What does an incomer use for money in Felarya?

Hey,

Let's say that you're a fairy-hunter. Or whatever. You're coming to Felarya from a world with some regular inter-dimensional travel, but which doesn't use one of the 'Felaryian' currencies, or regular inter-dimensional currencies. What do you bring with you in order to buy, trade or barter for things?

Remember it's got to be fairly portable, and preferably worth less on your world than on Felarya. E.g, it's probably very inefficient to bring diamonds to Negav as it has its own diamond mines.

What about different cases. Ttrading in Negav? With Nekos? With a (normal-sized) elf? Mer-people?

Help me out with this, would you all?

Yours,

Ambrose,

I'd imagine coinage made from precious metals, but if not, I'd wager that bartering would be the way to go.

Hey,

Well, if it's just value by mass or volume of metal, it'd surely be better to bring pure gold or silver or something rather than coins, since they don't tessellate properly. But I'd similarly been assuming, given the availability of precious stones and so on on Felarya that that stuff might not be so valuable. Maybe that's the hidden reason behind Felarya's failing tourist trade. The predators are just a scapegoat. The reason is lousy exchange rates.

As for barter... if you're planning to come, what would you bring? What's valuable in Felarya. Wobbly-headed dolls? People do love those (mildly obscure 'Firefly' reference there).

Yours,

Ambrose,

Gold, of course.

Felarya's got the problem that riches are sitting around like crazy. There's entire biology that - should one of us (provided we can return to our world) return to our world with it - would make one filthy rich. There's rich veins (well, were) of Ascarlin next to Negav (which was worth 12 times a diamond of either similar volume or mass) in addition to the aforementioned Diamond and other valuable ore veins. Magical items are also known to exist with some frequency (an old enough being's bones should be a mixture of biology and raw magical power) and so on. Quite frankly, inflation should be a huge problem there - you'd probably be handing ruby and emerald tokens around like we do copper and nickel (an exaggeration, yes, but the point remains).

The only real things one could offer for someone who had no desire to leave Felarya is stuff like favors, services, and so on. When you could have a cloak made entirely out of precious gems and it'd be more like us buying a cloak of the finest silks in terms of cost, your best bet in many instances would be such.

Or... or the currency system could be flipped on its head. You still need to eat and drink, for instance, and you might barter some of such in turn for a material.

Of course, there's also the "They use currency just like us, and somehow avoid inflation issues".

Well, you'd need something pretty utiliarian, and mildly valuable... I'd say... Felarya's got a pretty lousy industry. There's plenty of gold and jewels, but I've never seen any iron deposits. I guess the skevol is a nickel alloy just like everyone else's, jewels must be worth about as much as in the Kyrandia series.

I'd recommend you to bring metal implements, electronic devices, ammunition, or medici... no, wait, scratch that one out, it's not necessary here. Also, luxury industrial devices, such as an expensive watch or fine optics would be a good bet. A good book, preferably one on "how to X" would fetch a nice price from someone who can read it... how's that?

I reckon jewelry, small electrical appliances and other lightweight but valuble things would come in handy for haggling with.

I'm guessing your going to want to bring lots of manufactured goods.

Felarya is essentially a dimensional hinterland, lots of resources, but not really anywhere to plop a factory. So while they might have the ability to extract lots of raw materials such as gold and jewels, they don't have the ability to turn those goods into products.

JohnDoe wrote:

I'm guessing your going to want to bring lots of manufactured goods.

Felarya is essentially a dimensional hinterland, lots of resources, but not really anywhere to plop a factory. So while they might have the ability to extract lots of raw materials such as gold and jewels, they don't have the ability to turn those goods into products.

Agreed.
Here's a thought...
Since there seems to be an abundance of gold, jewels and other precious metals, I'd image there would be a thriving jewellery and magical amulet crafting trade. However, people things manufactured from steel and such wouldn't be as common, (MUST is an exception of course). Therefore it would be possible that a relatively low value manufactured object made of steel would have much more value on Felarya.

A thought that I've had for a while:

Since Ascarlin is the most valuable thing on Felayra, it stands to reason that it would be the currency. For example, coins would have a tiny piece of the stone embedded in it. The greater the valve of the coin, the bigger the shard of the Ascarlin.
This works because Ascarlin has valve everywhere.

Hey,

From the wiki:

Quote :

and empires have waged wars for just a handful of them.

Admittedly, Ascarlin's less rare in Felarya, but it still seems too valuable and downright useful to lock it up uselessly in currency.

Setting that aside, it's much more valuable outside Felarya than within it, so it's a terrible currency to bring in. I think, however, that we've reached some kind of consensus, which is:

1) The things it would make most sense to trade with Felarya for in any bulk are finished manufactured products, probably in return for raw-materials. The margins on this might even be high enough to support the dangers of trade - akin to the dangers of shipping on earth in the 16th-19th centuries.

2) If you're an individual travelling to Felarya, you're better off taking something portable, either magic-items, gemstones or similar. They'll be worth less in Felarya, but that just means everything will seem more expensive to you. Unless you're lucky enough that your homeland uses on of Felarya's currencies, of course.

Yours,

Ambrose,

Do what they do ini the movies and trade your Gameboy to some merchant. Then while he's busy playing Wario Land, you snatch his cart and run for it.

I consider it bartering.

I call BS. I know they take Visa.

Mentalguy wrote:

I call BS. I know they take Visa.

