(no subject)

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Mucking

“Cory! You’ll be mucking from the Orren ponds today!” proclaimed Gorsen. The job required taking a wagon to the Orren village by the riverside, wading hip-deep in their fish ponds with a hoe, filling many baskets with stinking but very fertile pond-bottom mud, and sploshing them over the fallow fields of Dren Mafferhame. It was one of the most unpleasant chores in Dren Mafferhame. The farmers had a mucking-list, so that each one took a turn at that chore or another that was equally unpleasant.

“I did that last month,” said Coriander Rounse. “Shouldn’t be my turn again for two years. Did your mucking-list get mucked up?”

“Nothing of the sort. You’re a hired farmer now, remember, not a regular villager anymore. We’ll be setting you whatever tasks we regular villagers like.”

“Now that is unfair! I’ve lived in Dren Mafferhame half my life now, ever since I married Allam and Periwinkle!”

“It don’t matter how long you’ve lived here. It just matter whether you’re a regular villager or a hired farmer. You sold your shares of the village, that makes you not a regular villager any-the-more. You’re a hired farmer now. That means you do what we tell you, and I’m telling you to go muck from the Orren ponds today. You or Gathern will be doing it every time from now on.”

“Damson? Cherrybush?” Coriander asked the two villagers who were standing by the mayor awaiting their assignments for the day. “Will you let Gorsen put on such airs, like she’s a baron or something?”

Cherrybush shrugged. “Seems to me she’s got the right of it.”

“Seems to me like you want to get off the mucking-list altogether!” snapped Coriander.

“Seems to me the hired farm-girl ought to go do what she’s hired for, not stand around giving herself airs and complaining about what her betters say,” said Damson.

“Betters! A month ago we had just as much land as you did!” said Coriander.

“And now you don’t, and your kid burnt down the barn and your husband wrecked my carriage and all of that,” said Gorsen. “So we’re your betters now, and anyone would agree. Go do your work, Cory, or I’ll be docking the day’s pay from you. And you don’t have much more to sell to make up for it, do you?”

“And no stealing from us all any more to enrich yourselves, like you was!” said Damson.

Contempt

“We’re playing villagers,” said Nithia Caragaborse, age twelve. “Go away.”

“I can play villagers!” wailed Ellie. “You know I can! We were playing villagers together all year!”

“We’re not playing villagers with you now,” said Nithia. “You’re not one! Go away! Play by yourself!”

Ellie didn’t wind up playing by herself. Zie wound up crying in Tansy’s arms.

Fees

“You’ve been drinking ale and cider of late,” said Gorsen.

“None of us have been drunk and troublesome, have we?” said Allam. “I’m pretty sure we’ve all been sober enough in public.”

“The concern is not sobriety,” said Gorsen. “Though that would be a concern as well if you were being disorderly. The concern is, simply speaking, that you have been drinking ale and cider of late.”

“Everyone drinks ale and cider at dinner,” said Allam.

“Every villager drinks ale and cider at dinner. We don’t begrudge you the food — why on wood would we, you work alongside us every day! — but the ale and cider is for villagers,” said Gorsen.

“What, you’re telling us not to have any?” cried Allam.

“Hardly that! We’re more than happy to sell ale and cider to you or to anyone,” said Gorsen. “And cheaply, too. A lozen a day for all five of you, for as much as you like. That’s twenty-seven lozens for the last month.”

“That’s dear not cheap, since it was free for all our lives before this! For the next month, we’ll be drinking water, so don’t be charging us such a fee!”

Comments

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I'm sure glad I never lived in a Herethroy village they sure are doing their best to make sure that the Rounses and Norritts never ever get out of the hole they're in but of course that's what being in debt is LIKE that's why no one should ever EVER borrow money for anything!

Even if you're not borrowing money on purpose.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

This is heavily discouraged (but still happens) in my world.. Debt bondage, ugh. Do you know any World Tree places that have a legal concept of 'Banktruptcy' as an alternative to Debt Bondage? See this for a definition if the term doesn't apply like I seem to be describing...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

So if you owe people money but are broke when you're supposed to pay them back, the court tells them to stuff it and you don't have to pay EVER? That's WONDERFUL I wish that were true here but it's not anywhere that I know of.

I've heard stories of something like that Jubilee though where all debts were cancelled every nineteen years in ancient times but no city in Ketheria does that now that I know of. Maybe some cities in distant branches I don't know.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Of course going bankrupt does have lots and lots of negative effects, like no one will loan you money for a REALLY REALLY long time, while it is still on your record. And if you are or have gone bankrupt, lots and lots of types of goods and services are more expensive, because you are considered a risk. So the full version is something to be avoided, and the lesser version where you restructure the collection of your debts and your business or life or sell off some of your assets or whatever... But at least you won't have your debtors trying to collect so much.

