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Month: May 2021

Worldbuilding 102 – Money and Banking in Fantasy Societies

When worldbuilding a fantasy world, money and banking might influence how trade is carried out, but it doesn’t actually have much impact on other aspects of a society. For the most part, creating a money system in a fantasy world is a good way to give the world a certain ambience.

What is Money?

The best definition of money I have found is that is a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value and a method of valuing debts. Most people are familiar with its role as a medium of exchange. Rather than bartering, we put our value in money and use that as a replacement for other valuable items.

A 1914 British gold sovereign. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Prior to developing money, trade was done by barter. The first forms of money were cattle and grain. Mesopotamians commodified trade by pegging it to the weight of a bushel of grain. Farmers would deposit their grain in the temple, which then recorded the deposit on clay tablets. The temple gave the farmer a receipt in the form of a clay token which they could then use to pay fees or other debts. For more on trade, see my article on Fantasy Economics.

Later, when trade with foreigners required a form of money not tied to the local economy, they developed coins that carried value with it. They stamped metal to indicate its value. Metal is durable, portable, and easily divisible.

File:Shekel - Coins of Second Temple period.jpg
2nd Temple Shekel. Davidbena, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Conceptually, any money system depends on the value the users place on the marker being used. The original Mesopotamian shekel represented a certain amount of grain, but the value of gold and silver is all in the minds of the people using it.

The rarity of these items keeps their value high, but their prevalence made them useful as commodities for exchange. The important thing is that there be a stable amount of the material in circulation, otherwise, you run the risk of inflation or deflation.

What Kind of Money?

Societies throughout human history have used a variety of materials as money. For most of history, the material money was made from has been commodity based. People have used cowry shells as money for millennia. The Chinese first started using them 3000 years ago. They were also used in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia, and Pacific Islands, often spread by the slave trade.

At various times in history, people have used salt as money, including the “salarium” of a Roman soldier. Ethiopians used it up through the 20th century.

See the source image
One unit of salt bar money. Image from salt.org.il

Those of us who played Dungeons and Dragons are familiar with gold, silver, and copper pieces. The first metal money appeared in China in the form of Bronze Knives and spades in China. Though not used as a medium of exchange, the Indians of the Pacific Northwest similarly used large copper plates as symbols of wealth and prestige.

The first coins appeared around the same time in China, India, and the eastern Mediterranean in the 7th century BCE. The Kingdom of Lydia developed the first inscribed coins in the Iron Age. These were of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver. The old school gamers will remember electrum coins from 1st & 2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons.

Croesus introduced pure gold coins in the 6th century BCE, hence the phrase “as rich as Croesus.”

Gold Croeseid, minted by King Croesus circa 561–546 BCE. Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Money remained much the same, with various reforms, changes in weight, purity, and denomination for the next two thousand years or so until the invention of paper money.

Paper Money

The first recorded use of paper money occurred in China in the 11th century CE. Its development grew out of commercial transactions where exchanging large quantities of coins became difficult. Merchants would give a credit note from a deposit house in exchange for goods. The seller could then take the credit note to draw the amount from the deposit house.

The idea of the paper promissory note made its way to Europe at the end of the middle ages, where trade was flourishing. A merchant could deposit a sum with a banker in one town. In turn the banker handed out a bill of exchange that the merchant could redeem in another town. Over time, these credit notes became bearer notes, that is, they were written to pay whoever held the note.

File:Sweden-Credityf-Zedels.jpg
The first paper money in Europe, issued by the Stockholms Banco in 1666. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

At first, banks and deposit houses wrote the notes, but eventually, governments stepped in to control the money supply and set a monopoly on printing bank notes.

Paper money carried the fiction that it represented a certain share of gold or silver until 1971 when the U.S. government de-pegged the dollar from gold. Modern money systems have even unlinked value from a specific physical object to a balance on an account sheet, often merely electronically recorded. In the case of cryptocurrency, the currency itself is divorced from a physical form. Could a highly magical society create something like a cryptocurrency?

