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| - In nearly any large urban port, the Customs and Excise Office holds some degree of power. Inspecting ships before they leave port, confiscating contraband, and arresting pirates are just some of the Customs Office's jobs.
- Depending on who you ask, the Customs and Excise office was the most efficient and triumphant part of the well-oiled machine known as Greyton. Seyda Neen is certain that this is indeed the case, Seyda Neen, with his wrinkled face and half-moon spectacles on a gold chain, was not the type of person who made mistakes. He had lived a very long life, and he would happily tell you that it had been blissfully free of errors on his part. Dalish elves can live for many centuries, and Seyda's 500th birthday came and went without anything as wasteful as celebration. Many elves turn to alchemy or arcarnistry to prolong their lives; Seyda was not gifted with magic, or so foolish as to muck around with chemicals and elixers. Seyda would attribute his long lifespan to his morning constitutionals, and fr
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| abstract
| - In nearly any large urban port, the Customs and Excise Office holds some degree of power. Inspecting ships before they leave port, confiscating contraband, and arresting pirates are just some of the Customs Office's jobs.
- Depending on who you ask, the Customs and Excise office was the most efficient and triumphant part of the well-oiled machine known as Greyton. Seyda Neen is certain that this is indeed the case, Seyda Neen, with his wrinkled face and half-moon spectacles on a gold chain, was not the type of person who made mistakes. He had lived a very long life, and he would happily tell you that it had been blissfully free of errors on his part. Dalish elves can live for many centuries, and Seyda's 500th birthday came and went without anything as wasteful as celebration. Many elves turn to alchemy or arcarnistry to prolong their lives; Seyda was not gifted with magic, or so foolish as to muck around with chemicals and elixers. Seyda would attribute his long lifespan to his morning constitutionals, and from abstaining from the well documented life-shortening effects of wine, "extravagant" foods, and humor. Seyda's friends may be able to corroborate his theories, but he'd never found the time to make any. When Tsuen fell, it wasn't just a problem for its residents, it was also a gross inconvenience to the Dalish Import/export Trade and Taxation Office (DITTO). Suddenly, there was no need to check if the Rice-pears from Tsuen were infested with leafflies, or if the goods Tsuen had traded with from the Valley had been properly taxed under Dalish tax law 103b, Subsection C "Miscellaneous nonproduced goods of imperfect providence". Quietly, DITTO downsized a bit, and his boss suggested that Mr Neen should retire. Seyda's relationship to retirement was similar to that between salmon and trees. He was broadly aware of the existence of retirement (and it's known correlations to cottages, gardening, and collecting ornamental tea-cosies), he also knew it wasn't for him. His boss entreated him to "live a little", and Seyda's pleas that "living a little" and "gardening" were natural antithesises fell upon deaf ears. In the three weeks that remained before his inevitable cottage-based doom, Seyda sought out alternate employment. No one was willing to pay him, which struck Seyda as odd, as no one paid you when you retired either. If they really wanted people to retire, he figured, they'd incentivise it, possibly at a pro-rated sum based off one's lifetime earning potential, cross references against the price of a loaf of bread in the local area. He drew up a basic retirement plan, costed it and sent it to the local officials, but it did little to calm his nerves. Even if his suggestion was enacted, he didn't want to be able to afford 3.22 loaves of bread per week (at the current rate). He wanted to work. Since no one wanted to employ him, Seyda took matters into his own hands. He took his 3rd day off this century, and spent it at the records hall. It didn't take him long to fnd what he was looking for; a set of barely legible notes from a small dock in some remote satellite-state. There were three spelling errors just on the first page and the arithmetic was somewhere in the unhappy beginning of the dictionary, nestled between "egregious" and "approximate". Later that day, he held a short meeting with the trade-guildsman in charge of overseeing the area. The guildsman himself claims not to remember the conversation, and Seyda refuses to "gossip", so we only have a rough approximation of what transpired. "This account is a mess" Seyda may have accused. "The declaration for the DITTO Trade Numeration Act Section Three is incomplete, the signed duplicate copy is missing entirely, and the paperclip used is not made of a certified DITTO page-compiling material" "What do you want me to do about it?" the guildsman presumably replied. "This is a minor offense and while, yes, there looks to have been less tax collected than there should have been, employing an auditor would cost more than the amount to be recovered" Seyda might have allowed himself a rare smile, the smile of a spider who's just seen a fly blunder into his intricate web. "That is not true. I know a qualified auditor who will handle this error, and work to make sure no further errors are committed. Better yet, he will work for precisely one copper piece less than the amount of lost taxes" What we do know is that a few days later, Seyda Neen was seen entering the local mages college, and buying a 1-way Teleport to Greyton. The mages loudly wondered why a man would spend his life savings on such a spell, instead of spending a few weeks on the back of a wagon, and Seyda did his best to impress upon them the dangers of Travel and Inns and the Countryside in a general sense, but he strongly suspected that they were lost causes. When he arrived, Seyda asked to be directed to the customs office. Wen he was informed that Greyton didn't have a customs office, Seyda reassured them that they indeed did, even if they were not presently aware of it. Seyda met with Tabitha, and handed her a shief of papers with official seals on them. While Tabitha is known to possess a mind nigh-immune to the suggestive powers of magic, she would seem to have a weakness for the suggestive powers of official seals and copies signed in triplicate. These days, Seyda Neen sits behind his desk. You know it's his desk, because next to the inkwell is a small silver piece of metal with "The Desk of Seyda Neen" engraved on it. As far as his old boss is concerned, Seyda has retired to Greyton. Seyda is taking to retirement well, he already has an office (made from what was once going to be a small dockside-warehouse, hastily repurposed), an assistant and 4 bookkepers. If his co-workers would be willing to name his greatest fault as an employer, it would be his deep dislike of employees keeping potted plants in or near the office, and his habit of docking the pay of anyone heard whistling, humming or inadvertently rhyming. A sympathetic diety may worry that Seyda's life is in some way dull. Seyda would say that his life is dull, and is currently engineering matters so that it remains dull for the next century or so. After the hustle and bustle of the Dales, Greyton is, in Seyda's rather limited experience, the dullest place there is.
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