Coins in Sartar

[Joerg]

Taking this reply to the Tribal Edit thread for TSR (who the hell authorized that acronym?) into a separate thread:

  

54 minutes ago, jongjom said:

Page 53

When it returns to Treya, it is weighty with praise expressed in the form of Lunar silver.

Silver for a tip? A silver is a five days' spending for a free man's household standard of living, or one and a half days for a noble (RQG p422)! Generosity is a virtue, but collecting this much would make Treya the equivalent of grammy-award superstars charging for entrance fee. The wife won't be amused...

 

Sure, this is possibly Treya's gig of the year, good for a quarter of her annual income. But individual gifts of appreciation in the amount of a silver coin warrant a few (stock) verses of praise by the artist. What good is generosity if you cannot brag about it, building up reputation?

Clacks and possibly bolgs should be more likely as anonymous gifts. But then I suppose that most transactions

 

54 minutes ago, jongjom said:

-- Are they still using Lunar coins at this point in time?

Why not? Now it is trophy money, and while the old dies for sovereign coins may have survived the Lunar occupation, melting in all the Lunar coins and re-stamping them would be a major effort in terms of resources. There are more urgent messes to clean up in the wake of Kangharl's fortunate removal from office.

What might realistically happen is that the coins with Lunar stamps get divided up into well-measured fragments - literally halfpennies, farthings, possibly eighths. Defacing the Lunar propaganda on the coins and providing cash for everyday transactions.

The silver penny is a quite valuable piece of wealth. Twenty of these will buy you a cow, a hundred an able-bodied slave.

 

What material would the coin dices be made of?

Bronze is the hardest normal metal available to the Gloranthans, and enchanted bronze doesn't get much harder. Enchanted copper on the other hand gains quite a bit of armor, so I see a possibility for minting stamps to be made of enchanted copper. This requirement makes minting a well-controlled privilege, too.

[Richard S.]

What cult or cults is in charge of minting silver coins anyways? My first assumption would of course be there merchant gods, Issaries and Etyries, but knowing the world we're talking about I wouldn't be surprised if there was a universal god of minting or something. Maybe it's a subcult of one of the merchants. On a similar note, who handles copper? I know gold coins are Lokarnos' deal, while lead are Argan Argar's.

Hm. Since silver coins were only popularized by the MSE (to my limited knowledge) does that mean that the minting aspect of whichever god(s) create the coins was popularized (or even, dare I say it, created) by the God Learners? I know that their minting can probably be done just find without gods, but knowing the GL and MSE I wouldn't put it past them to do something like that.

[Joerg]

12 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

What cult or cults is in charge of minting silver coins anyways? My first assumption would of course be there merchant gods, Issaries and Etyries, but knowing the world we're talking about I wouldn't be surprised if there was a universal god of minting or something. Maybe it's a subcult of one of the merchants. On a similar note, who handles copper? I know gold coins are Lokarnos' deal, while lead are Argan Argar's.

The oldest published minting office is in the Pavis Rubble, near the Real City.

The Guide names the Naverian city of Kerrinth as a source for clacks. (p,317)

But then we have that nice collection of Gloranthan coins on p.12 of the Guide.

The Sartar Guilder has its name from the fact that it is minted by urban guilds, as a royal privilege and duty. These guilds may be trade or craft guilds.

The metalworking and the redsmithing to create the enchanted die pieces probably is linked to Gustbran. Mining the metal can be rural activity or long-distance trade. Assessing the coins will be done by a jury of Lhankor Mhy, Issaries and possibly Humakt cultists (for the Oath magic). The core design of the die is the work of an artisan, usually in royal employ, and a master die negative might be carved out of amorphous rock like a seal, and transferred to the actual die used by the mint, which would then add its own local stamp symbol to the die.

 

12 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Hm. Since silver coins were only popularized by the MSE (to my limited knowledge) does that mean that the minting aspect of whichever god(s) create the coins was popularized (or even, dare I say it, created) by the God Learners? I know that their minting can probably be done just find without gods, but knowing the GL and MSE I wouldn't put it past them to do something like that.

The rather fixed exchange rates for the coins feel a lot like a divine decree of sorts, although the troll economy treats bolgs highly different from human economy. But then Argan Argar is the god of shady deals...

