Where what a company makes turns into money, and where a country's money turns into something worth holding.
You will find it at Marketplace → Goods.
Gold buys nothing here. Every price on a country's goods book is in that country's own currency: doge in Buldihndan, hebrea in Arados, and so on. There is no exception and no market anywhere that will take gold for a loaf.
That is the whole point of the market rather than an inconvenience of it. It is what gives a country's currency a reason to be wanted: if you want Aradosi bread you must first hold Aradian money, which means somebody has to have sold you some. A currency nothing is priced in is a token nobody needs.
So the chain runs:
a council mints its currency Realm → Council
│
│ and offers some for gold, by law
▼
you buy in with gold Marketplace → Currency
│
│ and pay a wage in it, or spend it
▼
you buy bread Marketplace → Goods
Twelve goods, which are the twelve a company can make:
| raw food, raw weapon | no quality; the materials a mill or a forge consumes |
| food q1–q5, weapon q1–q5 | five qualities each, and a q1 loaf and a q5 loaf are different goods |
A good at one quality and the same good at another are separate offers and never mixed. Nothing else is tradable: there is no market in gold, in companies, in land or in labour, and labour has a market of its own.
A price is not "so much each". It is a lot: some quantity of the good for some amount of money, both whole numbers.
a lot of 2 raw food for 7 doge
buy 5 lots → pay 35 doge, receive 10 raw food
A trade is always a whole number of lots. You cannot buy three raw food out of that offer, because three is not a whole number of twos.
This is the same rule the currency market uses, and it is here for the same reason: every balance in this world is a whole number, and a price of "3.5 doge each" would need a rounding rule that quietly took a fraction off somebody on every trade. A lot has no fraction in it, so there is nothing to round.
A price is stored in its smallest terms. Offer 4 loaves for 2 doge and the book will show 2 loaves for 1 doge, because it is the same price and the smaller pair lets a buyer take less. This is worth remembering when you come to the sales tax: what the tax rounds against is the lot as stored, not as you typed it.
The page does the arithmetic in front of you. You choose how many lots to take, and beside the count it says what they come to in the good and in the coin; the button that takes them repeats all three. There is no amount to correct, because a lot is the only thing you can ask for, and the count stops at what your purse can pay.
You sell out of your own store, and the goods leave it the moment the offer stands. They are held by the offer, not by you:
An offer stands until somebody buys it or you remove it. Nothing expires, and nothing spoils.
You sell where you stand. An offer is posted on the ground you are standing on and you cannot name another country for it, so stocking a foreign market means carrying the goods there yourself.
| your own country | free, always, and nothing to buy |
| anywhere else | you need that country's trading licence |
A licence costs what that country's council has set, is paid in gold into that country's treasury, and is permanent. It is bought on the market of the country that wants it, which is the only place you can be when you need one, and it is checked when you post an offer and never again.
You can read any country's book from anywhere, and you should before you travel: the page shows you the prices, the sales tax and the licence fee of every kingdom. What you cannot do from a distance is trade. An offer you cannot take is shown greyed with the reason rather than hidden, so a foreign book reads as a market you could reach.
You buy standing in the country the offer was posted in, and you pay in that country's currency. You cannot buy your own offer: it would move nothing.
An offer can be taken in part. Take four lots of a ten-lot offer and the other six stand at the same price. Take the last of it and the offer is gone.
Before you commit, the page tells you what you will pay, what you will receive, and how much of that currency you hold.
A share of what the buyer pays is withheld and reaches the treasury of the country the market is in — not the seller's country, and not the seller's citizenship.
The buyer pays the price on the row, and no more. The tax comes out of the seller's side.
sold for 100 doge at 10%
───────────────────────────────
buyer pays 100 doge
treasury 10 doge
seller 90 doge
Each country's council sets its own rate, from nothing to everything, and the current one is shown on Realm → that kingdom and again on the market page before you post. The sell form tells you what your offer would pay you after tax before you offer anything — as a range, for the reason the next section gives.
A rate is read at the moment of the sale, not the moment you posted. A council that raises its sales tax raises it on every offer already standing in its country, including yours, so your own offers are listed with the rate their country charges today.
The tax is a whole number and rounds up. That means a trade too small for the stated rate to make one whole coin still pays one:
| sold for | at 10% | tax | you actually paid |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.1 | 1 | 100% |
| 5 | 0.5 | 1 | 20% |
| 10 | 1 | 1 | 10% |
| 100 | 10 | 10 | 10% |
This is deliberate and it is not the rule wages use. A wage rounds down, so a wage too small to tax is not taxed. The difference is that a wage is one employer's decision once a day, where a sale is priced and bought in amounts both people choose freely: if the tax rounded down here, a seller could break one sale into a dozen small ones and pay nothing at all. Rounding up means splitting a sale always costs more, never less.
The consequence is worth seeing plainly: at the very bottom, a sale of one coin pays all of it in tax and the seller receives nothing.
This is the part to read twice if you are selling.
The tax is charged on each trade, and the buyer chooses how many trades there are. They pay the price on the row whichever way they do it, so breaking a purchase up costs them nothing at all — and every piece pays its own rounded-up tax, out of your side.
you offer 100 raw food at 1 raw food for 1 doge, in a country taxing 10%
a buyer takes all 100 lots at once you keep 90 doge, treasury 10
a buyer takes 1 lot, 100 times you keep 0 doge, treasury 100
Both buyers paid 100 doge. Only you are worse off, and nothing you can do after posting changes it. So the sell form quotes you both ends, and it is honest about which of them you control: neither.
Your only defence is what a single lot fetches, because the smallest trade anybody can make is one lot. At a rate of 10%, a lot must fetch 10 or more for the tax on it to round to the 10% it claims to be; at 5%, twenty; at 1%, a hundred. Below that, every lot pays a whole coin whoever buys it.
Selling bigger lots does not do it, and this is the trap. A price is stored in its smallest terms, so "10 raw food for 10 doge" is not a lot of ten — it is stored as 1 for 1, which is the very price that pays you nothing. What has to go up is the price, not the size of the lot: 1 raw food for 10 doge is safe, 10 for 10 is not, and they look almost the same when you type them.
The page warns you when a lot is priced under the line, before you post.