The Economy of Commorragh

actually, in the codex it says that you pay the haemonculi to regrow you by leaving them a piece of your soul. that might be used. you pretty much always have your soul with you. they probably have some other form of currency, but if you forgot your wallet ( or whatever the equivalent is), you'd have to use your soul instead of money.

if souls were the main currency, there would have to be ways to store and collect souls on a consistant basis. As a soultrap and an antimus vitae is rare item in realspace raids (only being taken by HQs) and for the commoners to get revitalized they have to pay to go to the wych arenas, there has to be another system of currency. I highly doubt your common everyday warrior is walking around with several soultraps trading souls for his daily food and weapon maintaince.

Also you have to consider how easily a economy based off of souls could be destroyed with just one enterprising young Archon. Capture and raise some Orks (as they take only a few days to mature) and bam! you got yourself a soul farm. Flood the market with these souls throw down the price of Ork souls, which at that point you could flood your excess orks into the wych cult arenas... You could also do the same for humans, tau, eldar, what have you. It would be too easy to influence a market like that, and Vect doesnt seem to be the type of guy that would let his entire economic structure be destroyed from under him by one guy

@Shadows - though, let's be honest, GW never lets common sense get in the way of grim darkness.

That said, I concur, souls seem unlikely as a base currency.

Aroshamash wrote:

While this is a bit of threadomancy, I think it's worth it. We've finally been given an "example of commerce in Commoragh" in the Imperial Armour Apocalypse 2nd ed. In it, it has a merchant, or at least craftsman, attempting to sell "a conveyance suitable for your esteemed glory", and they do indeed make use of a barter system, with the merchant asking for "a mere demijohn of Mistress Strake's bottled agony, or perhaps a strife of medusae". No mention of souls is made whatsoever.

We're also told that the design of the Tantalus was bartered for weapons and allegiance after the patron Archon was killed, by his successors, rather than actually sold.

Thats interesting snippet. I would not presume Dark Eldar have a unified currency, given the fact that they exist in separate fiefdoms within the context of Commorragh. I can see it being more of a bartering society, trading for items/services/slaves in return for items/services/slaves. Souls are an interesting idea, because it is the one 'thing' that all Dark Eldar desire and need, but I would put that into the realm of a Haemonculus making a deal, rather than your regular economic activity.

What interests me the most is the word 'demijohn'. That hints that there is an accepted, or regulated way to measure 'goods'.

Thor665 wrote:

@Shadows - though, let's be honest, GW never lets common sense get in the way of grim darkness.

That said, I concur, souls seem unlikely as a base currency.

one can dream cant he

i meant that i they didn't have their "slave tokens" with them, and they really needed to buy something, they could use part of their own souls.

The items being bartered with in imperial armour 2 sound like currencies to be. They both sound like ways pain can be stored for trade and later use. The denijohn of agony sounds like a measure of pain in liquid form, the amount of pain most be about the amount of the average Medusa fruit. So a cents/dollor, pence/pound type relationship between them.
Probably a complicated system for trade. Souls, pain, and slave backed currencies are probably all present, as well a trade item that literally contain the item, like early gold backed paper money used alongside gold coins. I would guess the covens would be the main source of these, since the kabals have limited ascess to this type of tech( soul trap and medusa). It would be used most bettween the "middle class". Warriors, scourge, trueborn, mercenaries, razorwing pilots. The poor would likley have to rely mainly on barter, the poor would likely inculdue a high percentage of the non-eldar. The very wealthy would be more interested in political favors, and only use currency for mundane tasks. Possibly paying a lower ranked eldar to be an accountant. Skimming cold be prevented easily by having 5 or 6 others audit the books with reward of torturing the guilty party and instant promotion if a error, fraud is found. Many would be falsely accused, but the archon/succubi/haemunclus likely find this amusing.
Kinda reminds me of America before the constitution bit after the revolution. 13 states with there own currency; french, english, and spanish coins; nationaly issued paper iou being traded below face value; farms making corn into whisky to trade with for goods; and barter and favors all along side. If we had hover craft and where sadistic elves colonial america would have looked just like the dark city would't it.

abjectus wrote:

The items being bartered with in imperial armour 2 sound like currencies to me.

