Panoply
Wealth in Creation | Mundane Equipment | Superior Eq. | Drugs | Weapons | Armor | Shields | Vehicles | Lifestyle | Everyday Wonders | Lesser W. | Hearthstones | Greater W. | Artifacts | Earthshaking W. | Artifact Vehicles | Warstriders | Artifacts and Artifice
This chapter gives an overview of the monetary standards of Creation and the various goods and services available in the world of Exalted. Creation is a vast place and it contains many things not explicitly found in this chapter, but a Storyteller can easily extrapolate whatever else characters might desire from those items found here. Obviously, not every item is available everywhere. Characters in a small town are unlikely to get lamellar armor. Items of greater complexity, such as articulated plate armor, are rarely obtainable outside the great cities—Nexus, the Imperial City, Lookshy or the capitals of the South. Large purchases, ships or manor houses for example, might require a character to wait months or years while the item is built to her specifications.
Wealth in Creation
Wealth exists in many forms. It can appear as a casket filled with jade coins or as a profitable iron mine with the slaves and guards to run it or as a palace filled with beautiful artwork and a suitable staff. The first of these is cash on hand, the second is capital, and the third is good credit. All three tend to surround Creation's richest and most influential the way silk moths cluster around old wardrobes and garment chests.
While the financial systems and instruments of the Age of Sorrows have fallen far since the days of the Shogunate, there are still banks and insurance agents and tax farmers. It is possible to pay for goods with letters of credit in places. One can buy shares in various commercial and civic enterprises or issue bonds against the future production of goods from a factory that hasn't been built yet. It is also possible to face execution for financial chicanery or be cast into slavery for debt.
The Jade Standard
Jade Currency Table
| 1 talent (T) | = | 8 bars (B) | = | 64 minae (M) | = | 128 shekels (S) | = | 1,024 obols (O) |
| 1 bar | = | 1 minae | = | 16 shekels | = | 128 obols | ||
| 1 mina | = | 2 shekels | = | 16 obols | ||||
| 1 shekel | = | 8 obols* |
*Obols are divided into quarters to form bits.
A regular system of coinage supports all of these financial institutions and ventures. This system is based on jade, and it is accepted as the cash standard by banks, tax collectors, mercenaries and courtesans alike.
For about 500 years, the Realm has promoted jade as the standard currency. On the Blessed Isle and in the satrapies, jade holds a privileged status as the sublime symbol of power—it's a magical material, a superior weapon material and the representation of fabulous wealth.
Unfortunately, jade's superior status in three such overarching aspects of life has tended to emphasize its scarcity. Jade has capabilities in the spheres of magic and martial arts that far outstrip its usefulness as money, so a single obol of jade can be supremely valuable. In the Realm and its dependencies, it is illegal for a peasant to hold so much as a single bit of jade. Instead, a second currency operates beneath jade and is supported by it. This currency is called jade scrip.
The jade standard is backed by the Realm's Treasury, which contains more than 50,000 talents of jade. The magical, martial and financial potential of this storehouse of treasure serves as a symbolic reminder of the Scarlet Empress's ability to make things happen in Creation and tends to reinforce the power and prestige of the use of jade.
By contrast, jade scrip is not backed by the Realm's Treasury. Rather, the Private Purse of the Empress serves as the monetary pool that issues and directs the use of jade scrip. As a result, jade scrip tends to be used only in the Realm, and only by the peasantry. The Dragon-Blooded and the patrician class tend to use jade whenever possible, leaving jade scrip to the townspeople and the rural farmers who cannot hope to accrue enough wealth to hold a single obol in their lifetime.
Jade Coinage
Jade coinage is issued in a variety of shapes and sizes. The talent (T), weighing 68 pounds, is a slab of jade roughly scored into eight rectangular bricks. The seal of the Imperial Treasury is lightly engraved into each of the resulting panels, and the minting date and an identifying number are carved into each side of the slab. Many talents, particularly those that are illegal, have no markings at all, since possession of an unmarked talent only results in confiscation and a fine, while forging the Imperial Treasury’s marks carries a death sentence. The true talent has always been a rarity even in the Realm. More frequently, the talent simply appears as a “money of account,” a column in the ledgers of the auditors.
