Coinage
The standard coin in day-to-day life is the copper obol, or co. It's a fat little coin, about five grams (the size of a nickel), and each city mints their own. This buys you a hardboiled egg, a broadsheet, a glass of lemonade on a hot day, a lead bullet, a pinch of snuff, or a ticket to a traveling show.
The most common coin for buying and selling goods is the silver obol, or so. It's the same size as the copper obol, but ten times more valuable. This buys you a good meal, a day of unskilled labor from the urban poor, a bed at a caravanserai, a skin full of wine, a bucket of oats for your horse, or a pouch of gunpowder.
For large transactions, there are silver doubles, silver trebles, silver tetrobles, and the silver drachm (six oboloi make one drachm). The rarely-used gold obol is the equivalent of 1 silver stater, 2 silver drachma or 12 silver obols; a gold drachm would be worth twelve silver drachma, seventy-two silver obols, or a jingling sack of seven-hundred-and-twenty copper obols. One gold obol buys you a high-quality backpack, a pair of leather boots, a big knife, a hunting dog, or a musical instrument. Note that an unskilled laborer needs to work two weeks (with Sundays off) to afford a pair of leather boots, assuming that he doesn't need to eat and when the workday is over he falls asleep standing up at the job site. If he's buying food and lodging during those two weeks then he... never buys a pair of leather shoes. Unskilled laborers weave reeds into shitty sandals. It sucks to be an unskilled laborer.
Six hundred obols, one hundred drachma or fifty staters (the weights, not the possibly-debased coins) take up one slot in your inventory; this is a mina, about 3000 grams of metal in a convenient-to-carry shape. Ten slots make one sack; the GLOG-standard "inventory capacity". A sack of silver is, conveniently, a talent of silver: one talent is ten minae, one-hundred librae, one-thousand drachma, or six-thousand obols. Don't try to compare these terms to historical usages. None of these align even slightly — well, actually, the talent is close enough, but I've been perusing Wikipedia pages about ancient coins until my eyes hurt and not a single one of those ancient fuckers could ever decide on how many tetradrachm to the sextertius, or how many asses make a shekel, or the relative values of an almost-tenth versus a two-tenth (closer to 3:2 than 1:2, I think), so I don't care any more. This is the system they use in the Obol Desert.
Trade Goods
These are generic high-value low-bulk trade goods, of the kind it is economical to carry overland on camelback. Food, water, lumber, stone — these are valuable, of course, but not enough to justify the high transport costs. The price listed is the purchase price in cities that produce the goods or import them into the desert; generally, you can sell trade goods for significant premiums depending on how far the product has traveled, about 1% per mile of main roads. Specific cities may pay several times the purchase price for select goods; others may have no interest in a product at all. The wily trader keeps track of shortcuts, seasonal changes, and all the little cultural variances which make Andona pay dear for ghoul vinegar and the bedouin trade gold nuggets for an ounce of green dye.
- Animal Skins. Leathers and furs harvested in the deep desert can be sold to the wealthy city-dwellers, if you ever make it home alive.. One sack costs anywhere between 1–10 silver minae.
- Asbestos. A miraculous mineral, more valuable than pearls, which can be woven into fireproof shrouds or used as a perpetual wick. One sack costs 15 silver minae.
- Black Dye. Blacker than venom, nearly priceless, imported from far, far, far, far away. One sack costs 20 gold minae.
- Chrism. A strongly-scented substance harvested from certain trees and mixed with olive oil to make it liquid. Medicos use it to treat injuries and hasten the healing of surgeries, while cultists use it to fuel demon-propitiating lanterns in underground shrines. One sack costs 15 silver minae.
- Copper. The price of copper is constant between cities, making it a poor trade good (there's no profit in moving money around in a pre-FinTech world), but a good choice as a stable resource to trade for other things. One sack costs 1 silver mina, and is 1 copper talent.
- Cotton. A lightweight and marvelously soft and durable textile imported by Foreigners, whose merchants were surprised to learn could sell the sails of their ships for admirable profits. One sack costs 8 silver mina.
- Foreign Pottery. Faintly translucent, like fine animal bone, but hard and heavy like a bronze vessel. Particularly fine pieces may be worth alone as much as a sack of the normal stuff, which costs 12 silver minae.
- Green Dye. Produced in the southern hills, beloved by the bedouin of the desert. One sack costs 5 silver minae.
