom is Eddis from the Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner. Several centuries before, the region was conquered but the effects of the conquerors' culture was felt much more in the two neighboring flatland countries. Eddis up in its mountains was more subjugated in name than actuality, as such they are now the only kingdom that still believes in the older set of gods and even the way they pronounce their kingdom's name is different than how others do. They mostly trade their ores for food and are famous for being great mercenaries because "what else are you going to do stuck all winter but practice with swords?". Their pantheon of gods is also led by a mountain goddess.
Really cool video. I think is also important to mention that some civilization used the mountains quite opposite to the others. Like the Incas who managed to expand their territory across the mountains but not in the flatlands
This was SUCH a good video! I got a lot out of it. I have a society of people living in mountains and valleys who are nocturnal, and from this I realized just how important sources of heat that don't involve light would be to them. I hadn't considered that before, and that's a gold mine. Also highly respect the clip from the Guardians of Ga'Hoole movie. Not enough people respect that series.
When you delve into the worldbuilding of Avatar it just ignites my need for further content, it just highlights all the great things about the show that we can consider when watching it again.
The worldbuilding for a story I'm doing has a mountain city. The citizens guard a mountain pass from northern invasions, they also have deep reservoirs of rock salt and ore and they breed mountain goats.
As one of 'those pesky Scots', it certainly 'worked' in that it effectively fostered a lasting animosity towards the English that still to an extent persists
Awesome video, definitely on point. Give props for going in a completely different direction then an Artifexian video. A few things I'd add: Mountainous areas are likely to produce divided societies, think like the ancient Greek city-states, with shared culture. Because there's less farmable land the landed aristocracy tends to be smaller. A powerful merchant class is likely to take their place. This can lead to oligarchy rule, though certainly not always. Oh, and trade routes often run parallel to mountain ranges, and in primitive times would provide a reference point for our nomadic ancestors. This is true in India, the Americas, southern Europe, and I'm sure in other areas too.
One of my favourite mountain cities is the wall city in ‘Mortal Engines’, it’s a giant wall that spans the only passage between Europe (home to giant rolling cities that ate everything on their side of the mountains, and Asia which is a verdant paradise. It was a primary a defensive structure that gained cultural significance and became one of the major cities of the Anti traction league. It also had a temple that survived the 60 minute war which wrecked the planet giving it unrelated religious significance on top of its culture significance
This stuff is interesting to think about, because the setting for one of my story projects actually has a prominent city which is built within a mountain canyon. The city's economy is largely based on mining the rich mineral resources in the mountains, but the difficulty of building in such an inhospitable location necessitated a lot of technological innovation and a highly educated STEM workforce, resulting in the city becoming known as a beacon of technological progress and scientific learning.
Another thing to consider is the affect of lakes on the mountainous climate. Deep lakes will moderate the temperature of a region and through this an elevated area can be rather temperate. Also, another neglected mountainous environment is the high plateau, the advantages of good wide mostly flat farmland while also enjoying the benefits of mountains.
I was not ready for Park City to be talked about, with it being in my backyard... Took me out of the fantasy world that is learning from Hello Future Me. I think I have some whiplash now haha
![On Worldbuilding: How Class Systems Work [ Avatar | Dune | Tolkien | Feudalism ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8tjvul5e1y4/mqdefault.jpg)
![On Worldbuilding: Class, Wealth, and Power [ Stormlight | Dystopias | Witcher ]](/img/n.gif)
what even was that accent bit.ly/HFM3-21
campfire 20% off code: HFM21
Stay nerdy!
Tim
Wow
Bad. The accent was bad. xD
I'd say New Yorker, French and New Zealand simultaneously. However that works...
And great to see another video Tim (and it was a nice surprise to hear you on the OSPodcast) hope you're keeping well :)
sounded to me kinda like a russian immigrant with a brooklyn accent
Can I use campfire to build and keep track of an galaxy? Something like Star Wars.
In linguistics, mountains often create residual zones - regions conducive to creating and preserving a high level of linguistic diversity. This also reflects a high level of cultural diversity. The Caucasus is a prime example.
Tim I have a question. Does the local ground temperature affect the settlement of mountains? My teacher said that in tropical climate people tend to settle more on mountains like the Incas and Ethiopia. Do you think this is a factor or are there other causes for these cities?
