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vanda nosseo meets the jianghu
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"So what were we talking about?"

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"Apparently we're at risk of destablizing things around here," says Nelen dryly.

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"That's okay! I'm already doing that."

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"The Wei sect is very unusual because Sect Leader Wei invented a new form of cultivation which can be learned by anyone, even those without a golden core. We are teaching it to householders so they can use it to make textiles. We've also encouraged people to use qiankun bags and swords to engage in trade."

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"And then I make a fuckton of money without demanding tribute! --I'm also trying to work out how to get more kids to learn to cultivate, but that one's hard."

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"Well, congratulations on your successes so far!" says Nelen. "Apparently the likely points of friction in our case are that we're treating the non-cultivators as a separate polity, which happens to be coextensive with cultivator territories, and they will, if they want to join Vanda Nossëo, be entitled to Vanda Nossëo defensive support which might disrupt their existing arrangements with local cultivators, and that some cultivation sects are liable to take it amiss that the criteria for joining include forbidding murder and rape and torture for perks such as money."

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"--so the idea is that you're going to give the peasants money if there are laws about not torturing people?"

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"That is among the ideas. Being a citizen of Vanda Nossëo comes with a periodic payment for just being a citizen but the minimum laws are free emigration, and no murder, torture, or rape. Polities have to vote in, though individuals can join Vanda Nossëo if they want."

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"That's solvable. I'll tell them that if they fuck with you I'll send my fierce corpse army after them and then we're good."

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"Is that a good idea?"

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"You don't lose face if you back down because the fearsome Yiling Patriarch told you to."

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"--or it would start a war."

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"Led by who? Lan Xichen? Jin Ling? Nie Huaisang?"

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"We'd... rather avoid threat-based solutions. Especially since sending an army to subdue one's neighbors is itself the sort of thing that might involve something that might legally constitute murder."

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"Fair enough. But my fierce corpses are available if you need them."

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Lan Sizhui quietly requests that a servant bring wine.

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"--I don't understand how giving the peasants money works. If you give the peasants more gold, then there's just more gold, it doesn't make extra stuff."

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"So, actually, gold is almost completely worthless in the multiversal economy, and step one of integrating you folks would involve buying it all off everyone who currently holds some so the economy doesn't collapse before it can switch over to new forms of economic activity," says Nelen. (Cassiel illustratively picks up a rock and turns it into gold with a little jazz-hands gesture.) "We use fiat currency, which doesn't represent any specific object, but has the important feature that nobody has the ability to just make it without doing anything that anyone else will pay for."

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"--what's fiat currency? Is it like drawing against the credit of the Wei sect?"

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"It's different from credit - not totally unrelated but not the same thing. Uh, imagine that people's gold kept being stolen, so they put it all in one place with guards, and received pieces of paper that said 'owns one ounce of the gold in the gold place' per ounce of gold - I don't know if that's a reasonable amount - and also had their names on them. These would be easier to carry, and easier to hide from bandits. Imagine everyone gets used to that and then eventually somebody actually looks in the gold place because they want to make jewelry and discover that all of the gold has been... uh... eaten, or something. They still have all the little pieces of paper, and they can in fact just totally ignore that the gold isn't there any more. And when you have more technology, you can replace the pieces of paper with something it would be harder for Cassiel to make out of a rock, which is mostly just a very fancy way of writing down how much money each person has, and making that number go up or down when they earn or spend."

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"...if I found out the gold had been eaten I would just stop accepting the little pieces of paper."

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"Well, you could do that, but you don't actually have to, it turns out that it works fine if you don't. If Cassiel offered you a pile of gold for, let's say a demo of your flute there, would you take it? Considering that she can just go around doing that all day, and the envoy team sent to the emperor can too, and I've just told you gold is worthless in the multiverse?"

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"--oh, good point. Sizhui, tell whoever's in charge of this sort of thing to sell all our gold and, uh, probably also silver and gems too. We'll sell it on credit. Very good terms."

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"Yes, Sect Leader." He writes on a piece of paper.

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"Little antisocial," remarks Natsuko.

"It doesn't matter, we'll buy all the gold and whatnot from whoever has it at the time," says Nelen, waving a hand. "The point is we use the writing down how much money each person has system without any underlying independently valuable thing the number relates to, and the money still has purchasing power. In the short term, given permission to do so, we'll set up a shop where we sell things in exchange for songs, or stories - we do actually want those, they help us preserve a snapshot of a culture before we show up and everything goes haywire - and in the longer term, giving all the citizens money indirectly causes there to be more stuff by making it possible to earn money beyond your basic income by producing and delivering things those citizens want."

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