I wanted to avoid if not eliminate the burden of finance, religion and monarchy, to give me the freedom to avoid those restraints. Trouble is that I hadn't considered the implications of having a culture sophisticated enough to rely on artificers of many kinds to provide the necessary tools and equipment that a toymaker would need to make mechanical toys of all sorts as trade goods.
I don't see barter as being impossible as a means of exchanging goods and services on a small scale which is why I envisioned Brythan as being a collection of small independent communities with the Citadel as the necessary focal point for external trade and the means to provide the necessary infrastructure for roads and communication linking these 'villages' together as required.
My Brythan is equivalent to the real Britain about 5000 years ago, the Iron Age when people began making tools and weapons from iron and steel. Also the jewellery and decorative artifacts that the Celts made, superior in design and execution and a tribute to what can be achieved using hand tools only.
Superstitious beliefs are common, mostly harmless, but enough to allow for the concept of 'magic' as being a power beyond human ken but deserving of respect. Religion is not accepted, neither the concept nor the practice which is seen as a foreign weakness to be thoroughly derided when encountered.
Once or twice in history a powerful family has tried to establish itself as a ruling class, or monarchy, by popular assent but invariably they lasted only a generation, two at most, before their scions proved that kingship should never be accepted on the basis of lineage.
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