The City of Arodil
Except for its size, Arodil city has changed little over the past centuries. Of all the places easily accessible by railcart it is the only city which, despite modern transportation and technology, still reminds you of the way things ‘used to be’, even if you weren’t around when it was that way.
Dusty roads lined sporadically with old houses, the type with broken shutters and drooping porches, cross in no particular pattern or order throughout the city. The city was never built with a growing population in mind. And as it grew, there was never any renovation or reworking of what was already in place, just expansion around the borders.
Even 1-200 hundred years ago the city was still run by local law enforcement and borrowed laws and procedures from the more developed provinces. Now however, it isn’t so much run by any one ruler or sheriff. Instead, it is abstractly governed by the changing needs of the AABD. If certain crops are needed or banned, the farmers do everything they can to follow the rules. And while there are still a few sheriffs and their deputies throughout the city, they usually deal only with small crimes such as petty theft and public disturbances. The threat of losing an entire season’s worth of crops because new rules prohibit it, or the way it was grown, has been a much stronger deterrent than anything a sheriff and the small jails throughout the area can do. This means the farmers and ranchers are quick to abide by any changing rule or law. Without a crop to sell, they can’t make any money, and without any money, they won’t eat.
Arodil city is considered both officially and unofficially to be one of the best places to live in all of Atla. The city proudly holds the title of having the ‘happiest people in Atla’ as recorded by the provincial census and survey (as of 245EM). And though there are many factors (including the climate) which have worked together to form the utopia, it is the care and concern the citizens share for one another that really sets the city apart from all others.
The people of Arodil keep in close contact even during the busiest times of the year. Houses are arranged in small communities where the farms extend out from the front of the houses while the backs form a community park area. Ranging from two house lots where neighbors share their backyards to full communities with hundreds of houses at the nucleus of thousands of acres of farmland, the people always stay close to friends, even if they don’t know them yet.
Tradition has given control of any given farm to the eldest child once they reach the age of 45 (that’s not to say the children don’t work on the farm up until then; the children at that point are usually doing most the work and just accept the farm in name, not having to change any operations) while the aging (usually grand-) parents take over the family markets that have been around for as long as the individual family has had a thumb in the ground. Though the farmers sell their goods to the rest of Atla, the little markets on street corners where it really is ma and pa, who, after decades together, still run and keep the store neat and tidy, have been a major factor in creating and keeping the community happy.
And chances are if you’ve ever been in one of these quaint, tidy markets more than once, ma and pa will know your name and what you like. And when you leave, be sure to return the warm smile they offer.
Don’t let the seemingly perfect atmosphere of the huge city fool you. Arodil has had its share of turmoil and chaos like any other city. The most notable event in the recent past was the war between the Dutch and Pocono family which in the end, after years of problems, is said to have caused deaths numbering in the thousands when the famine is taken into account. This event is unusual however. Though thievery, assault, destruction of property and even murder are present just as they are anywhere else in the world, Arodil truly is the safest of them all. Because the farms are located relatively close to one another, and each one has filled a certain niche, camaraderie has replaced competition. When a drought or insects plague the area, it affects everyone together. Through the numerous droughts and problems during Arodil’s recorded past, the families and farm owners have grown together, forging stronger bonds with each passing of a dark night, greeting the glorious new dawn with renewed passion and friendship.
With the more recent corporate atmosphere which settled in the form of the AABD, many thought the friendships and kindness throughout the city would vanish under the weight of competition and drive for productivity. If anything however, the opposite is true. The farmers as a whole see the AABD and other buyers not as separate organizations or people vying for their crops, but a whole and single entity with which none can be too careful. While a few farms here and there have turned to what some might call ‘shady’ means or the usual business procedures of cutting back to maximize profit, the people as a whole understand the power that comes with unity throughout the city, and that doing good means doing good not just for yourself, but weighing every action with its consequence for the whole.
Adopting the new Magi-Tech has been something the farmers have done only to help expand crops and to gain a better yield. In most cities now you will see anything and everything–blazing signs lighting the way at night, motorcarts driving through the city streets and even entertainment devices–while Arodil still seems lost in history.
Were it not for the railcarts passing by, or the occasional farmer on his motorcart hauling tons of produce, you would never know that the Magi-Tech revolution has been around for nearly 250 years.
What few pieces of Magi-Tech the people as a whole have accepted at one time or another are slowly discarded after the device’s usefulness never made itself clear. The common idea about such Magi-Tech devices has been that “having things cook food, do chores, build buildings and take you places faster hasn’t given us more leisure time. All that stuff’s done is keep the family apart and given us more stress trying to keep up with the new stuff which ain’t any different than the old stuff except that it’s newer”. It is indeed true that many people in Arodil feel that having devices do so many tasks for them hasn’t helped their lives, instead, so many of the new ‘things’ keep the people from doing the things which on the outside don’t have a tangible value yet truly build a person and community from within.
Nobody can say for certain, but the farms that have ‘gone corporate’ as many people call it by cutting personnel and quality to maximize profit, originated when the families stopped spending time together cooking, cleaning and eating and focused more on the worship of Magi-Tech. It can be said however, that the ‘happiest people in Atla’ come from the areas that look suspended in time. Simple facts of the census show that those who have adopted the culture of the rest of Atla fall into the same level of happiness as the rest, that is to say, less happy than their ‘old time’ neighbors.
