Making Elf - Society need some helps please

[Kikuta]

Hi there,

I'm a new DM and one of my PCs chose a High elf Warlock with Noble background and he wants to know about his characters home land.

What i've got so far is:

Single City/State (all the High Elves live in this one city)

Its a Unitary government - system in which power is held by single central source, and local governments are merely administrative agents.

Their society is based on magic, so strong magic users go to the top and basically have their distribution curve.

I'm going for a System of:

Arch-Mage = Leader

Then below is like a council made up of two representatives of each of the eight magical schools.

Called: Primarche and The Secundus

Then they have their structures in each school.

What I need help with is the Civil-service of the City:

I was going for an idea of Each of the Schools basically run different Civil-service departments but I'm not sure how I'd work that

or

Just having it so the less magically inclined go into the Civil-service who run the day to day Manufacture/Sanitation/Commerce/Military/ etc and then all changes are then sanctioned by the Ruling council and the Arch-mage

Anyone's got any ideas I'd love to hear them.

[2D8HP]

...I was going for an idea of Each of the Schools basically run different Civil-service departments but I'm not sure how I'd work that

or

Just having it so the less magically inclined go into the Civil-service who run the day to day Manufacture/Sanitation/Commerce/Military/ etc and then all changes are then sanctioned by the Ruling council and the Arch-mage

Anyone's got any ideas I'd love to hear them.

In RL I'm an employee of a City & County, and while much less true than it used to be, if you know someone's city job, you've got an edge in guessing what schools they went to, and vice-versa.

Elves are usually thought to live longer than humans, so I can imagine them even more bound by traditions and castes or, as an alternative, with there long lives maybe Elves change roles over their lifetimes.

Perhaps have jobs/departments have term limits or be segregated by age?

If you go by the D&D tradition of Elves being Chaotic, perhaps have jobs be assigned by lottery or augury.

Anyway, I suggest that you study up on how old city governments worked.

Start with the Guilds

and the

Livery Companies of the City of London.

[Satinavian]

If you are designing a background for someone who is supposed to be a noble that society should really have some kind of nobility. Either the regular kind or at least a set of really powerful families making sure every important job ends up with one of their own.

It should not be "strong magic users get to the top", except if normal people can't learn powerful magic or if magical talent somehow is linked to certain bloodlines.

[veti]

Think about ownership. Who owns - everything? With particular reference to "land" and "the houses people live in", because those are the most limited and hard-to-replace resources. Historically, the answer to that question is pretty much what defines "nobility" too.

You've described a mageocracy, but why? I mean - two parts, really: why do the mages think they should be the ones in charge, and why does everyone else go along with them? Ruling a country is a lot of work - don't they have more interesting things to do? And putting the most intelligent people in charge is seldom as good an idea as it seems. There's a good reason why the attribute most associated with leadership is CHA, not INT - it's not entirely superficial.