Coarse Sea Charter

A Coarse Sea Charter is a document required by every ship setting out from Scorch Gate into the Coarse Sea.

Acquiring a Charter
Charters are highly sought after by many traders seeking to explore the riches that can be found within the Coarse Sea. Over time the charter required more information before being handed one. In the current day the following details are required: After a Charter is approved two copies will be made. One is handed to the captain and the other is sorted in an archive building which is under guard. Before acquiring a charter a standard fee is expected to be paid, since the extensive bureaucratic process involved certainly isn't considered to be cheap.
 * Ship's name
 * Captain's name
 * Crew Manifest
 * Amount of cargo when leaving
 * Expected cargo on return
 * A proximate amount of tax is calculated depending on the value of potential goods being brought in
 * Detailed travel plan
 * Purpose of travel

Corruption
The amount of tax required to pay isn't set in stone but is as loose as the sands of the Coarse Sea. Many richer trade companies have the harbour administrators on their payroll, meaning that they can acquire lower taxes. Additionally for a bigger price many harbour administrators will completely ignore certain goods making the profit margin higher. This makes competition for newer traders much more difficult, many of which abandoned the lucrative trade completely, being discouraged by corruption and the bureaucratic process. Of course a trader who has the capital to bribe the harbour administrators can make a large sum of gold.

Sand-botter incident
Acquiring a copy of the charter stored in the archive can be a very lucrative opportunity for pirates seeking to ambush unsuspecting traders. Before the sand-botter incident the archives were guarded lightly. The few guards are as susceptible as anyone in Scorch Gate to look the other way when a good amount of money happens to fall in their pocket.

Only a couple of years after introducing the Coarse Sea Charter an incident as described above happened. In the evening a ship was expected to return the Scorch Gate with a hefty amount of booty, they returned from the gold mines located within the desert. The ship had become part of the regular routine and this time around everyone guards was really down. A group of pirates led by the human Ovo Gnollbane managed to acquire a copy of their charter, detailing the exact route the planned on returning. Equipped with just sand-botters they set out to create an ambush. Unprepared the Tri-fan galleon got ambushed and robbed of most of the gold it was caring. The sand-botters set of into the sunset never to be found again. A couple of days later a man was arrested trying to sell a large county of gold, after investigation it turned out to be gold stolen from the tri-fan galleon. The man (after torture) revealed that they managed to break into the archives and that is how they ambushed the ship. He never was able to reveal where Ovo Gnollbane headed to, since he succumbed to his wounds. After this incident the amount of guards was increased and a guarantee was put in place that the companies would pay a guard double the bribe they were offered.