The divinely coined wheels of the Lokarnos cult have been the master for numerous imitations true to the metal value and size of those coins, or providing a stable conversion rate.

Dara Happans use actual coins not just as exchange medium, but also as decoration worn on clothing, accessories and even armor.

Silver coins are neither the invention of the Lunars nor the God Learners. There are silver mines in various corners of Glorantha. Silver is associated with celestials, including Star Captains and their companions who fought and died in the Gods War everywhere across the world, but also deities of Power Rune origin. Few intact bones are known, but nuggets are plentiful, and corroded silver can fairly easily be smelted into the metal.

Coins have been used since before the settlement of Jrustela, and practically everywhere where urban civilizations existed. Including the heartlands of the Heortlings. The God Learners may have contributed to standardizing coin size and weight, or it may have been the cult of Issaries which did this. But then, both the Issaries and Lhankor Mhy cults were favored by the Middle Sea Empire for their utility.

 

Coins are generally made from alloys that make the metal soft enough that it can be stamped and hard enough to retain the shape it was stamped into. There may be specific recipes shared by the alchemists, who also have methods to assess the composition of coin alloys and metal used in jewelry, such as etching and scratching tests.

The mostali claim that all metal-working knowledge originated with them, but they have been known to over-state their "Made in Mostalia" claims on occasion.

 

[Tindalos]

29 minutes ago, Joerg said:

The rather fixed exchange rates for the coins feel a lot like a divine decree of sorts, although the troll economy treats bolgs highly different from human economy. But then Argan Argar is the god of shady deals...

I find it rather handy that one Wheel is of equal value as a cow. Useful standards of wealth and that.

[Stormkhan Cogg of Pavis]

Interesting to note, Tindalos, that in dark ages Ireland one of the largest denominations of coin, the cumal was the equivalent value of one milch cow. In fact, cows were used widely as a value in terms of wealth.

[Austin]

48 minutes ago, Joerg said:

But then Argan Argar is the god of shady deals...

Is this just for the pun? If not, could you elaborate a little on AA's sketchiness? I've not gotten that impression from the core book (pretty much my only exposure). Thanks!

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Quote

-- Are they still using Lunar coins at this point in time?

Why not? Now it is trophy money, and while the old dies for sovereign coins may have survived the Lunar occupation, melting in all the Lunar coins and re-stamping them would be a major effort in terms of resources. There are more urgent messes to clean up in the wake of Kangharl's fortunate removal from office.

FWIW it seems to me that we call the coins Lunars, and some number (perhaps the majority?) of Central Genertelans call them Lunars, but I suspect a good number of the coins running around aren't "actual" Lunars, but rather whatever silver coin-shaped thing the local elite happen to have around. Sometimes actually minted by the occupying Lunars, sometimes minted by a guild, etc.

I think another important complication in this discussion is that while Glorantha is Bronze Age, and derived from Bronze Age tropes, coinage terrestrially doesn't emerge until the Iron Age. So while we can draw comparisons from terrestrial history, I'd regard them as sketchy at best; although ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia meticulously recorded a bewildering amount of trade with neighbors both near and far coinage, as far as I know, wasn't a tool they used.

That said, I suspect the Athenian "owl" drachma provides an interesting example:

Around the era of the Peloponnesian War, at the height of Athenian's naval & trade ascendancy, their coinage was extremely good; by extremely good, I mean that the silver was consistently of a pretty good purity, and that the coins very consistently kept the same weight. This was such the case, that the eponymous owl became strongly associated with good and valuable coinage among other societies in the Mediterranean. So associated, that even for years (or, if I recall rightly, generations) after Sparta's defeat of Athens that coinage with an owl in Athenian style still emerged when those societies went to mint their own coins. The owl image became not associated with Athens, in the minds of the illiterate masses, but with a "good coin." So sometimes, if a ruler wanted their coinage to be more prestigious or more highly-regarded, they would mint it with an owl, and then their own city's or nation's iconography on the other side.

Now, Central Genertelans aren't going to suddenly start using a Moon Rune for "good coin" because they know it has magical associations; but it wouldn't surprise me that in the twenty-odd years the Lunar Empire dominated Dragon Pass politics and economics, some association arose with another Lunar image, connected with trade. Perhaps an Etyries non-magical (or minor-magical) glyph, or the Red Emperor seated on a throne (but altered slightly to be whichever local ruler; with the Air Rune instead of the Moon Rune, for instance) is now associated with "that's a good coin, it'll be mostly silver and weigh the right amount."

