Cities and Towns

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Cities and Towns
Cities and towns in Rokugan serve the same purpose they do in any civilized society: they are centers for trade and commerce, as well as foci for politics and governance. Each has reasons to be where it is, usually some combination of geographic, historical, cultural, economic, and religious factors. Cities are frequently built in defensible locations such as atop a hill or adjacent to a river. They are densely populated and supported by a large network of farms and trade villages, developed over Rokugan’s history in part as a means of streamlining the ungainly economic system of rice-based taxes.

Rokugani CitieS
Although cities are home to a significant portion of the Empire’s population, there are actually few large cities in Rokugan. In general, “city” refers to any single settlement with more than ten thousand inhabitants, although this number simply provides a convenient threshold for categorizing settlements. Legally speaking, true cities are only those with appointed governors. In practice, it’s not unheard of for some towns to exceed ten thousand inhabitants without being appointed a governor, whether due to lack of adequate economic or strategic importance, political maneuvering, or bureaucratic inefficiency.

Cities in the Empire represent the pinnacle of a social, cultural, and economic pyramid based on the structures of a largely agrarian society. Peasant farmers, woodcutters, miners, and other laborers form the broad base of the pyramid, growing the food and providing the other resources upon which the economy relies. A percentage of these resources are funneled into a multitude of villages across the Empire, which form the next, narrower level of the pyramid. From the villages, resources are further gathered into the region-al hubs of towns and, from these, into the cities at the top of the pyramid. At each step, value is added as resources are refined and manufactured into various types of finished goods. Taxes, in the form of a portion of resources and goods, are collected at various levels of the pyramid to provide for the machinery of political governance and military power

The Birth of a City
One of the most important factors affecting the origin of a city is geography. Cities tend to be located in areas that are relatively flat, accessible, and well drained. In the militaristic culture of Rokugan, defense is another consideration. A large river, forest, or mountain range that will limit approaches helps make a location attractive for settlement. Some cities have cropped up around castles, while others serve as sprawling way stations along important routes.

The locations of routes for trade and travel also affect where cities form, especially in places that aren’t close to fertile farmlands. Moving food and other goods and resources around the Empire is an import-ant but difficult task. Troops also must be able to travel. The locations of mountain passes, navigable rivers, land suitable for road networks, and natural harbors all tend to affect where cities are located. For example, Ryokō Owari Toshi is located in the gap between the rugged Spine of the World Mountains and the Shinomen Forest, close to the Seikitsu Pass through the mountains and at the northernmost extent of the River of Gold’s navigable waters.

A final consideration for a city’s location is more cultural than practical. Rokugan is steeped in the divine and the supernatural, and these aspects of an area may play a part in a decision to locate a settlement there. The most notable example is Otosan Uchi, the Imperial Capital. Although the city is located on a major, natural harbor, it originally grew around Seppun Hill, the revered and holy place where the Kami fell from the Celestial Heavens and entered Ningen-dō.

Firefighters
The lower portions of castles are made of stone, but most buildings are made entirely of paper and wood, making fire one of the greatest dangers any Rokugani settlement can face. A vigilant fire squad, armed with large buckets of sand and maps of wells and water pumps, is the best way to minimize damage. Where these are insufficient, fire-fighters must demolish adjacent buildings in order to prevent a blaze from spreading. Most cities delegate oversight of this duty to minor officials, paying them a small stipend to recruit a local group of heimin

Almost inevitably, firefighter gangs in cities where order is lax become involved in crimes such as gambling and prostitution. The signature crime for these groups is the protection racket: intimidating citizens and shopkeepers into paying a bribe or suffering violence at the hands of the gang, or losing their home or business when the gang “fails” to quell a fire in time, or even as a “necessary” demolition. The flip side is that the gangs rarely allow anyone else to encroach upon their turf, and those who pay can expect a measure of safety. Of course, samurai never suffer these consequences, and they may be incredulous upon hearing that they occur at all.

