As I write this it is skin-meltingly hot out… but Flairé was unusually talkative today and gave me the outline of the history of the kalmaeirin currency system(s), so I thought I should get it down before I forgot it or it got garbled by something. <_<  >_>

This does not include a discussion of the credit system they used, or the age jewel gifting traditions that existed in some parts of the kingdoms, or of the economic system itself. This is only a summary of how they started using currency.

As soon as the kalmaei were ‘civilized’ enough to start producing ‘goods’, they needed a way to exchange them. At first this was done by barter (“I’ll give you baked goods for three weeks if you give me those boots…”). This was pretty obviously impractical; they made do for a while with extremely complicated agreements (“I want some of your fish, but you don’t need my fishhooks, but that guy over there does, and he’ll give you a couple of oars, which you do want…” etc.) but in the end they decided something had to change. Continue reading →