Banking System for use with The Witcher TTRPG

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Both Witchers and nobles have gotten smarter over the years. Wealth, especially large amounts, is heavy, but gems are light and easily concealable. They also have favorable rates and are not taxed when changing between coin types so they are preferred over coinage in some situations, such as being robbed as they can be hidden in the strangest places. Most large towns or cities have a jeweler who will exchange the gems for native coinage so it can be profitable to bring gems from a poorer region to a region whose coin is worth more. Gems come in three varieties: Raw, Polished, or Flawless which mark their worth.

## Loot

All Gemstones unless mentioned otherwise have a weight of .1.

## Banking

Sometimes the best place for your money is not on you, like in the case of a robbery or corrupt officials shaking you down for a bribe, that's where the banks come in. With a bank, you can store and access large amounts of money, get a loan, or invest in your future. Once you have an account with a bank you’ll receive a banknote book so that you can issue banknotes in your name to pay others. (Or you can receive bank notes from others to be redeemed at the corresponding bank)

### 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 crowns (or native coin equivalent) per account, and as long as they maintain at least 10 crowns (equivalent)  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. 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, and 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 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 feels like making a joint account, then it’s 50 crowns (equivalent) to set up the account for one person and an additional 20 crowns (equivalent) 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 crowns (equivalent) for each person after the initial setup period.

### 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 authenticate the person as the owner of the letter essentially. 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 crowns (equivalent) 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, the bank copy will be updated too.

You may have wondered why the bank even has a copy, which is fair. There are a couple of reasons:

1. 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 common practice to check the backup letter for discrepancies since they’re going to be in the vault anyway, either to retrieve a large amount of coin or to dispose of the backups in the case of the account being closed.
2. 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 crowns (equivalent) for a replacement between the materials and the 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.

For example: 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 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 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, gems, 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 criminals 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 along the outside rotates and has various eldritch 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 keyhole, 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.

## Notes from the Article Author

* I use physical coins in my in-house games namely Realm Coins by Mused Fable as they have a copper, silver and gold denominations sold as sets for decent prices.
* The Banking Section save for the Collect Account Interest, Getting a Loan, and Investing were inspired by an article by ofmetalandmagic: https://ofmetalandmagic.com/homebrewtavern/2019/4/10/a-simple-banking-network-for-fantasy-settings. And all credit for the ideas they presented goes to them, I simply reworked it for use in the Witcher TTRPG. Thank you to Of Metal and Magic for your article and for granting me permission to adapt it for the Witcher TTRPG.
* The contents of this article are intended as free-use homebrew that anyone can use.