Money in Fantasy Societies

The easiest way to deal with money in a fantasy story is to ignore it altogether. For the most part, your readers don’t need or even want to know the price of a loaf of bread or a night in an inn. You can simply say that they rented a room or bought a loaf of bread.

If you have your characters counting out coins and making change, your worldbuilding might be taking over your character development. Character first! Worldbuilding gives your characters a background. You don’t invent characters to live in the beautiful world you created.

On the other hand, it might be a useful pressure point on your characters to not have money. This is a great opportunity to follow the old writing advice to force your characters in a corner and poke them with a stick. Lack of money is one way to force them into a corner. If they don’t have money, their options might be more limited in certain situations.

In my own books, I created the fiction that one character has all the money he needs. When he is around, the characters don’t need to worry about money and I, as an author, don’t need to worry about it either. At least inside the story. In another book, I separated them and the one character’s limited money supply is becoming a point of tension for her.

Fantasy Money (Bitcoin anyone?)

If you want to use money to add depth to your fictional world, the easiest method without developing your own monetary system is to use generic coins of gold, silver, and copper or model it on a real-world monetary system such as the English in the middle ages. Kenneth Hodges at the University of California created a list of medieval prices of various commodities and services. It is based on pounds, shillings, and pennies, but includes a conversion to crowns and marks.

Henry VIII Gold Crown. Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

If you really want to develop your own fantasy money system, you can go as far as inventing your own denominations for gold, silver, and copper or add other metals such as platinum, electrum, or bronze. You can also follow some of the other historical systems such as cowrie shells or salt.

If you want something truly fantastic, invent some other commodity that has that balance between widespread and rare. It has to be rare enough that it is hard to duplicate easily but widespread enough that it can be held by a large number of people.

One idea might be a magically infused item. Perhaps gold or silver is non-existent in your world. In order to keep a tight control on the money supply, a king might have his vizier or chief mage manufacture items that display a magical image of his face. These might be as simple as a bronze disk or as fancy as a glass ball. I would imagine a glass ball displaying the king’s face would be more valuable than the bronze disk.

Crystal balls as fantasy money
Well, it’s an idea.

Banking and Accounting

Accounting is older than the Bronze Age. It was invented during the late Neolithic as a method of counting agricultural produce. It is closely related to the development of writing. Both arose as a method of counting and recording stores of grain and wealth.

Banking came later, in about the 4th millennium BCE. The history of banking is inextricably linked to the history of money. Temples acted as the first banks in ancient Mesopotamia. People stored their wealth in the temples for a fee. Later, about 1000 BCE, private lending houses arose. The Code of Hammurabi recorded interest-bearing loans.

In Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome temples acted as banks. In many areas, such as China and India, merchants formed the first banks. Ancient Egypt developed the first government central banks. We must remember that the relationship between the temple and the king was very close in ancient societies.

The signature development of modern banking in the 16th and 17th centuries CE was the issuance of bank debt that served as a substitute for gold and silver. This debt became the new money that underpins the modern international economy.

14th century Italian counting house. Cocharelli, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Banks in Fantasy Fiction

Whatever form banks might take in your fiction, they can also act as useful villains. The best example I have read recently is in Joe Abercrombie‘s First Law and Age of Madness trilogies. The banking house of Valint and Balk acts as a nebulous antagonist that seems to be behind many of the plots and scheming in the books.

Debt can be a motivator for your characters. Like poverty, the fear of poverty and the obligation to pay debt can put a character in a corner. The banker might come by and poke them with a stick from time to time.

Another nebulous entity putting pressure on characters is the Iron Bank of the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin. This bank lends money to governments and armies, often on different sides of a conflict. Much of the conflict in the series is based on how the players scheme to get the backing of the Iron Bank or have to pay them back.

Fantasy banking in Game of Thrones
Stannis Baratheon negotiates with the Iron Bank. Image copyright HBO

Fantasy Banks and Money in Pancirclea

I am going to skip any development of specific coins in Pancirclea, but I want to have a banking system. This will serve two purposes. My characters can store any wealth they have and borrow money if necessary. Additionally, the bank itself can advance the plot. If characters have borrowed money, the bank can be an antagonist. The characters’ need to pay the debt can force them to act when they otherwise wouldn’t.

