Spire was a Stargate settlement for all the various races on Spire. Settlement occurred roughly 2,000 years ago. This is long enough ago that the knowledge of Spire being a colony has been totally lost. Even the Elves, Dwarfs and other long-lived races don’t know about it. All of the sentient races and most of the non-sentient races are from planets other than Spire. Spire was considered neutral territory where the different races from the various planets could meet.
All of the races had very small missions on Spire. They developed very little self-sustaining technological infrastructure. This isolation from a high tech society aspect permits me to introduce relatively advanced technologies into the society without having to have the entire development process in place. It also permits me to leave advanced technology devices and information where adventurers can find it without too much disruption.
The Stargate was a classified military led project started in the year 1999. A thousand or so humans settled spire about two years into the program. The colony was never supposed to be self-sustaining, at least not for many years. The people expected to be able to return to Earth or their own home planet at almost any time. The Stargate was opened at least once a week for each planet that had a mission on Spire. The other races started their Stargate projects at either the same time or were found by a group that had started in the late 20th century.
Spire got most of its food and supplies from Earth. While the colony could get any supplies they needed from Earth, there was a desire to limit the amount of material coming into the Earth side Stargate base. Limiting the amount of supplies would aid in keeping the project secret. Generally the colony was supplied with technological and manufactured items from Earth. The colony was encouraged to grow the food they would need and make some basic stuff. Towards that end, the colony had started planting fruit trees, vegetables and similar so they would have fresh fruit and vegetables. They had brought in some small amounts of grain crops such as wheat, peanuts, rye and cotton for experimental purposes. The colony was also provided with horses, oxen, cows, rabbits and such to provide transportation, farm labor fresh meat and fresh milk. The use of animal, wind and waterpower eliminated the need to bring gasoline, diesel and similar fuels through the Stargate.
Disaster struck Spire initially in the form of a plague. The plague affected Humans, Elves, Dwarfs and all the other sentient races. The plague killed off all the adults from the Dwarf, Elf and other long-lived races. The younger children got sick, but did not die usually. One of the first things that all the home planets did was to shut down their Stargates. It wasn’t until the Stargates on Earth and other planets would not open that people realized they were on their own.
While the Plague was a disaster in that lots of people died, it fell to the survivors to create a civilization out of what was a bunch of diplomatic and military missions. None of the missions had been setup to be independent colonies. The planet was still importing all of its manufactured materials and spares, was high tech dependent and some of its food. The missions had a wide variety of knowledge, but it was almost entirely in computer databases and was at the level of top-notch encyclopedias and not in a form to reconstruct civilization. People had a very good idea of what was needed to bring themselves up to an early 20th century tech level, but not many actual text books on how to actually do it.
The initial settlements had access to wind powered generators until their spare parts ran out and could not be locally manufactured. The colony kept all their information on computers and computer networks they had limited spare parts since it was easier to send back a dead computer than to try and repair them. They also did not have a lot of paper on-hand, nor was their any fast and easy way to make more computer usable paper. The computers remained operation for a couple of decades, but the lack of printing paper was felt much sooner. Paper didn’t last more than a few decades or so since it was not archival quality. People were quickly back to hand operated printing presses as a means of passing information along. Only the more important information was reproduced, although print runs could be fairly large and could be easily re-issued if the plates were saved.
Spire’s unique geography has shortchanged the planet of some key resources needed for the climb back up the technological ladder. Spire has no coal, oil or similar easily transported and gathered concentrated energy source. Spire’s societies run on wood, muscle, water, wind and magic. Even wood, or charcoal, is hard to acquire. The potential demand for charcoal and wood greatly outstrips the limited amount of land that can be given over to woodlands. There are strict laws governing how much wood can be harvested at any given time.
The colony quickly reverted to an odd mixture of 20th century technology and 17th or 18th century technology. The other major effect of the cut off was for many groups to leave the original Stargate site of what to become Ankh-Morpork.
