This is a segue away from a suggestions thread: https://efupw.com/efu1-forum/topic/17/17590/walking-stick/index.html
Oro wrote:
Its still a case where most PCs are not soldiers. They are a crazed lot of unpredictable adventurers. They're not home owners, they're not exactly upstanding citizens for the most part. They're not standing with their weapons on the city walls and they're not conducting regular armed patrols.
This is all true, but who makes up the common man in Sanctuary? They are mostly escaped slaves, and descendants of slaves. Most people who lived under slavery and escaped are going to be hard as coffin nails.
This isn’t a standard medieval/fantasy town, so who exactly are these “home owners” and “upstanding citizens”? Sanctuary doesn’t have a feudal system, nor a reified taxation system, so there is no systemic upper class, inheriting wealth from property/servitude alone. There are no barons, counts or lords getting rich off other people. At most there are a few older families who own property and rent it out to others. They might be rich, but they are more likely middle class real estate agents than barons. The ruling council are elected, and some of them have been very poor.
The middle class in sanctuary is also somewhat exceptional. Who are they? There are a handful of merchants, a couple of inn owners, a scrivener, funeral services… there was a brothel owner. These people are the bare bones of an economy. Note that none of these folks are primary wealth producers. A lot of functions, such as blacksmithing, banking and sales were conducted by the Duergur, who are now gone. Norma may have a vast mercantile empire, but she doesn’t look to be raking in great profits!
There is something of a working class. We have some secretaries, a few chiefs, a blacksmith, a few tailors, rothe herders and so on. But even basic farming is outsourced to Hrumpar and friends. Sanctuary is not a normal town economy. It has no peasant base, it has a small middle class, and it has no landowning upper class.
So where does its wealth come from? Adventures! Groups of hard ass maternal fornicator ex-slaves go and pillage the local communities (goblins, orogs, gnolls etc), and bring back their possessions and currency. The town can afford to buy food from Hrumpar, because we have stolen gold. We can make do with minimal blacksmiths because who in the militia (more on the “army” below) is wielding a Sanctuary-made weapon or armour? Most of the economy is providing services for these people – inns, brothel, merchants etc. There are few basic functions that loot cannot provide – like the zurkwood factory, but most of the economy is pillage funded.
Thus I submit that as a town, Sanctuary is more similar to the Corsair and Pirate towns of the 15-1700’s than a standard mediaeval/fantasy town. The coast of North Africa, Madagascar and the Caribbean all had sizeable pirate/buccaneer/corsair communities. Like Sanctuary they had a basic trade work, like boat repairers, cooks and so on. But most of the local economy was to do with providing services for the pirates, who were the basic source of income – brothels, drinking establishments etc.
In such a community, “a crazed lot of unpredictable adventurers” are also everyone’s meal ticket. In a normal feudal village such behaviour is looked down upon, partly because it is violent, but also because large sums of wealth injected into the economy might break the feudal pyramid of power, and the nobles don’t want that. But here it is the primary income to the city. Sanctuary exports nothing except gold coins, as far as I can tell (although until recently it imported metalwork and fiscal services, and still imports food). In this way it is again similar to a pirate community, which exports nothing except violence.
So who are these “home owners” and “upstanding citizens”? Well a large number of them will be ex-“crazed unpredictable adventurers” who spammed goblin fort often enough that they can settle down and put their feet up. Yes they might dabble in real estate, administration or something else, but they probably still keep their sword (or wand of fireball or poison knife or acid dripping flail) over the mantle piece. With only 150 years of settlement, even those who inherited wealth from rich uncle Harry the Staircase-Spammer, are still only a few generations away from adventurer stock. This is especially true in a world where many of the non-human citizens (gnomes, dwarfs and elves) would expect to live 150+ years. Sanctuary is a society based on violence, and unlike a traditional town there is not a large number of “upstanding citizens” who need to be shielded from the “crazy adventurers”. In fact the oppersite applies, the adventurers have the coin, the other citizens want it.
Now not surprisingly, given the general redistribution of wealth that is inflicted on the sentient beings in the area around Sanctuary, we have various types knocking on the gates and asking for it back. Who defends against these attacks? Certainly there are the watchmen, the spellguard, and the animatrons. These organisations all do their best. But in many ways they are more a bipedal warning system than an army. It is always the “unpredictable adventurers” who gather arms and drive away the invaders. Sanctuary is defended –primarily- by an informal but well armed militia. The same people who bring back the bacon also protect the gates from frequent assault.
When an “upstanding citizen” from Sanctuary sees an adventurer enter the city, halberd covered in undead-illithid viscera, they don’t think “oh dear, there goes the neighbourhood”. They rub their hands together and think, “thank goodness they are back, I wonder how much gold I can fleece from them” and maybe “thank goodness they are back, I was worried the *insert this weeks aggrieved local community here* was going to invade this dark (I’m glad we don’t have to pay them for that either, suckers!)”.
Adventurers are not an ‘army’ as such, but their capacity to carry arms is an absolutely vital part of the economy and safety of the town. Even if the capacity for storage allowed people to stash their halberds in a safe place, I doubt many people would object to them carried openly on the streets (inside would be a little different, I imagine the guards would take halberds at the door of the town hall).
This brings us to the watch. The watch would be well aware that it might be their shift on the gate the time the next wave of bloodthirsty beings rolls into town. They know that the militia are a vital component of the defence of the town, and will be hoping adventurers hotfoot it to the gate to dish out healthy servings of whoop ass. I imagine law enforcement in such a town would be awkward at best, dangerous at worst. The fact that the burly guy is carrying a massive body chopper might be of concern to a watchman. But that guy also probably just paid his wage, and that axe will probably be swinging beside his the next time there is a hue and cry from the gates. Thwak the barbarian isn’t “standing on the gates” or “part of regular patrols”, but such activities are hallmarks of a classic standing army. Sanctuary doesn’t have a standing army; it has adventurers (or bandits, pirates, marauders or whatever they would be more accurately called). In this way armed citizens would be welcomed, not reviled, as they are showing their willingness to fight when required.