I think the key element here in Gloranthan coin iconography is that a majority of the population is illiterate. Granted, the literacy rate will be higher among those handling coins—an average tenant farmer living on 15L equivalent/year probably isn't handling silver every year, much less every season, and certainly isn't literate—but non-literate recognition of coinage is still an important goal of the iconography.

So there's a fair chance some element of Lunar coin imagery would be repurposed as "general coin imagery" throughout the Dragon Pass region; less so in Kethaela (given Nochet's domineering influence), and very heavily in Pavis/Prax, where that's the only semblance of civilization at all.

(Note: I've provided this from memory based on reading Colin M. Kraay's Archaic and Classical Greek Coins some years ago, and don't have the book with me to verify the retelling's accurate.)

[Bill the barbarian]

39 minutes ago, Stormkhan Cogg of Pavis said:

Interesting to note, Tindalos, that in dark ages Ireland one of the largest denominations of coin, the cumal was the equivalent value of one milch cow. In fact, cows were used widely as a value in terms of wealth.

I like the Japanese coin used as the foundation of their coinage system that in antiquity was equivalent of the rice need to live fo ra year. 

ETA And @Crel that had to be a  bad pun, I have seem nothing to cause doubt in Argan Argar dealing fair.

Edited December 23, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[Joerg]

20 minutes ago, Crel said:

Is this just for the pun? If not, could you elaborate a little on AA's sketchiness? I've not gotten that impression from the core book (pretty much my only exposure). Thanks!

The sketchiness has directly to do with the different value of lead coinage in troll communities (where a bolg probably has the same value as a clack, and a wheel is a prisoner).

Otherwise, the Argan Argar/Only Old One concept of an equal exchange was essentially what Arkat's Command was about - resumption of the Shadow Tribute that had helped the survivor communities to emerge from the Greater Darkness alive. And the re-interpretations which led to the abuse by a certain shadowlord that caused the Tax Slaughter. The penalties for defaulting on the Shadow Tribute are pretty dark...

 

Sandy Petersen mentioned vast (worthless, except as spice) gold reserves hidden in the depths of the Castle of Lead in Dagori Inkarth which the trolls will release at some time to an unsuspecting market, crashing human economy within hundreds of miles for good.

 

20 minutes ago, Crel said:

FWIW it seems to me that we call the coins Lunars, and some number (perhaps the majority?) of Central Genertelans call them Lunars, but I suspect a good number of the coins running around aren't "actual" Lunars, but rather whatever silver coin-shaped thing the local elite happen to have around. Sometimes actually minted by the occupying Lunars, sometimes minted by a guild, etc.

I wouldn't put it past the Lunars to place hidden illuminating hints on the coins, with possession of say 49 pieces of Lunar-coined silver giving you a 1% chance for illumination... Treat this as a rumor, if you wish, but think of it - how better to reach the elites of the neighboring realms?

A scheme like this puts the Dara Happan practice to ornament clothing etc. with coins into a different context, too.

 

20 minutes ago, Crel said:

I think another important complication in this discussion is that while Glorantha is Bronze Age, and derived from Bronze Age tropes, coinage terrestrially doesn't emerge until the Iron Age. So while we can draw comparisons from terrestrial history, I'd regard them as sketchy at best; although ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia meticulously recorded a bewildering amount of trade with neighbors both near and far coinage, as far as I know, wasn't a tool they used.

Metal coinage didn't. Clay tablets bearing a certain seal appear to have served as tokens of exchange in Mesopotamia way before the Lydians used lumps of electrum (roughly 50% each of gold and silver) as standardized payment for their mercenaries. But then other items like salt (as in "salary"), amber, certain types of sea shells (possibly polished or otherwise wrought, possibly arranged on strings) have served as tokens for the imaginary wealth that is money.

"Bronze Age" is a very broad shot into the history and prehistory of our world. I would think that both the Copper Age (including the North American one that operated on cold-hammered copper that was mined from way larger deposits) and the Roman Empire are applicable.

With some interesting mis-conceptions. Like the first appearance of poured stone and terrazzo floors already about 8k BCE in Anatolia, before they had any smelted metal.

