Commerce

© RDD Wilkin / Spilled Ale Studios

Ramshackle has no near neighbours, but is nonetheless a vital trading hub. Positioned roughly equidistant between three continents, it facilitates trade from each to the others. More goods pass through Ramshackle than ever remain within it! The floating city also remains neutral ground for pirates and smugglers, and is the perfect place for them to fence stolen items and plunder. Many smuggling rings and other criminal organisations even headquarter themselves in Ramshackle, or maintain business fronts in the city.

Currency

With one notable exception, Ramshackle doesn’t produce its own coins. Instead, the city accepts coins from the world over. Civil servants, financiers, and business owners all over the city are familiar with the rates of exchange between dozens of different currencies.

Ramshackle’s citizens accept imperial coinage as their standard system: these are the standard denominations normally used in the Fifth Edition game, introduced by an old empire and still embraced by its many colonies. Most businesses will also accept any other currencies they are familiar with, but they add an exchange fee, which is typically a 3% markup. This fee covers the trouble of exchanging the coins themselves, and the possibility of having to pay a financier’s own exchange commission.

For simplicity, many visitors seek to exchange their non-imperial coinage (or exchange imperial coins back before leaving). The Halls of Polity will exchange coins for free, but the visitor must weigh that against the inconvenience of travelling to the Halls and waiting in tortuously long lines. Alternatively, there are many coin exchanges in the city that will convert currency for a commission (usually 2-3%). Such places will also take gemstones, ingots and bars and convert them to coin.

Admirals

Ramshackle has only ever had one coin of its own, though they weren’t minted in Ramshackle itself but instead commissioned from a minter based in a foreign nation. The coins in question were produced to commemorate Admiral Antana “Firemane” Lecheq’s 200th birthday. Though officially known as Firemane commemorative coins, they are colloquially known as admirals.

Admirals are large coins that contain three times the amount of electrum as a typical electrum piece. Engraved onto one side of each coin is the likeness of Firemane herself, while the tails side is her ship, the brigantine Vermilion Hellion.

The amount of electrum in an admiral gives the coin a face value equal to 3 electrum pieces, or 1 gold piece and 2 silver pieces. However, only a thousand such coins were ever made and a large number have been taken away from Ramshackle or lost to the waters. Admirals thus have incredible value to a collector. A numismatist (coin collector) based in Ramshackle might pay upwards of 500 gold for a single admiral. A collector from elsewhere in the world would pay thousands of gold the privilege of adding such a rare foreign coin to their collection.