Hester's Exacting Accountancy

Also known as "My last two posts met, fell in love, and had a baby together."

Another Orange-Silver School hybrid, the spell being of the third rank and comprehensible by casters of level five and above. The skinflint wizard of the nineteenth aeon, Hester Zeleny, gave this spell her name and some of her nature.

This spell creates a communicative bond with up to ten thousand coins within a 10' radius of the caster, who must handle a few of the coins to get the spell working. Groups of coins that are visually hidden from the caster are not included.. The coins may be commanded to do any of the following within the spell's three-hour duration:

1. Count themselves. After 1 minute, a spokes-coin for the hoard - the most valuable metal, the most venerable date - leaps up and gives an exact count of the stash, by material and number. Coins speak in the voice of the monarch, deity or other personage on their obverse, otherwise in the voice of whatever heraldic beast decorates either side, and lacking even that, in a tinny, emotionless voice.

2. Pack themselves. In the space of 1 minute, the coins roll and dutifully hop into whatever new containers the caster provides, organizing themselves as best they can.

3. Roll on. The coins arise en masse, balance themselves on their edges, and roll as a herd, subject to the caster's will, as long as he or she maintains eye contact with the lead coins. The mass moves at a rate from 60' to 120.' Two-legged creatures who try to move with coins underfoot must save as if standing on magical grease or fall, unless the caster commands the swarm to avoid them.

4. Tell tales. One of the coins, at the caster's choice, once per casting of the spell, will relate how it last changed hands (other than to the caster). This may include what the trade was for, who stole it or picked it up, etc.

Five and Dime Stores: Coin-Based Houses

Going on an even deeper level than the previous two installments, once you know the general character of a street area, you can use coins to create a scene for encounters or exploration. The random facing of the coins thrown down create a twisty little street that may branch and fork, as the characters enter from the larger thoroughfare.

Penny Lane: Coin-Based Streets

The next step down from the district, in our coin-based city system, is the "street" - well, really, a 200 foot wide area that may contain one notable street and a number of side passages and alleys. The world of narrow streets is traversed by wider thoroughfares that connect the districts. One Page Streets lets you generate all of this with a handful of change (and you don't have to have 21 coins ... just recycle the ones that turn tails up).

This system also works for creating a full-sized town of 2000, or of fewer people with fewer hexes, as long as you use the district system to give it an overall character and main industry.

We Built This City On Nickels and Dimes

The Babbling Bane took Talysman's system of city "quarters" literally and used a handful of random coins to improvise a village layout.

I think there is huge potential in this idea and have expanded it to this One Page supplement. Taking a different tack, I have gone on the highest "zoom-out" level to 1/5 mile hexes holding 2000 people each, based on my sources regarding population density. It's likely that a future supplement will cover what exactly can be found in each of those hexes using a similar method. What's more, I also see a need for a more fine-grained table covering exactly what each industry and trade might be. So keep an eye on this space...

Bearing in mind the international audience, I've made the coin specification as generic as possible. If you are in the euro-zone (touch wood) with 8 different denominations of coins, for example, you could put 1 cent and 5 cent in the lowest class, 10 and 20 in the next lowest, then 50 cent, then 1/2EUR.