>Imagine a fantasy world where goods are purchased with living currency
What might this be like?
>>43883296
It's called slavery, anon.
>booty barter
>>43883296
Imagine putting that thing on your dick.
>>43883313
>>43884473
Mollusks of Gor.
>>43884473
It'll just take longer for the parasites to get to your brain is all.
>>43883458
Beehives would probably make surprisingly good currency. They have innate value in the form of honey, preventing runaway inflatipn, and can somewhat protect themselves from thieves. Large numbers of bees are also great for plants and pollination.
The big downside is transporting them, since they're rather large, which also means the buying and selling of small goods is harder to do
I actually have something like this. It's not the whole setting, just one nation.
It's a land where the people eat lots of insects and bugs, and they like to trade trained spiders. These spiders can be helped with craft projects, to 'herd insects' scuttle back if they see someone entering a room and so on.
These spiders are even more valuable because they are smart enough to be useful and traded, but not smart enough to be trained to return home after being traded, giving them a lot of inherent usefulness.
Ok, speaking as an amateur who has done a lot of research into currency system, this actually did exist at one point, twice in fact.
It existed once in Africa, and once in Indonesia. The african one was a purely labor based currency using slaves (slaves were an accepted form of base payment between large tribes, unlike a base backing of a precious metal or other gatherable commodity).
The Indonesian one is more weird, and actually was trade in a variety of crustacean. It only ever existed on a small scale, and evolved from trading in the meat to trading the shells themselves fairly quickly.
>>43885877
>>43883296
I mean that's basically how bartering worked before money was a thing. You gave a guy a chicken for a clay pot and so on.
>>43885877
>New Orc Stain Never
>>43886014
why even go on?
>>43885877
God i miss Orc Stain.
>>43883296
Like
>>43886005
>>43883313
Said.
>>43884585
STOP IT
>>43883296
I would like it if all coins had the voice of annoying comedians.
>1 copper = Jon Lovitz
>1 silver = Gilbert Gottfried
>1 gold = Carlos Mencia
and they all converse with each other and tell awful jokes.
>>43883296
>living currency
Coins, which are fancy dishes containing rare bio-luminescent mold or algae. Their value is indicated in part by the color of the glow (perhaps Brown < Green < Silver < Gold). This algae-stuff is known to live for incredible lengths of time, as each coin is a self-sustaining environment. It is incredibly difficult to breed this stuff (it only survives in the coins, or in very specific extreme environments), making counterfeit next to impossible.
Now your setting has coins which glow in neat colors.
>>43887550
>Copper and silver coins converse with each other gold just repeats what they say and claims it was his own original material*
Fixed it for you.
>>43883296
That is a thing that happens in the real world so I am having difficulty conceptualizing it as a fantasy.
If you mean that the currency itself is some kind of living coin that does nothing other than just be a coin and alive then I am not sure how much of a difference it makes.
You can't mean a barter economy where livestock is traded, as that would not be different than the world we live in now.
If you mean, as your picture seems to suggest, that in this fantasy world some living creature is highly valuable and used as currency, then I think their value would be derived from some benefit they provide to their owner that does not deplete or destroy the organism itself. This sounds like silkworms, but honestly it could even be chickens. Inevitably, though such a system would be tied to the value producing activity of the "living currency" (like producing silk or eggs). It is difficult to imagine that a system like that would be sustainable. Ultimately, the creature is very valuable to some people (who can take advantage of the benefit) and useless to others (who can not run a silkworm farm or keep chickens producing eggs). Another, fungible currency would have to serve for transactions and the premise of the world would fall apart.
On the other hand if you are suggesting a living coin that does nothing other than be alive then maybe it talks? I don't think this is a very interesting fantasy.
>>43889973
Continuing with this train of thought...
Perhaps there is some kind of viable premise here if the benefit derived from the "living currency" is universal and indispensable...
A potential universe for your premise exists where the environment is completely devoid of naturally occurring water and the types of creatures existing in this world all require water to live. A single type of organism which sufficiently scarce so as to make it valuable produces potable water. The organism is small enough to be carried in large quantities and used by individuals. In addition, the creature is not harmed by taking its produced water.
But even this has a problem, living things have a finite demand for water. Thus once someone has enough water, additional organisms producing water are useless. Sure, demand could expand with the addition of more water-dependent individuals, but the demand is still finite.
So in addition to the requirements of 1) Universal Benefit and 2) Indispensability, there is another requirement of 3) Elastic demand...
>>43890143
Finding a way to make the demand for this resource inexhaustible is challenging.
If we look at our "current" currency of money we can observe that we can always derive more value from acquiring more money. This is true, as a practical matter, but in reality at a some unknown sum, money would also cease to be valuable. There are only so many things that you can do with money. There is no reasonable way to estimate how much money is needed before any additional money is useless, perhaps something in the quintiillions? In any case, it seems fair to say that the demand was be practically, rather than absolutely, inexhaustible.
To make this premise viable then, we could look at the benefit money provides and attempt to copy that to our "living currency." Money allows you to purchase assets, rights, and services. You can also use money as leverage (collateral) to induce others to provide you with any of those things with the promise of later payment of money or in default, surrender of existing sums of money you have. Money also provides a societal benefit by objectively quantifying the value of things so that exchanges can proceed more efficiently.
Reasonable people may disagree about what all these uses have in common, but I propose that money provides a means for its owner to entice actions from other sentient individuals. Money can not always guarantee that an individual will do what you want, and is worthless to living things that can not appreciate its value, thus its affects are felt solely in interpersonal relationships.
>>43890355
So then the living currency should provide a means by which a person can influence other people. It must meet all three of the previously listed requirements as well.
Perhaps some kind of nanoscopic organism taken into the body which permits telepathic control of others. The more of this organism taken in, the more control the owner can exert. In addition, the organism can be easily extracted by its owner and transferred to others. A person could conceivably take control of the entire population of intelligent beings by acquiring and internalizing enough of this organism but it should require an astronomical amount of continuous "revenue." In order to keep the demand inexhaustible, use of the organism consumes them.
>>43883296
>You pay this much
>>43883296
that's basically what happens when you have society of herding nomads. cattle generate it's own interest as calves, and you trade them for stuff.
Combat is probably non lethal mostly, since people always have blasters set to stun. Also druids corner the markets.
>>43883296
>I had enough money, but some of it died on my way here
Shitty. Breeding would also be problematic.
>>43883313
>>>/tumblr/
>>43885877
When the new Issues? After Guts got out of the boat everything is possible.
>>43896656
hes still on the boat what are you talking about
>>43887615
I really like this
>>43896896
>he hasn't heard
>>43899335
i just saw the last issue they havent even returned to his arc
>>43883296
I don't know what sort of thaumaturgy enables currency in path of exile to turn garbage items into magic or better items, but it could be an interesting interpretation if they were living as a result of it.
there's an implication somewhere that magic is alive in the setting, but not a terribly strong one. making items magical probably implies life in that case.
only slightly more abstracted than having your main currency be souls of living things.
>>43899335
>tfw just looked it up
>not even in english yet
>>43883296
>acquire said living currency in somewhat humanoid form
>proceed to waifu it
>love money
>>43883296
"Lo, citizens of Whyeven, the Royal Mint hath wrought new denomination for you! Behold, the Ten Sovereign Balloon Slug! Its bubble contains no less than a full ounce of platinum!"
I could see a kingdom shifting to a living currency in order to combat rampant coin clipping. Can't clip something that will die if you cut it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_coin_debasement
>>43902220
Also, the "purses" could be small lidded buckets, cushioned on the inside, filled with water and algae.