There are 1,024 obols in the ledger talent, though a true talent actually contains 1,536 obols by weight. The discrepancy arises from the carving process that turns a raw talent of jade into coins. The resulting dust, called "Imperial boot polish," can be mixed with steel and other metals to produce the jadesteel alloy so useful for constructing weapons and armor, but it amounts to 512 obols-worth of coinage that cannot enter circulation. This dust is placed under very careful guard in the Imperial Treasury, but large amounts of it, and even completed weapons, have been disappearing from the Realm’s armories of late. A talent is equal in value to the price of a new ship or the cost to hire a troop of mercenaries for several weeks.
The bar and the mina are also rarely seen in their solid forms, functioning more often as moneys of account like the talent. Each of them is a brick of jade with the seal of the Imperial Treasury scored upon its upper surface. The bar is additionally scored into eight thin strips each the size of a mina. A ledger-bar is worth an eighth of a talent, or eight minae, or 16 shekels, or 128 obols. A mina weighs about a pound and is a slab of jade about three inches wide, six inches long and a quarter-inch thick. A single line divides it in half, and the Imperial Treasury's dragon-badge is scored into each half, while a series of circles on the reverse side indicate 16 small circles. Bars can represent months worth of value in supplies for a fortress or a legion, while the mina represents the purchase price of a skilled slave.
The shekel, the obol and the bit are the most common types of actual jade seen in circulation. These three denominations represent small enough values and are distributed in small enough sizes that they can be regarded as useful sums of money for the Dragon-Blooded and their servants.
The shekel is a thin slab of jade graven with the eight circles of its eight jade obols on one side, with milling around its thin edge to discourage shaving. A single shekel weighs about nine ounces, and they are often carried wrapped in silk to keep them from breaking. A ledger-shekel represents eight obols or 32 bits.
The obol, a round coin weighing about an ounce and about an inch in diameter, is the common currency of the Realm's upper classes. Herb-sellers and drug dealers use obols as balance weights to prove the accuracy of their measurements. An obol's age can be determined by the image graven on it. The oldest bear pictures of a woman in a doorway, representing the Empress entering the Imperial Manse. More recent coins bear the crests of each of the Great Houses, announcing their inception dates. Others show a circle of faces that represents the formation of the Deliberative or various symbols or figures commemorating battles that Imperial forces have won. The most recent coins continue to show the lightning bolt from the Battle of Mishaka in RY 754. Some wits have suggested issuing coins featuring the picture of an empty throne, but no one has yet taken the step of commanding the Imperial Treasury to change the image on new obols.
The bit is an unofficial addition to the currency. Possession of bits was made illegal in RY 465 during the Unbroken Rushes Rebellion, because the rebels used them as a recognition token between the cells in various prefectures. However, they have survived official disfavor for a long time, simply because they are too useful not to persist as a permanent addition to the monetary system. A bit is literally a quarter of an obol that has been split into four pieces.
One common modification of a bit is to have a hole drilled in it for a lanyard or a chain and a word in Old Realm carved into the bit's surface. Peasants believe that bits of jade possess some magical capabilities, and they tend to wear them as magical amulets with glyphs representing longevity, prosperity or happiness. Many Dragon-Blooded officers collect these charms from the rebels during uprisings, thus proving the simplistic belief in jade's innate magical nature a dangerous illusion.
Jade Scrip
Instead of using jade to pay for goods and services, the lower classes of the Realm make use of money based on the jade standard, where copper coins and paper bills represent fractions of the value of a single obol. Jade scrip came into existence in RY 185, when the Scarlet Empress realized that the manufactories of the Realm produced all manner of goods for the use of the peasantry, for costs that were a mere fraction of the value of a single obol. If the jade standard applied to all her subjects, the Empress realized, then most peasants would never be able to afford to buy anything. Various changes have been made to the jade scrip system over the centuries, with the Empress regularly inviting comment and advice from the Deliberative and the prefects. At present, jade scrip is minted or printed at one of nine locations on the Blessed Isle and is issued through officials in the capitals of each prefecture.