Hahaha--- HOLY CRAP MENTALGUY POSTED!
Wow, I haven't seen you around for a long time.

Anime-Junkie wrote:

A thought that I've had for a while:

Since Ascarlin is the most valuable thing on Felayra, it stands to reason that it would be the currency. For example, coins would have a tiny piece of the stone embedded in it. The greater the valve of the coin, the bigger the shard of the Ascarlin.
This works because Ascarlin has valve everywhere.

I actually asked Karbo about what skevols look like and he said they're basically coins of different value, but he didn't mention a fragment of Ascarlin in them. Quite Frankly, I don't think putting a tiny piece of an already incredibly valuable gem in a coin would be smart. I think the only way you'd manage to get money in Felarya if you just came in is to trade stuff at a pawn shop, because the only alternative would be trying your luck at getting a job.

Sean Okotami wrote:

Anime-Junkie wrote:

A thought that I've had for a while:

Since Ascarlin is the most valuable thing on Felayra, it stands to reason that it would be the currency. For example, coins would have a tiny piece of the stone embedded in it. The greater the valve of the coin, the bigger the shard of the Ascarlin.
This works because Ascarlin has valve everywhere.

I actually asked Karbo about what skevols look like and he said they're basically coins of different value, but he didn't mention a fragment of Ascarlin in them. Quite Frankly, I don't think putting a tiny piece of an already incredibly valuable gem in a coin would be smart. I think the only way you'd manage to get money in Felarya if you just came in is to trade stuff at a pawn shop, because the only alternative would be trying your luck at getting a job.

Meh, it was an idea (I posted that months ago). But it does make sense to make your monetary base the one of the most valuable things in the multiverse

Sean Okotami wrote:

Anime-Junkie wrote:

A thought that I've had for a while:

Since Ascarlin is the most valuable thing on Felayra, it stands to reason that it would be the currency. For example, coins would have a tiny piece of the stone embedded in it. The greater the valve of the coin, the bigger the shard of the Ascarlin.
This works because Ascarlin has valve everywhere.

I actually asked Karbo about what skevols look like and he said they're basically coins of different value, but he didn't mention a fragment of Ascarlin in them. Quite Frankly, I don't think putting a tiny piece of an already incredibly valuable gem in a coin would be smart. I think the only way you'd manage to get money in Felarya if you just came in is to trade stuff at a pawn shop, because the only alternative would be trying your luck at getting a job.

...and that's where you get some of the poor adventurers from. At least the relatively smarter ones. One could imagine how hard it would be to get a job in Negav.

The most lethal one would be delivery boy, cause that means that you're expendable.

To be honest, while currency may exist in certain areas, I think bartering is probably the rule of thumb in a world like Felarya. Tech, weapons, even knowledge can all be bought and sold. See, and this could just be my darker view of Felarya kicking in, I'd imagine a lot of people are pretty survival-oriented. Anything to increase their chances of survival would be more valuable than some gem.

I can just see an advertisement!

Job board: delivery boy! pay: 1500 skevols per hour! warning: payment is received upon successful completion of job.

XD ...

ZionAtriedes wrote:

To be honest, while currency may exist in certain areas, I think bartering is probably the rule of thumb in a world like Felarya. Tech, weapons, even knowledge can all be bought and sold. See, and this could just be my darker view of Felarya kicking in, I'd imagine a lot of people are pretty survival-oriented. Anything to increase their chances of survival would be more valuable than some gem.

Well, when you're in a place like Negav where the number one danger is criminality, they gotta have an economy, implying they have a currency, which Karbo put in the wiki as Skevols, Faldong Gems and others I don't remember.

back in the ancient rome era, and greece and what-not currency was basically measured in weight. I imagine that this concept would take an important role, because pure value kicking in would cause a lot of problems.

I asked Karbo what a skevol looked like and he said it was basically coins with differing value. He didn't go into too much detail, so we should let him answer that.

I'm gonna go ahead and suggest this:

Maybe we should devalue Ascarlin a little. I know it sounds insane, but it just sounds weird when entire kingdoms would fight over a handful of it, yet there's an entire MINE near Negav.

Basically that would make Negav richer than every Universe and Dimension COMBINED.

Pendragon wrote:

I'm gonna go ahead and suggest this:

Maybe we should devalue Ascarlin a little. I know it sounds insane, but it just sounds weird when entire kingdoms would fight over a handful of it, yet there's an entire MINE near Negav.

Basically that would make Negav richer than every Universe and Dimension COMBINED.

Indeed. Ascarlin is extremely powerful. The ability to increase the magic power of something tenfold is certainly nothing to dismiss lightly. However, we have almost no information about the exact properties of ascarlin. Does 1 kilogram increase power by 10, or would 10 grams do it?
This is where the exact value of ascarlin will be worked out. Because, unlike gold, ascarlin does far more than look pretty.

ZionAtriedes wrote:

To be honest, while currency may exist in certain areas, I think bartering is probably the rule of thumb in a world like Felarya. Tech, weapons, even knowledge can all be bought and sold. See, and this could just be my darker view of Felarya kicking in, I'd imagine a lot of people are pretty survival-oriented. Anything to increase their chances of survival would be more valuable than some gem.

Well, to a spellcaster, having a piece of ascarlin is sure to increase their survival chances. Because mages are often the rich ones, having a bit of ascarlin would definitely be a good thing. Hell, if you had enough you could probably get the mage to come with you if you were venturing outside the walls.