Section 18’s station house was, before it was anything else, the Temple of Chuza – god of law, binder of oaths, keeper of balance – and the building has never quite let anyone forget it. The bones of that sanctity remain in the walls; the crypt beneath, by the Station’s own records, is older than the Empire itself.

“It always fills you with a sense of pride when you ascend the stone stairs to the huge iron doored entrance of the magnificent temple. The arched doors remind you of a mouth.”

The entrance has two Agents on watch at all time.
Beyond the doorway is the entrance hall leading to the front desk.

To the left are a number of interview rooms before the guarded and locked passage down to the lower crypt for the holding area.

For minor offenses [DnD, common assault, theft] prisoners are searched, scanned and put in a cell.
More dangerous perps have a body search and scan for magical items or glamour. Items and clothing bagged and a new set of orange overalls handed out. Rumours abound that the crypt has moving walls infused with lead – no one has escaped or broke in, yet…

To the right is a doorway that leads into the main church and the offices. A platemail clad humanoid is always present on a silent vigil with a chained hell hound. Agents must present their symbol (and face) to a ‘magic mouth’ in order to be granted access. Sometimes it malfunctions.

The doorway is blocked by two men in a dispute.
CLERIC – “It seems to authorise new officers but doesn’t work for the old recruits” you overhear.
MAGE – “Has the charge been reset?” the other asks.
CLERIC – “It was working fine yesterday…”
MAGE – “Yes but this is today, and if you don’t keep tabs on the Coraman crystals it can start to malfunction. Look at this [presents a blackened lump of stone from a recess under the door pass device]

When malfunctioning, the ‘mouth’ emits a long booming AAALLLEERRRTT! instead of the usual PPAASSS.
The hound starts sniffing and the platemail clad handler moves for it’s sword.

Beyond the door entry system is the open plan office area with sweeping stairways up both sides leading to the higher ranking offices.

In the centre is a statue to the god of law.

At the back, stairs lead down to the underground crypt where the lockers, training areas and armoury are located.
Officer Rhabbatt (extremely short for an Agent maybe reaching 5’ on a good day) oversees the checking in and out of weapons. And occasionally allocates new research equipment for ‘live’ testing by the Agents.

FILE NOTES

Section 18 is the newest and the last of sixteen Sections carved out of Chuza, its own patch running the north-east side along the docks.

The oldest Sections, down in the rougher country to the south-east, have been merged more than once as the city outgrew its own map – 1 and 2, 3 and 4, folded together as the population thinned.

All sixteen answer to the same Guild of Agents and the same common cause, but jurisdiction is taken seriously, and a criminal collared outside an Agent’s own Section has a way of turning a clean arrest into a turf argument.

The Guild itself grew out of the rebuilding after the old war – a hybrid of clerics, mages and thieves that evolved into something closer to a police force than any of the three ever set out to be.
Membership isn’t optional in practice: working the trade outside the Guild is technically possible, but draws exactly the kind of attention that makes it not worth trying twice. Inside the Guild, aggression toward another member carries zero tolerance; outside it, an Agent is expected to be considerably less forgiving.
Rank is earned through convictions and casework rather than time served, and any coin or gear that changes hands on an outside job is logged and split three ways – temple, city, or the Agent’s own pocket – at the captain’s discretion.

An arrest, done properly, follows the same six steps regardless of which Section is making it:

identify yourself as a Section 18 officer,
give the accused the chance to surrender on their own,
tell them plainly they’re under arrest,
name the crime,
explain why the arrest is necessary,
and make clear they are not free to leave.

Skipping a step doesn’t always sink a case, but it’s the kind of shortcut that has a way of resurfacing in front of a court martial later.

The grounds behind the building hold the Section’s own cemetery, walled and gated, locked to the public after 6pm. Its resident groundskeeper is a mage everyone simply calls Bucephalus – animate rope, levitate, mage hand, a floating disk for the heavier work, and a Kemercannon he’s not shy about producing when someone turns up asking questions without the right paperwork.
His dialect takes some getting used to, but he knows every grave on the grounds, and it was Bucephalus who levitated Agent Hawke’s casket clear of its plot – unwilling to let it be dug out and damaged – when the Agents came for an exhumation, paperwork in hand.