It may have been Autumn, but the sky was clear, and standing out in the open was pretty uncomfortable and boring. I tried to take my mind off it by thinking about banks.

The fact that Fantasyland didn’t have banks was an itch at the back of my mind that I couldn’t scratch. They didn’t even have the concept. Felicia and Kyle had just looked blankly at me when I brought up the idea. They knew about loans, sure, but loans here were done on a personal basis. Either you got a loan from a rich friend, with the understanding that you’d pay it back when you could - possibly with interest, depending on how a good a friend they were.

Or, they weren’t a friend, they were just rich. Much like when the Mafia loaned you money, they now owned you until the loan was repaid. That was mostly a game for Nobles, and it was part of their poor reputation. There was some middle-ground — guilds would occasionally loan startup funds to a member who was just starting — but those cases were practically family already.

The people here didn’t think they were missing out, but I was sure that there were a lot of growth opportunities that were being lost. I wasn’t sure why they didn’t have banks, but I did have an idea that it was all due to the Dungeons.

History wasn’t my subject, but the Firm loved playing up its connection to the past. There had been a display of the history of banks in our lobby for twelve weeks, so I’d picked up a few things. Banks had developed out of the medieval profession of money-changing.

You have to understand that by modern standards — and perhaps even by their own standards — monetary systems in medieval times were just insane. Never mind the fact that every Kingdom, Principality, or independent city felt the need to issue its own currency. We have that issue today. In those days though, there were no standards — for any country — about the size, purity or denomination of its coins over time. If you were lucky, they might stay the same for the reign of a single King. But that was very much the exception. Most Kings varied the currency according to their finances and the current value of precious metals — which varied hugely as different mines were discovered or tapped out.

Given how long coins lasted, even if you were just dealing with a single country's currency, there could easily be fifty or a hundred different coins that you needed to know the value of if you wanted to trade. It took a professional to handle that sort of complexity.

So money changing became a niche, difficult, but insanely profitable occupation. After all, if you’re the person who knows the value of both sides of the trade, and the other guy doesn’t… well, it becomes what my old boss used to call a moderately favourable trading environment.

Now, if you’re trading money, you need to store a lot of it, which means you need a lot of security to keep people from stealing it. Pretty soon, the money changers were the best-protected places in town, and they set up a side business in storing other people's money. At first, they charged for the service, but then they realised that they could lend the money out, started paying interest, and there you have your banks.

So why didn’t it happen here? Well, first of all, no money-changers. Nobody minted coins in this world - they all came from dungeons. And while rulers could customise the name and design of the coins through the [Territory Status] interface, they all had the same weights and purity.

Second of all, while this world did build vaults for security, the great majority of fortunes were kept in people's pockets. Or at least in their spatial bags attached to their belt. Spatial bags weren’t cheap, but once you hit the point where you were carrying hundreds of platinum coins around, it made sense to just get a bag and keep them all in there.

Vaults were seen in this society as something for organisations that needed to control access to their fortune but didn’t want to restrict it to just one person. I suppose we should have counted ourselves lucky that Baron Marseau had just locked his fortune up and not taken it with him.

Which left me in a bit of a quandary, as I wanted to encourage development in Talnier, but that took money. So much money. More money than the Town Council had available. We did have taxes, but that was all going on other things… like what was happening today.

“Talnier welcomes the brave and gallant Royal forces sent from the King himself to protect us…”

The mayor was making a pretty speech, while the rest of us stood on the dais and tried to look happy at the bunch of extra mouths to feed. Well, it wasn’t like they’d be doing nothing.

Additional Defense detected - 1 Territory Point awarded.

New Threat detected - Hector Rodakis

Well, shit. I’d expected the troops to be a mixed bag, but this suggested that the Captain was going to be actively trying to take control of the city from me. Despite my trade agreement efforts, the Tribal Council hadn’t disappeared from my list of threats. At least we had some more defences, and I had some more Territory points. I hadn’t gotten any more when we’d added the illicit funds to the treasury, leading me to guess that I got one point for each 50,000 gold added. Hopefully, I didn’t lose them when we spent the money.

I eyed the new threat to my rule as he joined us on the dais to get introduced to the people and ourselves. Wait, I didn’t like the sound of that. The threat to our fledgeling democracy — that sounded better.

He was a big guy, blonde and blue-eyed and with a face that was… rugged, I guess. Strong chin, clean-shaven. He looked every inch what a military hero was supposed to look like. Considering that his men had marched up here in just a day or two, he had the stats to back it up.

We exchanged names, bowed or curtseyed as required, and then the mayor started explaining where they would be quartered. We’d be providing the upkeep, which meant housing, feeding and clothing them. They had their own uniforms at the moment of course, but we’d be washing them, fixing them, and providing new ones as required. They’d be taking care of their own armaments, but they might well be monopolising our existing weapon-smith.

We needed to expand our weapon production, which got me back to thinking about encouraging development — and banks. I let the procession leave me behind as they headed up to the new barracks, while I thought about it.

Making it a function of the Council was the wrong idea, I thought. Not just because I wasn’t a Communist, but because when I thought about the idea of setting up a bank, I started to smell the possibility of money. A bank without competition would be fantastically profitable, and I wanted those profits to belong to me.