Same works for ecosystems as well, mountains have incredible diversity.
Another is the Basque region. Spanish on one side, French on the other, and ancient Basque in between
Papua New Guinea, tropical mountains, highest language diversity in the world, the language changes every few miles/kilometers.
The alps are also a good example. I'm from Innsbruck, Austria (4:36), the town is to big to have much of a special accent - apart from the harshly pronounced "k"-letter, but every village around has it's own, and people from the next valley are usually hard to understand. For example the term "downwards" means "hinunter" in standard german and austrian german, but in Tyrol it can be "abi", "obi", "oi", "achn", "owi, "awi", "achi" (and probably a few more).
Another alpine example is the survival of the Rhaeto-Romanic language, which exists nowhere, but in a small part of Switzerland...!
Edit: 4:36, 4:59 and so on :-P
Would anyone else like an episode on nomads? I feel that they get misunderstood in fiction a lot (look up A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry and the series "That Dothraki Horde).
Hell yeah, brother
That's an awesome idea. I try to watch and read stuff about different nomadic people for my own worldbuilding, but Hello Future Me covering that topic would SAVE ME.
@@CharlieCaw look up a collection of unmegtaed pegatry he explains it very well
Yes!!!
I would love an episode on nomads.
Two lovers…forbidden from one another….A war divides their-people…And a mountain divides them apart…build another path to-be-together….
Yeah I forget the next couple of lines, but uh then it goes...
SECRET TUNNEL!
@@groofay *SECRET TUNNEEEEEL!*
@@puddlel1ama327 THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN
@@nucleargandhi2709 SECRET SECRET SECRET TUNNEL
Can anyone explain? I don't get the reference 😅
One interesting thing about mountains is that there is some agriculture we have in the US that's dependent on mountains to grow properly. In the temperate regions of California where the climate is stable, farmers rely on mountainsides to create growing patches for various berries that require a specific temperature range. By growing strawberries at specific elevations in mountain valleys, they can ensure that the strawberry plants have an optimal growth season for their entire growth period. Different plants have different preferred elevations in a situation like this, so any 'traditional' agriculture that occurs in a mountain settlement will likely be split across horizontal bands of diverse crops in a mountain valley.
I was thinking the same thing. There are also a lot of regional berries that only grow in mountain areas like huckleberries, saskatoon berries, etc. Go to a mountain town and they will likely have a local wild berry that you’ve never heard of before.
Isn't there a type of berry that requires such a specific climate that it is hard to near impossible to farm them?
Looked it up, it's Huckleberries
I live in an area where we're super dependent on the water from mountain reservoirs and the snowpack. Droughts aren't determined by how much it rains throughout the year, it's determined by how much snowpack the mountains got the previous winter.
Not to mention active volcanoes like Mt Vesuvius, that fertilise the soil and make it ideal for vineyards and other farmlands - ultimately very risky as Pompeii and Herculaneum found
@@Doublemonk0506 huckleberries are very popular here in Idaho
We really need more of Graeme the wizard who likes cat to travel more.
You really found the weirdest way to spell Graham, didnt you?
@@milospollonia1121 it was UA-cam's auto generator
:)
Tim I have a question. Does the local ground temperature affect the settlement of mountains? My teacher said that in tropical climate people tend to settle more on mountains like the Incas and Ethiopia. Do you think this is a factor or are there other causes for these cities?
We need a dnd campaign where he plays the wizard as his character
@@thefolder3086 Temperature is very important. It changes what diseases you can get and how often, what plants can you grow, what type of homes is it better to build and it also influences mindset of people a lot.
Close to equator it is hot so diseases run rampant. Those are the places that are underpopulated which means that the land can feed a lot more people than the number that lives there. There is so much diseases around that this locations are the rare places that never got fully populated. In the mountains there are less diseases so death rate is lower which translates to higher population density than the one in the plains below. Those places are still underpopulated.
People are seeing subsaharan Africa as overpopulated which is not true. They are blaming overpopulation for hunger while the real cause of it are wars and neocolonialism.
Do you have more questions? I know a lot about this kind of things because I studied environmental science at college and would gladly answer your questions.
New Zealand accent -> Italian American accent -> Russian accent all before the one minute mark!
Came here to say that. Brooklyn's loaded with Russians these days though so he's not far off.
