[Urbis] Magic Item - Atalan Monocle
Posted 17th July 2008 at 10:36 AM by Jürgen Hubert
A new magic item for Urbis.
Atalan Monocle
The monocle allows you to tell genuine coins from fakes and clipped coins.
Level: 6
Price: 1800 gp
Item Slot: Head
When looking through the Atalan Monocle, all standard copper, silver, gold, and platinum coins within line of sight seem to glow. Coins that are less pure or weigh less than standard-sized coins do not glow. The monocle does not detect concealed coins.
The name of this item derives from the fact that the coin weight and purity standards which are detected by the monocle were first instituted in the old Atalan Empire, and the first magic items to detect coins which adhere to these standards were developed during that time as well. These standards are still used today in most of the Known Lands, more than a thousand years later, and make it possible to freely exchange coins from different city-states without having a unified mint, since all governments have a strong incentive to mint coins that adhere to these standards if they want to participate in international trade.
The monocle is frequently worn by bankers and serves as something of a symbol of office for them. Indeed, no caricature of a banker will leave out the monocle.
This nicely addresses one of my beefs with one of the underlying economic assumptions of D&D: Just why do all those different feudal governments use interchangeable coins?
Magically enforced standards solve this mystery nicely.
Atalan Monocle
The monocle allows you to tell genuine coins from fakes and clipped coins.
Level: 6
Price: 1800 gp
Item Slot: Head
When looking through the Atalan Monocle, all standard copper, silver, gold, and platinum coins within line of sight seem to glow. Coins that are less pure or weigh less than standard-sized coins do not glow. The monocle does not detect concealed coins.
The name of this item derives from the fact that the coin weight and purity standards which are detected by the monocle were first instituted in the old Atalan Empire, and the first magic items to detect coins which adhere to these standards were developed during that time as well. These standards are still used today in most of the Known Lands, more than a thousand years later, and make it possible to freely exchange coins from different city-states without having a unified mint, since all governments have a strong incentive to mint coins that adhere to these standards if they want to participate in international trade.
The monocle is frequently worn by bankers and serves as something of a symbol of office for them. Indeed, no caricature of a banker will leave out the monocle.
This nicely addresses one of my beefs with one of the underlying economic assumptions of D&D: Just why do all those different feudal governments use interchangeable coins?
Magically enforced standards solve this mystery nicely.
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Total Comments 2
Comments
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Absent a massive counterfeiting/clipping problem, that monacle seems pretty expensive, though.
Assuming that:
A) your bankers also spend part of their day dealing with scrip or letters of credit, and
B) your bankers would be able to detect at least some of the clipped/impure coins through less expensive mundane means,
Then I'd estimate that your average banker would probably only have to deal with 2-5 unacceptable gold coins per day (net). At that rate, he'd have to use the thing 1-3 years before he broke even.
If your using a coinage-only system, it's priced more reasonably, but even then, it's a time sink (because you have to inspect the coinst to make sure none aren't glowing). It might be better if it glowed when coins were clipped or impure.Posted 17th July 2008 at 01:55 PM by arscott
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The monetary system of Urbis is more complex than that - it also involves a rather massive amount of bank notes backed by gold and residuum (that universal ritual ingredient).
It's likely that within a main branch of a bank within a given city there's only one person with a monocle whose job it is to check the incoming coins for frauds, and the bank commissions a monocle for him. This is as much to protect there reputation of the bank as to prevent forgeries - if it becomes known that a bank lets too many forgeries slip through its fingers, confidence in the bank could shatter, leading to a banking crisis.
The actual high-ranking bankers - those who own a significant share of the bank - are unlikely to waste their valuable time with such a menial task. They wear the monocles as a status symbol - a way of saying "I'm so rich that I can buy a magic item I don't need."
And they can afford things like that - they often are ridiculously wealthy.Posted 17th July 2008 at 02:10 PM by Jürgen Hubert
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