Citizens of
Arc enjoy complete freedom of movement throughout the Arclands, with the notable exception of Skaris, they are incorporated into the body politic, so that an attack on their person is an attack on the entire polis of Arc. Moreover they can use their citizenship as collateral to guarantee any loan, and have recourse to support and protection from Arc’s embassies in other cities and nations. Most importantly citizenship affords citizens of Arc rights to private property, protection from enslavement, the right to marriage. It also allows citizens to serve in Arc’s military, and guarantees recourse to Arc’s judiciary system in criminal matters. Foreigners or visitors to the city must apply for temporary citizenship for the duration of their visit, however temporary citizenship can be revoked at any time by the authorities of Arc. A visitor whose citizenship is revoked is immediately deported for the city. As debt became an increasingly important component of Arc’s economy. All citizens, by default, became indebted to the state of Arc for their citizenship. As Arc has never had a conception of inalienable rights, the only recognised rights are civic rights, bestowed upon citizens of Arc as a form of Grace, one which is always undeserved, and unreciprocable, since without citizenship their life and all their possessions are forfeit to the state of Arc. Thus the value of citizenship always transcends the value of the individual citizen.
A declining power
As Arc’s power declined citizenship became an increasingly important aspect of Arc’s countermeasures to check the expansion of
Dran as a military power, and the rise of Taeor as the most important commercial centre in the Arclands. Previously Arc’s currency was backed by gold, however as Dran started to emerge as an increasingly hostile rival to Arc and the city’s grip over its empire started to weaken, it found that it needed to borrow well beyond its means to arrest its decline, and stave off the threat of being eclipsed, and eventually subjugated by Dran. As Taeor started to replace Arc as the centre of trade in the Arclands, The Azure Chamber, lobbied by the Houses of Coin became concerned that if Taeor dominated the commodity market, they could manipulate the value of Arc’s currency, as the Taeorianswere placed to manipulate the value of gold, the commodity upon which it was based. Above all the ruling council of Arc feared an alliance between Dran and Taeor could topple Arc’s Empire. Their solution was to create a fiat currency, backed by Arcite citizenship, the Arcish levat.
Citizens
Since Arcite citizenship was the sole font of all rights of ownership, including the ownership of one’s own person, it transcended the value of any commodity, and could only be bestowed or revoked by the state of Arc. As a citizen, and thus a member of Arc’s polis, under Arc law, the word of the borrower was the word of Arc itself. If they then broke that word, their actions would be said to bring Arc into disrepute, and thus in order to retain the value of Arc citizenship, the city of Arc would be obliged to strip a debtor, who violated the terms of a loan, of their citizenship revoking all their rights and sentencing them to a lifetime of servitude in the Oboline district of the city as punishment. Arcites are careful not to refer to this as slavery (even though it clearly is), instead the debtor is refered to as a 'Ward of the City' and consideredto have no further rights. They are no longer citizens of Arc but the property of the Oboline, undeserving of even a lifetime of total subjugation since no amount of labour can recover their citizenship. If Arc forgave those that put it into disrepute by breaking their word, the value of its citizenship would depreciate significantly. Thus once the initial debt and interest has been paid to the creditor, settling the terms of the debt and ensuring that Arc fulfilled the obligations of its debtors, the debtor would become a ward of Arc itself, to be used in whatever way the state sees fit with no recourse to object to even the most sickeningly inhumane treatment. A ward of the Oboline even loses the right to commit suicide, since it is no longer their life to take. Those who take their lives or try to escape find that their family are enslaved in their place, not only to pay off the debt they incurred in life, but also to recompense the state of Arc for the loss property incurred by the suicide of a ward. Faced with this threat, and with no recourse to contest the revocation of their citizenship, since any right of appeal is forfeited with the loss of citizenship, there is a great incentive for a citizen of Arc to settle their debts at almost any cost, and a guaranteed return on their investment to any lender. Consequently, the value of Arcish citizenship outstripped any commodity becoming the most desirable form of collateral available. Since Arc’s currency was backed by the value of its citizenship, Arc was able to produce currency to expand its economy without inflating its currency. Soon Arcish citizenship was respected enough to secure almost any loan, allowing Arc a greater scope than any other power to borrow. Consequently Arc was able to reinvent itself as Aestis’ financial centre, allowing it to maintain its ascendency over Taeor and giving it the economic breathing space to compete with Dran militarily.
