The city-state of Villai was founded in 391D. It was set up as land donated by at least four barons. Each donated a triangle of land ten miles by ten miles, thus creating a diamond shaped city-state that was twenty miles across and twenty miles tall. To this day, Villai is a city-state of 200 square miles of territory.
The purpose of this new city was to form a neutral place to trade, as well as a more centralized place to raise an army. This was the time of the Garnock Expansion wars and nearby Parnania had been conquered almost 100 years prior. While the baronies that donated the land have changed shape and ownership over the centuries, Villai remains a free-city unaffected by nobility and other political squabbles.
The city is a representative monarchy. There is a Duke, descended more or less from the original Duke set-up to rule the city-state while it got its affairs in order, but the Duke has been primarily ceremonial now for more than five centuries. The city is actually ruled by a Congress. Originally Sheriffs were elected in each of the designated shires and in addition to their responsibilities in their shires, they were expected to come to the capital and vote on laws. This proved impractical, so the shires began to elect Sheriffs to run the shires and Senators who vote on laws, treaties and basically run the city-state as a whole. Their Congress is a single body house.
Each of the original baronies was populated by Velesan humans, and the Duke’s family is human. However, almost from the beginning, Villai was seen as a safe haven for halflings and centaurs as well. Before the city was sacked in 616P, the population was 27,000, of which 12,000 were halfling and the rest were split fairly evenly between humans and centaurs. Since the city has stabilized after the Conquering War, the population is estimated to be 17,000 (7K halflings, 6K centaurs and 4K humans). This is (as of 655P) the largest urban collection of centaurs anywhere in the world, though it is clearly not a “centaur city”.