Currency

Money makes the world go 'round, and it tends to go around the known world in three main flavours.

Crowns

The main currency of both Andover and Carlia owing to their shared history. Officially it is known as the coronet, the source of its abbreviation, "co." Made of Dale-mined silver minted in Andover and mixed with only the slightest addition of copper, crowns - as they are almost universally called - are widespread and highly valued for their comparatively rich silver content; it is speculated that crowns even see use in Lusitana, as the mint barges running their route from Andover to Redland were the vessels most commonly plundered by Lusitanan pirates before the construction of the Bayforts. Crowns are fairly large coins, about half the size of an adult's palm, and are very cool to the touch with a solid heft to them.

Both Andover and Carlia have steady access to their own sources of silver and mint crowns with their own symbols, but to the precise standards of weight and metal content established one hundred and eighty years ago by the Royal Mint Standards Act. As a result, both countries can trade fluently and without issue, and neither has the economic leverage of currency inflation over the other: the coins circulate in both markets without discrimination. A recent trend, however, is the shift to payment in Cambran guilders for high-value transactions, typically among the aristocratic and industrial elite of Andover - not so much in Carlia where silver remains king.

Pennies

Crowns are subdivided into pennies, with 100 pennies making up a crown. Their official name from the Carlian mint where they originated is pfenning, leading to their common abbreviation, "pf." They are a small but thick copper coin, common enough that children play street games with them. Like crowns, they see circulation and widespread use in both of the kingdoms. The Lusitanan pirates are decidedly less interested in pennies than crowns, however.

Guilders

The currency minted in Cambra is the gold-based guilder, but it sees more use outside the city-state than within it: guilders are useful for large money exchanges with real mineral value in the shifting markets of Andover where owning hard cash is a literal and figurative asset. Meanwhile, in Cambra, business transactions tend to be done in letters of credit from bank branches to guilds and vice versa. Less wealthy Cambrans use technically illegal but quietly accepted pseudo-denominations of the guilder, called outer and inner guilders (or outre and inne in Cambran), respectively. They are, simply enough, made by taking a precisely-crafted steel punch and knocking out the centre of a solid guilder, with the larger and heavier outer ring becoming the outre, worth 3/4 of a whole guilder, and the smaller interior coin becoming the inne, worth 1/4. The abbreviation for guilders is "gd."

The guilder's name, as it implies, is a currency adopted by the united guilds of the city-state of Cambra by majority vote. The preceding Grand Duchy, having only late into its life cycle found the rich deposits of gold in the lower Kimber, mostly used gold-and-silver florins (fl.) from the distant land of The Wending. A few still circulate today as collector's items, but they see little use as real currency because of their complex alloy.