Longbeard & Farkle - The makers of money
If you reach into your coin purse, the coin you will pull out will be a Kopin. All financial transactions in every nation of the Lands of Legend are handled in kopins. It is the universally agreed upon currency. And the people responsible for the minting, distribution, and securing of kopins is the company of Longbeard & Farkle.
Longbeard & Farkle is an international company that mints the world's currency, the Kopin. Kopins are made from a strong but light metal discovered and mined by L & S since their founding in the Third Age. The symbol used to denote the kopin is Ж, located after the value. Thus, if an item is worth twenty five kopins, it would be written 25Ж. Kopins are minted in 1, 5, 10, and 100Ж coins. Larger amounts are represented by Vault Notes, thin sheets of metal that are meticulously etched with the amount of kopins the Note represents, and the location of the funds. Merchants and nobles will often use Vault Notes to transfer large amounts of money across long distances.
Structure
Longbeard & Farkle is controlled by its Directors, who meet annually to plan the next year's endeavors. There is one Director for each L & F Coin House, Mint and Mine. Directors have significant independence in conducting routine affairs and day-to-day activities in their own domain, but all actions are technically answerable to the whole Directorate. While the traditional headquarters of Longbeard & Farkle was the capital city of Rosalind, L & F has moved their head office to Avencourt just before the start of the Fourth Age. As Director of the Avencourt Coin House, Elbareth Carishar, an Elf female, is considered "first among equals" and the preeminent Director of the company.
Public Agenda
Longbeard & Farkle is famously neutral in their affairs. While the company prefers stability, as it permits trade to prosper (and thus increases the wealth in their coffers), L & F is not above profiting off of unrest and conflict. For L & F, the greatest goal is wealth and protecting their investments and personnel. Those that rob a Longbeard & Farkle Coin House or one of their convoys will almost certainly find themselves the target of bounty hunters, assassins and mercenaries.
Assets
All major cities, and some of the larger or more prosperous towns, have a Longbeard & Farkle Coin House in it. The Coin Houses are staffed offices that open at sunrise and close at sunset (with some regional variations). Coin Houses offer several services to customers - the storing of money in its heavily armored vaults, the conversion of coins and hard currency into Vault Notes, and even provide loans to customers for certain ventures, but they scrutinize every such application very carefully.
Along with the Coin Houses, Longbeard & Farkle operates several mines and more than one Mint, where the kopin coins are minted. The location of the Mints and mines are a closely guarded secret.
Longbeard & Farkle employs a veritable army of clerks, miners, craftsmen, miners, and guards. L & F encourages a high "esprit de corps" among their employees, both through good pay, but also by making every employee feel like they are part of the team. "Anyone can rise to the top" is the unofficial motto told to new hires on their first day, and there are enough success stories to impress every L & F worker to think they too can rise up.
History
At the start of the Third Age, every kingdom minted their own money, following the style of the uncounted nations that had risen and fallen during the Second Age. In truth, the value of any coinage was based on the rare metal they were minted from, and all merchants would measure money not by number of coins, but by weight.
During the reign of King Brand of Rosalind, there was a shortage of precious metals during a time of unrest. Without coins to pay, merchants and others resorted to barter. Nobles hoarded gold and silver in their halls, even as King Brand tried to order citizens to turn it over. Inflation crippled trade.
Enter Longbeard and Farkle. Just about that time, Durin "Longbeard" Jernskang discovered a rich vein of gold ore. Rather than simply sell the golden nuggets he pulled from the ground, he contracted with a Salimar friend, Farkle, to mint coins of his own. As the Longbeard and Farkle coins were made of purer metal than kingdom coins, they quickly became more frequently used than the “official” money of the realms. Farkle, a Salimar merchant who traveled far and wide, distributed these “coin tokens” everywhere he traded, and made sure everyone knew that the merchants in his employ would accept them at the same rate as official currency. In some places, Farkle would only deal in his “coin tokens.” In the meantime, Farkle would exchange his coins for coin of the realm, which would be transported to Longbeard who would melt the coin down and re-mint it as a Longbeard & Farkle "coin token".
Within the span of a year, the majority of the Rosalind populace were using Longbeard and Farkle’s “coin tokens” or Kopins™ as the tokens were soon called. As he continued to travel, Farkle introduced kopins to Veltingard and Aurulant. The Yellow Empress and King Brand separately tried to get Longbeard and Farkle to mint kopins with their nation’s arms upon the obverse of the coin. Longbeard and Farkle consistently refused, insisting that the kopin be an international currency only. After many failed attempts to bring the fledgling currency company under their heels, nation after nation finally assented to Farkle's demand and left the kopin alone. Over time, kopins became the preferred currency and countries stopped minting their own coins. The signing of the "Kopin Compact" as it has become known, legally made the kopin the official currency of the signatory kingdoms, which eventually included all the nations of the Lands of Legend.
After the Kopin Pact was ratified, Longbeard and Farkle moved to the next stage of their plan. They began minting kopins from a light but strong metal that Longbeard had discovered years prior. Naming it Hilnik, based on a mythical dwarven metal, Longbeard minted all kopins from this new metal, replacing coins made of precious metal. The gold and silver went into L & F vaults, which guaranteed the value of coins.
A handful of kopins.
Founding Date
Third Age
Alternative Names
L & F, the Coin House, the Vault
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