Morning Stars: the Gristle (Languages, Money)

There is an empire broken apart, in flames, brother soon to be turned against brother in a war which will set the course of history forever. It's best to remember what you have before you lose it; hold tight in your hands the tools your mother made you, and hold close to your heart the words your father taught you.

Memory awaits.

Gerard van Honthorst

Languages

Morning Stars characters start with Lingua and one other language of their choice, plus one for each point of INT bonus they have. Characters are assumed to be able to read and write in the languages they know with a base level of proficiency. You may say, "PRIMEUMATON, why are these filthy past-century-equivalent people so literate?" Because it's more interesting to be able to interact with parts of the game than not. I once had an otherwise very enjoyable dungeon cut short by the fact absolutely none of us could interact with the puzzles due to not being able to read a language.

If you insist on Trve Mvdcore, you may choose to be illiterate at character creation and in exchange gain an extra skill of your choice, representing a life spent not learning your phonics and instead taming horses or learning carpentry or any manner of things. Obviously, being illiterate precludes some occupations and skillsets, so take that into account. Illiterate characters treat literacy in a given language as its own separate language to be learned.

Also, if you're some kind of foreigner or are otherwise isolated from Imperial literacy programs, you can swap out Lingua with another language your party members speak.

Language List:

• Lingua, the common language of the Empire of the Sun and Moon, is a constructed thing that is scarcely more than a century old. A friend of mine once told me that one of English's best features is that it's good for poetry- Lingua is the opposite of that. It's a language for pamphlets, not novels.

The languages of humans are split by the cardinal directions from which they get their names.

• Eastern, the language of the Presbyter and consequently, the language of liturgy. It has a lengthy literary tradition of tales of great kings and knights, all rising and falling as surely as the sun.
• Western, with its complex characters derived from Ambling script, has many layers of formality built into its grammar. While much public writing is done in Lingua, Western remains king in Imperial documentation.
• Southern, the language of the cold, paranoid Viervorsten before the Empire put them to heel. Even after all these centuries, it still sees use as a source of criminal argot outside of its native lands.
• Northern, spoken in the lands in the shadow of the Great Wall of the Djinn, finds more use among the Sunmen than it does among the region's small human population. It is a language well-suited to shouting, as its syllables carry well over a distance. 

The various non-humans of the world have their own languages, rarely so divergent as those of man:

• Giant, high and melodic even in thick jaws, lends itself well to poetry and song. Before Lingua was invented, Giant served as a common trade language; giants are wanderers, and many make use of their services. Their letters are hewn into circles of standing stones all across the continent, the material memory of a people without a nation.
• Dove is consonant-heavy, most often encountered in the rough, cough-like speech of sailors; on the isle itself, the language is spoken so softly that it seems like a different tongue entirely. Dove is vaguely mutually intelligible with Eastern- at least enough to shout obscenities between ships.
• Ambling Sign has no spoken component, with all speech rendered in fast-waving semaphore and dance steps. Its written form is tactile hieroglyphics, often requiring touch to be fully understood; ironically, this makes it a popular written language for the blind, who would find the "spoken" form utterly useless.
• First, the language of the djinn, is just as it is named: the first language, said to have been derived from the divine vocabulary which commands the angels. It is simple in speech but devilishly complex in writing, and its alphabet is the basis for most other written languages.
• Orders is harsh and sibilant, a language made to be frightening to the enemy and effective for the ophiokorai when they were still shock troops for the serpent-men. Its two grammatical genders are "superior" and "subordinate", best understood as the actor and the acted-upon, or as cause and effect.

Money 

Silver Pieces are Moons. They are thin, two inches in diameter, and stamped with a wagon wheel pattern that allows the coins to be broken up into halves, quarters, and crescents (eighths.) Gold Pieces are Suns. They are discus-shaped, an inch in diameter, with a small hole in the center for a string to be threaded through. Traditionally, they are marked with the face of the current Emperor, with the hole taking the place of their left eye. As a measure against currency debasement by way of clipping or sweating, it's standard to measure the value of coins by weight. In practice, most people will take a coin at face value.

Ten SP to one GP. Simple enough. Just as Saint EMPEROR in his starry crown intended.

Things get more complicated elsewhere. 

On the Isle of Yonah, trade is done mostly in iron. The smaller currency is Wounds, strips of workable metal kept in bundles. A bundle of fifteen Wounds is equal to one Axehead, which more often than not is actually a functional iron axehead.

Kissi Pennies

One Axehead exchanges out as 3 SP, which means that a Wound is one-fifth of an SP. Given Yonah's status as an Imperial holding, exchanges are often not this favorable- "impurities in iron" or "problems with liquidity" are the common reasons given, though more often than not the real one is "what are you going to do about it?"

Among the djinn, the currency of choice are rings of gold, typically dispersed from ruler to subject in a sort of indirect palace economy. There's little in the way of consistent value, only weight; rings vary in size from delicate chain links to enormous things fit for giants. 

Rings are exchanged by weight for GP. The djinn don't get screwed over in currency exchange because cheating one of the firstborn is one of the fastest ways to start a generational blood feud. The Kings of the Days may be insular, but the djinn were a near-peer power even before a meteor wiped out the Imperial capital.

Rembrandt van Rijn or Gerard Dou. Wikimedia doesn't know.

Items

This is by no means exhaustive. Actually, by most means, it isn't even complete. It's mostly just a scale for my own reference.

1 SP will buy you three torches, a day's ration (typically dried meat and pastelli), a 24-hour dose of lamp oil, ten pistol bullets, or five musket bullets.

5 SP will buy you a light weapon, a common hand tool, 100' of rope, three iron spikes, or an oil lamp.

1 GP will buy you a medium weapon, a shield, a tent, a hound, or a pistol.

2 GP will buy you a heavy weapon, light armor, a donkey, a wheelbarrow, or a set of three hand grenades.

 

4 GP will buy you a massive weapon, medium armor, a riding horse, a cart, or a musket.

10 GP will buy you heavy armor, a warhorse, a wagon, a dinghy, or a small cannon.

Given economic instability, prices and availability of some items may vary wildly. When I feel like being that cruel, here's a 1d4 table for me to roll on:

1. Half price! Everything must go! If someone wants something off their hands this badly, it's likely stolen or worse.
2. Standard price. Just like any other day.
3. Scarce. Price ×1.5. Bandits hit the last shipment. A man's got to eat, you know.
4. Dwindling. Price ×2. The town that made these exploded and they still haven't found the bodies.