Målet Tomten

There's something really nice about displacement stories -- the ones where a hero is torn from his world and thrust into a foreign environment where he must not only handle all the plot can throw at him but also the consequences for his limited knowledge. They are one of the few types of plot entrance that allows the hero to be both dignified and knowledgeable -- competent, even -- without having the foggiest clue as to what's going on around him, giving an author an excuse for exposition.

This will not be one of those stories, though. We know this because we've already established that Graham is a wizard, and by implication is knowledgeable about very many aspects of his world. There remains the problem of sharing the details of the world with the reader while following Graham around, though, so I shall adopt a format of exposition that looks something like a textbook entry. This will be easiest, because I already write like that half the time.

Now, on to the world. We're not operating on a displacement story template, so we can build the world based on what we know of our characters. Claghen Provence, therefore, has the following things we already know:

It's a monarchy. We know that because there's a king, and that's normally where kings come from. Furthermore, we know that in at least some superficial aspects the king interacts in a fairly classic fashion with his people. We have evidence that he bestows noble titles because of the Viscount, we see that there's a king's forest, which implies that the king hunts, probably with his nobles. We also learned that one has to be noble to leave the city after midnight, which implies special privileges for the nobility. Standard stuff.

Claghen city is walled, and owned by His Lord the Viscount. Does this matter? Maybe. We don't know whether wizards are particularly interested in politics, or whether they're subject to special laws. We do know that workers-in-the-Power are a recognized type of person, presumably their own social class -- but whether that class has any need to follow the laws governing nobles or commoners is up for discussion.
Since it could be argued either way, I rolled for it, and got a three. I choose to believe that is a no, which means wizards follow their own law.

So now we must figure out the law systems for nobles, wizards, and commoners. To do that, we need to know a bit more about the culture's religion and ethical structure. That'll be next.