Except that it exactly matches how a barter system works. For example, the merchant doesn't ask for a demijohn of bottled agony, but the bottled agony of a particular marker, or asking either for a number of a particular good. That's exactly how a barter system operates. There's a rough estimate of what each thing is worth, but everything is judged in comparison to each other, rather than a central currency.

In other words, if there was a universal currency used in Commoragh, the merchant would be asking for that primarily, rather than first asking for a good that has worse resale value than a currency. What they do instead is go straight for asking for bartering material. That doesn't hint towards a universal currency, it hints towards the exact opposite.

To put it another way, if you run a business, and you're selling something worth five dollars, and there's a sort of candy worth five dollars, you simply ask for five dollars for the selling price, rather than asking for the five-dollar candy, which you potentially have no resale opportunity for.

We know that the Commorites have a rough estimate of what something is valued at, because apparently a Tantalus is woth a demijohn of bottled agony from a particular maker, yet that doesn't show that they're actually objectively worth the same amount, merely that the merchant, in their barter economy, places a similar estimate of worth on both items. That's how a bartering economy works. There's still a rough equivalent of "X is worth more than Y", but it's much more complex than simply comparing it to a universal currency. The same merchant probably trades his Tantalus' for shipments of splinter weaponry (asking for more or less depending on who the manufacturer is), or Pain Engines, or any number of other goods.
The most important thing is that he never mentions any equivalent of souls or any other hard currency, which would have infinitely greater use in an economy that made use of a hard currency.

Sorry for revieving this thread but I just have to leave my pain token.

I saw that you mentioned ''soul-currency'' and I thought about it.
Too use hard currency such as coins seems very alien for a race who have technology that borderlines to magic.
Even today we start to use less and less coins, at least here in sweden. They weight to much and a clumsy to carry around. Creditcards is way more efficient.

Imagine a little device, similair to a soul trap. You may wear it at your belt or around you neck, as a necklace. Not that big so it is easy to carry around, maybe at the size of a mobile phone.
In this you have ''tortuered souls''. That is a thing every dark eldar wants, tortured souls to invigorate themselfs.
But as Shadows Revenge mentioned, then everyone could just ''grow'' some souls and destroy the market.
Well think of it that there are souls of different values. I mean, a ''grown'' ork soul doesn't give much of a pleasure wile a bitter and lonely planet governor who have seen his chance to become a glorius war-hero thrown into the dust will give more pleasure and is therefore of a greater value.

I.e. a planet governor equals 100 000 ''grown'' ork souls. And to ''grow'' those souls, you will need a big garden

Good souls can't be grown, good souls come from a rich life.

Thats my pain token.

In imperial Armour Apocolypse second edition it gives an example of how trade works in the dark city.

"Ah yes sweet lord, a conveyance suitable for one of your esteemed glory – wrought from the finest tortured metal, anointed with widows tears and splattered with the blood of the betrayed. Yours for just a mere demijohn of Mistress Strake’s bottle agony or perhaps the strife of Medusae? …Ah, you demure, the price, is it so very high? …fear not, I’m sure we can reach an…accommodation."
A example of commerce in Commorragh

Hope this helps.

sorry, didnt see abjectus post. my bad.

Heh, don't worry about it (on another note, I posted it initially, Abjectus merely commented on it. To be fair, I didn't post the whole thing like you did, so you've given some more context to the dialogue). It actually made me re-read my previous post, and notice that I'd left out another key element of the "they're not currencies" thing. One of the items asked for is a number of Medusae. Unless the Dark Eldar carry around wallets full of trans-dimensional parasites, Medusae are not and cannot be a currency. They're a valued resource, sure, but once again demonstrating a trade system that matches far, far more closely to a bartering system. The merchant has offered his item in exchange for other items of similar worth. He's certainly not asking for any universal currency, as the Medusae would be impossible to utilise in such a fashion, and with the second item he asks for a specific maker. Bottled agony could be widely traded, we don't know, but he's not just asking for bottled agony, he's asking for bottled agony produced by Mistress Strake. If that's a universal currency, what the trader is saying is the equivalent of "yes, that item is $20, but I'll only accept coins minted in 2003."

