> Crown swaps a monopoly for some sort of financial assistance doesn't
> quite ring true for me as a description of how things operate within the
> Lunar Empire. The Emperor has vast sums of money passing through his
> coffers like wine through his body because he is the Emperor and that
> money is his by right. He really doesn't need anymore as he doesn't
> have any major enemies on his borders.
Yeah, I generally concur. I said "crown" so as to be a little vague about who the real-world human actors were. It was rarely the English king by himself. Often it woould be a privy council (which might be dominated by one figure or faction) or a powerful prime minister (Richelieu, frex). Also, the fact that the Emperor gets all this money raises the question "from where?" Pre-modern societies generally sucked at raising taxes in any way that any modern person would consider fair. Selling the right to raise taxes in a region has a long history. So does selling monopolies in exchange for regular payments. (Really, they are the same thing. Moderns just don't usually see it that way.) I think the Emperor gets a lot of his dough that way.Since he's also the head of (almost) all the lunar churches, the also gets a cut of their tithes. There, I look to the ancien regime in France for inspiration. (First because it was confusingly diverse, just like the Lunar empire.) In some regions, the local church got to keep most of their tithes; in most, over time, the higher-up, politically appointed bureaucrats sucked the parishes dry, to the point that some local notables had to be drafted into the parish councils (since they had the financial responsibility for collecting the tithes and keeping the church in good repair).
To summarize, I think that the Lunar empire's fiscal state is very messy, very inconsistent, rife with politics, and filled with self-interest.
> The monopolies would more likely be given by lower ranking officials in
> order to enrich _themselves_, not the Empire. When the locals put up
> some barriers, the merchants would call upon influence to get lunar
> troops to crush the resistance. That in return opens further
> opportunities for trade which requires expansion of Lunar authority for
> protection and so forth. The Emperor appears in person from time to
> time because kerbstomping rebels makes him look good to the folks back
> home.
I totally agree that this would be a common situation. After all, the lord governor commander of the XYZ area had to pay a lot to get that appointment; how do you expect him to recover his investment if he can't tax some new people?
I'm not sure how much that dynamic played out in the decision to conquer all the way to the sea. There were clearly a lot of mythological reasons, too (as you point out in a different post). I think the best we can say is that the self-interest of some lunar officials reinforced the mythological crusading of others to form a political coalition that was, at least for a while, able to gather a truly impressive set of magical and military resources. The unravelling of that coalition provides all kinds of interesting challenges and opportunities for player characters on both sides of the conflict. (E.g., extended contest: prove to monopolist of pickeld sunfish imports that he'll never make a lunar out of his monopoly and that his coalition partners have cheated him.)
Todd asks:
> If only high value/small volume items can make that route, then what do these
> monopolists send to Holy Country and beyond to acquire the goods you list?
A fine question, and one that I'm probably going to fail to answer, because I'm still stuck in thinking about the colonial experience, where it was refined goods in exchange for rawer goods. Here are a few suggestions: wine (regional variation make for marketability, plus the edges of the Pelorian basin looks good for grape-growing); distilled spirits (we know the Emperor drinks brandy!); olive oil (IMG, olives would be native to Dara Happa), horses (because of the fine Pentan stocks and doing double as beasts of burden during parts of the trip); whatever special minerals get mined from the Blue Moon Plateau; whatever spices grow in the Pelorian basin. Maybe cotton grows well in Peloria. Given all the marshes and civilitaion, maybe linnen and papyrus would be another export. (i know I listed these as coming the other way, but I really have no idea of where they grow. Peloria's weather is warmer than it really ought to be, so some of these might be "new" crops only introduced since the Empire began.) Magical items created from unusual lunar magic might also get exported. (I'm thinking things like the little toys that used to be one of China's big exports.)
Also, to the list of things going the other way, I should add salt (dried from ocean water -- quite valuable for preserveing food) and strange minerals from the volcanic regions of Esrolia.
It may be that the Empire has the problem that some economists say the Roman empire had. Supposedly, the Roman empire had little to exchange for spices and silk from China, so exported gold and silver. When your money is gold and silver, that means that your money supply contracts over time and you experience gentle deflation (which was not as much of a problem back then as it would be now). If that was the case for the Lunar empire, some bureaucrats might very well have pushed for the conquest of the holy country in order to tax the evil foreign merchants who were unfairly pocketing too much of our money. (Also, note that deflation, a consistent legal system, and relatively rapid transport in the Pelorian basin could give rise to privately-issued monetary tokens that are exchangable for gold of silver, but are not fully backed -- i.e. paper money).
Finally, the Romans also "imported" slaves from conquered areas. This seems like it would work for the Lunars, too. In Roman times, the conquest of new areas and the importation of its former residents as slaves had significant social and economic effects on the empire. The big influx would lower the price of labor relative to the price of land and supposedly helped lead to the success of the big estates. (I think that had more to do with the success with which the aristocracy manipulated the tax system, but that should be common in Dara Happa, too.) If easy riverine transport had been available through to the Holy Country, you can see how the Pelorian basin could have exported staples like grain from big estates using slave labor. (This was common in Roman north Africa.) That could have been self-sustaining (if not really very nice). The failure of riverine transport for bulky products kind of makes that whole plan collapse -- which leads to interesting role-playing possibilities.
Now I really want to be part of the society that the Emperor commissions to remove the obstacles to riverine transport to the ocean. Let's see: support someone who can control the chaos in Snakepipe Hollow, cut a deal with Delecti (or else kill him), placate the watery entities in the Creek-Stream River, clear the way from the bottom of the swamp to the sea . . . hey, that might help drain the swamp and placate the watery entities, so maybe start with that. And toll shrines -- as soon as possible. Gotta repay the loan I got to pay the bribes I paid to get this gig . . . Then we can see about a road westwards out of Snakepipe Hollow.
Chris Lemens
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