Urban Navigation
In terms of their layout, Rokugani cities tend toward chaos. Most large cities have grown from a central core that is typically a defensive structure of some sort, such as a castle. This structure is the home and court of the governor who rules over the city. Most of these centers of governance are surrounded by the estates of the city’s wealthiest and most powerful citizens. This central or “noble” district is in turn surrounded by districts commonly characterized by their general function:

• A temple district containing various holy sites as well as living quarters for priests and shrine keepers, who minister to congregants and tend to the sites.
• One or more samurai districts, where most of the lower-status samurai live. Services for those who reside there are provided by myriad sake houses, noodle shops, tailors, weaponsmiths, and similar businesses.
• An entertainment district, where theaters, geisha houses, and luxurious inns are located. Related institutions, such as schools for performers and workshops for the craftspeople who support the performances, are also found there.
• A merchant district, where commercial and mercantile activities are conducted and goods are warehoused.
• One or more commoner districts, where heimin live and work. These make up the bulk of most cities. Hinin are usually confined to their own district or live outside the city.
• Depending on the wealth of the city, walls may separate and defend the exclusive districts (those samurai live in and visit) from the more common neighborhoods. Where this is the case, gates control access from one district to another, and posted guards ensure that not just anybody can travel to certain high-class districts. From a militaristic perspective, this helps the city’s samurai to endure attacks until reinforcements from their clan arrive.
• If the city is located on a river or harbor, it will also have districts devoted to related activities, such as a river docks district, a fishers’ quarter, or a harbor district.

As cities grow in importance and their populations increase, they expand, at least to the extent that geography allows. Within the districts of a growing city, construction is often haphazard. Preexisting roads that a city grows around remain relatively straight and become the major city thoroughfares, but usually much of the city becomes a warren of narrow, twisting streets and alleys, particularly in more crowded areas populated by commoners. Some of the most labyrinthine and confusing streets are found within Scorpion cities, and it is widely believed that this erratic appearance is in fact intended to confound and discomfit outsiders. Some districts, however, tend to be more strictly and centrally controlled, such as temple districts and noble districts. In these, streets and buildings are usually carefully laid out according to plans that incorporate social, political, or spiritual hierarchies and take access and security needs into account.

Architecture and Dwellings
Most of the buildings in Rokugani cities are made of wood, stone being reserved for larger and more significant structures such as palaces and temples, import-ant defensive works like towers and city walls, and buildings owned by powerful people such as daimyō and magistrates. In all types of buildings, most interior structures and partitions are made of wood and paper and can be easily moved to change the interior layout; permanent rooms and walls are the exception, unless needed for structural or security purposes. Because of the large proportion of flammable materials in their constructions, Rokugani cities are highly vulnerable to fire. Cities therefore maintain elaborate fire-protection precautions, and arson is a serious crime indeed.

Lordship and Governance
Most Rokugani cities are administered by a governor who is appointed by the clan champion or family daimyō whose territory encompasses the city in question. In many respects, the governor is similar to a daimyō, but with a jurisdiction limited to the city and usually the area immediately surrounding it. The governor presides over a municipal court, where they hear petitions and make proclamations. The court bureaucracy is responsible for administering the city’s affairs, including road maintenance, public works such as city wall construction, and the collection and archiving of data on the city’s population. A chief magistrate, who reports to the governor, oversees a contingent of magistrates who are responsible for overseeing tax collection, maintaining law and order, and ensuring that the governor’s mandates are carried out throughout the city.

In the largest cities, individual districts may also have governors. In Otosan Uchi, senior members of the Imperial Court and other notable samurai who govern a district report to a central council that, in turn, reports to the Imperial Court.

Gangs and Criminals
Criminal operations in cities span the range from individual, petty lawbreakers to large and sophisticated underworld syndicates. Big cities tend to attract the larger criminal syndicates, such as the opium cartels of Ryokō Owari Toshi, which find it easier to hide their nefarious operations in the bustling chaos. Similarly, street gangs thrive in the packed quarters of a city. In some cities, again most infamously Ryokō Owari Toshi, firefighters—groups of commoners organized to quickly fight fires before they spread out of control—form the basis of some of the most powerful and intractable street gangs (although they generally still do genuinely fight fires).

Another surprisingly organized group found in most large cities are “beggars’ societies”: large, coordinated groups of scroungers, vagabonds, street urchins, and similar sorts who practice all manner of petty crimes, then pool the spoils for the benefit of all members. Blasphemous cults may also have a presence in large cities, but these groups tend to prefer the anonymity of more remote places in the Empire.

