Arkland Social Strata

*Everyone's got a place, here. You are born into it, but you aren't stuck with it. Best to remember that with a lot of hard work, a bit of smarts, and a dash of personality, you can rise to be whatever you want to be. At the end of the day, the people of Arkland follow the strength of gold. If you got it, you have followers. If you don't, you are following someone who does.* - **Arkland Proverb**

## Social Strata of Arkland

The exact breakdown of social power within Arkland can fluctuate in minor ways, especially from barony to barony. As each barony is a sort of organism onto itself, with slightly different cultures and peoples, the breakdown of the social and political strata of the people within the barony can also be organic and disparate. However, the following general truths exist throughout all of Arkland and serves to show how the feudal kingdom supports itself using a class system. The general breakdown of power within society appears as follows:

1. **Ruling Monarch** (King or Queen of Arkland)
2. **Barons** of each of the nine baronies, forming the Council of Barons
3. **Light of Arkland**. The ruling Priest of Light
4. **Noble families** from each Barony.
5. **High Priests**. Ruling priests over areas controlled by the priesthood.
6. **Merchant Class**. Very rich, successful, and powerful merchants, often business owners.
7. **Lord Commanders**. Military leaders, known as bannermen. Control small armies and are given the title of nobility and often land in return for service.
8. **Priests of Light**. Common priests of the holy order.
9. **Specialized Labor Class**. Made up of individuals with unique and profitable skills such an engineer, physicians, lawyers, high-level bureaucrats, tradesmen, craftsmen, and wealthy artists and individuals.
10. **Soldiers**.
11. **Working Class**. Otherwise known as the peasantry. The working class spans everyone else in Arkland who does not have the accrued wealth or power to move up the strata and could be anything from a farmer to a shipbuilder to a craftsman.

## Ruling Monarch

The King or Queen of Arkland is considered the supreme ruler of the entire Kingdom. He or she has sole power to decree law, adjudicate law, and to command the armies of Arkland. That being said, the supreme ruler is put into power via election by the Council of Barons. Furthermore, as the monarch is but one person, and with the barons of Arkland still wielding tremendous political power, the authority of the monarch does have boundaries. Crossing the will of the barons too often can and has resulted in overthrow of the monarchy. Thus, although the ruling King or Queen is considered the ultimate authority of the land, that authority is curtailed to a great degree by the ruling barons. Although many regents come from a dynastic lineage, with the current monarch decreeing that his or her child is to become the next regent, it is not at all without precedent that after the death of a powerful monarch that the family line is replaced at the will of the barons.

## Barons

Next in line after the monarch is the barons. Barons are powerful, fabulously wealthy, land owners who hail from one of the nine baronies of Arkland. Each baron comes from a lineage of noble families. Their families have in some way or another accrued wealth and power within their respective counties and have thusly been able to appoint one of their own as a baron of the land. Barons come and go as the powers of noble families wax and wane. Each barony maintains its own, usually unwritten, means of how nobles vie for power. In short, within a barony, the baron essentially acts as the regent of the land, in a similar way to which the current King or Queen of Arkland acts as regent over the whole nation. Likewise, although powerful, the rule of barons is curtailed by the other powerful noble families within their baronies which they must also answer to. In this way, barons are not only individually powerful but are also often representative of the will of the other noble families in their county.

## Light of Arkland

The Light or Arkland holds a special position within Arkland society, and most consider the current Light to be on par with the powerful Barons. The Light of Arkland is the current Priest of Light who is in charge of the priesthood. Commanding power through religion, the Light of Arkland holds political sway over many people throughout Arkland and throughout all counties. As such, although not technically a baron, the Light of Arkland actually wields tremendous wealth and power over the hearts and minds of the people of Arkland as to be more powerful than most Barons, politically and economically. The Light of Arkland acts in direct advisement to the King of Queen, and although the Light or Arkland is not part of the Council of Barons, if he or she wished to sit in on the council, they most assuredly would not protest.

## Noble Families

The vast majority of wealth and power in Arkland is divided up among powerful families who exist all throughout the Bay of Kings. Most dynastic, these families typically exist as old money, having gathered wealth through all sorts of means. New nobility is often formed when someone from the Merchant Class accrues enough wealth to hire bannermen and afford to start to muscle in on the business territory of other nobility. At this stage, current noble families would be forced to deal with the powerful merchant on their terms and eventually concede to consider their family as nobility.

Noble families are extremely diverse, wealthy, and powerful. Most have serving bannermen and thus have access to military power. Further, most nobility are large land owners and business owners, controlling much of the wealth and populace of their regions. They are referred to as the Lords and Ladies of Arkland, and all peoples within Arkland work and live on the land owned and controlled by a noble family. The relationship between nobility and the commoner is not often hostile but more often symbiotic. The nobility need to commoner for wealth and power. The commoners need the nobility for political stability, jobs, and food.

