Dyqamay Customhouse

Dyqamay Customhouse is a regional headquarters of the Commercial Guilds which operate in the Eleven Cities which surround the Sea of Jars. The largest such establishment to be found in the three insular cities, it is a powerful institution somewhat handicapped as such by its organisational heterodoxy.

Location

Dyqamay Customhouse is located at the western end of the wharf district of Dyqamay. As is often the case with customhouses of the Commercial Guilds, this location was dictated in large part by the fact that the building was once the local temple of Zargyod, the god of the sea, metals and good fortune. It is not clear precisely how old this building is. long the cult of Zargyod operated in the city before the Wesmodian Reformation. The building has been extensively and severally modified and renovated since the Reformation, mostly in the last century, obliterating much of the evidence that archaeologists might use to date the edifice.
The building is clearly of considerable antiquity, however, and just as clearly constituted something of a culmination of a significant degree of grass-roots reverence for Zargyod in pre-Wesmodian Dyqamay. Pre-Wesmodian inscriptions indicate what may be as many as a dozen smaller shrines to Zargyod in the city - many of them, interestingly, some distance from the wharf district. It has been speculated that a proper archaeological investigation of these shrines might date them and therefore suggest (among other potentially useful data) a maximum age of the customhouse building, as there would surely be little point in constructing a small shrine to a god so close to an existing temple. This work has not been undertaken, however, with debate still surrounding exactly how many of these shrines actually exist.

Facilities

Dyqamay Customhouse is a substantial two-storey building. The seaward half of the ground floor is a single large, richly-appointed room, rectilinear along three sides but convex on that which faces the sea. The large double doors are flanked by stout fluted columns and windows shuttered by lacquered wood studded with brass nails, while the floor is a chequered pattern of ginger-coloured ceramic and dark blue glass tiles. This room is open from sunrise to sunset as a venue for merchants to meet and debate trade deals and sell wares housed (for for modest fees) at any of a substantial number of warehouses in the vicinity owned by the Guilds. As much as two thirds of all the maritime commerce in Dyqamay, including everything conducted by the member guilds, is set up in this room. Guards prevent the entrance of gawkers or the destitute but anybody denied entrance may appeal to one of the two Iron Guilders who are stationed in the hall at all times and plead their case for admittance.
Doors in the landward wall of this room lead to rear chambers where Iron and Tin Guilders create and curate records of what is discussed in the hall. Maintained in an off-site warehouse, these records are extensive, and can be referred back to by interested parties who wish to consult their contracts. The indentures of all indentured labourers employed by the Guild of Labour in Dyqamay are also maintained by these scribes.
The top storey of the Customhouse is given over to private lounges where sensitive information can be shared and deals brokered. There rooms are hired for a small fee, with scribes - most of them indentured Lead Guilders - available for hire at a modest premium.
The Customhouse is unusual in that it contains no living quarters for its members. Guilders in Dyqamay are expected to live off-site and commute to the Customhouse for work.

Institutional structure and purpose

The Commercial Guilds of Dyqamay are organisationally unusual in that they employ no senior members of Gold rank. Instead of the triangle-shaped power structure favoured by most Guildhouses, the Dyqamay Customhouse has a trapezoidal structure in which the ultimate local authority is not a single person but a committee of three Silver-ranked Guilders who are - by both tradition and strictly-enforced practicality - considered equals. None of these three Silvers are permitted to claim or exercise any form of authority or seniority over the other two. Committee meetings of this triumvirate have been known to become deadlocked over this, and members have been demoted or even expelled from the Commercial Guilds altogether for attempting to enforce their control over discussions. Matters which come before this committee are debated on, sometimes at great length, before being voted on, and a simple two-to-one majority is all that is required to pass a motion, though this has been known to take days to achieve.
This structure of senior leadership results in an institutional culture more given to abstract debate than precisely goal-focused initiatives. Guilders from Dyqamay are noted for their cerebral approach to their work and for their willingness to concern themselves with seemingly ephemeral details of the initiatives they pursue. Guilders from other cities are often highly critical of this approach, to a degree that sometimes verges on vituperation. Commentators have speculated that this intra-organisational antipathy is an institutional echo of some sort of doctrinal or demarcation dispute between the Dyqamay temple and the other temples of Zargyod in the pre-Wesmodian era, though exactly what this might be is anybody's guess. What is known is that the Dyqamay Customhouse is unusual for liaising and conferring frequently with the Brotherhood of Rooks, an institution whose members hold the Dyqamay Guilders in peculiarly high regard. Why this should be is, again, unclear, since the Guilders and the Brotherhood are seldom closely linked in any other cities and indeed the Brotherhood has only a nominal presence in Dyqamay. Nevertheless Brothers from other cities are frequent visitors to Dyqamay Customhouse, as both observers of and participants in debate.
Dyqamay Customhouse is also noted for a distinctly patriarchal institutional culture. No women are allowed to serve at Silver rank. Those elevated to Copper rank are rare and often viewed with faint suspicion, even after years of service, as are female visitors to the Customhouse. Women serve in the Dyqamay Customhouse (often at Tin or Lead rank) rather than really working there. Unlike the other peculiarities related to the Guild this point is well-accounted for; it is well-known that in the pre-Wesmodian era the Dyqamay temple admitted only male clerics, and there has seemingly never been an institutional impetus to change this in the post-Wesmodian era. There is a feeling from outside the Guild that this should change, though nobody has ever prevailed upon the Guilders to seriously entertain this notion.
Whoever is actually doing the work, the Dyqamay Customhouse has the same basic job as the other customhouses around the Sea of Jars, facilitating, promoting and, to an extent, profiting from maritime trade. The Guilders are major players in the large-scale importation of food into Dyqamay, an important consideration for an insular city without enough arable land to feed itself,  which makes them highly influential figures in the community. One interesting downstream effect of the debate-focused institutional culture, however, is their intergenerational inability to help the Miner's Guild make much headway into the inland Dyqamay Silverlands, meaning that the precious metals and minerals which the city is known for exporting are still largely moving outside their jurisdiction. Dyqamay Customhouse is thus more focused on imports to the city than exports from it.