Currency & Trade¶
Contested
Named in the open question Who collects Sancturi taxes.
"Sow and Reap. Unofficial: You can't eat gold." — the motto of Great House Arvumas
Money in the Fifth Age is shaped by metal scarcity. After the corruption of Mithis, silver and iron became rare and costly, bronze took over from copper and silver as the coin of daily life, and gold, though still "the basis of wealth measurement", fell out of favour in the Riven kingdoms (S320). The Sancturi Imperium mints its own coins, forbids foreign money inside its borders, and taxes everything through its clergy; Proturas lives by hauling and warehousing the trade of its region. Older standards of coin weight survive from the Earlier Ages.
Sancturi Age coinage¶
"Bronze pieces have all but replaced copper and silver currency. Gold pieces still exist, but almost everything is paid for in bronze" (S320). Copper and tin are still easily mined in open pits, and most arms and armour are bronze as well; see Materials & Metals for the metals themselves.
| Coin | Value | Weight and form |
|---|---|---|
| Truesilver bar | about 1,000 gold | Most commonly a 5 oz bar; "used in very large transactions". |
| Sun | 5 gold | The Imperial Sun, "large gold piece weighing 2.5 oz of gold". |
| Gold | 1 gold | The "old currency" gold piece, 0.5 oz of gold. Still used, "but out of favor in the kingdoms. Still the basis of wealth measurement." |
| Crow | 1/10 gold | "Large Imperial Bronze Coin bearing a bird on one side and sword and Sancturi symbol on the other", about 1 oz of bronze. |
| Bronze | 1/20 gold | A rough bronze coin of 0.5 oz. |
| Bit | 1/100 gold | "Small triangular Imperial Coin bearing the sancturi symbol", 0.1 oz of bronze; the equivalent of a copper "in pre-Dark Sun times". |
| Copper | 1/100 gold | The old copper piece, about 0.1 oz of copper; one copper is worth one bit. |
An ounce of Truesilver is worth about 200 ounces of gold, and an ounce of iron its own weight in gold, so that "only the rich can afford steel weaponry and armor" (S320). Suns are the coin of law: fines, application fees and penalties in the Imperium are reckoned in "suns (gold)" (S323, S321).1
Bronze and the kingdoms¶
Gold and gems remain valuable, "especially in the Imperium", but in the kingdoms "the practicality of bronze as a tool metal makes it more desirable for trading. Many merchants in the Kingdoms deal exclusively in bronze and will refuse to trade in gold or gems" (S320).
Minting and foreign coin¶
The Sages of the Codex mint the imperial currency and hunt down illegal minting operations. "It is illegal to use foreign currency inside the empire"; a counting house converts it, and a counting house is normally also a bank (S321).
Older coin standards¶
An Earlier Ages summary of the Mithis metals (S418) fixes coin weights by fractions of a pound, so that heavy metals do not make coins too small or too impure:
| Standard | Weight | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Platinum coin | 3.2 oz, a fifth of a pound | Heavier metals |
| Gold coin | 1.6 oz, a tenth of a pound | "Most metals" |
| Silver coin | 0.8 oz, a twentieth of a pound | "Some light metals" |
The same table sells ingots in 20, 80 and 320 oz sizes and prices the Argentium, Aurumite and other Mithis metals per ounce against iron; those values are on Materials & Metals.
Gap
No Fourth Age coin is named, and no Earlier Ages coin beyond these weight standards. No source gives the price of food, lodging or ordinary goods, or a wage.
Taxation and land¶
In the Imperium all land belongs to the emperor and is leased: only a great house may lease land from the empire, and every lesser house subleases from a great house (S323). The Great Houses are themselves ranked by the tax the empire collects from them: "A rising house may dethrone an existing house by generating more tax revenue." Each great house receives election tokens in proportion to its tax revenue, and those tokens are the votes of the biennial Great Election. Paying inflated taxes to buy rank "is not allowed (and is a capital crime)". The political structure of 2018 gives tax collection to the judiciary (S323); the clergy document of 2021 gives it to the Sages, "tax collectors, accountants, record keepers and bankers for the Imperium", whose Sancturi Codex records "taxes, land holdings, etc." and is assembled whole once every two years for the election (S321).
Citizens pay "a higher base tax" than freemen and lose their citizenship if they fail to pay it; freemen pay a flat tax to keep their status (S321, S323). A freeman seeking citizenship pays "a citizenship application fee (usually about 100 gold/suns)" before his four years of service. Goods from the colonies are "heavily taxed (20-50%), while internal goods are taxed much more lightly (5-20%)", which makes merging a stable colony into the empire "a huge financial and honor win" for its houses (S132). Smaller houses are the likeliest tax evaders; a house caught evading pays heavy fines, those most responsible are ritually sacrificed, and "in the most extreme case it has led to entire houses being auctioned off at slave markets to pay the fines/back taxes" (S132). How honour, rather than coin, ranks the houses is on Social Order.
