Drakrom

The realm’s gold standard is not merely currency. A whole Drakrom is a sworn weight: proof of authority in a noble’s coffer, passage through a mountain gate, and value recognized wherever the dragon’s chain is feared.

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The realm’s accepted measure

The Currency of the Realm

Trade from the lowland markets to the Emberveil passes is counted in three linked denominations. The metal matters, but the stamped weight and accepted face matter more: every innkeeper, caravan-master, tax collector, and fence knows the count.

The Crown’s Three Weights

The Drakrom is the high measure: gold reserved for land grants, military contracts, dowries, tribute, and the tolls of powers too entrenched to bargain. Its lesser companions keep ordinary life moving.

A Talon is the silver coin of wages and wholesale trade. A Scale is the copper count of meals, lamp oil, ferry fares, and market change. Prices differ by region, but their exchange is fixed by charter.

“One coin, one weight. The crown is not divided.”

Chartered exchange between the three denominations
Coin	Metal	Accepted value
Drakrom	High-karat gold	1 Drakrom = 10 Talons
Talon	.880 fine silver	1 Talon = 12 Scales
Scale	Copper or billon	120 Scales = 1 Drakrom

Drakrom

Gold · 1 Drakrom

The sovereign coin. A full piece settles a lord’s obligation, secures a caravan’s passage, or gives a contract the force of a witnessed oath.

Talon

Silver · 1/10 Drakrom

The working coin of the realm. Talons pay soldiers, buy freight, and pass hand to hand at tavern tables, guild halls, and shrine steps.

Scale

Copper · 1/12 Talon

The small count for daily trade. Scales fill purses quickly, which is why every market ward has its own stories about shaved edges and false strikes.

Coins take on local meanings

Regional Use

The chartered exchange is consistent, but no coin travels without acquiring a local reputation. In the realm’s borderlands, a purse can open gates, earn a blessing, or reveal its owner as an easy mark.

The High Toll at Kravec

The Chain-Road through Kravec Pass accepts whole Drakroms only. Talons are refused, barter is ignored, and any gold piece that fails the Warden’s Weight is chisel-marked before it is handed back. For mountain lords, a coin fit for the pass is worth more than its gold.

The Oil-Crown Shrines

The shrine-order mints devotional Talons of purer silver than the crown’s common issue. Pilgrims buy them at a small offering premium, merchants accept them gladly, and households hide them in dowry chests rather than spend a blessing twice.

The Gloammarket

In the black-market alleys beneath the old river wards, Scale coinage is distrusted. Fences count copper by sound, bite suspicious edges, and quote serious prices in Talons. A clean Drakrom can purchase silence, but it also announces that someone important has entered the dark.

The marks that make the weight speak

Anatomy of the Coin

A moneylender reads a Drakrom with the thumb before trusting it to the scale. Its weight, its edge, its recessed inscription, and its relief all testify to whether the gold belongs in a strongbox or a furnace.

The Dragon Face

The obverse bears a left-facing dragon in high relief, its spine and scales chased finely enough to catch torchlight one ridge at a time. Its wings hold violet enamel in recessed channels, dark at the ribs and amethyst at the thin edges.

Copper-oxide wash burns warm along the talons and crest. The dragon does not need a crown above its head: the heavy interlocking chain around the rim supplies one, binding beast, gold, and law into the same unbroken circle.

38 millimetres across, struck for a hand rather than a purse.
High-karat gold with a dense, warm sheen rather than a mirror polish.
“Dra-Kro-Ma” is cut into the inner track beneath the relief.

The Throne Face

The reverse answers the dragon with a vertical sword of covenant. Its blade rises from the field in sharp relief, framed by inward-facing winged guardians and the same chain that closes the obverse around the dragon.

At the crossguard lies a cavity filled with granular ruby paste. Traders say the red is easiest to see in rain; soldiers say it brightens only when the coin has been paid for blood. Neither claim changes the price, but both make a counterfeiter’s work harder.

Gargoyle-like sentinels brace the lower field beneath the guardians.
The counter-inscription follows the lower inner rim as a mirrored oath.
A sharp, irregular edge reveals the hand-chiseled planchet split.

Mass 34.2 g

Gold 23.5–24 kt

Edge Unreeded

Strike Hand-chiseled

Mint reference

The Coin Gallery

Both faces carry the same visual argument: old gold made sovereign by chain, oath, and the authority to set a weight that the realm must honor.

Front face of the Drakrom coin showing a high-relief dragon surrounded by an aged gold chain border over a cracked deep-red field. — **Obverse · Dragon Face** The standard front strike: aged gold relief, a chained rim, violet enamel within the wing channels, and copper-washed talons set against a fractured red field.

Back face of the Drakrom coin showing a high-relief dragon surrounded by an aged gold chain border over a cracked deep-red field. — **Reverse · Throne Face** The standard back strike: aged gold relief, a chained rim, violet enamel below the wing channels, and copper-washed throne set against a fractured red field.

The recessed legend

Dra · Kro · Ma

Dra names the warden-beast; Kro names the binding crown and oath; Ma names the counted measure. Together they establish the Drakrom as a dragon-sanctioned standard of value — a promise cut beneath the coin’s visible power, where only a careful hand will find it.