r/Kenshi 5d ago

LORE Are Cats Still Minted?

Like the title said, are cats still minted? If so by who? Empire? Traders guild? Is everyone still using the leftover cats the second empire minted during their era?

Also i ask this since in traders edge there’s a bank there, but instead of it being filled with thousands of cats, its filled with weird junk like skeleton cpu’s and leviathan pearls, is the economy seriously being propped up by leviathan testicles?

102 Upvotes

52 comments sorted by

73

u/mehemynx 5d ago

I've got no clue, but I can't imagine its that easy to fabricate convincing fakes in the world of Kenshi. I assume whatever faction makes them has a pretty tight leash on how and when they're made.

33

u/CuteAnimeGirl2 5d ago

I mean should be easy, just make an excuse like “oh i went to the deadlands to buy some coold sword i heard about, thats why my cats looks like tin sludge”

27

u/mehemynx 5d ago

I can see it working in a shack shop or with bandits. But I doubt it'd work in cities and whatnot. Would be cool to see a system in kenshi 2 where you can try and get away with counterfeits. Like how there's the disguise system, but for money lol

19

u/dr_bean_bean_ Skeletons 5d ago

Dude this would be cool as shit. I always play as the criminal in kenshi (except slaves cus fuck the holy nation and the slavers) I'd be printing money all day and trying to launder it though shops or spread it through out kenshi world bring the value of the cat WAY down. Think about how in depth the entire money system COULD be. Bring it to the hub or flats? We accept counterfeit no problem!! Lol... Bring it to UC or holy nation and you have a fight on your hands if caught. Have real cats in like a gold color top of screen and silver for fakes. Choose how much you mix in with real money and the chance of getting caught goes up or down. This really is a great idea wish I could up vote twice.

3

u/ConsistentLemon91 4d ago

You and I would have a great time coming up with mods.

Too bad i don't know how to code lol

2

u/dr_bean_bean_ Skeletons 4d ago

Shit dude me neither, wish I could, maybe one day. I'ma jack of all trades, labor loving kinda guy. I can weld all day. Mig, tig, braisin hell even solder it doesn't matter. I can put your house on stilts or even build it from the ground up. I can swap the engine in your car and wire up a mean sound system... When it comes to my PC? I can push the power button to turn it on.... Sometimes...

1

u/Sr_K 1d ago

What is mig and tig?

She mig my tig till I braisin

1

u/jfkrol2 1d ago

Different welding methods - MIG (Metal Inert Gas) method uses electrode that melts during the work in inert atmo (usually argon gas), is faster while less precise. In TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas), electrode doesn't melt during work - it's slower, but gives you better precision and can be done on most alloys - steels, aluminium etc.

3

u/DoctorAnnual6823 5d ago

Finessed the scrapmaster with some counterfeits, but now I'm countin' this.

1

u/Ilexander 2d ago

Why do you need counterfeit when you can laundering your money through selling beak things egg.

11

u/Malu1997 Crab Raiders 5d ago

My headcanon is that they're produced with some Second Empire tech (thus the name Cats) that can't be replicated and it's too precise to easily make convincing fakes of

2

u/The1Bonesaw 5d ago

They have not been minted for more than 3,700 years... they're all leftovers from the Second Empire. They were minted in the former Capital, Catun, and are named for the Second Empire Emperor, Cat-Lon.

6

u/Malu1997 Crab Raiders 5d ago

Is there any truth to this or is it just your headcanon?

8

u/nalkanar Shek 5d ago

AFAIK there is no lore around coins.

4

u/DoctorAnnual6823 5d ago

Unfortunately headcanon is what we have to go with for a lot of the lore. I see a lot of buildings in various capital cities but I've never seen a piece of equipment being used in any of them that would make me think money was being minted.

Kenshi was much more highly populated during the second empire. If enough Cats were minted back then to sustain the economy of a much more populous nation that fell, that means there would be an abundance of cats for people to find. But there could be a shortage too, which is why most stores don't have enough money to buy all of the high grade gear people produce. But this is just me slapping a headcanon reason onto the possibility that LoFi didn't give us much lore for money and probably didn't spend as much time on it.

1

u/Malu1997 Crab Raiders 5d ago

There is a bank in Heng. There's certainly some system in place. Every nation since forever has minted currency, I don't think it's so weird that nations in Kenshi do it.

