The economy of Cross comes down, in the end, to one sentence: there is too much ore and too few believers.
The bottleneck — the central statistic of this world
The Order mines roughly three times more ore than it can purify.
This is the most important material fact in the economy of Cross, and the one closest to the thesis of the work.
Extraction is labour. You hire, you dig, you condemn people to the mines, and ore comes out. Purification is faith — lay mining produces dead ore, and a cynical cleric produces dead stone. The capacity to dig grew with industrialisation; the capacity to consecrate grew with nothing at all, because it depends on a resource that cannot be manufactured.
Accumulated consequence: since about 1878, stockpiles of dead ore have been growing in every mining State of the Order. Heaps of raw Choir-Iron, Chrism and Hashmalite — technically perfect, materially inert — waiting for someone able to wake them. Nobody publishes the figure. Every Cardinal-of-State knows it.
This connects directly to Belkar, 1884: the continent's last offensive died because it was not powder that ran out, it was clerics with faith enough to consecrate at the required rate. Belkar was not an accident. It was a balance sheet turning into nineteen thousand dead.
Annual mineral output — 1890, the whole continent
Quantities purified, not mined.
| Mineral | Purified/year | Main source | Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| MineralChoir-Iron | Purified/year~180,000 t | Main sourceFerrum Alpina · Kal'arn · Brytonia | UseBlade, armour, structure |
| MineralSeal Salt | Purified/year~90,000 t | Main sourceSal Pradelica | UseBarrier, field exorcism |
| MineralArdentine | Purified/year~62,000 t | Main sourceStromakra (volcanic) · Sathkar (liquid, enemy) | UseExplosive, artillery |
| MineralHoly Ash | Purified/year~30,000 t | Main sourceVallia Sacra, diffuse production | UseDefensive cover |
| MineralSilver Chrism | Purified/year~4,200 t | Main sourceMaritima Coronata · Seal IV · Brytonia | UseAmmunition — ~900 million rounds/year |
| MineralLumen | Purified/year~900 t | Main sourceSchola Coronata · Seal II | UseRepellent light |
| MineralHashmalite | Purified/year~240 t | Main sourceKal'arn 30% · Ferrum Alpina 55% · others 15% | UseElectricity, armour |
What the table shows
Hashmalite is vanishingly scarce — two hundred and forty tonnes for an entire continent, per year. That is why the Pantheon-Solar tanks exist in small numbers and why sanctified electricity lights cathedrals and not neighbourhoods. It is also why Königsmark, holding 30% of world output at Kal'arn, survives its schism: Rome cannot afford to punish it. See Königsburg.
Silver Chrism is the mineral that decides wars. Four thousand two hundred tonnes a year, turned into nine hundred million consecrated rounds, against eight million men under arms. That works out at roughly a hundred and twelve consecrated shots per soldier per year — which, for a permanent war, is tight scarcity. A soldier of the Order fires consecrated ammunition with accountant's restraint and fills the rest with common lead, which kills nothing that matters.
The arithmetic of the consecrated round
| Licensed purifiers in service | ~11,000 |
| Rate of a competent purifier | ~2 kg of Chrism per working day |
| Purification working days per year | ~250 |
| Theoretical capacity | ~5,500 t/year |
| Actual output | ~4,200 t/year |
| The difference | Death, travel, illness, doubt |
Every consecrated round exists because someone with real faith spent about twenty seconds with it in their hand.
And the 1,300 t/year between the theoretical and the real are, quite literally, the faith that was missing — purifiers dead before their term, purifiers in transit, purifiers who on a given day simply could not.
Budget and product
| Indicator | Value |
|---|---|
| IndicatorShare of continental product spent on war | Value~27% |
| IndicatorShare of the Clerical Order's budget spent on war | Value~62% |
| IndicatorReal-world reference, 19th-century states at peace | Value2-4% |
| IndicatorReal-world reference, total war mobilisation | Value~50% |
27% of continental product, every year, for thirty years. No real economy has sustained that for more than four or five years without collapsing. Cross sustains it because it has no alternative, and the price is exactly what the Age of Stagnation describes: no new street, no new cathedral, no new invention, not one more child.
Who pays: the Order funds itself through the tithe, through the purification monopoly, and through selling consecrated mineral to the crowns. The crowns pay in political obedience and in gold. The circuit is closed and nobody can step out of it.
Gold and credit
A gold standard across the continent.
| Indicator | Value |
|---|---|
| IndicatorContinental gold held by the Clerical Order | Value~65% |
| IndicatorContinental gold in custody in the Kantonal vaults | Value~40% |
| IndicatorFinancial centre no. 1 | ValueVelinia |
| IndicatorFinancial centre no. 2 | ValueBrithon |
The distinction between holding and keeping is the whole of politics: the Order owns the gold, the cantons physically have it, and neither can move without the other. It is the reason the Confederation has never been invaded and has never needed an army. See Bernkanton.
Liturgical credit — a Velinian invention: an advance against mineral not yet purified, guaranteed by the diocese that will purify it. A financial instrument that prices future faith, and the most cynical thing this world has produced.
Trade between blocs
The cross-dependency is total, and deliberate as a design of the world: Brytonia has industry and no mineral; the Order has mineral and buys machines; Vykhradia has food and no industry; Velinia has ships and nothing else; Kantonal has everyone's gold and none of its own. Nobody can leave, nobody can win, and that is why war between humans does not happen.
Relative wages and prices
Index, base 1 = a day's wage for a peasant of Vallia Sacra.
| Index | |
|---|---|
| Convict miner | Index0 — penal labour |
| Peasant (Vallia Sacra, Vykhradia) | Index1 |
| Line soldier of the Order | Index1.8 |
| Industrial worker in Manchaster | Index2.4 |
| Parish canon | Index3 |
| Kantonal mercenary on foreign service | Index6 |
| Licensed purifier | Index14 |
| Magnate cavalry officer | Index22 |
| White Medium | Index— fully supported by the diocese; no wage, because she is not expected to spend |
Concrete price anchors, for direct use in a scene:
- A kilo of purified Hashmalite costs more than a house in Vykhrad.
- A consecrated Chrism cartridge is worth a peasant's daily bread. A soldier who loses a magazine has lost a family's week of food, and he knows it.
- A liturgical clock from Bernkanton costs two years of a worker's wage.
- A third-class seat on a sanctified train, crossing one State, costs three days' wage.
The White Medium's line is the hardest in the table. She has no wage because she has four to six years to live, and everyone involved has done that arithmetic.
- A shortage of ammunition is always a shortage of purifiers. Never powder, never factory, never money. See The clergy in figures.
- Nobody wastes a consecrated round. A character firing at random is rich, is a fool, or is about to die.
- No economic problem is solved with more work. Working harder produces more dead ore. It is the trap this world is built on.
- Money in Cross is real gold, weighed and counted. No abstract credit outside Velinia, Brithon and the Vaults.