Coinstone

Coinstones, formerly and still occasionally called "grown coins", are the most widespread currency in use on the world of Vlastach. Coinstones are made of no mundane substance, but are created through landworking magics, by landworkers in service to Vlastach. Not all nations use coinstones as their exclusive currency, but all Grower nations do, and most Crafter as well, and even in those few states that do mint their own coins, such as Caphavia and Osrodica, coinstones are still accepted as a valid alternate currency. The only place where coinstones are not commonly accepted is Blathe, the sole nation on Vlastach to seriously focus on the landreaving magic that is anathema to the land.

Coinstones are as sturdy as regular stones, but are still breakable—especially the thin tesken. Most merchants consider broken coinstones to be worthless, though exactly what qualifies as "broken" may vary from area to area, or even from merchant to merchant. One trader may consider a small chip enough reason to reject a coinstone, whereas another may accept a badly damaged stone as long as most of it is still present.

Denominations

Coinstones come in eight denominations, the coins of each denomination having a characteristic shape and appearance that makes the different values of coinstone very easy to tell apart.

The least valuable coins, used for small change and common even in the hands of the impoverished and the mendicant, are the teskens, also called "silvers" or "slivers". A tesken is small, triangular, flat, and thin, shining reddish when light reflects off it from one angle, and bluish from another. Second is the asenai, worth twelve teskens. Shaped like short cylinders with rounded ends, asenai are rusty brown in color with gold veins tracing across their surface and slowly shifting over time.

Ten asenai are valued as a stolic, spherical stones colored a lightless jet black on the bottom and a marbled deep blue on the top. This is true even if the stone is rotated; the colors move to accommodate the new orientation, so that the black side always points down and the blue side always up. Fifteen times the value of a stolic is that of the hlani, a flat, bright green stone with a varying number of gently pointed lobes—usually four to six, though three, seven, or eight are not unknown. Branching blue-brown veins run through the stone's surface, gently pulsing from center to edge.

Worth ten hlani is a goneas, also known as an "oilstone" or just an "oil" for short. Oilstones are elongated ovoids with a pearly sheen, which when touched display ripples of delicate pastel colors spreading across their surfaces. They are valuable enough that, while they are often used in mercantile transactions, they are seldom carried as ready cash. Twelve goneas are worth one otul, round flat mottled reddish stones that always keep to a constant temperature of about twenty degrees Celsius, regardless of their surroundings. Otule sometimes pass through the hands of successful merchants, but are more common in the hands of the rich.

Eight otule make up a demari, a pale iridescent toric stone that continually rotates slowly around its axis. If its rotation is forcibly either slowed or sped, the demari emits bright rays of multicolored light. Sometimes called "ringstones" or "halos", demari are more or less the exclusive province of the wealthy, rarely glimpsed by ordinary merchants or other members of the middle class, let alone the lower. The most valuable coinstone is the galisti, also called a "glitterstone" or "glitter", which has the value of ten demari—or eighty-six thousand four hundred teskens. A galisti is shaped like a broad, slightly flattened oval, roughly three inches long. It appears dark in color, almost black, but within its translucent interior subtle lights of many bright colors can be seen playing in everchanging sparks and arcs and rays. When the glitterstone is held up to the light, the colors are even more prominent. Galisti are so valuable that they are rarely seen by any but the wealthiest individuals.

Creation

Landworkers create coinstones by means of the ritual of coins, a lengthy landworking ritual that can produce coinstones of any number and value—though the more or more valuable coinstones the landworker wants to create, the more favor he'll have to have with Vlastach to do so. Even a beginning landworker, or one in dangerously low favor with Vlastach, should be able to create a handful of teskens, but a galisti can be produced only by a powerful landworker with an excellent relationship with the land. This means that while the creation of coinstones is one way landworkers can make a living, the more powerful landworkers can make correspondingly more money.

Like all landworking rituals, the ritual of coins depends on Vlastach's will, and will not function if Vlastach does not wish it to. While most of the time, Vlastach will allow the ritual to work—it wants its landworkers to be able to support themselves, after all—Vlastach is wise enough to prevent landworkers from destroying an area's economy or diluting the value of the coinstones, and may refuse to answer the ritual if a landworker or a group of landworkers starts to get too greedy.

Counterfeits

Thus far, no one has successfully managed to duplicate coinstones by nonmagical means, and though there are a few tales of elemental mages creating counterfeit coinstones, no evidence has turned up to verify this. Certainly landreavers have attempted to make their own sham coinstones, but such close imitation of Vlastach's power seems impossible to their stolen art; all the reavers' coinstones have telltale blemishes of some sort or another.

Even if it's true that some elemental mages have managed to make false coinstones close enough to the real thing to fool merchants, certainly such counterfeiting would greatly displease Vlastach. Anyone who did manage to create fake coinstones would have the enmity of the land, and would find likely find nature turning against him unless he managed a great atonement.

History

Coinstones were first created about three millennia after the Merge, the brainchild of a leaflord named Xaderich. Originally, Xaderich created only one kind of coinstone, which resembled in both value and apperance the modern hlani, which indeed is directly derived from it. A later leaflord, Teu Tai, along with her dedicant servant Yolor tu Ai, added the varieties now called the stolca, goneas, and otul. The others were added one by one by later landworkers; the current system of eight coinstones has been stable for about two thousand years, since the elimination of a now-obsolete coin called the urali in 10118.

Other Worlds

Some other worlds where landworking takes place have mimicked Vlastach's currency system—either exactly, or with some modifications. Hiaru may be the only one to have copied Vlastach's system unchanged, but Draav and Emeaker use it with only a few minor alterations. Lian and Miacander both use a somewhat similar coinstone system, but with radical differences from Vlastach's—particularly in Miacander's case.