I would expect every town to have its own bank. Perhaps they would have multiple lending houses. The most powerful banks would have branches in every city, facilitating trade and enabling traders and adventurers to draw on funds when they are traveling.

I would think the bank would be controlled by a clan, rather than a company. I am leaning toward using clans to control major organizations in Pancirclea. Banking clans, trading clans. Clans that permeate the upper levels of government or the military.

Like the Game of Thrones or First Law worlds, I would have one premier bank that can act as the antagonist in the story. If I need another to put pressure on that main banking clan, I would likely mention another.

Trade
Trade Routes in Pancirclea. Image by Michael Tedin

In sum (no pun intended), you don’t need money and banking in your fantasy world. You can develop the other features without any detailed development of these features. On the other hand, doing so can enrich the ambient feel of the world and provide some powerful motivations for your characters.

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Worldbuilding 102 – Applied Worldbuilding

So far in this series, we have discussed a lot of theories with a few suggestions for practical applied worldbuilding. I have set out a few examples along the way. Now lets take a moment to apply what we know to the sample world I created, Pancirclea. If you have read this series from the beginning, you’d know that the continent is named because I started with two circles representing continents and smashed them together.

Applied Worldbuilding: What We Know So Far

Back in my worldbuilding article on demographics, I came up with three basic genetic groupings, Hillfolk, Savannah People, and Silvans. I based them on the climate and biomes that they evolved in. When I was doing that, I kept in mind that they would likely have distinct cultures from each other.

Culture is not a single defining feature, but a set of features among a society that gives the society a distinct feel. Many of the things we talk about in this series of articles make up the culture of each society. Later, we will talk about language, religion, and politics.

What we know so far in the series is demographics, settlement patterns, urban geography, magic and technology, and some economics (types of economies and trade).

In earlier articles, I mapped out the demographics and settlement patterns of southeast Pancirclea. Now let’s apply some worldbuilding techniques and look at the technology and economics of the region. I’ll take a stab at listing out some of the social forces at work in each society. Once we know that, we can begin to see some areas of conflict.

These social forces and conflicts are the starting points for developing characters that live in these areas. Those characters may have these conflicts as motivations, either as primary motivations or as secondary motivations. Either way, characters with multiple motivations make for much more interesting characters. See the most recent issue of Writer’s Digest (May/June 2021) for a great article on The Russian Nested Doll Theory of Motivation.

Cultural Zones
Applied Worldbuilding: Cultural Zones of Pancirclea. Image by Michael Tedin

Applied Worldbuilding: Resources Are Important

In order apply our worldbuilding techniques to what we know about each society’s technology and trade, we need to know what resources each of them has. This depends on where they’ve settled because their environment determines the natural resources available.

Savannah Culture

Savannah People are an agricultural society. They’ve settled in the plains and by rivers in cities A, B, C, D, F, M, and G. (I am going to finally give these cities names when I write an article about language. Stay tuned.)

They grow grain and raise livestock, including horses, cattle, sheep, and goats. The livestock also produce milk, cheese, and wool.

Hillfolk

The Hillfolk have settled in the hills. Their cities are E, F, H, I, J, K, and L. Cities E and F have some crossover culture between the Hillfolk and Savannah cultures.

Some of the hills are forested, some are not. The hills provide mineral resources such as copper, tin, and coal for bronze making, as well as iron, salt, limestone, and marble. The forests also provide wood for building. Wood can also be converted to charcoal for use in for smelting. They also raise livestock, including sheep and goats.

Silvans

The Silvans did not advance as much technologically as the Savannah or Hillfolk cultures because they were not as much under ecological pressure to survive. The forests still provide enough for their villages to thrive. Consequently, the need for developing intensive agriculture or metallurgy was not as high.

