Auronim

The city is an international hub, meaning that people of all sorts of ancestries, ethnic backgrounds, and nationalities gather here. The Middle Ring of the city has several districts where people with a shared culture have created a sort of "little home" for themselves and others can come to experience traditional forms of cuisine, entertainment, and even architecture in the case of some newer buildings.   When it comes to wealth, Auronim boasts both the richest and poorest people in the entire contienent. The Auronites who live in the Inner Ring of the city enjoy a life of extravagant opulence, and although they are small in number, they command that vast majority of political, economic, and social power. Meanwhile, the Outer Ring has a large amount of impoverished folks who cannot even afford the smaller abodes of the Middle Ring, where most live in hollowed out ruins, abandoned by progress, or self-built shacks, scraping by on what they can get out of either legitimate jobs in the Middle Ring, trying to reclaim the land through horticulture, or crime.

While Auronim does have a autocratic leader that deals primarily with international intrigue in the form of the Golden One, day-to-day domestic issues are dealt with by the Scion Council, a group made up of Inner Auronites, who each represent one of the major families there. Each family decides on their representative in their own way, each one differing with each family. Whenever a Golden One dies, a new one is selected from any member of the populice by the Scion Council.   Additionally, the Auronites of the Middle Ring also send representatives from each district to petition the Scion Council for laws and decisions that beneifit their people. These representatives, called the Adjurers, are voted on democratically each year by the members of each district. When elected, Adjurers are not paid through the government, so citizens of each district often donate funds to their Adjurer so they can focus on bargaining with the Scions.   The people of the Outer District have no say in the larger governing of the city, but they do have their own form of self-governing as they form mini-communities within the clusters of housing. While each community determines leadership their own way, in general they informally elect a redge, or a "little king". Compared to the Scions and Adjurerers, who pass laws and deal with the minutia of paperwork to rule, redges instead deal with organizing their community and prepping them for bandit or monster attacks.

When it comes to Auronim's defenses, the first thing that people think of is the mighty twin walls that surround the Middle and Inner Rings. The outer wall is 50 feet tall, with sheer walls that are difficult to climb, with only four gates into the city, and only one of them can open at a time. The inner wall is much shorter, only reaching 20 feet, although this only has two gates within. The wall also have several archer towers and ballistae stations along the top of the outer wall to pick off invading forces from far away.   The walls are not the only defense that the city has though, as it is also surrounded on three sides by the bend of a river. The easiest way to cross the rivers is the three bridges set up along the the north, east, and south. However, these bridges can be pulled up to deny passage, as well as to allow boat to sail through the river, but the bridges can also be dropped into the river at a moment's notice from the side closer to the city.

Auronim's economy is a largely service-based one, with most people making their money through selling imports from trade to travellers and other citizens alike, or performing some sort of service like smithing or carpentry. In the Inner Ring, people rarely work outside of politics, with the scion families living off of generational wealth and topping it off with their share of the taxes. In the Outer Ring, when they are able to find a job, it is usually as a dock laborer down south, or working menial job for the service businesses in the Middle Ring.   Most of Auronim's trade is acting as a middle man, skimming transaction fees off the top. There are almost no natural resources that Auronim doesn't import. Instead, they get raw materials from other nations, have their craftsmen work those into finished products, and then trade those crafts back out. The only resource that Auronim has for itself is gold deposits that the city was built on top of, although not much new gold is mined anymore.

Known for being on the forefront of progress, Auronim's infrastructure is no different. The inner two rings have large roads that make moving through the city by carriage smooth and easy, with the roads in the inner two rings being well-maintained. And while the roads are well known, Auronim is truly famous for its two walls. One wall seperates out the Outer Ring from the Middle Ring, with four large gates that lead into the Middle Ring, with the only other way in being to break through or climb over the wall. The second wall seperates the Middle Ring from the Inner Ring and acts more as a secondary wall of defense against attack to preserve the richest families in the city.   While more invisible to the average visitor, and less well known, Auronim also has an extensive sewer system that expands through all of the Middle and Inner Rings, allow dirty water to be funneled to a cleansing facility along the nearby river, where it then sent back up to be used again. The sewers are almost as well-maintained as the roads, with wide walkways that make it easy for laborers to move throughout.   Outside of the main part of the city, there is a set of docks along the southern bend of the river with their own set of buildings for sailors and dock workers to stay. The docks connect directly to the trade roads that lead to the south gates of the city. Despite being outside of the walls, the docks are given more protection and consideration than the Outer City.

There are three main divisions in Auronim: the Outer Ring, the Middle Ring, and the Inner Ring. The Outer Ring is the poorest part of the city, resting outside of the walls that defend the city from bandit and monster attacks. To compensate for being left to defend for themselves, the people of the Outer Ring formed mini communities that help each other out as best as they can. Lacking a signficance legitimate income through meager jobs in the Middle Ring and hard to defend horticultural gardens, most in the Outer Ring resort to crime of various kinds to eke out a life. In fact, most people believe that the thieves' guild of Auronim is located out here.   The Middle Ring is where most of the people of Auronim live: they are wealthy enough to afford a standard house, but they do not have a blood relation to the scion families of the Inner Ring. Similar to the mini communities in the Outer Ring, the Middle Ring is divided into self-decided districts, with their own forms of self-government. Many immigrants from different regions of the world also live here, settling down and forming their own districts, drawing a lot culturally from their mainland. There are also a lot of cultural centers in the Middle District, including several theaters, expensive restaurants, and a couple of museums, encouraging travel between the districts.   The final major division is the Inner Ring where the noble Scion families all live in lavish luxury. Each is supposedly descended from one of the heroes who accompanied the original Golden One in his expedition that founded the city. Each family has a large estate where they have immense halls and outdoor gardens that are larger than single housesholds in the Middle Ring. At the center of the Inner Ring rests the Golden Palace, where the Golden One and their family reside.   Farther outside the city are the docks where several people live, although they are mostly people who work in businesses connected to the sailors, like shipwrights, innkeepers, and foodsellers.

Auronim was founded when an enigmatic figure known only as The Golden One journeyed out, looking for riches, picking up several followers along the way. They eventually found a large and deep deposit of gold in the bend of a river. From there, the group worked together to mine out the gold under The Golden One's supervision, and bartered with surrounding nations enough to build a settlement over the gold deposit.   As time went on, they built up walls around the city to protect themselves from bandits, monsters, and theoretically enemy armies. Originally, there was one wall, protecting the descendents of the original people that joined The Golden One, with all the people that congregated to the city to join in the riches living outside the wall. Eventually, as more wealth built up outside the wall, another wall was constructed farther out, cutting out the poorest of the commoners and forming the city that people recognize today.   Most recently, Auronim bolstered its reputation even further by being instrumental in the defeat of Silrioch in the Mad King's War. They used their central position and access to a river to rally the other nations and move troops along to battle the Silrion forces.

The city itself sits on a temperate grassland, but its location is notable for being within a large bend of river, to the point where it is almost surrounded on all sides by water. This water is especially useful for facilitating trade, as not much agriculture takes place in the city's territory, so irrigation is not needed. The river is also used as natural defense, and to help with the sewage system within the city.