It was beautiful. Made me giggle when I needed a good giggle
Someone needs to make a wiki page compiling all the lore of the Graham the Wizard Who Likes Cats series
Mountains can also be a double edged sword when it comes to war and expansion. If your nation is surrounded by mountains on its side, those mountains may be able to protect your nation from other nations, but they may also hinder and stop your nation from expanding the direction the mountains are.
And if someone is attacking you from the other side, the mountains are a barrier limiting the possibility of retreat, migration, though they can be used to hide in for a time.
@@MDP1702 yeah
They may also just be poorly lined up with cultural boundaries over time- whilst most people have a clear understanding of Italy's land border being the alps, the Appennines were historically the harder to cross, but due to sea trade and being a peninsula (meaning that the easiest routes of navigation for traders only got you to more italy) there was still enough cultural exchange that it would eventually unify. But generally, Italy's mountains were horribly bad for it's defense, as they mostly prevented it re-assembling itself after it lost the political power of the roman empire and got divided up by a series of incomplete conquests. Similar issues can be seen in poland's history, though not with moutains, as it's only natural east-west border is in the exact middle of the country, being the river that the culture established itself around, which means that it has repeatedly suffered from 'get invaded from both sides' as a political issue, given 'the middle of poland' is that natural boundary between German and Russian forces historically, at which point it was difficult to successfully defend, despite being distinct culturally. I could imagine a similar thing with 'lonely mountain' style mountain kingdoms in fantasy, in that a good natural fortification is pretty useless if it's so centrally located it is the natural boundary between the nations further away whilst not on the boundary of your own kingdom at all.
@@reganator5000 very interesting
See : Zhuge Liang seething after his 199th attempt to conquer Wei (Northern China) failed due to overextended supply lines from Shu (Sichuan) in Romance of the 3 Kingdoms.
Explaination - The man suggested the place as a base to Liu Bei due to it being a very fertile valley surrounded by mountains on all sides in the first place. Look at the map of Sichuan in China and Shu-Han's borders and you'll see.
I've never heard a half South African-Half Borat old timey gangster before.
bada bing badinga
I think he was trying for a Russian mobster
Him is my sponsor, campfire. Hims is pain in my assholes...
@@Keyce0013 I thought he was going for Italian Mobster
I think he was trying to sound Italian, but he’s British
PUPPY!!! 🤩
Yes!!!!!! 🥰
Hey what's up check mark
Who
Oh shit. It's The Dom.
Why do you just randomly show up in comments so often for me?
Okay, but that puppy really did get my attention. Such a cutie! The accent also worked... somehow xD
Your comment says it's been posted 6 days ago but the video was posted like an hour ago. 😱🤔 Not sure if it's really interesting or really weird.
@@anthonydavis5288 He’s a patron who got it released early probably
Very cute puppy indeed ☺️🐕💕
The terrible New York accent you mean? 😂
I'm noticing a distinct lack of dwarves in this video. How would an underground species affect this analysis?
Mountain = metals therefore dwarves love mountains
It still all comes back to purpose and culture. Where did the underground species and peoples come from? Why did they settle in/under the mountains? What resources do they value? How does living underground affect them and their culture? How does it affect trade? What about physiological adaptations over time and how do those affect all of the above? And so on and so forth-
-signed, an amateur worldbuilder who is still learning but hopefully can help a little bit
Perhaps I'm dumb, but I always thought that vast underground civilizations in a medieval-inspired world was a bit of a stretch. As far as I know, there is nothing comparable in our history (at least in scale). Without some type of magic (like Tolkien), I find it hard to believe that it could happen.
@@j.g.9045 Well, it's one thing when we talk about humans who need sunlight both biologically and psychologically (just look up how coal mining affected workers that were underground from sunrise to sunset), so a fully underground civilization is not exactly feasible in our world. But if we're specifically talking about dwarves, then we're talking about fantasy creatures that might not require sunlight, simple as that. Other solutions could be a sunlight crystal, or a material so valuable/powerful it drives people to suffer underground for it, or a futuristic technology that allows underground living - think a world in which the surface became hard to inhabit, so humans used daylight lamps to create great underground cities.
