Hex Crawl 23 General Lore 5: Technology and Economy

 Technology

The Empire's ways of doing things are so obviously perfect that no innovations are needed. Long-horned oxen are the dray animal, and the paved roads are kept smooth enough for wheeled carts. For riding there are camels and the swift axe-beak bird. Tame antelopes pull chariots for war and sport. River and canal boats abound, often constructed atop bound reed floats.

Most tools and weapons are of clay, bush timber, and bronze. With all nearby mines long since depleted, new metal has to be recycled or smuggled in. Armour and shields are made with variable layers of well-treated tough hide. Exotic species like giant lizard give better protection. The crossbow was "invented" (imported) since nobody knows when.

Buildings are fitted stone and adobe. Wood is a precious commodity used only when nothing else will do. Machines mostly exist to move and control river water.

Clay tablets record everyday business, papyrus is for sacred, literary, and magic texts, and the most important official documents are graven in tablets of brass and on great monuments of sandstone.

Meat and milk are the privilege of the upper classes, but everyone eats the staple grains and whatever fish and field vegetables they can find. Garlic is a common flavouring. Saffron dye gives the yellow cloth that only the highest ranks can afford. Everyone else wears sun-bleached white or grey wool. Beer is everyone's drink, though even canal water is surprisingly potable, waste being channeled through clay pipes to the river. Alchemy and medicine have been stagnant, but at a relatively high state of development, including some recipes that would astound folk from up north.

Economy

The base currency of Urighem is the golden kuzen, a thick rectangle the length of half a thumb, today devalued to a golden shell fused around a lead core by secret alchemical art. One kuzen will pay for a modest day's food, beer, and lodging. The kuzen is stamped with the scales and twin jackals of the Dead God Anpu, and on the obverse, a cartouche with hieroglyphics corresponding to the current dynasty and ruler. Solid gold kuzen are sometimes found in treasure troves, worth ten modern kuzen among those who know the telltale dynastic signs.

Silver is rare in the region and not used as coinage; superstition about the baleful properties of the "moon metal" keeps demand low, but it is useful for certain sorcerous purposes.

The next lower coin is the solid copper urud, ten of which sum to a kuzen. Urud are a longer rectangle of solid metal, stamped with four fishes, the sign of the Dead God Wesir. They are often found broken into two or four pieces to pay smaller amounts.

Small square bronze coins are found in historical troves, stamped with dynastic marks on one side and the name of the current ruler on the other. By order of the state they must be surrendered when found, to address the shortage of that strategic metal. They trade twenty to a kuzen on the black market, the price including the risk taken by holding them.

The mines of surrounding regions have mostly been depleted, and the stock of precious and base metal is kept afloat by imports from the Kabiri dwarves and smuggling. Wealth is often displayed as ornaments of precious stones and metals. The custom of burying such valuables with the dead leads, oddly, to a form of social welfare. The Su'usa (Openers), a society of tomb robbers who follow a rigid code of honour, wait a decent interval of three years before despoiling a body, and the proceeds then go back into enriching peasants and slum dwellers. Traps and curses are no barrier to the skills of the Su'usa. In fact, to protect a tomb site thus is a form of acknowledgement and respect, as well as a defence against incautious unofficial robberies.

Trade with non-vassal human nations has been forbidden by decree for unremembered generations. Naturally, smuggling happens along many fronts: travellers with packs crossing the plains of Emur in the guise of hermits or their guardian hunters; axe-beak riders who desert from garrisons up the Zi'id and come back laden with panniers of goods from Mnai; mad skippers from Aponsalam or Lor across the salt sea, sailing in defiance of the ponderous blockade and its ship-borne catapults. The usual form of such furtive trade is to sell away Urig spices, semiprecious stones, and alchemical preparations, and to buy metals, exotic seeds and foods, and wine for sophisticated tastes.