Haven Sanctuary

The Haven of today is a constantly-shifting melting pot, housing permanent, Haven-born residents as well as refugees, travelers, seasonal residents, and workers-for-hire just looking for a busy place to earn some coin. No one is turned away, and everyone is considered entitled to a fresh start on arrival.
Curiously, the city gates somehow manage to lead to every major region in the known world, connecting to more roads than natural geometry should allow, and the outlying fields that feed its people seem to border on no particular region at all.

Demographics

About one third of Haven Sanctuary's residents are the descendants of the people who lived in the original Freehaven. This group is almost exclusively of human heritage, though there have been a number of mixed unions through the years that has added some more diversity in that particular group.
About two fifths to half of the population is comprised of refugees or descendants of refugees in some sense. There is greater variety in species and ethnicity among this group, and it has some overlap with the former due to intermarriage.
The remainder is split between seasonal residents, whose occupations or callings bring them elsewhere for part of the year, and travelers with no set pattern or schedule, but for whom Haven is still a set point that they come back to frequently enough to call it home, or for other residents to consider them Havenfolk. This is the group with the greatest variety in species, partially because includes less-seen species with a natural wanderlust, who aren't likely to be permanent, settled residents anywhere.

Government

Haven Sanctuary's core Guiding Council consists of the heads of each of the Guilds with an active presence in the city, and makes many of the decisions regarding its day-to-day business without further influence. When a group without Guild representation stands to be impacted by a decision, a representative chosen by that group will be invited as an auxiliary Guiding Council member in order to ensure that the group's interests are heard and considered. In that way the exact size of the Guiding Council can vary depending on what issue is being discussed. When speaking of a "full Guiding Council," what is referred to is a gathering of all core and auxiliary Guiding Council members. The current Lord or Lady Freehaven also has a seat on the full Guiding Council, as well as a courtesy seat as an observer in any regular Guiding Council session. As an observer they are expected to refrain from speaking on the issues being discussed unless directly called on to break a tie.
The existence of a role of tie breaker is, itself, largely a formality. In order to call for the sitting Lord or Lady to break a tie, all avenues of possible compromise must first be exhausted, on the theory that a decision that goes against half of the Guiding Council's votes is probably not going to be a better decision for the city as a whole than a decision that the Guiding Council can grudgingly agree on.
The Guiding Council's primary role is legislative and organizational, leaving judicial and executive powers largely to a separate law enforcement system. Any person who feels their sentence has been unjust may, however, appeal the justice system's decision to the Guiding Council, and the Council's decision to the sitting Lord or Lady Freehaven. The primary concern for the Guiding Council in these cases is whether law has been applied correctly, though there have been situations where an appeal has revealed aspects of the law deemed by the Guiding Council to be unjust, and resulted in a pardon being issued and the relevant law amended to prevent future injustice. The Lord or Lady has the right to issue pardons at their discretion, but it is a right exercised sparingly.
One of the guiding principles of Haven Sanctuary is that the city, while it may cooperate with other powers to reach common goals, is ultimately an independent, neutral entity. It will provide sanctuary to any one that requests it, allowing such persons a fresh start within city walls. While assault is always taken seriously by the law, any attacks motivated by transgressions committed outside Haven prior to seeking sanctuary will be looked upon particularly severely. As such, the city does not enter extradition treaties or similar agreements with other governments, and any exception made would have to be by unanimous decision of its full Guiding Council. Such an exception has never been made to date, and is unlikely to ever be made, but is technically allowed for by the city's Founding Laws.
As a sanctuary city, while it is understood that disagreements will sometimes come to blows, Haven Sanctuary requires that weapons be peace-bonded in public or shared spaces not dedicated to combat training, unless one is an on-duty keeper of the peace. Drawing a weapon or using offensive magic outside the context of combat training will at best result in stiff fines, and at worst get the offender shown out the city gates, with exceptions made for self-defense and the sale, repair, or enhancement of weaponry.

Defences

Haven Sanctuary, in the days when it was called Freehaven, originally was constructed as a pretty standard lordship capital - a central keep surrounded by inner walls, and a set of outer walls to surround the city itself. Within those walls, rows of houses were built in pairs of semicircles, each ring offset by a quarter-turn so as to increase the distance between the outer gates and the keep in case the city came under attack.
Since then the outer wall has been raised and received a second, lower wall some three ells out from the inner wall. This outer wall is intended to be a first line of defense to bottleneck an attempted siege and make them vulnerable to attack from the higher vantage point of the taller wall with less room to regroup. The area between the walls is frequently used to dispose of refuse such as spoiled straw, though there are penalties for leaving anything liable to attract pests such as food waste or non-degradable materials such as bricks or pottery. A few times a year anything left between the walls is raked into refuse piles which are then burned as a means of final disposal.
It is worth mentioning that a significant portion of the travelers who make Haven their home-to-return-to are mercenaries, bounty hunters, or people whose callings otherwise involve combat. For many of them, Haven Sanctuary becomes a much-needed and treasured break from a life of danger and a place to recuperate from injuries both physical and mental. While many of them are more accustomed to fighting alone or in a small group than being part of a larger unit, they nevertheless provide a formidable addition to the city's defenders.

