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Unto the Ages: Chapter 134
🕑 Added 2024-11-10 10:11:57 +0000 UTCIt took almost a year for all the tribes and villages to hoard enough copper to start producing enough coins to barely keep up with the products being produced and traded, and it was still far from enough.
Due to this, the demand for copper, and thus miners, skyrocketed almost overnight, and it was at that time that all kinds of other metals that were previously unknown or just not commonly used came into the market too. Ida did not know what these metals were, but on the off chance they were valuable in the future, she bought them up and had some blacksmiths sort and process them into ingots. Ida ended up needing a new warehouse for all the different ingots they managed to process.
In the spring, a year after the decision to transition over to a currency-based economy was made, all the tribes and villages throughout both continents started slowly injecting copper coins as currency into their economy. In Grud’s tribe, while the majority of the people were still using the bartering system, Grud and his wives started using coins in place of wages for anyone affiliated with his family’s many businesses, and heavily encouraged the use of coins in the barterer market district.
Through Grud’s family and those working with and for his family, coins started circulating within the Rock Claw tribe. Over the next few months after the currency was released, external traders came in using the same currency, further normalizing its use.
At the start, when people and businesses started getting their hands on coins, the price of goods and services greatly fluctuated, mainly because people did not know what it was worth, but as the months went by, capitalism naturally took its course, and as people started undercutting their competition for goods and services, this inadvertently created a ballpark range for goods and services people were willing to pay for, and thus, the prices stabilized.
***
Not even three years after the introduction of the copper coin currency, people started running into another problem, that of those who were extremely economically successful, hoarding thousands upon thousands of copper coins, essentially creating a shortage of copper coins in circulation, it also did not help traders lugging around heavy bags of copper coins.
So another meeting of the leaders was called to discuss how to address this problem.
The solution they eventually came up with was bigger denominations of currency, and to make it more recognizable, they had to use other metals. They sampled a few different metals and judged them based on their looks, and the difficulty of extracting and processing the coins.
Eventually, they settled on silver and gold. The coins were the same size and design, but ten coppers would be worth one silver, and the same applied for silver to gold.
Grud readily agreed to this outcome while staying silent about how happy he was inside, because of all the unknown mined metals that Ida brought up, there was a substantial sum of silver and gold that was just sitting in his warehouse.
He will have to do something nice for Ida when he gets back from the meeting, and also ask her to find out where the silver and gold mines are located and secure them.
***
Sometime after the gold and silver coins were introduced, the economy got back on track, the average tribesman and villagers had money in hand, and with the economic agility that currency brought, trade was booming more than ever, both internally and externally.
But where there was booming trade, there was always the less scrupulous who preyed upon the weak. This manifested in the form of predatory deals and even the use of violence, but the most damaging thing in the eyes of all the chieftains and village chiefs, was the rise of banditry.
These bandits would target traders, robbing them of their coin, goods, women, and most of the time, their lives. Naturally, this raised the price of imports from different locations, and none of the leaders were happy about this. So tribe and village leaders sent out their men to hunt down these bandits with mixed results.
By the time the bandit problem showed up on Grud’s turf, he had heard the grievances of his fellow leader and decided to nip that problem in the bud right quick.
For Grud, this was an easy thing. When a report of someone getting robbed in his territory reached him, he rounded up some men and was out of the gate and running toward where the robbery happened. When he reaches the scene of the crime, the person who was robbed is usually dead, so the only thing Grud can do is get revenge for them or ask his men to render aid if they are still alive.
But this is where Grud performs a hundred percent capture rate of bandits when compared to others with bandit problems. With his enhanced sense of smell and other enhanced senses, Grud had no problem tracking bandits down to their hideout. But instead of killing them, Grud made sure to capture every one of them alive.
The captured bandits would be brought back and tied to stakes planted along the walls of the tribe, where they would be left to die from exposure as a message and example to all bandits entering his territory. And the traveling traders were more than happy to spread the news of what happened to the captured bandits far and wide.
Soon, the bandits in and near Grud’s territory caught wind of what happened to the other bandits, and especially who did it to them, they quickly caught the hint and vacated his territory.
