A Letter from the First Bank of Steel Horse Crossing
To the Citizens of Steel Horse Crossing and its surrounding environs:
Recently, I visited with your Town Council to provide information about concerns that the First Bank of Steel Horse Crossing had regarding the locally used currency of Lug Nuts, Spark Plugs, and Pistons. I am sure the Council would be happy to discuss the matter with you at length, but the crux of it boils down to the Bank having concerns regarding the valuation of a currency that no longer holds value to its current citizens beyond that of Tradition, as the originators of the currency have long since left the area. Compounding this, there has been additional distrust as criminal manipulation and trickery has created a mercantile loss of confidence in a medium of exchange for which we hold no real control over.
For these and other reasons, not excluding the recent difficulties regarding widespread starvation due to scarcity of produce and trade goods, the Board has moved to divest itself of assets backed by the aforementioned Lug Nuts and begin an orderly transitional shift to a new note issued and backed by this Bank, supported by a tangible good that provides a lasting sense of stability, nourishment, and sustenance to the community that we support: Cheese.
The First Bank of Steel Horse Crossing will begin issuing ration vouchers, backed by the Bank and through a partnership with a local monastery. An individual ration voucher will be worth 1 Cheese Curd, with greater quantities of course being equal in value to appropriately sized pieces of Cheese.
To keep this transition orderly and all those who need food to get it, currency exchange services that do not involve Trade Notes will be suspended. Lug Nuts will still be accepted by our offices at this time.
Regards,
Thomas Maddox
Vice President, First Bank of Steel Horse Crossing
Out of Character Transparency
Hi, everyone. You probably have questions, so I’m going to do my best to answer them preemptively. Since Live, we have been unable to order Lug. Everything we’ve done since then, every module that sent Lug out, and every zombie you looted has been running off of existing/recycled inventory. Developing a new Currency is not a fast process, and we had delays while we prioritized our time working on other things (like running game each month). My thanks to our Team, including Dan who has since stepped back, for all the work that went into this project.
The recent narrative involving the Bank and the Town Council’s Bank Account was not really intended to be interacted with in the usual ways. The Bank Account getting frozen originally was part of a Black Market plot gone sideways at the time, and the current narratives involving crime and Dangerous Routes is 100% plot that’s designed to be interacted with, but All This™ also gave us a nice story insertion for the Bank choosing to transition from one object that was seen of arguable value to another that held more intrinsic value. We wanted to provide some narrative basis for *why* the Currency was going to change. We hope you enjoy that part, rather than something less fun like a handwave and an OOC “Ope”; we’ve tried to interweave this with other ongoing plotlines (which are designed to be interacted with!) so it felt more organic. But in the end, we needed to switch Currencies.
Narratively, the Bank has never really been the issuer or backer of Lug. Lug was issued primarily through two (mostly NPC) factions back during DR: WI’s creation, and those groups have been long absent from our setting. The Bank dealt in it because everyone else did. In short, we’ve all been using a fiat currency, partially because OOC we had all these cards that we wanted to keep using. So we created a narrative where the Bank looks at the existing situation, decides it’s going to create its own, make it a currency backed by actual trade goods, and continue operating as a Bank with much more faith and trust in a currency that hasn’t been propped up and dragged along.
We will be disbursing the new Currency organically and naturally, and not doing Lug-Cheese exchanges at Public Works. Trade Notes for Cheese will be exchanged as normal, but in general we are intending a more gradual transition. Lug will still be accepted by NPCs and Public Works for now; if/when that changes, we will give you a headsup. I do not intend to even *consider* that decision until the end of the 2026 season. At the end of the day, ordering a Currency from scratch is pretty expensive and we want to see how our initial order holds up over the rest of the year.
TL;DR
- We had an OOC need to change Currency
- Lug will be accepted as norm, for at least awhile
- You will have to obtain Cheese within normal mechanical means; no exchanges