WORLDBUILDING

Note - originally began as notes for the suit of coins in my Tarot system. the setting appears pretty clearly inspired by Chinese antiquity, even taking the name of one of their most important rivers. the economics are inspired by David Graber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

Temple Silver refers to a variety of denominations of coins forged in temple complexes. in centuries past, each temple complex was an oeikonemy unto itself. with the rise of the great Mandarins, most temple complexes traded self sufficiency for specialization, at least during periods when war, famine, plague, and revolution did not obstruct free travel. yet even these calamities drove interconnection in certain contexts, especially as great cities formed out of one or several villages scattered along a great river's oxbow peninsula unifying into a single metropolis which might maintain stability and offer protection from the shifting tides of war and thereby uniting their own local shrines with the region's upstream and downstream temples, woodland retreats, palacial island complexes off the coasts of luxury rich, plague rich cities, mountain peaks with noviciates and cellars grown fat on the donations of surrounding colonies hoping to win legitimacy and prayers from their higher altitude cousins in their constant jokying to control the mountain passes.

the silver of temples serves as a ledger for the various tribute and production the temple controls. by minting and spending it's own silver coins, the temple agrees to accept such silver back as full and meritious donations and payments on debts. in practice however, most of the silver was not actually circulated day to day, but kept at temple accounts, sense the temples acted as banks of deposit as well as lending institutions. temples might transfer silver to each other physically, but in practice this was usually not necessary. each temple in a given city or region kept accounts with every other.

because initially each temple minted it's own silver independent of each other in terms of size, purity, quality of craftsmanship, and stated value. the great temple of the Yellow Dragon River Valley was notorious for minting quite small silver coins with high amounts of tin, yet it would accept such coins at face value, for payment on the most elaborate rituals, which allowed prosperous peasants to commission birth, naming, graduation, marriage, and death rituals which would have made warlords several regions over blush with envy. nor was it's purchasing power limited to esoteric value. the fees for the necessary incense, altar reservations, offerings, labor hours of the priests, as well as temple products, such as milk and fabric, and rent of temple land, levies to maintain bridges and roads, etc. for any other coin, the most exacting standards of quality and quantity were imposed. thse policies led many temples to melt down much of their silver and sell it to the Great Temple of the Yellow River Dragon for coinage, or simply attempt to counterfeit the coins themselves. the effect was to make the ornate temple complex of the Yellow Dragon on the dime sized silver the primary coin of the realm. once it achieved 81.9% market share, a mathematically inclined monk explained to the archbishop, they could announce a recall of all coins, effective a year and a day for all outlying princes, and just 100 days for everyone else. everyone rushed to submit their coins, since any left over would be useless as credit with the Grand Temple and of only marginal value as raw silver.

the silver was melted down, purified, and used to create a number of ornate statues, doors, ornaments, and a modest run of new coins, still small, still displaying the grand complex, but now of the finest silver, inlaid with semiprecious stone and delicate calligraphy. the total amount of silver brought in was much higher than the initial inlays, thanks to counterfeiting and the sale of other temples melted silver. instead of paying out silver to those who turned in their coins, a large and handsome bronze coin equivalent to one fifth of the new silver pieces and smaller copper pieces worth 1/20th of a new silver, and about equal to half of the old silver pieces, was issued instead.

the silver to copper scheme was announced within weeks of a levy to build a series of bridges over the rapids; those with new bronze coins would pay a fraction of what those who paid in other tribute would pay. the timing of the policy meant that copper and tin mines could sell their claims for good prices to the temple in exchange for the tribute donated by the peasants. that copper would then go to mint the new coins as well as a large donation to the dragon gods of the river in exchange for them permitting the construction of the new bridges. thereafter, every time a noble crossed the bridge or sent one of his goods across, a donation to the dragon gods would be made. peasants generally purchased the rights of passage as a village or clan, allowing every member unlimited access to the bridge in exchange for a fixed outlay of labor provided by the clan, labor either on the bridge or the lands and workshops associated with it which sold products in exchange for the money to higher expert workers and to make offerings to the dragons.

