Protagonist Treatment

After Solam followed the shipowner and the others into the city, he found that it was fairly stable. People were somewhat nervous, but there was no panic, and many shops were still open for business.

If there was any group of people in the world with the sharpest instincts, it was undoubtedly merchants. Their noses were far keener than ordinary people's. If something had truly gone wrong in this city, they would definitely have been among the first to flee.

Though the city was somewhat desolate now, overall it was already doing quite well. Solam and the others had seen at least several thousand monster corpses outside the city, mostly goblins. A battle capable of killing so many monsters could not have been small, yet even after such a fight, these merchants still had such confidence. That surprised Solam somewhat.

Solam soon learned why.

Because of one man: Crimmor's ruler, the Lion of the North—Marco Samaranch.

Under Amn's political system, there was actually no position known as city lord. They used a governorship system, with one governor for each city. Governors did not serve for life; their terms lasted ten years, and they were appointed by the council.

(A common feature of the nations on the Faerun Continent was that their administrative divisions were based on cities. In other words, one major city could govern all the land within several hundred kilometers around it.)

Unfortunately, Amn's laws had never placed any limit on how many terms a governor could serve. As long as the council permitted it, a local governor could be reelected indefinitely. By now, the governorship system had been thoroughly distorted. In many places throughout Amn, governorships had become hereditary, passed from father to son as noble offices. Thus, the title of city lord had risen again in