The Mech Touch

After reading many different reports, Ves understood the arguments and goals of the currency project to a greater degree.

The people who worked to design the lark and the coins were all earnest people who wanted their clan to become a more serious body.

Maintaining a currency and minting coins was one of the most influential ways to manipulate people's perception and behavior towards the clan.

"The lark is decent, but that is all. It checks the boxes without going any further."

It was too bad that Ves was never satisfied with doing an adequate job.

Maybe Gloriana had rubbed off on him more than he anticipated, but he truly could not tolerate an effort that only covered the basics without going any deeper.

When Ves looked back on the Larkinson Clan, he imagined the bonds of family that brought a highly diverse mix of human talents and individuals together.

He thought about all of the living mechs that protected the expeditionary fleet through thick and thin.

He thought about the unique and powerful expert mechs that possessed the greatest individual combat power of the Larkinson Army.

He thought about the diverse personalities of prominent members such as Calabast, Shederin, Jannzi and Joshua, which the clan did not try to suppress.

When he thought back on all of this, he noted that each of them had a few elements in common.

"Diversity and unity." Ves identified.

The Larkinson Clan was not an organization that demanded a high degree of conformity.

The best example that Ves could think of that pursued the opposite was the Hexadric Hegemony.

The former home state of his wife was large and filled with many different personalities. However, the overwhelming majority of them were rather similar to each other because that was what their culture and their fellow people demanded.

The Hexers had to follow a strict set of rules that governed how women needed to comport themselves, the way that ‘boys' had to be treated and how much tolerance they should show towards deviations from these standards.

Suffice to say, life in the Hexadric Hegemony was strict towards rule breakers. Those that thought that boys deserved to be treated as equal would either get thrown in jail or be sent to special classes in order to ‘correct' their mindsets.

Those that insisted on the ‘barbaric' notion that men were equal to women despite all of the warnings would be branded as Fridaymen spies and sent to the execution chambers!

"Our clan isn't anything like that." Ves said with pride.

Although it was not easy keeping all of the different subgroups and subcultures together, he liked the fact that his clan was made up of different people that easily got along with each other.

Even the more distinct and abnormal groups such as the Swordmaidens and Penitent Sisters did not generate a significant amount of rejection from more ordinary clansmen.

It wasn't just the different subgroups that were allowed to maintain their unique customs. Every individual clansmen was allowed to develop their unique personalities. The clan didn't care how far they deviated from the norm as long as they were loyal and did their jobs.

This was how eccentrics such as Vincent Ricklin, Ketis, Gloriana and even Ves stayed so unique. The clan did not pressure them to conform to a more generic standard, which was exactly how Ves liked it. He detested regimes that imposed too many silly rules on people.

So what if people were different? As long as the deviances were harmless and not disruptive, it should be okay for Larkinsons to retain their unique identities.

Naturally, there were downsides to this approach. Even if the Larkinson Network did much to prevent different clansmen from splintering away from each other, it was still difficult to make every single Larkinson react the same way to different instructions.

"In any case, my clan celebrates individuality while at the same time binding them together in a common family."

As he came to this conclusion, he gained a solid direction on how he should shape the currency of the Larkinson Clan.

The name could stay. It sounded good and it was rather clever to refer to it as the lark.

What Ves truly wanted to change was the design of the coins. He had a lot of different ideas on how he should overhaul their properties. Too much, actually.

In order to sort out his thoughts and pick the most useful and relevant out of them, he opened up a document and listed out his own set of requirements.

"The lark coins have to be living products without any exceptions."

"The lark coins must be unique and traceable."

"The lark coins cannot be forged by unauthorized parties."

"The lark coins must be totems that not only possess a small form of life, but are also tied to different design spirits."

"The lark coins should all possess the capacity for growth, allowing them to change and evolve as they are being used or handled by different users."

"The lark coins must possess tangible value or utility that is worth money even if it is no longer used as a form of currency."

"The lark coins must possess all of the aforementioned properties while at the same time make it viable for them to be mass produced."

Ves paused and went over the list several times. These were the major demands that his coins absolutely had to meet in order to satisfy his own demands.

His overall aim was to turn the physical lark coins into products that could be treated as special commodities that were not only useful to his clansmen, but also outsiders.

This could become a potentially lucrative export product if Ves designed the coins well enough!

He could create a coin that cost 0.001 MTA credits to make but actually sold for 10 MTA credits because that was how much customers were willing to pay to obtain extraordinary benefits!

"It shouldn't be easy to fool people like that, though."

