For the most part Macedonia is a country riddled with canyons, valleys and sheer cliffs. Even on the northern plains of Macedonia holes many hundreds of metres across occur.
The lands of Macedonia are slightly higher above the sea level than that of Thracia, but the land is cracked. Macedonians have adapted to the land, and vast pathways, roads and various massive stone bridges have been constructed to reach the lower levels of the Macedonian lands. Ice glacier water is a constant source of fresh water - and from the massive waterfalls of northern Macedonia of the rivers of the Grey Mountains rivers run through the valleys and canyons. Great architectural achievements in the form of ‘aqueduct’ have been constructed by the Macedonians to divert much of this fresh water so that the rivers sometime either pass through a town or so that the rich have access to it first.
As can be expected, the villages, towns and cities of the Macedonians are not like the villages, towns and cities of the other lands. Macedonians have carved much of their dwellings out of the living rock, and many homes have their front-doors opening onto the sheer cliffs. Massive and elaborate wooden structures are often created so that the towns-people can travel between the heights - to visit the markets or to get to places of worship. The very privileged few can afford to pay the expensive upkeep cost to use the travelling cages that are sometimes seen in the larger cities - enabling speedy travel downwards to the rivers or upwards towards the plains. With diverted water supplies from the aqueduct many villages have a series of water wheels, used for grinding grain, but also to occasionally power an alchemic dynamo for heating - which is pumped around the village into the living rock itself.
Macedonia society is not the trader-based society of Thracia, nor the academic based society of Illyria. Instead Macedonia is a more feudal based system, with nobles owning the small amounts or arable land available and traders growing crops on these lands, but paying the nobles a ‘rent’ for its use. With this system or organisation comes the way the villages are organised. The higher sections of the canyons are ravines usually have larger, flatter areas of land - and these expanses are used for the farming. These sections look like puzzle pieces cut from the plains above, each varying levels of height against the ravine walls. Around this level are also the homes of the rich and powerful, the nobles of Macedonia as they oversee their lands and the best place to catch the sunlight. Below these are the temples and the catacombs, being the most extensively burrowed caves, being nearest to the surface plains. As the first Macedonians moved down the cliffs they hollowed out less and less - many of the commoners live lower down the cliff sides. Despite this, many of the shops and stores exist on the lowest levels in many towns and villages - small spaces being cheaper to rent but also having a more direct route to trade and barter via the rivers and waterways.
Some Macedonian cities are so vast that they exist on both sides of a canyon - unlike many cities where living space is expanded vertically, Macedonian cities expand horizontally, flowing across the rock faces. Vast wooden and stone-carved bridges are exquisitely designed to span the ravines - it is at Mykene, the capital and most influential City-state, that the very first Erna suspension bridge was built, the middle columns of which are decorated with Juno, or Janus, the Saint of entry, each statue of him facing the opposite direction to the other.
Whilst Illyria will ponder social graces and moral values, whilst Thracia peers at the stars and wonders what exists beyond the Solar system, Macedonia creates engineering of practical value - and thus, the Senate keep a careful watch of the Machina here - but very little of it is ever refused. It was Macedonians that constructed the first clockwork watch, Macedonians that developed the clockwork harvest thresher.
Despite its advances, Macedonia is slow to produce them. Because of their confinement to the walls of canyons, Macedonians are very much into gossiping and sharing one another’s lives. Their society is very loose-weave, and Macedonians share a love for food, music, sport, celebrity and entertainments. With such a love for life, Macedonian food is said to be the best in the world, and their people the most welcoming and protective. In Macedonia life is to be spent the best possible way, as indulgent as anyone could wish for.
Macedonian politics is based around the family feudal system. Each Macedonian typically allies themselves with one of twenty-four Family Ideals that were once the original Macedonian founding families - families that formed the first Senate in Macedonia. As such members of the same family may well have different name endings as they choose their political alliance. Each town, village and city is governed directly by a Princeps, who is responsible for the taxation and public spending of his given domain. It is not unusual for villages, towns and cities to thus be governed by a Princeps following one of the Family Ideals and to be replaced with another. In this was Ideals can sometimes control vast areas of Macedonia, and it is with this method that governors eventually become members of Parliament and eventually, Senators.
