Adventures in Heroland

Harriet Ironspike is a tax collector, but not the exciting kind. Not one of the highly-skilled operators of the Special Assessments Office with their ultra-light chainmail and automatic crossbows. Harriet is only an initial assessor, a form-filler, who has to call in the SAO when things became complicated or tricky. Which means that the SAO always get all the credit for the most interesting audits she does.

Harriet doesn’t mind that. She doesn’t mind her job. In fact, she actually quite likes it, even though working where she does is sometimes tricky. She is in the difficult in the northern province of Karmelt. Or Heroland, as everyone calls it.

Karmelt is in the northern marches, and is full of heroes. And bandits. And dragons. And orcish raiding parties. Which the all heroes fight endlessly. And that fighting is all very well, and like all the residents of Heroland, Harriet is glad someone does it, but it does create certain complicated issues around their taxes. Like irregular incomes and capital gains and deductible expenses for dragon hordes.

Any cash-based employment with haphazard accounting needs to be treated with a certain care by the tax authorities, and unfortunately, those tax authorities are Harriet.

Only Harriet.

For the whole province of Heroland.

And it isn’t just heroes she has to deal with, either. It’s heroes, and orcish mining corporations, and elvish agricultural collectives that everyone knows are growing illegal narcotics off in the woods, and worst of all, it is doing audits of dragons.

Harriet hates doing audits of dragons, but tax season is coming and she knows she is going to have to before the financial year is out.

[Updates on Wednesdays]