A coin clat­tered on the bar­top. A stool scraped. A pair of ban­daged palms clasped beside it.

“What’s this?” said the bar­back. She plucked up the coin, turned it round. It was old and dent­ed. Clean­ly cast with bas reliefs: Some runes on the obverse; and on the reverse: the cru­el-eyed face of a woman with spi­ral horns. A scent of mildew and cop­per rubbed off in her hands. “Ain’t no reg­u­la­tion gold­en pound,” she quipped, twid­dling the coin, looked to the man who’d sat across the bar. Her expres­sion soured. “Oi, you’re drip­ping on my bar.”

He, young and crop-haired, was indeed drip­ping. Bleed­ing, but smil­ing broad­ly. A trick­le of min­gled red and clear liq­uid ran from one swollen, ruined eye, down his cheek to drip below his mug­ging lips.

“Don’t you wor­ry, Eavan,” he leaned for­ward, and his clasped palms trailed a smear of red and drit as they went. A pair of bro­ken teeth showed in his smile. Sour air washed off him. “That right there’s more ‘n suf­fi­cient to account for what­ev­er dam­ages I inflict on your bar.” He nod­ded to the coin.

Min­gled con­cern and detes­ta­tion knit­ted Eavan’s brow. “Have you passed a mir­ror recent­ly, Flatwich?” she said. “Since you crawled from what­ev­er feck­ing hole you got that coin out of?”

“Ach. It’s noth­ing. Pour me some med­i­cine, if you’re so wor­ried.”

“Your ear is bare­ly hang­ing on.”

Moment­ly, Flatwich’s hand twitched towards his shred­ded ear. He sneered, clasped his hands again, knuck­les crack­ing. “Is my gold fair ten­der here, or not?” His eyes gleamed dul­ly in the bar’s orange lamps.

“Doc­tor Stotz is in town. Let me call for...”

A sack jan­gled. Flatwich dropped anoth­er fat coin on the counter. It resound­ed, rang spin­ning; glit­ter­ing gold edges reflect­ing in the oak pol­ish. “Gimme a stout n’ a back of oak whiskey,” growled the bleed­ing cut­ter.

Eavan’s lips went thin, but she act­ed, nonethe­less. She pulled a frothy pour of stout from a near­by bank of taps. And, covert­ly, while the foamy head set­tled, scrib­bled a brief note, tore it off, passed it to a mouse mop­ping under the counter. The fur­ry crea­ture nod­ded, propped up his mop, hopped away. She flicked her eyes to Flatwich as she poured the top-up, found he was occu­pied spin­ning the pair of coins. Two gold disks, whirling in a grow­ing pool dripped from the man­gled man’s head.

As soon as the beer appeared before him, Flatwich tipped it back. He drank it down in long, slow gulps inter­spersed by gasp­ing swal­lows. In that time, Eavan plucked up the spin­ning coins, placed a neat-glass of amber booze before him. Soon enough, it too had dis­ap­peared. Up went a tiny splash of droplets as he slammed the glass down.

“Och, right, sol­id,” he grum­bled, shook his head. The stool legs squeaked. Flatwich made to stand.

“You’re off already?” said Eavan, eyes wide as she beheld him. Now that the man stood, a hilt could be seen pro­trud­ing just above his right hip. Not the hilt of a belt­ed knife, but an antique, rust­ed dag­ger still stuck, crust­ed in the cut­ter’s side under the seam of his armor jack­et. Eavan blanched at the sight of it. Flatwich moved as if the impaled blade both­ered him not at all.

“Indeed, I’m off. Lots more where this came from, down the hole.” He slapped the jan­gling sack on his belt. “Got­ta lug it all safe­ly home, you know.” Eavan watched, incred­u­lous as he limped for the saloon door.

“But what about the oth­ers? Flatwich, your gang, your friends: Are they com­ing?”

Flatwich paused, door latch in hand. “Oh, yes. They’re down there, too. Salt­ed. Don’t wor­ry.”

“Salt­ed? Their-”

“Don’t wor­ry. I’ll car­ry them up.” He round­ed the door­frame. “After I get the rest of that gold, of course.”

Every­one’s got a tea­spoon of salt in their coin purse. Every­one who con­sid­ers them­selves civ­i­lized, at least. And not typ­i­cal salt, either, but the mag­i­cal and cura­tive grey salt griso­date, the min­er­al by which ten­u­ous civ­i­liza­tion sur­vives. * Steely grey grains, crushed to pow­der among the pence and lit­tle far­things.

You’ll get a uni­fied expla­na­tion for why it’s there: Wis­dom. ** The wis­dom to treat one’s mon­ey well; to spend dis­cern­ing­ly and choose a degree of asceti­cism and mod­er­a­tion over greed. How or whether at all this works, none could tell you for sure.

