The Free Zone's Government
Southern California is a religious state that has survived for centuries with basically no external threats. In this environment, its political system has had plenty of opportunity to go to seed. Its institutions have grown and spread theit tendrils into some odd places. The governing bodies, in a general sense, are called "the Church," but the term implies a certain streamlined unity that is not to be found in Southern California, where the Church is divided among a labyrinthian network of holy orders, temple cults, monastic communities and interlocking bureaucracies, each of them having an assortment of administrative responsibilities that have accumulated over time.
For example, the Keepers of the Shrine of the Pacific have as their primary responsibility the care of the great temple at Palos Verdes and its associated holy sites. Since time imemorial they have also supervised all the lighthouses north of their temple site, a fairly logical extension of their main job. But for generations they have also maintained the roads of the Los Angeles basin - the reasoning being that the roads' highest purpose is as tracks for pilgrims. In addition, the Shrine oversees all corvee labor in the Lands of San Bernardino and San Fernando, the reasoning being... well, at this point there is no real reasoning. The Keepers were given that responsibility a long time ago, and today they guard it jealously because it gives them prestige and access to resources. The golden spires of Palos Verdes sparkle above the hills, testifying to the importance and wealth of the Keepers of the Shrine. And the other religious orders of the nation are no different. Their duties are similar to those of the California Republic's departments of irrigation, collection, public works, etc., but these duties are divided in myriad ways among the different religious bodies.
Local administrators must manage the contact between these religious bodies and the land and people. The main unit of local government is the township, which consists of a central town and the surrounding fields. Southern California was once blanketed with towns, one crowding against the other, and most the modern townships take their names from these ancient suburbs, many claiming a direct line of continuity with them: Burbank, Pasadena, Anaheim, Irvine, and so forth. But most are now sleepy market villages, their only public buildings being a storehouse, mayoral hall, and a few shrines on the central square.
The aristocratic landowning families have plenty of opportunities to build bases of power. Great families have control of many religious posts and mayorships, making them essentially hereditary. But the corporate structures of the church bodies, and the division of power among them, prevents the aristocrats from challenging the power of the President. The President and his palace staff are the only institution that can coordinate and organize the Free Zone's confusing government. The system is not efficient, but it keeps the canals full and the fields planted, and the President rich and in command, so as long as attacks from over the mountains don't get too serious, efficiency is not necessarily that important. The highest governing body, called The Orgo, is a conclave of leaders of all major religious organizations in the country. This body is large enough that it does not meet very often.
The army and navy are the only aspect of administration whose control is centered entirely in the Presidency (with the exception of the forts at Santa Clarita, see below). These are entirely defensive in nature. Southern California's culture is not militaristic, and the life of the scribe and priest is praised more than that of the soldier. There are troops stationed at Ventura and the entrance to the Coachella valley, and a central army to protect the capital and put down insurrection. The navy is somewhat more able to project its power over a distance, but it too tends to stay in the Free Zone's waters, patrolling the spaces between the mainland and the Channel Islands.
Another word on the navy: as in the California Republic, the navy, or Shore, is used for training the highest-level priests and officials. But the Shore of the Free Zone has a much greater separation between its religious and defensive branches than you see in the Republic's Great Western Shore.
Geographic divisions
Mountain chains divide the empire into four "lands:" the Lands of
Los Angeles,
San Fernando,
San Bernardino, and
Ventura. The lands are important to administration in that most church bodies have different responsibilities in different lands, while others have their activities restricted to only one or two. The lands are also the basis for the judicial system: there are four Presidential Courts, one for each.
The
District of Santa Clarita is an anomalous part of the Free Zone. It is a high basin in the mountains above the Lands of San Fernando and Ventura. It consists of a single township, and its land all belongs to a single family, which nowadays take their name from their estate. Located at the entrance to the main overland route into the California Republic, it is also a strategic spot; so the Clarita family also maintains a private military force and several fortresses to guard the pass. This makes Santa Clarita the only part of the empire that is essentially a feudal territory.
The
Channel Islands are considered naval property, managed by different monastic orders that are couched within the navy's administrative structure. The islands, located out in the holy waters of the Pacific, are considered crucial to the health of the empire. The President makes an annual circuit to each one to perform the purification rituals that renew the whole country.
Finally, there are three vassal city-states to the south of the Free Zone's territory. All three look to the President as a spiritual and temporal sovereign while staying basically independent. They are
Escondido, San Diego, and
Ensenada. Escondido and Ensenada are small, hardscrabble agricultural towns of no particular value other than as a source of prestige for the President. San Diego's magnificent harbor makes it an important base for the navy to guard the Free Zone's southern flank. But the land around San Diego (and its neighbor, Tijuana) is rather poor, and it is not the great urban area that it was in former times.
Surrounding these regions are the forbidding deserts of Mojave and Baja California. These deserts supply certain minerals to the Free Zone but are otherwise uninhabitable. They, along with the mountains, insulate the country from the outside world and allow its people (and its aristocrats in particular) to continue to enjoy their way of life.
This map shows most of the townships of the Free Zone.