The Houses Of Coin
Seeing an opportunity to expand their power immensely the
The Houses of Coin pushed through a law ensuring that even the smallest loan had to be guaranteed by the citizenship of the borrower. Since the citizenship of a Arcish citizen was their most valuable possession, and the consequences of breaking the terms of a loan were, in many ways, worse than death, the Houses of Coin were able to use the threat of the Oboline to control debtors unable to pay their loans by offering extensions in exchange for services or favours. Thus it was in the interest of the Houses of Coin to entrap as many people as possible in debt, as well as to stigmatise indebtedness to isolate debtors and strip any support networks that could extricate them from their predicament. To this end the rituals of citizenship became entwined inextricably with the Oboline, enshrining it not only as the debtors district, but as the cultic centre of Arc’s civic religion.
The Oboline and Rituals of Citizenship
The Oboline Quarter, known simply as The Oboline, is a small but thriving enclave that lies almost exactly halfway along the side of The
Dures Road closest to the city’s eastern wall. Along with the
The Trophym it is one of the oldest districts in Arc, pre-dating the institution of Aruhvianism as the city’s religion by several centuries. The Oboline is an austere and imposing complex, with walls hewn from cyclopean blocks of Firg masonry so high that much of the district is shrouded in their shadow. Access is tightly controlled with only two arched entrances, known as the Crones, cut into the eastern and western walls. Since the founding of the city The Oboline has been largely autonomous from the Arcite government and the Aruhvian Church, serving as a cultic centre of the Grace Levanto, until it was purged of Levanto’s devotees in the aftermath of the Council of Gol. Once Arc adopted the Arcish Levat (see
The Levat and Modern Arcish Currency) as its currency, the cult of Levanto was revived by the Houses of Coin, to incorporate the business of debt collection into Arc’s civic religion. From that point onwards the Oboline was to become synonymous with the suffering of Arc’s poor, a looming threat that cast its shadow over the whole city, devoted to the collection of debt and the exclusion of debtors from civic life.
On becoming a citizen
One result of this revival was the ritualisation of citizenship. Prospective citizens would be led in a procession into the Oboline, their passage through the city announced by a cacophony of flutes, drums, horns and bullroarers, garlanded with wreaths, and adorned with necklaces and bracelets made of pinecones and the shells of sea urchins, folk memories of the Golan rituals that the Aruhvian church could never quite stamp out, upon hearing the procession, often conducted in the early hours of the morning, people would run out of their houses, line the streets and bang pots and pans together, mimicking the final cries of the animal world they were leaving behind in becoming civic men and women. The night where one became a citizen was a final night of license, for they would not be bound to their civic duties before the rising of the sun over the city. Consequently, the ordination of citizens is more often than not conducted in winter with the largest and most debauched festivities occurring on the winter solstice, the night where the boundaries between civic and animal man are at their most porous. Once they have been led into the Oboline, the prospective citizens are each given a hammer and chisel, they descend down the steps into one of the Oboline mines, pursued by masked men and women imitating various wild animals,and doing everything in their power to make them turn around. If they look back at any point they are dragged up to the surface, sewn into an animal skin and must race around the Oboline on all fours until the sun rises, as the crowds jeers and pelts them with rotten meat prepared for the occasion. Once they have descended into the mine they are led to a large deposit of black onyx, where they are instructed to extract a piece large enough to adorn a brooch. They will then give it to one of the Smiths of Obola, an order of priests that preside over the district, who will work through the night and the morning to fashion a brooch before sunrise.
