The Bank Gambit

The Root of All Evil

One of the oldest, most controversial, and most useful illusions Arcanists ever created gave birth to a bardic routine that redefined espionage, opening a theater of war far from any battlefield. The Bank Gambit is a routine available to bards involving the reproduction of physical currency. A bard takes a pebble, a single coin, a sheet of cheap parchment, or anything roughly the size and shape of a desired currency, and transform it into whatever denomination they desire. This could even use a form of currency with a smaller denomination.

Bards who work as spies can destabilize the economy of a nation just by living there. They could end a war early, or prevent wars from happening in the first place. The illusion could hold indefinitely, at least until the bard's death, which was a common tactic used by some to destabilize their rivals should their spy get caught and executed. While a rapid surge of counterfeit money is damaging to an economy, suddenly realizing the treasury has significantly less than it should is damaging as well, if revealed at the right time.

The spell is easy to learn on one's own, but using it heavily frowned upon. If you're not working to ruin an economy, you are setting back local merchants or other customers they have, resulting in confrontations that are neither parties fault. Nations have started adopting arcane techniques to make their money much more difficult to forge. Illusions require a fine eye for detail, and only the most skilled bards could use the spell and make it work in the present. Counterfeiting is a big deal to most nations in the present, and the history behind the spell has much to do with it.

Casting the spell

The bard reaches Attunement and then proceeds to visualize the end goal. This is usually done by using the intended form of currency as a reference. Eventually, when the bard is prepared for the transformation, they will cast their hand over the substitute and it will change before their eyes. Doing this in a place that is public, or in any situation that requires discretion makes it necessary to have skills in sleight of hand. Some bards choose to work under a tavern table, while others make the change in the privacy of their own home before leaving. Some bards are so skilled at using the spell they can cast it at the moment the currency is to be exchanged, having committed all the intricate elements of a currency to memory.