@@j.g.9045 well, it certainly wasn’t physically impossible for civilizations at that tech level to enlarge and improve natural cave systems. Natural cave systems can be quite extensive: Lascaux is a good example. Cliff face dwellings were also common, and demonstrate how people were able to carve buildings out of the rock. While humans need sunlight to grow food and also to not go insane, it is worth pointing out that we are a tropical species who evolved at our planet’s equator: so it’s no wonder we need sunlight so much. A species that could eat mushrooms we would find poisonous and which evolved in the arctic region of their planet would have a much easier time living underground. Humans are also uniquely good at thermoregulation, so we can tolerate the extremes of temperature on the surface more easily (although even we have built cities into cliffs to avoid temperature extremes: see Petra). If a species was not able to endure the day-night temperature variation on their planet, living underground would be a viable solution: especially if they also needed a humid environment.
"We get our food from flatlands....but that's not necessarily true in fiction"
Ever heard of terrace farming? The Incans were masters at it and their civilization lived high up in the mountains.
Building flatland that you have to maintain every year to prevent it crumbling is always more resource intensive than just having flatland.
Yeah. You only do this is if you don't have readily accessible flatlands.
Translation, they're turning the mountains into several small sections of flatland.
There are flat parts in the mountains too. He did not tell that those are the most populous places. Quite high population density. Higher than the one in flatlands. This is where the cities are. Trade rutes are going thru those places even if there is a quicker way thru the mountain. Travelers need to eat too. It is better to travel a little longer than it is to carry twice or trice the amount of food for you and your donkeys.
Also guys, bear in mind he's speaking about mountains, not uplands in general, there's a significant difference
"And look! Puppy!"
Oh no, I am now trapped and must watch this video without ad block 20 times
The almighty magic of the doggo
Mhm
Sure
About time Horizon Zero Dawn got some love. Love the world and story.
An amazing way to flip resources on their head. Metal and biofuel coming from animals.
One of the few recent examples of a post-post apocalyptic world building.
Where new, fully developed civilizations have formed from the ashes of the old.
I find this much more compelling than post-apocalyptic, where humanity is is barely surviving digging though the scraps and trash of the pre-apocalypse, a la Fallout.
Yes!! The best game I have ever played! Horizon Zero Dawn is such a perfection for me! I love everything about it. Music, gameplay, narrative, theme... etc. 🥰
@@TheNinjaDC I'm currently playing around with something similar, but without telling the reader. Like giving hints here and there, but the full picture only gradually developing.
I'm not sure about that setup. Like, would people feel cheated by it? "Bruh, why is this post-apocalypse all of a sudden? I sold me Mayapunk!"
Horizon's lore and worldbuilding has some impressive depths - particularly around how the faiths, customs and environments of the game's present-day are revealed to have come about. There are some pretty solid foundations beneath the surface.
From why some (and specifically only some) of the robot dinosaurs look like dinosaurs, to why the Nora's warriors are called 'braves'... the more you chip away at the story and the world, the more you find. Love that game.
Finally, the knowledge I have acquired from living in a valley most of my life will finally come in handy.
Be from a super ancient, super diverse and interesting mountain civilisation and not get mentioned in a fantasy mountains video. SAD.
I'm from the Caucasus mountains, it never gets talked about in any history or fantasy videos but I think its a pretty cool place.
Caucasus is a mountain border between Europe and Asia between the black sea and kaspaian lake, north has the kaspian steppe and south has Anatolia. North is where all the horse people spawn from and south is where all the civilisations come from. the constant battle between East and the west takes place here, on it live ancient kingdoms and tribes. In the north, aryans, Sythians, turks, mongolians and kosaks live few days walk from each other, south there is Georgia- ancient people, predating the indo Europeans, nation states since the bronze age
Armenia- one of the oldest branch of indo Arians and also an ancient kingdom
Azerbaijan- 1000 year old Turkik nation.
Nether of these 3 are large or very powerful, but managed to fight off multiple imperial envisions at the same time since the bronze ages. The whole land is hills and mountain and their culture is fully built around it.
The mountains trap and protect people's and cultures, sythians used to rule the grasslands, terrorise the ancient world and influence both east and west, but only remnants of their kind is few thousand people in the mountain villiages.
Love the Sunless Skies reference. A deep cut, but absolutely a fantastic example.
The legend of timestamping is here as well!!!?!?!