Maybe he should tone it down and adopt a more reasonable profit margin. He could do that by making use of more expensive materials in order to raise the physical value of the coins.

People would become a lot less reluctant to pay 10 MTA credits to buy a metal object that cost 1 MTA credit to make.

This was because the added value of the product more than made up the price difference.

Of course, the premise to this was that the coin truly offered benefits that were worth at least 9 MTA credits in people's eyes!

"I don't need to mess with that yet. I should start with generating useful concepts."

He activated his desk terminal and called up a design program.

Usually, he used it to design his mechs and occasionally other technical products, but this time was different.

He imported the design of the current coins and began to alter them based on his intent and feelings.

He had to come up with viable concepts, and he thought about tying his coins to different design spirits at first.

In half an hour, Ves made over a dozen different sketches of coins. He left aside differences in size and denominations and focused mainly on their appearance and spiritual design.

The first coin he started with was arguably the most standard one. He created a simple golden coin that depicted the Golden Cat but in a more vivid and lively fashion.

"Hmmm."

Although it seemed obvious that a variation of this Golden Cat Coin should come into circulation, Ves had a different idea.

"This coin doesn't provide any tangible benefits to outsiders. The Golden Cat has nothing to do with them. It also isn't useful for my clansmen either. They are already connected to her and there are plenty of Bright Warriors and other sources where they can feel her presence. Obtaining this coin does not provide a lot of added benefit."

Nonetheless, he still felt it was worthwhile enough to use it as the smallest denomination of the lark currency.

"The millilark is the least valuable but also the easiest tender to proliferate within the clan. Every Larkinson should be able to own a few and keep them in their pockets. As for outsiders, it is doubtful that they would even bother with buying such a low-value coin. It is much more convenient and desirable to exchange their MTA credits for the bigger and more valuable coins."

Ves liked this idea enough to immediately mark it as the form of the new millilark coin.

He swiped the interface and moved on to the next coin.

This one made him feel a lot more doubtful. This was because the coin was a totem dedicated to Lufa.

"It's a good coin that should be powerful enough to reduce stress and cleanse one's mind." Ves guessed.

He wasn't sure of this as Ves was never able to impart a lot of spiritual capacity to small totems such as coins. The effect would probably be weak and fairly subtle, especially if he employed some form of mass production.

"Still, even if it is weak, the Lufa Coin should still make enough of a difference for certain people to buy them at a generous price."

There were lots of people suffering from stress and mental imbalances. The Red Ocean was filled with them due to the frequent disasters and crises that the immigrants from the old galaxy suffered from. If all of these people could gain a bit of help by carrying a Lufa Coin around them, then Ves anticipated that his clan would be able to sell a fair amount of them provided people did not get freaked out by unknown tech manipulating their moods.

However, Ves ultimately turned against the Lufa Coin.

"I shouldn't introduce a product that cannibalizes one of my other product offerings."

Although he hadn't made any progress on it as of late, he still intended to market his Sanctuary model to the Red Ocean. The sheer amount of utility of a Sanctuary mech was far greater than a simple coin.

Ves was also a mech designer by nature. If a problem could be solved through the use of a mech, then he would prefer to stick with that rather than go down the wrong path.

"If this is the case, I should also skip the Vulcan Coin."

He had recently erected the Creation Association which had slowly but steadily expanded its membership. There were still a lot of craftsmen in Davute that had experienced Vulcan's glow before and were willing to pay a generous amount of money to gain inspiration on demand.

"A Vulcan Coin will not only ruin the exclusivity of my Vulcan totems, but also devalue what my Creation Association is doing."

Although the coins weren't meant to bestow people with a false inspired state, just the Vulcan glow was enough for people to skip the Creation Association!

"Well, goodbye then. I don't need you anymore."

He manipulated the interface and deleted the drafts of both coins right away.

Ves shifted to the next design which was tied to the Illustrious One. Strangely enough, he made it as a luminar crystal instead of a random alloy formula.

"This is probably the prettiest coin by far. It's also one of the most useless ones."

Aside from its brilliant reflections and sparkling surfaces, the Illustrious Coins did not bring anything meaningful to the table.

They could be used as jewels, he supposed, but that would be a highly tacky use of legal tender.

"Useless."

He deleted the Illustrious Coin and switched to the next coin on the list.

This one made him pause for a time.

"Is it wise to make a totem based on a 6000-year old astral beast?"

The Titania Coin possessed a vibe that was a lot more abnormal than usual. It wasn't easy to describe the Titania's glow, but one of his impressions was that it made him feel as if he was a subject to a greater hive mind.