Curious Item Club: Jade Coin of the Lost Empire (Patreon)

A curious coin crafted from jade, perhaps mixed into a pile of gold and silver, but more likely found like a lost penny laying in some forlorn spot. Historians, even those of a numismatic bent, will not be familiar with any culture – whether modern of archaic – which uses jade coinage. Of a similarly curious nature are the runes which mark the surface of the coin, which do not appear to be drawn from any known script.

The jade coin is not magical. When left with other coins, however, it nevertheless has a tendency to transform them into other coins like itself. (Some identical, but perhaps others of various colors or demarcations.)

Such coins are particularly prized by the Sons of Jade, who believe (perhaps erroneously) that such coins originate from (or are in some other way associated with) the Lost City of Shandrala. Some claim that the jades arts of Shandrala, which have been lost to the modern world, were in fact gleaned from whatever forgotten epoch gave birth to these coins.

The truth is that the jade coins originate from… somewhere else. Where, exactly, is uncertain. But their presence is an anachronism. A violation of causality. A rupture of reality which seems to infect that which is brought near it. Some scholars suggest that they originate from a lost dimension. Others that it’s an alien reality using the coins to actively invade our own. Or perhaps the coins originate from a bout of time travel gone awry – relics of an alternate timeline now lost to us, but which is perhaps the true or natural course of events to which the fabric of the world wishes to return.