Sith scorn the notion of abstract money; even tokens of value are seen as a sign of weakness, as there is no guarantee in a Sith’s mind that an institution wouldn’t fail to redeem tokens if they perceived weakness in a client. They insist on trade in actual goods; they have standard currency of bars and coins of standardized precious elements and gems, which are embedded in a transparent plastic that bears a certification of the size, quality, and purity of the substance. The coins are valued based on the abundance of the substance and its utility, so a tungsten coin is usually worth about the same as a gold one. No institution would dare get caught practicing fractional-reserve banking; interest rates are negative unless you authorize a bank to lend using your assets, in which case they may go to zero or even positive if you assign a high enough risk factor. (There is no regulation of banks; all banking is free banking.)
The ancestor of the Galactic Credit Standard is actually a convenient abstraction used for micropayments, calibrated based on purchasing power parity, though the simplicity of it usually causes people to advertise prices in credits. One of the most common uses of micropayments is for food, and this is the basis for the abstract credit unit (rather like the Big Mac Index): one credit unit (&credit;) is defined in each local economy to be the value of a day’s nutrition for an average-sized human slave. Your wealth in a bank is a portfolio of physical assets; their value in credits varies with the market. Most monetary transfers measured in credits perform an instantaneous transfer from your portfolio to someone else’s. Some banks will issue tokens that can be redeemed by that bank for physical goods— based on their value at the time at which you traded them in— but this is generally only used for pocket change. Travelers usually let their bank manage their portfolio of assets, informing their bank of their itinerary in order to have their portfolio optimized for the trade goods worth the most in the region they plan to visit. The money is tracked to the decicredit for personal transactions and the millicredit when handling informational transactions.
Even in restaurants, payment occurs when goods change hands. (In classier venues, it quietly happens over a wireless link to your PDA or commlink.) Contract enforcement is often based around escrow (where a professionally neutral third party mediates the exchange) or vengeance insurance (where a bounty is placed on someone who violates the terms of a contract).
Just as it’s efficient to gather people in cities for industry while others work farms, it’s efficient to plate over entire planets like Coruscant and Taris in skyscrapers while leaving other worlds to be mostly agricultural.
Wealth is about ownership, and ownership is what you can hold and prevent from being taken from you. You can pay banks to hold your wealth and protect it for you, and you can pay your local armed group to protect your home for you, but ultimately it comes down to your ability to reliably defend what you claim.
Raw elements are mostly precious for their industrial uses; mix that with the native abundance to get relative value— e.g.: rare earths are particularly valuable for their use in electronics. Simple gemstones like diamonds and corundum are easily fabricated, and are often displayed in gaudy array by lower-class individuals who can’t afford the ones with fancier nanoscale structure. The ones with a more complex structure, like firegems, corusca gems, Krayt dragon pearls, Caridan arachnijewels, and nova rubies, are the prized baubles.
Complex substances that are difficult to manufacture are valuable. Wood is a valued ornament in ecumenopoleis and space stations. Most advanced substances with complicated nanostructure are worth shipping rather than manufacturing on site.
Finished goods are valuable. Since there is no notion of intellectual
property, companies protect their designs as best they can by making
them hard to reverse engineer. Anything with nontrivial software
components (which includes force field emitters, blasters, etc.)
has the software burned into black-box packages that contain numerous
anti-tampering measures. Some manufacturers go to great lengths to
need proprietary software, like sofas with smart
cushions that
change their softness for the contours of a person’s body.
Slaves are also valuable, particularly well-trained and well-bred ones.
Game-mechanically, value is represented by loot points (hat tip to Spirit of Epic Fantasy for the idea); these are effectively fate points that can be spent when rolling for bribery and purchasing. Particularly good treasures can be tagged multiple times for a purchase.