Jade scrip is backed by the Empress's Private Purse. This arrangement achieved two goals. The first was the creation of a rival bureaucracy to wrangle with the Treasury officials who had grown too powerful. The second was the removal of jade as a currency from the hands of the peasantry. The Private Purse of the Empress acts as a rival financial bureaucracy that handles the economy of the lower classes, as opposed to the Imperial Treasury that handles the economy of the upper classes and the Realm’s overall financial policy. As a beneficial side effect, the peasant economy is entirely dependent upon the Empress's good will.
Jade scrip is issued in four forms: the koku, the quian, the siu and the yen. The koku, a paper bill measuring three inches by five inches, is the most valuable form of jade scrip. Printed on mulberry paper shot through with purple and gold silk threads that form a pattern of flying cranes, the koku bears an image of a black-and-green print of eagles nesting on the Imperial Mountain. On the reverse is the legend, "In the Scarlet Empress's name, one-eighth of an obol of jade." The paper also bears a watermark in the shape of the Imperial Manse. The quian is printed on similar paper, but features lions instead of cranes. The face bears the skyline of the Imperial City, while the reverse bears the inscription, "In the Scarlet Empress's name, one-sixty-fourth of an obol of jade." These paper bills were never very popular, both because their values are still too high to be useful and also because the imagery struck devotees of the Immaculate Philosophy as idolatrous.
The siu and the yen are much more useful and popular. These two sizes of copper coins are in common circulation throughout the Realm and its satrapies in the Threshold. The siu is about the same size as a jade obol and has the Imperial Treasury seal on one side and a stylized portrait of the Empress on the other. The coin is chemically treated to make the copper stay brown. The yen, by contrast, is twice as large and has a square hole in the middle. Stamped with characters that say "Scarlet Empress" on the obverse and "She Reigns Forever" on the reverse, the yen is chemically treated to make the copper turn green. The siu has a face value of 1/128th of an obol, and the yen has a face value of 1/1,024th of an obol. Both the siu and the yen can be cut into halves and quarters, and the yen can be further divided into eighths.
The Empress, and the Deliberative after her, have placed deliberate safeguards in the Realm's laws about what jade scrip can and cannot be used to buy. Weapons and armor cannot be purchased with jade scrip from any Realm manufactory, nor can luxury goods, ships or items of sorcerous power. Food, raw materials, pottery and cloth must be bought with jade scrip, requiring even the Great Houses to make regular purchases of jade scrip, trading in their jade stores for the Empress's private currency. Patricians and Dragon-Bloods can buy jade scrip at a rate of one and a half times its face value, so a single obol of jade buys 1,536 yen. But this transaction is entirely one-way. To purchase jade with jade scrip, one needs three times as much jade scrip, so an obol of jade can be bought only with 3,072 yen. This makes jade nearly impossible for the lower classes of the Realm to possess and, indeed, makes it economically beneficial for the peasantry to turn in jade in favor of jade scrip. Therefore, the jade scrip maintains a permanent and deliberate division between upper and lower classes in the Realm.
To help understand the scale of the jade scrip, a koku is about equal to a month's wages for a peasant. A new plough and oxen team costs this much, as does the land and trees for a small apple orchard. Three to four koku is a family's annual tax payment. A quian is a week's wages. It can purchase a dozen sheep or a couple of milk cows. A siu will buy meat for a family for a week. A yen is a day’s wages for an unskilled laborer. A half-yen will feed a childless couple for several days without meat. A quarter-yen will buy a day's groceries, while an eighth-yen allows for a pleasant evening at an inn.
