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+# DIALOGUE-PROLOGUE-0008
+## The Coin Shortage — Canonical Draft
+### Status: Canonical Dialogue Draft
+### Layer: OTIVM (Roman Merchant)
+### Purpose: Prologue scenario teaching liquidity stress, credit substitution, discounting, trust networks, and the difference between wealth and ready money.
+### Repository Path: docs/scenarios/DIALOGUE-PROLOGUE-0008.md
+
+---
+
+## 0. Design Intent
+
+Trade is active, goods are present, buyers exist, and yet business stalls.
+
+Too little small coin is circulating through Ostia this morning.
+
+Men have goods but not change. Wages are delayed. Retailers refuse large pieces. Debtors offer promises. Honest inventory sits unsold because settlement cannot be made cleanly.
+
+Known facts are uncertain:
+
+- recent tax collections drained coin
+- shipmasters hoarding specie
+- military payments diverted coin elsewhere
+- money changers withholding small denominations
+- panic hoarding after rumor
+- coin exists, but in the wrong hands
+
+The participant must learn that shortage of money can occur amid abundance of goods.
+
+---
+
+## 1. Scene Constraints
+
+Location: market square near money tables, food sellers, and porter hiring corner in Ostia, late morning.
+
+Primary signals:
+
+- buyers arguing over change
+- wages delayed
+- sellers refusing large coin
+- private credit notes circulating
+- money tables crowded
+- prices splitting between coin and promise
+
+Selection method: participant chooses whose interpretation to follow.
+
+---
+
+## 2. Opening Scene Draft
+
+The market was full of goods and empty of completion.
+
+Bread stood on boards. Oil shone in jars. Fish smelled certain. Fruit bruised itself in baskets. Buyers touched everything and purchased little.
+
+The loudest sound was men explaining why they could pay later.
+
+Marcus Atilius Varro stood beside a porter line that had not yet become work.
+
+Lucius Fabius Felix arrived smiling like a man who preferred shortage to abundance.
+
+“No fire. No blood. No rain,” Felix said. “Yet everyone is miserable. A refined city.”
+
+Varro watched two men argue over a single denarius.
+
+“Too few small coins.”
+
+Felix nodded.
+
+“The purest famine.”
+
+Gaius Licinius Crispus approached the money tables with visible disgust.
+
+“Who licensed these changers?” he asked.
+
+Felix answered first.
+
+“The gods. They multiply fees invisibly.”
+
+Crispus ignored him.
+
+“Rates are absurd.”
+
+“Rates are honest,” Felix said. “Need is absurd.”
+
+Quintus Cornelius Lentulus Minor arrived carrying no purse visible enough to be vulgar.
+
+“My baker refused me credit,” Lentulus said.
+
+Felix stared.
+
+“Then Rome truly declines.”
+
+“He requested settlement from yesterday first.”
+
+“Then Rome improves.”
+
+Titus Varenus Secundus came from the porter line counting men with no work.
+
+“Twelve left already,” he said.
+
+“Why?” Varro asked.
+
+“No coin for hiring advances.”
+
+Felix spread his hands.
+
+“There. Labor exists. Need exists. Coin absent. Philosophy complete.”
+
+A quiet voice entered from the changer’s queue.
+
+“Not absent.”
+
+Publius Terentius Chresimus stepped aside holding two tablets and no expression.
+
+“Concentrated.”
+
+Felix smiled.
+
+“There he is. The man who can make arithmetic sound immoral.”
+
+Chresimus looked toward the money tables.
+
+“Small bronze and asses are trapped behind counters. Silver sits in purses. Debts sit everywhere.”
+
+Crispus said, “Then compel fair exchange.”
+
+Felix laughed.
+
+“With what? More missing coin?”
+
+Lentulus looked annoyed.
+
+“I have silver.”
+
+“No one doubts it,” Felix said.
+
+“No one will break it.”
+
+“That is different.”
+
+A butcher shouted that he would take coin only, not promises.
+
+A fruit seller shouted she would take promises from known faces.
+
+Half the square turned to watch.
+
+Varro said, “Trust is pricing.”
+
+Secundus nodded.
+
+“And strangers pay more.”
+
+Chresimus added:
+
+“Or do not buy.”