- Ghoul Vinegar. Explosive and poisonous. Alchemists require large amounts of this stuff for their work, and wizards use it to pickle the eyeballs of horrible things from beyond the horizon of Xater. One sack costs 20 silver minae.
- Glue. Adhesive, produced from pitch or animal bone in the desert and brought to the cities to make boats and other things. One sack costs 6 silver minae.
- Gold. A stable resource, not a trade good. One sack is 1 gold talent.
- Lead. Dug up in certain desert mines, and used everywhere to cast bullets, produce reliable trade-weights, sweeten wine, counterfeit coins and assemble bizarre arcane devices. One sack costs 5 copper minae.
- Machinery. Springs, sprockets, gears and cogs, fine chains and delicate mechanisms. Andona's primary export. One sack is 30 silver minae.
- Red Dye. Cheap and easy to sell. One sack costs 3 silver minae.
- Rubber. Extracted from groves of strange trees in northern cities, useful in making waterproofed clothing and containers. One sack costs 15 silver minae.
- Salt. Used to flavor and preserve food, extremely cheap on the shores of the ocean but increasing in price at double the rate as you travel inland. One sack costs 1 silver mina.
- Sandalwood. Maintains its rich scent for many years. Small chests of this wood are used to store fine clothing, sweet treats, or the jewels of blue-bloods. One sack costs 6 silver minae.
- Silk. A wondrously rich, shining textile imported by Foreigners. Takes dye beautifully. One sack costs 20 silver minae.
- Spices. Grown on far-off islands and always expensive. One sack costs 15 gold minae.
- Spirit of Wine. The most common alchemical product, created by carefully heating wine and capturing its essence in perfumery stills. Generally too cheap to be worth carrying, but a small amount of the good stuff is a valuable gift to a tribe of desert neanderthals. One sack costs 2 copper minae.
- Steel. The best-quality steel is made in Dimashkus, a city which predates even ancient and mighty Andona. Blades, guns and toolheads of dimashkene have a +1 bonus. Purchased in the city itself, billets of the steel are one sack for 15 silver minae.
Camels
The common pedigrees of camelids perform similarly in similar conditions. Despite this fact there are significant differences of price and availability, partly due to economic realities and partly due to desert superstitions and traditions. Pedigrees are differentiated by four factors: their sturdiness, their stubbornness, their virtues and their vices. Sturdiness determines how long a camel can survive extreme conditions. Camels have great stores of vitality, but not limitless ones, and when those stores are exhausted only food and water and rest at an oasis can replenish them. When a camel's sturdiness is challenged, roll a d6 and compare it to their Sturdiness score; if the number is higher than the score, the camel becomes weak. A camel that would be weakened twice lies down patiently in the sand and waits to die. Stubbornness is the measure of how willing the camel is to put up with its driver's stupidity. When asked to do something it does not wish to do, roll a d6 and compare it to the score; if the result is equal or lower, the camel refuses to participate until the situation meaningfully changes (and please keep in mind that camels are very difficult to deceive). Virtues and vices are unique to each breed and generally only relevant for riders, not camel-drivers.
A brief aside — stubbornness is already scored assuming that you are doing your utmost to persuade the camel. Hitting the camel with a stick is factored in. Yelling at the camel will do no one any good. Screaming at the camel, begging the camel, threatening the camel, threatening the camel's family, insulting it, beating it over the head with a wrench, WHERE 🔧 IS 🔧 MY 🔧 MONEY, none of these things will shift the stubbornness score. Camels are intelligent enough to be vulnerable to psionic damage, but cannot be swayed by mystical techniques.
Any normal camel can go 30 miles in a day carrying eight sacks, 20 miles carrying nine or ten, or 10 miles struggling under eleven or twelve. A rider is two sacks, and their inventory is a third. You can bump more heavily-encumbered camels up to a higher speed, but they roll for sturdiness at the end of the day. A camel can be provoked into a dash of forty miles an hour for one minute at a time, checking stubbornness at the end of each minute. Camels who have stubbornly refused to dash will not do so again until the next day, unless their lives are in danger. Camels can go a week without food or water with no issue. If running them like this, at the end of the week they'll want to drink 3 sacks of water in ten minutes and eat a sack of food over the course of a few hours.