Of course, with the Scarlet Empress missing, the issue of jade scrip has become increasingly complicated. The Great Houses dislike the system intensely, since it stripped them of jade reserves and kept them from controlling the peasantry of the Blessed Isle directly. The peasantry is unnerved by the awareness that its financial system depends on the existence of the Empress's Private Purse—a purse that may be emptied by the next monarch of the Realm. No one really knows if the jade scrip system will survive the pressures currently afflicting the Realm and its government.
Jade Scrip Currency Table
| obol (O)* | = | 4 bits | = | 8 koku (k) | = | 64 quian (q) | = | 128 siu (s) | = | 1,024 yen (y) |
| 1 koku | = | 8 quian | = | 16 siu | = | 128 yen | ||||
| 1 quian | = | 2 siu | = | 16 yen | ||||||
| 1 siu** | = | 8 yen# |
* Obols are divided into quarters to form jade bits. ** Siu are divided into halves and quarters. # Yen are divided into halves, quarters and eighths.
Other Money
Beyond the pale of the Realm's satrapies and dependent territories, another standard of wealth applies. In these regions near Creation's edges, where possession of jade attracts the notice of spirits, demons and the fae, it makes sense to use a material other than a magical magnet as a symbol of wealth.
The Silver Standard
In the East, North and South, silver is the standard money, minted into coins of numerous sizes and shapes. Hacksilver, in the form of belts, neckrings and bracelets, is popular in the North, where displays of both wealth and impetuous generosity are common. In the South and East, the dinar is the coin of common value. Usually found in minted coins of about a halfounce weight, the dinar is minted by individual cities, towns and principalities.
As a money of account for tracking large purchases in silver, accountants use the dirham, equal to 16 pounds of silver. There are 400 dinars to a dirham, but there tend not to be any dirhams in actual circulation. (There are ingots of this weight available from time to time, though.)
Different cities tend to have different levels of purity in their coins, and these variations can vary year to year. Merchants tend to assess coins by weight and silver quality as much as by city of origin. This has tended to delay the acceptance of silver as a permanent replacement of jade in the Threshold and the Realm. The Guild's standard coin is widely regarded as the purest and most reliable source of silver coinage. The coin is slightly oval and is milled around the edges to discourage shaving. Dinars can be halved or quartered, and sometimes, they are cut into eighths.
Silver Currency Table
The following chart explains how the silver standard compares to the jade standard as of RY 768. These numbers are subject to variation as the Guild's fortunes rise and fall. The Realm is considerably more stable in people's minds, so the jade standard remains rather more stable as a result.
| 1 talent (jade) | = | 5 talents (silver) | ||||||||
| 1 talent (silver) | = | 64 pounds | = | 4 dirhams | = | 1,600 Dinars | = | 1/5 talent (jade) | = | 204 1/2 obols |
| 1 dirham (silver) | = | 16 pounds | = | 400 dinars | = | 51 1/4 obols | ||||
| 8 pounds (silver) | = | 200 dinars | = | 25 3/4 obols | ||||||
| 4 pounds (silver) | = | 100 dinars | = | 13 obols | ||||||
| 2 pounds (silver) | = | 50 dinars | = | 6 1/2 obols | ||||||
| 1 pound (silver) | = | 25 dinars | = | 3 1/4 obols | ||||||
| 1/2 pound (silver) | = | 12 1/2 dinars | = | 1 3/4 obols | ||||||
| 1/4 pound (silver) | = | 6 1/4 dinars | = | 3/4 obol |
The Cowrie
In the West, the red-shelled cowrie is the standard medium of exchange. The perfect shells are arranged according to size in three categories and set on strings of 25, 50 or 100 shells. While not recognized in the rest of Creation, the shells are highly prized by the islanders themselves. The Western islanders trade three dirhams of silver to the cowrie, and six cowries to the obol, thus rating silver very high and jade very low. As a result, it can be an intermediate investment for people doing lots of business in the West, but its minimal usefulness elsewhere in the world has tended to discourage the purchase of cowries by any but the islanders themselves.
