Tyros Customhouse

Tyros Customhouse is the Tyrosian headquarters of the Commercial Guilds who operate in the Eleven Cities that surround the Sea of Jars. It is the largest such facility in the three insular cities, but far from the most powerful due to the low status of the Guilds in Tyros compared to the esteem they enjoy in some other cities.

Location

Tyros Customhouse is a substantial compound of buildings and warehouses centred around the ruins of the city's former temple to Zargyod. Located on the city's waterfront, this building is of considerable antiquity, and one of the largest such structures in the Eleven Cities (behind only the temple in Chogyos and Halumay's monumental House of Brass, demonstrating the strength and wealth of the cult of Zargyod in pre-Wesmodian Tyros. It suffered considerable misfortune during the Wesmodian Reformation, however, which make it hard to determine much about its pre-Reformation appearance or the practice of the cult. It was built partly over the water, on a series of eight stone piles driven into the lagoon bed, but the section of the temple supported in this way collapsed, all at once and quite dramatically, in 5 AWR, for reasons that are as yet not properly understood (accounts also differ widely on the destruction thus wrought; some suggest that, miraculously, nobody was hurt, while others go into lurid detail about the loss of life). The piles themselves were sound (Five of the eight still stand, and are visible at low tide) but there appears to have been some catastrophic lapse in the integrity of the building itself. Some thaumatologists have suggested that the building relied upon some sort of magic to stay upright over the water and that the neglect of Zargyodian rituals in the years following the publication of Wesmod's invectives (initially in Tyros) led to the failure of this magic and thus the collapse of the building. Much of the stone that fell into the lagoon has since been recovered and repurposed around the city or otherwise disappeared into the lagoon bed, but the five piles still stand at the western end of the waterfront and have been visited over the years by numerous thaumatologists. Members of the Alchemist's Guild of Dypholyos have chartered boats to examine the piles on several occasions.
The landward half of the original building is still standing and, after some repairs fifty years ago, is utilised as part of the complex. The refurbishments have largely obliterated what remains of the pre-Wesmodian art and fittings, however, leaving only an airy, sheltered, semi-indoor space on the waterfront.

Facilities

Tyros Customhouse has three core purposes; to levy appropriate taxes and duties on good passing through the port, to facilitate such trade by providing introductions and furthering discussion among merchants, and to generate revenue by lending money to commercial enterprises.
The first purpose is largely delegated to a staff of Copper Guilders with Iron and Tin adjuncts. These operatives will at the very least visit any ship, of any size, arriving in the port. Large cargo ships will receive teams of perhaps as many as half a dozen Guilders, making a careful inventory of its contents, while a private fishing boat might be the subject of a brief interview with a Steel Guilder. The Guilders of Tyros are noted for their scrupulous adherence to policy and are seen by locals as famously incorruptable compared to their colleagues in other cities, liaising closely with the local government and keeping strict records of their takings to ensure nothing is gleaned or missed. Those from such cities feel this perception speaks more to the sententious parochialism of the Tyrosian character as much as the institutional culture of the customhouse.
Like most customhouses, that of Tyros also holds courts where merchants and speculators can conduct and arrange business. These generally take place in the refurbished remains of the waterfront temple, which unlike other former temples of Zargyod is seal off from the sea and instead accessed by a collonnade (of post-Wesmodian construction) on its landward side. This forms the southernmost side of a paved, triangular public space with two more similar buildings constructed on its other two sides and used for similar purposes. Interestingly, tradition has it that these spaces are open for debate and discussion from the turning of the morning tide until the high afternoon tide, rather than from sunrise to sunset as in most Guild facilities. It is speculated that this is some sort of institutional hangover from the procedures of a cult which revered Zargyod in the northern style, primarily as a sea deity, though few records survive to confirm or deny the theory.
Like the customhouses in Ramoros and Elpaloz, Tyros Customhouse also operates a service whereby those involved in international trade can borrow money to further their enterprises. Unlike those other institutions, however, the moneylenders of Tyros are noted for being highly selective about who they take on as clients. Anybody may approach the small building to the west of the original temple where a bureaucratic staff will assess their proposals, but that assessment process is famously rigorous, with venerable waterfront scuttlebutt maintaining that only one out of every ten proposals gets past the initial interview stage. Tyros Customhouse does not issue personal loans and, unlike most other moneylending guilds, never solicits proposals. They do, however, accept payments from other guildhouses's debtors, charging modest fees to forward the money back to the creditor via inter-guildhouse missions accomplished by a small fleet of ships. Many merchants visiting Tyros avail themselves of this service, since the fees involved are often smaller than the interest their loans would accrue travelling back to the city where they drew the money. Other Guilldhouses have begun sending delegations to Tyros to investigate the possibility of expanding this service into a network across the Sea of Jars.

Institutional structure

Tyros Customhouse mostly follows the rank structure laid down by The Book of Favour in Chogyos Customhouse. It is run by a Gold Guilder who receives advice from two Silver Guilders, who then pass policy directives to a dozen or so Copper Guilders, who then implement that policy by running a much larger staff of Iron, Tin and Lead Guilders. The institution also incorporates a small corps of armed troops, mostly to guard the treasury where their moneylending activities are based. Rather than being paid mercenaries, these troops are fully-invested members of the Commercial Guilds, holding "Steel" rank and thought to be somewhere between Iron and Copper in institutional seniority. The Guilders who command these troops hold "Bronze" rank and are regarded as a specific, compartmentalised task force among the Copper Guilders. As well as guarding the treasury the Steel Guilders occasionally aid in the collection of duties from particularly suspect ships and have occasionally been known to answer requests from the sitting Dog of Tyros to patrol the waterfronts as a show of force at times of strife.