Lastly, I will admit that I don't want the Dark Eldar to trade in souls/agony as a universal currency, because it's so damned stereotypical "evil moustache-twirling villain". They should be more refined than that. A bartering system makes sense when dealing between organisations in such a fragmented society where cash isn't really all that necessary. Large amounts of money sitting in your Kabals bank account is simply A ) protection/resources/influence that you aren't making use of, and B ) a temptation to other Kabals to attack you without the protection that could be gained from A.

I had actually been thinking that Dark Eldar monetary units might be called a "favour".

Example, you give me this captured Sister of Battle, and I owe X number of favours.

The value of favours would be determined by a central office, under the direct control of Asdrubael Vect... he is the "king" after all, and thus produces the coin of the realm. Failure to honour a favour when it is called in ("hey, remember that Sister of Battle I gave you, well, now I need some Scourges for a realspace raid...") results in a visit from some nasty people in Vect's employ.

or somesuch.

Braden Campbell wrote:

I had actually been thinking that Dark Eldar monetary units might be called a "favour".

Example, you give me this captured Sister of Battle, and I owe X number of favours.

The value of favours would be determined by a central office, under the direct control of Asdrubael Vect... he is the "king" after all, and thus produces the coin of the realm. Failure to honour a favour when it is called in ("hey, remember that Sister of Battle I gave you, well, now I need some Scourges for a realspace raid...") results in a visit from some nasty people in Vect's employ.

or somesuch.

This is an intriguing concept. Vect could always refuse getting involved to drive subordinate Kabals making too much noise against each other. i.e An Archon refuses to fulfil a favour for another Archon that he has earnt rightfuly and so when he goes crying to Vect and he gives the Archon the cold shoulder the two Kabals ar forced to wage war.

Would this work on different social levels? So you couldn't ask for a favour for somebody above you in the hierarchy, but they could ask favours from you?

I'd assume you could ask for favours from people above you, but it would be risky (since you don't want to offend a more powerful Archon), and the price would be a lot bigger.

For example, if an Archon needs some Hellions or Scourges to participate in a raid with him, he could just give them some combat drugs, weapons or slaves in return for the favour. If he needed to get the assistance of a more powerful Kabal, he would be expected to offer them a significant part of the profits as a tribute, and might still owe them a favour they could use later.

When i was re-reading path of the renergade i found some references to wealth. The DE do have some form of hard currency, as the Archon says that the renergade is easily bought, this renergade had no appertite for souls so this currency carnt be souls. I also dont think slaves are the main source of currency either, as what is the main job of slaves in Commorragh? To work, yes to die, but mainly to work, this is why the dark eldar seocity feeds on slave meterphorically ( although quite litterally as well) because the DE wont do this work. The only people i can truely see acturally BUYING slaves are the wych cults (and they wont buy, but will have ties to the raiding party, same with haemonculi) or the big factories under the city.

Dark Eldar also do value wealth to some extent, as one of the Archon's armour and raider is be-jewled and he makes heavy use of gold and jewles, even if only aethetically (spelling?) they do value what we count as wealth.Although this may just be because humans value it, we must take it away and flaunt it, even if we secretly dont want what we have taken.

Any way, my pain token.

Quote :

Dark Eldar also do value wealth to some extent, as one of the Archon's armour and raider is be-jewled and he makes heavy use of gold and jewles, even if only aethetically (spelling?) they do value what we count as wealth.Although this may just be because humans value it, we must take it away and flaunt it, even if we secretly dont want what we have taken.