Trading Dots for Cash
Players and Storytellers will both want to make use of actual monetary values from time to time instead of Resources dots. It is difficult to translate Resources into specific amounts of cash, since Resources is, by design, not a linear progression. The level of financial capability between one dot and the next is a significant order of growing wealth and power.
For each character in her series, the Storyteller should make a determination of what form the character's wealth takes, whether it's jade, jade scrip, silver or some other form. The division will be primarily between jade and jade scrip on the one hand and silver or cowries on the other, depending on where the characters are and what their attitudes toward the Realm are. This book assumes that characters with four or five dots in Resources are not going to be using jade scrip, but you may make other choices about how jade scrip is used in your Exalted game.
The following correspondences provide a rough guide to translating Resources dots into cash in the three main money-systems.
| Resources | Cash Equivalent |
|---|---|
| X | Jade: less than 2 obols of income a year Jade scrip: less than 16 koku a year Silver: less than 20 dinars a year |
| • | Jade: less than 1 mina of income a year Jade scrip: less than 64 koku a year Silver: less than 60 dinars a year |
| •• | Jade: less than 1 shekel of income a year Jade scrip: less than 128 koku a year Silver: less than 100 dinars annually |
| ••• | Jade: less than 1 talent of income a year Jade scrip: less than 8,000 koku a year. Silver: less than 5 talents a year |
| •••• | Jade: 4 to 6 talents a year Jade scrip: 16,000 to 50,000 koku a year Silver: 20 to 30 talents a year |
| ••••• | Jade 12 or more talents annually Jade scrip: 96,000 or more koku a year Silver: 60 or more talents a year |
Banking
In the days of the Shogunate, money was one of the types of power holding the world together. There were financial instruments called Walls of Creation War Bonds that used the threads of monetary transactions made across great distances to create the boundaries of the world.
Today, the financial business seems considerably more mundane. Even so, banking in the Realm and the Threshold remains a powerful and respectable business, holding over its high reputation from the First Age. While banking is now an institutional or national concern rather than a personal one, the work of loaning or holding large sums of money in trust still carries great responsibility.
The largest bank in Creation is the Bank of the Scarlet Throne, which doles out money to the Great Houses, the Immaculate Order, the Army of the Realm and various projects and concerns on the Blessed Isle and in the satrapies. Dealing exclusively in jade, the Bank of the Scarlet Throne is controlled by Bal Keraz, the head of the Imperial Treasury. The Scarlet Bank of the Empress is controlled by the Private Purse, and it deals exclusively in jade scrip, issuing this petty cash through its agents in the Threshold and the Blessed Isle. Both of these banks can lend hundreds of talents at a time, in their respective currencies. In the Threshold are numerous national and civic banks, which try to run their respective country's or city-state's monetary policy and program. These are much smaller banks than the Throne Bank, with considerably more limited access to extra cash. As a result, their loans tend to run to dozens of talents. These banks usually lend only to the leaders of their territories or their leader’s chosen institutions or individuals. Even smaller than this are individual or syndicated moneylenders, who operate as small guilds or chartered societies, and are rarely able to lend more than 10 talents at once to anyone.
The World of Money
The Salt Rate
Thousands of small gods watch over beaches, salt marshes, tidal pools and mines where salt is collected. Sometimes regarded as the sixth magical material by the ignorant, salt is a necessary food preservative, and it is a critical ingredient in numerous industries, from weaving to mining. Many kinds of work can be done without this substance, but it is easier to do them with salt.
As a result, most bankers use the cost of the sacrifice to the local salt gods compared with the value of the salt that is extracted, as the base rate for all financial calculations. When someone speaks of the salt rate, they mean the value of the purchased goods that must be sacrificed to the local salt god, relative to the market value of the salt gained. Salt is measured in quintals, which is an official measure of 130 pounds, and one generally sells for two bits or the equivalent in jade scrip or silver.