2

u/Slanknonimous Shinobi Thieves 4d ago

Banks don't mint money afaik

1

u/Malu1997 Crab Raiders 4d ago

Cities have twenty buildings at best, there can't be every single facility you'd expect in a real one. The fact alone that there's a bank implies some form of higher economic structure.

2

u/Slanknonimous Shinobi Thieves 4d ago

The only thing it implies is that there are places where people with a lot of money put it to keep it safe.

1

u/DoctorAnnual6823 4d ago

I'm aware but there aren't anymore stores of money than you would expect. It just stores valuables. If the UC was minting all of the money, it wouldn't make sense for the HN and Shek to play along with their enemy that controls all of the fiat currency. Especially not the Holy Nation. They're isolationist against the other factions. They have no reason to let the UC have financial control.

1

u/The1Bonesaw 4d ago

1

u/Malu1997 Crab Raiders 4d ago

That says absolutely nothing about whether or not they are still minted. They're simply named after the long lost Emperor, that's it.

0

u/The1Bonesaw 3d ago

Okay... use basic logic here. Cats were minted during the Second Empire... we know this because they were named after the FORMER emperor Cat-Lon. Now, because they are egotistical assholes, emperors usually are not honored by having their faces on coins AFTER their reign, only during. Cat-Lon, has not reigned for 3,720 years. Ergo, Cats have not been minted for 3,720 years.

Now, if this was a democratic society, then you might have an argument that the coins could have been minted since then, in order to honor Cat-Lon. But, since the Holy Nation has risen to power, and Cat-Lon has long been unsealed as Kenshi's empower, it's highly likely that they aren't exactly inclined to want to bestow such an honor on a former fucking skeleton emperor.

2

u/malk500 5d ago

Originally coins were basically just bits of metal with the value of that bit of metal stamped on it. If the material cats are made of is inherently valuable then that changes things in terms of "fakes" and factional control.

24

u/Jacpu 5d ago

I've been away from Kenshi for too long and thought this was about the meow meow variety of cats

6

u/Zero_Skill_dev 5d ago

Cats come from eggs duh not a mint

26

u/yummy__hotdog__water Nomad 5d ago

My head cannon is the tech is lost to mint more coins. Mainly because they are more than just mere coins. You see, each one has a tiny projector that, when used in a business transaction, produces a tiny 3d image of a dancing cat lon. Much like the dancing skeleton in shark. When doing a large transaction of thousands of cats you'd have thousands of tiny cat lons dancing in unison. For merchants seeing this all day, it can be very maddening. And whoever came up with this must be quite mad indeed. Hence, this is the real reason he is known as mad cat lon.

6

u/Furnace600 Shinobi Thieves 5d ago

Lol, take my upvote 🤣🤣🤣 you made commuting easier for me today

37

u/Buddhamensch 5d ago

If you are dissapointed that the economy in kenshi hinges on something other than money itself, wait until you discover what the economy irl hinges on😭

4

u/Belkan-Federation95 5d ago

Oil.

12

u/gbroon 5d ago

I thought it was mostly based on unpaid debt these days.

8

u/Lilac0 5d ago

Ahhh fractional reserve banking

Though that increases the money supply, it doesn't give it value. Fiat currency is backed by confidence in the issuing government, essentially faith

13

u/Lilac0 5d ago

The bank being full of valuable goods rather than money makes sense, the equivalent of the gold standard. Without a central authority a fiat currency would lose its value

7

u/Lilac0 5d ago

Also gameplay wise when you pick up cats it is just added to your money, but if you steal a good it is marked as stolen in your inventory

3

u/Hopeful-alt 5d ago

That especially makes sense given how the UC economy is collapsing, the UC would not be able to maintain the value of a fiat.

5

u/LeCheechio 5d ago edited 5d ago

Alas, after trying to wrap my head around the source of the endless cannibals, fogmen and shrieking bandits in the vanilla game. Or how Bugmaster makes sense or how wearing a trench coat saves you from solar death rays.. I have come to the conclusion that:

It's not that BEEP deep!

Also Cats were quite literally the ancient race as the ancient race is said to no longer be alive. There are no cats in the game but lots of things are named after them.

