What do they use for currency in the Netherworld?  Did the monarchs make coins?

I figure they probably don't barter for beers at the Genocide lounge..

Thanks! 

I have in the past said that dollars are accepted by lots of Netherworld types, but only as a type of barter (so exchange rate is really up to the bartering types). I think a lot is up to you and how much importance you put on characters funds.

As a result of completing a particular mission, my PC's got bank accounts which never run dry (essentially i gave wealth status: rich to them all) which makes them very happy in the contemporary juncture, but doesn't count for squat in 69 or 2056. They have learned their lesson and tend to stock up on booze and other trade goods before hitting the netherworld these days. Let them use dollars at the genocide lounge, but one day a beer is $2, the next it's $15.

That said, my PCs are _deathly_ afraid of 'future favors' for payment. One of the recurring Bad Guys in the over-arching meta-campaign is the ever-slimy, ever-smooth, ever-in-control Stephen Alzis, aka The Bad Man. About a year ago, our Old Master got caught in a situation where he had to give over a 'future favor' in return for getting the Dragons out of a jam. He ended up losing six months of his life, a tattoo in Greek, and getting screwed over by a Pornomancer (long story). Ever since that particular deal, the general feeling of the group is that you spell out your Netherworld deals to an exact degree.

If we ever have the need for currency, I will bring up Bud's Big Warehouse of Stuff, the place where all Innerwalkers go to store their bartered goods so they don't have to walk around with an off-shift battle tank and a 12-pack of Mountain Dew from when it was spelled in Aztec all the time.

I hope you don't mind, but i'm stealing the Big warehouse idea. It just makes good sense.

-Bud is a 2056 renegade cyborg super-soldier. And female.
-She contracts out with the Thunder King for bouncers.
-Bud's gives out receipts upon storage that are the only way to get something back from the warehouse (when Bud says, "Keep your receipt," she means it). A short description of the lot is written on the receipt.
-Due to turnover or lack of paying the fee for space in the warehouse, Bud runs a yearly garage sale of old 'excess' that is so large that it spills out in 1996 on the annual Twenty-Mile Garage Sale in May in Western Wisconsin.

Good deals on vat food and caramel-covered coconut bars.

Existing juncture currency only works with whatever factions happen to be active in those junctures... and a critical shift or sudden juncture closure means that cash becomes instantly worthless.

I'd say the most stable form of currency in the Netherworld is whatever the Four Monarchs are using... they're the biggest players in the Netherworld, and they've been there longer than any of the other factions. Part of that could be just blind cussed stubbornness, too... the Monarchs still use and accept their own currency because they refuse to acknowledge that their empires have fallen, never to rise again.

That and assuming that the Thunder King has the largest cavern that can support a working agricultural system (based mostly on fungi), I'd say the Thunder King's currency could probably be considered the currency of choice in the Netherworld. So, let's say 1 Thunderbolt (or Thunderbill) = roughly 1 U.S. dollar, for simplicity's sake. The other Four Monarchs would have equivalents, but refuse to refer to them as Thunderbolts... Pi Tui would probably use "Snowcats" or "Icicles", Ming-I would use "Darkbats", etc.

The biggest problem with currency in the Netherworld would be counterfeiting via Shaping. So, again, my pick for the faction with the most stable currency would be the Four Monarchs, who are powerful enough to create currency that can't be Shaped by anyone except themselves.

Sure, anyone with a Shaping skill could make something that looked like a Thunderbill, but the lightning bolt just won't light up when you rub it like Huan Ken's Thunderbills do.

Likewise, when you breath on the solid ice coins that Pi Tui prefers, the Snowcat's eyes glow green. The fakes don't do that.

Li Ting uses bills and coins made from solid fire... cold enough to handle, but drop a few drops of water on 'em and they'll sizzle.

As for what Ming-I uses... scraps of tattooed flesh and bone, like bat wings torn off of bats... poke 'em with something sharp and they bleed. Let's just say they're not terribly popular outside the Darkness Pagoda.

If someone had a high enough Shaping score, could they copy these things? Well, in theory, maybe, but everyone who tries fails miserably... you could toss in some handwaving here and there about the Four Monarchs have manipulated the chi flow throughout the Netherworld with powerful sorcery so that anyone who tries to create similar currency automatically fails.

Another solution could be touchstones provided by the Monarchs that immediately identify counterfeits. Or maybe just trying to shape the currency is touchstone enough... if someone hands you a shaped coin or bill and you can shape it into something else, then you know it's counterfeit. The Monarch currency can't be shaped because they make it that way, and the only people in the Netherworld that can undo their shaping or their sorcery would be one of the other Four Monarchs.

Mmmm I mostly just wondered what my PCs would pay thier bar tab with...but I'll just gloss it over I guess.. 

Darn it. Now I have to figure out how to actively use Bud's in a campaign.

But above all, I mostly think of things like drinks at the Lounge as something usually that's taken care of without role-playing it or put on "the tab"...unless the tab's just run out because Those Damn Jammers Are At It Again or (add your favorite plot).

I'm sure the Monarchs have currency, which I hadn't thought of until reading these posts. (Strange that the Netherworld sourcebook doesn't bring this up...) But even though the Monarchs are the biggest baddest influence in the Inner Kingdom, in my campaign there's still enough of a Netherworld population that considers themselves outside the Monarchs' rule that they would probably deal in barter or trade.

Although thanks to this post, I'm getting all sorts of devious ideas about a counterfeiting scam in the Netherworld, or the PCs being paid for services in some bizarre currency, and a whole adventure based on them trying to turn the currency into something more useful.