- Ariana Carolus: It's all gone?!
- Gavin Carolus: Yes.
- Ariana Carolus: This is a catastrophe! How are we going to get through the winter now?
- Gavin Carolus: Well...
- Gavin Carolus: We’ll probably have to sell everything that’s not nailed down.
- Scarlet: But not Abel’s book!
- Gavin Carolus: Don’t worry. Nobody would pay more than a few Shards for it anyway.
- Scarlet: ... Okay.
- Ariana Carolus: What did the guard say?
- Gavin Carolus: They don’t know any fox that fits my description. He must be from another district. Maybe even from Oris.
- Ariana Carolus: All that we’ve built up, gone in one fell swoop!
- Scarlet: Don‘t cry, mommy! I’ll find that bandit!
The Machine of Eternal Summer 009
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11 thoughts on “The Machine of Eternal Summer 009”
BlackDragonSlayer
I get the feeling that Scarlet really means that. Hijinks ensue?
HKMaly
Well he IS listed as main character, so …
Crystalgate
She almost certainly does mean it. If she leaves, it will make her mom cry more rather than less.
HKMaly
Ok, so they DO at least have guards. They are useless, but better than nothing.
Graybeard
If they have guards, why don’t they have banks?
BlackDragonSlayer
It’s possible the banks are unreliable or scarce (i.e. you need to travel a long distance to actually access your money).
Old Brit
Guards have existed throughout the history of civilization, but banks only started in Europe in the Renaissance, and banks as we understand them from the late nineteenth century. Plenty of precedent for guards but no banks.
Graybeard
“In Europe”, however, is not “in the world.” China has had banks of a sort for over a thousand years. Treasuries that performed some banking functions, including some that would be relevant here, are a lot older than that. For that matter, in-universe, how did the people in town that bought the beets and rented out the wagon manage their money? The existence of books in the Carolus household, lots of them, implies the technical ability to do the record keeping that a basic bank needs.
Suspending disbelief for the moment here, but this just feels weird.
Old Brit
The existence of banks in China does not invalidate my comments about Europe managing without them being a precedent for guards but no banks. Of course, there were money-lenders, which might solve the Carolus family’s immediate problem.
thysi
Roman banks accepted deposits, though they were not super widely used (likely not used by farmers, for example). That’s about a millennium before the Song dynasty.
People keeping (almost) all their money in banks is a rather recent phenomenon everywhere, though.
Vicious Sand
They could have eaten the beets, but those are what they sold in the first place!
Too bad we’ll never get Noir Scarlett, Gumshoe Detective. That’s more of a Sandra and Woo joke.
Characters
Ariana Carolus Athamas Baako Bolin Clara Graybold Cyril Darius Leyh Elwin Flammt Evelina Ferrus Gale Nenawa Gavin Carolus Iona Jehona Shardyk Julius Mirkning Kala Silverspring Kenan Orege King Protos Lauro Levon Goldwood Leyton Wayt Ludis Graybold Luitpold Marik Marton Princess Elodie Raymond Reto Mirkning Reva Rodar Rosetta Greenleaf Scarlet Carolus Severin Silvana Mirkning Tibor Frey Vidal Viola Vreni Xaver Yerim Zach Ilkin