None can say, as it is indeed work­ing. City folk could­n’t tell, though. It’s not they who are at risk of unnat­ur­al greed. They, with their purs­es full of griso­date and fresh­ly mint­ed, uncor­rupt­ed specie, need fear only the mate­ri­al­ism con­trived by their own minds.

They are blessed to nev­er know the hor­rid avarice of real gold fever.

Gold Fever

Civ­i­liza­tion’s gold is not mined. Not any­more.

It is stolen.

Stolen from the tombs and dun­geon com­plex­es of awful empires past. Of rich and ter­ri­ble king­doms, now buried, lain to rest uneasy behind locked vaults and ranks of undy­ing guardians. To the finan­cial insti­tu­tions of the world, it is large­ly prefer­able to wrest gold from these ancient halls than to mine it. † To do so, they employ cut­ters: ven­ture­some mer­ce­nar­ies and weird errants mad­ly bent on an often-unlaw­ful life of high adven­ture.

Gold tak­en from the for­bid­den earth is no good bul­lion. It is, so say gos­sip­ful cut­ters over pipe bowls and cups of aqua vitae, hor­ri­bly cursed. It is this ancient gold, they say, the twist­ed chal­ices, spired crowns, and fat, sneer­ing-faced coins, that bears the curse of gold fever. 

And they are cor­rect. Gold buried long ago bears a sick­ness in its dusty lus­ter: A mold, indis­tin­guish­able from spot­ty com­mon mildew, that clings dor­mant to crevices and reliefs. A mold respon­si­ble, in part, for the mad­ness of those ven­ture­some souls who fer­ry it from its places of inter­ment.

Schol­ars, those few who are aware of it, call the mold Rabese­duc­tor aurum. This, the mold for which peo­ple unwit­ting­ly keep anti­fun­gal salt in their purs­es, is observed to grow and repro­duce only on gold.

Those same schol­ars the­o­rize that con­tact with R. aurum is observed to cause a sort of mania, one char­ac­ter­ized by an over­rid­ing, anti­so­cial avarice, par­tic­u­lar­ly for gold. A dan­ger­ous dri­ve accom­pa­nied by grandios­i­ty, impul­siv­i­ty, and a pre­vail­ing dis­re­gard for per­son­al or pub­lic injury, all the sig­na­ture symp­toms of gold fever.

Madness

Any­one who has spent time among the fringe cul­ture that is cut­ters’ will know all the above symp­toms to be more than preva­lent. Though none among those cav­a­lier, itin­er­ant killers would rec­og­nize it, most cut­ters of mod­er­ate suc­cess are ful­ly ensor­celled; enchant­ed by lucre just as effec­tive­ly, if not more unnat­u­ral­ly, than the greedy financiers they dis­tant­ly serve.

To learn of R. aurum and the mania it’s thought to incur is to have one’s per­cep­tion of cut­ters, per­haps even of one’s ven­ture­some self, bespoiled; strewn to mud­died doubt. What once seemed a nat­ur­al range of behav­ior in debonair, Dev­il-may-care mer­ce­nar­ies with noth­ing to lose becomes more trans­par­ent­ly con­cern­ing: Self­less sto­icism becomes indif­fer­ence and per­son­al neglect; rol­lick­ing brav­ery becomes a pen­chant for unnec­es­sary vio­lence; and ambi­tious deter­mi­na­tion becomes sui­ci­dal avarice. ††

After all, how often can one see a cut­ter, wound­ed beyond belief, stag­ger to the bar and glad­ly down a few drinks, only to return, weapon-hand twitch­ing, back to the dun­geon for more loot? What sane crea­ture, after hav­ing seen the buried hor­rors of ages long ago, would glad­ly return to the deep? Indeed, to know the truth of gold fever is not just to doubt the cut­ter, but to doubt the integri­ty of free will. With­out some mad­ness, how should a sane per­son wish to be a cut­ter at all? And is R. aurum the vital mad­ness that fuels it all?

The schol­ars who named R. aurum the­o­rize that the ven­tur­ing econ­o­my would not exist, if not for gold fever. They are wrong. R. aurum is not present out­side stores of ancient gold. § Instead, far more mun­dane dri­ves exist to send cut­ters down hor­rid, dead­ly holes: Scarci­ty, curios­i­ty, thrill-seek­ing, and, most notably, debt will all send a soul down the ven­tur­ing life.

Gold fever, unnat­ur­al or not, sim­ply serves to keep them there.

⁂

Note

Mur­der­ho­bos, jus­ti­fied for you by fan­ta­sy tox­o­plas­mo­sis.

They way I use gold fever, I actu­al­ly don’t stat it out. There are no sys­tems attached. It’s sim­ply a rumor. A rumor meant to unnerve the play­ers and make them sec­ond-guess their behav­ior. These days, in Incunab­u­li d12 , you can actu­al­ly get an XP ben­e­fit for explic­it­ly iden­ti­fy­ing your­self as being infect­ed with gold fever. 10 XP per day, if you lug ancient gold out of the hole.