Post/Author/DateTime	Post
dsivis 10-20-06, 03:35 PM	Did this on a lark today, see if any gamers who are numismatists (coin collectors) will find this evocative or cool... Coinage of Eberron Adar: Coppers are triangular, Silvers are quadrilateral, Golds are pentagonal and Platinums are hexagonal. Regular progression of shapes mimic the crystals that are so important to Psionicists and the increasing order of the mind under the Path of Light. Coins are plain to emphasize the primarily ascetic life of Adarans. Aerenal: Holy symbol of the Undying Court (Aereni death-mask) on obverse with half-profiles of the Sibling Kings facing away from each other but joined at the vertical centerline. Aereni elves don’t really have a permanent mint, as they rarely need to change their tradition-and-favors-based economy outside of Pylas Talaer very often...and their monarchs die about 10% as often as any other monarchy! Argonessen: Seren barbarians will sometimes use castoffs or gift coins from Dragon hoards for coinage – so naturally they come from everywhere and could be quite old. Otherwise, they exchange polished river stones or barter. Aundair: Dragonhawk in flight on reverse side for all denominations, Queen Aurala’s profile on the other for Coppers and Golds, Wrogar’s profile for Silvers and Platinums. Breland: Roaring bear head with a double headed axhead behind it on reverse, profile of King Borenal on the obverse for gold and platinum and a standing portrait of Wroann (1st monarch of an independant Breland) for copper and silver. Inscribed with date and place of minting below the King’s profile and a battle cry or national motto below the bear’s head. Darguun: The Dhakaani clans hold onto leftover coins from their old empire, while the Kech Volaar and Marguul use holed coins much like the Talenta, although with crude decoration in the form of a few letters in Goblin acting as acronyms for various slogans and proverbs traditional to Goblinoids. Demon Wastes: A few very old Galifar coins are in circulation out here along with nearly as many Dhakaani bits. There are also supposed to some even older coins that feature faces on both sides appearing to be souls suffering ultimate torment...and they have an aura of necromancy under a detect magic spell... Droaam: A lot of coins stolen on raids from Breland, Zilargo and the Shadow Marches mixed in with bags of dust from panning operations in the mountains from goblin and kobold slaves. Local Byeshk is also sometimes pounded into very large and crude coins for ease of export or manufacture into the weapons that work so well against Daelkyr and other underground horrors. Eldeen: Primarily older Aundairian or Galifar coinage, as the Druids have little interest in economics; Reachers will normally barter. Karrnath: Profile of howling Karrnathi bloodwolf on reverse and the King’s Fortress on obverse. Previous monarchs put their profiles on coins, but Kaius III stated his desire for a more unchanging currency, so as to worry less about minting and recirculation. In reality, it’s so that less people notice his “uncanny resemblance” to Kaius I. Heh heh heh... Lhazaar: Mostly Galifar, Cyran and Karrnathi coins with a mix of everything else those dirty pirates can grab... Mournland/Cyre: the Lord of Blades has little use for pathetic meatbag currency - therefore it is melted down into components for magic weapons and eldritch machines needed to destroy those obnoxious adventurers! Prince Oargev, on the other hand, is in negotiations with the Brelish government to built a new mint in New Cyre with the coinage bearing his parents’ faces, one face per side. Mror Holds: Each of the Dwarven clans has its own mint and issues its own currency, though Mroranon and Soldorak coins are naturally the most common, coming from the largest clans. Oddly enough, House Kundarak does not mint its own coins, preferring to work on protecting the coins of everyone else (and also so not to disrupt the treaties that keep Dragonmarked Houses from acting as nations). Instead, it issues letters of credit for those who hold or are owed money from its many vaults. Q’Barra: New Galifar tries to keep up the old traditions by continuing to mint near-identical coins to the great kingdom...but they must concede to scarce frontier living. Thus, New Galifar coins often have slight amounts of inferior metals mixed in. This is not immediately obvious and would probably require a Craft (Alchemy) check of DC 10 to notice a different reaction, but it would not do if it got out to many of