Even the most capitalist of Sith offer no support for the formation of
corporations
(2); they would
sneer at the notion of creating a fictitious entity. The only
protection investors have is the ability to forcibly extract assets
from nonperforming investments, so investors tend to be more like
partners than shareholders. And the only notion of ownership is what
you can defend. Business groups call themselves
companies
, but there’s no regulation or formality to it;
the main difference between a company and a gang is whether their
hangout is an office building or not. Their internal structure looks
more feudal than like a board of directors, mirroring the power
structure of the Empire; bringing in a particular amount of investment
doesn’t guarantee that you’ll continue to control it, so
it’s wise to bring in minions along with money. Powerful
companies can negotiate with their overlord to get favorable tax
rates.
The only thing restraining monopolists is the cost of defending themselves against hostile action from competitors— or disgruntled customers. In practice, this limits the amount of price-gouging to the level that people don’t pool their funds to hire bounty hunters, so ripoffs are merely annoying and not astronomical. It leaves plenty of room for intimidation, harassment, and assassination of potential competitors.
Military units are allowed to subcontract if they aren’t busy on errands of their lord, and often do a brisk side business in contract enforcement. There’s nothing like subsidizing your local military base to make your bank think twice about going back on their contracts. Lords often call them in to impose martial law any time a dispute winds up turning into an escalating series of reprisals that cause undue interference in economic efficiency.
Banks are militarized organizations that provide secure deposit of assets and secure couriers; the only thing keeping them honest are other militarized groups who can be convinced to seize the assets of a bank that betrays its investors. The only loans are effectively mortgages; if you don’t have collateral, they don’t want to do business with you, and they have their own investigators and auditors to verify the value of collateral. You can always mortgage yourself if the bank thinks they can pilfer you out from under the local Sith Lord who is your owner of record. They make enough money off loans that they don’t charge interest on deposits, but they seldom pay interest; depositors usually need to authorize risking assets on some form of speculation in order to have their wealth sitting around accreting.
Banks have a particular interest in maintaining FTL relay networks, and have fought small wars over subspace spectrum allocation. They never trust to the network alone, and regularly send out courier ships with extensive secured datacores filled with random numbers to use as one-time pads when communication needs absolute security. (Quantum computers are commonly available, but public key cryptography is still effective.) Typically, someone arriving on a planet will contact their local bank branch (which will be at a heavily armored location in the spaceport), authenticate themselves to the degree specified on their account (anything from knowing the right passwords to carrying a token with appropriate codes to set of cross-checked biometric scans), and authorize a certain level of expense on the planet. The request for current account records is sent over the subspace relay at the beginning of the authentication process, and is often complete by the end of it.
Lack of regulation has caused banking disasters in the past, with repercussions felt across the galaxy. Booms and busts in the business cycle do occur, but there is a large body of data on the results of rampant speculation, and people often hedge their bets against downturns in the market. Hundreds of billions can suffer when the economy is on the skids, but the sheer amount of investment in precautions against this damps the effects somewhat.
Sith Lords never have to worry about unemployment statistics. If there are enough people lacking food and shelter to be a problem, they can always be demoted to slaves and either sold or put on a work gang and tasked with doing something useful. Like building immense monuments by hand, the blood of their fallen comrades mixed into the mortar holding together the massive blocks...
Insurance is a common way to deal with risk, and there are many
providers for it in the galaxy. Some are highly independent, such as
the vengeance-mole-bots that tunnel under your house, then emerge and
set off the thermal detonator inside their casing if you don’t
regularly reassure them that you’re still living there. Others
are massive galactic agencies that can place a bounty on anyone who
harms or kills you (death insurance
), or damages your property.
Some, such as the Public Nuisance Eradication Service, even specialize
in aggregate bounties; a tough guy who intimidates his way through too
many transactions may find that a great many people were willing to
throw 2&credit; at the prospect of putting a bounty on his head... but
be unaware of it until he sees his face on the Bounty Channel.
(Some PNES subscribers are blatant about taking pictures of people
who annoy them; some use a camera concealed in a bit of jewelry.)
Vengeance insurance ensures that harm to you will be avenged; it usually comes with logos for your clothing to show how much trouble someone will be in if they mess with you. (Insurance investigators are often very curious as to whether someone went outside the terms of their contract, which usually doesn’t cover belligerence.) Your personal infotalisman will usually tell any vehicle in which you’re riding to adjust its e-ink decals and network beacon accordingly.
