if ( typeof CN !== "undefined" ) { if ( CN.dart ) { CN.dart.call( "yrailTop", { sz: ( CN.isMobile ? "320x50" : "300x250" ), kws: [ "top" ], collapse: true } ); } }ABSTRACT: Maps of Britannia show a boomerang-shaped island with the cities of Minoc and Vesper at the northern end, Britain and Yew in the middle, and Trinsic in the south. The kingdom, which is stuck somewhere between the sixth and the twelfth centuries, has a single unit of currency, a gold piece that looks a little like a biscuit. A network of servers is supposed to keep track of all the gold, just as it keeps track of everything else on the island, but in late 1997 bands of counterfeiters found a bug that allowed them to reproduce gold pieces more or less at will. The fantastic wealth they produced for themselves was, of course, entirely imaginary, and yet it led, in textbook fashion, to hyperinflation. At the worst point in the crisis, Britannia’s monetary system virtually collapsed, and players all over the kingdom were reduced to bartering.