Humans can go 30 miles in a day carrying three slots, 20 miles in a day carrying up to one sack, or 10 miles a day carrying up to two. A three-liter waterskin occupies one slot. In the desert, humans require two liters of water per day, plus one liter per 5 miles walked. At a three-liter water deficit, a human has disadvantage on all checks. At a six-liter water deficit, humans fail all checks automatically and begin to vividly hallucinate. When a human is in debt 10 liters, they die in extreme agony. Humans are not as good as camels.
Important Camel Lineages
Baklo Line-Drawer
Queen of the desert, charcoal-furred beauty beloved by bedouins, common in every caravan. Their ruby-red eyes are filled with ancient and malign intelligence that looks with scorn on the works of man. They take riders well, but they know what blades are, and muskets, and fear them with a rational self-interest.
Sturdiness 2, Stubbornness 3
Virtue: Intense loyalty and startling intelligence. Baklos have been known to drag injured riders to safety over fifty miles of desert; if they like you, they'll even drag you by your collar instead of your hair.
Vice: Hatred of violence. Baklos will never enter a melee, preferring to flee to a safe distance where they can keep an eye on things. Checks stubbornness before carrying a rider with a drawn weapon, or to not dash for cover if fired upon.
Price: 3 silver minae, anywhere.
Oeth Congenial
Taller than any other camel by a head — and what a large and impressive head it is! Said to have been bred by an ancient, morbidly obese lord who ruled much of the coast of the desert in bygone days. A royal bloodline, then, and one crowned with an oilslick mane like a melanistic lion's.
Sturdiness 3, Stubbornness 4
Virtue: Noble bearing. Checks stubbornness on the first overloaded day, only checking sturdiness that day if its will fails.
Vice: Immense pride. Congenials will not carry anyone who disparages their breed, and will viciously attack any who insults them personally while refusing to carry their baggage (whatever trick you're thinking of trying, they've seen through it before). Only placated by a spa day, in town.
Price: 6 silver minae in the cities, 10 silver minae in the desert.
Midnight Cool
Resembles its cousin, the Baklo, at a distance. Close inspection reveals the mincing step, milk-white gums, and ingratiating sneer that marks this breed like a fiery brand. The Cools are notoriously pliable — for a camel, obviously.
Sturdiness 1, Stubbornness 1
Virtue: Servile grace. Does not spit, and will not make a sound unless commanded. Some swear that Cools can walk through puddles of water without leaving a ripple.
Vice: Oily meekness. Midnight Cools must check stubbornness if left alone for more than ten minutes; on a failure they have walked off following someone, or something.
Price: 2 silver minae in the cities (or free if you steal it), 6 silver minae in the desert.
Ghoubka Canny
Its short neck is dwarfed by a pair of tuberous humps. Slablike, sullen brow. Unique odor. No lack of disrespect. Favored by the Foreigners, for obvious reasons.
Sturdiness 2, Stubbornness 3
Virtue: Severe addiction to foreign drugs. Cannies will reroll a failed stubbornness check for an ounce of imported tobacco (36 ounces fit in 1 slot, and cost 1 gold obol), as many times as you can stand hearing it chew and seeing its eyes roll back in pleasure.
Vice: Severe addiction to foreign drugs. Requires one ounce of imported tobacco to put in a days work. Cannies carry nothing, not rider, not food, not water, without the daily ration.
Price: 3 silver minae in the coastal cities, 1 silver obol in the desert (typically from someone who has run out of tobacco).
Suus Gradial
The bedouin war-mount. Gradials only resemble camels from some distance; desert legend says the first of the breed were somehow cross-bred with scorpigans. Anyone coming face to face with a Gradial, and seeing the twin pupils of their eyes, and their wolfish fangs, is forced to admit that old legends sometimes bear a grain of truth.
Sturdiness 3, Stubbornness 3
Virtue: Petulcus enthusiasm. Lashes out in combat, striking at +2 to-hit with a bite (1d6) as it goes or a pair of thunderous trotters (1d10) if reined up.
Vice: Plain laziness. Gradials would literally rather die than carry a fourth sack. If somehow surprised (say, by a heavy person landing on them), will front-flip and lie still until the weight is gone.
