The Bank of Rhylanor

## OPENING AN ACCOUNT

Anybody is more than welcome to open an account with the bank - they’re not going to turn down good money, after all. To do so, one just has to pay a fee of 50 gold per account and as long as they maintain at least 10 gold in the account then the account can stay open indefinitely and they don’t have to pay another fee. If the balance ever drops to 0 then the account is considered closed. Much like the Templar order, the character just has to deposit their gold and they’ll get a letter of credit which says how much they have in their account. It also displays their name, account number, which branch they opened their account in along with the authorizer, and a little blood seal. *“Blood seal!?”* Yup, the blood seal kind of acts like a fingerprint ID; The teller presents them with a small glass orb and asks them to place a finger onto it, which after a pricking sensation it then draws out a not insubstantial amount of blood. They place the orb onto the letter of credit, as well as a copy for their own records, leaving what looks like a wax seal on each of the parchments.

If the party feel like making a joint account, then it’s 50 gold to set up the account for one person and an additional 20 gold for each person authorized to access the account. People can be authorized at a later date, though it costs more since the records will have to be retrieved and that can be a bit of a fuss; So 40 gold for each person.

## ACCESSING AN ACCOUNT

Obviously at some point the party member is going to want to get some of their hard earned coin out. All they have to do is waltz into a bank, present their letter of credit, and let the teller know how much they’d like to withdraw. The teller will then produce a familiar glass orb to gather some of the character’s blood and use it to essentially authenticate the person as the owner of the letter. With that out of the way they’ll hand over the requested amount, assuming they have the amount to hand. I generally rule that withdrawals of 500 gold or larger have to be retrieved from the vault and involve the party member having to wait. They’ll then use the same orb to update the letter of credit to reflect how much is left in the account, and since we have handy blood magic in use the bank copy will be updated too.

You may have started to wonder why the bank even has a copy, which is fair. There are a couple of reasons, first and foremost is protection against fraudulent letters, in case anybody decides to try impersonating anybody or tries to modify the amount listed on their letter - Any time a large withdrawal is made or an account is closed it’s practice to check the backup letter for discrepancies since they’re going to be in the vault anyway, either to retrieve the large amount of coin or to dispose of the backups in the case of the account being closed. Secondly it serves as a way of creating another letter of credit should the adventurer ever accidentally lose, damage, or destroy theirs. This way they can still have access to their coin, though it’ll still cost 40 gold for a replacement between the materials and time taken to retrieve the records.

## THE VAULT

Alright, here’s where things get interesting! Granted, something akin to blood magic in a bank is already pretty interesting in my books, but I digress. If you hadn’t already guessed, those big double doors at the back lead to the vault where all of the treasure is kept, as well as all of the records of account holders (the letter of credit copy + the orb with the account holder’s blood). *"But how is one bank going to gain access to another bank’s records?”* you ask. Honestly you’ve probably already worked it out: all of the banks share the same vault via a demi-plane. In my world the vault only has 4 doors in and out, which are all shared by all of the banks simultaneously. That means that only 4 banks can have access to the vault at the same time. Moreover, access can only be gained from the outside, so if the door closes on some poor employee while they’re checking somebody’s records or something, then they’re stuck until somebody opens a door (and who knows which bank **that** leads to).

Visually it’s a room that floats in perpetual darkness, where only features that matter exist. The first floor is arranged almost like a compass, with four bridges stretching out to giant ebony doors. The floors match the same stone patterns of polished whites, blacks, and grays as in the banks, though notably there aren’t any walls on this level. In the middle is a large circular platform that wraps around a smaller circle that descends into the darkness with a gold and marble staircase accompanying it. The staircase that leads down to tall levels of floor to ceiling dark wooden shelves, all segmented into small square cubbies marked by account number. Sitting in most of these are the glass orbs and spare copies of various account holders. Levels seem to be created as needed. Back on the top, another 4 bridges arch down to 4 white stone silos floating in the dark. Each has a door with a lock to it. Inside each silo is a set of stairs that descend down without railings, disappearing into seas of platinum, gold, silver, and copper coins, ingots, and trade bars.

## PROTECTIONS

Maybe I’m just prepared for the worst, but when creating places of importance like magic stores and palaces, I like to ask myself “what’s to stop somebody from robbing this place?”. While I do want to make it difficult, I don’t want to purposefully make it impossible. Not only because I’m well aware no system is perfect, but I also don’t want to completely shut down players who are dead set on holding a bank heist. If they’re a band of trouble seeking rogues and it fits in with the campaign, then I’m going to have fun with them seeing if they can pull this off.

Let’s start with the lobby; simply getting past the front guard requires all weapons either be turned over or peace bound. After that, everything up to the counter is in an anti-magic field - The counter and everything behind has to allow magic as that’s how the glass orbs and letters work. While the vault doors look like oversized and ornate wooden doors, they’re still startlingly thick and hard to break through. Not to mention bashing through would simply lead to a brick wall. In order to get to the demi-plane the door has to be opened using the key *and* combination on the strange circular device resting between the two handles. I describe it as being made of steel and ivory, a plate long the outside rotates and has various draconic symbols in glowing ink (the color changes between red and green - red if all the doors are currently in use, and green if at least one is available), and in the center is a strange key hole, for a key that has 3 prongs. Now, all good banks have a panic button, but there’s not exactly a direct equivalent in a medieval fantasy setting. There are a bunch of creative things you could come up with, but for these banks I decided to have a little fun; after putting in the combination, if the key isn’t turned a certain way the entire building shifts onto the demi-plane with the vault. There’ll be a light shuddering from the transition but the players aren’t going to necessarily know until they try to get out through the main doors and see that it now leads into darkness. It’s something that’s relatively easy to reverse assuming they can coerce the teller into complying (and they haven’t locked themselves in the vault to wait for another door to open), but it’s something that grabs a lot of attention on the material plane and will very quickly bring guards to the area. By the time the players figure it out, the building will likely be surrounded.