City, Alliance

Alliance City Life

(Do check the accompanying pics in the Photos section of the group for a visual
glimpse of Alliance city life!)

City life is distinct from country life; the two are separate, though
interdependent, worlds. There are many manifestations of rural life in the city:
gardens, herds of livestock, even farms within the city walls. Yet townsmen see
themselves as distinct from country folk, and country folk view the cities with
suspicion and envy.

The development of cities

In several parts of the Alliance, peasants, due to their knowledge of a special
craft beyond the immediate requirements of their isolated village, or merely a
self-reliant spirit, began to gravitate towards walled population centers. Some
new towns were founded upon long-distance trade. The sites for many towns, more
often than not, were the fortified burghs of nobles or high-ranking land-holding
priests. Other towns were simply market villages, local centers of exchange. A
rare few are centered around historic events or magical landmarks.

As urban life flourishes, the traditional three-estates model of Common Lands
(now referred to as the Alliance) society—those who fight, those who pray, and
those who work— found itself under considerable pressure. A new class, the
merchant class, became a powerful force in Alliance society. Many of its members
achieved wealth on par with, or even exceeding that, of many nobles—a situation
that has led to the first real possibility for movement among the three estates.
Land- and cash-poor nobles, eager for wealth, began to arrange marriages with
members of the merchant class—who were themselves eager for titles and noble
status. Though the control of international trade lines by Emperor Arthur
maintained a balance of wealth among the four estates, and encouraged
competition, many merchants became so wealthy that they were able to dress
themselves in fashions and fabrics once only available to the noble classes
because of their expense. This led to the passage in many places of what are
called sumptuary laws, which dictate things like what kinds of furs, how much
gold trim, and what style of headdress can be worn by non-nobles. This concern
is particularly acute in Alliance cities, as opposed to in the countryside, for
in the city, nobles, merchants, laborers, and beggars all might live, work, and
play in the same space—while in the more rural parts of the Alliance world there
is a more obvious demarcation between noble and peasant spaces.

Most towns are only a few thousand people. Even the big cities can be measured
in the tens of thousands, while a mere handful reach one or two hundred
thousand. The population of Loudon, for example, has ranged between
10,000-100,000 residents during the Alliance period. Waterdeep, Thyatis City,
and Sundsvall are some of the largest Alliance cities.

Cities are geographically small with the average about 1 square mile. Arthur's
policies instituted King's highways, paved roads, combined with protection of
the wilderness. Cities and larger towns are usually surrounded by a wall, which
enhances the separation between urban and rural, but the fields frequently come
up to the wall.

As the influence of the Alliance Empire is imposed on what was once the Common
Lands and the Alliance, we see townspeople becoming less and less like their
rural peasant counterparts. Due to the demands of business and industry, many
townspeople are more literate and have a greater grasp of mathematics and
economics, though public education has been re-instituted by Common Law. There
is also an increasing demand for private schools and educational opportunities
for the children of the urban bourgeoisie. It is becoming the norm, rather than
the exception, for the children of merchants to attend private school and become
highly educated. City life also has become an area where upward social mobility
is possible. While peasants farming the manor of the lord in the countryside
still think of themselves as functioning within that hierarchical relationship
matrix we often refer to as Common feudalism, merchants and craftspeople in the
towns tend to think of their relationships with others in horizontal, rather
than vertical, terms.

A town can be, and often is, defined legally in the Alliance. Towns get charters
from a church official, a great lord, or a king. The charters vary greatly, but
commonly authorize the town to form its own city council and to regulate certain
aspects of city life. Thus the towns have a legal identity within society and
before the law.

Elements of city charters might include: landholding is to be by lease and rent,
not by feudal tenure; freedom from taxation through fixing limits to what the
lord would levy; freedom from tolls on bridges in the lord's lands; freedom from
sales taxes levied by the lord on his other subjects; freedom from the lord's
courts — a burgher can be tried only in the courts of his home town, at first;
right to their own merchant courts (these are commercial courts, but are
sometimes given jurisdiction over low justice).

There is a bewildering variety to town governments, yet there are common
elements. Most have some sort of chief executive. His powers might vary widely,
but some such office as Mayor exists in nearly every town. The Mayor—by whatever
title—might be elected or appointed, but it is unusual to find no such office at
all.