Anyway, even without putting such a high priority in repayment of debts that a system that does debt bondage does, loaning people money is still REALLY REALLY profitable and widespread here. Institutions that loan money just have to collect more data on who to loan and how and interest rates and such. So you don't actually NEED the insurance of debt slavery hovering over people to encourage people to loan money and stuff.

And loans (in the right system) can be a really good thing -- taking on a loan to start a business or do another sort of investment that is intended to create lots of future revenue can be a really really good thing, and especially a good thing for societies to encourage investments and creations of new businesses and ideas and stuff like that.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Also! Insurance! If you do the math right, insurance for people or organizations who loan money can be a viable and useful way of mitigating risk of nonpayment.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Not being able to borrow money would be fine with me I don't see why anyone should borrow money anyway but why would it make anything else more expensive?

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

"I don't think you are a good risk of repaying me for this service I am going to be providing you over time, so because of the added risk of me providing you this service to you in particular, you will be charged more."

Higher risk demands higher payoff to be worth it...

[terrana.livejournal.com]

Plus I think being Orren - especially as Orren an Orren as Delight - automatically puts you in a higher risk group.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Uhm, there's a phrase from a song on my world, about a type of Debt Bondage, which goes, "I owe my soul to the company store", about a system for causing that sort of thing, called a 'Truck System', which, again, is heavily discouraged...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_system

Do you know of any places that use that form of debt slavery to make it seem like it isn't debt slavery?

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I've heard of rural or impoverished nobility paying servants in scrip because they don't have real money and that no one really wants the scrip because it's not real money so kind of maybe? I thought it was because they were broke as opposed to cheap or deliberately malicious though. Maybe it's something that happens on the frontiers if the founding expedition is cheap I don't know.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a difference between scrip and fiat currency.

Do you know of any places that have managed to successfully do the fiat money thing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

If that concept sounds absolutely completely barking mad to you (like the idea did for much of our history), then the answer to my question is probably 'no'. It's useful stuff, something that is easy to carry that everyone agrees is worth something, and is worth something because everyone agrees it is. The trick is getting that agreement to stick...

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I think lozen are already a fiat currency. It's not like you can do anything with them other than use them as money.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure -- Gold, Silver, Platinum and such were considered to have inherent value, even though for a large period of time, there was little societies could actually do with them. I'm thinking more of some duke (or whatever) printing paper sheets with his picture on them and some way of making it hard for them to be counterfeit, and saying this is legal currency and can be used to pay taxes and for any goods in his lands and people actually accepting it and using it amongst themselves and thinking it is actually worth something.

[calamitous-cani.livejournal.com]

...That sounds a bit like a lozen.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

...I need to go look up my notes on what precisely a Lozen is. Is it capable of being used for high denomination and high value purchases?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[1 lozen is loosely worth US$10. It comes in denominations of 1/3, 1, 3, 10, 33, and 100 lozens, perhaps others in some places. -bb]

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Are there mages who work for a place that creates lozens? Not mining them or anything, but people who are capable of making an arbitrary amount of the item, and who have to hold back according to some mathematical formulas so they don't devalue the currency? Or is it something that specifically is hard for governments to get large amounts of?

[(Anonymous)]

Well, it's Durador. Any reasonably skilled Durador mage can make them, but they cost cley. For a mage that's able to make them and has the spell grafted to do it, the cley is usually worth a lot more than just spending the lozen.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Where are lozens made of anything Durudor? All the ones I know of are made of amber, with special and distinctive magical imprints.

I suppose that, when Kismirth becomes a city-state in its own right, we might make a 333-lozen coin out of metal. That could be classy!

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

I think the person is getting materials mixed up, is all. It happens...

I suppose what I was saying of fiat currency would be something like this: "For most people, the effort in making them magically is more than they are worth. However, for a few people in the government, there is very little effort in making them at all, so arbitrarily large amounts can be made to pump into the system as needed. However, because of this, the government has to follow specific math formulas on how much currency to put into or not put into the system, to not devalue the currency." That's what I mean -- items that are valuable because everyone believes they are valuable, NOT because they are intrinsically rare.

