Worldbuilding

Economy

With The Deepwood having overrun most of the world, things really can’t be very much like our world, or like many fantasy worlds. There has to be fundamental differences in what we take as basic givens in the way we exist and interact.

Besides from that pesky being swallowed whole by monsters every time you step outside thing.

Resources have to change. And in creating details of the world, it was always imperative to the creative team that things always felt a struggle. This world is harsh. This world is dark. It’s a terrible battle that’s been raging, and humanity is not on the winning team.

When you think about common commodities in the real world, and you hit things like food, shelter and money. How does the twisted ecology of The Deepwood take these simple and obvious concepts and turn them on ear?

Shelter is obvious, and the forefront of this world. The Deepwood is harsh and aggressive, to the point of destroying roadways and structures with a tireless oppression of root and vine. Roads between cities cannot exist in a traditional manner, as paths get overgrown and roads cracked and broken by the shifting of the underbrush faster than they can be maintained. Cities must be walled. These are major and clear defining factors of this existence. People in cities are almost like overcrowded islands in shark infested waters.

Speaking of waters, that’s the only easy thing to come by. It rains. A lot. It would have to be constantly raining to support the sheer amount of growth. Environmentally, we knew this place was wet.

Food, on the other hand, becomes a slightly different story. If you can’t leave the city safely and the cities are overcrowded, farms for crops and animals become nearly impossible. In the modern world, when we run out of space in an area, we go up, and add stories to buildings. That technology does not exist in this world. It’s time to go under, not up.

Underways are common to any city of a decent population. They are a web of dirt tunnels stretching under the city used for farming root vegetables and edible fungus. A huge variety of mushroom, fungi and potato variants form the bulk of most of the meals our brave adventurers will be eating.

Vast caverns become mushroom farms. Rare illuminating clusters of crystals or bioluminescent plants provide light beyond the torches carried by the workers. The work is hard and dangerous, but necessary. Picture it almost as food mining. Those who run the Underways can become some of the wealthiest in a city and are often divided into cartels of a sort to prevent pricing and supply from becoming uncontrolled. Or, more precisely, controlled in a malevolent manner. Even in this dire world, the rich want to be richer.

Of course, with everything so messed up, even the riches aren’t the same.

The most common fantasy trope for money is of course, gold. Because that’s based pretty strongly on the real world. For centuries, the golden rule has been he who has the gold makes the rules. Gold is a near universal aspect in low tech settings.

Gold is weak.

The Deepwood is a practical place. If there is no practical use for something, it has no value. Trading precious metals do make sense for early economic structures. But very few people really care or have a need for gold. You can’t defend yourself with it. You can’t build with it. You can’t harvest with it, so who cares about gold?

Iron is strong.

Iron is tools. Weapons. Nails. Iron is civilization. Iron can become even stronger steel. Or if can be made into bars, ingots, and the common small change of The Deepwood, Flecks.

On a personal level, as a writer I took this concept and ran with it. This is probably because for years I have worked as a professional historical blacksmith and used iron and steel regularly, shaping it into various bits of hardware for educational and practical use. They say you write what you know. I know iron and steel at 1500 degrees.

If anyone has been checking out the images released so far from Oathsworn: Into The Deepwood, some of them show things like taverns. Like where my good friend Fableman Tarren tells his stories. If you examine some of those pictures, you may note piles of grey bricks. This is money. That’s the cash register. The take for the night. Pay from a table. Maybe a spot of gambling.

If in this world, iron is used as a means of wealth and trade, yet it is also used for building tools and hardware, it means you have to be able to literally turn your money into something else. You want a tool? It isn’t always bought, but sometimes actually crafted from the money itself. Since it is the means of tracking wealth, something huge like an Anvil is a small fortune unto itself and used only by the very skilled and trusted.

Enter The Banksmith.

The word evokes both the craftsman and the teller. If you would like a new shovel for working The Underways, you bring a bar of iron, or maybe a bucket of flecks, to your local Banksmith. For the nominal fee of keeping a few flecks for himself, return tomorrow and pick up your shovel. Obviously, a good Banksmith knows supply and demand, and may have more common hardware ready for use and you simply trade for an already crafted one.

Travelling? A shovel is large. But if you’re going to take the perilous journey to another city, you will need money. Bring The Banksmith your shovel, and minus a few fingers of iron, have it turned into the far more efficient to carry bars and ingots.

Of course, any skilled Banksmith can also execute the difficult technique of ColdForging. Beating the iron into a new shape without heating it first. It’s hard, time consuming and takes a vast amount of sweat. And yet sometimes, this form of iron is needed for weapons. Why…