Fantastic Economy question

[Ahriman238]

So recently I started rereading an old favorite fantasy, Dark Lord of Derkholm. Assuming none of you are familiar with the premise, an ordinary businessman named Roland Chensey manages to summon and bind an exceptionally powerful demon, and open a portal to a fantastic world full of magic. In another story, Chensey would go on a great adventure and learn something profound about himself, but this is Diana Wynne-Jones, so instead he begins a business venture with the locals and cunningly traps them and all their heirs in insanely lopsided contracts enforce by his demon.

So began Chensey's Pilgrim Parties. For a fee, you can obtain a ticket to leave this dull world behind and go on an epic sword-and-sorcery adventure! Join a valiant band of 19 other boobs from your world, led by a genuine Wizard Guide. Fight pirates, Dark Elves, witness the sack of cities and the clash of armies of light and darkness*! See dragons, speak with wizards and behold all the wonders of magic! Overthrow evil tyrants and fanatical cultists and uncover the clues to the secret weakness of the Dark Lord so you can kill him and save this world!

*Chensey's Pilgrim Parties not liable for any injury, curses, or death resulting from your decision to leave your safe home and take part in real swordplay, desperate battles and encounters with monsters up to and including dragons.

Well, it's varying degrees of illusion magic and make pretend, but the average Pilgrim Party still kills two hundred locals, and various other distasteful parts lead some to try and escape the contracts forty years later, setting up the story. But it occurred to me to wonder how much Chensey gets out of this whole thing. Exact figures will not be possible, ballpark figures may be dubious, but is this not a site for the intelligent and slightly bored?

So here goes:

The year of the Last Tour, the book, there are 126 Pilgrim Parties. This is an unusually large number, enough to alter their operational plans and confine everything to one continent to keep Pilgrims from piling up at the final confrontation. Each party consists of twenty people. We're never told how much they pay for a ticket, but a retiree couple, the Pooles, intimate that they took out a mortgage for one last hurrah. The Pooles' background is a fabrication, they are government agents investigating the Pilgrim Parties, but it's most likely a plausible background.


Besides this, Roland Chensey has a number of side interests, to wit:

It is well known in certain circles that, for a lordly sum, Chensey's Pilgrim Parties will arrange for specific individuals to die valiantly freeing the Other World from the forces of darkness. All arrangements handled with the greatest discretion. Payment unspecified, but wizards refer to the expendable list as where the real money from the Tours comes. There are typically 2-3 expendable tourists in each party.

Several (terrible) nations pay Chensey an unspecified amount to empty their prisons of violent offenders to make up the Dark Lord's Army. These men are promised full pardons and fair pay if they survive the tour season. Needless to say, the majority don't.

The 11 dwarf clans of the magical world each pay Chensey an annual tribute, consisting of as much gold as can be carried by 6 ponies. Should be the easiest value to figure.

In a similar vein, one of the first things he did is confiscate the vast majority of each dragon hoard for start-up capital. In this world, dragons derive essential nutrients from lounging on heaps of precious metals and jewels. Chensey had a couple of "experts" estimate the minimal treasure a dragon needs to survive, then went with the lowest figure. I figure this one, at least, is completely incalculable.

Finally, Roland Chensey operates a secret mine run by slave labor digging up... ordinary dirt. The magic is part of the very earth, you know, so magic can be distilled from soil into a liquid form, a super fuel. The existence of this is not known to the general public, mostly select industrialists willing to pay out for special applications. Whatever it's other virtues, magic doesn't have much of a shelf life.

Chensey's corporation has been running 40 years by the time of the book, and it seems in all this time he never paid a cent in taxes. Roughly how much do you figure he made before his business empire imploded? In a year?

[krakonfour]

We have 6 incomes and costs, including a 7th factor that is the annual variation of the figures, and only one of them can be roughly estimated (the ponies, but that depends on the species and the technology used to mount the treasure on them...)

So yeah, impossible task in my eyes.

[Simon_Jester]

Let's at least try to get order of magnitude estimates.

If taking out a mortgage is a realistic way to raise money for a ticket, then the tickets cost something like $50-100,000 each, especially if this is set in the '90s before the housing boom. Figure one to two million per adventuring party, roughly. That explains how the money from discreetly getting a couple of members of a given party killed would be 'the real money,' since it's at least conceivable that someone might be willing to give you a million dollars of money to quietly make someone go away. Ten million would be unlikely because there are a LOT more ways to quietly off someone; this is just one of them.

So, figure something in the low single digit millions per tour.


The tributes paid to empty prisons probably don't do much more than cover some of the expenses incurred in the fantasy world. There must be expenses; presumably Chensey is paying for some things even if he can use his demon to threaten and manipulate people into doing others.