the bridges were more than three times as long as the more efficient point of crossing, and five times longer than the shortest possible crossing. this was partly to make the bridges more impressive, especially giving them more surface area on which to affix bronze inlays, and partially so that of the runs of rapids, only two were spanned in their entirety. the others were left open and uncrossed for the free play of the dragon gods, and offerings were made in those rapids when people crossed the bridges elsewhere so the local spirits would not grow jealous. despite all these costs, or perhaps because of them, the bridge complex united many guilds. it took 10 years before a year round crossing site was established and another twelve before the bridge had achieved full capacity, and the fortresses and storehouses and mobile repair clinics took another fifteen years to be finished. when all the associated projects were initially finished almost fifty years behind schedule, the bridge was the envy of the yellow River, a boon for the project of military, economic, monetary, and spiritual hegemony being pursued by the Great Temple.

the entire bridge was technically a single massive monument or shrine to the ghosts of those who had lost their lives to the river, and to the ghosts of those who survived because of it, and to the dragon gods themselves, who now inhabited an underwater palace system visible from the bridge, and to the spirits of the rapids, who might have become enemies of the city if a more straightforward, single slice of bridges or dams had been established. along with the new monetary system, the bridge became one of the great projects of the great temple at this period, helping to unite many markets and industries under the grand temple's portfolio. the other two great projects were fortress monestaries which collectively overlooked 5 mountain passes. the military advantages of these complexes was less clear; by the time they had been constructed, the balance of power had shifted from the mountains to the open planes, perhaps because the complexes were there serving as deterents. the fortresses were converted to being primarily military academies. later, both would be used as sites of exile for politically thorny princes, military men, popular spiritual leaders and powerful priests by enrolling them into the priesthood responsible for the rites of the Phoenix migration. the members of this priesthood were confined to a mountaintop lodge for at least six months at a time, tending the lamps honoring the phoenixes who inhabited the mountains and keeping one of the oldest known phoenix roosteries where birds sometimes took refuge from storms. membership in the priesthood could only be dissolved by the temple grandmaster's declaration or by traveling to the Great Temple itself for the summer solstice, when absence from the Roostery was forbidden, when one would have to leave in the winter.

the Phoenix coup began at such a shrine, when an injured Phoenix commissioner one of the novices as her servant and had them accompany her down the mountain to the Great Temple, where she transformed into a princess and married the captured dragon prince who was held there until he consented to choose a bride. the Phoenix them appointed her novice as the new grandmaster of the temple.

the scandal of rough mountain monks sitting in the great palace, singing chants for stone dragons over the rivers and leaving yak milk for ravine spirits and cave brownies instead of the reed gods and meadow nymphs did not go unnoticed. when new bronze coins were issued with mountain script or with emblems of the dessert and steppe territories which had long gone overlooked by the Great Temple, and their lords and craftsmen and novices were welcomed into the enrollment slots which the locals had always viewed as their own, and their own son and daughters and xhildren were sent to study abroad in the mountains and desserts, or not enrolled at all, the conservatives refused to accept the new coins at face value, and began systematically reducing their purchases of rites to the most modest forms, or abstaining altogether, whereas before they had always completed with each other to purchase the most elaborate performances. they manipulated as many appointments as they could, seeking to lay the groundwork for a counter coup, which might put the foreigners in their place. instead, the ex novice called upon the warlords of the desert to enter the city by the bridge and maintain order, and placed their sorcerers in high places. most alarming of all, the ex novice adopted many of the political institutions and principles of the desert people when it came to granting autonomy to individual peasants and peasant clans, stripping the conservatives of their power base. the newly independent peasants were now about to engage in commerce directly using temple bronze, and in less than a year the novice made a gift to the warlords of five times the asking fee in exchange for them withdrawing their forces to a new great temple complex where the desert met the sea. trade between the two would operate by ocean and up the yellow river, further turning the control of the mountain passes into a critical issue because now other kingdoms would be further inclined to attack from the mountains.