Theft insurance pays for the recovery of your stolen property and
vengeance on the thief. The more effort you take to make your
property distinctive, the better your rates, so vehicles (particularly
starships) usually have a variety of telltales that make them unique
(so they can be identified by insurance investigators) and ways to cry
for help if they aren’t being operated by the right people.
This has, of course, triggered an arms race with chop shops
that
can help you make that stolen ship unrecognizable. Sith have been
known to take out theft insurance, but not vengeance insurance.
Insurance is the usual mechanism of licensing. Insurance is verified by a tamperproof black box that does biometric validation on its carrier; it signs packets with a private key provided by the insurance company, which predistributes the matching public keys throughout the area covered (which is the entire galaxy, for starship pilots). (Data storage is sufficiently cheap that this is practical.) Some areas deal with a lack of insurance by shooting down vehicles being piloted without it; the more well-off districts in most megacities require that whether a vehicle is under organic or droid control, it needs to be tied into the local wireless network and giving other vehicles warning about its behavior. There are no such things as traffic laws, but expect serious consequences if other beings get the impression that your driving is a hazard to them.
One sign of the social class of a shop is whether it has surveillance cameras, both monitoring the outside and space in front. A shop that can afford to hire bounty hunters to track down thieves and avenge attackers displays them openly, and rents access to its records to bounty hunters; the cameras uplink the footage to a secure repository elsewhere. Poorer shops can’t afford to have irate customers shooting out the cameras because they want to avoid leaving a trail.
Insurance can lead to perverse occurrences. Your local fire response unit may proactively burn down the house of a person who doesn’t have fire insurance, since were that house to catch fire without the department’s force field generators present, it could endanger paying customers next door. (It’s not about punishing freeloaders. Honest.)
Piracy is a big problem in the Sith-dominated galaxy. No single group is willing to put in the effort to exterminate them (as that would give a free ride to too many others), and no one has the power to ban trading with them (since someone else would profit instead). If they actually take over a planet, an overlord capable of wiping them out will show up and demand tribute, which forcibly integrates them into society. There are often bounties issued against particular pirates by aggrieved mercantile concerns and insurance companies, which can lead to professional pirate hunting mercenary fleets. Some companies have policies of rewarding ships that make an effort to defend themselves against pirates, or punishing those who fail to do so sufficiently well, which can lead to unpleasant escalation with the pirates who want to terrify their victims into surrender.
Pirates tend to move around a lot: they pick a good spot for raiding, make as much profit as they can until all the good pickings travel in convoys with armed escort, then move someplace else (particularly a place that now lacks escort ships because they’ve been moved to deal with the current set of pirates). They often have scouts in spaceports, keeping an eye on which ships are being loaded with worthwhile cargoes. Ships preparing for the possibility of a pirate raid usually have at least one fake cargo manifest, and some degree of valuables hidden away someplace; the competition between methods of hiding and methods of discovery can lead to anything from an amused attitude of sport to an occasion for gruesome torture.
Galactic terminology distinguishes between corsairs (who are responsible only to themselves and have their own code of behavior that is tied to their investment in their reputation), privateers (who are working for some other group, which provides them with a safe market for their loot and takes a percentage of its value), and reavers (who are brutal thugs that take everything they can get). Corsairs usually practice a form of constitutional direct democracy in their own vessels and fleets, where the captain is elected as executive during combat, the quartermaster is elected to manage resources and divide spoils, and the constitution specifies such things as the number of shares for people in different positions in the crew, the amount that the company will spend to take care of an injured crewman (usually the cost of a functional cybernetic replacement of any missing limb or organ), and the code of behavior toward surrendered opponents; some have been known to have quite cordial relationships with ship captains who don’t give them trouble. Privateers may be anything from corsairs who voted to accept the hospitality of a particular system to detached members of a military. Reavers usually practice Sith-like survival-of-the-strongest, and are disdained by other pirates as fools who don’t realize that it’s not a good idea to put people into a position where they have nothing left to lose.