The power of the trade guilds in Alliance cities cannot be overstated. However,
the Guilds are a subject in themselves and are treated in an Encyclopedia entry
to themselves. Regarding city governments, there is normally one or more
councils, and these are vital. A Mayor might be a powerful figure or merely a
figurehead, but real power always lies with the city councils. Cities tend to
have multiple councils, but most commonly you will find a Great Council and a
Small Council. The Great Council might consist of hundreds of members, meets
rarely as an entire body, and really serves as a kind of pool from which are
drawn the members of the Small Council plus members of a myriad of standing
committees that actually get most of the work done. The Small Council is more in
the nature of an executive council, comprised of only a few members (six or ten
or so). This Council makes many of the tough decisions, including deciding
matters of alliances, treaties, war, and so on.

Much of the day-to-day administration of a town is done by committee. Alliance
towns tend to spawn committees for just about everything, and much of the
detailed politics of a town centers around control of these. Generally,
elections are by lot: candidates have their names put in a hat (the mechanics of
this vary) and the necessary number of names are drawn from it. Elections very
rarely involve the citizens stating their choice. Terms of office are extremely
short: a year, six months, even two months. Since the election of a new council
is a matter of picking names by lot, it can be done quickly. The idea is to
leave no one person in power for too long. The pre-Alliance era in which the
Iron Ring held sway has left many towns with a fear of demagogues.

Town government officials deal with the building of defensive walls, the
institution of a night watch, and assigning regular days for the sale of
particular goods and services. Sanitation is a particular concern, and Alliance
towns came up with interesting ways to deal with this situation. One striking
example in a Thyatian town made the position of sanitation official attractive
in that this person had the right to collect excise taxes from the homes and
businesses on the central square and the streets adjacent to it. In fact, this
position has become so attractive that several people bid for the right to hold
it for a year. In some cities, in exchange for cleaning refuse and garbage off
the streets, the holder of this office has the right to be a town crier—meaning
that he can do some advertising with his voice, such as announcing livestock for
sale, objects that have been lost, and alerting citizens to holidays and to the
creation of certain emergency governing bodies. This profession of crier is
strictly regulated in order to prevent anyone and everyone from announcing
anything and everything. Town criers exist in a hierarchy: at the top are the
official heralds of the commune who announce the decisions of the town council
plus judicial sentences and other such important matters. Below them are the
town messengers, who carry letters on official town business between city
members and occasionally carry letters between various private individuals.
Although the holder of the sanitation office is most likely on the third and
lowest rung of the criers, the benefits from this position must be significant
if people are willing to pay money for the privilege of holding it. One
interesting note about the sanitation officer in Thyatia: He was also given the
right to keep a sow and four piglets in the piazza, where they could feed on the
grain that had been spilled there—a common occurrence in any place where buying
and selling of food takes place. In fact, pigs are some of the most frequently
used sanitation workers throughout the Alliance world, as they often eat that
which most humans consider garbage and had thrown out into the street. In
cities throughout the Alliance world, pigs perform the function of keeping the
streets relatively clean, and in return they eat and fatten themselves up for
free. It isn't a perfect solution to a noisome problem, but it helps some.

Life in an Alliance town is distinctly different from life in the rural,
agrarian countryside. One of the most noticeable differences is in terms of
proximity to one's neighbor. The sheer number of people results in houses
leaning right up against one another, or even many different families sharing a
single household. If you walk through an Alliance city, you will notice that in
many parts of the city it is quite dark, even if it is the middle of the day.
This is because of the practice of building structures whose upper stories are
each just a little bit bigger than the ones below—a means of trying to carve out
extra space where there really isn't much to be had. So you have a situation in
which at the upper levels of a street, houses or buildings on opposite sides of
the street might come together and actually touch one another at the top. This
blocks out sunlight, obviously, as well as keeping smells and noise—neither of
which are usually pleasant—contained within the street. To start with, some
streets are not more than 10 feet wide, so you can imagine how these factors all
contribute to a particularly strong sensory experience. The sheer numbers of
people and the close proximity in which they live produce a related problem—what
to do with waste and refuse—and solving this problem is one of the major
preoccupations of town governments. Before Arthur's reign and during the time
after his death, in most cities, chamber pots were simply emptied out of upper
stories into the street. If the person doing the emptying was being considerate,
he or she might shout a warning. Still, if you were walking along a street in an
Alliance city, you would have been wise to look up frequently—in addition to
looking down to avoid piles of garbage, human waste, and effectively negotiate
what became a river of mud during rainstorms, as the paving in many cities
became neglected. Some cities passed laws requiring shopkeepers and householders
to keep the area in front of their homes and shops—which are usually one and the
same—clean, at least on fair or market days, at which time large numbers of
people might be coming into the city from outside.

