Something I’ve been working on in my revamps is trade. In Three Pantheons, it largely revolves around WHAT is being traded.
For Three Pantheons, the divine realms generally are in a bit of a Cold War standoff with the technological areas. And one thing I’ve decided to do is to play with transmutation. At the start, this would be things like precious metals, since hey, gold and silver always work, right? But the reason they’re precious is often scarcity, and so this would devalue the metals quickly. The gods would quickly realize that just shipping out gold and silver isn’t working and have to switch.
A friend pointed out that Hades, being not only God of Death but also God of Mineral Wealth would possibly make diamonds. However, diamonds are valuable because the De Beers cartel controls so much of the supply; in 2001 when Realmfall happened, they controlled approximately 60% of the total supply. Because of this, they could set prices. Selling below their price meant you were losing money, and eroding your own market share. So this means that by 2020 (Nathan’s time), diamonds are no longer used as jewelry, as synthetic lab diamonds, and transmuted diamonds have undercut the supply to the point that they’re well below where they were. Industrial diamond use would benefit, particularly from being able to essentially custom-order diamonds, but for jewelry, it would be pointless. Jewelry is intended to be a status symbol, and if everyone can afford diamonds, they’re about as good at showing status as a bunch of glue-on plastic gems.
So what could the gods produce? Well, one idea is that some might be interested in using methods to produce high value substances. Many chemical compounds are extremely intensive to produce, between acquiring precursor chemicals, shipping and handling them (particularly if they’re unsafe), time spent needing to convert them (physics cares not what your timetable is), and so on. On the other hand, with sufficient skill in transmuting and available magic supply, who says you can’t just whip up a batch of nusinersen? Or something similar that’s either being overcharged to hell, or alternately, is not in meaningful production due to costs?
Obviously you get the issue with concerns about supply source and safety, at least at first, but medicine feels like something they could produce that would get them a niche where they’re providing SOMETHING that people might be willing to accept out of realm. That and other high value or effort chemicals. Maybe this isn’t going to be approved in all countries, but medical tourism already exists. And if the god source undercuts sufficiently, well…medicine you are unsure about, but can afford, beats medicine that you can trust, but can’t pay for.
And that’s before you get into things that might simply be beyond modern science. Are you blind? Asclepius can fix that for the right price. Will your friends and family approve? Maybe not, but then, THEY aren’t blind and can’t really understand, can they? Missing a limb? Lots of options here for exploration.
Now, not that they can transmute anything. I have some ideas for rules, since there need to be limits and stores of hard value the gods can’t denature. For now, I’m considering radioactive materials, which were used in the original version. There, radioactive elements decayed rapidly in realm. I might not do it that way, but I’m thinking that there’s more here to work with and will be exploring further.
More to come on this, but if you have thoughts, blogsquawk@vershaft.com
-Arrow