The dwarf clans- 66 pony-loads of gold per year. A realistic pony-load is probably something like 100 to 200 pounds, at roughly 300$/ounce (in 2000 dollars), figure 66*150*12*300... about 35 million a year, IF that gold were sold on the open market in our world. On the other hand, a lot of it is probably (again) needed to cover expenses in the fantasy world.


The dragon hoards- incalculable but probably immense sums. If a dragon needs a pile of gold large enough to use as a mattress, then reducing the size of that pile by a significant percentage means scooping up MANY tons of gold. A ton of gold would fill a cube roughly fourteen inches on a side; you figure out how many such cubes he can get per dragon, and how many dragons there are.

And one ton of gold is worth roughly five to ten million dollars during the period of interest.

That, however, is a one-time boost of startup money. It can be spent in either world.


The magic mine is probably not worth that much, simply because without "distilled magic's" existence becoming known to the scientific community, most of the practical applications won't have been discovered yet. Maybe a couple million more a year. Maybe even tens of millions, but I doubt it.


Sum all this up and... well. Chesney would be rich, very rich, quite possibly billionaire rich. But not into "Bill Gates was a piker" territory.

[Ahriman238]

Might be able to narrow things down a bit.

The ponies each had two baskets, and these apparently weren't just loaded with coins but items of wrought gold, created by master craftsmen.

I honestly have no idea what Chensey's operating costs look like. It seems he must spend a lot on advertising and legal fees to combat his most persistent foes, Internal Revenue and the Monopolies Commission. It seems he like he does pay at least the Wizard Guides and Glamorous Enchantress something for their troubles, and presumably the various nations see something but it's far less than the devastation the tours frequently bring. Chensey is pretty hands-off about the Other Side, he requires them to appoint a Wizard as Dark Lord to manage everything on that end. He goes to one meeting of the Dark Lord and all Wizard Guides, mostly to distribute fresh maps, schedules, lists of pilgrims and expendables, and to introduce the year's theme and novelty and make whatever amendments to the Tour rules and procedures he sees fit. Otherwise, they never see him unless there;s a serious problem. Very least, the Dark Lord appears to provide food and shelter for his army at his own expense, though CPP seems to provide them arms and armor.

The Dark Lord is a hated and thankless job, running the world on Chensey's behalf and making sure every party has their encounters at the proper place and time. On the other hand, he appears to be the only person in that world eligible for a bonus, but only if he comes up with some exciting new atrocity for the Dark Lord to commit.

The mine is run by slaves, but it's not clear how they get there, they are just a bit north of one of the largest slave-employing city-states, Costamerat. The overseers are recruited from the Dark Lord's Army, deserting early on to relieve last year's crew.

There are at least a hundred dragons on Derk's world, even though their population growth has dropped to almost nothing since the Tours started. The smallest are described as being twice the size of a spacious farmhouse, the largest take up half a small valley, both discounting wingspan.

[InsaneTD]

He'd probably still have most of that loot from the dragons since he can't dump that much gold/jewels/precious metals into the market without massive depreciation Most of it would probably be on the otherside funding the dark lords army.

[Ahriman238]

He'd probably still have most of that loot from the dragons since he can't dump that much gold/jewels/precious metals into the market without massive depreciation Most of it would probably be on the otherside funding the dark lords army.

Good point.


A couple more thoughts as I read and thumb through the book again.

CPP apparently pays to rent a horse for each Pilgrim. Each Pilgrim receives for free two pairs of tunics and trousers, a cloak, and a blanket from the company. The locals maintain camps about a days ride apart along each Tour path, stocked with magically preserved food. All of this, as well as shelter and feed for the Dark Lord's Army, are handled at the locals' expense. Failure to provide is punishable by forfeiture of all pay and a 100 gold piece fine.

If the Pilgrims want arms or armor, and they always do, they pay out of pocket for it.

Derk (the titular Dark Lord of Derkholm) convinces several dwarfs to become his Dark Servitors and fight Pilgrims on the way to their final confrontation, apparently the standard rate is 20 gold pieces for the entire season.

It seems Roland Chensey may not be precisely from our world after all, the Pilgrims mention credits as currency. It seems that each pays an additional 1-3 thousand credits for life insurance, depending on age and health.

[Bedlam]

It seems Roland Chensey may not be precisely from our world after all, the Pilgrims mention credits as currency. It seems that each pays an additional 1-3 thousand credits for life insurance, depending on age and health.

That's quite interesting given that 10% of each party normally dies, What does the insurance pay out? If it's less than 30K then there's a loss going to be made.

Now I realise that most of the deaths are pre-planned but wouldn't it be suspicious is an otherwise well person can't get life insurance?

There might be some legal trickery that the policies are actually more or less worthless I suppose, something in the small print that is only covers very specific situations something like does does cover death by magic when the whole of the other world can be considered magic even normal swords, daggers, water, etc.

