Seeing as how I haven't researched that turbulent era of France, that explains my lack of understanding of Galt. So in theory, Galt would be full of Swashbucklers right?
From what I've read, it may be more comparable to revolution-of-the-week anarchy. Maybe not as bad as that, but stability doesn't last long there. Imagine chaotic neutral almost at its worst applied as a system of government, and add in the paranoid and backstabbing one gets when the only ones with job security are the guillotine operators.
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Revolution of the week........ Which is why I am having trouble understanding how there is any towns and cities left in Galt. Seems at the best the major communties would look like WWII French communties, ruined buildings and rumbleRevolution of the week would be an exaggeration. It's a very poor government that lasts a week, but there have been times that nations have gone through multiple governments a year and still been around afterwords. That wouldn't be sustained for half a century, but tally up all the committees, republics, empires, Bourbon restorations, communes, and the like in Paris in the fifty years starting with the first French Revolution and point out some of the shortest lived it's not hard to get the impression that Paris couldn't possibly survive such upheaval, and yet Paris did. Rome had similarly turbulent periods. Rome, too, remains.
Mobs just aren't that destructive. They don't want to burn their own communities, just the rich and even doing that properly takes more discipline than they can usually muster. Destroying a city is a lot of hard work and making it stay dead requires killing off the population, which is the mob. They're not going to just commit suicide or kill each other.
You didn't see Baltimore.
Galt is a place where everyone has a grudge against someone else but needs a third party to protect them from the people that have grudges against them. Everyday is a choice between setting up something to fulfill your grudge or stopping someone else from fulfilling their grudge against you and on top of that keeping your head down so those in power don't think you are gunning for their job and decide to take you out first.
Basically a soap opera.
Or cyberpunk. Power for the sake of power, style over substance betrayal for the sake of betrayal, and the occasional kicking of the puppy just because.
I would read Simon Schama's _Citizens_ (a very good history of the French Revolution), add in Thucydides' sections from _The Pelopennesian War_ on what happened as various people fell into civil war, and stir in a good dollop of literature on the Thirty Years' War and on the Russian purges.
Then read Franz Kafka.
Then realize that Galt is _even crazier_.
Earth has had several failed states in recent history, some of which persisted for years (which on Golarion scales up to decades, at least). Living conditions there were absolutely abysmal, but not everyone perished.
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Galt is mob rule propping up kangaroo courts and paranoid councils. Everyone has to walk on eggshells to avoid becoming the target of the mob, the councils most of all. Fanaticism reigns supreme and jumps at the specter of aristocracy. The country survives, because as said upthread, destroying it is harder than it looks, and so the destructive efforts go towards whoever the patsy of the week is.
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WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS!
I suspect Galt's supposed to be in the middle of a revolution whenever the PCs come thru but may be a bit quieter at other times.
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There's stats for "mobs" in the module "House on Hook Street". They are similar to swarms, but 20'x20' shapeable and can be comprised on small and medium creatures. Really, really useful for Galt. The crowd disperses when the mob reaches 0 hp.
EDIT: sorry, they call them "troop", not "mob" in that module, if memory serves. Useful for crowds and army units both!
