Equipment
Use the form below to access our equipment database.
Currencies of Meln
History
Sagrians were the first big traders. They experienced that weighting metals was just too difficult way to complete payments. So merchants gathered together to solve this big problem. After long negotiations (i.e. after years) they decided to melt metals to a small disks with certain weight. On the other side they stamped blazon of grand-merchants guild (two stoats) and on the other side they stamped blazon of Sagrian (moon, sun and ship.)
Agaries spread throughout the world with sagrians and dwarves were the next who become inspired minting own coins. Dwarves, who were proud about their blacksmithing skills, decided to mint more valuable and finer coins. This caused quite a competition between dwarves and Sagrians. Dwarves had experience of thousands of years, so they knew better ways to mint nicer and finer coins than sagrians. Soon competition about the value of currency started fading to a background for sagrians, because they yet ruled trading. Among sagrians the following phrase become very popular: "Dwarves can mint beautiful money in their holes, for it is we who understand its practical value." Dwarves have always been a little clammy to trade with other races. All dwarves have same currency units and money value. Also elves use same money with each other. Of course every mint has own mark, which they stamp to coins.
By degrees other nations saw benefits and elegance of minting and started minting own coins. This way also currencies of other nations started to flow in to world.
| Nation | Platinum | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Half | Quarter | Rate |
| Sagrian | Ul | Aucr | Agari | Silt | Cupe | Clid | +/- 0 |
| | | | | | | |
| Nation | Platinum | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Half | Quarter | Rate |
| Dwarves | Thornu | Elektri | ** | Krone | Krun | Uart | 1,25 |
| Elves | Mith | Eal | Ilitl | Whealai | Whal | Qual | 1,15 |
| Haran | Pond | Huntar | Sirki | Gird | * | * | 1,1 |
| Mavalan | | Mynth | Cope | Gyft | * | * | 0,9 |
| Velmera | | Lhiar | Trabe | Prik | * | * | 0,9 |
| Veenda | | Pego | Amia | Dapri | * | * | 0,85 |
| Metha | | Dipe | Aluna | Palaka | * | * | 0,8 |
| Jonai | | Aul | Agi | Yina | * | * | 0,75 |
| 4000 | 400 | 40 | 4 | 2 | 1 | |
*Every nation has own name for a bronze-half and bronze-quarter. Usually name is derivative from sagrian words: "cupe" and "clid".
**Dwarves won't mint money from silver, because silver is holy metal for them. Instead of silver they use black-iron, which is nearly as valuable as silver. This coin is called "muora".
Dwarves have also seventh currency unit, trithor. Its value is about ten platinum-thornues. Trithor is minted from charmed platinum, which elves call mithril and humans call noble-platinum. Charmed platinum is charmed by the nature itself and it is nearly impossible to charm platinum with intual magic.
Halves and quarters
Black-iron, silver, gold and platinum also has halves and quarters, but those are not minted, but humans have cut up cons when needed. Halves and quarters of valuable coins don't officially belong to currency units, but there is also those and those are also accepted currency.
From the first sagrians meant that only merchants belonging to trading alliance would have rights to use coins. Because they traded with larger amounts, they didn't need coins of lesser value. Gradually coins, however, drifted also for other traders and merchants with consequences that coins started expire from mighty trading alliance.
Trade-council deliberated problem in their meeting and decided that they start minting money for everyone's use but they would collect little tax for doing so. First official mint was founded. The mint minted certain amount coins every year with price that was about quarter higher than was the price of material.
Because money has became general among all nations and humans cut coins half and quarters (mainly bronze), trading-alliance decided to start minting also bronze-halves, cupes and bronze-quarter, clids.
"War" against falsifiers and cheaters
First cons were made from pure metal (gold, silver or bronze), but after it spread outside of quilds, humans started filing coins and collect metal for themselves. In harder times, when precious metals were hard to achieve, trading-alliance mixed cheaper metals in to coins and naturally value of coins lowered. To rise value of coins, some amount of precious metal was added to a coin, but no so much that coins would be "pure." There is always false money in Meln and those differ from coins made of cheap metals to coins that are only covered with thin layer of valuable metal.
Specialists can examine coin and see does the coin have too much cheaper metals or has it wrong stamp or is it filed. Standard measurements for a coin are: diameter 30mm and thickness 2mm.
Below are weights of coins:
| Metal | Weight |
| Noble platinum | 35 |
| Platinum | 30 |
| Gold | 27 |
| Silver | 15 |
| Bronze | 21 |
| Half | 11 |
| Quarter | 5 |
Moneyless nations
Many cultures don't have own currency units. They usually use bartering economy and weight precious metals (also coins) with scales. Here is some common values of bartering economy in agaries:
| About ½kg silver | 64 ag |
| Ox | 90 ag |
| Cow | 75 ag |
| Horse | 60 ag |
| Pig | 25 ag |
| Goat | 50 ag |
| Chicken | 1,2 ag |
| Beer pint | 0,02 ag |
| Rye bread | 0,02 ag |
| Long sword | 18 ag |
