The Currency of Baden Part 1

The great Krynn empire was formed by the coming together of all the good nations at the end of the Time of Chains. The empires fledgling economy had a great many problems as different groups had their preferred currencies no one could agree on the value of commodities. Trade wars almost borough down the Empire before it had a chance. In the year 234 RM the emperor gathered all the financial leaders together in a summit to solve the problem. This lead to the adoption of residium as the standard currency for trade across the empire.

Residuum was a transportable, universal and stable unit of valuation, and quickly became the empires dominant economy. Residuum is extremely valuable in small quantities. To aid in it's use for small frequent transactions it was mixed with precious metals and minted into coins called electrum. These had a much more reasonable value than a tube of pure residium which is valued at a small fortune in itself. The coins where then enchanted to bind in the residium. This made them virtually immune to counter fitting as it was simply not profitable to do so.

Over the age of the empire various electrum pieces have been minted using different metal bases. Silver was used for low denomination coins while gold and even platinum was used for larger denominations. On average 90% of a coins value is based on the residuum contained within it while the other 10% is the residuum equivalent value of the precious metal it is made out of. In all provinces destruction of electrum coins for use as a ritual component is an imperial offense. It's also pointless as any bank will trade electrum for pure residium in a one to one ratio. If one where still inclined to do so, say in an emergency situation, one would find it quite expensive as only a master minter has the knowledge necessary to extract all the residium from a coin. If one where to simply use coins to fuel a ritual only half the value of the coin could be harvested. Using the disenchant ritual can increase this up to about 75% of the coins value.