Copper stars

Copper stars are small coins used as currency subunits in several of the cities surrounding the Sea of Jars.

Description

The precise size and design of the coin varies widely between the six cities - Elpaloz, Andymalon, Dyqamay, Tyros, Dypholyos and Pholyos - in which they are minted. Cities have also changed the designs of the coins over the several centuries they have circulated, creating a confusion of historical and contemporary styles which numismatists find fascinating and everybody else finds tremendously dull. The two constants of the design are that they are made from copper and are stamped with some form of star design on at least one side. They are generally circular, although those manufactured in Dyqamay are by tradition heptagonal.

History

The use of copper stars predates reliably-attested history in the Eleven Cities, going back some centuries into the pre-Wesmodian era. Copper was rare enough to be discernibly valuable but not as rare as gold or silver and thus a natural choice for striking into subunits of more valuable currency.
Why these coins became associated with stars is an interesting point of uncertainty. The most straightforward explanation may be the correct one; that a minor coin needed to be minted in large numbers and thus become thought of as being as numerous as the stars in the night sky. Alternative theories do exist, however, mostly to do with the gods worshipped in the Eleven Cities before the Wesmodian Reformation. One is that copper stars were minted as tokens of exchange between the secular authorities and the cult of the goddess Ynglyas, who were especially prominent in Pholyos and Elpaloz. The cult is known to have devoted much of its energy to costly astronomical expeditions, and to have enjoyed the subscription of the secular authorities for many of these. The notion is that the coins were struck as a means of paying the cult for their efforts, stamped with stars to commemorate this origin, and thence became absorbed into the cash supply as the cult used them to pay for supplies and sundries for the expeditions.
Although popular, the idea is flawed in that such expeditions would require a large enough outlay that paying for them in copper would be wholly impractical. Perhaps more plausible is the story that the star have their origin in the charitable activities of the cult of Hayan, whose remit was love and mercy rather than intellectual toil. The cult distributed money to the poor in pre-Wesmodian times and often received it back from secular society, and the idea is that these humble tokens of material well-being originated as counters of such charity, stamped with stars as sigils of hope. The cult of Hayan was probably more widespread than that of Ynglyas, which is thought to account for the commonality of the coins across many cities. This theory is somewhat shaky in that stars feature only incidentally in Hayanian iconography, but it has been endorsed by several chapters of the Keepers of Light, notably that in Pholyos.

Use

The copper star is used as a subunit of currency in Elpaloz, Andymalon, Dyqamay, Tyros, Dypholyos and Pholyos. Exactly how many pennies go into larger units of currency varies from place to place, and indeed from time to time depending on the economic power of the given city. Because the buying power of the more valuable coins is often more than the average citizen requires for household provisioning, copper stars are coin most commonly employed on a day-to-day basis. Stars are also surreptitiously accepted for minor purchases in some parts of other cities such as Ramoros, though this is not strictly legal.
The profusion of designs of copper star over the centuries has led those interested in the archaeology of the cities - including many thaumatologists - to posit that the coins found in some archaeological sites could speculatively be used to date them; if a coin is found at a site, then the site must be no earlier than the date the coin was minted. This is a tempting theory, although no remotely comprehensive or properly-researched concordance of star type so far exists. Any such scholarship could be a major step forward in its field.