Although villages certainly have crafts and tradespeople—such as bakers and
blacksmiths—cities have people practicing these trades in greater abundance.
Indeed, street names in Alliance cities often indicate the major trade that is
practiced there. Practitioners of a single trade—such as metal workers or
tailors—are often grouped together on a single street. In many Alliance cities,
houses and businesses occupy the same building.

A typical layout of a home of a craftsman in an Alliance city might have the
first floor devoted to the business. Very often, this level has a large
shuttered window—with two shutters opening toward the street, one opening up and
one down—that can be bolted on the inside. The lower shutter can be propped on
supports and serve as a display area for goods and wares. Beside this, the main
entrance usually stands open during business hours, and those walking by can see
the craftsman hard at work inside. Many cities have laws prohibiting
craftspeople from aggressively soliciting business from passersby, and some have
laws forbidding merchants and other craftspeople from approaching potential
buyers who are examining a competitor's goods. At the back of the first level
of an Alliance city-person's home/business might be another workroom, a place
for storage, and sleeping quarters for any apprentices to the craft. The second
floor of the building usually houses the main living space—the equivalent of the
great hall in a noble household—where most of the activity of the household,
especially dining, takes place. On this second level, or sometimes on the first,
and occasionally in an outbuilding at a remove from the main structure, cooking
is done. The risk of fire—especially in crowded quarters full of aging
structures made of wood—is always great. Therefore, many townspeople take
precautions when it comes to using fire, although obviously this is the only
means of heating a house—so fireplaces or hearths of some kind are necessary in
most of the rooms. The upper floors of a craftsman's home and workplace are
usually sleeping quarters for the family, and occasionally, if they are
well-to-do, for their servants—who usually occupy what might be thought of as
attic space.

Some trades, such as tanning, fulling, dyeing, and butchering are occupations
that often produce strong and unpleasant smells. For this reason, those who
practice these trades often have their workshops a great distance from the
center of the town, usually downriver of the town, which serves as a de facto
garbage dump for the large amounts of waste many of these occupations—especially
butchering—can produce. If you think about it, given what goes into rivers, it
makes sense that most urban Alliance people drink beverages like ale or wine
that are fermented, as fermentation is a great bacteria killer, and one never
knows what the town upriver has already passed into the water. While plain water
is certainly drunk by plenty of Alliance people, attention is paid to the source
of that water.

The guild hall is a large building and is often the building that houses city
protection. Temples are the largest buildings. Generally there are temples to
several deities and castles that straddle the city walls with the main gate to
the city.

Communes

Communes in the Alliance are sworn allegiances of mutual defense (both physical
defense and of traditional freedoms) among the citizens of a town or city. They
take many forms, and vary widely in organization and makeup. Townspeople need
physical protection from lawless nobles and bandits, part of the motivation for
gathering behind communal walls, but the struggle to establish their liberties,
the freedom to conduct and regulate their own affairs, and security from
arbitrary taxation and harassment from the noble or church in whose jurisdiction
these areas lie, was a long process of struggling to obtain charters that
guaranteed such basics as the right to hold a market. Such charters were often
purchased at exorbitant rates, or granted, not by the local power, which is
often naturally jealous of prerogatives, but by the king, who came thereby to
hope to enlist the towns as allies in the struggle to centralize power. The
burghers of the Alliance were sometimes ruthlessly harassed, blackmailed,
subjected to oppressive taxes and humiliated. This has driven the townsfolk back
upon their own resources, and it accounts for the intensely corporate and
excessively organized character of Alliance cities.

