The Currency of Baden Part 2

For the first hundred years or so after adopting the residium economy each individual kingdom/region of the empire still used it's own currency. Electrum was used for trading and banking to stabilize the economy but it's value was inappropriate for every day transactions. When traveling to a new region one would have to trade currencies. In the year 335 RM a counsel was convened by the current high priest of Shinare, Kefrum Holember. The topic of interest was the current state of the empires economy, it was at this time that a unified low currency was first proposed. It was rejected as the empire was formed by the joining of many smaller kingdoms and they did not like the idea of giving up some of their history.

Pressure from the church of Shinare, and some say from the goddess herself, over the next 10 years eventually wore down the sub-kingdoms and the steel piece was officially adopted across the empire in the year 345 RM. Since steel is keyed to the value of the electrum, unlike the older floating currencies, prices where stabilized across the empire and a new sense of unity began to take root.

The steel piece is a representitive coin worth 1/100 of an electrum, it contains no residium. Steel coins are made out of Dark or Deep Steel which comes from iron veins found in the middle underdark around adamantium deposits. This iron has trace amounts of adamantium impurities which are impossible to completely remove from the ore. Dark steel is much harder than normal steel but is also very brittle making it useless for weapons and armour, ideal for coins.

When the empire fell in 792, currency was in a very bad shape. The war effort had a terrible toll and many regions became very poor. Steel which was once worth very little became the primary form or currency and the electrum became scarce and valuable. Bronze bits where introduced to subdivide the steel piece into more manageable denominations. Most of the world still holds on to the steel piece as their primary form of currency. This means that even through the world consists of islands of light in an ever encroaching darkness, trade can still exist.