Fantasy Economics 101 - Chapter 11

When in doubt, ask an expert

"Ah! Welcome home, Mister Raol!"

The skeleton froze momentarily, just as he was about to step through the threshold of the familiar cottage in the woods.

Home. Was Elkayla's hermitage his home, he wondered as he belatedly entered. It was certainly the closest thing he had to such a thing at the moment, and returning from New Reedcourt certainly made him feel relieved. In a sense, just the fact that he considered it 'returning' should have been evidence enough, but he was too mentally exhausted to ponder the intricacies of his inner world at the moment.

By the time he closed the door, Elkayla was already in front of him, clad in a sky-blue dress and her hair braided into twin plaits hanging behind her shoulders.

"Did everything go as planned? Did the trinkets work fine?"

Before Raol could get a word in, the young woman was already patting him down, as if looking for something.

"You weren't hurt, right? Nobody discovered that you're a skeleton, right? I was getting a little worried, you know?"

"Everything went fine."

Raol carefully removed her hands from his colorful robes and put his backpack down next to the door. He was still wearing most of his exotic scholar guise, but once he was out of town, he took off the trinkets and replaced the headdress with a simple cowl before stuffing everything else into the bag.

"The disguise worked, more or less, but by the time I left, a few people started questioning why I never showed my face, so I don't think I can use it again."

He walked over to the familiar table and sat down, followed by a relieved sigh. He wasn't tired. Or rather, he couldn't get physically exhausted at all, yet his legs were still yearning for rest, and once he took his seat, an involuntary sight escaped his mouth.

"So? How did it go?" Elkayla sat down on the other chair and stared at the skeleton with expectant eyes. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Not exactly, no." The young hermitess wordlessly waited for him to explain himself, so Raol inhaled hard, out of habit. "I think I have a firm grasp on the economy of the county. The Guild is in the center of it all. Adventurers bring in their 'loot' in exchange for an intermediate currency kept in the Guild's ledgers. The same applies to all farmers, craftsmen, and other citizens of New Reedcourt, and I suspect the same economic system is in place everywhere else as well."

"Yes. The Adventurers' Guil has Guild Halls everywhere."

"Right. As far as I'd seen gold coins aren't used directly to buy anything. In the Guild, they are immediately converted to their credit system, while in the market square, the merchants were bartering for everything."

Suddenly reminded of something, Raol raised a finger and sprung to his feet again. Under the curious gaze of his host, he opened up his backpack and took out a small, brown paper bag.

"What's that?"

"Honey nut fritters," he told her and handed the bag over to Elkayla. "They're cold, but I was told they taste great."

Her eyes lit up with delight and she hastily unwrapped the packet. The sweet scent of the pastry tickled her nose, and her face bloomed into a delighted smile.

"Oh, Mister Raol! I know I told you to bring me a souvenir, but I wasn't serious!"

"It's not a souvenir, it's a treat," Raol pointed out and sat down again. "I know that you like sweet things, so I thought you'd like this too."

"I do! Thank you!"

While the young hermitess gleefully picked up one of the round pastries, the skeleton let out a satisfied hum and collected his thoughts.

"Where was I? Bartering, right?" Elkayla only nodded, since her mouth was already full. "The only place that seems to put any value on gold coins is the Guild. I suspect the only reason they are accepted as a currency anywhere else in town is because they could be turned in to the Guild in exchange for some other valuables."

"That's how it works, yes."

"What I couldn't figure out was where all the gold goes." Raol sounded rather displeased, and even stifled a groan after saying that. "All of that gold goes into the building, but I couldn't see it ever leave it. I asked around in town as well, and no one else had any idea what they would be doing with all that gold."

"It's a mystery?"

"You could certainly say that, and it irks me to no end."

In truth, the reason why Raol stayed in New Reedcourt longer than initially planned was because his investigation led him no closer to answering his questions. He even went as far as to stake out the rear entrance of the Guild Hall for three nights, but there wasn't any movement there either.

"Maybe they have a huge storeroom under the building," Elkayla proposed between two bites. Raol just noticed, but half of the fritters were already gone. "Like one of those legendary treasure vaults of the Monarchy."

"I've been in the grand vault of Luteanum once. Based on the sheer amount of gold that entered the Guild Hall on a daily basis, it could've filled it up to the ceiling in a matter of months."

