Fra [Remixing Avernus – Addendum: Soul Coins](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/45049/roleplaying-games/remixing-avernus-addendum-soul-coins): Souls damned to Hell are forged into coins on Minauros, the third layer of the Nine Hells, and then “used for goods and services, infernal deals, dark bargains, and bribes.” ### Functioning The functioning of soul coins is described in “Commerce” (DIA, p. 78), “Soul Fuel” (p. 217), and “Soul Coins” (p. 225). #### Changes from the Book - Talking to the soul inside doesn’t require charges. - Expending all the charges in a coin (or using it up as fuel for an infernal machine) burns out the coin, but doesn’t destroy the soul inside. (Such coins need to be taken back to Minauros to be reforged, with the soul being transferred to a new coin.) #### Coins as Fuel Kan bli brukt som fuel for [[Infernal War Machine]] The souls *scream* when you use them as fuel: Regardless of its size, a furnace can hold any number of souls, their screams of anguish audible out to a range of 60 feet. **ALTERNATE FUEL**: Devils need soul coins to fuel their war-machines because they’re not mortal. Mortals like the PCs, however, can directly fuel the war-machines. The mortal suffers 1d10 points of damage and fuels the war-machine for 24 hours. This damage cannot be healed by normal means, but returns at a rate of 1 hit point per day. A _greater restoration_ instantly restores these lost hit points. This also means that you can have devils riding across the Avernian plains with screaming prisoners strapped to their war-machines *Mad Max*-style: ![[Pasted image 20241027190609.png|500]] #### Coins as Companions Every soul coin is a unique NPC. I recommend leaning into this. **WHO THEY ARE**: Check out [_51 Soul Coins_](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/300292/51-Soul-Coins?affiliate_id=81207) as a good source for random soul coin characters. The collection is limited in its range (featuring almost exclusively average people who got gulled by a devil), so you may want to broaden its scope (with, say, historical figures, those who damned themselves to Hell without the help of a devil’s contract, good souls who were captured and forced into a coin, and so forth). **WHAT THEY KNOW**: Soul coins are constantly aware of their surroundings, making them a potentially valuable source of information. Let’s give them a 1 in 6 chance of having useful information (i.e., roll on the [Avernian rumor tables](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46659/roleplaying-games/remixing-avernus-part-7i-avernian-rumor-tables)). **COIN MADNESS**: Being locked up inside a coin for eternity is not conducive to a sane mind. Many soul coins have had their sanity shredded to the point that they are no longer coherent or intelligible (see table below), and even those who are capable of conversing may display strange tics of behavior and distress. |**d8**|**Madness**| |---|---| |1|Hysteria| |2|Amnesia| |3|Hallucinations| |4|Mania| |5|Logorrhea| |6|Paranoia| |7|Echopraxia| |8|Catatonia| #### Coins as Currency - **Soul coins** are worth roughly 50 platinum pieces in purchasing power. They are rarely used in actual commerce, and instead serve primarily as a coin of account. - **Spent soul coins** are more common, accumulating over millennia of soul coins being used up that aren’t important enough to reforge. They have a purchasing power roughly equivalent to 1 platinum piece. - **Obsidian chits** are the common currency of Avernus, with a purchasing power of 1 gold piece. These chits are issued by various Dukes and warlords and backed by stockpiles of soul coins. [[Mad Maggie]], for example, has a small stockpile and issues her own chits, as does the Wandering Emporium. If you want soul coins to be prized as fuel for the war-machines, then they can’t be common enough to serve as coinage in Avernus. Which is a pity, because the use of an alternate currency would be an excellent opportunity to alienate and disorient the players (and their characters). “What do you mean I can’t pay with gold?” As I describe in _[Random Worldbuilding – Coins & Currency](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/45043/roleplaying-games/random-worldbuilding-coins-currency)_, money can be a powerful channel for conveying information about the world to the players. And this would be a powerful one: Not only clearly signaling that “you’re not in the Realms any more,” but also viscerally signaling how Hell is fundamentally built upon the suffering and exploitation of mortal souls. (Hence the above list.) You can generally issue about 1,000 chits per soul coin. (That’s more than the strict conversion rate, but welcome to the wonderful world of being a banker.) If you want to get more complicated, you could postulate cheap chits or bull-chits — chits which were circulated by Avernian powerbrokers who no longer exist or whose soul coin stockpile was lost. These are still perceived as having some value and could be used as the equivalent of copper pieces. _Design Note: Such cheap chits could also be a window into Avernian history. Or just easter eggs. For example, the PCs might find cheap chits that were issued by [[Gargauth]] when he was [Treasurer of Hell](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/44320/roleplaying-games/remixing-avernus-part-3b-lore-of-the-vanthampur-investigations)._ #### Coins as Souls As described in DiA p. 226, the soul within a soul coin can be freed by casting a spell that removes a curse. A freed soul is released to whatever planar afterlife it belongs in … which means that for most soul coins the soul is just churned back through Hell’s intake for new souls. **USING THE SOUL**: A soul coin can also be used in conjunction with _animate dead_ or _create undead_ to bind the soul to the undead created. Such undead can be controlled by anyone holding the soul coin they were created from. If the undead are destroyed, the soul is released to whichever planar afterlife it belongs in (see above). If you are in Hell, you can similarly cast _infernal calling_ (from _[Xanathar’s Guide to Everything](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0786966114/digitalcomi0a-20)_, p. 158) in conjunction with a soul coin to transform the soul within the coin into a lemure. The soul coin is destroyed in the process. (You’ve more or less just created the lemure the soul would have become if it had entered Hell through Avernus rather than Minauros.)