Panoply

This chapter gives an overview of the monetary standards of Creation and the various goods and services available in the world of Exalted. Creation is a vast place and it contains many things not explicitly found in this chapter, but a Storyteller can easily extrapolate whatever else characters might desire from those items found here. Obviously, not every item is available everywhere. Characters in a small town are unlikely to get lamellar armor. Items of greater complexity, such as articulated plate armor, are rarely obtainable outside the great cities—Nexus, the Imperial City, Lookshy or the capitals of the South. Large purchases, ships or manor houses for example, might require a character to wait months or years while the item is built to her specifications.

Wealth in Creation

Wealth exists in many forms. It can appear as a casket filled with jade coins or as a profitable iron mine with the slaves and guards to run it or as a palace filled with beautiful artwork and a suitable staff. The first of these is cash on hand, the second is capital, and the third is good credit. All three tend to surround Creation's richest and most influential the way silk moths cluster around old wardrobes and garment chests.

While the financial systems and instruments of the Age of Sorrows have fallen far since the days of the Shogunate, there are still banks and insurance agents and tax farmers. It is possible to pay for goods with letters of credit in places. One can buy shares in various commercial and civic enterprises or issue bonds against the future production of goods from a factory that hasn't been built yet. It is also possible to face execution for financial chicanery or be cast into slavery for debt.

The Jade Standard

Jade Currency Table

1 talent (T)	=	8 bars (B)	=	64 minae (M)	=	128 shekels (S)	=	1,024 obols (O)
1 bar	=	1 minae	=	16 shekels	=	128 obols
1 mina	=	2 shekels	=	16 obols
1 shekel	=	8 obols*

*Obols are divided into quarters to form bits.

A regular system of coinage supports all of these financial institutions and ventures. This system is based on jade, and it is accepted as the cash standard by banks, tax collectors, mercenaries and courtesans alike.

For about 500 years, the Realm has promoted jade as the standard currency. On the Blessed Isle and in the satrapies, jade holds a privileged status as the sublime symbol of power—it's a magical material, a superior weapon material and the representation of fabulous wealth.

Unfortunately, jade's superior status in three such overarching aspects of life has tended to emphasize its scarcity. Jade has capabilities in the spheres of magic and martial arts that far outstrip its usefulness as money, so a single obol of jade can be supremely valuable. In the Realm and its dependencies, it is illegal for a peasant to hold so much as a single bit of jade. Instead, a second currency operates beneath jade and is supported by it. This currency is called jade scrip.

The jade standard is backed by the Realm's Treasury, which contains more than 50,000 talents of jade. The magical, martial and financial potential of this storehouse of treasure serves as a symbolic reminder of the Scarlet Empress's ability to make things happen in Creation and tends to reinforce the power and prestige of the use of jade.

By contrast, jade scrip is not backed by the Realm's Treasury. Rather, the Private Purse of the Empress serves as the monetary pool that issues and directs the use of jade scrip. As a result, jade scrip tends to be used only in the Realm, and only by the peasantry. The Dragon-Blooded and the patrician class tend to use jade whenever possible, leaving jade scrip to the townspeople and the rural farmers who cannot hope to accrue enough wealth to hold a single obol in their lifetime.

Jade Coinage

Jade coinage is issued in a variety of shapes and sizes. The talent (T), weighing 68 pounds, is a slab of jade roughly scored into eight rectangular bricks. The seal of the Imperial Treasury is lightly engraved into each of the resulting panels, and the minting date and an identifying number are carved into each side of the slab. Many talents, particularly those that are illegal, have no markings at all, since possession of an unmarked talent only results in confiscation and a fine, while forging the Imperial Treasury’s marks carries a death sentence. The true talent has always been a rarity even in the Realm. More frequently, the talent simply appears as a “money of account,” a column in the ledgers of the auditors.

There are 1,024 obols in the ledger talent, though a true talent actually contains 1,536 obols by weight. The discrepancy arises from the carving process that turns a raw talent of jade into coins. The resulting dust, called "Imperial boot polish," can be mixed with steel and other metals to produce the jadesteel alloy so useful for constructing weapons and armor, but it amounts to 512 obols-worth of coinage that cannot enter circulation. This dust is placed under very careful guard in the Imperial Treasury, but large amounts of it, and even completed weapons, have been disappearing from the Realm’s armories of late. A talent is equal in value to the price of a new ship or the cost to hire a troop of mercenaries for several weeks.