The Causa Waiver¶
A landholder who cannot pay his taxes faces "land forfeiture and having his citizenship revoked unless he gets a Causa Waiver from the Sancturi Sages" (S150). The waiver needs a valid Causa: an "external calamity or extenuating circumstances". The one case recorded is a Curcian lord with an estate of twenty tenant farmers, whose inability to pay came from "overextension and misfortune", a weak case; a sage advised him to recover a Sancturi artifact instead.
Banking¶
Inside the Imperium the Sages "operate banks and counting houses. Banks are moneylenders and depositories" (S321). Among the great houses, Great House Devjardin has "banks and arbitrators ... scattered across the Imperium", and the young lesser House Boivin is "known for its traders and banking" (S322). Even the Assassins of Ghoresh keep a bank: their Fist of Coins makes the contracts, takes payment and acts as "the organizations bank and accountant, providing money, budgets and wages to the other fists" (S545).
The Proturan Bank¶
In Proturas the Proturan Bank guards its most secure vaults with a token that must be presented alongside a second key: "a bluish-silver coin imprinted with a series of symbols on one side and the Proturan Bank symbol on the other" (S029). During the Proturan campaign one such Proturan Bank Token, stolen from the Dockside Cutters by the Stone Syndicate, was hidden at the Pale Pit.
Trade in Proturas¶
Spillwater is the transport hub of the city: "most caravans drop their goods in warehouses where they are either processed locally or ferried across and shipped up the dam" (S103). Its count's "primary concern ... is for Spillwater to keep the trade flowing", and he cares little for its people or other industry. The Dockside Cutters run their own trade beside the legal one, with a Dockmaster over the port and warehouses, a Trademaster over markets and merchants and a Coinmaster over the fence and smuggling (S029).
The Stairs are the route for "a large amount of lighter trade goods" carried by wagon into the rest of the city; heavy goods go by Spillwater and the dam, because of the steep ramps up the steps (S104). The district holds the Southstep Central Market, "many excellent shops and unique market stalls aimed at selling to the lower and middle classes", the chapter halls of the Artisan's and Mason's guilds, the Proturan Stairs Grainery and the Proturan City Storehouse. Proturan shops, inns and taverns are graded by the quality of what they sell, and the better ones "screen customers (peasants will not be welcome in a high end tailor's shop)" (S104). Beyond the city, Proturas controls the trade routes through the Rift that were fought over in the Great Guhvil War.
Trade among the kingdoms¶
The five leading Riven Kingdoms of the Fifth Age live by trade as much as by farming (S319):
| Kingdom | Trade |
|---|---|
| Alghert | Uncorrupted dwarven iron mines; famous smiths and masons, apples and bread. |
| Brusau | Fishing, hunting and the Broken Sea trade routes; treaties of non-aggression with "several trading partners". |
| Miydal | "An important trading center and seafaring nation", patron goddess Sidhe of the Trade Winds; vineyards and wine. |
| Ozaustein | Mercenaries, metal, weapons and armour, wheat and maize. |
| Uthein | Grain farming, trade and crafts. |
Gath'gorim, a valley of dwarves and humans, is "a significant source of bronze, copper and tin", and the migratory Rovers "visit the kingdoms to trade", though they are "often seen as untrustworthy and thieves" (S319). In the Earlier Ages the dwarves of Dru'Bazan were "one of the principle suppliers of iron and steel across Numenia" (S372).
The Arvumas embargo¶
Food is a weapon among the Sancturi houses. House Arvumas "produces more food than all of the other houses combined". Some forty years before the present of the Sancturi material, after House Vinceric destroyed its ally House Ulchera, Arvumas cut off all food supplies to Vinceric's armies, "which left their armies to die of starvation and rout to Riven forces" and disrupted several campaigns (S322). The feud between the two houses dates from it.
Slaves¶
The slave trade is legal in the Imperium and largely in the hands of Great House Ocassus, which "orchestrate[s] raids on Riven settlements to gather more" and is rumoured to buy from Oesterkull raiders (S322). In the Earlier Ages the Draconians of Pherox raided their neighbours "to gather up slaves, or to steal food and other goods", and by law sold the children of slaves "at an early age to break up familial ties" (S372). Slavery itself is on Social Order.
Barter¶
Not every people uses money. The Naher "often prefer barter and trading systems to monetary based ones (though money still has value for trade with outsiders)" (S372), and among the Boreal Elves "monetary systems might not exist, and bartering could be the primary method of exchange" (S100).