Q’Barra’s more violent inhabitants who have started using their coins for trade... Riedra: The Inspired prefer not to think of such petty things as money in their grand schemes. They instead prefer a brisk trade in mined crystals and gems for their potentially-psychoactive properties. Meanwhile, the common folk of Riedra do not have access to a national coinage and operate on an economy of barter mixed with collectivization when ordered to. Shadow Marches: The myriad influences in the swamps bring much coin to House Tharashk and other marchers. Zil and Brelish coins are most common, but many older coins from Galifar are still in circulation. Sometimes visitors to the Marches will be surprised by sometimes being paid in ancient Dhakaani coinage that shows remarkably little tarnish for its age - especially given the climate! Talenta Plains: Halflings are practical first and foremost - their coins are simply discs of identical size with round holes thru the middle. Naturally, they are worn rather than carried - necklaces, bracelets, anklets, sewn into tunics, etc. Particularly shiny coins (or attractive foreign ones) will even be glued to hunting masks for “eyespots.” Thrane: The Church hierarchy likes to differentiate Thrane from the other, secular governments of Khorvaire. Thrane’s currency is quadrilateral and slightly diamondoid and contains trace amounts of flametouched iron. These actions were ordered by the Council of Cardinals to give Flamic money (or anything melted down from them) a distinct sheen (Spot DC 20 for anyone in the know). The stuff also makes evil outsiders slightly uncomfortable, giving them a -1 penalty to charisma and wisdom check and relevant skill checks when held in hand...not that the Lords of Dust necessarily know this. The coins have a picture of a flame on one side and the Keeper of the Flame on the other with relevant text below. Fortunately, the profile of Jaela is too small for any of the crew of the Forgotten Freedom to fantasize over... Valenar: High King Shaeras Vadallia is above places his likeness on coinage! Better to subsume your form into the heroic spirit of your ancestors! Instead, Valenar issues a small number of coins with double-ended scimitars on them, along with artistic likenesses of warriors from the past. Xen’Drik: Drow like to barter in weapons, poisons or magic items. Giants try to find coins from their ancient empire to trade in; smarter giants like them because they’re reminders of past glory, hill giants like them “’Cuz dey shiney!”. Giant coins are, naturally enough, big. About four times as big to be exact, with incredibly intricate scenes worked into them - probably done by hand using elf slave labor for the platinum pieces! (Quadruple value, volume and weight for these suckers - lots more if the seller knows they’re THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD!) Zilargo: Gnomes don’t have a monarchy, so they don’t have people on their coins. Instead they prefer complex geometric designs incorporating minor arcane diagrams. The Trust is probably looking for a way to use massive sympathetic divination magic to monitor large (and probably illegal) transactions.
OneWinged4ngel 10-21-06, 12:19 PM	Actually, the coinage for most of Khorvaire has already been covered by Keith Baker... hate to break it to you after you did all that work ;) However, the coinage of other places still hasn't been covered. Galifar dominated pretty much all of Khorvaire, and the currency system was united under Galifar's rule. Though nations have now begun to mint their own currency since the breakup of galifar, they still use the Galifar system as a convenient basis. Dragons= Platinums Galifars= Gold Sovereigns= Silver Crowns= Copper Some nations have minted some specific, new coins... such as the Cyran Throne (5sp) or Brelish Double Crown (2cp). However, using the Galifar coinage allows you to use your money pretty much anywhere throughout Khorvaire without having to exchange it. For more information, I recommend reading Keith's writeups on the economy. I also think that, for the most part, it makes more sense than your system for the Five Nations.
dsivis 10-21-06, 04:57 PM	Oh, Okay. The fact that KB did it makes it better... Um...where can I find this?
OneWinged4ngel 10-21-06, 05:24 PM	Oh, Okay. The fact that KB did it makes it better... Um...where can I find this? In the appendix of KB's first novel: City of Towers. Under "Economy." It was someplace else, too, but I don't remember. Possibly you could find it on his site... not sure.
