Wealth of City-States, Villages, Trading Houses etc

Setting
#1

Dear Athasians,
I am looking for opinions on how much wealth some people or communities can or should have, in gp, sp, cp and bits. Maybe you remember some sources or can make an guess based on prices, everything is welcomed. The Tribe of One Trilogy went too far with a 100.000 gp hired sellsword imo but i might be wrong.

Wealth of a…

City-State
Dwarf Village
Slave Tribe
Altaruk
Fort
Major Trading House
Minor Trading House
Veiled Alliance

etc.

I like a “metal is rare, even with coins setting” so I would go with:

City-State (Population 12.000) avg. 1 Mill. gp, 10 Mill. sp, 50 Mill. cp, 200 Mill. bits

Dwarf Village (Population 1.000) 10 gp, 1.000 sp, 5.000 cp, 8.000 bits

Slave Tribe (Population 100) 30 sp, 400 cp, 1.000 bits

Altaruk (Population 1.200) 60 gp, 2.000 sp, 8.000 cp, 12.000 bits

Fort (Population 60) 60 sp, 600 cp, 1.200 bits

Major Trading House 100.000 gp, 600.000 sp, 3 Mill. cp, 10 Mill. bits

Minor Trading House 1.000 gp, 6.000 sp, 300.000 cp, 1 Mill. bits

Veiled Alliance 100 gp, 1.000 sp, 10.000 cp, 50.000 bits

But I’m not very sure about such a approach.

Thanks to anyone replying.

May your waterskin never run dry.

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#2

Personally, I use the financial limits of the communities stated in the Dungeon Master Guide 3.5 (page 137) and the wealth limit of the NPC and PC (for major NPCs) which can also be found there. I only convert gp to cp.
For the tribes, I would use the same guide than for the cities.
For the trading houses, I have no specific guidance or tables, but I assume that major trading houses are almost always able to sell the most valuable items of the city-state except for magical ones. You can maybe compare trading houses to the guide for communities: the Wavir trading house could have, on all its installations, the wealth and financial limit of a city-state of a 10.000 inhabitants.
The wealth of a merchant house is not concentrated in one city-state, but split between them. I use equivalents of letters of credit (not written in an obvious way, of course, and with an arcane mark spell on them) that can be exchanged from one city-state to the other, but only in the installations of the same trading house that emitted it (with precise records of every letters of credit being kept in all the major installations of a city-state through psionic communication). The cost of creation of letters of credit is such that they are rarely used and only for large amounts of cash, and only by major trading houses.
For a veiled alliance chapter, I would use the number of members and their level, to have an idea of its wealth (using the NPC tables of the DMG).

4 Likes
#3

Same - I use those wealth levels as a guide for Athasian settlements and also the stuff on how many NPCs can be found in a settlement, using the Community Modifier system. I plan to write this stuff up as a blog but for now, here is the page with my notes from my campaign journal:

Cities of Athas
Cities of Athas1920×2717 318 KB

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#4

Considering Cermanic-Pieces are purely speculative, given economics; they can easily be reproduced, so, inflation is rampant: and economic readjustments are common.

In Dark Sun, anything with walls, has value. Any tool(weapon), that helps you survive, has value. More importantly, having power over individuals is wealth.

1 Like
#5

I can’t imagine that Borys wouldn’t seek to enforce economic stability by using Ceramic Pieces as representative currency to exchange backing commodities like grains or water, two things integral to build a population of people to bully. I would go so far as to say that the setting implies that that’s the case via existence of the supplement “Dune Trader”. No one would seek financial wealth if it wasn’t a stable and widely valued thing.

All of the things you list (individuals, tools, walls) boil down to manpower and any sizable force dedicated to a task (be it labor or war) will only go as far as it’s stomach will carry it.

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