Of Silver and Jade: Money in Creation
Creation practices a complex array of monetary arrangements. What follow are the prevailing methods of exchange in Exalted, in degree of increasing sophistication.
Informal Economics
In populations with little wealth, provision of essential aid and supplies is usually allotted via an array of ritual exchanges; mutual gifting; patronage; and familial, clan, or tribal obligations. The typical uses for hard currency in these situations are dealing with traders, who will have wares from outside the village economy, particularly metal goods. Additionally, in areas near state influence, tax collectors often demand payment in state-backed currency, which the locals must obtain by selling their labor or its fruits at ruinous markdown.
Threshold Economics
Most "civilized" Threshold economic systems use a standard of exchange that has little use to society as a whole, is difficult to counterfeit and is scarce enough that wealth can be transported in a small volume. Typically this means silver— though gold commands value, it’s primarily regarded as a decorative material.
The goal of the economy of the Threshold was plunder. All organized economic activity on which the Realm had any influence tended to resemble a conveyor belt feeding wealth into the Empress's Silver was not the only tribute that the Empress demanded from the Threshold, but the means by which she extracted tribute of more practical value—troops, slaves, and rare and exotic goods. Places with scant material wealth paid her tribute in resources directly. Places that had great wealth, she forced to mine jade for her, or to otherwise obtain jade offerings to place before her throne. Jade, alongside the other Magical Materials, is the true coin of Creation—both scarce and valuable. As in the Realm, the Empress used payment in jade as a cudgel to punish those she wished to strip of their riches.
Realm Economics
The Realm's monetary systems feature central banking, financial instruments like bonds and equities, and the other trappings of an advanced trading and manufacturing economy. Its currency is bifurcated. Most individuals—not just peasants and slaves but even high ranking mortals—may legally have access only to a paper and copper-coin currency called "cash." Dragon-Blooded and their assignees are permitted to transact business in jade. Many controlled objects are freely available save that the price is by law quoted in jade, rather than cash. Slaves, chests of opium, exotic sorcerous reagents, all can be bought from shop fronts or salons in the right part of town—if one has access to the currency of the Dragon-Blooded.
The Silver Standard
The silver standard of coinage used in the Threshold has three denominations, of which 2 are struck. The silver talent is 64 pounds of silver. A talent is worth 4 dirhams, or 1,600 dinars. Talents are purely units of account; nobody goes through the trouble of making silver into 64 pound bars.
The silver dirham is brick of silver weighing 16 pounds, worth 1/4 of a silver talent or 400 dinars. They're rarely seen by common individuals. This was the Empress's preferred tribute from Threshold princes, and is useful for transactions on the national or city level. Note, however, that worth is typically transferred in kegs of coins.
The silver dinar is a coin weighing 1/25th of a pound, ovoid with milled edges. Their worth is rather great for common transactions and so they are halved, quartered and cut into eighths. A dinar is the approximate monthly income of a commoner house with two skilled working adults and active cottage industry, and when food prices are stable, one dinar will pay the monthly food cost of four adults (or three adults and two growing children) with a little left over for other necessities.
Cowrie Shells and Stranger Things
In the West, the red cowrie shell is used as the standard unit of value. The shells must be very fine to have much worth, and are drilled and strung together in groups of 25, 50 or 100. They’re not much valued outside of the West, but in that region, they're worth three silver dirhams to the shell, or six shells per obol.
The Empress didn't accept the West's tribute in cowrie shells, but allowed the West to retain a functional means of exchange even as she stripped them of silver coinage. It is for this reason that silver is given a favorable exchange rate, and jade penalized.
The Cash System
The cash system contains two coins and two paper notes. The paper koku is worth 1/8th of a jade obol. It’s worth 8 qian, 16 siu or 128 yen. It is shot through with purple and gold threads that form the image of a crane, and it bears the black and green imprint of eagles nesting on the Imperial mountain. A koku is worth only slightly less than a silver dinar, and the two are roughly interchangeable at the scale of household finance.
The paper qian is worth 2 siu or 16 yen. The threads in this note form the image of a lion. The qian is printed with a black and red design depicting the skyline of the Imperial City. It's a week's wages for a skilled commoner. The siu is worth 8 yen. It is halved and quartered. A siu is adequate return for several days of labor by a skilled craftsman. It’s struck from copper and treated to take on a dark brown color.
