Lawful LEV and Attunement Tax

LEV is the legal value used for taxes and crimes, not a guaranteed sale price.

Lawful Estimated Value is the number Lawful offices use when assessing relic recovery, ownership risk, attunement fees, property crimes, surrender rewards, and audit stakes. It does not necessarily equal what a shopkeeper, black-market buyer, desperate adventurer, or institution will actually pay, especially in the Void Era economy where gold prices, relic energy value, and political scarcity keep pulling apart.

Required by Law items usually cost 10% of LEV to legally keep or attune.

Items marked Required by Law usually require an attunement or retention fee equal to 10% of the item's LEV. Paying the fee does not make the item harmless or consequence-free; it records a lawful holder and gives the Lawful a paper trail if the item later causes trouble.

Declare the haul, decide who holds what, and expect questions about restricted items.

After a dungeon, raid, relic recovery, dragon lair, or suspicious windfall, a Lawful officer may ask for an item declaration. A party can declare personal gear, surrender items, register a lawful attunement holder, mark institutional property, or invite further inspection by being evasive.

Hiding a restricted item may be worse than owning it.

Concealing a Required by Law item, swapping a lesser item into the record, selling around the books, or pretending a registered item does not exist can turn ordinary loot into Unlawful Relic Possession, Unlawful Attunement, fraud, or a later tribunal problem.

Personal gear gives freedom; institutional gear gives cover and paperwork.

A finder may keep some items after paying fees, surrender items for a smaller finder reward, or place them under institutional ownership such as QUEST or VQU custody. Institutional ownership can reduce personal heat, but the item may remain subject to assignment, recall, inspection, or faculty review.

High LEV means high fees; even small magic items can create paperwork.

The system already existed before the Aleklot's Rest job; that audit is simply where the party first saw the math land hard on their own haul. A 15,000 gp LEV Ring of Absorption carried a 1,500 gp attunement price, a 350 gp LEV Knife of the Cardinal Carver carried a 35 gp price, and common items such as the Steady Step Band or Minor Acid Ward Charm still had small fees because they were magic and registered.