If any of you have seen The Brotherhood of the Rose a 1989 TV movie, then this will be familiar to you. I really liked the idea of the Abelard Treaty, so I decided to incorporate it into The Realm.
First a little history...
After the Catastrophe, the old state and country boundaries disappeared and the city-states grew in their place. As might be expected, many wars were fought between the city-states. A few centuries after the Catastrophe and the rise of the city-states, Alexander Pendragon, a great and powerful king, managed to unify The Realm. For all of his life, a great peace was over The Realm. It was said that one could ride unguarded from one end of The Realm to the other with 1000 g.p. and be in no danger of theft. After Alexander's death, the empire he had put together fell apart again and city-state divisions returned. Wars became more frequent, and, once again, The Realm became a dangerous place in which to live.
Now, the main subject...
The rulers of the various city-states decided that the peace and safety which had been over The Realm during Alexander's reign was a useful thing. It had made espionage and travel much easier. Thus, most of the rulers gathered in a neutral city called Abelard for a peace conference. The main thrust of this conference was to establish a lasting peace among all of the city-states of The Realm, without crowning any one person King or Emperor of The Realm. As they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions . As may be expected, the rulers could not agree to boundary demarcations, or much else for that matter. There were heated arguments and some even erupted into violence. At the end of the third day of the conference, most of the rulers had stormed off to their lodgings, vowing not to return to the conference, unless some condition or other was met. Of course, many of these conditions were mutually exclusive.
Just when all seemed bleak, one of the rulers, King Soloman of Yeshua, came up with an idea to, at least partially, save the conference and the good intentions of the rulers. He managed to persuade most of the attending rulers to return, with the promise that borders, political ideologies, and theologies would not be discussed.
At the meeting, he presented the outline of the Abelard Treaty. He proposed that each city-state fund and maintain a safe house which anyone, without restriction, could use. Within the confines of the safe house, there could be no violence. Two of the worst enemies would be safe from each other even if they were in the same room. The penalty for breaking this rule (which came to be known as the Abelard Sanction) would be instant death. If a perpetrator managed to get away, he would be would not be given sanctuary in any city-state, and the city-state of which he was a citizen would be denied Abelard safety until the violator was dead.
This proposal went over amazingly well, and was carried unanimously. It was decided that the safe houses not be in the city proper, but some miles away in a secluded and easily guarded area. It was further decided that men and women from the neutral city of Abelard would staff the safe houses and ensure the keeping of the Abelard Sanction. A new caste was created called The Caretaker. The men and women who staff the Abelard safe houses automatically become members of this caste, It is a High Caste, due to the importance of the work. The safe houses themselves would be relatively small, no bigger than 20 rooms. They could be anything from abandoned monasteries to newly built, modern structures. There would be no cost to the guests; all costs are to be the responsibility of the host city-state. With one exception, a person could only stay in an Abelard safe house for a period of two weeks. The one exception is the safe house known as the Abelard Retreat. It is located just outside of Abelard itself, and is a converted castle. This safe house is special as it is not funded by Abelard (the city-state). Instead, there is a cost involved, and not a cheap one. It costs 1000 g.p./week to stay at the Abelard Retreat, but one can stay as long as one can pay. The Retreat is huge, with just about any recreation that anyone could want. Of course, the Abelard Sanction is in effect at the Retreat, just as it is in any Abelard safe house.
Not just anyone can stay at an Abelard safe house. One must produce documents which prove that one is in the service of the government of a city-state. There is a black market for such documents, removed from the bodies of dead government employees. It can cost upwards of 20,000 g.p. to obtain the documents on the black market, and they can be sold for upwards of 15,000 g.p. But, to stay at the Abelard Retreat, a person will be checked out with the government for which he works. Thus, there are no illegal residents at the Retreat.
There have been incidents at Abelard safe houses in the past, but never at the Abelard Retreat. In one incident, a representative of Neyork murdered a representative of Seattle at a safe house in London. The representative of Neyork was immediately executed by a Caretaker. In another instance, the safe house at Port LA was destroyed by an offensive mage in the employ of Chicagil. Chicagil was subsequently barred access to the safe houses for a period of ten years, and the offensive mage was executed. As you can see, the penalties for violating the Abelard Sanction are severe enough to make the number of incidents very few.
Copyright © 1995 Apocrypha, All Rights Reserved.
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