Since news that the fragile relationship between Zulappi and Satura is being rebuilt, trade has boomed in Wasat. It has come that it is increasingly hard for the locals to buy essential goods and services without being run over by the mass of merchants crowding around the market.
Pharon, unlike others, saw this as a problem. If Wasat is too crowded for Saturans to enter, let alone engage in local trade or go to the temple, then it might cease to become the capital of the Saturans and merely an international rest stop. The important thing is that it will cost way too much to buy food from an apathetic countryside instead of having farmers, or grain merchants, hunters, or herders, come of their own free will with their wares.
Pharon the Farseer therefore ordered that all mercantile transactions of more than a handful of gold must also include the funding for a single stone block to be dragged to a construction site on the other side of the river. This usually amounts to a single ring per block, but can easily brought in bulk so that it can fall to a hand for a whole cow.
Of course, most of the local Saturals buy things in nails, let alone pieces. It's mostly the foreign merchants and domestic retailers who engage in massive money transfers who will have to uphold the costs. Grumbling was surprisngly little, and some Saturan merchants even funded extra blocks to build their own store within the design.
The Market of Merchants, one block at a time, slowly rose on the other bank. As more and more merchants crammed themselves into Wasat, the walls grew higher and higher.
The same day Pharon stood proudly before the completed Market town, the first shipment of beer has arrived from the City of Peace. Wickerware and pots of stone and clay were already being sold by agents of far off merchants while cooks busily collected ingrediants for the Drunken Hare Roasts.
It is time for a feast.
A Shaman was invited.
From Pharon the Farseer
To the Land of the Sun
We will like to trade our wonderful specialty stone crafts for your dye, as we have already traded our Hare in exchange for Wickers in such a way as to ENSURE profitability.
The Saturan Monetary System (Cultural)
In the past, it was hard to tell how much some gold was worth. Of course, it was sacred and doubtlessly worth much, but how much?
Pharon thought long and hard. In the time of Gideon, gold is merely the blessings of Akten. Now gold is much more... it is now also the heart of the Saturan economy.
So gold must have a value, right?
Pharon and the Clerics thought long and hard. Finally, Pharon lifted his hand and spoke.
"A golden piece, flat, as thin as my nail and as long as my thumb, is worth 1 Nail.
And a day's hard labor in the fields, and a patrol in the grounds, and a week's chores on the temple shall be worth 1 Nail."
"A golden piece, flat, round about as a circle between my thumb and my forefinger, is worth and weighs as 5 Nails. And it shall be called a Ring.
And each Ring shall worth of a craft of a day's labor, or a patrol in the wilderness, and the value of Daretos hare's meat.
"A golden piece that fits within my palm shall be worth 10 Rings and 50 Nails. And it shall be called a Hand. And let each Hand be worth a day's labor in the Quarries, which shall gather 10 blocks, or for a march through hostile lands, or for the spices, and beer, and work in preparing a single Drunken Hare Roast"
"And let 50 hands, worth 500 Rings, or 2500 Nails, be worth a Cow. And let each cow be worth a year's skilled labor, or 5 Year's hard labor, or as pension of a lifetime of service."
And so it was.