About 80% of the people in rural Sartar make their living directly from food production – farming, herding, fishing, and hunting. That’s about 2/3rds of the total population in Sartar.
The remaining third of the population are predominantly urban, and they include crafters, merchants, scribes, healers, and thieves – as well as nobles, priests, and professional warriors. This urban population is tied to the rural population through kinship, tribal affiliation, and cult.
One way of thinking about Sartar is that it is a confederation of city-states centered on Boldhome. Most of the tribes are fully integrated into a lesser city-state and these are in turn subject to Boldhome. A few tribes are autonomous and directly subject to Boldhome – the Colymar, the Pol-Joni, the Telmori, the Lismelder, and arguably the Ducks.
About 2/5ths of this urban population are in just one city – Boldhome and around one in twenty of all Sartarites live in Boldhome. If the inhabitants of Boldhome were a single tribe, they’d be the second largest in Sartar (just after the Colymar).
All of this got almost completely ignored by the old HW material, which is a big part of why it is not canonical. You can’t understand Sartar without the cities and their population.
An important thing to remember is the inhabitants of the cities are also members of tribes that are largely rural. The city is an overlap point for several tribes – usually held in common by its members.
Boldhome is something of an exception as it belongs to all the tribes united by the person of the Prince of Sartar.
Inhabitants of the cities are full members of their tribes and clans, subject to their laws, cult rites, etc. So if I am a member of the Orleving clan who resides in Jonstown, there are clan affairs that require I travel the 20 some kilometers back to the Ormthane Vale to take care of. I am still subject to my chieftain there, might have a marriage arranged by my kinfolk there etc.
wWhere the Sartarite cities are held in common by mostly rural tribes, Dara Happans make a sharp division between the city and village. The land outside of the cities is owned by temples and nobles, and worked on by peasant farmers. So among the Sartarites, a member of the Cinsina tribe from the village of Goodhaven is perfectly free to reside in Jonstown and even become a citizen of the city – while still maintaining Cinsina tribal membership. The tribes all maintain manors in Boldhome where members residing in the city can deal with many tribal affairs and where visiting tribal members can receive hospitality and support.
That is very different from Dara Happa, where people who reside outside of the city are assumed to be unfree or semi free peasants. Inside the city walls are the domain of Yelm, outside are Lodrilli, weeders, riverfolk, and barbarians.