Coins and Commerce, Part I

The fellow many people knew as Jon Chess sat it what he privately called his "Thinking Spot", sitting on a boulder which sat in the stream that drained the Lion's Rest park into the sea.

The night before he had run into Hinik and Raysse of the House of Stewards at the Ironforge Craft Faire.  Jon had been awarded of medal for "intrepid exploring" or somesuch, he had not really been paying attention.  The truth is that his fiance Alia had a research expedition that Jon had helped fund in such a way that it would help repair her tenuous relationship with the Kirin Tor.  Alia was possibly the most brilliant mage Jon had ever known, but was limited by the scope and breadth of her library... and her pride. 

Jon had accompanied Hinik and Raysse back to their base of operations in Vigil Hill, a town in south Tiragarde Sound near the southern border to Drustvar, overlooking Daelin's Gate. After the destruction of Daelin's Gate, the Irontide Raiders have repeatedly launched attack after attack. Before he was asked to join Tandred Proudmoore's crew, the local defense had been commanded by Lieutenant Tarenfold, who had organized the local militia and integrated them with the defense force of Kul Tiran marines.  The House of Stewards was a key element in beating back the Irontide raiders, and had bled in their defense.

That night Hinik had shown Jon some counterfeit Kul Tiran coins that his folk had found in Freehold, the lawless city of those who decide to live outside the reach of Kul Tiran justice.  Jon had given his opinion, but there were many unanswered questions:

Who had created the counterfeit Kul Tiran coins, and for what purpose? 

Freehold has traditionally served as a haven for pirates, scoundrels, and those who wish to live free of Kul Tiran control. Recently, the Irontide Raiders have brought the city under their control, building a virtual army of various pirate crews under their banner, funded in part by the traitorous Priscilla Ashvane and her Ashvane Trading Company. Were the coins part of the payment she had given the Irontide Raiders as part of their employment?  Or were these coins part of the booty taken by the Irontide Raiders as part of their depredations.

The coins Jon had examined had been excellent; the edges of the images on the front and obverse sides had been clean and clear.  Whoever had struck the coins had done so from dies produced by master engraved images; the largest challenge for any counterfeit operation was finding an artist with the skill and lack of ethics to create a precise enough image; from the sculpted master, the dies would be made, and over time would degrade as coin after coin was struck.  In Stormwind and Ironforge, the process was augmented by steam-powered hammer assemblies, and the coins struck from large sheets; the flash, or the leftover metal, was collected and melted down into other sheets. 

Kul Tiras was not as progressed as their Alliance allies, and the coins were struck from heavy hammers one at a time.  Kul Tiras merchants welcomed Alliance coinage, which had poured into their coffers like a gentle rain as the Alliance military passed through on their way to Zandalar.

Still, counterfeiting coins was a labor-intensive process, and a lot of coins needed to be reproduced to finance the effort, and the first principle of any criminal investigation was "Who benefits?".  Jon had thought about the list of possible suspects:

• The Ashvane Company, using the counterfeit coinage to spread its resources beyond their already-impressive fiscal reserves.  Fomenting a rebellion against first the Proudmoores and then the Alliance was an expensive enterprise.
• The Irontide Raiders, using counterfeit coinage to buy the loyalties of the disparate independent pirate crews; the Bilge Rats, the Cutwater crew, The Blacktooth crew, and myriad others all required a constant flow of gold to keep them in line and useful.
• The Horde might be using counterfeit coinage to devalue the currency of the Alliance in general and Kul Tiras in particular.  Reducing the confidence in the value of the coinage undermined the moral of both the military and civilian populations.

This could also be the work of any number of other criminal organizations; the Coldwater Cartel, the Blackwater Pirates, even (although doubtful) the Uncrowned (or elements of it).

Regardless of who, the best way to fix the problem for the longer term was to destroy the dies and kill the engraving artists.

One did have to identify the pieces before you could take them off the board.