Of course, not all criminals are members of organized groups. Every city has its share of pickpockets, muggers, burglars, petty extortionists and black-mailers, and myriad other small-time lawbreakers. The magistrates and their deputies work very hard to keep criminality from becoming rampant, but wherever humans come together to engage in commerce, greed will eventually win out in the hearts of the weak willed. Many magistrates actually cultivate contacts throughout the criminal underworld of their jurisdiction, sometimes overlooking minor crimes in order to keep tabs on, and thwart, larger ones.

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Rokugani Towns
In Rokugan, “town” usually refers to a settlement of between a few hundred and ten thousand people. (A smaller settlement is considered a village.) Towns are much more numerous than cities and, in some respects, they collectively have as much influence on the social, cultural, and economic fabric of the Empire—and perhaps more

Towns occupy a place in the social, cultural, and economic pyramid immediately below the top triangle occupied by cities. Towns fill the role of regional hubs. Food, raw materials, and simple finished goods flow into them from surrounding farms and villages in the form of both trade and taxes. From these hubs, some of the gathered food and resources, as well as more elaborate finished goods, flow out to other towns and the nearest cities. Some of this outflow is commercial trade, and some is in the form of taxes ultimately destined for the Imperial Treasury.

Expanding Settlements
Trade needs are more influential than defensive needs in determining the locations of towns, which are much more numerous than cities. Geography is still a factor: towns tend to be located along trade routes such as rivers, on land suitable for easy road construction, or in or near farmland. A location merely adequately defensible may be preferable to a more defensible position farther away, simply because the first location is better positioned with regard to fertile lands, farms, and villages

Like cities, some towns began as a simple defensive structure, such as a small keep or watchtower. Most, however, started as a small village that happened to be best positioned to attract growth. Although they are usually no more formally planned than cities, towns tend to have a less chaotic layout due to their smaller size. If a town is located on an Imperial road, that road is usually the main street and the nucleus for development. Other parts of the town are built as local geography allows.

Most towns are less cramped than cities in their layout. They develop more organically than cities and have fewer demands placed on them by lords and bureaucrats during their growth. As a result, buildings are constructed with more space between them com-pared to the claustrophobic proximities found in cities. Nevertheless, pedestrians must usually stick to the alleys, as streets are given over to carts, which leave little room for passersby and seldom heed their safety.

It is rare for a town to be subdivided into formal districts like cities are. Still, towns are far from homogeneous. Wealthy, powerful, and otherwise influential citizens tend to live close to the court and estate of the town’s head magistrate or lord in the best-defend-ed part of town, while commoners are relegated to the fringes or other less desirable areas. Hinin typically live in separate settlements entirely, located a short distance away from the town, and usually downwind.

The architecture of towns is broadly similar to that of cities, although there are fewer large buildings and fewer buildings made of stone. The latter are normally restricted to buildings related to governance and defense. The vast majority of the buildings are of wooden construction, with wooden and paper interior partitions, and most are no more than two floors high.

Town Administration
Whereas cities have a governor, towns have a clan magistrate or samurai lord in their senior leadership role. The prestige of the position depends greatly on both the reputation of the town and the samurai’s previous station. Appointment as the head of a remote or obscure town is, in fact, often a punishment for samurai who have proven themselves incompetent or untrustworthy but have not acted in a manner deserving of more serious censure.

Town leaders live in large estates that tend to vary in size according to their town’s importance. Magistrates invariably maintain a manor house within the town in order to more easily conduct the affairs of government and law enforcement, while it’s not uncommon for samurai lords to maintain their estates outside of town or substantially isolated from the surrounding citizenry; this is especially true of those samurai who view their town as beneath them.

Crime and Conspiracy
Criminal activity in towns echoes that occurring in cities, albeit on a smaller and more local scale. Large criminal syndicates may have a presence in particular towns, but generally for a specific reason. For example, a large opium cartel based in Ryokō Owari Toshi might have an outpost in Kudo, a port town located downriver from the city along the River of Gold, a convenient location to support smuggling operations

Other criminal activity in towns is usually of the minor sort: the myriad assaults, robberies, thefts, and other common offenses expected in any settlement of several hundred people or more. One type of serious crime, often organized nonlocally, however, is more likely to be found in a town than in a city. Blasphemous cults might arise within or base at least some of their foul operations in towns and villages, well away from the immediate attention of Emerald Magistrates and other groups involved in combating their profane activities.