Graham the Wizard who likes cats is easily my favourite character in fiction at this point.
Thanks for the awesome video, Tim!
As someone from a mountainous country I can relate. We don’t have an independence day.
If you don't have an independence day, then every day is independence day.
I get happy whenever Stormlight Archive is mentioned anywhere.
That's exactly why I clicked on this video
Same
Are we not gonna talk about how Zuko's scar is on the wrong side in the thumbnail? What is this, Ember Island Players?
Bruuuh that why I clicked!!!
As a Kikuyu myself, I was pleasantly surprised when he mentioned the Kikuyu of Mt. Kenya and our deep connection to that sacred mountain.
I just want a thought I might be in danger of running out of ideas he comes out with an episode entirely about mountains I don't think we're in danger of that anytime soon
I think you could use the wheel of time here too, with the Spine of the World, Dragonmount and the Aiel. The world opens up so much after the other side of the Spine is revealed. Dragonmount also serves as an ever-present reminder of the Dragon Reborn (tEotW prologue is also an awesome display of power)
Tim's impression is terrible, but that actually made the bit so much better.
Considering that he's not even American, it's spectacular. Better than some Americans I know could do.
Actually it’s Mother’s watch that is built next to the sacred mountain, while Mothers heart sits on the other side of the valley
Can you do a worldbuilding video on horizon zero dawn? Favorite game, and I’d love to see a deep dive on how it was set up and how the different cultures interact with each other
I really enjoyed the game, But it felt way to railroaded.
Something to ponder too are things like plateaus. They would have similar challenges as mountains depending on accessibility while maintaining some benefit of flat land, depending on size. I could a society considering the lowland between plateaus the functional equivalent of our seas in terms of travel and exchange; if getting up and down a plateau limits you to small pack animals or the like, it would be that much more difficult, expensive, and intentional to organize large expeditions.
A great town as an example of the trade route that has been replaced by a better one is Carburetor Springs from Cars. Route 66 was once premier and they grew as a pit stop on the journey. When the road was bypassed it died out until it was revived as a historical tourist destination by Lightning McQueen and his friends.
It feels silly but it’s actually a really good example.
The bit about Tamriel and mountains also has a few other cultures native to mountainous areas. For example, there's the Orcs, who consistently build their cities in the mountains around High Rock and who tend to survive and keep rebuilding every time their cities are destroyed, and the Reachmen in Skyrim who also tend to wage guerrilla warfare in the most mountainous and difficult ground in the province.
One type of mountain city I'd add is the fortress. Specially in times of political-military upheaval, populations of the surrounding lowlands tend to flock to more defensive sites (Acrocorinth comes to mind, as well as the pair of the second Minas Tirith and Minas Ithil, Gondolin...). These population centers usually don't grow too large after the initial growth, unless the new population uses the strategical location to control trade routes, or find a new resource to explore, and may become either part of a larger city growing downwards - as Corinth - or be abandoned - as literally hundreds were in the Middle East during the early Iron Age - as the situation calms down or simply be overwhelmed by the same enemies that drove its population there in the first place (as were Gondolin, Minas Ithil). Their people also tend to have more diverse backgrownds as they literally are anyone who might want to live and get to make the journey.
Great timing! I'm in the middle of putting mountains into my world map
Tim, can we just get a full fantasy epic about Graham the Wizard who Likes Cats? I really want it.
A WIZARD DID IT
Actually I really like idea of a Candy Mountain, but with the added detail of it being subjected to decay, and the effects it would have on the region.
I imagine it would be inundated with ants.
The candy mountain that yearly melts in the heat of the summer and sends waves of thick, sticky nectar like a lava flow over the surrounding villages, carrying with it the eggs of flies the size of dragons and maggots so large that their lumpy white bodies resemble covered wagons? The candy mountain that, despite going stale and sickening, never becomes fully rotten nor allows to rot all those people, animals, and older, more terrible things that have all been trapped beneath its crystalline, cherry-flavored surface? The candy mountain in which the mad Mellified Men make their homes, burying themselves over centuries in service of their dark god the Candy Man? The candy mountain that is the infernal origin of the phrase "The sweet embrace of death"? The candy mountain that contains twenty percent more of the vile Mr. Goodbars than any other single type of candy? THAT candy mountain?