Within 50 years a strange thing was noticed and documented. Magic worked. Praying to the Gods produced results rather more often than not. Those communities that made offerings and such seemed to prosper more than communities that ignored religion and the Gods. It didn’t particularly seem to matter what Gods a community worshipped, just so long as they worshipped. Within another 50 years, that is 100 years after landing, worship was widespread and the beginnings of magic as an art were established. See the magic time-line for the order in which spells were created.
There are a large number of sentient races on Spire. Almost all of them come from other planets, although some are crossbreeds between two off-planet races. None of the races are native to Spire. The initial plague killed off all the adults of the long-lived races and many of the adults from the short-lived races. In particular the children of the initial Dwarf, Elf and Gnome settlers were raised by humans. This resulted in a cultural break from their home planets. These races ended up adopting the culture from Human fantasy novels.
All cross breed races are sterile. This is helpful in some ways. The limited amount of land has produced a requirement that only women with access to a certain amount of productive land are allowed to bear children.
The first generation of accidental settlers had it very hard. The children and grand children didn’t realize how bad things were, but all of them experienced a rising standard of living. For the next 2,500 years various generations have had it both better and worse. Spire has had its fair share of wars, over population, famine and other normal societal disasters. Spire history has not been a continuous climb towards a better society. There have not been any real Dark Ages though; the long-lived races such as the Elves and Dwarves provide a continuity that a purely Human society does not have.
The first four hundred years or so after landing saw a steady expansion of human and non-human settlements. There was plenty of land available for those individuals or groups that wanted to hack a living out of the wilderness. This is not dissimilar to how the population in Europe and the Americas grew. A small initial settlement takes many generations to expand. The US grew quickly in part to large number of immigrants and the Industrial Revolution. It also saw large numbers of initial settlements fail.
Since Spire was originally settled by numerous small groups of people, the political history and political boundaries partially reflect this.
After roughly 400 years most of Spire was settled. Population density was very high for a non-technological society. All the arable land was in production using the best farming techniques that could be found. It was at this point in time that the various races started settling underground. Life underground had some advantages. It was easier to build down than it was to build up. Entrances occupied very little land, which left more for crops. At first underground homes were very shallow and just had crops planted above them. As time went on, underground cities formed. The existence of the continual light spell made underground life very feasible. People have continued to live underground, and not just out of need to preserve cropland. Living underground has defensive advantages in a world of magic. A lot of underground cities and towns have not greatly expanded because they have met the limits of their local agricultural output. There are still currently unsettled places, especially in the Small Kingdoms and Barbarian Northlands.
While the population was dense for a non-technological society, it wasn’t very dense by modern standards. The average mountain or valley town is still only 500 people, and the geography is such that there is normally only one town plus a couple of villages per valley or mountain area. This leaves lots of room for bandits, monsters and dungeons to exist. The limiting factor on town size continues to be transportation. It is not feasible to transport grain or meat animals via animal draw wagons on roads. It takes to much grain to maintain the animals compared to what can be hauled. For roads on flat land the limit is about 30 miles. The limit for water transport is much larger, but there are only a few cities that have reliable access to rivers year round. Most of the land on the planet is very mountainous, it is even tougher to transport food and other goods even with roads.
It was also at this time that the first major wars occurred. As people ran out of living room they fought their neighbors. This is especially true with regards to the Orcs.
Over the next 2,100 years, various kingdoms have risen and fallen. The Twelve Cities region is prone to periods of great central power followed by warlordism. This is similar to the history of China except that barbarian invaders were of various races and were not entirely just conquers. Invaders could also be rapacious traders or similar.
In the Small Kingdoms, local warfare could sack towns and depopulate areas. This gives rise to the possibility of ancient cities occurring inside of the civilized parts of the world. Such cities and dungeons would not have normal monsters since the dungeon has been buried for generations. This also explains why there are abandoned dungeons and cities on a planet that is so heavily populated that a large portion of the population lives underground in order to grow food on the surface.