I think this is an excellent point: it isn't just that one is rich, it is that one must be seen to be rich. Reputation is very important because it is a means of measuring one's place in society and how one is perceived by others. If I have wealth, everyone needs to see a conspicuous display of it, both because it's an easy way to impress the simpler races and minions, and because it proves how much power I have because I am unafraid to show it off, confident that I have the firepower to protect it if necessary.

For this to be effective then rare goods, things one has to expend considerable effort or favours to get, are going to be worth more as a display of power and so acquire value and become tradeable as wealth.

That's my theory, and I hope it makes sense, because it's now very late at night here

alexwellace wrote:

When i was re-reading path of the renergade i found some references to wealth. The DE do have some form of hard currency, as the Archon says that the renergade is easily bought, this renergade had no appertite for souls so this currency carnt be souls.

Well, that doesn't prove the existance of a currency. Just because you've got something someone else wants doesn't mean you share a currency, it just means you've got something he wants. Where does it state that the Archon simply didn't provide said renegade with jewels/rare materials/promises of power, etc? I can buy someones loyalty, but that doesn't mean I literally paid them money, it just means that I gave them something, and they promised me support. I can go to a foreign country and buy someone's support without being stocked in their currency, or without them wanting mine. I've "bought the support" of my pet dog, in a way, by providing it with care and food, and you'd hardly describe that as a currency.

I still stand by my barter/patronage version of Commorragh, although unlike Braden Campbell I wouldn't describe favours as a monetary unit, merely as the patron/client loyalty ties that exist between Kabals/Cults/Covens and their members. A patron organisation, whether that be a Kabal, Cult or Coven (mostly patrons would be Kabals though), essentially "owns" their clients, to a greater or lesser degree. The client provides materials/items/political support to the patron, in return for other items/materials and protection.
I doubt Vect would interfere with such business though, as the patron can simply withdraw the support from an unruly client, and watch them suddenly become targetted due to their lack of protection, and an untrustworthy patron would soon lose all their clients, weakening them in turn. Remember, betrayal can be good, but you can't betray so much and so often that you get a reputation for it. Do that, and you've got noone willing to be your friend, and friends are everything, and I mean literally everything, in the Dark City.

Inside the organisations, things would be much more feudal, with everything provided by the leader, or at least distributed by them. The Kabal members get their food distributed from the stocks pillaged from the Kabals raids, or produced by their client workers, their weapons are produced by client weaponsmiths, and handed out how the Archon sees fit, gladiator "tickets" are received from the client Cults, etc. Anything produced above the "client tax" rate would either be theirs to keep and barter with, or exchanged for raw wealth taken from raids with which to barter, or perhaps exchanged for a Kabal-made currency that would only really be valid within that Patron/client network.

I know this hasn't seen any action for about a month now, but I think I have something to contribute. I agree with Nightowl. Look at the warrior models, I would call them the closest thing we have to average joes. On each of their chests on the left side there is what looks to me like a jewel with a wire hanging out of it. What do you want to bet that's the dark eldar version of a credit card with an RFID chip? It's in plain view attached to your clothes so no one can steal it. I bet it captures souls, but doesn't have the sophistication to empower the user with those souls, just store them for later use as currency, or as a snack. We know our craftworld kin can store souls indefinitely with soulstones, I'd bet that we could use the same tech as a credit card.

Just my two souls there.

From what I remember, the concept art describes that as a translator device/combat drug dispenser. I'll bring up again though that we've got several examples of Dark Eldar commerce, and there's been no mention of souls as a currency. Everything we've seen hints towards a barter-based system.

The problem with soul-trapping technology being that widely available is that it means that the Wych cults essentially have their influence slashed in Dark Eldar society, as it would no longer be required that they exist to "feed" the masses. Instead, the haemonculi or Kabals could just mass-produce these soul-capturing technologies, and hand those out. The codex hints that soul-traps are rare and expensive pieces of equipment, given that it's included under arcane wargear.
While the Craftworlders have their soul-stones, each of those is uniquely bonded to the wearer, they're not really mass-use sorts of things.

I think I have a simpler notion for how currency works.