***
Years passed, and Grud’s tribe kept growing to the point that they were the biggest and most populated tribe on the mainland. In fact, it was more accurate to say that the Rock Claw Tribe had become the Rock Claw Chiefdom. It started as a passing comment from traveling traders, but as others came to visit and trade, they could not help but agree.
As for Grud and his family, they had only grown in number, mainly because of Grud having his many wives pop out his children, but most recently, the addition to the family was not his fault, it was because Grud recently had his first son-in-law.
Grud’s first child, Ayla, Nita’s daughter by birth, had just come of age, and Grud’s Rock Claw Chiefdom was hosting the biennial meet-up that was traditionally held at the Spirit Moon Tribe before the Ancestor Rock, but with the many tribes, as spread out as they were, it was just not practical to make the journey from so far away. So Grud’s tribe was elected to be one of the gathering points for the region.
At this meet-up, Ayla was wearing jewelry and face paint that signified her as being of age and single, and seeing that she was the daughter of Grud and Nita, she inherited some very desirable genes.
While she was not as short as her mother, Ayla had inherited her beauty and curvaceous figure, which meant her breasts and hips were huge for her age, but not at the ‘freak of nature’ size that Nita’s was when she first married Grud.
Grud, knowing how beautiful his daughter was, and how aggressive, horny, and stupid young men were, (He should know, he was convinced to hunt a Big Tooth Cat for his coming-of-age hunt.) escorted his daughter around while showing her off. His daughter was here husband hunting today and he was going to make sure his daughter married the best man there was.
It did not take long before men were falling over each other to introduce themselves to Ayla, and some of them even tried to make a good showing to Grud in hopes of having an in with Ayla through Grud. Some of the braver men, or stupid if you ask others, decided it was a good idea to openly proposition Ayla, those men revived a mighty slap from Grud and were quickly dragged outside the walls to get the shit beat out of them by Grud’s men.
Eventually, there was a young man who caught Ayla's eye. While he was not the fastest or strongest when taking part in the competitions to show off their prowess, he was handsome and performed well in the hunting competition even if he did not win.
When Grud asked Ayla why she had her eye on the young man, it turns out that she already had her eye on him for some time, and that he was from a nearby tribe.
Grud turned to Nita, who was holding Grud’s other arm and was about to ask her to check on the young man’s background, but she interrupted him with a knowing nod and a pat on his arm, “I already sent some of our daughters and the other wives to ask around about the boy.”
Grud looked back and forth between his wife and daughter, then stopped at Nita, “You knew?” Grud asked.
Nita tittered as Ayla blushed, “I knew just a few hours ago. Our dear daughter kept on glancing at the boy whenever she thought no one was looking.”
All Grud could do was sigh and put on a stern face, he knew that this day would come when men would come courting his baby girls, but now that the day had come and his daughter liked a boy, all he could do was wait for info on the boy to get back to him, and if everything checks out, he would need to have the same talk with the boy the Nita’s father had with him before he married Nita.
By the end of the first day of the meet-up, Grud’s other daughter and wives reported their findings on the young man. Besides him and a few other boys being caught peeping on their tribe girls bathing, there was nothing outstanding, he was a decent hunter and an even better trap-maker and sometimes led some of the young men out on hunts.
After some deliberation with his wives, they eventually decided to go ahead with the engagement. First thing in the morning the next day, Grud contacted the parents of the young man who was at the meet-up and proposed the marriage, to which they readily agreed.
But before anything formal proceeded, Grud asked to have a talk with the groom-to-be.
After half an hour of “talking” with the young man, and warning him that certain actions have consequences, the young man left the private room looking paler than before.
After the talk, Grud and Nita talked with the young man’s parents and after some discussion, it was decided that the young man would marry into Grud’s tribe.
By the end of the day, Grud was officiating the wedding and his harem was wives were squealing in delight at the thought of grandchildren.
The thought of grandchildren brought a smile to Grud’s face. He could still remember his in-laws, Frill, Iko, and Rae, who came to visit every other meetup and get swarmed by his small army of brats, all he could see on his in-laws’ faces were bliss as they bounced babies on their laps.
“I guess that will be me soon.” Grud mumbled to himself.
