Alt-text: "And again Gregor Peck is showing a distincitve scrooge-ness. I wonder what he thinks about christmas."
This one is a little author saving throw for me concerning how Serpent's End is run. On some occasions in the past I talked about how Master Peck is just fully and officially both the (Mages') Guild Master and the mayor of the city - and on other occasions it sounded more like his power over anything other than guild business is more of a real, but unofficial thing.
So this page now tells how I decided it to be: his control of the city is official, but shared with a council of wealthy citizens. And more importantly it is meant to be temporary, until a new "real" mayor is found and approved both by the city council and the Guild Master, in this case Peck. Of course ... being able to veto any candidate on his own gives him considerable power, and the Guild Master not having a term limit or being able to get voted out of office by the council ... it is fair to say that the political system in Serpent's End is indeed quite skewed in favor of the mages.