On 21 Sep 2004 at 18:58, bethexton_at_... wrote:
> A purely personal view....after centuries of domination by the OOO,
> and even more so after rule by the pharoah, the heortlings of
> Heortland itself have shifted to a more top down, rather than the
> sartarite bottom-up, flow of power. That is, the tribal king has his
> power because the pharoah says he does, the chief gets his authority
> from the king, the is important because it advises the chief. They
> may still hold moots and what not, but in general I think they've
> been shifting to a more feudal structure, especially at the top end.
Absolutely. I certainly see that as the case, entirely separate from the Aeolian thing. In fact, I think it is one of the reasons they were able to shift over into the more Malkioni religion, having already moved to this more top down style. But I digress.
> > I like that it is a mercantile city, no doubt about that. Some
> kind of powerful city council
> > of merchants. But if that's the idea, why is there a Baron? (Why
> not be more a Hanseatic
> > league free city, reporting directly to the Pharoah?) The Baron
> founded the city, as I
> > understand it, so how do he and the merchants interact when it
> comes to power?
>
> I can think of two big reasons why there is a "baron"....one the
> pharoah wants someone to be directly responsible for the city, and
> two there is no "Issaries Rex" cult.
The Issaries Rex thing is a good point. It seems to me that Karse is really quite small, though. Some maps seem to have it as a city of 7-10 000, the DP map has it as 10-25. I'd guess it's right around the 10,000 mark. But it's territory seems quite tiny, barely extending beyond the city. So there really is only the one noble family, I would think, the Baron. I would suppose he needs some kind of formal arrangement with the powerful merchants, keeping an air of neutrality in settling conflicts that threaten the city.
> I like your hanseatic parrelel to an extent, however. I wonder if
> the various holy country ports have some sort of trading league?
> They all still have their temporal rulers, but it would make for an
> interesting cross current in the politics.
They might, but there're certainly enough indications the major ports view each other as serious rivals that the league can't be TOO strong.
Another thing I like from
> the parrellel is that all merchants trading there probably have to
> buy into the guild (originally just one guild per city, controlling
> all trade). Of course Issaries trades with anyone, but being allowed
> to actually set up shop in the city is licensed! (this might lead to
> travelling merchants having a field they use outside the gates?)
Actually, I had already figured this was exactly true. A guild of some kind, for proper deals in the city. But out at the docks, outside the city proper, are areas for unlicensed, including Argan Argar and Etyries merchants. This, of course, changes with the Lunar take over. I think this is even in the Mikidema "Carse" supplement, since there are refrences to a place like this for foreign merchants in two adaptations of that work I've fouind on the web.
> Heortling cities traditionally have a city ring, similar to the
> tribal ring. So imagine the baron would have 12 ring members, sort
> of equivalent to aldermen. No doubt the merchants are well
> represented here, directly and indirectly.
Absolutely. Looks like I'm going to have to look up city rings now. :-)
> Finally, I suspect there is a serious undercurrent of longing for old
> glories in Karse (i.e. before the CreekStreamRiver was stolen from
> them), so there may be some archaic governing structures kept in
> place as a symbol of past glories.
In fact, since that predates the Pharoah establishing the Barony (and the move of the Herotlings to control the city) I would suspect that the longing for old glories is that of the Pelaskite old guard, with their heavily Esrolian and Troll-influenced Matriarchy.
Hmmm. I think if this continues, we're definitely slipping over into Digest territory.
LC
ly go with two here.
Powered by hypermail