Liv makes a beeline toward a stall in the miscellaneous-crafting section, one that displays a profusion of random shiny trinkets that I hadn’t gotten close enough to inspect carefully. She doesn’t look around at all, so she must have picked it out when we were making the rounds.

I’d taken it for a jeweler, but now that I think about it, would a jeweler be able to make money in this town’s economy? I don’t think we’re in a fully medieval economy, I didn’t see any barter happening despite the vegetable-sellers probably being also the vegetable-growers, but I haven’t overheard anything like enough prices to guess how much discretionary income the average farmer has, nor have I figured out what fraction of the population is actually farmers. Nor do I know how common precious metals or gems cost relative to those incomes! Jewelry can’t be all that expensive, judging by how every single knife I see has at least some adornment, but now that I look I’m also not seeing all that many earrings or necklaces.

My musings about fantasy economies doesn’t matter, of course, because as I get closer I realize that this stall is clearly selling enchanted items. Liv’s laserlike focus is a hint, of course, but the other is the small cards that I now see under each item, presumably explaining what it does.

Liv spends zero time reading those cards, as far as I can tell. We stand, waiting for a townsperson to finish talking to the enchanter. The enchanter turns out to be surprisingly young, a boy in his mid-teens. He makes a few different offerings to the townsperson, but none of them seem to meet the requirements and the prospective buyer walks away empty-handed.

Liv steps up and gets right to the point. “Hi! We’re looking for minor magical items for a research project,” she says. “We can accept quite a few flaws since the magic iteslf is more important than the functionality.” The enchanter’s eyes light up at that. An apprentice selling their own work to make some extra cash? It’d fit the way the previous customer didn’t find anything, and would explain why Liv went to this stall. These are probably bargain-bin items in the scheme of things. “I definitely want the flawed lightmaker there,” she says, pointing at one of the trinkets, “I’ll also need a good lightmaker to compare it to, and then a couple things that are as different from that as possible. Perhaps the shield there?”

I read the card under the trinket that Liv indicates. It claims to project a small, weak force field, only a foot across and suitable for deflecting a thrown pebble at best. Certainly not a real defense.

“Good eye! The shield was an experiment,” the apprentice happily confides. “I make most of my items using Beast Cores, but with that one I used a crystallized hit point essence that I bought off an adventurer earlier this hundred. Weak, but it works, and who knows,” he says slyly, “it might even have some hidden properties!” Liv doesn’t obviously react, so he moves on. “I’d disagree about the lightmaker you chose being ‘flawed’,” he says, “but you’re right that its limits are noticeable. And then this one, perhaps, with the blue?”

Liv agrees with those selections, then the two start trying to pick out a fourth trinket.

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I move forward to start reading the cards and get the distinct impression that these are not “production quality”. Many, like the shield, are advertised as toys for children. Others claim to be suitable as cheap backups, items for emergency kits or the like. The trinkets themselves aren’t any sort of jewelry I can identify. Some look like leaves or simple geometric shapes, but for the most part they’re just twisted little bits of glass. They could probably be attached to necklaces or worn as brooches or earrings, but not with any intent.

I wave my fingers above the display but don’t feel anything. I guess I need to be more sensitive or build a tool.

Liv and the Apprentice eventually decide on a fourth trinket, a bit of red glass that can be activated to emanate a field of warmth. It’d be enough to keep someone warm on a very cold day without a coat, but it apparently doesn’t work long enough per day to be depended on for cold-weather survival.

Then they get to haggling and my understanding fails completely.

“I’ll give you two bear for the lot,” Liv begins aggressively.

“Outrageous!” The apprentice replies. “Even considering the exchange rate right now. Two long-guilder.”

How in the world do they have two denominations so close together that the opening bids are equivalent counts of each? And the names are completely different.

“You know as well as I do that the exchange rate only matters if you’re lazy. Four hundred republic.”

“Wh- Yeah, but I’m stuck here at the market until I’ve sold all of these. A thirtieth-green, and I’ll throw in a handful of failures for free.”

That’s four etymologies in as many offers! And wildly different magnitudes! This can’t be a single currency.

“Maybe if these were master works, but with that many failures we both know you’re better off getting a good exchange than you are trying to sell more. Two gold Scrolls.”

“I may still be an apprentice but I’m sitting here making enough money to support myself, aren’t I? The numbers on those aren’t everything. A whole-yellow.”

Finally they repeat! Uh, assuming uniform random choices of currency I could use the birthday problem to figure out how many different currencies there are but there’s no way they’re selecting uniform random and do these people have calculators in their heads?!

“Okay, okay, I’ll take pity on you. Two bear eighteen wolf.”

And I guess a bear is worth more than eighteen wolf! But also a gold Scroll is bigger than a long-guilder but smaller than a bear, and all of those are within probably a factor of two because haggling?

“Deal! Two bear eighteen wolf.”

And then Liv reaches up and unflinchingly yanks a tooth out of her own mouth, except her hand comes away not with a single human tooth but with a pair of extremely sharp-looking fangs off some huge predator, enough to fill her entire hand. She hands the two knife-sized teeth over, then reaches up and pulls out another handful of smaller teeth. Smaller! They’re still an inch long and they look razor sharp! She waits for the apprentice to get the two “Bears” squirreled away before she gives him what I presume are the “Wolfs”.

Or are they “Wolves”? Nope, I’ve managed to ignore the Isekai Language Problem until now and I’m going to keep doing so, lalalalalala I can’t hear any spelling differences.

Just when I thought this place was starting to make sense, its currency decides to punch me in the sanity.

I’m not going to freak out.

Liv and the apprentice shake hands on the deal, the apprentice hands over the bag of trinkets.

It has to have something to do with Gifts. I’ve already seen how organized and relatively sane the bureaucracy here is. They wouldn’t let themselves have a currency like that.

Liv turns to smirk at me.

I’m going to very calmly ask her about the Republic of Eld’s currency and monetary policy.

“What the f-”