The Bitter Cold and using it to Heat

Every now and then, winter comes in and serves a cold dish a little restricting on people's wallets and lifestyles.  Heating a home during a deep freeze is daunting, especially for people that lack sufficient insulation.  Homes struggle with rises fuel costs associated with heat, while the cold winter sucks the energy right from the structure.  But if the winter is cold enough and there is ample snow around, it could work to your advantage. 

Snow is a fantastic insulator, while ice is not.  Snow is made up of ice crystals, but as they pack together, air pockets form between them, which restricts the passage of heat, making it great for insulation.  For homes with constant dangers of freezing pipes from bitter winds, this snow can become the thing that prevents that.  And that method is a snow wall.

A snow wall is essentially a pile of snow that surrounds the structure to a certain level.  Snow walls can be made loosely or built vertically even using powder snow (it actually works better).  Using a snow shovel and tossing powder snow into one area will make a ridge.  By throwing the snow onto that ridge by letting it fall on it from above, builds that ridge into a wall, while the powder snow that falls down can be thrown up again.

There are three advantages a snow wall provides.  1) It's a great wind barrier and cold air buffer, which slows the transfer of cold temperatures to the side of the structure.  2) It traps heat that bleeds off the home in the air gap between the wall and the building longer, meaning less heat passes through.  3) looking at areas of the wall that are melting away from the side of the house faster means more heat is lost in that area, and can be addressed from adding insulation to an inside wall or placing heat reflective insulation in front of a window.  If the snow wall melts slower or not at all, then it means more heat is being retained by the inside.

I have built snow walls before and they do work great.  There was a noticeable slow to the drop in my home heating oil even though the outside air was in the negatives, and the downstairs portion was much warmer longer, which meant my floor was warmer.  It essentially takes the ground temperature and raises it to whatever the height of the wall is, which even though cold in winter, is far superior to the alternative.  

If in doubt, try it out.  It's a good exercise activity and might save you money at the same time.  

Lore of the Neizda

The manipulators of fate and the biorhythms of the world, were the last 'race' created from the Atlanteans.  As all Atlanteans were mentally advanced and capable of psychic activity to some degree, the Elementals and Fate controllers (called Neizda) were merely products of specific honing for generations.  They were all technically the same people, just changed through conditioning and mindset.  A mindset that was dominating in the Neizda community.

Unlike the Elementals, who were accepting of the natural order and only willing to make small alterations despite being powerful enough to reshape their environment, the Neizda believed it was their purpose to restructure the lives of others, and often strove for power when they had little.  In legends before written story, the gods would be the Elementals, while the demons would be the Neizda.

For generations the Neizda and their Elemental kin would venture into the world to create marks upon human civilization.  The demonic pleasures of the Neizda let them slip into governments and empires to create situations of war and conflict.  They became the puppeteers that controlled the actions of the civilizations capable of a large regional influence, undermining the networks established by the Atlanteans of the past.  Eventually these practices caused a rift between Neizda and Elemental and the two no longer associated with each other.

Eventually this rift caused a deep seated hatred between the two, but a demonstrated lack of confrontation for many years.  But that all changed when a Chaos Elemental woman and Neizda man fell in love.  It was a dark romance that would forever change the fate of Atlantis, and the world would never be the same.  
 

Rise of Atlantis

In the rising curtain of a difficult age, a species of human similar to homo sapiens fled the catastrophic forces of the mainland to an island west of Europe and Africa.  Although it's exact position remains a mystery that is unresolved, it was the home of these humans that stood above the others.  With a higher order of intelligence and mental capacity, they quickly forged a civilization out of the limited resources they possessed.

Gifted with their ability to shape and fashion stone work, they carved great cities out of the stone the land was made of, using little wood in their buildings, since forests were limited in their supply.  The port cities were steeped in a step like fashion to accommodate rising ocean levels present in the day, and floating docks used the steps with weights to shift into newer locations, so they would never be destroyed by the fury of the ocean.  This step formation is similar to the side of a pyramid, and can be thought of as the precursor to the design that would eventually build pyramids across the world.

Out of respect for knowledge and human potential, the Atlanteans took studying their minds and the 5 elements to another level, trying to control them as they desired, though it wasn't for hundreds of years that they would get anywhere noteworthy.  Eventually they did, and the people that studied these aspects of nature would gain great spiritual wisdom and power, enabling long life and to retain their memories after reincarnation.  These pioneers in the field would lead to the creation of beings called Elementals. 

The Elementals and the Atlanteans would explore the greater world, helping to establish new guides and building techniques to the other human species.  They would go down in history as myths and legends of gods and supernatural beings that came to help them.  Evidence of their presence was recorded in the buildings that honored them, indicating the time frames by reference to the stars and constellations.  It was a glorious age in which was thought to be a time that would lead to a greater future.  Yet they were not happy with just the elements, and studied how to alter the biorhythms of life and the planet to manipulate fates, and eventually created a race of fate manipulators.

Several hundred years went by, and then things changed forever.  But that is a story for another day.