The Financial Codex

The Valas Empire runs on two things. Grain and coin. In Year 317 the same system has been running for nearly two hundred years. The grain comes from the villages. The coin comes from the same villages by a different route. Both end up at High Orvallis.

The Levy

Every household in the empire owes the Crown forty out of every hundred. Forty bushels for every hundred grown. Forty animals for every hundred raised. Forty bolts for every hundred woven. The number does not change with the weather. The number does not change with the harvest. The number is the law of the land.

Collection happens once a year, in Huntcall, the first month of autumn. The grain wagons arrive with an armed escort. The empire takes its share while the grain is fresh and the granaries are full.

What is left is what the village survives the winter on.

Who Takes What

The forty percent is split four ways before it leaves the village.

REEVE. Five percent. Pays for the well, the roads, the market square.

THANE. Five percent. Pays for the magistrate, the constabulary, the roads between villages.

SOLARCH. Ten percent. Pays for the regional court, the bridges, the granaries, the Solarch’s own soldiers.

CROWN. Twenty percent. Pays for the standing army, the imperial court, and whatever the Emperor decides to spend it on.

Every coin and every bushel passes through four ledgers before it reaches the capital. The Reeve writes the first number. The Thane’s clerk audits it. The Solarch’s agent counts it again. The Crown’s collector signs at the end.

The Coins

The empire uses a decimal system. Each coin is worth a hundred of the one below it.

BIT. Copper. The base unit. The coin a child holds.

ORVAL. Silver. One hundred Bits.

GOLD ORVAL. One hundred Orvals.

CROWN. One hundred Gold Orvals.

DIADEM. One hundred Crowns. Not a coin. A number in a ledger. Diadems exist only on the books of the Crown treasury, the Solarchs, and the largest trading houses.

What A Loaf Of Bread Costs

A loaf of bread in a Caldor market costs ten Bits.

A Private in the Spears of Light earns ten Orvals a month. A hundred loaves of bread.

The widow of a Private earns two Orvals a month from the Crown. Twenty loaves of bread. A widow with three children to feed is feeding them on twenty loaves a month and what the garden gives.

Wealth And Poverty Across The Regions

The Crown sets the levy. The Solarchs collect it. Each Solarch governs the finances of his own region. He decides how the Solarch’s ten percent is spent. He decides what regional taxes get added on top. He decides which villages get a granary repaired and which villages do not.

This means the same empire can look very different from one region to the next. A Solarch who manages the levy fairly leaves his villages enough to live on. A Solarch who pushes the levy to the limit, or adds his own taxes on top of the Crown’s, takes so much that families go hungry. Both kinds of Solarch exist in Aevrya in Year 317.

Every region in the empire has its rich and its poor. The mix depends on who holds the Solarch’s seat.