Editing Flamepunk:Social Order (section)

==Everyday Life in Kiora==

Kiora is a stratified society whose structure is created and preserved by the influence of the three massive institutions that control a large part of the Kioran citizen's everyday life: the Church, the Guilds, and the Hadar. 

===Lower Classes - The Common Laborer===

Life for the lower class is rarely pleasant. The dominant experience of the lower class Kioran is navigating their way through their Guild duties and their responsibilities to the Church, while trying to put enough food on the table not to starve. The Guilds' laborers - by far the most numerous of guild employees - spend their lives performing backbreaking, dangerous work in the massive forges and factories, paying just enough to keep most employees in perpetual debt with the Guild. 

Smoke, heat, and soot are the lot of the Guild laborer, as is blacklung and the risk of a horrible death in a fiery accident. Employee dissatisfaction may be rampant, but mass protests are extremely rare, because the Guilds are not shy about using all of their leverage to compel compliance.

While the Guilds work the lower classes to the bone, the Church preaches that virtue is embodied in a selfless worship of the Holy Flame and a patient wait for the world to come. Dissatisfaction is smoothed over by the Church's services, inspiring sermons, and a careful and precise management of human behavior, born from centuries of experience.

For the common man or woman, the influence of the Hadar is found in the graft and bribery that often accompanies certain activities; in the exorbitant cost of non-Guild goods; and in the street violence that erupts with regularity in the poor neighborhoods.

===Middle Classes - The Merchants and Technicians===

Middle class Kiorans have it somewhat better. They are still often beholden to Guilds for their daily bread, and many of them remain in debt to Guilds for their entire lives. However, they're not spending their days in a scorching-hot factory, dying slowly of blacklung and toxic fumes, so they consider their lot to be fairly good.

The Kioran middle class is made up of mid-level Guild functionaries, Guild merchants, technical professionals such as surveyors, architects, and flametech experts, and Church personnel. 

The Hadar influence on the middle classes falls mainly in the area of protection rackets, bribery, and black market goods.

===Upper Classes - Guild, Church, and Hadar Aristocracy===

Life as an upperclass Kioran is life above the smoke and out of the flames. The upper classes of Kiora have fairly easy lives. Loyalty to their Guild and the Church is expected, and no upper class Kioran would fail to make proper obeisance and conduct themselves in a manner contrary to their loyalties - at leat, not where anyone could see. 

The upper class comprises high-level Guild members, Church clergy, and an aristocracy born of exceptional good fortune and shrewd business acumen.

At the highest levels of society, the Hadar are simply another group of potential partners or rivals, and contracts, deals, and double-crosses are the stock and trade of high-class life.