A note on currency and units of measure.

Being a mediaeval and feudal society Halgran has no usefully uniform set of units and measures like the metric system. Nor have the wonders of decimal currency been introduced, as such this will act as a guide.

The most common unit of length in Halgran is the foot. One foot quite fortunately is exactly half a metre, this is because the Arch Wizard Gu'ran defined it as one twenty-millionth the distance from the equator to the pole, whereas on earth, an identically sized planet, a metre was defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the pole.

Unfortunately it seems that is where any real sense in creating units ended as a yard is made up of four feet and a mile is made up of 1457 yards. A league is somewhat easier being only two miles, but that just makes a chain downright confusing at one third of a league. Inches are the smallest unit being with one foot containing thirteen inches. Overall I am certain Alexander will be changing this at some point.

And then there is currency. Halgran still uses precious metals as currency, and coins are really only helpful known weights of these metals and the relative values between the gold, copper, and silver are constantly changing. However within one type of metal Halgran organizes its coin into four standard sizes. These sizes are from smallest to largest, the piece, the ring, the crown, and the throne. A ring is five times the weight of a piece and a crown is the weight of three rings. The throne being the largest standard coin weighs as much as sixteen crowns. Of course, the common peasant would never usually handle gold in their lives.

A peasant on average earns a copper throne a month or possibly a single silver piece. A loaf of bread is almost always a few copper pieces in price, but only in large citys where livestock drive mills and there are enough nobles to support the bakers. For copper coins the half-piece and quarter piece do exist for use in small transactions.

Pounds and ounces make up the most common units of weight. A pound annoyingly for Alexander is exactly 1.74328 kilograms. And to make it worse there are seven ounces in a pound. When measuring the weight of larger objects tons are used, but there are two types of ton of course! The short ton and the long ton. The short ton is one-thousand three-hundred and four pounds, whereas the long ton is two-thousand and ninety eight pounds. Short tons are the most common, but both are usually just called tons, and it is usually necessary to specify in order to not be scammed believing you will receive a long tone of something and receiving a short ton instead.