Watching a video of an artist drawing some unique fantasy currency and it brought me back to thinking about the currency for Urutae.
I had initially been thinking about shape coins and the number of sides of a coin (triangle, square, hexagon, etc) represented the value. Perfectly circle coins were worth the most, and these long weirdly teardrop two-pointed coins were worth the least. They also had holes in the middle of them so they could be strung on string and stored.
If you had a lot of money I imagine you would have strings and strings of perfectly circle coins.
This is all heavily based on traditional Chinese currency, but I'm not sure I want to turn the strings of coins into their own currency in the way the "string of cash coins" was its own superunit.
Inyat, one if my ocs in Cosmica, is an employed guard/soldier for one of the wealthy land owners named Odessi.
She is stuck between her ambition and her empathy. On one hand, her society rewards the upholding of the status quo, and the persecution of minorities. If she does the same, her ambitions will become reality, she'll be elevated, honored. By punching down at those who have already been made lowly, she will be promoted.
But her empathy strains against this idea. She has compassion for the poor, the destitute. She sees community where other soldiers see refuse.
And so when she befriends Sitar, a lowly worker at the steel mill she patrols, she finds herself at war with her heart.
Cosmica's higher powers are not really gods. They are more divinities, or divine wills. Pieces of power that have been specifically shaped by mortal wills.
They are as such called "Numen", literally 'divine wills'.
Spite - numen of spite and the will to survive. A savage, vengeful essence, that feeds on lives lived in spite, and things done in spite.
Preservation - numen of preservation and the will to persist. To bond so deeply with a thing that you cannot be separated from it. A will of protection and security for the cherished item, whether person or place or thing. It is a quiet, melancholy essence that feeds on the ache to protect until you yourself are destroyed.
Conquest - numen of control and the will to power. To subjugate and rule all things, to tame every wild threat and wicked tempest. To bridle the wind, to bend the backs of the trees. A heavy, lumbering essence that feeds on the need to conquer, the hunger to gain under yourself all things.
These are early ideas, and subject to change, but I love the concept of divinities feeding on and being shaped by the mortal desire to be alive in different ways. Living, whether through spite, greed, or yearning, is a draw for these divinities, and each has been sculpted to represent a different aspect of "the will to live."
Government and social class for cosmica is. Certainly something.
So basically the class system goes like this
The Figurehead
- this guy is just pretty to look at
- the common people wanted someone to "represent them", but the rest of the upper class with all the actual power didn't want someone who would threaten their power, so they created the figurehead position.
- you have no power but you get your own plot of land and a nice house and everyone is supposed to respect you
- if you owned land, you don't now. It goes to your heir or you give it to someone else, but you legally cant own more land than the parcel of property surrounding the palace.
The upper class
- aka the landed gentry. They own the lands, and usually these plots are the sizes of countries
- they make most of the rules, and have actual power to change laws
- theyre kinda uppity
The upper middle class (Ancillary)
- aka the ancillary. They are rulers on a smaller level. The landed gentry appoint these people to take care of their lands on a more detailed level
- they must defer to the upper class in terms of ruling.
- some wealthy merchants populate this class
- for political reasons, ambassadors and rulers from other countries are treated as if they are this class
Lower middle class
- educated people. More important tradesmen, specialists, religious leaders (maybe). Average merchants and people from other countries populate this class
- they sometimes own land, but never enough to move up classes
- theyre equivalent to like, average people who went to high school at least
Working class
- tradesmen who dont own land, or who are employed for their craft by the landed gentry
- these are your blue collar workers I think
- they get by just fine, but if the economy shifts, theyre the first to fall
Lower class/slave class
- people employed by the landed gentry or ancillary to do menial labor/hard labor that doesnt require much instruction. Usually criminals, political traitors, and social outcasts.
- those in abject poverty are usually here
- its possible to buy one's way out of slavery, due to the law of universal pay, but the system is built to make that very difficult.
- sometimes the working class can be pressed into service by the landed gentry and ancillary when there is a labor shortage
A plot point I decided to put in my story is what happens if one of the landed gentry manages to become the figurehead, and makes a sect of powerful followers who give the figurehead power.
It would completely shift the power balance in the land and would make a lot of the other landed gentry and ancillary people nervous.
I have been hounding this idea for ages and im not certain where its going but i WILL follow it.
Basically travel between solar system planets in cosmica is possible through these gateways on each planet. I havent decided if there are multiple per planet or just one each.
These gateways allow you to go to the waterways, also called the headwaters, also called ver krina. You can travel the headwaters between planets like navigating a vast network of streams and rivers. And then you go through another gateway and congrats youre on another planet!
Its my solution for high fantasy space travel, because i wanted star wars but like high fantasy. and it operates basically like the Nether. X miles in outer space is Y miles in ver krina.
For now the network doesnt extend beyond the edge of the main solar system, in order to prevent other worlds from this wider universe from accessing cosmica (because that would be too complicated for them rn)
There is a lot of water imagery and language surrounding ver krina and travel between worlds, but not in the way that the ocean is. Its very firmly river-like