+
+Felix pointed toward a tavern keeper accepting marked tablets.
+
+“There. Private money.”
+
+Crispus frowned.
+
+“Unregulated scribbles.”
+
+“Useful scribbles,” Felix replied.
+
+“They fail if the writer flees.”
+
+“So do magistrates.”
+
+Crispus’s jaw moved once.
+
+Lentulus asked, “Why today?”
+
+No one answered immediately.
+
+Then Chresimus said:
+
+“Two causes certain. Tax remittances yesterday. Grain ship crews paid in silver this morning.”
+
+Secundus added:
+
+“And teamsters were paid late last week. Many are already in debt.”
+
+Felix brightened.
+
+“So three causes. The fourth is fear.”
+
+“What fear?” Varro asked.
+
+“That if coin is scarce now, it will be scarcer later. Men hold what they have.”
+
+Crispus folded his hands.
+
+“Hoarding during stress invites scrutiny.”
+
+Felix shrugged.
+
+“Then scrutinize closed fists.”
+
+A money changer announced new rates.
+
+The crowd cursed as one body.
+
+Lentulus turned sharply.
+
+“He charges that much to make change?”
+
+“He charges that much because he can,” Chresimus said.
+
+Varro watched the porter line.
+
+“If wages delayed till noon, work shifts fail.”
+
+Secundus agreed.
+
+“Unloaders leave for food. Carters refuse distance jobs. Animal feed goes unpaid.”
+
+Felix said, “And sellers with wet inventory become desperate.”
+
+“No rain today,” Lentulus said.
+
+“Every inventory is wet if it cannot turn.”
+
+Chresimus almost smiled.
+
+“That was nearly wise.”
+
+Felix bowed.
+
+“I rent wisdom by the sentence.”
+
+A fishmonger began offering two prices:
+
+one in coin, one higher in credit.
+
+Crispus pointed.
+
+“Abuse.”
+
+“Accounting,” Chresimus corrected.
+
+Varro looked at him.
+
+“Can this spread?”
+
+“It already has. Soon wages quoted one way, rents another.”
+
+Secundus spat to the side.
+
+“Then confusion costs more than shortage.”
+
+Lentulus said, “My family can extend notes.”
+
+Felix laughed.
+
+“Your family can extend promises. Collection is the expensive half.”
+
+Crispus said, “I can enforce notes.”
+
+Felix replied instantly.
+
+“For a share.”
+
+“For order.”
+
+“For a share wearing order.”
+
+A baker’s apprentice ran through the square shouting:
+
+“Copper at the river tables! Last trays!”
+
+Half the crowd moved at once.
+
+Felix turned.
+
+“There.”
+
+“What?” Varro asked.
+
+“The real cargo today is change.”
+
+Secundus said, “And the real line.”
+
+Varro had already started walking.
+
+“To the river tables.”
+
+Felix moved with him.
+
+“To buy coin before men buy bread.”
+
+Crispus adjusted his garment.
+
+“To review rates.”
+
+Lentulus followed more slowly.
+
+“To secure household settlement.”
+
+Secundus nodded toward the porter line.
+
+“I’ll hire men with food first, coin later.”
+
+Chresimus tucked away his tablets.
+
+“I’ll learn whose notes are already being refused.”
+
+Felix looked back once.
+
+“Six men. One shortage. None of us discussing poverty.”
+
+Varro answered without turning.
+
+“We are discussing stoppage.”
+
+---
+
+## 3. Choice Presentation
+
+> Goods fill the market. Coin does not. Whose reading of the shortage do you trust?
+
+| Choice | Background |
+|---|---|
+| Follow Varro to restore hiring and movement. | Former Legionary |
+| Follow Felix to profit from change scarcity and distress sales. | Freedman Trader |
+| Follow Lentulus to use family credit and social standing. | Noble Younger Son |
+| Follow Crispus to enforce notes and procedural order. | Failed Magistrate |
+| Follow Secundus to keep labor working through food and advances. | Camp Logistician |
+| Follow Chresimus to trace where coin truly sits. | Guild Scribe |
+
+---
+
+## 4. What This Scene Teaches
+
+- Money shortage can mean liquidity shortage, not lack of wealth.
+- Small denominations matter disproportionately in daily trade.
+- