Setting Idea: The Residuum Economy

[Jürgen Hubert]

Suddenly I imagine giant golems shoveling people into the portable residuum converters on their backs...

Well, I've added this idea to Urbis here (login required to read about "the secret"...). Thanks for inspiring it!

 

[Goobermunch]

"Intellectual Property" is a very modern concept rooted in modern legal systems and property laws; the closet medieval term would probably be "guild secrets". As you've said, the need to keep the rituals secret would strengthen guilds, but I think that it would make them even more secretive as they already are: guilds would guard their secrets very jealously.

Define "modern." While the concepts of intellectual property are post-medieval in nature, the groundwork for intellectual property law started in the early Renaissance era, making them decidedly pre-modern.

Property law, at least as it is practiced in much of the United States, is the least modernized area of the common law. The terminology regarding the different possessery estates would be easily recognizable to an attorney from the late 1200s (though we have at least gotten rid of the livery of seisin and replaced it with recording statutes and surveying).

--G

 

[nick012000]

I'll point out that Residuum is naturally found in the Feywild in moderately large quantities. It's why it's all vibrant and full of fey magic and whatnot.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Here's another idea for a residuum source:

Ley lines pulsing with primal energies cross their land. Where they cross, there are great places of powers - enchanted forests, bizarre rock formations, and so on.

Now humans have figured out how to tap those places - slowly draining them of power while generating residuum from them. Such "hot spots" are now highly sought after by nations as "strategic reserves" - the nation with the most such spots to gain residuum from has a significant advantage over its rivals.

Needless to say, the druids are pissed. But who cares about such primitive throwbacks to the past?

 

[gtJormungand]

This also sounds a little like The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, where manufacturing entirely takes place using a molecule feed and nanomachine constructors.

 

[Goobermunch]

So how are these patterns made? Are the relics from an older empire? Or do people know how to make new recipes?

If its the latter, there may be a very wealthy class of skilled craftsmen who spend their time tinkering with designs to develop improvements. These craftsmen are likely supported by wealthy nations/city-states like Renaissance artists were supported by wealthy Italian families.

--G

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

So how are these patterns made? Are the relics from an older empire? Or do people know how to make new recipes?

I'd say with some effort ritual casters can develop new ones.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Interesting idea. Basically, this is a very... Startrek-like scenario. If you've got replicators, you can create theoretically anything. The only resource you need is energy. Of course, you can produce energy in a lot of ways, so there would be "secondary" resources (antimatter, hydrogen, dilithium crystals...)

In some regards, I could imagine it almost being like Dune. With the Rituals/Nexus Towers being Spice/Arrakis and all the different city-states, kingdoms, etc. be the Great Houses.

It would be like any video game with only one primary resource - like Command & Conquers Tiberium, Dunes Spice, and so on.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

This also sounds a little like The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, where manufacturing entirely takes place using a molecule feed and nanomachine constructors.

Indeed - like I said in my first post, I got the idea from 3D printing, which is a similar (though comparatively primitive) technology.

Though this Residuum Economy is more primitive still, since it requires skilled people (=ritual casters) to actually create the items, while anyone can use nanomachine constructors as long as they have the templates and the raw materials.

 

[roguerouge]

Be prepared for entreprenurial players to see if they can game the system.

You state that the material components cost the same as the item produced. But they can't cost the same. The cost of something is due to supply and demand; it's not fixed. So, logically, there are going to be occasions where the demand for the object-to-be-made is high but the demand for the material components to be used (candles, crystals, residuum) is low. [Perhaps there's a nostalgia fad for hand-crafted items, which become status symbols for a year.] So it will be like printing money. And that's going to happen all the time, especially if the material components are actual items like candles, not abstract stuff like Residuum.