For several hundred years, the Realm had the lowest salt rate, thanks to the Empress, who forced all the salt gods of the Blessed Isle to negotiate together rather than separately. There, the salt rate has varied between two and eight percent of a quintal's value.
Elsewhere, the cost of salt varies widely, with the cost rising the farther one is from the Inland Sea. In the Threshold, the cost of salt and the voracity of the salt gods results in salt rates set between 10 and 12 percent. In the Far South, the salt rate can rise as high as 20 percent.
In the days of the Shogunate, the Realm and the nations of the Threshold made use of complex financial networks and institutions. It was possible to transfer money or information from a bank in Gem to Nexus or Arjuf in only a few days. Stocks in major corporations and bonds issued by civil authorities could be traded, bought and sold across Creation. Most citizens had accounts with banks and could join in the workings of the world’s financial markets with relative ease.
The financial institutions of the present day are considerably more limited. Most individuals do not have accounts with banks but deal in hard money of various sorts—cowries, jade, jade scrip or silver. In regions that are notoriously short of actual coins, such as the Southeast, many people set up a series of individual accounts with merchants with whom they deal regularly, and the ledgers are wiped clear every few months with payments in transfers of goods or raw materials.
Merchants, bankers and agents of the Imperial Treasury are well-aware of how fragile these systems can be. Barter systems are notoriously easy to manipulate by transferring large quantities of goods made in manufactories into regions where most things are made by hand. For instance, cheaply made beads from a glass manufactory in the Threshold can be exchanged for a young slave in the Far East. However, the advantages of machine-aided production can be stymied by failures in the financial and trade networks. A missing caravan or a bank failure can cause manufactories to change hands or a regional economy to collapse, simply for lack of raw materials or the necessary hard cash to pay for the finished goods.
Banks and Banking
Today, banks are national or regional entities, rather than international organizations. Most of them deal only with very wealthy individuals or mercantile houses. While in former days, banking institutions were subjected to rigorous controls and independent auditors, banks now operate independently of government oversight. Good banks maintain vaults of hard currency as proof of their solvency, while others collapse overnight, stranding their depositors without money and without credit. Sometimes, governments even aid and abet these financial collapses, in order to enrich some friend of the prince, prefect or satrap.
The banks of the Realm tend to be the most stable and reliable. With full-service branches in all the cities and towns of the Blessed Isle and at least a representative in the major satrapies, these banks make it possible to do business in many places without carrying pounds of jade or jade scrip wherever one goes. These banks suffer from political disadvantage, however, for not everyone wishes to do business on the Realm's terms; Realm banks are hampered by having to operate within the Realm's accounting practices and legal customs. The degree to which the banks abandon these precedents, however, also affects their potential clients' perceptions, since these depositors choose Realm banks at least in part because of their conservative financial programs.
By contrast, Threshold banks tend to play more fast and loose based largely on the attitudes of their host countries. Northern banks tend to be staid and serious and pay careful attention to honor and honesty since a depositor is entitled to cut off the right hand of a banker who loses her money. Eastern banks tend to be honest about the risks of deposits but fill contracts with wrangles of fine print. Southern banking houses are often little more than pawnbrokers' shops, accepting everything from actual money to slaves as deposits.
Financial Markets
Even so, strands of the financial web of the past remain. Stock markets in Nexus, Arjuf, Paragon and elsewhere continue to exist, buying and selling shares in local and regional businesses. Most companies with stock for sale deal in genuine goods—timber harvesting syndicates, iron-mining consortiums and ship-building ventures are all common investment opportunities. It is more difficult for companies and individuals with more mobile assets to raise capital from stock markets, however. Long-distance trading firms have to form clear partnerships, and even then, the risk of loss is quite high.
In the absence of strong capital markets, the business of trading commodities and commodities futures is much more viable. Nexus's commodities market handles more than 1,500 different goods and raw materials, ranging from cows and timber to coffee and rice, to smelted iron and brocaded silk. As always, the rule is to buy low and sell high.