But I didn’t have enough money. Given the novelty of the idea (and the lack of support from the Crown), I wouldn’t be able to loan more than I had. In fact, I’d probably have to keep a massively inefficient stockpile until people got used to the idea. And that was assuming I could get people to keep their money with me.

I needed investors. The solution to, and cause of, most of a firm’s financial difficulties. Nobles were out, of course. There weren’t any here and I couldn’t trust them besides. Adventurers though… they certainly earned money quickly, but they tended to spend it just as quickly. They’d probably appreciate the idea of a steady cash flow, if I presented it right.

“What do you mean you’re going to solve your literacy problems?” Felicia asked. “You don’t have a problem with literacy?”

“There aren’t enough people with [Scribe], is my problem,” I explained.

“Oh right, you were going to set up a school or something?” she said, casting her mind back to my plans in Anchorbury.

“That was the old plan,” I said excitedly. “Now, I can create a new profession that unlocks [Scribe] and [Calculate] — and doesn’t have any pre-requisites!”

“Can you do that?” she asked sceptically. “Wouldn’t someone already have tried?”

“I think there’s a general consensus that too many wizards are bad for a Kingdom,” I said. “And the best way to keep people from being wizards is to keep them from reading.”

“Are they bad for the country?”

I shrugged. “When I say consensus, I’m talking about between the King and his predecessors — oh, and I guess some Nobles might have access to this interface as well.”

“So you figure that they’re wrong.”

“I feel sure that isn’t an unpopular opinion. Now, hang on a sec while I go through the interface and see if it is possible. I want to run through it with you before I commit to it.”

I opened up [Territory Status] and went into the [Professions] tab, and selected [New]

Profession Name: [ ]

Profession Description: [ ]

Pre-requisites: [Level 2] [Stat-based] [Skill Based] [Special]

Skill Unlocks: [ ] [ ] [ ] [+] [-]

Skill Bonus: [ ] [ ] [ ] [+] [-]

Special: [+]

Territory Point Cost: 3

Development Point Cost: 5

I played around with the options for a bit. There seemed to be a template for each value of Level pre-requisite, changing the number of skills and, as it went higher, changing the Development point cost. Pre-requisites lowered the Territory point cost, but I didn’t want too many of those. Soon I had something like a [Profession]

Profession Name: [Talnier Official]

Profession Description: [Bringing civilisation to the world, one ledger at a time]

Pre-requisites: [Level 2] [INT 4] [None] [None]

Skill Unlocks: [Scribe] [Calculate] [ ] [+] [-]

Skill Bonus: [Bargain] [Persuade] [ ] [+] [-]

Special: [+]

Territory Point Cost: 2

Development Point Cost: 5

Four was the minimum requirement for stats and saved me one point. Now I had to decide on another two skills, or get rid of them and have a minimalist profession. I tried it out and saw some odd stuff. When I removed the Skill Unlock, the Territory Point cost went down by one, but when I removed the Skill Bonus, the Territory Point cost went up to four, while the Development cost went down to zero.

A [Profession] that was free to take did appeal, but I didn’t have four Territory points at the moment, so I added the skills back in again and went looking at the skill list. It wasn’t long before I found the perfect skill.

Profession Name: [Talnier Official]

Profession Description: [Bringing civilisation to the world, one ledger at a time]

Pre-requisites: [Level 2] [INT 4] [None] [None]

Skill Unlocks: [Scribe] [Calculate] [Bureaucracy] [+] [-]

Skill Bonus: [Bargain] [Persuade] [Bureaucracy] [+] [-]

Special: [+]

Territory Point Cost: 1

Development Point Cost: 5

Putting the same skill in both slots reduced the cost as well, I saw.

“What do you think?” I asked Felicia. I made an illusion of what I was seeing.

“What does the [Bureaucracy] skill do?” She asked. I could tell she was looking at the skill description as she asked.

[Bureaucracy]: Skill for managing and navigating professional organisations.

“How do you navigate an organisation?” she asked incredulously.

“Eh, it’s about knowing what forms to fill out and who to talk to, to get things done,” I said. “Probably things like filing and developing procedures to get things done as well.”

“I see… Did you want to add in a language?”

“There isn’t a language skill, I checked.”

“No, languages are bought with Development points. Some professions have a bonus that would normally be bought with Development points. I’ve never seen a profession with a language, but it should be possible, and you want to promote ties with the Tribes, right?

“Right,” I said. That was what the Special section was for. I went into it and found that I could, indeed, add a language. I could even…

Profession Name: [Talnier Official]

Profession Description: [Bringing civilisation to the world, one ledger at a time]

Pre-requisites: [Level 2] [INT 4] [None] [None]

Skill Unlocks: [Scribe] [Calculate] [Bureaucracy] [+] [-]

Skill Bonus: [Bargain] [Persuade] [Bureaucracy] [+] [-]

Special: Language: Lattoran/Tribal Common [+]

Territory Point Cost: 2

Development Point Cost: 5

If they didn’t know Latorran, they’d get it, while if they did, they’d get Tribal Common.

“So you take the profession, and all of a sudden you speak Tribal?” I said.

“That’s how languages work,” Felicia said. Just like it was common sense.