in other cities, no single temple became hegemonic, and so they were left weak and squabbling or powerful and federated. in the later case, each temple was permitted to mint it's own coins of uniform purity and size, and though they could require their own coin for purchase of their own rites and products and debts, for any rite performed simultaneously across multiple temples, or for products made jointly, any coin from the federated parties might be used.

these constraints became the lattice for a great deal of monetary creativity. the obverse side of most coins displayed the issuing temple, with the gap in the coin representing by absence the interior, the sanctum sanctorum, the resident god or idol, etc. as such, coins might be distinguished by the guardian statues. at the base of the temple or on the reverse, many coins displayed in mirrored silver a koi pond, using semi precious stones to depict koi in black, white, and three shades of red-orange-gold. the patterning of the koi as well as their placement, position, orientation and number was of great information density. in different systems, more koi might represent the number of adepts currently enrolled or the accounts held with other temples and shrines, spirals of koi facing a single way might depict the strength of different schools of thought or the pilgrims it received, and colors could signify the breeds of koi they kept or maze their fields produced. the acquisition of an important relic was often accompanied by minting a run of coins depicting it, which were often used to purchase the relic or to endow a festival in it's honor or distributed as charity to the local poor, ora lump sum purchase of a debt jubilee, especially on debts incured by birth, marriage, and funeral rituals,

such rites were not exhausted by to the ritual act itself, but came with record keeping and insurance. for example, if a marriage was disolved between two people, they could claim restitution from the temple in the form of lodgings and food while a new household could be established. the temple corporation might become a legal third parent to the children of a marriage or performed in the case of divorce, widowhood, orphanhood, or impoverishment. during times of hardship, the poor mignt commit marriage and/or divorce en mass to transfer themselves and their holdings under the temple's umbrella. the creation of such a super household was often the explicit goals of temples, especially those competing with a hegemonic temple or with rivals within their own federation. if an individual or family moved it's gods and ancestor tablets from one temple to another, that could signify shifting prestige, income, and in republican cities, votes. political parties were formed around which temple the party leadership or members belonged to, and where one married, housed one's gods, named ones children and honored one's dead often signified an important step in a politician's carrer, whether an advancement in the party's higherarchy, defection to a rival faction, or--potentially most disruptive, the establishment of an independent faction.

in the suit of sickles there is a card displaying an exchange of hearts. two or more individuals, especially politicians and medicine masters, swap organs in a surgical theatre on the floor of the temple, a public act meant to announce to everyone that the two participants view each other as closer than brothers, twins of the heart. from that point onwards, they are legally indestinguishable; they might eat each other's food, sleep with each other's wives, stand surety for each other in court, be imprisoned for each other's crimes, exercise the same public office (in this last case, however, the surgery and it's publication must be announced prior to election or appointment, and if someone already holding office chooses to have the surgery performed, they must resign their offices before the unification of identities takes effect.

trading hearts often but does but always brings about a dramatic increase in telepathic capacity between the two or more participants, a capacity which sometimes extends outside of the circle as well. women who trade hearts tend to consider any child born of a heart twin their own, which is not always the case for the men, for whom the threat of cuckoldry may remain a potent factor in the relationship, even if the law would not recognize such a child as a bastard, but simply the result of it's mother, the consenting authorization of her husband, and the heart twins collectively as a father.

if I've heart twin dies during the operation, the survivor may assume his property, spouses, debts, political offices (provided the announcement preceded their appointment), and even their name, and may even declare their old identity, including their resources and relationships, dead. if two or more participants wish to terminate the relationship, they must return or burn their hearts. they must also engage in a lengthy and socially traumatic process where they divorce and widow their wives, orphan and disown their children, concede all resources and responsibilities to other parties, and undergo a funeral, seance, and resurrection. then newly reintroduced to society, they must be given new names, be adopted by their parents, remarry their spouses, adopt their children, reapply for their old offices, etc. it is common for new despots upon taking power to order their enemies to dissolve their heart bonds, knowing full week the medical and social trauma of such a cleaving frequently causes death or suicide during or s

hortly after the procedure.

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