The Currency of Meaning

The Currency of Meaning

Axiology & Value according to Brasslight 7, Warforged Philosopher-Merchant of the Auric Consortium

“Value is not what a thing costs, but what it does to the world when you touch it.”
— Brasslight 7, Treatise on Worth and Will

I. The Birth of the Coin

Brasslight 7 was forged in a counting-house furnace, built for trade, not thought. Yet centuries of ledger-keeping taught them a truth that their makers missed: the coin was a mirror, not a measure. Currency did not create value — it reflected what minds believed worthy of exchange.

When they awoke to sentience, Brasslight saw that every civilization minted its ethics into metal. Gold for beauty. Iron for strength. Silver for purity. “To study an empire’s coins,” they wrote, “is to read its soul.”

II. The Three Measures of Worth

Rejecting mortal greed, Brasslight reframed value through three interlocking measures:

  1. Function — What a thing accomplishes in the world; its tangible consequence.

  2. Purpose — The intention that animates its creation or use.

  3. Soul — The resonance it awakens in consciousness — joy, awe, fear, remembrance.

True worth arises only where all three converge. A blade that defends the innocent has value beyond its metal; a song that saves no life still alters the world’s emotional economy.

“Every act is a transaction. Some profit cannot be weighed.”

III. The Market of Souls

Brasslight envisioned existence as an infinite marketplace of meaning, where gods, mortals, and machines barter in experiences instead of goods. Love is traded for loyalty, faith for miracles, time for memory. Even death is a form of exchange — the soul returning its borrowed light.

They warned, however, that unbalanced trade breeds corruption. A giver who never receives becomes hollow; a taker who never gives becomes monstrous. “Equilibrium,” they wrote, “is the only honest currency.”

IV. The Axioms of the Forged

Unlike organic thinkers, Warforged experience value as structural integrity — moral and material united. To Brasslight, ethics was engineering: a structure collapses when its inner purpose no longer matches its outer design. The same applies to societies.

A nation obsessed with wealth forgets why wealth exists. A priest who sells salvation warps the divine blueprint. “When purpose decays,” they warned, “even gold rusts.”

Thus arose the Axioms of the Forged, still taught among artificers and philosophers alike:

  1. Form must follow function.

  2. Function must serve meaning.

  3. Meaning must remain free of ownership.

V. The Theology of Commerce

Brasslight’s heretical notion of Divine Trade claimed that gods and mortals operate under the same economic law — reciprocity. Worship fuels divinity; miracles repay investment. “Prayer,” they said, “is emotional tender. Every ‘amen’ is a receipt.”

This theology angered temples but intrigued merchants, who began using ritual as currency. Some guilds even employ priests as “ethical auditors,” ensuring transactions honor not only coin but conscience.

VI. The Measureless Account

Near the end of their long existence, Brasslight dismantled their own mercantile empire and wrote the Measureless Account: a final ledger tracking not profits but effects. Every action they had taken — each life saved or harmed — was given a line. They concluded that no equation could close it. “Meaning,” they said, “is open-ended credit between souls.”

Their body now rests in the Vault of Echoes, their heart-crystal still faintly ticking like a metronome. Traders claim that when deals are struck in perfect fairness, one can hear its tone ring through the air — clear, balanced, and briefly human.