ChimericalWolf 10-21-06, 08:01 PM	Don't dispair, as some of your foreign coins could be useful! However:Aerenal: Holy symbol of the Undying Court (Aereni death-mask) Faiths of Eberron teaches us that the Undying don't have a holy symbol, or rather, that each family or house has a personal symbol, and that the death-mask has been used by outsiders as an overall symbol for the Court.
Thanqol 10-24-06, 12:56 AM	You can blend Keith's and yours - just call Platinum coins "Dragons" and keep the distinctive shapes etc.
Quicksilver 10-26-06, 02:32 AM	Thanks for that Elrinade. I'm going to use the existing KB descriptions for Galifar coinage, with the new descriptions you've provided for all coins minted after the Last War broke out. The first thing a group with a claim to government does is to mint its own money. Anyone ever hear of Confederate dollars? The information regarding the currency outside the 5 Nations was very useful too.
wendigovegan 10-26-06, 11:55 AM	Just to chime in. I went the opposite direction in my games. I decided that the other kingdoms got into huge financial trouble minting their own coins at the outset of the war (its tough to spend Thranish money in Karnath for instance) and instead let House Kundarak take over the minting of coinage for all of Khorvaire. This stabalized the currency during the war and helped offset inflation problems. It also lets me avoid a lot of needless explanations to the players about coinage like why is 1 gold equal to 10 silver everywhere? Because the House set it at that ratio.
OneWinged4ngel 10-26-06, 03:24 PM	Thanks for that Elrinade. I'm going to use the existing KB descriptions for Galifar coinage, with the new descriptions you've provided for all coins minted after the Last War broke out. The first thing a group with a claim to government does is to mint its own money. Anyone ever hear of Confederate dollars? The information regarding the currency outside the 5 Nations was very useful too. There's actually a problem with your logic here... while the confederates would certainly have motivation to mint their own unique money, they wanted to secede. The Last War was a very different sort of war, where the nations did not ever intend to seperate. They were fighting over who become the heir to the throne. Ideally, they would place themselves at the head of Galifar, and keep Galifar a united kingdom... and thus pretty much keep to the same currency. Creating new coinage would be detrimental to the goal of the Last War, as it was *not* intended to seperate the nations. A comparison to confederate dollars does not make sense in this case.
Quicksilver 10-27-06, 01:37 AM	There's actually a problem with your logic here... while the confederates would certainly have motivation to mint their own unique money, they wanted to secede. The Last War was a very different sort of war, where the nations did not ever intend to seperate. They were fighting over who become the heir to the throne. Ideally, they would place themselves at the head of Galifar, and keep Galifar a united kingdom... and thus pretty much keep to the same currency. Creating new coinage would be detrimental to the goal of the Last War, as it was *not* intended to seperate the nations. A comparison to confederate dollars does not make sense in this case. The way I see it, the Last War was a war of nations (as opposed to simply one of heirs or ideology). Each king and each nation fought to make their home country the ruler of the entire continent. With nationalistic feelings running high, I think it would be very likely that each country would mint its own coins with its own sovereign or symbols upon them. In this way, I can see diverse coins being produced, but all of them sticking to the 1 gold = 10 silver Galifar standard in order to keep a connection to the old kingdom that all of them aspired to conquer. The idea would be that once you've won the war, all nations will mint your coins under your government. Also, the nations must have minted money during the last 100 years to pay for the war. Are they going to put the old symbols on them, or their own, new ones? Not coincidentally, this means that you get to keep an easy currency exchange (1=1), while injecting some extra flavour to the setting. I like ease of use and I like flavour.
