*A letter to Legate Azadeh Zarat* (DM)

[WriterX]

To the Honoured Legate Azadeh Zarat,

  I hope you are in good health and spirits, for sadly I must touch upon a topic that troubles me heavily.

  As you might know, one of my esteemed scholarly colleagues, Jamileh Attar, has been ever pursuant in her archaeological work, sending her reports and depositing her findings to our Sandstone College. She has been hard working, thorough and dedicated to her profession, more so than any other archaeologist I met in this city.

  That said, life has been unkind to people like her; people who wish to grow and prosper as Scholars.

  The Sandstone College is in shambles, and even her words directly with the Princesses bore no fruit. Most recently the introduction of renewable licenses has brought to light the unfortunate reality that archaeologist like, indeed, the esteemed Jamileh Attar, do not earn many dinari, if any at all, from their work.

They struggle at a level near poverty and while some of them might even stoop so low as to sell their findings, instead of pursuing history further, Jamileh Attar is not one of them.

  As such, good Legate, we cannot abolish a law that was set in stone, but I would ask for your permission, yourself being a woman who too pursues and finds much interest in history, to grant an exemption to Jamileh Attar's need for renewing her licenses, so that she may continue her work unhindered.

However, Jamileh does not work alone. She has many followers, other scholars and specialists, who too might be tangled in such a mess of unnecessary costs and fees. And she, and many others like her, would wish to improve the Well and the Sultanate, not by gold, but by the work that they do. Work which is currently held in a choke by the notion that a lowly Archaeologist should be charged as heavily as a merchant with a heavy purse, and I have heard the merchants moan and complain just as much as those people who actually can barely afford their own research.

I beg for your consideration thus the following, grant an exemption not just to Jamileh Attar, but allow her to form an organization which, unlike the Sandstone College that currently is ill equipped to do anything other than gather dust, will continue the necessary work, for the good of the Sultanate. An organization whose members might not receive payment or wages as many others do, but who, by proving themselves worthy to Jamileh, will be exempt from the burdens of taxation.

   I submit this for your consideration, for many Scribes seem hungry for the Dinar of those both rich and struggling, while I, a follower of Izdu, cannot bare to watch this.

Live and Drink,

Scribe Marcellus Saenus