I tinued digging the tunnel for awelve days until the snow on the mountain started to melt again. It seems like the mert is not going to make it back this year. It seems that the safest time to travel between here and the mainnd is winter, so now that the season is ging, I'm expeg he won't make it batil year. Hopefully by that point I have the vilge bought into the idea of using currency, and I won't be the only oh trade requests.

  Rather than gh all the stages of making the currency myself, I'm going to offer to pay a few of the goblins that helped Katarko to make cots for me. I'll need quite a lot of the metal, so while I excavate the native copper on the mountain, the goblins melt it down and form it into ingots down in the vilge. Ohink I have enough copper, I'll make some molds for s and a press to use for imprinting a design on them. I'll also o dig a secret vault somewhere in the mountain where I keep excess currency I make.

  I spent sixteen days gathering copper from the mountain, and a det k of that time ent finding new veins from existing ones usionise. Since I also had to ew paths to those veins, I ended up shipping a det amount of stone down the mountain as well to use for stru projects.

  In the evenings, I spent my time designing the age for our initial currency while making lightstoo use for both the casts and the press to make the s. I settled on using three different s for now. All three s are going to be circur and have the same sized square hole in the ter of the , so that a string could be run through to easily keep your moogether.

  The smallest value will also be the smallest in size with a simple attern across the . They'll be retively thin and made of copper. The middle value will also be made of copper, but will be both thicker and rger than the first . Sihis is the that I want to use as the basis for entering the fishing area, I figured it would be fitting to have the themed with the more popur kinds of fish that are eaten. I io set the value of this at ten times that of the smallest .

  The st is going to be slightly smaller than the biggest , with a design of our mountain on one side, and a river oher. These s will be made from the higher quality metal that Katarko helped refine a lot of. I pn on having these s be worth 25 of the rge copper s, so that they're generally used fe purchases, and to store wealth. Zaka will be given most of these s to ha least until some form of bank is figured out. Then if someone wants to exge a whole bunch of the lower currency for the rger one, we trade it out for them.

  We io give all the goblins an equal starting point with the currency, but since we'll be colleg from some pces, we'll also have to introduce currency ba through paid work projects. With the road project fast approag, that will be one pce where we re-introduce currento the market via manual bor. The guards will also make a certain amount of money, which should trickle through by some method bato the market, but we'll o keep an eye on currency circution to see how the bance is being handled.

  So, despite the fact that I only io give 5 of the middle tier of s worth of value to each vilge member to start out, I'll still o make a signifit amount of age overall. First, I think that two middle tier s, and thirty small s is probably about the right denomination to start distribution at. With almost 500 vilgers, that es out to an absolutely absurd amount of s. However, I also want to have more than triple that number actually manufactured in the first batch, so that we're prepped for both popution growth and any unknown factors that might spring up. As for the highest value s, I think just 200 of those s should be more than enough to st us a long time.

  Which means I'll in some goblins to help with making the s. That means I'll also o keep the minting equipment sealed away in the hidden vault as well, so that no ories to make terfeit currenbsp; I suppose that means I should also get specific with some of the designs, so that a trained eye spot terfeits.

  Once I get the hidden vault made, I'll actually make the molds and presses for each of the s. Initially, we'll pour the copper onto a ste with many molds on it. , a bar will be run across the whole mold to remove excess liquid copper. Finally, as the copper starts to harden, but is still hot, the press pte will be lowered down onto the mold, giving the sed face it's pattern. For the smallest s, I pn on doing stes that have is for about 500 s in total. For the medium value s I pn on doing 200 s per ste, and for the highest value s, 100 s per ste.

  Down in the cavern, I spent two weeks excavating the hidden vault. I'm not going to say exactly where or how its hidden, but there are multiple measures io make it difficult to both access and discover. It's got plenty of room for st all the equipment for making the s along with a signifit amount of s. I've even made denomination buckets inside so that I easily remove exactly how much currency I any given point.

  After the vault was pleted I made all the various items necessary for the minting process, whie another week in total. I've got all the ingots ready, so it should just be a matter of melting and casting s from here on out. My hope is that I pay the same goblins that helped make the ingots, sihey're already familiar with metal w.

  After a bit of a rocky start, we mao start produg s at a pretty det pabsp; All in all, produ of all the s was eventually pleted in 24 days. If I had do all myself it would have taken signifitly longer. As payment for their work, I gave each of the three goblins three middle value s. Ohey had left, I spent awo days just moving things to and from the hidden vault, and s them.

  Finally, ohird m after they left, I loaded up a cart with all the age and manually lowered the first batch of s down the mountain. Moving the s from one cart to the ook quite a while, and I ended up not getting back to the vilge until te in the evening. I got a guard's attention, and had him go get Zeb and Zaka while I protected the s.

  For tonight, we'll keep them in Zaka's house, and both Zeb and I will stay over to ehat no oeals any s before we get a ce to distribute them.

  Finally, the time to distribute s, and expin the ges to the way things were going to run has arrived. The initial expnation to the vilgers took about a half of an hour, and didn't go over particurly well. Most of the goblins saw the whole thing as an unnecessary volution to the way things already work. After all, they already just bargain with each other for supplies. Not only that, but now a bunch of things that were free are now going to have a cost to them. The most vocal group to pin actually surprised me.

  I expected that the goblins who rarely worked would be the oo pin the most, but surprisingly most of them were quiet oter. The group that pihe most were actually the fisherman, who were upset that they would have to pay money when they're already providing something to everyone else for free. Despite attempts at ving them to trade their fish for currency again to make back more than they spend going in, they weren't vinced.

  If the baseline providers aren't going to buy in, then we would have a serious problem on our hands. The other workshops also were a little upset that they'd be charged for some portions of what they owned, seemingly arbitrarily. For some individuals, it would be less, based on exges I'd made with them in the past to struct things in exge foods, but others who I built things for free are beiroactively charged for the work, but in a lot of ways, they see it as unfair.

  A few promises were drafted up as a result in order to get these groups on board. First, to the fishermen, I eventually iated that we'd build an open marketpce where they sell their fish. For fishermen and farmers, use of marketpce stalls will be free. For others, stalls will be rented out at a fixed rate per day. For the craftsgoblins, we've dropped the costs of their workshops for existing craftsgoblins, but the warehousing charges will be kept in pce.

  After those iations, it seemed like the majority of the goblins were at least willing to give the currency a try. At that point, we had the goblins form lines, and we distributed the currency to each of them.