can jade script be forged?

[Persell]

this is probaly stupid... but I remember hearing something that jade script was imposisble to counterfeit do you think this is true or not?"

 

[Jukashi]

That's too mundane a thing to be impossible in Exalted.


Oh, certainly, it's hard- about as hard as it would be to fake paper money in the real world, if you lacked the technology to do it. The scrip is probably made with all sorts of tricks to make it hard to forge, but the extent of such tricks would only go as high as what's capable through mortal alchemy.


So, if someone had the resources and the expertise, as well as some good spies to tell you how the original is made, even a mortal could probably forge it with some hard work. For someone like a Night-Caste, it'd probably be quite simple.

 

[Persell]

the extent of such tricks would only go as high as what's capable through mortal alchemy.

Not necessarily. Depending on how important DBs think the security of the money supply is, they could have anything from charms to First age artifacts for producing scrip.


But it's certainly not impossible. How hard you want to make it depends entirely on your game.

 

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

This reminds me of some huge list someone posted in the off topic forum ages and ages ago of things to do to irrirate the ST:


"Rather than fight the bad guys, I will ruin the villian's national economy causing a huge rebellion and his own people will kill him."


Or some similar idea.


DOn't fight the db's, just fuck over the realm economy with hyper inflation and alll those millions of peasants will kill them for you.

 

[wordman]

The trick to printing money is to find a technology that you control that makes the cost of printing money for people without that technology high (ideally more than the cost of money printed). This is always an arms race, because most of the time, the cost for the counterfeiter is paid once to develop the technology, then they can print cheaply. So, you also have to keep the tech you are using a step ahead of them.


This is actually easier in Exalted, because the terrestrials have access to essence pools and most mortals don't, making it easier to create a gap between the capabilities of the official mint and the populace. The Empire would be idiots not to take advantage of this, so jade script is probably produced by magical means.


This implies that the people most likely to be counterfeiting Empire currency are other terrestrials.

 

[Haku1]

Or some celestial exalted...

 

[Persell]

If someone can make it, someone can counterfeit it - it's just a matter of finding a process of making a decent faximile.  As well, the processes utilized to make something 'impossible' to counterfeit would make it relatively more difficult to authenticate.  The value of currency, especially, is based off of it's face value.  It boils down to a matter of appearance and how it's passed off.  


Take American currency, for example.  Recently there was an article on digg about BoA dispensing counterfeit 20s.  And yeah, every grocery store in america has at least one counterfeiting pen, but how many $100 bills are accepted on a daily basis without any testing?


This just sounds like the base-less bravado generated to make the dominating authority seem stable and inviolate.

 

[Persell]

OOH!!! Cool Idea...


Solar exalt counterfeits WaY TOO mUCH jade script then distributes it among the peasantry ....


(among different villages of course)


And realms economy COLLAPSEs

 

[Sherwood]

I saw a special on the History Channel about counterfiting.  The U.S. has discovered that China is making nearly perfect counterfit 100 dollar bills.  They are using the same mechanical methods of making the bills, but they are missing a few critical security items that the Treasury put in.  


I seem to remember that the bulk of the Empire's currency is in hard coin, and the paper money is used by the lower classes.  I think it was in the 1ed Dragon Blooded book, so it may have changed in 2ed.  The impression that I got from it was that the higher ups of the Empire do not use the paper cash, prefering to use real jade.  So, a person trying to mass produce paper money can only do so much damage to the currency base before it makes the pesant populace that use it have to switch to the hard coin.  Those that don't would just get driven lower down and raise the value of the hard currency.  That could be a good story hook for a worker's rebellion in the Empire, to be smashed to quivering pink flesh under the heels of the Dragon-Blooded and the leigons - unless they have some major mojo helping them out, like a Solar circle causing problems, Looksky marching on the warpath, something like that.

 

[Ker'ion]

God with spirit charm saves up Ambrosia and uses Charms to create uber amounts of jade, which he distributes to ONE Dynasty house, overbalancing the Realm economy and using their connections to access the printing presses of the Realm, flooding the lands of the other Houses with Jade script, so that th House he's buying off will end up in control of the Realm and can then take the throne (especially with all of the Artifacts they can buy up with all that Jade).


BTW:  How much Jade can you make with one Ambrosia coin?


I usually do a one yard cube, but I'm not sure if the book has a set amount.  I allow each Quintessence able to make one foot cubes of pure precious metals, but not Jade.

 

[Sherwood]

A very possible idea.  Depending on how complicated you wanted to get, are there Sidereals involved with this plot?  If not, this god will have to have some way of making him/herself powerful enough to be able to overlook an investiation from the Celestial Brueau.  Why is the god doing this?  Has he been promised to be the new god of the Empire?  There is a few fun things that can be done with this.


Just had a thought.  What about the underworld?  Don't the Deathlords have jade comming out of their asses?  One of them might be able to pull off a scam of disguising themselves as a god to pull the above trick to destablize the Empire.

 

[Ker'ion]

He could be claiming to be an Ancestor spirit.  Or he could have deal set up to be venerated for an entire month.  And of course there would be a Sidereal working somewehere in the plot.  Probably in HR.