 

20 minutes ago, Crel said:

That said, I suspect the Athenian "owl" drachma provides an interesting example:

Around the era of the Peloponnesian War, at the height of Athenian's naval & trade ascendancy, their coinage was extremely good; by extremely good, I mean that the silver was consistently of a pretty good purity, and that the coins very consistently kept the same weight. This was such the case, that the eponymous owl became strongly associated with good and valuable coinage among other societies in the Mediterranean. So associated, that even for years (or, if I recall rightly, generations) after Sparta's defeat of Athens that coinage with an owl in Athenian style still emerged when those societies went to mint their own coins. The owl image became not associated with Athens, in the minds of the illiterate masses, but with a "good coin." So sometimes, if a ruler wanted their coinage to be more prestigious or more highly-regarded, they would mint it with an owl, and then their own city's or nation's iconography on the other side.

Now, Central Genertelans aren't going to suddenly start using a Moon Rune for "good coin" because they know it has magical associations; but it wouldn't surprise me that in the twenty-odd years the Lunar Empire dominated Dragon Pass politics and economics, some association arose with another Lunar image, connected with trade. Perhaps an Etyries non-magical (or minor-magical) glyph, or the Red Emperor seated on a throne (but altered slightly to be whichever local ruler; with the Air Rune instead of the Moon Rune, for instance) is now associated with "that's a good coin, it'll be mostly silver and weigh the right amount."

 

 

20 minutes ago, Crel said:

I think the key element here in Gloranthan coin iconography is that a majority of the population is illiterate.

But that was the case in our history until maybe 200 years ago, too - when the first places had mandatory public schooling. Athens had a significant quota of illiterates despite practices like the ostracism (which required the voter to write the name of the person they thought would benefit from exile).

 

20 minutes ago, Crel said:

Granted, the literacy rate will be higher among those handling coins—an average tenant farmer living on 15L equivalent/year probably isn't handling silver every year, much less every season, and certainly isn't literate—but non-literate recognition of coinage is still an important goal of the iconography.

That's why the stamp die for the mint is important.

People do recognize seals, and even cartouches, even if they cannot read them.

 

20 minutes ago, Crel said:

So there's a fair chance some element of Lunar coin imagery would be repurposed as "general coin imagery" throughout the Dragon Pass region; less so in Kethaela (given Nochet's domineering influence), and very heavily in Pavis/Prax, where that's the only semblance of civilization at all.

(Note: I've provided this from memory based on reading Colin M. Kraay's Archaic and Classical Greek Coins some years ago, and don't have the book with me to verify the retelling's accurate.)

The Lunar penny has penetrated into the economical sphere of Nochet and Kethaela at large only fairly recently. Belintar's sovereigns or guilders held a similar guarantee as the Athenian owl. Prior to that, there may have been various guarantors for coinage in Kethaela, e.g. Casino Town, Nochet, and possibly the Hendriki kings with their access to silver mines in eastern Heortland.

 

[scott-martin]

29 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Belintar's sovereigns or guilders

Bit of trivia: reading between the lines, Red friendlies spent a lot of effort flooding the market with lunar silver (^RMI) in order to knock as many Holy Country (^ING) and Sartar (^SOV) guilders as possible out of circulation. A lot of them were probably melted down and recast as lunars to keep the cycle going. Now the process is turning but there's still a vast amount of funny money out there.

[Qizilbashwoman]

maybe a woman with a sword, like Judith on this Menorah

https://www.thetorah.com/article/judith-a-chanukah-heroine

[Bill the barbarian]

16 hours ago, Joerg said:

Taking this reply to the Tribal Edit thread for TSR (who the hell authorized that acronym?) into a separate thread:

 

Thank you all, for this great topic,

I have for decades used multiple coins to represent silver coins on the ancient and incredible heavily trafficked trade routes traversing the Pass... guilders, lunars, oddities from antiquity,  something from the HC that I can not recall the name of now oddballs from all over the world—all in the various regions of the Pass. which is an idea I got from a Great Old One or... canon? All, of course, being accepted under the Umbrella of an Issaries Great Market Spells.  Doing deals outside of an Issaries market carried many risks, lunar protective trade magics were not as powerful, AA trade magics might not see the same risks the human traders might... shaved or counterfeit coins ,  to cursed ones (rumour, tarnished silver that can not one cleaned). and even misunderstandings, or religious rivalry, adventure hooks galore! 