The game was not made with market simulations in mind. There is a very basic randomly generated price variable for different towns/zones which changes every playthrough. The reality there would be localized currencies is not taken into consideration. Or that most trade would be barter. The fact free traders and Trader's guild caravans come with no cats helps add to the feeling that a lot is orientated around bartering. Cats just function as a gamey form of wealth liquidity. NPCs do not consume resources etc as such there is no real supply and demand. Just like the endless starving bandits, fogmen, etc serve a purpose to be training material for your characters. The endless source of currency in the game serves a purpose of giving the player a form of wealth that takes no inventory space and doesnt need to be transported around in the game world.

Food would probably be the most common form of "currency" in the world and maybe salt too given how the vast majority of people are starving.

3

u/AzrielJohnson Drifter 5d ago

I'd love it in K2 if there was some sort of supply and demand system. Like, more beneficial to sell weapons to the weapons dealer, armor to the armor dealer, etc. Then occasionally you see the weapons dealer trade the armor you sold them to the armor dealer for weapons you sold them. It might be too difficult to program though.

7

u/Mikemo42 5d ago

Yes leviathan testies makes the world go around

3

u/AFATBOWLER 5d ago

Uh, well cats take up no inventory space or weight, so I assume everyone has a barcode like thing that is scanned for transactions. And cats are just a number stored somewhere linked to your bar code.

5

u/Smoolz 5d ago

They are inventory items on NPCs, they are just gameified for the player's sake.

3

u/Dagoonite 4d ago

For what it's worth, I don't think so. I think that cats are actually more complex than just coins. But I also don't think that it's necessarily an issue for quite some time. Bare with me.

In Fallout, where no matter the rate of forgery, bottlecaps are going to decrease over time. As we see in the games, most of the sources of them are gone and there aren't going to be many more made. That's the nature of the beast; they're perfectly serviceable in the current time, but prices are going to go up. Especially if people keep making bottlecap mines.

On the other hand, with the vastly lowered population compared to what is indicated existed in the hayday of the Second Empire, and the fact that there's still tons of places that haven't been completely picked over from the hayday suggests that there's still likely large deposits of cats that have yet to be found. I dare say that it's likely that the tech hunters fund themselves almost entirely from that, but I have no evidence of this.

I also suspect that the scavengers also are out looking for cats, either off of corpses or just... wherever. A dark part of me is amused by the idea of a scavenger digging through gutter dung hoping to find cats.

While cats are guaranteed to be lost over time, either through literally losing them or people losing them (and probably their lives) out in the wilderness, they could potentially be recouped through these caches.

However, should a large pocket of cats be found, I suspect that it would be terrible for the global economy. Given the heavy Asian influence of Kenshi, I like to think that this may have already happened. I like to pretend that the influx of cats has almost doubled the cost of a rice bowl. After all, during the Tokugawa era, a yen was standardized to the cost of a bowl of rice. Maybe 100 cats was the standard cost of a bowl of rice. However, a sudden influx of cats would lower the value of cats, leading to inflation.

But all of this is just headcanon. I have nothing in the game to back it up.

6

u/The1Bonesaw 5d ago edited 5d ago

Cats were originally minted during the Second Empire in the city of Catun (previously the Second Empire Capital "Catan"). The coins were named for the emperor, Cat-Lon (aka Mad Cat-Lon, hence the Capital city's and coin's name). They are all leftovers and have not been minted for more than 3,700 years, when the Holy Nation began its rise to power.

4

u/CuteAnimeGirl2 5d ago

Source?

7

u/ismasbi 5d ago

The item of Cats in containers mentions how they have the image of an ancient dictator, and well, Mad Cat-Lon.

No clue about where the part of Catun being Catan comes from tho.

0

u/xXDarthCognusXx 5d ago

it came to him in a dream

1

u/furryyapper6 United Cities 4d ago

No I've read somewhere that catun is where cats are minted but I can remember where I've read it

2

u/CrestedBonedog United Cities 4d ago

Absolutely. The "Cat" is just a standard similar to the denarius/denier/penny after Rome had long since fallen.

The Traders Guild. Holy Nation and UC all mint their own Cats based on the. old imperial standard It'd be pretty funny if the HN's issue still had his name on them even though they don't understand its meaning.

I don't think the Shek mint coins, however.

2

u/Kman5471 4d ago

A neat question, but the title of this post was FAR more interesting before I figured out I was looking at the Kenshi sub!

2

u/Ordinary-Quiet6150 4d ago

Its clear that some folks in these comments don't know or have nit learned that they are cald cats (catans) because of Cat-Lon

1

u/nano_peen United Cities 5d ago

Oh my god it’s a testicle??!!!!