## High Priests

The Priests of Light are a religious order within Arkland and a very powerful one. Their hierarchy is very simple, consisting of Priests of Light on the low end who would own or control flocks and temples, moving to High Priests, who control large regions, and finally ending at the Light of Arkland who has ultimate control over the whole priesthood. High Priests are therefore on a similar social strata as nobility. Often, High Priests live on large estates, and from there, they collect money and distribute wealth to local Priests of Light. They also pass down decree and attend to the higher order business of the priesthood. Much of the nobility begrudgingly accepts the presence of High Priests, and where the High Priests make their home, the nobility of the land must often include the High Priests in all orders of business for the region.

High Priests also often command control of bannermen, many of which are actually governed by high ranking Paladins of the order. Thus, the word and wealth of the High Priests is also backed up militarily by dedicated forces.

## Merchant Class

The true deity of Arkland is gold. As such, those with gold command power. The Merchant Class is an elite group of business men and women who have built empires out of trade. Because nobility grows wealthy off of its citizens, it is unlikely that the nobility ever try to interfere with the workings of a powerful merchant within a region. After all, they enjoy a portion of the wealth in taxes that those individuals generate. As such, there is a rather free place in society for people to establish businesses. As those businesses grow and prosper, their economic power grows with them. In this way, the Merchant Class represents very wealthy individuals in society who have as of yet not moved up the social ladder to become nobility.

The Merchant Classes oversee much of the highly structured economies of Arkland. This is often dealing with the trade fleets, goods production, and overland business that Arkland enjoys. The Merchant Class has also been known to grow so wealthy as to be able to afford bannermen, and thus, establish military power themselves and ability to thereby govern and police a small region or populace. This is most often seen in the naval trading merchants who maintain hosts of marines which they hire to defend their vessels while at sea.

## Lord Commanders

Lord Commanders are powerful military leaders within Arkland. So called because they are officially recognized as pseudo-nobility when they are hired to fulfill their roles which are as commanders of small armies. Lord Commanders are effectively mercenaries, hired mostly by nobility to serve as their military strength and policing force of a region. Lord Commanders are then typically given command of a barracks or other military structure in which the soldiers of Arkland live and train. One very viable way of moving up the social strata of Arkland is through service to a Lord Commander. There, soldiers who are especially adept, can be known for their prowess and perhaps either be hired as Lord Commanders or replace existing Lord Commanders.

## Priests of Light

The Priests of Light are the magically gifted and trained prosthelytizers of the religion of the Light. These low level Priests, once trained, are sent out into Arkland to establish temples and flocks to which they oversee. They are the local leaders of the religion. Once having established a flock within a region, Priests of Light can grow in stature, especially given the size of their temple and the amount of wealth it can accrue. By building large followings, Priests can establish themselves and perhaps one day catapult into the position of a High Priest which would then oversee an entire region of the priesthood.

In the social strata, as religious leaders, Priests of Light are considered a morale backbone of society and are respected as such. They enjoy a higher degree of social power and respect among the local populace of most regions.

## Specialized Labor Class

The specialized labor classification is a catch all term referring to individuals within society who typically make up the middle class. They do so often through providing unique or highly paid services to a local community. Such specialized labor would be engineers, architects, physicians, high ranking bureaucrats, small business owners, or any number of other well paying professions. Enjoying greater wealth than commoners affords them to be in a position of slightly higher political power meaning that when enough of the specialized labor in a region speaks, the local nobility may be forced to listen.

## Soldiers

Soldiers and marines of Arkland occupy a special place within society. This is for obvious reasons as Soldiers are the people within Arkland who defend the kingdom. They also often act as the police of a region, enforcing law. To be a Soldier gives a person a higher station in life, often on par with the middle class. The job of a Soldier is life long and in service of a Lord Commander. The work is voluntary and is a hard life, another aspect which garners them respect in society. Many Soldiers do not maintain families, but some do. Most Soldiers live within a communal barracks during their time of service.

## Working Class

The working class of Arkland, otherwise known as the peasants or commoners, encompasses everyone else in Arkland who is below the middle class, economically. As Arkland is a modern society, at least in terms of Indagar, the working class is the most expansive classification of peoples and also spans an enormous gamut of professions and livelihoods. These can be farmers, herders, artisans, craftsmen, shipbuilders, business professionals, actors, bureaucrats, community leaders, fishermen, traders, sailors, or any number of other things. Often, the line between the working class and the specialized labor class is quite blurry and is generally just a measure of the relative wealth an individual and his or her family commands.

The relationship between the working class, which comprises the largest majority of peoples within Arkland, and the higher social strata is not one of degradation or hostility. Most working class individuals are oblivious to the political machinations of the higher social strata such as the nobility. Their most common interactions would be with each other, the specialized labor class, or possibly the Merchant Class as paid workers. As such, although the nobility may see the working classes of Arkland as being beneath them, this is no more so than the rich of most societies view those in their own societies with less wealth as beneath them. Likewise, the working class, although bowing to the laws and land ownership of their lords and ladies, is not destitute nor feels under-privileged. Hard work and the accrual of wealth in Arkland is the surest way to improve ones social position and is open to anyone who is willing to grasp it.

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--Neil (talk) 22:04, 15 October 2016 (AST)