Currency Talk

[Reece]

I think the vast number of the points you bring up are actually sort of reinforcing the concept of a standardized currency. The Empire sure as hell doesn't want people trading with Camelot and visa versa, so having forms of currency which are NOT accepted is actually advantageous to the powers that be in this situation.

Oh, undoubtedly; all I meant was that I wasn't sure whether merchants would use those currencies or not (if you had a choice between a universally accepted currency, and one which you'd need to pay money changers to swap if you ever left your home city, which would you opt for?)... that said, I guess in the case of Secondaries who have found a verse to settle in, using one of these other currencies would probably be fine (aside from the counterfeiting).

Also, having a MORE trusted system of standardized currency for the Secondaries would give them a BETTER idea that they are getting what they are asking for, as opposed to not. Sure, barter is probably preferred in a lot of cases, but the reason we moved from barter to currency in almost every culture ever is that it's a pain in the ass to haul a bunch of chickens and bread around when you want to get a pint at the pub. It's not convenient and it's not quick. It's also much more difficult to determine value. Is it worth two chickens? Is it worth... a fucking landspeeder or whatever?

Certainly not convenient, no... but it'd be easy enough to determine value if you had a trustworthy (<with emphasis on this word here) Prime to help you out; they just take not of how much OM is in different objects (by extracting and rebuilding, if necessary) and tell people what each is worth...
That said, saying this has made me realise that few Primes, if any, would ever waste their time like this; they were brought to the Omniverse because they're supposed to be interesting, after all, not to hang around valuing chickens and pints for Secondaries. So I guess I'll have to concede this point.

So, I mean yeah, Primes could probably make some pretty convincing counterfeits (that is if Secondaries can't determine the OM value of items by handling them, or that there isn't some unmistakable way to verify how much it is), but the alternatives are just untenable.

You're probably right. It's kinda unfortunate that any Prime with even a hint of deviousness is likely to figure this out at some point, and could subsequently become immensely rich simply by lying about the value of the notes/coins they were handing over with every trade they made... but I guess that's just how this world must work. This may well be just another reason the Secondaries get screwed over so much.

Also, let's remember the actual Rules post about Omnilium:

It has been theorised that omnilium represents value itself. It can take many forms. When held by a Prime, it absorbs into their being and becomes a kind of essence that cannot be given or stolen, only used. It can take many physical forms, but the default is a kind of malleable sphere that can be split or combined at will, instantly reconfiguring itself to the same shape, size and weight but changing in 'density' depending on how much actual omnilium the orb represents. While anyone can split and recombine omnilium, secondaries cannot hold it within themselves as Primes can.

The only "true" form of OM is within the body of a Prime. Anything else is just a Prime's summoned representation of OM. Even a shiny sphere of whatever the shit isn't even the "true" form of OM, because OM is just a representation of "value." If a Secondary can't inherently determine the OM value of an object, then trading with shiny stuff wouldn't really work either, because something being the same size, shape, weight, etc but being of a variable visual density is a really hard thing to count beans with.

Hmm... I somehow forgot about the density-changing. I guess it must work like that with everything, then; the shape & weight are the same, regardless of the 'value' you put into it, but some objects are more dense than others... obviously, though, you can't just go around stress-testing everything, since you're gonna end up tearing/bending/breaking a whole bunch of your notes/coins/glowy-balls...
So yeah, I can't deny this either, I guess.

Even the most standard of visual representations are meaningless to people who can't absorb the shit, so having a standardized currency that is usually of the same value would be very useful for people, even if it could be counterfeited.

Well, I guess you have me convinced... though I do get the impression that you may be slightly underestimating the likely scale of the counterfeiting. True, no one whose stories I've read so far has mentioned it, but that's likely due to their characters simply not having even considered the possibility. But anyone who did, and was willing to break a few rules, could easily start churning out 100-Gold coins which were actually only worth 1-Gold... and once they passed that secret along, their (Prime) friends could also take advantage of it. Basically; Primes can embezzle everyone they meet with no effort at all.
True, this might not work for someone who had taken up residence in one specific place, since they'd end up with a reputation as a cheat, but for travelling Primes, it ought to pose no problem... especially for those with forgettable faces, skill with disguises, or shapeshiting powers.

Whatever type of currency is used throughout the Omniverse is still, in essence, used OM. Even the precious metals of the Omniverse are made of used OM.

Yeah, the problem we've found, though, is that unless you want your 100-Gold-Coin (or whatever the equivalent would be in other currencies) to be one hundred times the size of the 1-Gold-Coin, you're going to have to compress it... and assuming everything else follows the same rules as Omnillium compression (which is highly likely, given that the Shrink power allows you to reduce your weight, as well as size), then the only difference other than the coin's design will be that it is more dense... and since density can't be easily measured, it would be incredibly easy for unscrupulous Primes to take advantage of this by summoning less dense (and therefore cheaper) versions of the coins, but which have large numbers printed upon them. By trading these, then extracting their purchases and making more fake coins, then repeating the process, it would be possible to make a huge amount of OM (at the Secondaries' expense) in only a short period of time.

With that being said, currency should be up to the perspective of whoever is writing. Maybe there can be some sort of measurement (density, weight, etc), but I find it really hard to explain anything beyond that. Not unless the Empire and Kingdom stamp their faux-coins.

True, I suppose.