Jonathan

After the conversation with the king, Jonathan waited in an adjourning room, while Elise and Tablos spoke to the king and then they left the castle.

They drove all the way back to school and during this, Tablos let it known that tomorrow Jonathan would be woken early and brought to his first lesson, which would be in economics.

Jonathan found out that while there was no formal way of studying economics, there were theories of how trade worked that were generally accepted and which were used in day to day affairs, especially by rulers.

The one who would help Jonathan was the kingdoms own Minister of Commerce, a Lord Gerard Wertin.

After they arrived at school, Jonathan began thinking about what was important about the economy that he knew. He did not know much, but he knew enough to know that their system might be fundamentally different than the system he grew up with.

One of the main aspects that would likely be different is the codification of certain processes and tools. They likely exist in a sense that they either happen or are being used, but nobody knows much about how the fit in.

He ate his dinner, which he got brought to his room and went to bed.

He awoke, suddenly. This time not due to knocking at the door, but due to a strange noise. His alarm on his phone had gone on, which he thought impossible.

After a bit of furious tipping, realizing that the battery was nearly empty, he found out that it was an alarm he thought he deactivated around a week ago. He powered the phone with the power bank and began his morning rituals. He began stretches and solved little equations he made up.

After around an hour of waiting, someone knocked at the door.

An older man, who wore a white beard, came into the room after he opened the door.

He was positively surprised that Jonathan was already clothed in a robe he had gotten yesterday. In fact, he had gotten an entirely new wardrobe from Tablos, not only the formal robe.

The man introduced himself as Lord Minister Gerard Wertin, which was often shortened to Lord Wertin. They went and got breakfast at the kitchens, which Jonathan had not seen to this point.

It was a large medieval kitchen, at least as Jonathan imagined a medieval kitchen to be.

Afterwards, they went to an unoccupied classroom, which was designed for up to 10 pupils. Then they sat down, made their food ready and began to talk.

Lord Wertin thought for a while and asked Jonathan after this: “What do you want to know?”

Jonathan thought about this for a while and answered: “I am interested in your currency, on what it is based as well how much one unit is worth. I would be interested to know what you think about trade as well.”

The Minister thought for a moment, gathered himself and answered: “We use, as everybody does, silver and gold coins as our currency. We have Pecunas, which are small silver coins and the smallest generally used coin. But, because it is the material worth that counts, one can break apart a coin if something is less expensive than the worth of one coin. The advantage of the coins is that they are somewhat standardized. They have a bit less silver in them than their net worth, but they do have a magical signature on them due to which the kingdom backs them. Because this signature fails if the coin takes excessive damage, to produce the broken apart coins, normally foreign coins are used. The next denomination would be the Secanus. It is worth seven Pecunas. After that, we have the first golden coin, the Guldon. It is worth 24 Secanus, also 168 Pecunas. The last coin that is used and produced, apart from a few special coins, generally produced for one specific transaction, is the Guldomus. It is used for sizeable exchanges and the effect of less material worth is really pronounced in them. They are worth 12 Guldons, which means that they have the same worth as 2856 of the smallest denomination. Did you understand everything?”

Jonathan negated this and asked: “Do you have a writing instrument as well as a sheet of paper, parchment or something similar? I think I need to note this down.”

Lord Wertin was surprised by this and asked him if he was literate because this was rare outside trained mages and parts of the nobility.

Jonathan answered to this question: “In my country, nearly everybody is literate. Everybody must learn how to read and write in compulsory education. We also learn basic mathematics, and later on, if we stay at school, more complex mathematical problems. But these are not the only things we learn, but the rest is mostly uninteresting for this world, or not relevant right now.”

Lord Wertin laughed, clearly not believing him that such a thing might be possible, thinking that Jonathan must have come from a rich aristocratic family, and stood up and went to a cabinet on the wall, where he took a class of ink as well as a sharpened feather and a sheet of parchment.

All of this he gave Jonathan, who, to his surprise, asked him for instructions on how to use these tools. But while he did, Jonathan explained to him that back home they used completely different writing utensils, which tended to make much less of a mess than these that are used here.

After he had written everything down, he asked how money lending worked in this world, as well as how banks functioned.

Wertin explained that banks functioned in protecting the money, of course against a modest fee. Modest being around 10 times the annular income of a peasant, which lied around 13 Secanus.

Money lenders were generally disliked and expected regularly a 50% return on their investment. But everybody could become a money lender or a banker. They generally expected to get the money back over a period of 10 years, with assurances in case of death. After this they spoke for a time about other matters in this direction and then Jonathan was sent to lunch.