What's the deal with Zenny?

[Kyle]

I'm aware that this topic has been (somewhat) addressed both eons ago and semi-recently, but we need to focus on something else.

Smaller refractor pieces are used as currency. Okay, I get that. But do all of these refractors come from defunct Reaverbots and ruins? Are the larger ones broken down in order to keep Terra's economy afloat? Who regulates it? The entire world can hardly run of a mercenary/miner-esque bartering system, can it? Has the King Miroc exploit caused untold amounts of inflation overnight?! WHO BOUGHT THAT GIANT REFRACTOR FROM THE BONNES AT THE END OF MML1?!

THESE QUESTIONS MUST BE ANSWERED!

[Dashe]

Taking into consideration the 5-Island Adventure, there is a machine on Urakoi Island that actually creates refractors, so they definitely don't occur naturally. That particular ruin contained a stone tablet that unlocked the Ancient Towers in the fifth chapter of 5-island, and that seemed to be connected with the system, so the refractors themselves aren't physically produced by carbons. As far as other diggers don't find out about the King Miroc nest, they're probably under the impression that there are only a finite number of refractors in the world.

Whatever faction regulates refractor distribution and breakdown must be a global standard like the Digger's Guild. Maybe it's directly linked with the guild. Maybe Bluecher's running it. He looks incredibly well-off for someone who hasn't gone on a dig in ages.

[RyanLEO]

Well refractors are a source of power, which I'm pretty sure is used by the reaverbots and that is why you get them after you kill them. Other than the machine that makes refractors, if it stops making them , then there would be a limited amount of them. Zenny is the currency used in the MML world, and each refractor is worth a certain amount of zenny. I don't know if it is, but if a refractor has unlimited energy then I think the zenny they're worth would stay the same. If they eventually run out, then they would become more expensive over time while people realize they are becoming harder to get.

The giant refactor had to be worth a huge fortune, and Teisel must've really screwed up bad to blow it all. I'm not sure if they ever said who bought it.

[Blues]

Ah, excellent questions Jeep! Here's an issue worth discussion.

Do all refractors come from defunct reaverbots and ruins? Almost, but not quite; refractors come from old techology in general, both System and pre-System technologies, implying that refractors as a source of energy long predate (and are thus not exclusive to) ruins and reaverbots.  Note additionally that refractors only come from machines and are not mined naturally- in fact, a refractor mine (as seen in MoTB) is really just a less-organized ruins system, perhaps from ruins that have 'broken down' (i.e., the ruin's wall no longer exist and reaverbots/traps 'leak' into more natural cave formations).  Geetz implied that refractors could be manufactured when he was attempting to trick Von Bleucher and Barrel into finding the Four Keys; whether or not that particular fact is true seems to be left intentionally vague.

Are large refractors broken down for economic use? I don't see why they should be, considering A. the primary function of large refractors- that is, powering large/energy-intensive machinery and B. the general scarcity of these large refractors (which would make them more valuable whole as opposed to in the more common 'pieces' you get from reaverbots).  And of course once large refractors are used up they're worthless, as they have no power. So there's no need to ever have them be broken down.

Who regulates the refractor 'economic' system? Now this one's really interesting!  See, the largest body of government we see in the games is on a small town or city level- at best we only see mayors of individual cities on islands (if we're lucky). Never are there mentioned any regional governors with power superior to these mayors, or presidents/prime ministers/what-have-you who control one or several islands. (Although do note that there are banks on several islands- no telling if there's trade between the banks of different islands.) Chalk that down to it never being important to the story of the games, I guess.  What's interesting is that despite all these islands having different governing bodies, each and every one of them has zenny as their currency- a contrast to reality where two neighboring countries are likely to have different currencies (or even different currencies from region-to-region; think the ancient Greek polises, where Athens would have different coinage from Macedonia, and so on)!

