Hassan

[Baggins]

Hah.  Not very benevolent if you consider the fact they put the single source of transportation and shipping into the hands of a single enterprise. Monopoly's are bad. 

Also, not very benevolent to the poor citizens that relied on free travel to get around, or the island businesses that will have to pay his exorbent fees to ship their goods around the islands.

The system as it was previously put up for benevolent reasons, and it worked. People were quite happy with it. Taxes were kept low as well (though i'm not sure how).

I think its a conspiracy, or extortion and I'm sticking to it. 

Maybe he's turned pirate... Since he didn't a need a crew before to ferry people around. But hey Sea Dog Hassan could more easily rob shipping lanes outside the islands with a crew of scaliwags.

Maybe he is secretly a privateer for the crown. He robs shipping lanes gives some of the gold to crown's coffers.

Maybe he charges high amounts of money only to give some back to the castle.

Not to mention his first mate looks a bit seedy. 

So he plays graham the fool charging him even more than he usually charges (as we note from his surprise by the amount of the money in the bag). Graham doesn't even notice he's being overcharge. and Hassan gets to double dip off the castle's funds. (Graham gives him a "week"'s worth of gold", and he claims its only good for 2 days). Certainly a pirately thing to do.

Like Petra brought up, the ticket booth could be a secondary way to collect taxes and take census, without the people being any wiser.

Also maybe hassan double charges his passengers, pays the crown its share, but keeps a double share himself, like a corrupt tax collector, .

[Yonkey]

Heheh well conspiracies can actually go both ways.

Maybe in KQIV travel was seemingly free to the player (since Alex used a magic map) and Derek, but maybe it really wasn't.  Maybe Alhazred secretly imposed a tax on all ferry travel and tariff on all imports/exports between the Isles.  Considering he stole all their sacred treasures, this isn't an unreasonable assumption about his jaded character.

It's no wonder Hassan had to work for free!  Any profits he made were snuffed out of his hands by Alhazred.  Or literally vanished with the help of Shamir, a.k.a. the omnipresent tax collector.

I'd have to say Hassan played it smart by sabotaging the Ferry back then and claiming it was under repairs.  Alhazred was a bit too unintelligent on naval travel to understand the complete fluid mechanics of a sea vessel, and he probably didn't want Shamir to waste magic on repairing it.  Alhazred's more of a slave-driver kind of person, and with Shamir under his control, he could literally do whatever he wanted.

[Petra Rocks]

 

Anyhow, I suspect that Hassan is probably not quite honest or at least operating on normal procedures when he charges Graham.  If that has any further conotations that haggling we shall see I guess. 

But just for the record, I hope Alex never let Graham go near the bazaar unsupervised.  He's obviously got no skill at haggling. 

[Baggins]

I only know the ferry travel was free since that's what it says in the manual and companion about the ferry. But hey if POS has decided to ignore those sources for the sake of their personal story who am I to argue LOL... 

I was just trying to tie things together so it fits better in my mind.

[Petra Rocks]

That's the curse of knowing too much canon, when somebody doesn't follow it, it bugs you.  Just ask any Trekkie (no offense intended).  They should've had you on the team when they were writing the script, you could've made sure KQ canon was perfectly adhered too.  You're more than qualified.   

But you can rationalize your way around it, like we are doing here.  You can also try to deduce odd things like lifespans from bits of info that the poor author never even realized (s)he was implying. 

On a purely personal side note, that's why I like history.  More complexity that any fictional universe (though Tolkien's is pretty good), and not of these annoying contradictions.  Forgetting if the ferry was free or not is the kind of error that doesn't fly in real life.    Besides, it goes over well with the parents. 

[Yonkey]

Haha, well that's all I'm saying.  The beauty of fan-fiction is you can make whatever you like happen and somehow work it into the bits of truth that there is with the official storyline.

While you could say Hassan is a greedy money lover, you could also say Alhazred and Shamir were instead, and base a whole storyline on that.