Communications
If the financial world is the warp of Creation, then the communications system is the weft. The infrastructure of the postal system of the Shogunate survived intact on the Blessed Isle despite wars and the Contagion, and much of that same system survived in the Threshold. This system included roads, posting houses for the stabling of horses and their letter-carrying riders, signal towers with swinging arms for semaphore, dedicated wharves in important ports for mail ships and heliograph mirror stations. The Empress made the restoration of this system a priority in the early days of her reign, and it remains in operation to this day throughout the Blessed Isle. Most of the nations of the Threshold followed her example. Today, it is possible to send short open messages by semaphore, or longer written letters by hand, over long distances. Short messages can travel hundreds of miles while the sunlight lasts, but letters can take anywhere from several days to several weeks to arrive at their destination.
In the Realm, the Imperial Post can send a heliograph message from the Imperial City to the western prefectures in two sunny days, while letters take three to six weeks to arrive depending on the weather. The Imperial Post charges a delivery fee to the sender and the recipient both for heliograph messages, with Imperial communications taking precedence over all other traffic. The fee is based on a sliding scale, with the sender choosing the level of urgency, ranging from a few koku up to four obols. Letters cost two quian per side of a piece of paper to deliver anywhere in the prefectures. Delivery costs to the satrapies are tripled.
Modern national borders and political disputes disrupt the mail and the old heliograph system in the Threshold far more than technical failures. Still, it is possible to send letters in most nations of the Threshold and the Realm, even if sending or receiving mail across national boundaries is considerably more difficult. Several Scavenger Lands nations formed the River Province Postal Union a few decades back, and it is a simpler process to use the mail service over long distances there than anywhere else in the Threshold.
Very local communications tend to be much easier. Most cities and towns have a dinar-post for sending messages and letters across town or within a nation for a very low price. In some places, there are actual post offices where one can rent a box. In other towns, mail is delivered to a popular central location, such as an inn or tavern. In addition, large cities have private messengers and stevedores' associations who can be hired for delivering sensitive letters and cargo around town or within a small region.
Exalts, the Dragon-Blooded and high-level government officials and merchants also have access to sorcerous communications links through the use of Charms and magic. Infallible Messenger is a common enough spell that anyone who needs access to instant communication makes sure that she can get it when she needs to. Similar magic is available at high but reasonable prices from many thaumaturges in major cities and towns—provided one is willing to tell them the message. No nation guarantees the privacy of the mails. Postal services are widely recognized as arms of their host nation’s military force, intelligence agencies and secret police. Their principal purpose is to facilitate the government's communications with its outposts, rather than for private convenience. One must, therefore, expect that the letters will be opened and read. Codes and ciphers are common in most long-distance communications, especially those dealing with financial matters.
Accounting
The business of accounting for where money goes is just as important as where it comes from. In the Realm, accountants are trained in the one of several schools. The most famous of these academies is called the Shining Garden of Calculating and Counting. The training is thorough and takes six years. After at least three years of real-world practice, an accountant may sit for the Counters' Examination in the Imperial City. Those who pass can then be a kaja, a prefect's or satrap's accountant. These kajas ride circuit in their districts, defined as a number of villages or a larger town and keep records of tax receipts and expenditures of tax money. The kaja is responsible for bookkeeping and passing on financial information to the Imperial Treasury. Some kajas sit for the Assessors' Examination to become gongfangs in service to the Realm after at least three years of experience in the Prefectures. Those who pass join the Thousand Scales or go into private practice.
In the Threshold, there are fewer schools for accounting and book-keeping. Most of the time, accounting practice is taught within families, and children are trained to be gongfangs or accountants by their parents, aunts and uncles. The North and the South have the most lax accounting practices, since hospitality and generosity are difficult to practice while keeping an eye on the bottom line. The East has the tightest accounting systems, and they tend to be standardized throughout the River Province in particular. The West tends to reject insurance policies and long-term planning in favor of the here and now, but the average ship captain can tell you his net worth down to bit, yen, cowrie and dinar.