The purpose of Fiat currency is to solve this problem:

*There isn't enough money in supply to do all the sorts of trades of goods or services that people would want to be able to do with one another in a given economy
*Actually mining amber (or whatever) is a difficult process, and limiting the amount of useful items for enabling trading by what you can mine (or whatever) artificially limits what an economy (say of a duchy) can do
*If instead money is made of something inherently not valuable, but difficult for MOST people (ie, those not part of the government issuing the money) to make, and that everyone agrees that it can be used for trade and currency, then the problem of there not being enough actual currency to lubricate the system can be solved

Does that make sense? I don't know if the Lozen fits all of those requirements or not.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

A lozen is a bit of amber with a magical stamp on it that make it so the effort required to make one by magic is more than the value of the lozen.

The materials in them are essentially worthless.

[ragarth.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the villagers are *trying* to shun them without actually shunning them.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Sure!

Or, perhaps, that the villagers are glad to have someone to be superior to.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

This is why you let taptet farmers stay in your mene. So this sort of thing doesn't happen. Well, to herethroy.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I don't think the taptet like it any better although I guess well they're used to it. :(

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to develop a prejudice against rural herethroy.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

You understand!

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

What I don't figure is how they can turn on folk like that so quickly.

No, wait, I think I maybe do understand, and that's what irks me... it hits close to home.

[calamitous-cani.livejournal.com]

I blame Birkozon. It seems like the most rational thing to do here.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

I am waiting for the moment some other poor Proper Villager decides that something else is his, and use the handy dandy scape goat.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

In our various monster cosmogonoi and mythoss, we have had a number of "pantheons" -- though none as blatantly present as the gods of the World-Tree.

And the majority of those, once they become "mature" by being around for two or three lifetimes, have a concept added of "fate" as somehow superior to the gods, often anthropomorphized as a group of women spinning threads (which are the lives of every creature) and weaving cloth from it (which is to say, history.)

In another major tradition which doesn't appear to have that format for "fate", there is a concept of balancing called "Karma" which says that all the good and all the evil we do will be returned to us in kind from others, across incarnations if necessary.

A third twist on this, culled from folk wisdom and the earnest attempt to revive a historical tradition that never existed in the form that it's been given, says that when we invoke the Powers to intercede to bless, curse, heal, harm, or even simply change things, the working returns on us threefold as a price.

It leads me to wonder whether the World Tree species - primes, monsters, etc. - have such a personified view of "fate" or "karma".

Such a view would call the doom that has been afflicting the small family as a karmic balancing for previous lives, or as a setup for a karmic rebalancing to greatly improve their current lives. Or, perhaps, as them receiving special attention from a fate weaver.

The village, however, is building up its own "bad karma" by its graceless management of the situation, which could be viewed as a test of their integrity and worthiness. In such a weaving, they would find their own fortunes suddenly reversed in a harsh way that ironically points out their failures as sapient beings.

This is why "fates" are nasty things to avoid having.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

If "fate" or "karma" exist here, they haven't been detected experimentally as far as I know.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Do you know if the cultural belief is prevalent anywhere in particular? Not all beliefs have to be testable...

[ionotter.livejournal.com]

I believe you know these concepts as "doom", and encounter it with disturbing regularity.

Although to be fair, not much I've read of your adventures leads me to think that you deserve these dooms.

If Fate or Karma is currently collecting for past dues, then you must have been an exceptionally horrid being with the blood of thousands upon your claws. Either that, or Fate is charging you now for a future of glorious bliss and tranquility.

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

See, this is how the children of lowly herethroy former-villagers decide they have little to lose and turn Adventurer, and come back five years later and conquer the hell out of their former village and become their new Lords.

[stickseed-doom.livejournal.com]

That's an awful idea! If you were going to be wicked enough to conquer a village, it would be much smarter to pick one which didn't have a history of dismissing you. How else are they going to respect you as their Baron or what have you?

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Well, at least it provides a nice village to Raze on your way of becoming a Warlord, doesn't it?

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

They don't have to respect you. They just have to fear you.

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

They will respect our sharp pointy things!

[ionotter.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, no, maybe not conquer? But most certainly purchase their mortgages from the local bank. Or inform the local guilds that you'd like to build them a new guildhall in the middle of the growing fields, so they can perform dangerous and/or toxic experiments there in safety. Of course, you'd have to offer "encouragements" to the local administrators to have the existing property "condemned in the public interest", so it can be "improved" with the addition of the new guild hall? But such things are so much more polite than trashing and burning the place.

And besides? Nothing says "intercourse thee" quite like getting someone's home condemned and building a chemical weapons factory on the former foundation.