Now you've probably heard Chiz or Dashe or some of the older members mention the 'Refractor Cartel' joke, where the Digger's Guild teams up with Lex Loath's criminal organization and has some mad plot to control the MML world.  It's amusingly ridiculous, but there's an element of truth to it- according to the games, Diggers are the only source of getting refractors (to power machines) for the MML civilization. And the Digger's Guild controls the entrances to many of the ruins seen in the MML world, which means that you have to registered under their system if you want to go digging in about 80% of the island's ruins we've seen so far*.  Therefore, by controlling and regulating the Diggers and their actions, plus the physical openings of the ruins entrances themselves, the Digger's Guild has quite a lot of economic power!  Imagine, for instance, that the Digger's Guild decides to rebel against the other smaller governments that exist on the other islands or whatever.  They have the authority to close down all ruins entrances under their control and tell the diggers in their guild not to dig in other ruins at the risk of losing their licenses (which could also equate with status).  Right away that means the world is down a majority of its potential resources.  The Digger's Guild could essentially hold Terra's future procurement of power supplies hostage if they so wished! Isn't that fascinating!?

The King Miroc trick I see as primarily a 'game mechanic' thing.  It's a neat trick that players can pull off to get extra money, but isn't much more than that.

The spending of the giant refractor (doesn't it have a name?) is open to speculation of course.  My theory is that Teisel spent it all on:

• Buying a building/property to be the Bonne's store (as the Bonnes likely didn't own a store while they were pirates). Note that property on the scale of buying stores is probably really expensive in and of itself.
  
• Buying furnishing for the store, as well as setting up whatever changes to the structure they would've wanted.
  
• Utilities (electricity, running water, etc.)
• Stock items to actually sell on shelves.
  
• And probably advertising for their store too- the Bonnes strike me as
  business-savvy, and advertising is essential if you want your store to
  get noticed.
  

          
What might be worth discussing is how exactly that giant refractor was used by whoever ended up with it.  Sure, it's likely a massive amount of power- but are such large refractors common?  As in, would the carbons have built systems that could accommodate refractors of that size?  And what would it power?  The Gesellschaft, large ship that it was, would seem to be the kind of thing you'd power with a large refractor; but the Bonnes treated the giant refractor as if it was a rarity, something they wouldn't do if they had one powering their ship, so that's right out.  So how could that thing be put to use?  I leave those questions to whoever can theorize a crazy enough explanation to answer them. >: P

Addendum- On the 'zenny questions' as asked in the older threads: Theory/notes about the difference between Refractors and Refractor Shards.  Full-on, whole Refractors are used to power machines, including reaverbots.  When you blow up reaverbots, you get Refractor Shards, which are used as currency.  So what are Refrator Shards?  Well presumably, reaverbots have whole Refractors in them that power them up, much like airships, cars, and Bonne mechs have whole refractors that power them too.  So when you blow up reaverbots with your buster gun, you also shatter the whole Refractor that was powering it into Shards.  This also explains why you get Refractor Shards from Bonne robots of all kinds too. 


_{*Unless one particular island has their ruins controlled by their 'government', like Kattelox, or just doesn't seem to care who enters their ruins, like whoever's in charge of Ryship Island's Nakkai ruins and/or the Shala-Kun refractor mines.}

[SketchMan3]

So what's the use of refractor shards anyway? Can they be glued back together? Can they power things like flashlights and hoverboards? Why are they worth anything?

I don't see how it would be unreasonable to consider the Main Gate Refractor as being suitable to powering the Gesellschaft. The Bonne's ship wasn't even half the size of that thing.

Maybe Sera bought it and used it to power her final form, lol. Or maybe the digger's guild bought it?

[proudone]

I always figured you'd exchange refractors for zenny, what with them coming in pretty large sizes (like, half the height of a teenager!?) it would probably be a huge bother carrying them around for people without hammerspace.

[satoh]

The size of refractor shards in the games is not literal, in my opinion... Frankly there are a lot of them that won't even fit inside the reaverbots they came out of.
As for why they are worth anything at all... Because people allow them to be. That's all that is required for currency to have worth.

For instance, while the US dollar was once backed by gold, this has not been the case for many years. US Currency is backed by nothing. It is paper and coinage that has worth simply because people believe it does. I think this is the case with refractor shards. It may even be like gold itself for that matter: Rafractor shards are actually useless pretty trinkets that have been sought after since the betas first attained sentience. Their original meaning, if any, is another casualty of time.