In general, it is a primarily barter society, However, in certain districts owned by specific Kabal(s), they could use a source of currency like a minted coin and use that as value. It isn't valuable outside the Kabal's range, but can have various influence as the Kabal deems so.

For example, the US Dollar isn't worth much, but because of trade and federal influence, having hundreds of dollars is worth something then the possibility of making a green jacket. Yet, it is valuable in a few countries as it is an accepted form for trade (granted, not now anymore but point remained.). I think someone may have said this already.

personally, I was never a fan of the soul drinking, I like the current empathic feeding off of the suffering of others a little more.

I like the favor idea, it's almost like something the Mob would do. Barter likely also happens often, probably between kabals, dealings with the covens, and all that. coins could be made as well, one howling kabal coin = fifteen space marine slaves or something.

Now that I think about it, people that wish to enter the arenas to observe the battles and such have to be able to pay there way in right? And I think possibly maybe not much as a currency but something they could trade is a type of blood or stored pain of the like? For example a haemonculus wants the tears of say a catachan soldier or the like so a group of some kind goes to fulfil the task and in the proccess raiding,looting,basking in the pain and sorrow as well and the haemonculus could offer the group or leader of the group a favor where it could be adding a limb or changing there eyes or replacing there blood and that sort of deal. Just an idea y'know?

((engage financial speculation fanfic!))

Like many things in Commoragh, it started as a conspiracy.

The House of the Scorpion was a mid-tier noble house in the period leading up to the Fall. Duke Omi oversaw a rather forgettable satellite realm that provided ready access to Commoragh. Following the Fall and the rise of Asdrubael Vect, the House had a serious problem - most of its noble patrons, who kept the house afloat in transit fees, were annihilated. Even worse, the new Kabals had no intention of recognizing the currency of a dead Empire, let alone paying fees. The duke had avoided outright liquidation by surrendering to the supremacy of Vect without even a shot fired, but the kabals could smell blood in the water.

Omi, however, had not spent centuries managing trade flow without learning a thing or two about economics and he reached out to several of the nascent Haemonculus covens with an idea - a slavecoin. The coin, made of the one material that the Dark Eldar had no more use for, wraithbone, could be exchanged for a slave with the covens. In order to acquire the coins, one had to give slaves to the covens (making a "deposit"). What was in it for the covens? Put simply - loans. The covens could loan slavecoins out at interest and reap the rewards. Omi even recommended some noble houses on the brink of destruction (Other than his own, of course) that might accept the loan, and the attendant show of weakness, in order to acquire mercenaries and materiel to fend off the kabals. As a show of good faith (for such values of good faith as the Dark Eldar define it), Omi deposited 20,000 slaves he had acquired by raiding an isolated Imperial world. If he failed to mention that this represented the near-exhausting of his own forces, well, who can blame him?

While getting the covens to agree to such nonsense was a challenge, what Omi did next set the whole thing in motion - he spent those coins. More importantly, he spent them all over the place: merchants, wych cults, even a few smaller kabals. The larger kabals had been engaging in a barter system that allowed them to make grand parades of slaves whenever it was time to make a big purchase. The slavecoins not only allowed smaller kabals to acquire goods and services, it allowed them to do so relatively discreetly, which drew the attention of more powerful individuals. Soon the covens that Omi had initially recruited to act as "banks" were seeing an ever-increasing influx of slaves, which drew in the other covens to get their own piece of the action. Raids were commissioned against Craftworlds to acquire more wraithbone and the coins were psychically imprinted with a particular sort of agony in order to inhibit counterfeiting. By the time the covens and the kabals realized they had moved from advantage to mutual advantage to mutually assured destruction, the system was too robust and widespread to be easily undone.

It was one of Vect's procurers who engaged in a little financial speculation and discovered the trap that lay within the slavecoins. Kabals had to make the money work for them because the coins themselves were worthless. Even worse, the debt system became so labyrinthine that sudden collection could cause unforeseen repercussions throughout the Webway. The covens could sell debt to different organizations in order to increase their own liquidity and so the debt system had become a financial webway as confusing as the real one. The Covens took a bit longer to discover how they were also trapped by the system - because the coins were tied to a specific commodity, they could not issue them willy-nilly. Moreover, they had to carefully manage how they issued loans, lest the kabals catch wind that they were overextended and decide to close their accounts, triggering the very bloody equivalent of a bank run. Thus the covens were the sole source of the coins, but their power was shackled to their ability to redeem them.

