Cities of Refuge
Not to be confused with sanctuary cities, cities of refuge are sections of land where neither formal nor customary law have any say. The original purpose was to act as sanctuaries for manslaughterers fleeing the vengeance of their victim's families. Honor demands that blood answer with blood. Feuds could last for hundreds of years and swallow entire communities when left unchecked. In an effort to both fulfill the post-Independence lawcode and stop the deaths, manslaughterers were sent to cities of refuge. Other killings received different punishments. As long as a manslaughterer stayed in these cities, they were protected under law. In turn, the victim’s kin group and potential innocents would also be protected from the manslaughterer.
The admittedly unpopular measure was set down after the post-Independence Lawcode forbade the death penalty for citizens of Nayir. The badlands of the provinces served as home for these cities, each ministered by a local priest. The cities themselves had to possess a degree of self-sufficiency, while also being easy to get to. That meant the city itself should sit near water and workable land must surround the city center. Those with difficulty reaching the cities of refuge would be given a dog or other animal to direct their way. While some cities were built with this purpose, others already existed before being designated cities of refuge.
However, these cities have erred from their original purpose. Those who found themselves on the wrong side of the law—any law--would move there. Since the city could not grow larger than a set area, it would build on top of itself, growing denser and harder to police. An alternative economy formed, based around the currency typically seized at the border. If an individual wanted foreign goods, cities of refuge had markets for them. In becoming hotbeds for these markets, they became hotbeds of foreign cultures and a draw for tourists, who then brought more foreign currency. Many see these cities as wounds on the landscape due to these combined factors of foreignness and criminality. However, they remain as evidence of Nayir’s post-Independence commitment to protection and honoring of life rather than capitulating to feuds that had become common in the centuries of instability prior.