(Originally posted on December 18, 2014.  Only covers Legends of Windemere for a bit, but it was still interesting.)

Waterdeep from Forgotten Realms

The Central Sister City is where Duke Solomon, ruler of Serab, lives and makes the kingdom laws.  Again, this is a rather basic system with a ruler and his advisers.  I’ll get more into that later, but first an explanation of the Law Archives.

Gods’ Voice is one of the few cities that survived the Great Cataclysm and the only one to retain its rulership during the chaos of the following years.  That’s why it became the center of the Serabian Kingdom and has such an oddly shaped territory.  The chaotic regions that weren’t part of the jungles, plains, mountains, barbarian territory, and desert were absorbed.  They were placed under the former laws of Gods’ Voice and the residing Duke created his first council.  This resulted in a year long meeting to create new laws and revise the old ones.  Every region and species got a say, which is why you see such a mix in the cities.  You also have strange laws that stuck around for some reason such as ‘The Throne is responsible for any damage done to an administrative office by the forces of an enraged barbarian’.

As for the Duke and his advisers, they rule until their leader decides to retire.  When the Duke steps down and hands the throne to his successor, his closest advisers retire as well to make room for the next group.  There is a period of training their replacements to make sure they know where everything is and they are always on hand to help.  The idea is to always make room for the future and for a ruler to have those he/she has trusted for longer than they have ruled.  This may also stem from a few incidents in the past where retained advisers attempted to push former agendas that were no longer viable.