Currency in the Galactic Community

Money can get you anything, and I mean anything. A new gun, 40 Talents. A new ship, small but well furnished for one person; 4000. A small army of mercenaries to protect you both on the ground and in space? Well, I don't want to buy and tell, but I think you can imagine. Now, what was that about 'paying for my sins'?

The history of money for a single species is long enough that a scholar could dedicate their whole career to that history, and likely never get to the bottom of it. The history of money for the whole of the galaxy? That is a labyrinthine topic that I'm somewhat certain might put any perspective student into shock from the get go.

I could certainly expound upon the attempts of galactic society to come to some sort of consensus over the money that they'd use. The history of conversion rates, the attempts to institute a universal bank, and after that to institute a currency that was no longer limited by physical materials or that made transportation difficult with their weight and physical space. I am not the individual to recount such specificities to you.

So I shall leave such things in the past, and simply talk about the present.

Currently, money takes the form of small bars of valuable metals that are stamped with their makeup, their place of origin, and various other minutiae that may be relevant to determining bargaining weight. The exact shape, composition, and markings can vary wildly, but the purpose was less about a truly standardized currency and more about easing trade with easily identifiable values and amounts.

This does mean that a Talents value can fluctuate with market values, or that you could simply be unable to find a merchant or shopkeeper willing to deal in particular Talents due to not having a use for that particular material. This is more likely on frontier worlds, where they're more interested in materials to operate their printers or forges than monetary wealth, in the moment. Something to keep in mind while traveling.