Economy

Blood
I’ve noted elsewhere that James Scott’s “Seeing Like A State” is an influence on my writing. Scott provides a great capsule history of a core challenge that every premodern state faced in administration and finance – the incommensurable diversity of local weights and measures, naming conventions, land tenure systems, etc. across its territory – and the centuries-long project of making populations more “legible,” ironing out that diversity into a set of common rules and standards that allow a state to be better aware of what’s going on.

Because of the “legibility” challenge, premodern states didn’t and couldn’t  know  enough about what was going on across their economy to have something like an accurate national budget. (The periodic attempts, like England’s Domesday Book, are precious sources that also highlight the severe limitations of royal capacity in this area.) Premodern rulers had perforce to delegate authority to local actors (the local feudal lord, village reeve, etc.) and live with a big gap between their declared policies and on-the-ground realities. Their knowledge was fuzzy at best, and unintended consequences and inefficiencies were rife.

We’ll see more details from Game 2 Ch 2 of how the Hegemony is pushing slowly toward modernity. But at present, blood is harvested across a vast land area by thousands of semi-local authorities. Much of it is used on local needs, e.g. agriculture, which is in no way under central control. Some needs to be sent to Aekos to keep the Palace airborne, some to the Halassur front, some to the Wards… but I’m afraid you’ll find that’s not actually a single centrally planned system but one in which different Ennearchs are given (shifting, sometimes clashing) extraction rights over different bits of territory and deploy their Theurges to wring as much blood as they think they can out of it.

Only a few features of the continent’s blood economy, like the cost of keeping up a Ward/Palace, can be known and planned for with a high degree of accuracy by the state. For the rest – both the actual scale of the population from which blood can be drawn, and the scale of demand from agriculture, war, policing, experimentation, etc. – the Thaumatarchy operates in a bit of a fog. Mistakes are inevitable, and consequential. This is the system you’ll inherit (having of course made things even less legible by your rebellion). (source)

Drachem
(from the Game World Index)

A silver coin, roughly equivalent to a day's wage.

Paper Money
Paper money doesn’t exist; the Syntechnia knotwork-and-seal system (plus written contracts for complex deals) allows traders to settle accounts without shifting massive amounts of coin. (source)

Stater
(from the Game World Index)

A gold coin worth one hundred drachems.

Money-lending
There are moneylenders at just about every scale, including highborn Karagond ones who lend to the Thaumatarchy itself. Mostly they’ll be Syntechnia merchants, as they’re the ones who accumulate tradeable capital. (source)

Prices
At this point in rural Shayard, barley costs 6 drachems a bushel, wheat 8; any trader who sells in bulk to the Whendward Band whacks on an extra drachem per bushel for the risk. Your band’s bare subsistence grain needs through the 16-week winter are in the vicinity of 700-800 bushels. (source)

Taxes
Architelones don’t accept taxes in (human)kind. (source)