Hubris Falls

Excerpt from the Book of Shadows of Sapphire Circe

Dear BoS,
My search for the actual historical labyrinth of the minotaur took me to the Greek Island of Crete. After flying into the Chania airport, I took in a couple of touristy attractions and left a paper trail that might ingratiate me to the local authorities as a tourist here to spend money and not take away anything but photos. The beach on the Aegean Sea is just beautiful. The old light house and the cat-filled Holy Trinity Monastery seemed magickal in their own way.
The boat excursion to the hiking trails of Balos Lagoon left me with plenty of time unattended, so that's when I set my rented rudder for what is now called Spinalonga Island.
Now popular tourist information going back as early as 66 B.C. says that the minotaur labyrinth was located under the ruins of the Palace of Knossos near the city of Heraklion. And the Romans made a good deal of profit from cultural tourism to the mythological Greek sites. But modern archaeology has found no labyrinth there.
However, several miles away at Spinalonga Island, there was a lost settlement which would have been a perfect skeleton upon which Daedalus (or any skilled engineer/architect) could have built a deadly labyrinth.

High Hopes for the Settlement

Only one copy has been found of an unfinished tragedy poem regarding the settlement of Hubris Falls. It states that the legendary hero/anti-hero, Hubris, found on this little island the only gold mine on the island(s) of Crete. He immediately proclaimed himself "king" of the small island and set about building a "grand" city and palace to praise him. It would have tall spires that could be seen from miles away and a sporting arena with not a bad seat in the house.

A Sad Reality

A settlement formed from the miners and other laborers Hubris called in to carry out his plans, whom he paid in small quantities of gold from his mine. Keeping the majority of the island assigned to the palace grounds, his workers had exceedingly compact living spaces, which they had to build for themselves. Hubris had no care for the housing and comforts of the servants building his palace, so local home-grown leaders and committees popped up and dropped out of the civic-planning rapidly. Barracks, single-family dwellings, kitchens, and bath houses were built with adjoining walls, on top of each other, and underground.
To make matters worse, (an obvious mistake when viewed in hindsight), raiders and various types of pirates moved in upon hearing of the gold mine, the palace, and the settlement. Daily shipments of goods and gold were ransacked and the island was raided routinely.
Nonsensical roads and passageways eventually became a type of security allowing locals to fairly quickly get around the settlement while invaders took what should have been the direct route to the treasure troves of the palace and found themselves in a kill zone, a death trap, or just hopelessly lost in the twists and turns.

Left abandoned

When Daedalus was commissioned to build a grand labyrinth, I'm certain he could not have done better than to start with the ruins of the settlement of Hubris Falls and its fully mined-out and worthless gold mine. But it was not like a Roman fighting arena or sports colosseum, it was more like an oubliette to throw the unwanted or anything you would want to stay hidden for a long time.

Cursed to the Modern Day

Later a fort was built to defend the larger island's ports against pirates, but it did not stop 7th century Arab pirates. In the mid-15th century the Venetians began to construct salt-pans in the shallow and salty waters of the gulf which was the first serious natural resource since the emptied gold mine, so people returned to the area. The Venetians fortified bunkers on the island, which the Ottomans eventually overpowered. Revolts and insurgencies left the island practically uninhabited by 1900. At that point it made a great place to put a leper colony, so that's what they did until that dissolved in A.D. 1962 leaving it empty again.
Yes, if I'm going to find an actual Labyrinth in Crete, I'm certain that is the place to look.
Leprosy germs don't last 60 years without people present, do they? Or is it a virus? I think it's a virus. That's another thing I need to research right now.

Continued from:

Type

Underground / Vault

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