The walled city represented protection from direct assault at the price of
corporate interference on the pettiest levels, but once a townsman left the city
walls, he (for women scarcely travel) was at the mercy of often violent and
lawless nobles in the countryside. Because much of the Alliance lacked central
authority to provide protection in the past, each city had to provide its own
protection for citizens both inside the city walls, and outside. Thus towns
formed communes, a legal basis for turning the cities into self-governing
corporations.

Although in most cases the development of communes was connected with that of
the cities, there were rural communes, notably in Funeese (now the Dalelands)
and in Brython, that were formed to protect the common interests of villagers.

No two communes are alike, but at their heart, communes are sworn allegiances of
mutual defense, either against violence, or against limitation of civic
freedoms. When a commune is formed, all participating members gather and swear
an oath in a public ceremony, promising to defend each other in times of
trouble, and to maintain the peace within the city proper.

What does it mean for a commune member to defend another? If a commune member is
attacked outside the city, it is too late to call for help, as it is unlikely
anyone would arrive in time. Instead, the commune promises to exact revenge on
the attacker, the threat of revenge being a form of defense. However, if the
attacker is a noble, safely ensconced in a castle (as is often the case), the
town commune cannot muster the forces to attack him directly. Instead they might
attack the noble's family, burn his crops, kill his people, or destroy his
orchards in retribution.

Those who are commune members (or "citizens") form perhaps half a city's
population, though sometimes they are as little as 10 or 15 percent. The
citizenry are the skilled tradesmen and the merchants, the economic lifeblood of
the city. Citizenship is generally inherited, but it can be granted to
individuals or to families, usually as a recognition for some extraordinary
service to the city. By the firm establishment of the Alliance on the continent,
guild membership and citizenship went hand in hand. In Florence, for example,
membership in a guild is a requirement of citizenship.

Everyone knows in a city who the citizens are, for they annually swear an oath
of loyalty to the city. They gather in one of the city plazas, often in front of
the town hall, and there repeat the oath out loud, for everyone to see. This
serves the double purpose of binding the citizens and of letting everyone else
see who are recognized as citizens. Citizenship brings privileges and also
obligations. They are required to serve in fire brigades and street patrols. In
times of war they man the walls and serve in the city militia. Only citizens
have to pay taxes. On the other hand, they are legally protected and often have
better access to town courts. The citizens are the real caretakers of the
city's prestige and reputation, ethics and the common weal.

Among those who are usually not citizens are the clergy, though they are
generally privileged and prestigious members of the community. The nobility are
sometimes allowed to be citizens, sometimes are required (in Talia) to be
citizens, and sometimes are forbidden citizenship.

Communes are very important for the Alliance churches. Generally, organized
Alliance churches have at least some focus on establishing peace. Communes can
help bring peace, because people cooperate instead of acting egoistically. In
many places, fraternities and guilds were formed before church jurisdiction was
established. They were formed by common people who imitated the way of life of
the cloistered priests, without becoming part of a monastical order.
Non-religious orders and organizations of other sorts grew out of communes to
become private or public collections of citizens with common cause, goals, or
qualifications.

According to a Brython cleric of pre-Alliance Common Lands, society was composed
of three orders: those who fight, those who pray, and those who work (the
nobles, the clergy, and the peasants). In theory this was a balance between
spiritual and secular peers, with the third order providing labour for the other
two. The urban communes are a break in this order. The churches and King both
have mixed reactions to communes. On the one hand, they agree safety and
protection from lawless nobles is in everyone's best interest. The communes'
intention is to keep the peace through the threat of revenge, and the churches
are generally sympathetic to the end result of peace. On the other hand,
communes disrupt the order of society; the methods the communes use, eye for an
eye, violence begets violence, are generally not acceptable to churches or King.
Furthermore, there is a sense that communes threaten the social order. Only the
noble lords are allowed by custom to fight, and ostensibly the merchant
townspeople are workers, not warriors. As such, the nobility and the clergy
sometimes accept communes, but other times do not. There have been occasions of
communes being suppressed, some of which have resulted in defiant urban revolt.
The outlawed alignment societies are a good examples of this, though many of
them were and still are supported by various churches.