The yen is the smallest coin struck by the Realm. Yen are halved, quartered and divided into eighths. A yen is larger than a siu and struck from the same copper, but treated to be bright green. Yen are pierced so they are easily carried— you can keep your wallet on a long string. A yen represents the day wages of an unskilled laborer and will buy about a day’s worth of food. An eighth of a yen will purchase several beers or a jar of wine.
The Jade System
The Empress adopted jade as a currency with the open intention of making herself master of the Realm's stocks of the material. In this she was largely successful. Several of the houses have accumulated significant stocks of jade— particularly Ragara, which uses it as the capital for their banking operations. However, even Ragara’s bankroll paled compared to the Treasury's hoard, which totaled more than 50,000 talents.
A jade talent is a thin slab of jade weighing 68 pounds. Those cut by the Imperial Treasury are engraved with a number and a seal, and etched on all corners to defy shavers. It's worth 8 bars, 64 minae, 128 shekels, 1,024 obols, or 5 talents of silver. These values are for a jade ledger talent—a notional value of 1,024 obols easier to keep track of than writing "1,024" repeatedly. While a ledger talent is worth 8 jade bars, a true talent is worth 12 bars by weight—the difference is lost as a talent is cut down into smaller denominations.
Physical talents do not circulate commonly, both due to the difficulty of transporting them and their enormous value. When manses need their interior geomantic structures fabricated, talents are the raw materials, so the Empress only allowed physical talents struck from the finest and purest jade.
The bar is one-eighth of a talent of jade. It is traditionally scored to show how to divide it into 8 minae, and those cut down from the Imperial Treasury are marked with its crest and an identifying number.
The mina is one eighth of a bar. It is marked with a central scoring and sixteen circles, describing how to split it into two shekels or how to carve sixteen obols from it.
A shekel is simply half a mina. It is almost always marked with an eight-circle template that describes how to cut it down into obols. As implied by the marks, a ledger mina is worth 8 obols. The cutting-down process between shekel and obol is where the majority of the loss of the powdered jade known as "Imperial bootblack" happens. This is a critical material in the manufacture of magical weapons and armor, and comprises 1/3rd the mass of the shekel—many artifacts created during the Second Age are forged from "Jade-steel alloy" created by adding jade dust to molten steel and cementing the alloying process with occult treatments.
An obol is the most commonly circulated coinage among the Dragon-Blooded. Obols struck by the Treasury are graven with one of several emblems.
The bit is an informal splitting of the obol into quarters to make it more spendable. They are formally illegal for commoners to possess in the Realm, and ownershipof them is nominally discouraged among the Terrestrial Exalted, as they have links to an ancient rebellion. Despite this, they represent a meaningful fraction of the circulating jade coinage of the Realm—perhaps 40%. That 40% does a lot of work; even the Dragon-Blooded of the Dynasty are not rich enough to throw full obols at their expenses casually.
Money Table
- 1 silver talent = 64 lbs. = 4 dirhams = 1,600 dinars
- 1 silver dirham = 16 lbs. = 1/4 silver talent = 400 dinars
- 1 silver dinar = 1/25 lbs. = 1/1,600 silver talent = 1/400 dinar
- 1 cowrie shell (West Only) = 3 dirhams
- 6 cowrie shells (West Only) = 1 jade obol
- 1 paper koku = 1/8 jade obol = 8 quian = 16 siu = 128 yen
- 1 paper quian = 2 siu = 16 yen
- 1 copper siu = 8 yen
- 1 green copper yen = 1/8 siu
- 1 jade talent = 68 lbs. = 8 bars = 64 minae = 128 shekels = 1,024 obols = 5 silver talents
- 1 jade bar = 8½ lbs. = 1/8 jade talent = 8 minae = 16 shekels = 250 silver dirhams = 1,000 silver dinars
- 1 jade mina = 2 shekels = 16 obols = 125 silver dinars
- 1 jade shekel = ½ minae = 8 obols
- 1 jade obol = 1/8 shekel = 62½ silver dinars
One yen (about 8 silver dinars) is about a day's wages of an unskilled laborer and will buy about a day's worth of food.