Price: 20 silver minae in the cities, 15 silver minae in the desert (if you can find a bedouin breeder who likes you)
Mirror-Finished Radical
Radicals are held in superstitious terror by the Hillmen, who insist that feral herds of the beasts are a sure sign of evil spirits. The bedouin hold them to be sacred agents of the Green, sacrificing their own bodies to protect watering holes from defilement. City-folk believe that coats of their shining hair repel disease. Nobody will sell you one for cheap.
Sturdiness 2, Stubbornness 3
Virtue: Cleanliness that verges on godliness. Radicals produce no waste, and their milk and blood are clear citrus-scented water. They can consume any organic material and many inorganic ones. Radicals produce one liter of drinking water per day, or two on days where they have consumed something particularly dangerous.
Vice: Beacon of sin. Those who ride a Radical suffer a -1 reaction penalty with all civilized folk. You will be assumed to have leprosy, or syphilis, or both. Caravans with large numbers of Radicals will be taken for plague pilgrimages, and may require a fast-talking captain to be allowed rooms in small caravansaries.
Price: 30 silver minae in the cities, 45 silver minae in the desert.
Beasts
These common animals can be purchased in most large bazaars. Raised in captivity, they are kept for their venom or their pelts, or simply as exotic and inadvisable pets. Met in the wild, some are quite dangerous.
Stockwhip Asp (purchasable for 1 silver drachm)
0.5HD (1HP), AC as unarmored, 5 morale
Possessed of long wiry tails which they swing in circles to produce an irritating whir like a brewing storm. Not aggressive, but will bite the shit out of you if startled. Tradition holds that assassins know how to delicately trick these snakes into biting fruit, injecting them with deadly venom for wicked harvest.
No. Appearing: 2d6
Movement: faster than walking pace
Code: Desert (2 sins)
Intelligence: animalistic
Attacks: -2 to-hit, two bites (1 damage, HRTS or take 1d8 poison)
Blood-Red Scavenger Worm Long as Your Arm (purchasable for 1 silver stater)
0.5HD (1HP), AC as unarmored, too stupid to check morale
Foul creatures, the bane of caravans. The color of fresh blood. Any bedouin or hermit will pay a silver drachm for a dead worm; for one thing, destroying scavenger worms is surely worth a bounty, and for another, they are delicious when smoked thoroughly over a low fire.
No. Appearing: 3d6 (a result of 1 on any die indicates an encounter with a 2HD blood-red scavenger worm long as your whole body)
Movement: pathetic hopping and flopping, but can burrow through sand faster than a man can crawl
Code: Monster
Intelligence: deterministic and easily manipulated
Attacks: +1 to-hit, toothy bite (1 damage, anticoagulant venom reduces CON and STR by 1 as the torn flesh bleeds)
Powerful Nose — scavenger worms can smell flesh (living or dead) in contact with sand at a distance of two miles. They preferentially target intelligent creatures, but will chew the feet off of a camel if nothing else presents itself.
Scorpigan, Green (purchasable for 5 silver drachma)
1HD (4HP), AC as chain, 7 morale
Muscular arachnids as big as wolves. Green scorpigans are known to travel in harems, not fear fire, and to rot in hours when slain.
No. Appearing: 1d6 males and one Alpha Female (6HP)
Movement: quiet creeping, or camel-speed galloping
Code: Desert (1 sin)
Intelligence: pack-hunting predator
Attacks: +1 to-hit, two pinches (1 damage). If both hit, one strike from bewareful stinger-tail (1d6 poison, check HRTS or unable to benefit from food or rest for 24 hours)
Rending Charge — in combat, a scorpigan can charge a target slower than itself and automatically hit with both pinches. Only one scorpigan can charge a target per turn, and they require 30' of runup.
Alpha Female — the larger female scorpigans have larger pinchers, which deal 2 damage, and more venom, which deals 1d10 damage and applies 48 hours of debuffs on a failed HRTS.
Black Moth, Baby (purchasable for a silver stater)
Winged insects larger than your outspread hands. Suicidally attracted to light-sources. Often believed to herald death. Can be harvested for one dose of flashpowder, if you are patient and have a good comb.
1HD (2HP), AC as leather, 5 morale
No. Appearing: 2d6
Movement: flight as graceful as a fat seagull
Code: Desert (0 sins)
Intelligence: bugge
Attacks: no
Psionics: those who mean black moths harm save vs. charm to approach within melee range. If failed, suffer one minute of disgusting wracking ugly-sobs: drip snot, produce a lot of racket, and apply a -2 to any checks that require un-teary vision.
