The Sorcerer-Kings

Every city is led by a king. He (or she) may be addressed as "Magnate" in one place and "Vizier" in another, but is always the absolute dictator of his subjects. Kings are at the top of the social order. They live near the center of the city in a fortified palace bustling with minor officials. When a potentate finds it necessary to leave his palace, he does so only with a great deal of preparation and pomp, well-protected by magic and his full bodyguard. If this cannot be arranged, he will not leave (except in the most dire of emergencies). The last thing any king of Athas wants is to walk unprotected among his subjects. Almost without exception, every king is a powerful Defiler who has risen to his position through the unprincipled use of magical and psionic abilities. All monarchs jealously guard the use of magic and employ a sizable force of templars whose sole duty it is to ferret out and execute unauthorized Preservers. In every city that I have visited, the kings are especially anxious to infiltrate agents into the Veiled Alliance, as an organization of Preservers presents a viable challenge to their magical power base. Every king uses his magic to prolong his life, and most have reigned for hundreds of years. Many have reigned for more than a thousand years, and one or two are even credited with founding their ancient cities. The king is sometimes considered his city's deity. His priests force the citizens to build temples to the king and lead them in pompous ceremonies of worship. Sometimes, the nobles and a few wealthy citizens consider the king their benefactor. Never, however, are other classes misled by such pretensions. The merchants see the king for what he is - a center of political and magical power that must be appeased if they are to continue their commerce in his city. If the ranks of slaves see the king as a god, it is certainly as an evil and corrupt one that keeps them in bondage and makes a misery of their lives. In return for his exalted position and unlimited authority, the king has the duty to administer justice, protect the citizens from famine and crime, and safeguard the city from external attack. In practice, these gluttonous monarchs spend most of their effort protecting their power base and seeing to their own comfort. Justice tends to be self-serving and arbitrary, and the king's agents are so corrupt that they often ignore crime altogether - providing the criminal pays them a large enough bribe. All kings take the matter of famine seriously, how ever. When a city's population starves, one of two things happen: a terrible revolt breaks out or disease and pestilence run rampant through the streets. In either case, the slave population plummets. Untended fields go barren, fortifications fall into disrepair, and the city grows weak. Therefore, most kings take quick and decisive action when famine begins: they raise armies and go to another city-state, steal its food, and replenish their supply of slaves. Because starting a war is the typical response to a city's internal problems, I have never heard of a sorcerer-king who does not take the matter of security from external attack seriously. All kings maintain standing armies, they usually have some large defensive project under construction, and I have heard that they devote most of their magical research to developing spells to fend off enemy armies. In fact, most cities are so well defended that it is impossible to criticize any sorcerer-king on this basis.

The Templars

Templars are clergymen devoted to the sorcererking of their city. Like other priests, they are granted spells in return for their worship. Unlike true priests, who draw their power from the elemental forces of the world, Templars tap into the magical forces of their sorcerer-king. When a templar beseeches his monarch for a spell, the sorcerer-king grants the request by employing his own mystical energy to power the templar's magic. Because of the strain this places on both the sorcerer-king and the surrounding land, young templars do not ask for (or receive) many spells. As close personal servants of the sorcerer-king, however, high-ranking templars have greater access to magic than one might expect. These greedy templars dominate the king's bureaucracy. Although each city organizes its agencies differently, every bureaucracy is steeped in ancient traditions designed to promote the organization's welfare and keep it tied closely to the monarch. Templar bureaus tend to be permeated by intradepartmental treachery and embroiled in external political intrigues with other agencies of the city s bureaucracy. As agents of their monarch's will, templars are feared and despised by common city-dwellers - with good reason, if you ask me. These priests abuse their positions steadily, enforcing the king's edicts with spiteful indifference, taking bribes, and dealing out unjust punishments to anyone who objects. Generally, complaints about the bureaucracy's corruption fall on deaf ears, for the templars are any sorcerer-king's best means of maintaining a stranglehold on the population. Templars are the guardians of reading and writing. Because knowledge is power, and the most efficient way of passing on knowledge is through writing, no one but templars and nobles are permitted to read and write. One of the most sacred duties of the templar bureaucracy is to prevent the knowledge of this art from spreading beyond their own ranks and that of the nobility. Most kings have authorized them to execute on the spot anyone else demonstrating any knowledge of these critical skills. Templars are commonly recruited from the offspring of other templars, or from the ranks of freemen. Technically, a member of the nobility may also join the king's bureaucracy, but most aristocrats consider such positions beneath their honor

The Nobility

The nobles control the farms and the water of the cities. Usually, each noble family picks a senior member to sit on a parliamentary council. In theory, these councils act as advisory bodies to the monarchs, but in reality they are little more than administrative bodies through which the king passes his commands to the aristocracy. It is not rare, however, for the interests of the nobles to be opposed to those of the templars and/or the kings. On such occasions, the advisory councils sometimes find the courage to voice their opposition. When this happens, a flurry of political assassinations usually follows. Most people assume that these assassinations are carried out by the templars on their own initiative or at the king's request. Though the nobles sometimes gather the courage to oppose the templars, or even the king, don't make the mistake of believing that they have the best interests of the city populace at heart. As a class, they are interested only in preserving their hereditary land rights, and they form the largest block of slave-owners in any city. No matter how opposed the nobles might be to the king's policies, they can always be counted on to protect the city (as invasion would strip them of their landed rights). For this reason, every family is allowed to maintain a standing army of slave soldiers, with the young men of the family serving as officers. In an emergency, the king can freely call upon these armies to supplement his own troops. As you might expect, the nobles sometimes turn their armies on each other or the templars, but never the sorcerer-king. The king's magic is usually more than sufficient to deal with the use of force, and any family foolish enough to challenge him in such an obvious fashion suffers terrible consequences. Like the templars, the nobles are permitted to read and write, and they are usually equally vigilant about protecting this critical secret.