The Copper pieces I used to think of as being a deeply etched round copper coins  that could be easily chiseled into 4 slices of pie (the LM claimed, in my Glorantha that  this is how pi came to be), cleanly or roughly bitten by some or snapped apart by others (giving me ha’ pennies or quarter farthings back in the penny silver coin days of RQ 3). The modern view of the Earth Runed and metaled square copper coins with square holes that could be perhaps broken in half  . I  doubt that they would break them in half on the horizontal though as the result wold be a squarish looking U shaper coin perhaps resembling the chaos rune a little to closely for some I would think. 

So breaking a clack into four or half on the diagonal might work and  would yield two or four slices that resemble the old law rune triangle or maybe the beast rune to a degree with a inverted triangle taken out Story wise than means would would get 4 pieces of law missing a piece of law from the earth or perhaps 4 beasts taken from four beast from out of the good red Earth (now that sounds a bit more like a myth a bit of an apocalyptic one but...)

I love Joerg's idea of illumination rumours (think the american one dollar bill’s illuminati pyramid rumour for instance, more so amongst america's enemies or illuminati believers) and the breaking of a Lunar coin to show disdain by desecrating it while paying for something ironic... Great!

Oh and finally thanks Joerg for clearing up the AA sketchiness. That makes sense.

Cheers

Edited December 24, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[jajagappa]

11 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

the breaking of a Lunar coin to show disdain by desecrating it while paying for something ironic... Great!

Until the merchant you're trading with tells you that it is no longer worth it's weight is silver.... 

[Qizilbashwoman]

12 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

The Copper pieces I used to think of as being a deeply etched round copper coins  that could be easily chiseled into 4 slices of pie (the LM claimed, in my Glorantha that  this is how pi came to be), cleanly or roughly bitten by some or snapped apart by others (giving me ha’ pennies or quarter farthings back in the penny silver coin days of RQ 3). The modern view of the Earth Runed and metaled square copper coins with square holes that could be perhaps broken in half  . I  doubt that they would break them in half on the horizontal though as the result wold be a squarish looking U shaper coin perhaps resembling the chaos rune a little to closely for some I would think.

I remain strongly of the position that coins in Kerofinela, and perhaps much of Theyalan societies, is holed like traditional Chinese money. It makes it easy to organise in strings and also to sew onto garments - here's a German anthropologist's daughter in Turkish Armenia (the Hemshin were never genocided as they were not recognised as Armenians due to a very distinct lifestyle and Islamic faith). Larger coinage as worn wealth is historically incredibly common as it's hard to pickpocket and is more portable than in a heavy bag. Your bank account is on your face.

You KNOW the women of Kethaela wear coins

Edited December 24, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[Tindalos]

Oh, yes, I did post some of my thoughts on coinage on my blog a while ago, how they developed over time. It may be of interest!

 

On 12/23/2019 at 10:32 AM, Joerg said:

Taking this reply to the Tribal Edit thread for TSR (who the hell authorized that acronym?) into a separate thread:

 

Honestly, I'm wondering if that wasn't intentional given the earth elemental on page 115.

[Joerg]

9 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

You KNOW the women of Kethaela wear coins

I know that the women of Kethaela hide wealth underground. The Pelorians are the ones who display coins on clothes and armor, as per the art direction in the Guide for the Pelorian culture couple.

But then, if Lunar chic is imitated, yes, Kethaelan women imitating the Dara Happans wear coins.

I don't think that the central hole needs to be the end of this. If you want to have rulers' heads or mythic events on the coin, a central hole needs quite a lot of ingenuity not to hamper the depiction of a ruler in profile.

There might be standardized "coin hangers" into which a coin could be inserted, affixed (by bending some thin metal) and then strung to a thread or bigger things to be able to hang them to your clothing or accessories.

[Qizilbashwoman]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

But then, if Lunar chic is imitated, yes, Kethaelan women imitating the Dara Happans wear coins.

They'd never. I guess the Lunarised Sartarites, then.

[Bill the barbarian]

8 hours ago, Tindalos said:

Honestly, I'm wondering if that wasn't intentional given the earth elemental on page 115.

The Smoking Ruins = Tactical Studies Rules, no? They are both TSR and one (TSR) is definitely in the other (the smoking ruins), no?

Edited December 25, 2019 by Bill the barbarian