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.