Imperial Credit System
The economic and identity substrate of the Maan People Maan The most numerous people of Elshore and the baseline cultural reference of the age. empire, running through every transaction from burial-plot terminals to pharmacy dispensers and capsule-train turnstiles. Credits are the measure of life in the empire, access to medicine, food, shelter, and transit is gated by credit class or subscription tier. The system is identity-bound and stratified, with parallel ration-strip and stipend rails for those outside the credit-seal class.
Key traits
- Operates through multiple credential classes: bank cards, credit seals for tiered-access spaces, subscription accounts, trainee ration strips, and unemployment stipends.
- All major service points, pharmacy dispensers, burial-plot terminals, capsule-train turnstiles, vending slots, are self-service and credit-verified, running without clerks on-scene.
- Subscription tiers gate access to medical care, meaning those without monthly payments are excluded from treatment regardless of need.
- The Order of Randen Faction Order of Randen The fastest-growing power in the Maan empire at AC 50, the Order of Randen is a religious-political apparatus that co-opts the theology of Randenism and transforms it into a deb...'s doctrine frames financial debt as existential obligation, giving imperial credit obligations a religious enforcement layer beyond formal prosecution.
- Descends from the Inarin-era Elandrium silver coin system; the AC-50 "imperial credits" unit is its successor after roughly 1,800 years of monetary history.
- Card-in-hand is sufficient to transact; no PIN or biometric confirmation is cited, making physical possession the sole authentication factor.