Customal

Ancestral First Ingots: The First Ingots a dwarf inherits from ancestors, kept apart as a physical genealogy.

First Ingot: The dwarven coming-of-age rite in which every dwarf produces a first gold ingot, the anchor of personal standing and credit.

Hacksilver: Cut or broken pieces of silver valued by weight rather than form.

Heft: The dwarven measure of material importance: an ingot is real, and a pile of the same metal is not.

Honor and the Ingot: The dwarven code governing the breaking of a First Ingot, liens, counterfeits, and bankruptcy.

Ledger Bones: The durable bones, usually actual whalebone, on which the Skelds inscribe their trading ledgers.

Mint Charters: The royal charters that permit a lord to mint coin, issued as political grants.

Monetary Systems: Value is layered, local, and context-dependent; no unified monetary model exists.

Platinum First Ingot: A First Ingot made of platinum: a considerable social event, and a conspicuous display of standing.

Skeldic Rings: Rings that Skeldic lords award to their warriors, some for honor and some to carry value.

Skeldic Trade with the Dwarves: What the Skelds trade to the dwarves: amber, wood, tar, naphtha, food, and the right to peat and bog iron.

Skeldic Traders: Small commercial entities that normally trade in silver or, for greater sums, in gems.

Telvari Exchange: How the Telvari handle value: through obligation and allocation, taking coin and goods only as temporary carriers.

The Ratchet: The tendency of coin inside the dwarven system, platinum above all and gold to a lesser degree, to pass into ingots.

Wayfarers: Young dwarves who go on the road in itinerant groups, each carrying a dwarven craft with it.

Wealth and Kin: How dwarven Wealth is bound up with family, clan, and marriage, and who takes part in it.

Wealth and Riches: Dwarven division of bullion into two pools: Wealth, which is sealed away from the market, and riches, which are spent.

Weregild: Skeldic compensation for a killing, set by the lord and roughly reckoned by the dead person’s rank.

Without a First Ingot: A dwarf who cannot acquire the assets for a First Ingot stays constrained in social position, whatever his age.