Most pirate groups have a few well-armed ships; their usual modus
operandi is to show up with enough force that a victim will simply
surrender, then make off with the most portable valuata on the ship
and turn the victims loose with a minimum of harm (in hopes of
collecting from them another time, and in burnishing their reputation
so others will prefer surrender). Battle damage is expensive, and it
is often sufficient to take down someone’s shields without serious
damage to their ship to decide an engagement. Victims that offer
resistance, however, are made into ugly and memorable examples to
burnish the fearsome reputations attached to the pirates’ sigil.
(Sometimes a freighter will pull into port with battle damage, tales
of raving pirates who spaced all the cargo they didn’t want, and
trashed furnishings. Other times, escape pods will show up on a
shipping lane or in the outskirts of a system, containing traumatized
passengers and the mutilated corpses of crew; the missing ship may
later be seen, heavily modified, in a pirate fleet, or chopped
to hide their origins and resold. The most thorough pirates simply
sell everyone aboard a resisting ship into slavery.) This keeps the
incentives on the side of a relatively peaceful transfer of loot with
minimal harm to either side.
Pirates will usually take care to check for a victim having a high retribution-insurance policy, and will take care to put them in an escape pod headed for a habitable world to avoid having the bounty on their heads go up by too much. Victims with high ransom-insurance policies may receive grand treatment from pirates anticipating the reward. Ships may also carry ransom-insurance policies, making them valuable prizes; some pirates may attempt to hold people or ships for ransom without such a policy, but are very much aware how much ruthless mercenary effort could be hired for the cost of a ransom.
There is quite a lot of gambling going on. The only limit on growth is the lack of regulation, which breeds distrust. Ambulatory vending machine droids can transform into ambulatory slot machines with a small user interface change, though some people prefer to see a mechanical device containing a chaotic system providing randomness. The more value a machine carries, the better its defenses.
Slythmonger is a term for a drug dealer.
Giggledust (2), as is glitterstim is a variant of spice (2). (See spice variants.) Grey Gabaki is an incense that gives off a relaxing smoke. Muon Gold is a drug that enhanced mental clarity and focus but causes long-term neural degeneration. Sweetblossom, Yarrok, Shadowpaw, Neutron Pixie, Gunjack. Algarine torve weed. Zwil. Ryll (2) is undiscovered. Balosar death sticks have not been refined, though the balo mushrooms that create them are often dried and sold. Ryloth and Socorro are sources of spice. Rashallo leaves are made into cigarras. Avabush spice (2) is useful as a truth serum. Gannarian narco-spice (2). Garcornian Spice. Gree spice (2). Gy’lan (2). Lumni-spice (2). Magravian spice (and cat-spice). Narco-spice. Roon spice. Rylspice. Nic-i-tain is an addictive drug, grown in T’bac.
Tentacle is a euphoric stimulant for most parahuman species; the drug is actually a cephalopod fertility hormone secreted by the spermatophore-like mating nodule of a squid from ????????. You stick an arm in a tank full of horny squid, get the nodule injected under your skin, and the living tissue secretes the hormone (as well as squid gametes) and keeps you high until your immune system destroys it. (The nodule would normally be lodged in a female’s skin, where it would stimulate her into egg production and then fertilize the eggs until it was destroyed by cells sent out from a competitor’s nodule.) This can last for a week the first time, then shorter and shorter times as your immune system learns to recognize the alien proteins. Different lineages of squid have different profiles and may last longer; even if a dealer already has a breeding population of one particular lineage of squid, he may pay well for ones with different histocompatibility complexes.
Split this out into another page. Take a look at our Economist world guide for ideas.
A famously brutal vengeance insurance company. You pay us, we make
them pay.
Their insurance investigators are known for being fairly
thuggish in their own right, happy to make examples of people who
don’t cooperate with their questions, and their stable of bounty
hunters are feared across the galaxy. A Skarkorak protection decal on
one’s jacket can deter most muggers, but there are plenty of
freelancers who will surreptitiously scan that decal to make sure
it’s genuine; Skarkorak pay well for the opportunity to make
counterfeiters unpleasantly famous. Such a decal may give you an
advantage on Intimidation checks, but a penalty on Rapport; it’s
a mark of a ruthless person.
|
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License; see the disclaimer for details. | |
|