Tristan felt as though he was about to suffocate.
A surging crowd packed the entrance to City Hall beneath the newly hung wooden sign reading "Referrer Registration Office."
"Next! Name! Who are you referring, and what skills do they have?" the registration clerk bellowed, his voice already cracking.
"Me! My uncle! The best carpenter in Stonebridge City! I reckon he has to qualify as a level-two skilled worker!" A burly man held his identity tag high, his face flushed red.
"Get out of the way! My cousin can fire bricks! All five people in his family can work! That's at least five level-one laborers!"
"Make room! I've got a big one! My brother-in-law is a foreman at the Textile Workshop in Silver Moon Port. He manages dozens of people! That should count as level three, right?"
Tristan finally squeezed out of the crowd, the collar of his new administrative official's uniform askew and an unidentified grease stain smeared across his sleeve.
Without stopping to straighten himself up, he hurried down the corridor and all but jogged into the Lord's Manor.
Inside the study, Veylin sat behind his desk, tending a seedling.
"My lord, the registration office is out of control."
Tristan handed over a sheet of parchment, slightly wrinkled from sweat, and gasped for breath.
"As of a moment ago, more than a thousand Citizens had applied to become referrers. Every sheet of writing paper and bottle of ink in the city has been snapped up. If the guild store didn't have fixed prices, they would probably have more than tripled."
Veylin took the report and glanced over it.
"Excellent." He set the report on the desk. "Let's discuss how to allocate the new immigrants we'll be receiving..."
Night fell.
Candles burned quietly in the study.
An enormous nautical chart