And a month of veneration and prayers from the entire Realm would probably make a god willing to do anything.


Besides, doesn't Underworld Jade disappear when it is hit with sunlight?

 

[Persell]

Ok, as people obviously don't read canon all that much.


Jade scrip and jade is the currency of the realm.


The scrip is used to buy daily goods, like food, horses, clothes etc. it is backed up by the empress' purse and the only money commonly being used by peasants. But dynasts have to buy scrip too, if they want to eat. Buying scrip with jade is very easy, the other way round is extremely expensive.


Jade is Jade and needs no real backing ^^.


Forging of scrip shouldn't be too much of a deal. Nothing in canon even hints at it being produced by some essence powered process. It is simple printed money and coins. And the printed money is not even used because its worth is actually too high for the expenses peasants usually make. So you really would only forge the siu and the yen (around 1/128th of an obol) which both are copper coins, both are broken down into quarters and eigth often to have "coins" of even lesser worth. A currency which is broken down on a regular basis can't be very forgery proof to be honest.

 

[Persell]

Ok, as people obviously don't read canon all that much.
Jade scrip and jade is the currency of the realm.

It's just not really that important to get canonically correct.  Like many things, the economy is slapped in from historical context and is not a vital piece of the game's creative atmosphere.

 

[Persell]

Ok, as people obviously don't read canon all that much.
Jade scrip and jade is the currency of the realm.

It's just not really that important to get canonically correct.  Like many things, the economy is slapped in from historical context and is not a vital piece of the game's creative atmosphere.

I beg to differ. The way stuff works for the people around the characters is VERY important if not even VITAL to the creative atmosphere of the game. And when talking about forging the stuff it is pretty important to know what it is used for, because that most likely gives some strong clues on the failsave methods in place to prevent forgery.

 

[Persell]

I guess the point that I was making (or failed to make for the sake of brevity) was that since it's ripped from historical economies anyway, it might be better to use a mesh of both what the books have to say and what just makes economic sense.  Verisimilitude requires strong familiarity, and defaulting to "what happens in the real world" makes a very good backup plan for pesky details, especially when dealing a game system that lump sums virtually all financial transactions into a 1-5 rating.


When in doubt, use what makes sense... use what you know.

 

[Persell]

Don't mind me anyway, I'm just being fractious.  I agree with the points you made in your post, I was just responding the reverential use of "canon".


One thing though, I thought the Realm's economy is strongly based on the price of salt (an interesting bit of real-world historical reference, by itself).

 

[Lord Ben]

It's probably like forging coins in ancient times.  It wasn't incredibly difficult to do, but if you got caught it was equivalent to treason and punished very harshly.   To an anathema it's not much of a threat.


Your characters are likely to be powerful exalts.  Whether their resources 2 comes from the family farm or they carry around the stamper to make copper coins to pay for lunch and travels doens't really matter.   A night caste that just scribbles up some scrip when paying for a carriage ride to the nearby city isn't going to break anything.


And trying to buy a Daiklaive with a pile of paper money is going to get you busted.

 

[Persell]

Actually no. Everyone's economy depends kinda on salt, because you need it for mining, tailoring, food preservation... actually salt is nearly used for everything. So merchants have a salt rate, that is the amount of goods you have to sacrifice to a local salt god to get something else made.


In the realm the salt rate used to be very low, because the empress pummeled all the salt gods into submission but now she is gone and the realm suffers from salt gods like anyone else. The salt rate used to be 2% in the realm, now it varies widely.


I still don't get why nobody reads this stuff. Details set the mood and make a game grand. Every storyteller should at least know that much.

 

[Murdrak]

Can any sort of exalted create salt by the ton?  A flood of salt could have serious effects on the realm's economy.

 

[Persell]

would the "counterfeit money then distribute willy nilly" thing work for wrecking the economy?"

 

[Murdrak]

Yes,  I guess there are lots of possibilities for economic warfare in the Exalted setting.  I'm not sure that I'd be all that interested in too much of that but I'm sure a good storyteller could run with it.  


I wonder how a power like the Realm or a nation state of the threshold would fight back if their economic system was under attack, as in a flood of salt or endless supplies of counterfeit money.  Obviously the direct method of tracking the source and putting a stop to it, but if that didn't work they might need to go to a planned economy and price fixing.  


In the end you can't expect to overthrow a nation just by a method like this, but you can set up conditions that you can use to become the savior of the nation and lead a rebellion yourself.

 

[Persell]

would the "counterfeit money then distribute willy nilly" thing work for wrecking the economy?"

Yes, quite so. the peasantry is already worried, because if the empresses purse ever runs dry their money will be worthless and the great houses are just attempting that because they do not like the scrip system and are said to be on the brink of rebellion.

 

[Persell]

The dyansty could of course confiscate a large quanity of it but not without SERIOSULY Angering a lot of peasants and citizens,


Im sure the IO would try connecting it to the anathema, and explain that this is an attempt to exploit peoples greed...