"… Is the Monarchy's treasury that small?"

"No, it's the number of gold coins we're talking about here that's crazy."

"But if they don't take the gold anywhere, then wouldn't it be flowing out of the windows by today?"

Raol's eye-lights opened wide and a stifled chuckle escaped his throat as he suddenly imagined the friendly adventurer party he encountered getting swept away in a torrent of gold coins pouring through every opening of the Guild Hall. He could even picture the young bard laughing her lungs out in the process.

"What is Mister Raol thinking of?"

He blinked, surprised by Elkayla's sudden question. She sounded strangely intense for a moment, but when he explained himself, her expression eased up at once.

"So Mister Raol made some friends in New Reedcourt. That's… good?"

While he wanted to ask her why she sounded so uncertain of her words, he didn't want to get sidetracked, so Raol tapped his fingers on the table to punctuate a new topic.

"More importantly, there was at least one new thing I discovered that might be very important." He opened his robe and retrieved a small knife from one of the inner folds. It was a short one, more of a tool than a weapon, with a bone handle and a simple leather sheathe. "I've got this as a parting gift from one of the adventurers in the guild."

"Was it the girl Mister Raol talked about just now?"

"No, it was the big man with the heavy armor," Raol responded by reflex.

"Oh, it's good then."

"What's good?"

"That… Mister Raol made a male friend too?"

Ignoring the suspiciously innocent gaze she was giving him, Raol shook his head and unsheathed the knife. It had a finely honed single edge made of a pale, yellow metal.

"It's made of Orichalcum."

He watched Elkayla's reaction closely, but as expected, she didn't seem to be surprised at all. He set the knife onto the table, right next to its sheath, and let out a long breath.

"Is there a problem with that?" the hermitess belatedly inquired, sounding puzzled by his reaction. "Orichalcum tools are common, aren't they?"

"Back in my day," he began, sounding like an old man for a moment. "Back when I was alive, Orichalcum was a legendary metal. An Orichalcum knife like this would cost the annual income of a barony."

"Really?"

"Really," Raol responded flatly, and flicked the knife so it spun on the table. "There was a legendary set of Orichalcum armor in the Imperial Treasury I just mentioned. It's called the Mail of Friendship, and it was given to Emperor Ferdinand the Second in exchange for acknowledging the de jure claims the Dwarves had to the entirety of the Luam mountain range. I was told this single suit of armor was valued at over five hundred thousand imperial gold Crowns."

"That's not a lot."

Raol narrowed his eye-lights at the thoughtless comment and cleared his throat (or, at the very least, pretended to do so).

"Back then, you could buy the entirety of New Reedcourt, the surrounding lands, and the matching feudal titles, with some left over."

"Oh. In that case, that's a lot," Elkayla nodded along, suddenly sounding impressed. "In that case, how much would this knife have been worth back then?"

"I'm not an expert, but I'd say at least a villa, with staff and a minor title included." Raol flicked the knife again, and just as the blade made a full rotation, he stopped it by firmly pressing his finger on the end of the handle. "And yet, now it's 'common'. I've seen beginner adventurers use Orichalcum swords, and townspeople were eating using Orichalcum forks, and by the courts, they even made shovels out of it!"

He sounded outraged to even his own nonexistent ears, but in truth, this fact gave Raol almost as big of a culture shock as 'looting' and the value of gold did back when he received his second lease on life. It was an absolutely unthinkable development, and after ruminating on it for the past couple of days, he could talk about it while merelyoutraged.

"Yes, but… is that important?" Elkayla interjected in a low voice, and after a breath's time, Raol managed to gain control of his temper and he tapped on the table with his fingers.

"Maybe. I have read a few books in a New Reedcourt library, and one of them was about the relationship between the Monarchy and the Mountaindeep Lords of the Dwarfs. In particular, the chapter that talked about how the Dwarves are the only source of Orichalcum in the known world. Yet now, both gold and Orichalcum have become so common they are practically worthless. There has to be some kind of connection there."

"Maybe the Adventurers' Guild uses the gold coins they receive to buy Orichalcum?" Elkayla proposed, but the skeleton shook his head.

