Our friend the Echo

I’ve been wondering about this for a while, how does one carry their echoes once earned? Is this the name for a kind of solid currency, or can we pull reverberations out of our pocketbooks?Thoughts?

Echoes are paper money.

I think it might be because its late and I am hungry, but the echo in that image kind of look like it could be a sandwich where the dark line at the bottom is the filling. and the lighter lines are bread. mmm delicious echo sandwich.

[quote=Sara Hysaro]Echoes are paper money.[/quote]Of course before the Fall the pound was backed up by precious metals, and anyone could exchange pounds for a variety of precious metals if they ever felt the need. The echo more resembles hard currency in this fashion. Melt a gold coin down, and you have a small sum of gold. Burning an echo, likewise, makes a unearthly din. As I’m sure you are aware, such noise can be sealed in jars and traded, just like any other commodity.

Converting echoes into their backing commodity has been illegal within the Fifth City for nearly a decade after a brief fashion in which certain members of society would leave an echo-fueled fire burning atop their carriages and ride through crowded areas. The royal navy instructs their recruits to use burning echoes as a sort of last-resort distress beacon, but I have never met a zailor, tightfisted as they are, who has done this. They always mutter something about it being better at attracting large bat monsters than rescuers. In any case, I can’t recommend burning echoes. The exchange rate is abysmal.

Or, you know, it could just be paper money.
edited by upthrust on 1/9/2015

Echoes are more akin to the fiat currency of today than the gold & silver backed currencies of the late 19th century.

The Numismatrix mentions that Echoes are actually backed up by giant coins that exist far beneath the surface, each one too large for any man to lift. No one in London has ever seen them or likely ever will.
Instead, the echo is backed up with the full faith and credit of The Bazaar and is enforced by The Masters.
The exchange rate and devaluation is heavily regulated by the Masters, who work as sort of a central banking structure for the Echo, like the Federal Reserve.
They are superior to current fiat monies in that instead of being supported by governments, they are supported by ancient outer space Cthulhu monsters of such Abyssal horror to think of them would rend your petty, mortal mind apart.
That’s not the sort of thing one defaults on.

Not everyone enjoys trading in Echoes. Many prefer Jade or Rustygold or Nevercold Brass. However, Echoes form a good basis for the Bazaar economy because you can pay your taxes with them, they’re accepted everywhere and no one will doubt their value, lest they and all their loves ones be scooped up in the middle fo the night by giant space bats.

Ancient Outer Space Cthulhu Monsters- Taking over the banks of the world, one Fallen city at a time.

Echoes cannot be just paper money. For one thing, there are pence, which may or may not also be paper. Secondly in Sunless Sea, echoes are represented with greenish coins.

American Dollars are usually in bills, but we have pennies, too.

The Echo is a unit of currency. Bills are more convenient, but you can make an Echo with a hundred penny coins.

So exactly like the Federal Reserve, then. :)

That’s what I’m Yellen about.