(Originally posted on December 16, 2014.  Only covers Legends of Windemere for a bit, but it was still interesting.)

City of Bree from Middle Earth

This would be the second city that Luke Callindor, Nyx, and their friends visit in Prodigy of Rainbow Tower.  Rodillen is sometimes called Two-Faced City because it has an outer facade of a typical port city and the true face of a place run by thieves.

There is a mayor, a judge, and a guard captain who do their jobs like those of any other city.  The difference is that they’re entirely corrupt and exist to give Rodillen a semblance of order/normalcy.  Without these people, there would be nobody to function between the populace and the guild.  It mostly when a stranger breaks a law that these people come into play and show that justice can be served here.  It’s all a show and it tends to revolve around a visiting warrior killing a thief in self-defense.  They make sure to have some of the accused be found ‘not guilty’ to keep up appearances.

As stated, the true power is in the thieves’ guild who have their hideout beneath the surface.  They are run by a Guild Master who takes a share of every theft and spends most of his or her time watching for danger to the guild.  These are the ones who make the laws and pull the strings when events have to unfold a certain way.  It’s been shown that Guild Masters with extreme ambition tend to cause trouble as there have been many who nearly brought the guild to ruin by reaching too high.  So there is also the position of Barbed Whip who is a thief that is given the freedom to openly defy, criticize, and argue with the Guild Master.  After a year, this person can even call for a vote to remove a leader if they can prove that they are a danger to the guild.  By remove, I mean they publicly announce that an assassination will happen unless the rejected leader gets out of town.

Note:  The guild is not typically cruel even if you think that after reading Prodigy of Rainbow Tower.  It simply had a greedy jerk of a Guild Master who was recruiting children and selling the failures to various organizations.  He had been in charge for almost a year and was on his way to be revoked.

So you might be wondering why a city like this exists within the kingdom of Serab.  Well, there are a few reasons that Duke Solomon won’t destroy the thieves’ guild and retake Rodillen:

1. It’s been tried before and the guild returned soon after the royal guards left.  It was seen as a waste of manpower.
2. The guild has proven to be a valuable source of information and, in times of war, willing spies.
3. Many thieves gravitate toward the guild.  Without this organization, these people would be spread across the land and might set up multiple guilds.
4. Rodillen actually pays its kingdom taxes on time and the guild has even been known to help citizens pay off debts.  This is to keep the royal guards and money collectors from showing up, but it’s made it that the city is 100% debt free.