"It still doesn't explain how all that gold leaves the Guild Hall, and with how worthless gold became, I can't imagine a reason why Dwarves would want to exchange their most precious magickal metal for it." Raol tapped his chin with one bony finger, visibly troubled. "My instincts tell me there has to be a connection here, but I just can't put together all the pieces yet."

"Maybe we just need more information," the hermitess proposed, and after a breath of pause, she snapped her fingers. "Right, I also have something new to tell to Mister Raol!"

Without waiting for the skeleton's response, she rose to her feet and disappeared into the bedroom, only to shortly return with a familiar book in her hands. It was the dead necromancer's grimoire Raol left in her care while he was out infiltrating the Adventurers' Guild, and by the sound of it, she discovered something in it.

"Listen, Mister Raol! Since I had the time, I read this whole book really carefully, and I found something amazing!" She placed the leather-bound tome in front of the skeleton and opened it up near the end. "Look, here. The previous owner used the last few pages to take notes."

"I can see that."

In fact, that was all Raol could see, as the cursive handwriting was so tightly packed and crooked that he couldn't understand it any further than the notion that they were notes of some kind. Unperturbed by his reaction, Elkayla pointed at a hastily scrawled paragraph roughly in the middle of the page.

"Look, the interesting part is here."

Raol squinted his eye-lights, even though doing so did not affect his vision, but after a couple of breath's time, he gave up and turned to the young hermitess.

"Can you give me a quick summary?"

Elkayla smiled sweetly and leaned forward, so that her shoulder touched the Skeleton's. Neither of them minded though, and she soon explained, "You see here? The previous owner of the book was researching something they called the 'Miasma'. It's only explained later, but it's something like residual magicka that doesn't naturally disperse. Their theory was about this Miasma being 'weighed down' by something, and he drew a parallel with necromantic arts, theorizing that, just like an undead could be created by infusing magicka into a dead body through a ritual, certain natural circumstances could cause this weighed down Miasma to condense and create monsters!"

"Isn't that a big leap?"

"M-Maybe, but look, the theory is solid!" Elkayla sounded oddly defensive, but Raol didn't have the time to point it out, because she soon pointed at another paragraph on the page. "Look, here! They wrote that they had already managed to repurpose a necromantic ritual and create a White Copperbelly from thin air!"

"Is that a monster?"

"Yes. It's a small sneak-like creature."

"So it's a small one. I guess that means it's not worth a lot of gold."

"Wait, Mister Raol! You're missing the point!" Elkayla waved her hands, nearly bumping the skeleton off his seat in the process. "The important part is that it's possible. We already discussed that becoming an adventurer trying to save up gold through hunting monsters would never work out, but what if we could perfect this method written here, and create our own monsters? Then you could punch them, and loot them, and make much more gold much faster!"

"That… certainly sounds intriguing," Raol admitted, and the more he thought about it, the more appealing the idea became. "What does this ritual look like? Does it require any sacrifice, or being performed at a certain place or time? Or any other detail that would make it inconvenient?"

"I… honestly don't know. It wasn't written in the notes."

"Huh."

Raol's flat response made Elkayal's eyes open wide, and she hastily sputtered, "But, but don't worry, Mister Raol! Their ritual was based on the necromantic practices of this grimoire! I'm sure that if we keep trying hard, we should be able to figure it out!"

"How long do you think that would take?"

"I… honestly don't know," she admitted, losing most of her previous enthusiasm in the process. "Without the original author, it might take a long time."

"I imagined as such…"

Elkayla's shoulders drooped in disappointment, but in contrast, the skeleton's eyes remained focused on the book. Before Elkayla brought this option to his attention, his plans were centered around either breaking into the Adventurers' Guild to take their gold, or discovering how any of this was connected to the Dwarves, and hopefully take theirs. Both of those were high-risk options, and neither of them had a solution to the question of 'Then what?'

As in, what to do after he found a treasury with a mountain of gold coins? Even if he managed to take a whole chest's worth of gold, it would've been a drop in the ocean at best. He imagined he would've needed a small army of workers, carts, and a whole lot of draught animals to transport it all, without being caught in the act. It was a daunting task, to put it mildly.

However, if Elkayla's idea, or rather, the theory in the notes was correct, it was a compelling alternative, so long as it could be implemented. If the presence, or lack thereof, of the original author was the biggest obstacle to the project…

"Why don't we ask him, then?"