The resources available to them are mostly forest resources they can gather, including the obvious wood and woodcrafts. Also, their long relationship with the forest has allowed them to develop a deep understanding of the forest herbs and medicines derived from them.

Pancirclea Resources
Applied Worldbuilding: Natural and economic resources of Pancirclea. Image by Michael Tedin

Applied Worldbuilding: Technology and Magic

At this point, it’s time to apply our worldbuilding techniques to make some creative decisions. I’ve decided that, due to environmental pressures, the Hillfolk and Savannah People have developed Bronze Age technology, but the Silvans have not. The Silvans still make use of technology borrowed from the other two.

The creative part is the development of magic. There is no real world analogy, so let’s just make this shit up! Without going into too much detail on the mechanisms behind magical theory, let’s just say magic is based on life energy. It’s a common trope and one that works well for the purpose of this demonstration.

Sources of Magic

The Hillfolk have a lot of forests in their hills, so they can draw on the life force of the forests to wield magic. On the other hand, the Savannah People have grasses on the plains, though there are trees along the rivers. Therefore, they have less life force in the natural world to draw on (in spite of the equal value of different types of mana in Magic: The Gathering).

The relative scarcity of life energy in the plains forces that Savannah People to rely on another, more powerful source of life energy: human sacrifice. Naturally, nobody wants to volunteer for the duty, so they rely on prisoners and slaves for sacrifice. Later, we will see how this affects society in the areas of class, religion, and politics.

The Hillfolk are near forests, so they use as much plant material as possible. It is depleting the forests, clearing large areas. They use these cleared areas to plant grain and graze sheep and goats. The hills around city E, where civilization first stared, are almost completely bare.

The Silvans have an abundance of forest resources, including magical energy from the life force of the forest. Because of this and their ready access to herbs and medicines derived from them, they also have developed the knowledge of magical potions.

Applied Worldbuilding: Economics and Trade

As I pointed out in my last article on trade, societies will exchange their surplus resources with other societies for resources they lack.

If you wonder why I focus on trade so much, it’s not because I think every story needs to have merchants or traders in it. Rather, trade is a major pathway for cultural exchange. Ideas, religion, technology, art, and literature all flow along trade routes. It helps to know what materials flow along those routes to know where the routes get laid out.

Savannah People

The Savannah people have a surplus of grain, but lack minerals, metals, wood and charcoal. Because of the cost of the things they lack they have developed a culture that relies on them less. Where they cannot get them, they will trade with the Hillfolk for minerals and metals. To some extent, they will also trade for wood.

The Savannah people also use human sacrifice to power their magic. To some extent, they will take slaves from among their own people, either criminals or subjugated peoples. To make up the difference, they will go to war with other cities or kingdoms to capture slaves, raid the Silvans, or trade with the Hillfolk for them. We’ll discuss war, government, and politics later.

Hillfolk

The Hillfolk have almost exactly the opposite surpluses and deficits than the Savannah people. This makes these two societies natural trading partners. The Hillfolk have minerals and metals but less grain.

They also have wood and charcoal from their forested hills. Because of the forests, they also have more magical energy available. They can’t export that energy, but they can craft magical artifacts for sale. I imagine a brisk trade selling such artifacts to the people of the Savannah.

Silvans

Silvans have little they need from other societies, but find metals and minerals useful. Their magical energy derives from the forest. They store this energy in potions and trade with the Hillfolk for metals and minerals. Because they live on villages and have no cities, they also have no major trade routes.

Nobody is willing to trade their own people, so Hillfolk and Savannah people resort to raids to capture slaves. The easiest source for raids is among the Silvans who live mainly in poorly defended villages.

Pancirclea Trade Routes
Applied Worldbuilding: Trade Routes in red. Slave trade in yellow. Image by Michael Tedin

Setup for Conflict

The core of a good story is the drama created by conflict between characters. Already, we are starting to see conflict arise between societies that might translate into personal conflicts. In my next article, I’ll discuss the class divisions within a society along with a money system.

Pancirclea Conflict Zones
Pancirclea Conflict Zones. Image by Michael Tedin
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