That means the city center, where the nobility, temple, and services are headquartered, and the miners live, contains around 50,000 people; the rest live in hamlets, thorps, or small homesteads spread around the rest of the city.
Basic food, shelter, and care are provided for all; common-room cots for single adults, and small apartments or homes for married couples and families, and soup-kitchen style meals served twice a day. More expensive housing and food are available for those who can afford it; unskilled labor (working in the fields or the mines, hauling trash to the border, some janitorial work in the city, for example) generally earns a gold piece each week outside of basic services (for an example of the relative worth of money).
There's a flat 20% tax on income over 1gp per week, and a 5% tax on sales, which funds the government; most of the food grown is processed and distributed in the communal kitchens. The economy is complicated, like any economy, but the small size and central control of it keep it managed (and manageable); the Dragon keeps inflation at 0% through control of the banks and money supply.
I know that's unrealistic. Do you want to play Tax Attorneys and Economists, or Dungeons and Dragons? It's not like adventurers live long enough to worry about inflation.
Crime exists, but when there is a Dragon at the center of your city, with spellcasting priests to interpret and enforce the laws, things are not as rough as, say, inner city Detroit. When laws are broken (or the peace disrupted), penalties range from fines, to job re-assignment (some of you are currently experiencing this, I suspect), to exile into the Walled City, to being eaten by the Dragon (which has a certain amount of honor), to, in rare cases, Excommunication and Forbiddance Of Entry (EFOE); a death sentence, because the Field of Bones is inhospitable for life - a death without the honor of being consumed by the Dragon.
As adventurers, you haven't spent a lot of time researching the government and who's who in the city (if you want to take skill points in an appropriate skill I'll fill in more details). It's not like there's elections or anything - each Barony has a different way of choosing a new Baron, but none of them involve general elections by the populace. However, as adventurers you know that the Police Duke has 12 Barons who report to him; 10 of these Barons are Guard Captains, one for each segment of the city, and then two floating Detective Barons.
The Districts, broken down by Barony, are:
- 4 Agricultural Quadrants (NE, NW, SE, SW, separated by the four rivers), each with its own Baron
- Slums and the Walled City
- City Center and the Garden District
- Downtown and the Bazaar
- Uptown
- Riverside and the Palaces
- Parkdale, Parkville, and Parkton (the Parks)
So there are 10 Barons reporting to the Districts Duke (4 ag quads, and one for each of the groups above).
The ten Guilds (each with its own Baron) are:
- Merchants
- Entertainers
- Peddlers and Beggars
- Nursing
- Manufacturing
- Timber
- Builders and Construction
- Artisans and Engineers
- Lawyers and Contracts
- Mercenaries
It might seem like there's overlap between Barons - for instance, who's in charge when an arsonist (Police) sets a fire (Services) in one of the pine forests (Timber, or NE quadrant). And there frequently is; this kind of dynamic tension makes for very exciting times when the Seven meet with the Prince.
No comments:
Post a Comment