NixFall

Inclusion

With a population of 3961 citizens, Nixfall is pretty varied when talking about how different species are distributed along its territory, since it is a hub for misfits all around the kingdom after all: you may see everything from humans, elves, halflings and dwarves, to goliaths, dragonborns, tieflings, gith, tieflings, undead, and fae.
 

Work/Economy

The way this population contributes to the economy is by way of day to day work. Nixfall is a settlement based on subsistence, which means that it is forced to produce anything it needs on its own. Furthermore, realizing the only large humanoid settlement of The North, and by making peace with the fact that the only way to get to the rest of the continent is by crossing The Forest, it was decided that trading would probably never be an option.   Each individual is assigned a "job" based on their previous professional experience and put to work immediately. The pay gotten from doing this kind of work is given in the form of food, housing, power (energy), and the overall coverage of basic needs for decently comfortable living.
Those who can't find a way to contribute to the community in one way or another, be it thanks to incurable sickness, reluctancy or sloth, may need to be exiled from the settlement... in favor of saving resources for those who can.
  Be it as it may, the number of living or unliving beings who had to actually go through this process were very few, everyone is good at something, they only need the motivation to find it, and harness it, for the good of the commune.  

Social Classes and Roles

Social segregation is not the way Nixfall's community deals with roles and power, there are only those who work (de som jobber), and above, those who rule (de som styrer), nothing lesser, nothing better.

• De som styrer include the Northern Council members, ambassadors, and the work supervisors of their respective fields.
• De som jobber encompass everyone else: lumberjacks, farmers, cooks, hunters, adventurers, nature dwellers, soldiers, knights, wizards, scholars, engineers, and prisoners.

Every newcomer to Nixfall is assigned to any of these 15 roles and are advised to do what needs to be done.
As things works in any meritocracy, the better the work, the more belønninger they get. The term "belønninger" refers to the credit system in which Nixfall's economy is built upon, credits are rewarded to each citizen every week based on quality and quantity of work, they can be spent in the Services District or exchanged by valuables with other citizens, basically acting as a non-exchangeable local currency for daily living.

The Town is led and managed by a permanent government known as the Northern Council, made up mostly by Frostfallen Family Members, Banneret Knights, and Work Supervisors who give a voice to different working sectors of the community, two for resources, one for science, and one for magic.
  It has 13 seats as is Frostfallen Tradition, and 11 of those seats share the same font of political power. Only the seats of the Lord and Lady Paramount of the North hold an additional veto power, as they are the ones trusted with leading the community to the right path forward, even if they can't understand what that means at the time.
  They control all, the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of the commune, but their belønninger is average, and they are barred to have any lingering power outside of their assigned roles, so they aren't above the law, or socially above the humble workers of Nixfall, they just do another type of work.

Nixfall is built upon the foundation of an ancient Frost Giant's bastion, so it is surrounded by an outer wall made to sustain their strength and height, standing just over 50 feet tall and with stone masonry imbued with some kind of material which has not been identified as of yet, suspected to originate from the Whispering Peaks, but it provides a sturdiness to the walls that not even Fireballs can break through.

However, as a consequence of this, the two gates that give access to the settlement are also as tall as the outer walls, 20 feet wide too, so they act as major defence gaps, addressed by having them magically shut at all times, and heavily defended top to bottom by Frostfallen Knights, wizards, and outer-gate soldiers.   On the other hand, defences against environmental threats are equally as important, so some of the town's mages and artificers are assigned to heat up the city when things get too cold, conjure abjurations barriers to protect it from invasions or Glyggems, or cover it in illusions to keep unwary travelers and creatures away from its environs.

The territory Nixfall was built upon was a deserted Frost Giants' Hold, left empty after the Great Migration to the North, so it has inherited many of the Giants' buildings and sturdy infrastructure and put them to good use, be it to defend the city with their stubborn, well crafted walls, or to house many of the townsfolk who do not have the luxury of a Lantern of Scelerious Envision, and need somewhere to call home.
  Furthermore, the main government building used to house the Northern Council is actually an ancient castle where the Frost Giants' Jarl (or community leader) used to live and rule.
  The town's people call it the Grey Hold.
  It is a massive structure, specially when compared with the wooden houses and structures that populate most of Nixfall. Nevertheless, it seems to have taken much damage during the years of the Dragon-Giant wars, considering the substantial holes it has yet to cover, the burnt wood and signs of molten rock that show in the upper towers, and the White Dragon Statue that rests on top of its tallest tower, which has crumbled off the top into the castle.

No matter the defects, the Grey Hold is still highly defensible, and serves the purpose of a crisis shelter during Praesticus raids, Glyggems, or when the Sacred Permafrost Reeducators arrive for their bimonthly checkup...
Also, it is not the only Giant structure put to use around the city, see "Districts" for more building information.

