The city does not apologize for this. It simply charges accordingly. Merchants who control caravan routes control supply. Goods that require channeling materials are expensive twice over: once for the journey, and once because the people who can use them prefer to keep scarcity part of the arrangement.
Prices below are standard-market baselines. A shortage, a lost caravan, or a merchant with leverage can push any of them higher. The GM adjusts freely. A price lower than listed is a different kind of problem.
| Good | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Firewood (bundle, 1 week household) | 3–5 Crowns | Scarce. Nothing grows inside the walls. Woodcutters harvest timber from the edge of the wilds and bring it back. The price is whatever the woodcutters think their survival is worth, which fluctuates. |
| Construction timber (per beam) | 15–30 Crowns | Caravan import. Building projects in the inner districts consume most of the supply. The outer districts build with whatever is left, which is usually not enough. |
| Iron ore (raw, per unit) | 10–20 Crowns | Mined at distant settlements, shipped by caravan. Price spikes reliably whenever a caravan fails to arrive. Caravan failures are not uncommon. |
| Iron ingot (smelted, per unit) | 25–40 Crowns | Smelted within the city from imported ore. The smelters — Lower to Middle Caste — control the processing bottleneck. They are aware of this. So is everyone who needs metal. |
| Silver (per small bar) | 80–150 Crowns | Rare. Used in channeling via the Electricity–Silver pairing. Upper Caste interests keep tight control over supply and tighter control over who sells it at what price. See Channeling Materials. |
| Copper (per small bar) | 30–60 Crowns | Used in channeling via the Force–Copper pairing. More available than silver, which is why Force magic is considerably more common than Electricity magic in the outer districts. |
| Lead (per small bar) | 15–25 Crowns | Used in channeling via the Void–Lead pairing. The least glamorous of the channeling materials. Also the cheapest, which means Void magic has practitioners the other schools would rather not think about. |
| Crystal (raw, per piece) | 50–120 Crowns | Used in channeling via the Restoration–Crystal pairing. Quality varies enormously — the spread in price is the spread in quality. The best crystal commands Upper Caste prices. The worst still works well enough to matter. |
| Obsidian (per piece) | 40–90 Crowns | Used in channeling via the Mentality–Obsidian pairing. Volcanic origin, sourced from a single distant settlement. Supply is unreliable. Mentality channelers plan their work around this, or they find alternatives, or they go without. |
| Exotic fruit (per piece) | 1–3 Crowns | Luxury. Most residents of Soltherra have never tasted fruit that did not come from a rooftop garden. Those who have tend to mention it more than necessary. |
| Exotic spices (per pouch) | 5–15 Crowns | Transforms bland food into something worth remembering. A status marker at dinner tables throughout the middle and inner districts. In the outer districts, it marks an occasion. |
| Salt (per sack) | 3–5 Crowns | Essential for preservation. Imported from coastal flats south of the city. The fish industry runs on it. The outer districts run on the fish industry. The arithmetic is straightforward. |
| Cloth (fine, per bolt) | 10–30 Crowns | Basic cloth is produced locally from limited livestock. Fine cloth is imported. The distinction is visible at a glance to anyone who grew up being told which one they could afford. |
| Leather (tanned, quality hide) | 8–15 Crowns | Hides come from hunters working the wilds. Quality depends on what was killed and whether it tried to kill back first. Both variables affect price. |
Wages context: see Wages for what these prices mean against a monthly income. The comparison is instructive and, at the lower end of the table, not comfortable reading.
Soltherra sits on the coast. The ocean is one of the city’s few reliable local resources, and the city exploits it accordingly.
The fishing industry is Lower Caste work: hard, unglamorous, and essential. Fish is the cheapest protein in Soltherra and the staple food of the outer districts. A bowl of fish stew at the docks costs two Bits. Nothing else in the city comes close to that number. Without the docks, the outer districts go hungry in a specific and rapid way that the inner districts would find inconvenient to manage.
The docks are among the largest employment centers for Lower Caste and Casteless workers alike — gutting, hauling, net repair, salting and barreling the catch. The labor is steady and the pay reflects that it is also brutal. Dock workers and fish gutters earn ten to twelve Crowns a month. Casteless taking dock work earn what the foreman decides to offer, which is generally less.
Boats go out daily when weather permits. The ocean is safer than the wilds. It is not safe. Fishermen who have worked the deeper water for long enough develop a specific set of habits: they do not fish alone, they come back before the light changes, and they do not discuss what they have seen out past the shelf with anyone who has not seen it themselves. Occasionally a boat does not return. The docks note it quietly. There is no investigation. The assumption is weather, because weather is easier to live with than the alternative.
Those who have been out there say the alternative has teeth.
Wood does not grow inside the walls. The trees that once stood close enough to harvest safely were taken long ago. What remains is at the edge of the wilds, which means getting timber requires leaving the city to retrieve it.
Woodcutters are the people who do this. They are Lower Caste, they work in armed groups, and they operate on a principle that anyone who has spent time near the wilds understands immediately: cut fast and return before dark. The groups do not linger. They do not explore. They take what they came for and they leave.
The danger pay — twenty to twenty-five Crowns per month — is among the highest rates available to the Lower Caste. It exists because the mortality rate exists. Not every group that goes out comes back complete. The city tracks the timber. It does not track the woodcutters with the same diligence, which is a fact the woodcutters are aware of and have stopped being surprised by.
Some Casteless take woodcutting work. The pay is better than anything available inside the walls — day labor pays three to five Crowns a month when work is available, and work is not always available. The calculation is not complicated: a dangerous chance at twenty-five Crowns competes favorably with a reliable chance at nothing.
Whether it competes favorably with the wilds is a question that answers itself, eventually, for everyone who pushes the odds long enough.
See also: Channeling Materials — why certain metals and minerals command the prices they do.
See also: Economy Overview — currency, wages summary, and links to all economy reference pages.
See also: Wages — monthly income by caste and occupation, for context against these prices.
© Soltherra RPG System