City

Towns and Cities
Compared to other regions on western Lythia, Hârn is not very urbanized. No more than 10% of the population live in towns. The largest urban center on the island is Coranan, with a population of about 12,500. It is perhaps the only center deserving of the name “city,” although this term is commonly applied to any walled town. There are eight walled towns on Hârn.

In addition to these cities, most settlements marked as castles and keeps on the regional map have small unwalled towns adjacent to them where a market is held at least once a month. Several of these, notably Dyrisa, Kiban, Shostim, and Telen, are budding walled towns with populations of 2,000–3,000.

Government of towns
In a strict legal sense, there are two different kinds of towns on Hârn: freetowns and feudal towns. Aleath, Golotha, and Thay are freetowns and enjoy a fairly high degree of independence from external authority. Azadmere, Cherafir, Coranan, Shiran, and Tashal are feudal towns, held directly by the king or state. To the average citizen, the distinctions are minimal. All towns tax their citizens and pay aids and taxes to the king or state. However, taxes levied by freetowns tend to be less onerous and collected with less enthusiasm. To a runaway serf, the distinction is crucial. Only freetowns allow the serf to claim freedom after a year and a day of residence. Feudal towns offer no such protection.

Town charters
Freetowns possess a charter from the crown that sets out the rights and privileges of their citizens and their obligations to the king. Each charter is unique but all have some basic common provisions. These include the right to build and maintain a city wall, hire mercenaries for defense, hold markets and fairs as often as desired, and freedom from feudal or other obligations to anyone except the king. Various clauses detailing the form and powers of civic government, responsibility for taxation, defense, and the administration of justice are also laid out in a town’s charter. Feudal towns have no need for a charter but often have a document outlining the form and nature of town government.

City Officials
Governments in both kinds of towns tend to be similar in form. Civic offices are mainly filled by guildsmen, while military offices go to men with military experience. The officers described below are common in Hârnic towns.

Alderman
An alderman is a custodian and expounder of the law and member of the town court. Although aldermen must be invested in their office by the sovereign or his representative, the office is often inherited because this is the way that knowledge of customary law is passed from one generation to the next. Most Hârnic cities have 12 aldermen, all of whom are prominent guildsmen and often members of the Litigants’ Guild.

Mayor
Only freetowns have mayors, as such, but all others have some official who is responsible for administering civil and financial affairs. Mayors are usually appointed by the aldermen, often from a short list of candidates supplied by the crown. This official will run a sizable bureaucracy, including tax assessors and collectors.

Warden
Wardens command the city garrison and are responsible for maintaining civic law and order. A major expense for any city will be its military budget. In freetowns, the warden is appointed by the mayor; in feudal towns by the crown, usually the constable of the citadel.

Harbormaster
This officer is in charge of the town port, if any. Appointed by the mayor, he is either a retired member of the Pilots’ Guild or a political appointee who hires a master pilot as an assistant. Duties of a harbormaster include supervising port maintenance, providing pilotage services, and collecting maritime taxes such as pilotage, wharfage, and vessel registration fees. Harbormasters in the larger ports have several assistants.

Bondmaster
The bondmaster is responsible for overseeing the city bonding house and collecting hawking taxes and import duties. Appointed by the mayor, the bondmaster is usually a member of an important guild and may have assistants. Guards will be provided by the warden.

Town Law
Town law is quite different from rural justice and is sufficiently complex to support a guild of litigants. Towns are inhabited mainly by freemen, so royal justice is available to most citizens. Towns regard the right to operate their own courts, free from the interference of any local lord, as their most treasured prerogative. Freetown charters give their courts a place in the judicial hierarchy equal to a shire. Appeal from them is directly to the crown. Feudal towns are considered part of the shire in which they lie, so appeals are made first to the shire moot.

Towns are centers of trade and sometimes of scholarship and there is a somewhat greater dependence on written statute and precedent in town law. Financial transactions are much more common and civic penal codes may view economic or civil cases as dimly as crimes of violence. The importance of a suit is often a matter of how much (and whose) money is involved.

Most cases are settled informally. The parties to a dispute make an appointment for adjudication and the case will then be argued before a single alderman. The financial interests of the participants often lend themselves to a quick execution of justice. The alderman will pass judgment and levy and collect fines with dispatch. Appeals may be made to a town court of assembled aldermen. Important or complex cases will usually go directly to the town court. Aldermen may issue writs and warrants but, in a corrupt town, it is usually cheaper to seek a writ elsewhere.

Urban Geography
Most towns are roughly circular. Streets tend to radiate from several key points, notably the market and citadel, but they may well detour around vanished ponds or trees. Many streets existed before the town walls were built but new construction will take into account the location of city gates and gradually make the city appear more planned.

Street names are rarely posted; they tend to be a matter of oral rather than written tradition and change from time to time. Houses are not numbered. There is no official post office; mail is carried privately, at considerable expense. Few can read anyway.

Crime is rampant in most cities. Street illumination is rare so the streets are dark and dangerous at night. Policing, such as it exists, is typically in the hands of notoriously corrupt and incompetent city garrison. The open carrying of weapons is discouraged by most civic authorities.

The quality of urban construction tends to be somewhat higher than in the countryside but there is wide variation from town to town. Aleath is famous on Hârn for its high standards of civic architecture; Golotha, on the other hand, is an urban blight. Sewers are rare.

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.

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