Hey guys,
I love this website, let's get that out of the way first. Lots of the pictures you've accumulated through your travels are making for some excellent reference for this thing I'm working on. I live in Hazleton, PA smack in the middle of the coal region and I'm currently involved with my partner Jon in writing a fantasy/adventure novel set in the region called "The Coal Golem" which is based on an old miner's legend from where I derive my user name. Let me elaborate a bit further:
According to old Slavic fantasy there were a group of dwarves called the Karzelek, or the Skarbnik (which means "treasurer") that lived underground and spent their whole lives mining for precious gems and the like. They were generally friendly to the human miners they met and the legend eventually evolved to say that Skarbnik (now a singular creature) was something like a guardian angel to miners. He would lead them to new veins of ore, or would take them back to their teams if they got lost.
Our story focuses on two college students (Jon and Jerry) who accidentally find themselves in an abandoned mine underneath Hazleton where they come face to face with Skarbnik, the legendary guardian spirit who through some strange circumstance (revealed later) has become an evil parody of himself and is now a canine-like golem made entirely of anthracite. You can see a picture of the evil coal golem here:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/gfh110/golem.jpg
Throughout the story Jon and Jerry have to deal with the coal golem as well as face off against some of the Hazleton area's local legends including the haunted Weatherly Cemetery and the cursed Stone Couch near Eckley. It's a very tongue-in-cheek story with regards to common Northeastern stereotypes. There is a even a fantastical explanation of the origin of the word "Henna" for anyone from the area who may be familiar with coal cracker speech.
Anyway, I had a few questions that I was hoping some of you guys might be able to answer for me. One of the main plots of the story deals with the Stone Couch, which is just what you might think it is. It's a big rock near Eckley Miner's Village in Pennsylvania that just happens to resemble a couch. The story explains it was created by a long forgotten people and that there is an identical stone couch on every continent guarded by a creature similar to the coal golem. Our idea was that the creature would be made of whatever material is prominently mined in that part of the world. For example in North America the golem is made of coal, in South America it's made of gold (the whole El Dorado thing), in Asia it's made of jade, etc.
My question is what do they predominantly mine in the rest of the world? I want to stay at least partially factually correct. For example, I know the biggest copper mine in the world is in South America but copper doesn't make for particularly interesting fantasy so we're going with gold which allows us to explore the "lost city of gold" subplot.
Also, does anybody have any good mining related folk tales?
Thirdly, if there's anyone out there who would like to read a beta copy of the story for proofreading and editing's sake let me know. A lot of it takes place in an abandoned coal mine and I'm sure I got some of the details wrong.
Thanks!
-Jerry