Albor Broce
Albor Broce is the capital of Exeter Province, built 69 years before the be-ginning of the Imperial Record. Built on the site of an early Hyperborean fort, the streets still run in the straight grid laid out by the Hyperboreans, though the city has long since outgrown the ditch that surrounded the fort. In some places in the city, the ditch and berm can still be discerned as a gentle, curving rise in the ground, and occasionally the citizens still find artifacts of old Hyperborea when digging for new wells or building foundations. The city is well-fortified with high stone walls, and Lord-Governor Benevic has personally supervised their repair and improvement. The Citadel of Broce, home and court of the lord-governor, is constantly abuzz with soldiers training at siege defense and with the comings and goings of his force of spies.
These spies are organized as the Squires of the Ferret, which does not grant its members the full status of knighthood (which the lord-governor awards only to those who are staunch warriors), but lends them approximately the same powers as a sheriff. The Provincial Order of the Squires of the Ferret is commanded by a knight by the name of Sir Ghendric the Terrier, who essentially functions as Lord Benevic’s spymaster. Since the province actually contains only a very few subversive conspirators, the Terrier has to stretch a bit to justify his position, and has a long-standing practice of treating late tax payments as evidence of treasonous intent.
The troops stationed in Albor Broce are trained to perfection, although most are unbloodied in combat; they should be a formidable fighting force if challenged. They are efficient at keeping order in the city, and their informants are well paid; any sort of crime beyond petty thievery is extraordinarily rare within the city walls.
Unlike most cities in the Borderland Provinces, Albor Broce has no municipal government of its own; it is treated as part of the lord-governor’s direct responsibility, and the lord-governor delegates most tasks to Sir Rohnic Ort, his “Minister of the Capital.” Sir Ort is a capable administrator and an intelligent man. He is disturbed by the increasing lawlessness of the countryside beyond the capital, but he considers his role to be limited to the city and nothing but the city. Moreover, even if someone asked him for a solution to the problems in Exeter Province, he would have no answer. Sir Ort is trapped within the same defensive mentality as the lord-governor, unable to see that all the province’s resources for keeping order are deployed around the borders instead of balanced between the borders and the countryside. To be fair, Sir Ort has a weaker perspective than the lord-governor, since he is not privy to the province’s large-scale deployments. Sitting in the well-defended capital, he has no way of un-derstanding that within 25 miles of his armories are villages utterly undefended from even the threat of a few lightly-armed ruffians.
All traveling merchants passing through Albor Broce are required to bring their wagons to a large customs house just inside the gate where the contents are tallied and then taxed at 2% of their value. The lord-governor’s tax-assessors are not easily bribed, for they know they are watched carefully by the Squires of the Ferret, and accepting bribes is a capital crime.
Capital
Albor Broce (Capital)
Type
Capital
Owning Organization
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