Economics

Aloran Mercantalism

The economy of Seln Alora is quite different from the capitalist viewpoint that dominates our modern world. Instead, Seln Alora is based on a byzantine system of royal grants and clan patronage. Individual clans engage in a perpetual struggle to seize the rights to lucrative grants and thus exclusive control over economic sectors.

The primary take-away for you? As Seln Alora is not a free market, you may or may not be able to procure the goods and services you desire. As a cultivator, expect to roll up your sleeves and build for yourself!

Now, a deeper look.

The Crown dispenses permission to individual clans to work land, produce goods, or control industries within a geographic region. These dispensations last for one hundred years, and the clans exert every resource at their command to guarantee that the dispensation remains in their control after review.

Every trade good or industry imaginable has one or more matching dispensations. A clan that owns a strong dispensation has a powerful, dependable source of economic power, and the fights to grab these dispensations are some of the most frightfully underhanded dealings in the entire Kingdom!

As an up-and-coming clan or band of heroes, you will face a steep climb for resources. Clans know that new domains require certain materials and will charge outrageous prices for them. Clan spies may undermine your access to independent resources to force you to the table. If your clan begins to grow too powerful, the clans may instead refuse any business at all!

For its part, the Crown strategically shuffles these dispensations, keeping the clans focused on competition with their rivals. Queen Astra keeps a cunning eye on the map, breaking the dispensations up by geography such that no clan can ever gain true monopoly.

This system has been stable for centuries, but it leaves new entrants at a severe disadvantage. One answer? Move beyond the geographic boundaries!

In recent years, the Crown has restricted these dispensations to only the inner wards. The Queen’s agents assure the clans that the oversight is temporary, but no change is in sight.

At the same time, new domains in the outer wards are granted generous dispensations. The Crown will often pay for new roads and wards to integrate them properly into the Kingdom, pushing the inner wards outwards kilometer by kilometer.

The unspoken incentive should be clear: to get into the game, break new ground for the Kingdom.

Metal scarcity and the vineyards

You grew up in a world deprived of metal. Utensils are wood or bone; buildings are constructed with interlocking joints instead of nails. The idea of mining as we know it would seem absurd: everyone knows that you could dig for a week and find nothing but endlessly descending rock and cavern!

Yet Seln has a source of metal: vineyards.

Floran botanists have perfected the art of metalbloom, coaxing great trees to dig deep into the soil and pull trace materials from the ground. These are then transferred into the limbs and concentrated into seeds of precious metal. Here, a man can pluck a golden apple from the tree!

Finding metal…or making it?

If there is no metal in the ground, how do the metalbloom orchards find it? The official answer is that they pull very tiny amounts of metal from large amounts of soil, but there is a stranger possibility.

What if the metalbloom trees tapped into something else? Such as the elemental currents!

What if the trees do not find metal but synthesize it?

The output of these vineyards varies. Iron, aluminum, and copper orchards can produce an amount of metal fruit equivalent to the output of an organic orchard of the same size.

More refined metals such as gold and titanium produce a limited harvest each year. These orchards are also more sensitive to ley line disruption; an entire harvest can be lost due to one bad storm.

The strangest, most powerful metals like Feathersteel or Adamantium produce a few pounds of metal a year and require intensive geomancy to maintain absolute stability of the ley lines.

“Apple thievery” takes on a new dimension within the metal vineyards. Expect the guards to such rare fruits to have very little sense of humor for tourists!

Well known metalbloom orchards:

• Tio, northwest of Kawazu on the Izu peninsula
  • A rich gold orchard. The world’s largest gold apple is on display!
• The Crown Orchard, just north of Seln Alora
  • Produces a different metal each year according to astrological cycle. A portion of the year’s harvest is granted to the winner of the Crown Martial Arts Tournament each year
  • Guarded better than the royal manor!
• Nickelbough, located deep within the hills of the Scalewood
  • The sole orchard capable of creating nickel and thus the basis of currency
• Death’s Garden
  • Location unknown, whispered to be in a Shade realm
  • The powerful Dark metals found within are free to any who can survive the trials to claim them!

Currency

The Crown mints nickel coins from Nickelbough. The metal is melted, stamped, and subjected to a secret transmutation process by the clan responsible for managing currency: the Maneki-neko clan.

Despite all attempts otherwise, this secret transmutation has been held by the Maneki for five thousand years! The ninja war to discover this secret is subject of numerous historical dramas.

The Maneki distribute small elemental crystals that can be used to validate coins. True coins will cause the matching elemental crystal to glow.

Supposedly, they achieve this by using a “Mani-key” to stamp the coins with a secret spell. One source of truth that anyone can validate! If the Mani-key exists, it will (of course) be held in Fort Nyax, deep in the Maneki clan territory of Izu.

The Standard Coins

• The Chit
  • Element: Air
  • Value: Pocket change, commoner’s lunch
  • Color: Silver-white
  • Notes: Hole in the center allows the folkto carry on strings
• The Bead
  • Element: Water
  • Value: Day’s unskilled labor, a night’s stay at a cheap inn
  • Color: Pale blue
  • Notes: Most common coin of the land
• The Stone
  • Element: Earth
  • Value: Day’s skilled labor, a night’s stay at a proper caravansary
  • Color: Dusk grey
  • Notes: This and higher values are generally taken to a money changer for testing
• The Ember
  • Element: Fire
  • Value: Comfortably feed and house someone, capital expenses
  • Color: Dull red
  • Notes: Minted in six inch bars

Many dramas revolve around a down-on-his-luck man finding a cache of Ember; even the name “Ember” carries a connotation of danger and recklessness. Why? “Because that much money has a way of starting fires.”

Don’t mind the details

Economics is a difficult subject. An accurate economic system must account for maddening complexities: from forgeries to market failures, mandated prices to supply shocks, coin debasement and inflation…

While this is fascinating historical study, it is not particularly useful for most cultivators. Beyond the lowest echelons of power, a cultivator always has the option of retiring from adventure to make a living as a civilian.

This system will not spend much thought on the coin currency of the Kingdom. As a cultivator, your Reputation and the favors owed are far more important!