Since the entire system relied upon the natural treachery and hunger for advantage of the Dark Eldar, it worked. Nothing runs perfectly, of course, and there have been painful lessons in overleveraging, such as the Kabal of the Splintered Arm, as well as failing to keep sufficient deposits on hand, such as the Coven of the Heartthorn. Several Kabals still endeavor to avoid using the system, though the race's obsession with speed and discretion means that organizations that solely use barter often find themselves wrong-footed by rivals who can make transactions quickly and quietly. Low Commoragh started carving the coins into pieces to enable low-grade transactions for slave food and the like. Realspace raids are the only real form of "economic growth," but happen with enough frequency that it hasn't created any real pressure on currency value.

As for Duke Omi and the House of the Scorpion, by making careful bets on the currency, assassinating a few currency manipulators, and keeping their collective heads down, they eventually became the Kabal of the Scorpion. Archon Omi still lives in his spire some distance from the heights of central Commoragh, where no one thinks very much on him and his piratical kabal. As a result, he gets up to...whatever it is treacherous creatures get up to when no one's watching.

((End financial speculation fanfic))

Essentially, I wanted to come down on the side of having a currency. Barter systems are inefficient in small locations and Commoragh is huge. The IA example shows us why - while it's full of the overwrought phrasing that GW so loves for its elfy-types, it opens up a million questions: What if our "sweet lord" doesn't have Mistress Strake's bottled agony, because he likes Master Talak's blend? How many different transactions would one have to go through just to get the item desired? Just consider the sheer variety of arms and armaments in the codex - how many different trades would be needed in a barter system to upgrade from a blast pistol to a blaster, if one were so inclined?

That being said, I think what our barter advocates are driving at is that fiat currency (like the U.S. dollar) implies a certain degree of trust in a central authority. Using the phrase "full faith and credit" in Commoragh is likely to draw peals of laughter both before and after you are excruciated for being an imbecile. No one trades on faith, so the currency must needs be backed by something. As I am also averse to having the Dark Eldar be soul-drinkers, as opposed to pain-drinkers, slaves seem to be a natural choice. From a storytelling perspective, I also like the idea of a slave-backed currency because there's a lot of fodder there: what if a coven attempts to "debase" the coinage, trading out broken slaves for coins? (Reason to fight!) What if a Kabal kidnaps an Eldar bonesinger and uses them to counterfeit coinage? (Reason to fight!) Most importantly, by creating a mutually dependent system, no one gets a leg up because of the system, so the status quo, violent and treacherous as it is, is maintained.

This is a very interesting discussion.

My one real thought though is... umm... Pirates, a profession that implies a level of barterdom with intrinsic value in items that have... intrisic value..? So perhaps you're like Captain Blood and have a fist full of valueble pearls that you can buy of a rivals crew with, he was just going to pay them in pain anyway. Maybe you've gone raiding and come back with 200 head of cattle (last time you use bottom shelf hypex), well it boils down to who in the vast dark city would want that many cows... and who puts the right price on it (what you want). You could take it to the flesh crafters... but people arn't lining up to be cows, they want to be bats and eagles... or you could take your wealth of protien down to the arenas and pay an advace to the cults for a raid, say next tuesday?

Yeah eventually you run into the problems of barter systems (see Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations). Honestly in a society more apt to stab ya than to honestly broker deals, it's about what you'll get.

Maybe Vect can try to make a system that uses some kind of printed cash, or people recognize the value of precious metals/jewels/etc like traditional pirates (they wore earing not to look cool, but so they had some money on them when they needed it), but I doubt the dark city has it's own currency, let alone something that cannot be subdivided and possibly has an expiration date on it (souls, etc).