Infrastructure

Haven Sanctuary has a rudimentary recycling system - there are designated drop-off points for metal such as worn-out horseshoes and other reclaimable materials. The contents will then be collected and distributed fairly among local craftsmen based on their ledgers for the last three months, with those that have used more materials receiving the larger share on the theory that more of the material probably originated with them.
Emergency housing for citizens exists within the inner keep, along with space to care for the wounded, clean water sources and a generous stockpile of preserved foodstuffs that is rotated as fresher supplies are available. These are maintained but not in active use, intended as protection for the population in case of a siege or other catastrophic event that endangers all or parts of the city proper. This housing is far from spacious, but having a roof over your head and a place to sleep, even if it is crowded, is surely better than to risk mortal danger.

History

Before Haven Sanctuary became what it is today, and simply was known as Freehaven, it was ruled by a generally benevolent Free-Lord, who claimed no land beyond his city and the land his subjects worked, and who refused to swear an oath of allegiance to any King or court. Freehaven was relatively successful as an independent lordship for a time, though there were time when one bordering nation or another attempted force the Free-Lord's hand by closing trade routes with the city, hoping that becoming a vassal of would seem a small price to pay for the reopening of trade. When such measures failed, a newly-crowned ruler decided to put a much bloodier end to the thorn in their side that was the continued independence of Freehaven. The city's population was decimated as it was overrun by the foreign army, shields painted black and wearing no ruler's colors, and any person encountered in the central keep slain in an effort to eradicate the Free-Lord's line. By pure dumb luck the Free-Lord's cousin Lady Emyla Freehaven was late returning from a ride due to her horse taking lame, and managed to escape the carnage unscathed. When she returned, she found her city in shock and her family murdered, and resolved to not only help her people heal from the trauma, but also to make the people responsible for all these deaths answer for the callous slaughter. When finding the perpetrators proved easier said than done, and all chances of resolving the situation through official diplomacy seemingly exhausted, she entrusted the running of the lordship to the heads of the Guilds, extracting from them a promise that they would not neglect the plights of any subject who had no Guild to speak for them, and rode out to seek the truth through other channels.
On her return, and seeing that the city had fared well under the temporary government she'd installed in her absence, she came to formalize that arrangement, with the Freehaven family retaining veto rights for any major decision, and with the ability to reverse judicial decisions made by the Guiding Council thus formed. The veto right was later reduced to the sitting Lord or Lady Freehaven simply having a tie-breaker role in the Guiding Council, with no vote on the Council outside that role.
In seeking justice for the event that came to be known as PLACEHOLDER, Lady Emyla eventually managed to, with the support of neighboring nations, confront the engineer of her family's destruction with the evidence of their role in orchestrating the bloodbath. While she ultimately showed enough mercy (or restraint) to leave them and their family unharmed, she returned to Freehaven having left the offender's coffers bare. With the gold she'd extracted as compensation for the harm that had come to her and her city, she hired master spellcrafters to turn Haven into what it is today: a city bordering on every realm, surrounded by lands seemingly bordering on none. How exactly they accomplished this peculiar folding of space is lost to history; if they made any notes about it those are safely locked up somewhere in the inner sanctum of Freehaven Keep.
The city thus connected to roads that could be reached by any traveler in search of shelter, Lady Emyla declared her city sanctuary for all those needing it. It's not always easy to reach; if one is not traveling with someone who already knows the way the right roads only seem available to those with a great need for shelter, whether from disaster or persecution, and only if they truly believe that a place exists where such shelter can be found.

Architecture

Most of the buildings in Haven are constructed of gray stone or wattle and daub, in both cases framed with visible timber. Most of the daub is made from some combination of clay, lime, sand, manure, straw, feathers, and hair, with hair only really being used in walls constructed during livestock shedding season. Wattle-and-daub buildings are whitewashed and painted, while many stone buildings still have the stone exposed. Interior walls, unless load-bearing, are usually wattle panels hung with sheets of coarse fabric, which is often used as a canvas for children to start learning stitching and mending. Windows tend to be small, using greased paper or reclaimed parchment rather than glass; in the few houses that do have glass windows the glass is thick, bubbly, and in practice offer only limited visibility. Most roofs use reed or flat wooden shingles for coverings, save for buildings used by businesses that depend on open flame, such as smithies, whose shingles are instead made from fired clay or slate.
Major streets are cobbled, with a half-ell of bare packed dirt on each side which residents often use to place grow-boxes and objects they wish to decorate the front of their homes with. Those that run a business out of their home, or simply have a surplus they wish to sell, may also place a bench with samples of their wares in this space. The homes of seasonal or intermittent residents are often identifiable by the lack of decor that requires regular care.

Alternative Name(s)

Freehaven (deprecated), Haven, Sanctuary

Type

City

Inhabitant Demonym

Havenfolk