No one remembers WHY they wanted to keep the broken shards of refractor, only that they DO want to keep them. Just like gold had no real useful value to primitive man, it WAS pretty, and could possibly be used for the same things as any other material... but it was pretty and so it was worth more than say, sandstone, which could be shaped and used as a tool like gold, but also like gold, it was not very durable...but gold is at least pretty.

Substitute gold for refractor shards.
Aside from that, refractor shards fill a need in the world. The world NEEDS currency in order to progress in a controlled way, to reach the point that it has in MML. If everyone spends all day bartering one sheep for two chickens... a lot of time is wasted establishing the worth of things. Currency has definite worth. Refractor shards are plentiful. While you can go into ruins and "get as many as you like" it DOES require significant amounts of work to do, and therefor even diggers are earning the shards they gather, meaning the worth of them is not diminished.

Again on size being a game mechanic rather than a literal:
We see three good examples of what are considered "large refractors" by the cast. The first one is smaller than most of the shards you find in the game, yet it is called a large refractor. We can assume that the shards Trigger collects are smaller than this. As for why they are so apparently large in the game... it's to make them easily visible, and also easily distinguishable from each other. Large things are easy to see and thus make good collectables. Small things... not so much.

Now, no one has mentioned that there seem to be a lot of refractor shards in the garbage... Well if they're actually quite small, it would be easy to lose them and for them to wind up alongside other items in the trash. Most people don't rummage around in trash cans either, so Trigger collecting trashcan money is actually sort of an oddity.

Lets expand upon the discussion even further by asking how much is a refractor shard worth... That is, what is Zenny worth. My guess is that 10 zenny is roughly equivalent to a US dollar, a British pound or a euro. My reasoning is that I have actually dealt some with machining, and if we consider a lot of the things Roll builds being about 500 USD/other real currency (5000z) then its actually quite realistic, considering she starts with parts that she has and puts all of the work in herself. Then we consider that trashcans seem to have 20z lying around all over... well, losing two coins is pretty easy, so losing two coins worth of Zenny is probably easy enough too.

However, this is not a perfect figure, as it only costs 1800z to build an upscale condo....according to Mayor Amelia. However, one man during the evacuation claims that he "Forgot [he] only had 970z in the bank." If twice that is enough for a nice house, then "only" seems like a snobbish thing to say, however if 970z is only about 97 quid/buck/insert euro slang... well that's not much of a savings at all.

Setting aside where they keep it (because that's in the pocket dimension as per ALL video game logic) there could just as easily be actual coinage that is indeed traded for shards. In fact its not uncommon for multiple forms of currency to be used, for example, trading shards for items, and getting coins back as your change. This is how trade works in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, the US dollar is worth more than the native currency, not in the monetary sense, but in the personal value placed in it by the people. If you pay in USD, they will accept it eagerly, but will always return you change in local money, even when they have correct change to give you, and know readily how much of what to give. If you ask for USD as your change, they may oblige, but the general sense is that they'd rather have the green bills than the red ones padding their registers.

So with this in mind it could be that shards are literally currency, while zenny is ALSO a currency.

[Avegodro]

I like to think that besides being shiny baubles used as currency that refractor shards also hold some charge in them and can be used to power things to. They are just broken crystal shards after all, shouldn't be to tricky to hook it up to some gizmo.

[satoh]

Aug 22, 2013 20:53:54 GMT -5 Avegodro said:

I like to think that besides being shiny baubles used as currency that refractor shards also hold some charge in them and can be used to power things to. They are just broken crystal shards after all, shouldn't be to tricky to hook it up to some gizmo.

but think about how they work, remember the Flutter refractor coupling? You'd need something fairly large to have a device like that in it and even then, a broken shard would likely not be sufficiently energized or pure enough to generate the power required for it. Then again...

Maybe that's where some of Roll's spending goes... directly into the weapon itself as a power source... (Unlikely)
_{((On the subject of her spending, she spends a hell of a lot LESS than an entire government agency would on the same project, and yields better and faster results too. So quit complaining, people, you've got better equipment than the collective militaries of the world can build, at a tenth of the cost.))}