Black Dust Wings — when a black moth takes fire damage, they detonate in a 10' fireball. Save or take 1d6 fire damage.
Tiny Jumping Lizard (purchasable for a silver drachm, another buys a little woven cage)
0HD (0HP), AC as leather, 5 morale
Sings at sunrise and sunset. Delicious when eaten raw, but it's good luck to leave him be.
Movement: as tiny jumping lizard
Code: Desert (1 sin)
Intelligence: negligible
Attacks: +0 to-hit, ferocious nip (0 damage)
Psionics: carried in its small cage, kept fat and plump with crumbs of food, the song of this tiny lizard soothes the soul of its owner. Rest heals 1 more hitpoint than normal, or restores 1 extra point of stat damage. Those who have knowingly harmed or eaten tiny jumping lizards cannot benefit from this until they have assuaged their guilt at a shrine to the Lizard Gods out in the deep desert.
Albino Camelroo (adolescents purchasable for 5 silver drachma)
2HD (6HP), AC as leather, 5 morale
Ghostly-white creatures with long powerful limbs and two large humps of fat protecting the spine. Well-adapted to life in the desert, eating cacti and stomping scorpigans flat. Quality pelts may fetch as much as a gold drachm.
No. Appearing: 2d6 females, 1d6 adolescents (1HD, 3HP), 1 alpha male (10HP, does not check morale when protecting wives)
Movement: bounds and leaps as fast as a horse
Code: Desert (1 sin)
Intelligence: pack animal
Attacks: +2 to-hit, pair of ferocious punches (1d6 damage) or a tremendous double-barreled kick (1d6+2 damage, fly 20' back, take impact damage as if falling)
Psionics: alpha males will challenge large or ostentatiously dressed combatants, filling them with injured pride. Save vs. charm or attacks against any other target have disadvantage.
Coyote-Mouth Cattle (a cow for six silver drachm, a bull for one gold drachm)
3HD (12HP), AC as leather, 7 morale
Built like stone towers, with steely hooves and sharp fangs for tearing carrion or gnawing trees. Domesticated herds live in symbiosis with the Reaver culture. Wild herds live in oasis-rich regions, along the banks of the Neilos, or on the shores of the ocean, with each population being slightly different in size and hide pattern. Outside of mating season the cows travel in large related clans protected by a single massive Grandmother who may mass as much as 1000kg. Desert folklore holds that coyote-mouth cattle speak a language that they never use in the presence of bipeds, even in extreme need.
No. Appearing: 2d6 bulls (16HP), or 5d6 cows with 5d6 juveniles (1HD, 3HP) and a Grandmother Cow (4HD, 20HP)
Movement: like a bigass cow
Code: Charnel God (1 sin)
Intelligence: cowlike for example
Attacks: +3 to-hit, a charge at a distance (1d6+3, target checks MOVE or falls prone) or a powerful kick from the rear legs when close (2d6+3). Bulls with at least 20' of runup deal maximum damage with their charge.
Psionics: receptive to telepathic communication. In combat, Grandmother Cows may force an intelligent target to check SKLL or become overwhelmed with brainfog and lose their turn.
Grandmother Cow — intelligent as an old woman. directs other cows with powerful telepathic broadcasts.
Treasurer
A large caravan might consist of a handful of wealthy merchants, two or three servants for each merchant, the same number of retainers and bodyguards, a five-man squad of mercenary guardsmen, a dozen pilgrims, a score of camel-drivers, and three or four score camels — not to mention the wizards, slaves, doctors, captured bandits, mailmen, tourists, and the Foreign cartographers and rubbernecks who inevitably end up trotting behind. Such a group needs its officers.
One member of the caravan (that is to say, one real-life player) is to be elected treasurer. The treasurer tracks the financial holdings and obligations of the caravan. This includes the denominations and value of all the coinage and bullion and gems, the wages to be paid out to hirelings, the conversion rate between various mints, the distance that various goods have traveled, opportunities for larger profits in specific cities, &c &c &c. In short, one player handles a bit of the paperwork and math so the DM doesn't have to. That player earns an extra 10 XP per session. If the DM checks the financials and discovers a discrepancy, then the caravan was surreptitiously robbed at some point: half the money (by the DM's estimate) has vanished and the treasurer doesn't get the extra XP that session.
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