The Smiths of Obola
The Smiths of Obola extract a vial of blood from the prospective citizens, then drive them with whips up to the surface, where they are expected to transgress every law and expectation of citizenship in their conduct towards the inhabitants of the Oboline, who until morning and forced into the role of their victims. In the days leading up to, and on, the winter solstice, the sack of Arc is enacted with little to no restraint in the confines of the Oboline. Within its confines Arc is destroyed on the darkest day of the year, so that it may be renewed with the coming of the rising sun. All citizens participate in this event which lasts four days and nights, destroying many of the Oboline’s prisoners who play the role of the victimised citizens, so even the poorest and most deprived citizen is elevated to the role of a conqueror with power over life and death in the annual pogrom.
Once morning has broken and the frenzy of the night has exhausted the prospective citizens, the Smiths of Obola present them with a primitive stone box, with a set of scales weighing atoms of time intricately carved on the lid. Inside the box is a copper green brooch adorned with the uncut onyx they chiseled out earlier that night. They place it in the wall surrounding the Temple of the Eyeless that lies at the centre of the Oboline, a wall known as the Apertures of the Faceless, swearing that they will never give cause for the brooch to be removed from the wall during their lifetime. Once this oath has been sworn, and witnessed by the priesthood of the Oboline, and thus recognised in the eyes of the Graces, they are presented with a signet ring inscribed with a unique crest, that from that day forth shall be their emblem. The ring will act as an outward sign of their citizenship, and serve as their signature, giving the weight of Arcish citizenship to any agreement or transaction they enter into.
A deal with Arc
By entering into civic life, the citizen of Arc enters into a binding social contract, gaining the privileges and protections of citizenship along with the risks. Each signet ring is registered to a specific owner, inscribed with a magical hallmark which only the Smiths of Obola, or powerful mages, know how to reveal, as a precaution against forgery. The inscription of the signet ring is bound to its owners blood, and the crest inscribed on the signet ring is branded onto their arm, as an incantation is chanted. Consequently, the hallmark will only appear on documents stamped by the citizen as it is inextricably linked with the citizen’s blood. This prevents all but the most sophisticated of forgers from using the signet ring of a citizen of Arc. Conversely a document bearing the hallmark of a citizen of Arc’s signet ring is incontrovertibly linked with that individual, preventing them from claiming a fraudulent use of the signet ring to get out of contracts. If a citizen of Arc fails to meet the terms of a contract or loan, then they are escorted under armed guard to the Oboline, where they must journey to the Apertures of Facelessness to retrieve their brooch. They are then lead to the square in their neighbourhood where they are forced to wear the brooch as a symbol of their failure to live up to the responsibilities and duties of a citizen of Arc, the tattoo of the crest on their signet ring is removed by branding the seal of Levanto, a set of scales weighing atoms of time, on their arm, permanently marking them as a debtor.
Enemies of the people
Those who consort with a citizen bearing Levanto’s seal and wearing the onyx brooch are considered suspect in the eyes of their fellow citizens, those who live in the neighbourhood of the offending citizen are given the opportunity to publicly denounce and disown them, spouses to annul their marriages, they are essentially banned from public life and given a two day period of grace under surveillance, to prevent them from running, to set their affairs in order and to try and find a way to either fulfill the terms of the contract or gain an extension, before they are dragged off to a lifetime of slavery in the Oboline. During this period an inventory is made of their possessions and their life is dismantled piece by piece so that they enter into the Oboline with nothing but the clothes on their back. Their civic humanity is destroyed and they are forced to crawl through the streets, sewn into the skins of stray dogs to signify to other citizens that they have proved unworthy of social existence, and are reduced to the state of animals. Citizens chase them through the streets symbolically hunting them down and tearing the skins off them, to show that they have proved themselves unworthy of even animal life. Only then, when they have been stripped of both civic and animal life will the gates of the Oboline creak open to receive them into a life so arduous that the entry of their souls into Damnation is said to be a reprieve.
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