@@nobledamask if you made this up yourself just for a UA-cam comment, you deserve a Nobel Prize.
"it'd be a shame if something happened cause you don't have campfire"
Oh god oh fuck
This is so relevant because I'm looking at using a mountain range in the worldbuilding I'm doing right now, and your claim at the very start about environmental determinism has me rethinking it.
Environmental determinism is only lazy world building when it's the *sole* determinant that explains everything or almost everything about a part of your world.
The environment has an enormous impact on the way civilisations and nation states develop that shouldn't be discounted outright. Just make sure that the environment is tied into the culture, language, politics etc of the world you're creating and make sure that there's adequate nuance, and that there are other extraneous forces that are also shaping that workd
As an Italian-American, I'm tempted to mock that accent, but New Zealand accents are my worst accents, so I shouldn't throw stones.
I love these worldbuilding videos! This mountain one (and the island civilizations) is my new favorite!
Mountainous Islands for combo points, though they tend to be volcanic
@@geraldgrenier8132 you just described the main island of my setting lol.
Listen, I’d love to watch this in the first half hour it’s out, but I’m only like 2/3 of the way through the cyberpunk vid so I gotta get back to that
Mountain cities can also be built as a trade hub if the territory itself is mountainous, here in Colombia we have a city built literally in the mountains, Manizales, and whilst today is a medium size university town, it used to be an industrial and commercial hub of the region due to its central location. Nowadays, the industry has moved to the other cities and better roads have moved the commerce to other cities as well.
I love the fact you mix in both real world and fictional examples
I don't watch your channel too much, but boy when I do, I get so much inspiration and so many ideas that it makes me want to write.
Excellent, Tim is finally telling me what to do with all of these molehills
I was not expecting Sunless Skies to come up, but I am absolutely here for it.
*sigh of relief* my D&D world's mountain cities are safe. Great video thank you for your hard work
Im literally designing a volcano island chain right now i swear you upload at just the perfect times 😁
Off topic but I love going back and looking at Tim's old videos and seeing how he developed as a person
I'm presently worldbuilding a uniquely difficult setting; The Earthen Sky, where levitating boulders full of valuable resources crash against each other or are suspended apart by vines and plants, and are mined by dwarven airship crews, while more lush zones are full of life from massively fuzzy floating tigers to lizard-like impact-resistant birds. All this fooating miles above the sea, which is pitch black and frozen from the hundreds of miles of rock that blot out the sky. Please make a video about worldbuilding in the sky.
Now I'm wondering how much Zeal was a factor in the surface weather in Chrono Trigger. They were in an ice age already, but did the constant blizzards start before or after a magical floating island chain started dropping scenic waterfalls left and right?
Depending on the Mountains you will have Valleys with good farmland which can sustain multiple populations. A good source for how populations in mountains act with each other is to look at the Alps during the Bronze Age.
I'm glad this came out! I'm writing a novel where mountains are a geopolitical divide! This is a godsend!
My favorite mountain civilizations are the Nonmen from R. Scott Bakkers the Prince of Nothing and The Great Ordeal series. While men still wore skins and lived in caves they spent ages hollowing out their great mansions in order to hide from the gods and thus escape damnation through oblivion.
Ay! I was rewatching your The Last Airbender critique just to watch one of your videos. Now I have fresh content form you to enjoy!
Really cool video and interesting to think about how and why people live in the mountains in the stories and the effects it has.
Innsbruck also combines the whole river crossing aspect of town growth with it's position in the mountain. The name literally translates to "Inn bridge" (inn is a river which runs parallel to the alps). Edit: It also continues it's role to this day as europe is building the Brenner base tunnel through the alps, which comes out in - you guessed it - innsbruck
I'm sure that your two+ hour video on a game that I can not, nor will ever likely play, was wonderful. But it's nice to get back to some of the bread and butter content. Thumb's up for this one.
A thought:
A people who live on mountains like we do on flatlands, but on flatlands have big issues opposite the ones we have on mountains.
Flood, strong winds, sinkholes the size of cities
It’s interesting that in hotter climates however mountains often serve as refugees for more centralized states. Ethiopia for example is remarkably more temperate than all lands surrounding its central mountains. Even the Andes can be seen doing this as well. It’s probably because its harder to do agriculture of mass crops like grains in a tropical climate , though there are many exceptions.