The bar and the mina are also rarely seen in their solid forms, functioning more often as moneys of account like the talent. Each of them is a brick of jade with the seal of the Imperial Treasury scored upon its upper surface. The bar is additionally scored into eight thin strips each the size of a mina. A ledger-bar is worth an eighth of a talent, or eight minae, or 16 shekels, or 128 obols. A mina weighs about a pound and is a slab of jade about three inches wide, six inches long and a quarter-inch thick. A single line divides it in half, and the Imperial Treasury's dragon-badge is scored into each half, while a series of circles on the reverse side indicate 16 small circles. Bars can represent months worth of value in supplies for a fortress or a legion, while the mina represents the purchase price of a skilled slave.

The shekel, the obol and the bit are the most common types of actual jade seen in circulation. These three denominations represent small enough values and are distributed in small enough sizes that they can be regarded as useful sums of money for the Dragon-Blooded and their servants.

The shekel is a thin slab of jade graven with the eight circles of its eight jade obols on one side, with milling around its thin edge to discourage shaving. A single shekel weighs about nine ounces, and they are often carried wrapped in silk to keep them from breaking. A ledger-shekel represents eight obols or 32 bits.

The obol, a round coin weighing about an ounce and about an inch in diameter, is the common currency of the Realm's upper classes. Herb-sellers and drug dealers use obols as balance weights to prove the accuracy of their measurements. An obol's age can be determined by the image graven on it. The oldest bear pictures of a woman in a doorway, representing the Empress entering the Imperial Manse. More recent coins bear the crests of each of the Great Houses, announcing their inception dates. Others show a circle of faces that represents the formation of the Deliberative or various symbols or figures commemorating battles that Imperial forces have won. The most recent coins continue to show the lightning bolt from the Battle of Mishaka in RY 754. Some wits have suggested issuing coins featuring the picture of an empty throne, but no one has yet taken the step of commanding the Imperial Treasury to change the image on new obols.

The bit is an unofficial addition to the currency. Possession of bits was made illegal in RY 465 during the Unbroken Rushes Rebellion, because the rebels used them as a recognition token between the cells in various prefectures. However, they have survived official disfavor for a long time, simply because they are too useful not to persist as a permanent addition to the monetary system. A bit is literally a quarter of an obol that has been split into four pieces.

One common modification of a bit is to have a hole drilled in it for a lanyard or a chain and a word in Old Realm carved into the bit's surface. Peasants believe that bits of jade possess some magical capabilities, and they tend to wear them as magical amulets with glyphs representing longevity, prosperity or happiness. Many Dragon-Blooded officers collect these charms from the rebels during uprisings, thus proving the simplistic belief in jade's innate magical nature a dangerous illusion.

Trading Dots for Cash

Players and Storytellers will both want to make use of actual monetary values from time to time instead of Resources dots. It is difficult to translate Resources into specific amounts of cash, since Resources is, by design, not a linear progression. The level of financial capability between one dot and the next is a significant order of growing wealth and power.

For each character in her series, the Storyteller should make a determination of what form the character's wealth takes, whether it's jade, jade scrip, silver or some other form. The division will be primarily between jade and jade scrip on the one hand and silver or cowries on the other, depending on where the characters are and what their attitudes toward the Realm are. This book assumes that characters with four or five dots in Resources are not going to be using jade scrip, but you may make other choices about how jade scrip is used in your Exalted game.

The following correspondences provide a rough guide to translating Resources dots into cash in the three main money-systems.

Resources	Cash Equivalent
X	Jade: less than 2 obols of income a year Jade scrip: less than 16 koku a year Silver: less than 20 dinars a year
•	Jade: less than 1 mina of income a year Jade scrip: less than 64 koku a year Silver: less than 60 dinars a year
••	Jade: less than 1 shekel of income a year Jade scrip: less than 128 koku a year Silver: less than 100 dinars annually
•••	Jade: less than 1 talent of income a year Jade scrip: less than 8,000 koku a year. Silver: less than 5 talents a year
••••	Jade: 4 to 6 talents a year Jade scrip: 16,000 to 50,000 koku a year Silver: 20 to 30 talents a year
•••••	Jade 12 or more talents annually Jade scrip: 96,000 or more koku a year Silver: 60 or more talents a year

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