Three main administrative districts where established since Nixfall's founding, taking the role of vital organs tasked with the sole purpose keeping the body alive. Anything outside of these districts can be regarded either as living space or as general amenities:
 

• Styrer District: a heavily defended square where the Grey Hold stands tall, providing the services of a Town Hall, harboring the Council Chamber, and a living space for Frostfallen family members and high quality workers and soldiers. Close by is the Northern Magisterium, which has been repurposed to serve as a conference meeting hall where the family leaders address Nixfall's population with necessary announcements or political briefings.
 
• Services District: surrounding the Jarl's Courtyard, decorated by the sculpture of the Armored Titan, is the town's largest trading market, tasked with providing goods and services to the populace with enough credits to afford them, these include: craft food and drink stalls, Nixfall's general Workshop, Shaealyn Elderwood Library, the Tavern of Andre Sjanser, and the Jermyas Frostfallen School of Permanent Learning.
 
• Subsistence District: a collection of squares close to the outer walls, surrounding the Jermyas Frostfallen Yard, where the resource guilds are established and managed. The city needs to survive on its own as it has nowhere to trade, so the guilds are tasked with training townsfolk to arm themselves and learn the ways of the snow to explore the depths of the Hemiboreal Forest in search of necessary resources for the population to subsist, guilds include: lumberjacks, farmers, hunters, adventurers, and nature dwellers.

  The rest of the blocks are mostly living districts, where each district's community collaborate with each other and set up their own businesses so each living district can subsist on their own and not depend in the efficiency of the central government's system. Some have planted their own crops and trees, made their own water wells, their own religious hubs, etc.

Most of the Frostfallen Family's resources were lost to time, the war, or the exile, very little is left.
  The Shaealyn Elderwood Library in the Services District holds the remains of the Family's knowledge stash, which was mostly burnt to the ground while Jermyas was Arcane Sieging Yhernier, the Sacred Capital. Most of the remaining books are either stories, novels, history lessons, professional guides, or War Magic grimoires, reserved only for the town's local wizards.
  Nixfall's general workshop also harbors some valuable assets, with the wool of the Northern Pecus being a valuable, but rare defensive mechanism reserved mostly for the Frostfallen Knights, or the very rare pieces of Black Ice which provide reasonable offensive capabilities when turned into weaponry.
  The rest of the settlement does the best it can to subsist with the local resources gathered by the workers day after day, putting their life on the line so that their children and their children's children don't starve to death. This is the way of life of the exiled wildlings ever since they fell out of grace, is there really no possible way to change this?

When looking for work to gain credits and support the local commune, once could look to join and support one of the following guilds of de som jobber:
 

• Lumberjacks: tasked with cutting down and replanting trees of the surrounding Hemiboreal Forest for the building of houses and tools.


• Farmers: with little to no arable land around Nixfall, farmers use Arkanical Agriculture as a way of producing synthetic food in enclosed environments, growing potatoes, wheat, peas, and meat.


• Cooks: Nixfall is one of the few settlements of Novarkan (for better or for worse) which cooks their food in the traditional way, via cooking crafts, which means preparing, cooking, and serving the food all by hand using natural resources like charcoal and fire, unlike the traditional method of conjuring food into existence via the Novarkan Weave.


• Hunters and nature dwellers: both are dangerous professions tasked with venturing into the wilds near the city to gather resources for living, including fruits, meat, fur, bones, and ice.


• Adventurers: a role designated only to the brave of heart, adventurers venture further from the wilds to do reconnaissance tasks, searching for outlander camps or ruins to take resources and technology from. They may travel as far as the Perpetual Glacier or even Mt. Gate, but few end up returning back alive...


• Soldiers and Knights: tasked with defending the city and keeping the peace amongst the commonfolk. They tend to follow the chain of command, but have liberty of choice when dealing with minor crimes or unfriendly disputes.


• Scholars and Wizards: students of the Novarkan Weave are pretty few in Nixfall, so they are high value workers with many purposes to serve all over Nixfall. They tend to live in the Grey Hold amongst the Frostfallen Family.


• Engineers and Artificers: also high value workers tasked with civil, mechanical, and military engineering. Their hub is Nixfall's general Workshop where they sell their wares and lend the soldiers any equipment they need for keeping the peace.
  They are barred from going to war.


• Prisoners: faithful to the old ways of Jermyas Frostfallen, the prisoners of Nixfall are not punished with imprisonment but with creditless forced labor, supervised by the town's peacekeepers.
  If they complete enough work to satisfy their criminal transgressions, they may be promoted back to workers and to their normal lives, with a warning of course.

Read The Frostfallen House article for more information about Nixfall's come to being.

Consult The North's article for more information about Northern ecology, climate, and how it affects living beings.