wendigovegan 10-27-06, 10:10 AM	The way I see it, the Last War was a war of nations (as opposed to simply one of heirs or ideology). Each king and each nation fought to make their home country the ruler of the entire continent. With nationalistic feelings running high, I think it would be very likely that each country would mint its own coins with its own sovereign or symbols upon them. In this way, I can see diverse coins being produced, but all of them sticking to the 1 gold = 10 silver Galifar standard in order to keep a connection to the old kingdom that all of them aspired to conquer. The idea would be that once you've won the war, all nations will mint your coins under your government. Also, the nations must have minted money during the last 100 years to pay for the war. Are they going to put the old symbols on them, or their own, new ones? Not coincidentally, this means that you get to keep an easy currency exchange (1=1), while injecting some extra flavour to the setting. I like ease of use and I like flavour. The problem I see with this, is the problem you always get with using specie for cash which is that you can't just mint more money whenever you need it. Consider the situation. Each of the 5 nations is locked in a struggle with their neighboors for 100 years of warfare. To win the war they need access to the super weapons being provided by the various Dragonmarked houses who are only accepting cash. The nation's King can't just tell his Lord Treasurer to "mint me 10,000 more gold coins" he has to get the gold from somewhere. This is why the USA and CSA used paper currency during the war, you can print more of it. If the nations were to "mint" their own money for the war I would see it as being experiments with paper currency rather than gold coins. Even in DnD gold is at least in theory a rare thing to get (hence it's value) and wars ALWAYS lead to inflation which means that you need to get your hands on ever increasing ammounts of gold just to keep up. The way I see it, either the 5 nations all switched to paper money for the war and used gold to pay the dragon marked houses (who would never accept paper money I'm sure) OR they turned to House Kundarak who would have been the one loaning the money to them in the first place in which case Kundarak would have taken over the business of minting and maintaining Khorvaire's money supply. It's worth noting that the paper money solution in war-time tends to cause even worse inflation and frequently crashes the economy of whatever country is printing it. You could use this in a campaign in which the PCs are ex-soldiers who got paid off in (now nearly worthless) paper money from their governments and have to adventure just to earn a living.
Quicksilver 10-28-06, 06:56 AM	The problem I see with this, is the problem you always get with using specie for cash which is that you can't just mint more money whenever you need it. Consider the situation. Each of the 5 nations is locked in a struggle with their neighboors for 100 years of warfare. To win the war they need access to the super weapons being provided by the various Dragonmarked houses who are only accepting cash. The nation's King can't just tell his Lord Treasurer to "mint me 10,000 more gold coins" he has to get the gold from somewhere. This is why the USA and CSA used paper currency during the war, you can print more of it. If the nations were to "mint" their own money for the war I would see it as being experiments with paper currency rather than gold coins. Even in DnD gold is at least in theory a rare thing to get (hence it's value) and wars ALWAYS lead to inflation which means that you need to get your hands on ever increasing ammounts of gold just to keep up. The way I see it, either the 5 nations all switched to paper money for the war and used gold to pay the dragon marked houses (who would never accept paper money I'm sure) OR they turned to House Kundarak who would have been the one loaning the money to them in the first place in which case Kundarak would have taken over the business of minting and maintaining Khorvaire's money supply. It's worth noting that the paper money solution in war-time tends to cause even worse inflation and frequently crashes the economy of whatever country is printing it. You could use this in a campaign in which the PCs are ex-soldiers who got paid off in (now nearly worthless) paper money from their governments and have to adventure just to earn a living. There is a quote that is appropriate here: "Gold cannot always get you good soldiers, but good soldiers can always get you gold"-- Niccolo Machiavelli I like the idea of worthless wartime national scrip - promissory notes that are no longer honoured now that the war is over. The characters could uncover a rumoured fortune, only to find worthless pieces of paper. That's the reason that gold would still be the standard. House Kundarak might have to make sure that their letters of credit are backed up by gold reserves, but a desperate country in wartime might choose to spend the money on weapons or urgently needed supplies first. Also, governments don't always have to pay exhorbitant rates for goods and services. They can compulsorily acquire goods, require people to work in war related industries for set wages and draft troops. They can then ration and control scarce supplies without money entering in to it. Governments and Houses might use paper, but coins have value no matter who has them. I see a lot of use for coins in day to day living in Eberron.
Melvin the Mediocre 11-03-06, 12:02 PM	I like the idea of worthless wartime national scrip - promissory notes that are no longer honoured now that the war is over. Hmm... Now I'm thinking of bitter but highly skilled families of weaponsmiths and magewrights who were bankrupt by the ending of the war. Perhaps they are sitting on stockpiles of weapons and magic that they refuse to sell (or are desperate to sell) now that they have been stabbed in the back and shoved to the side.