You're describing the classic tension between environmental determinism and possibilism, the bread and butter of human geographers: human environment interaction!
Always like hearing/seeing my home region of Utah. Mountains be poppin' yo
I never thought to see cities skylines footage on this channel.
When I was a kid my friends and I designed mountains that would take two full days to fall from the top to the valley if you fell from the cliff. As you grow up and learn about acceleration and what not, its mind boggling how high that would have to be.
With mountains that large you would no longer be able to consider gravity to be constant, nor radial likely.
@@matthewparker9276 the planet would have to be like as large as jupiter or something but even then...
In greek myth it is sometimes said that to fall from earth into tartarus (the underworld) it would take a large block of Iron seven days and seven nights to reach the bottom
This video came out at the PERFECT time- I was just writing a very mountainous setting for my next DnD campaign- thank you!
One city that’s interesting to think about in this regard is Denver, Colorado... because it’s not exactly a mountain city. It’s thought of as one, it’s the highest up major city in the USA, but it basically sits at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
The foot of them. While it’d be a foolish assumption to say that Denver was founded because west-bound settlers trekked uphill for half of a continent, got there, looked up at the massive crags ahead of them and went “fuck it, here’s fine”, its not unreasonable to say that at least some settlers felt that settling for Denver instead of trying to get to Oregon or California was a good option.
Because cities do still need at least some flat land. We can deal with hills and such, but if your city is going to have a seriously large number of people, it needs room to expand and grow and not have people go uphill for a mile just to deliver bread...
See also Los Angeles and Orange County. There’s mountains all up here in this bitch, but people don’t live in them so much. Some build houses up in them, but the work gets done on the flatlands that are around.
In Exandria, there is a mountain range called the Ashkeeper Peaks between the imperialistic, nationalistic, expansionistic Dwendalian Empire and the theocratic dark elf kindom of the Kryn Dynasty. They've only just discovered each other and subsequently went to war of the theft of a Kryn relic but I won't be surprised if trade towns emerge on the Ashkeeper Peaks.
I feel like Tim could be my best friend 🥲 his passion is remarkable, I've yet to find people in reality that match my enthusiasm for such things
I just have to say this video has been out only a few short weeks and I have watched it probably 8 times. It is easily my favorite of the series.
Tim citing Starbound as an example hit straight out of left field for me and honestly don't know why.
Nobody EVER mentions Starbound outside of a couple spaces like Steam. I legitimately had to take a moment and stop to look through the comments to see if anyone else was surprised as I was.
This video was so helpful because I am writing a fantasy epic set in a continent almost completely made up of mountains. The two major mountain-residing groups are Dwarfs and a group of Earth Elves. The Dwarfs live in complex cave systems within the mountains, complete with cities, farms, and highways that run underground. Their main source of water comes from subterranean water chambers that bubble up through the earth, and most of their crops are either fungi, root vegetables, or fruits that get photosynthesis from magic luminescent moss that grows in the caves. The Dwarfs need meat, of course, so they have selected herdsmen who take care of their cattle up top and bring them into the caves during winter, when the grass has dried up. I am proud of the Dwarfen world building, but I realized that my world building for the Earth Elves is lacking. Again, thanks for your thought provoking work.
I would love to see a desert version of one of these videos 😁
Woah, Graham the wizard's liking of cats is becoming important to the plot and worldbuilding now. That's some good foreshadowing, Tim
I'm a simple woman. I see Aloy and Zuko, I click.
the Inheritence Cycle did a really good portrayal of a mountainous society
I love mountains in fantasy. They give the world a sense of scale.
hey man, no idea if u r going to read this but just wanted to say that I know you since the how to train your dragons times and have recently come across your chanel again, and man you've changed a lot! Hope u r doing fine and good luck with your chanel, you've really deserved it bcs you improved a lot over the years, keep up the good work
I loved the mountains of ignorance in the Phantom Tollbooth
Another old mountain trade city is Megiddo in the Middle East. It’s importance caused it to be captured and burned by every army that ever marched the area. It was called Har Megiddo in certain languages which was Greekified into Armageddon. A mountain city so often destroyed that it became synonymous with destruction itself.