[Ahriman238]

The insurance appears to be mandatory, presumably to limit liability.

At the Enchantress' Lair, we learn that King Luther or Luteria and the Duke of Chell each get paid 200 gold for their participation this year. Luteria participates in the climatic battle between good and evil, on the side of light, while the city of Chell is sacked by Dark Elves while the Pilgrims barely escape through hidden tunnels in the catacombs. Both events involve a dozen, perhaps 20 parties kept carefully separated from each other so each believes these events are for their adventure alone.

The dragons, it seems, each receive one gold goblet every 5 years from CPP. That for the one encounter where the party has to steal the magic item that's the Dark Lord's one weakness from a dragon hoard.

[Simon_Jester]

Might be able to narrow things down a bit.

The ponies each had two baskets, and these apparently weren't just loaded with coins but items of wrought gold, created by master craftsmen.

Given the way modern economies work, if he tries to sell gold Earthside, I'm betting that the majority of the cost of the gold will still be from the raw metal- it's a lot easier to find competent goldsmiths than to find the actual gold.

I honestly have no idea what Chensey's operating costs look like...

Yeah, that's the non-estimable side. We can get a pretty good idea of what his income is worth because he's getting paid in dollars and in gold bricks- but his expenses are more diverse and weird.

There are at least a hundred dragons on Derk's world, even though their population growth has dropped to almost nothing since the Tours started. The smallest are described as being twice the size of a spacious farmhouse, the largest take up half a small valley, both discounting wingspan.

And they literally sleep on pillows of gold? Yeah, that makes for a nearly incalculable mountain of wealth, then. Chensey's operating capital in the fantasy world is nigh-limitless, and his operating capital in the real world is limited only by his ability to sell off that treasure.

[krakonfour]

That's a huge amount of gold!
We produce a cube 4.3m wide of gold a year. A dragon 'the size of a small valley' has several decades worth of gold!

[Simon_Jester]

...Er, yes, that was my fairly obvious conclusion.

Our idea of dragons having massive piles of wealth that they can literally lie on like a mattress comes from mythological, not just fantastic, sources. The wealth of such a dragon is like the strength of Hercules, or the cunning of a trickster-god. It is something so large that it hardly even fits into the world as medievals knew it, the whole point being to get them to go "WOW!" with lots of exclamation points and amazement.

And while we today are less impressed by the ability to lift a one-ton rock or beat a lion in a wrestling match, that massive volume of wealth is still impressive. Probably because gold remained rather scarce even as technology made duplicating some of the other labors of Hercules easier.

[SMJB]

The question in my mind right now is...why? I mean, what I'm getting from this is that this guy can make an entire world do his bidding, more-or-less, and is clearly not interested in anything even remotely like the greater good, so why not just get a solid-gold seraglio on a private island somewhere?

Also, damn it! Yet another one of my ideas isn't as original as I thought it was.

[Ahriman238]

The question in my mind right now is...why? I mean, what I'm getting from this is that this guy can make an entire world do his bidding, more-or-less, and is clearly not interested in anything even remotely like the greater good, so why not just get a solid-gold seraglio on a private island somewhere?

The easy answer is "because it's a kid's book." If Chensey wasn't exploiting the entire world, and doing it in that specific way, Derk's world would be drastically different. It's still be full of people, with conflict and room for storytelling, as the sequel Year of the Griffin made clear, but it would be a very different, and probably far more generic sort of fantasy story. This is about what's going on behind the scenes of your typical fantasy story and what happens when the men behind the curtains decide they're sick of this work.

But that doesn't really satisfy, does it?

Try this, I can't really see Roland Chensey retiring to Derk's world even with all the slave girls and riches. The two things that define Roland Chensey in his every appearance is how ordinary he looks, like any other middle-aged accountant, and how unruffled he is by whatever is going on. He gets splashed with a barrel full of blood early on and while his companions flinch and scream, he calmly pulls out a handkerchief, wipes his face, informs the responsible party they are fined 10 gold pieces, and resumes his business meeting. When leaving the meeting, Kit, the largest griffin sets himself in the path with the sincere intent to kill the man. Chensey stands his ground, utterly calm, informing Kit that if he doesn't step aside he will regret it.

In the end we learn this is fueled by his utter faith that no one in Derk's world is real. To him they aren't people, just resources to be exploited. He tells them how they will appear and act, and they do so. He never allows Pilgrims to stay behind, or people from Derk's side of the portal to come through because they aren't real life.

Also, damn it! Yet another one of my ideas isn't as original as I thought it was.

I heard once they found a 4,000 Egyptian document lamenting that all the original ideas had been used up and everything now was retreads and sequels. No idea if that's true or not, but it is hard. Well, it doesn't really matter who had the idea first if you can bring a fresh perspective or direction to it, Mrs. Wynne-Jones herself would approve.