5001-HârnWorld/3rd Edition/20

Government buildings and temples tend to be built of stone on a lavish scale. However, most townsmen live in two- or three-story slums of wooden construction in which overcrowding is the norm. Guildsmen can usually afford better accommodation and the homes of a few wealthy guildsmen may be quite luxurious.

City lots change hands without reference to any zoning bylaws, although government will occasionally step in to forbid construction and all urban governments have unlimited expropriation powers.

Town Markets
Towns are essentially defensible markets, where the countryside trades its agricultural surplus for the civilized artifacts of the city. The relationship is symbiotic; each has its own monopoly, but the countryside could exist without towns while the converse is untrue.

The heart of the town is its marketplace, the place where money and goods are exchanged more or less freely. It is illegal to sell anything within five leagues of most towns except within its marketplace. Impromptu highway sales within this zone are forbidden by royal laws; the minimum penalty is confiscation. The marketplace itself is administered by the Mangai, who rent space for a penny or two per day. Vendors can sell from their own carts, tents, or stalls, or rent them from tentmakers or woodcrafters.

Local guildsmen have an advantage in the town economy. Town aldermen and mayors are usually local guildsmen and members of a local guild are the only ones permitted to freely sell their goods within the town. Goods imported into a city are subject to payment of hawking taxes and, if they are covered by a local guild monopoly, they must be offered first to local guildsmen handling such wares to be marked up and resold.

Townsmen
Town life is more sophisticated and volatile than life in the countryside. On the rural manor, everyone has his place, high or low, governed in accordance with old feudal traditions and almost all rural activities center around the seasonal nature of agriculture. Townsmen, on the other hand, are freemen and their social and legal obligations seem less. Their duties may be limited to the payment of some rents or taxes, perhaps to military service in time of war. But while townsmen are not required to work on the land, no one guarantees them food or shelter. Their freedom from service is paid for by their lack of security. Unemployment and starvation come hand in hand; in time of famine, it is the urban poor who starve first. Townsmen are divided into two major classes, guilded and unguilded.

A guild is a brotherhood of craftsmen who have banded together to control economic activity in specific or related trades. Throughout Hârn and western Lythia, virtually all significant commercial and professional activities are within the control of powerful international guilds whose monopolistic rights are protected by law. Unlike the countryside, towns are dominated by the activities of the guilds; it is their activities that justify a town’s very existence.

The Individual Guilds
A list of the guilded occupations is noted on the Income Table on page 26 and their badges are shown on page 21. Each guild is described in Hârndex. Most are urban and some are rural; a few are both. Some guilds may be weak and have loosely defined monopolies, but most are strong with rigid monopolies. In Orbaal and among the Khuzdul, the functions of guilds are performed by clans, equally monopolistic but simpler in organization.

The Mangai
The Mangai is the association of all guilds. Grand chapters exist in Hârnic states in one form or another. The Mangai’s principal functions are to regulate guilds, settle disputes between them, organize and regulate town markets and fairs, and lobby with governments concerning guild rights and privileges. The Mangai operates under the Charter of the Mangai, a law that has been enacted by most civilized governments of western Lythia. It is this charter that fosters and protects the legal monopolies held by all guilds.

Most settlements have a Mangai chapter made up of at least one representative of each local guild. Larger chapters may elect an executive council. Different chapters have various modes of operation, but most are democratic. Although it wields enormous power, the Mangai stays out of politics. Governments respond by limiting their involvement in guild affairs to taxation.

Franchises and Chapters
A guild’s primary purpose is to provide economic security for its members. They do this by employing their legal monopolies to limit competition, primarily by restricting the number of franchises in a specific market. A franchise is a license granted by a guild to a qualified master to operate a business within a specific area.

Guilds are organized into chapters, whose structure and jurisdiction are based on tradition and the number of members. While a larger market town may have enough franchises to merit its own chapter, most chapters cover a wider geographical area and can include all guild members within a given hundred, shire, or even kingdom.

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