Within a few minutes, I had reached Sableton. The town was bustling with activity now that the planting season had finally started. People were happy to finally leave their homes after the long winter, and hundreds of people lined the streets, smiling and laughing uproariously.
I walked through the market set up in the center of town. Several shop owners waved to me as I passed, and I waved back. The prices of various items were written in paint on the side of large wooden signs.
1 apple pie: 10 copper pieces
500 grams of charcoal: 1 copper piece
1 bag of candy imported from Sondrith: 3 silver pieces
Breeches for summer use: between 75 copper pieces and 5 silver pieces
1 whole roast pig: 2 silver pieces
1 chainshirt: 60 silver pieces
1 longsword: 25 silver pieces
1 magic ring: 10 gold pieces
All the prices I saw around the market drew to my mind the memory of the economy of [Ferrum Online]. In Etronia, goods were bought and sold using coins. These coins came in copper, silver, and gold denominations. One gold piece was worth 100 silver pieces, which were in turn worth 100 copper pieces. For reference, people on the forums always said that one copper piece was worth an apple. This meant that one Etronian gold piece was worth 10,000 apples.
By mid-game, the player almost entirely dealt with gold pieces. The only way to upgrade your gear beyond the basic longsword and chain shirt was to pay exorbitant amounts of money for magic items. To upgrade a character’s gear beyond the base mundane level, the player would need about 100 gold pieces.
The life of an adventurer was an expensive one. I once calculated the total value of my necromancer’s gear near the end of the base game, and I realized that the gear cost more than 100,000 gold pieces. To put that in perspective, the Realm of Northwind brought in about 40,000 gold pieces per year from all forms of taxation. I learned that fact the previous year when Armond was trying to tutor me in leading a fiefdom.
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The exorbitant price of being an adventurer was the reason that I had spent the past several years inventing a new form of transmutation magic. The two drugs I intended to synthesize first would certainly sell well, and I could use that money to fund the start of my expedition. Making money was step one on my eight-step plan to save the world.
As I thought about the nature of Etronia’s economy, I heard rapidly approaching metal boots impacting against stone. I turned and saw the quickly approaching Sir Eadric Vanta, knight of House Feldrast and my current financial patron.
Eadric must have been in his early twenties at that point. Thinking back on it, I realized that he couldn’t have been older than seventeen when he was shot with an arrow while protecting us. He was still just a kid.
Physically, Eadric had light brown hair and green eyes. I had heard once that the Vanta family was closely related to my mother’s family, the Sellacks. His and Solana’s green eyes probably came from the same source. On my mother’s side, he and I probably shared great-grandparents.
In fact, I could probably say something similar about every noble in the Northern Realms. It was said that the nobles of Ferrum were the descendants of heroes who were active during the Fourth Calamity, which was more than six hundred years ago. It would be safe to assume that all nobles in a certain area share some ancestors.
“Hey there, Thale,” Eadric said, smiling. He was holding a wicker basket filled with food and toiletries. Melissa must have sent him out to go grocery shopping. “How’d the experiment go?”
“It went well,” I said without stopping. “I think I’ll be able to pay you back sooner than I thought.”
“Oh, no. You don’t have to do that,” Eadric said with a meek expression on his face. “You’ve already saved my life. This is just my way of paying you back, just a little bit. Plus, I don’t even know how much I’ve lent you.”
“I owe you 2 gold, 35 silver, and 11 copper,” I rattled off easily. That number had been in my mind for a while. As soon as the money started coming in, my first task was to pay the knight back. Two gold was not a small amount of money for anyone, and I hated being indebted to people.
“Oh, was it that much?” Eadric scratched the back of his head, pretending to not know how much I owed. He definitely knew. It was impossible to lend someone the Ferrum equivalent of thousands of dollars and then forget.
“Yes, it was, and I promise to give that money, with interest, back to you within a year.”