Kostamus

Kostamus (Russ. Костомукша, Kare. Koštamuš) is a Uralican city in Karelia county, the only major centre on Highway UH-39.

When Uralica officially annexed the area in early November of 2009, its government was pleasantly surprised to find that this city was already hard at work producing Uralica's #1 economic resource - iron. The city has long been a source of iron, which is the reason the city was founded in the first place. Iron ore had been discovered in 1946, and after years of planning, Kostomuksha was founded in 1977 after a joint venture with the a Finnish company to build an ore-processing plant, which still runs to this day (although it was very much rebuilt in 2006 after Cataclysm).

The name of the city came four years later - it was actually named via a contest, and the reason the name Kostomuksha was picked for the Russian name is that it was the name of a Karelian village, derived from the word koštamuš, which means "revenge" in the Karelian language. The Finnish name was also picked at this time, but they went with the etymology of the name instead of the old name itself. The name has not actually changed, but rather, the Finns and Russians in the city agreed to make the Finnish name official in 2009.

Aside from iron-mining and ferrous metallurgy, there are sectors in lumber-milling (imported logs and pre-cut boards come from Kohona for the most part, although there is a small feed from Old Finland as well), machine-building, automobile production, electronic parts making, fish-farming, and food production in the city.

Culture
The population in Kostamus is roughly 75% Finnish, with Russians and Karelians making up the balance.

Although Kostamus is young, the Uralic connection to the area is anything but. As a matter of fact, it was this area of Karelia that inspired the Finnish epic Kalevala (specifically, the village of Voknavolok), and as such even the Russian government wanted to create a national park in the area. Cataclysm prevented them from getting further than the nature preserve in the area, which suffered some environmental damage in the same. However, come the end of 2009, Kalevala National Park was born. This large park runs from west and southwest of the town of Kalevala to west and northwest of Kostomuksha. There are paved back-roads that connect the two settlements as well.

In the actual city, the Finnish-Karelian epic has an entire museum dedicated to it. There is also a Karelian-ethnographic museum and a decent-sized music hall, plus one major music festival every season. Finally, there is a small tomb dedicated to Karelian folk singer Arhippa Perttunen in the city. The most common tourists to the area are culture buffs, folk music fans, and eco-tourists.

Neighbourhoods and Suburbs

 * Kondoka
 * Pohjoiskostamus