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Bureau of Numbers

by Paladinltd

“Hey, can you guys keep it down? I’m trying to work.”

– Ted, employee

“Of course I do my job! You want to hear some numbers now? There is one jackass annoying me with questions, two lovely ladies waiting for me inside and not nearly enough booze in the city to keep me down tonight!”

– Anan Moro, titular head of the Bureau

In a chaotic city such as Nexus, one would not expect there to be an orderly institution created purely for numbers. One would be right. If there is one thing that the Bureau is most certainly not, it is orderly. Standing near the Ashtown border of the Nexus district on Wilting Rose Street is a tall, noble building, grandly featuring the best architecture of the Second Age. Next to that building is the Bureau of Numbers. No one can quite recall the exact location of the Bureau, whether it’s on the left side of the tall building or its right, or even if the Bureau resides on that street, so most people assume that it is in fact the tall building. This suits the employees of the Bureau just fine, as they have all garnered a reputation of being annoying do-gooders, and many slavers and drug-dealers have taken their anger out on the street -- as evidenced by the many craters up and down the buildings that line the street.

Not that that reputation isn’t well deserved. From its inception right after the Council took power, the Bureau has attempted to “reduce the numbers” of slaves and drug traffickers within the city. Its founder, a Sidereal by the name of Iolis, was always seen as too soft-hearted by his fellows. The original plan, laid down by the Council, was to have the Bureau be mere number-crunchers, who were to only ask the numbers of slaves and drug traffickers. But Iolis turned it around; instead of merely asking for numbers, his agents would crawl into every dank hole, every corrupt cesspool, to reveal the diseased underbelly of the city. And their work has garnered results, for surely were it not for the Bureau and its noble work, Nexus would have collapsed under itself.

The Bureau of Numbers was once a proud institution within Nexus, calculating everything from the number of Durian fruits shipped into the city to the number of victims of the brutal murderer The Black Chopper. If the citizens of Nexus could take pride in nothing else, they could take pride in the fact that at the very least the numerical value of their comings and goings were calculated by the heroes of the Bureau.

And then the The Great Nexus Fire happened. Iolis disappeared and a new, doddering replacement was quickly found, a convenient ally of the Bronze Faction who did little besides drink and whore -- a Sidereal by the name of Anan Moro. Soon all the noble activities of the Bureau fell on the wayside, and eventually all actual work fell to one employee, Ted. Now instead of people lauding the Bureau workers as heroes, they deride them as hedonists and devil-spawn.

Rumors

• “The ghost of Iolis ‘iself is ‘aunting the building. I saw the 'im meself! It’s ‘is revenge on ‘is successor says I!”
• “Oh, it's inevitable. That Ted is just going to snap one of these days and burn the whole damnable building.”

Secrets

• Anan is not the whoring, boozing idiot he appears to be. He certainly whores, and he could easily drink a Northern Albino Wheezing Boarman under the table, but he’s certainly not an idiot. He is in fact working for Iolis, who has gone undercover in Yu-Shan to step up the work he started in Nexus. All the employees are in on it (except for Ted), and continue their benevolent work, though they go to great lengths to keep it under wraps.
• Were it not for the intervention of the Bureau. most of the gods on Drunken Wind Street would be starmetal by now.

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