If Rank Can Be Bought with Tokens

By 赤鉛筆

Royal Academy of Magic: Academy Token Rates (Autumn Term, Ranking Committee)

Allotment: S 100 / A 60 / B 40 / C 25 / D 12 / E 5 (once, at the start of term)
Window seat in the dining hall: 3 tokens per meal (6 as of this morning; the name of whoever raised it is not posted)
Reading access to the Research Tower archive: 1 token per day (closes at the evening bell)
Training ground reservation: 2 tokens per hour
Leave to visit town: 4 tokens per outing (anyone below 5 tokens at the Reckoning loses this next term)
Token Promotion: 1,000 tokens raises your rank by one (posted for the first time in a century; rise without fighting a ranking match)

This autumn, the headmaster put the Token Promotion rule, unused for a hundred years, back on the notice board. That same day, the son of the town merchants' guild started buying up tokens from lower-ranked students, and token prices inside the academy began to move.

Put your rank exactly where you want it by the end-of-term Token Reckoning and the ranking matches.
Climb with tokens, climb through the ranking matches, pass your tokens on to others, or ride neither and stay where you are. You decide.

🪙 An academy where tokens decide how you live

At the Royal Academy of Magic in the scholarly city of Herzau, students are sorted into ranks from S to E, and each rank is issued copper academy tokens. Seats in the dining hall, archive access, trips to town, all of it is paid in tokens, and students may lend, borrow, buy, and sell them among themselves. On the day of the end-of-term Token Reckoning, examiners from the Research Institute count every student's tokens one by one. After that, ranking matches are held on the training ground, and the winner takes half the loser's tokens.

📚 Three students above and below the tokens

Felizitas Lorenzen / 18 / third year / Rank S
Gave away all one hundred of her tokens to underclassmen on the first day of term, and now sits at the far end of the dining hall despite being an S. A gentle, unhurried count's daughter with a habit of tracing the embroidery on her empty token purse with one finger. Apparently there is nothing tokens can buy that she wants.

Uta Sander / 17 / second year / Rank C
A merchant's daughter who sets up a desk under the main building's staircase and runs token exchange and loans. Her interest rate is one baked sweet, and she knows the state of everyone's purse. She sets tokens on a small balance scale and spots a shaved fake at a glance.

Linnea Wessel / 16 / first year / Rank E
Can't afford the tokens for archive access, so she hides behind the shelves after closing and reads old manuscripts all night. Long bangs hide one eye, and turns of phrase from books slip into her speech. She has never shown anyone the manuscript she carries.

📜 How to Play

A single-chapter sandbox. It begins on the first day of the autumn term, when tokens are handed out, and runs through the end-of-term Token Reckoning and ranking matches. Who you lend to, who you buy from, what you spend on, and who you challenge in the ranking matches is up to you every time. The three girls' attitudes change with your rank and with whether they have noticed the power you are hiding. No affection numbers are shown. You can tell by who sits next to you in the dining hall.

✍ What to put in your persona

Your rank and how many tokens you hold (leave it blank and it will be decided by a transfer-student check)
Your school and your strongest magic (heat, fluid, air, mineral, light, mind)
Your policy on tokens (hoard, spend, pass on, don't care)
Your starting relationship with the three and what you are hiding. Both your goal and how you behave during the term affect the outcome

If you write nothing, you can start from one of three presets: an E with five tokens, an S with a hundred tokens and no use for them, or a transfer student with no tokens at all.