Excellent video. I’m glad to see that the mountain community in my own story lines up with many of the criteria you listed. They are a magically-centered community who formed the village originally as a place of learning, but slowly migrated their entire population there as relations with the non-magical community grew more hostile.
This reminded me of a podcast i use to listen to called "Our Fair City" basically the world froze over and people were forced to live underground, but it was briefly mentioned that the narrator found it baffling people use to believe in heaven being in the sky cause they thought the afterlife was farther underground because its warmer
I love your videos so much they always help me rethink and improve my writing
Sometimes I don't even know a topic could be worth a video until Tim makes one and I think - uh, how interesting. Which is a good thing, because my greatest fear is that he will one day run out of worldbuilding topics. I really NEED more of this
The Return of Graham the Wizard Who Likes Cats!
An interesting mountain kingdom is Eddis from the Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner. Several centuries before, the region was conquered but the effects of the conquerors' culture was felt much more in the two neighboring flatland countries. Eddis up in its mountains was more subjugated in name than actuality, as such they are now the only kingdom that still believes in the older set of gods and even the way they pronounce their kingdom's name is different than how others do. They mostly trade their ores for food and are famous for being great mercenaries because "what else are you going to do stuck all winter but practice with swords?". Their pantheon of gods is also led by a mountain goddess.
Your video came perfectly fitting as i am sending my dnd party into a mountain terrain in our current campaign.
Really cool video. I think is also important to mention that some civilization used the mountains quite opposite to the others. Like the Incas who managed to expand their territory across the mountains but not in the flatlands
This was SUCH a good video! I got a lot out of it. I have a society of people living in mountains and valleys who are nocturnal, and from this I realized just how important sources of heat that don't involve light would be to them. I hadn't considered that before, and that's a gold mine.
Also highly respect the clip from the Guardians of Ga'Hoole movie. Not enough people respect that series.
I would love if one day you talk about calendars, we don't see a lot in fantasy, but they help to flesh out the world a lot and make it more immersive
A fascinating video as always - you provide so many good points to consider and think about.
When you delve into the worldbuilding of Avatar it just ignites my need for further content, it just highlights all the great things about the show that we can consider when watching it again.
This feels like such a specific topic and i love it
Sir, you looked like a John Wick villain in that advertisement.
The worldbuilding for a story I'm doing has a mountain city. The citizens guard a mountain pass from northern invasions, they also have deep reservoirs of rock salt and ore and they breed mountain goats.
Oh hell yes, love the Sunless Skies example.
As one of 'those pesky Scots', it certainly 'worked' in that it effectively fostered a lasting animosity towards the English that still to an extent persists
Awesome video, definitely on point. Give props for going in a completely different direction then an Artifexian video.
A few things I'd add:
Mountainous areas are likely to produce divided societies, think like the ancient Greek city-states, with shared culture.
Because there's less farmable land the landed aristocracy tends to be smaller. A powerful merchant class is likely to take their place. This can lead to oligarchy rule, though certainly not always.
Oh, and trade routes often run parallel to mountain ranges, and in primitive times would provide a reference point for our nomadic ancestors. This is true in India, the Americas, southern Europe, and I'm sure in other areas too.
One of my favourite mountain cities is the wall city in ‘Mortal Engines’, it’s a giant wall that spans the only passage between Europe (home to giant rolling cities that ate everything on their side of the mountains, and Asia which is a verdant paradise. It was a primary a defensive structure that gained cultural significance and became one of the major cities of the Anti traction league. It also had a temple that survived the 60 minute war which wrecked the planet giving it unrelated religious significance on top of its culture significance
This stuff is interesting to think about, because the setting for one of my story projects actually has a prominent city which is built within a mountain canyon. The city's economy is largely based on mining the rich mineral resources in the mountains, but the difficulty of building in such an inhospitable location necessitated a lot of technological innovation and a highly educated STEM workforce, resulting in the city becoming known as a beacon of technological progress and scientific learning.
Another thing to consider is the affect of lakes on the mountainous climate. Deep lakes will moderate the temperature of a region and through this an elevated area can be rather temperate.
Also, another neglected mountainous environment is the high plateau, the advantages of good wide mostly flat farmland while also enjoying the benefits of mountains.
I was not ready for Park City to be talked about, with it being in my backyard... Took me out of the fantasy world that is learning from Hello Future Me. I think I have some whiplash now haha