Ul Mina Puciosa

 

Ul mina puciosa, which in Comerta translates to the brimstone mine, is an abandoned sulphur mine that operated during the Imperial Era. The mine was important and valuable because it was a dry mine. Normally sulphur deposits are found near volcanic vents and the environment can be quite humid and filled with dangerous hot toxic gases. Whatever thermal vents created the deposits here became inactive millenia ago, leaving the mine totally dry, and thus safer and easier to exploit.

After the mine stopped producing sometime prior to the year 900, it was abandoned for at least a century before it was purchased by the Radulesc family before 1084 and recommissioned to serve as a family crypt.

The lower level of the mine was carved out and made more ornate and respectful, and was used to house the sarcophagi of important members of the family for a few generations. Bodies were laid to rest here, and placed in stone sarcophagi which were filled with powdered sulphur. In a dry environment, powdered sulphur desiccates and preserves the body and prevents any kind of bacteria or fungus from causing rot or decay. While the corpses here are now shriveled and yellow, they are still remarkably well preserved.

After a few decades, as the Radulesc family became more wealthy and powerful, an extension to the crypts was commissioned, and the lowest levels were carved out to form what would become the family tomb - sometimes referred to as Ul Tumo Puciosa. Here, finely appointed funerary chambers were built for the heads of the Radulesc family to be properly entombed in a manner befitting nobles of their stature.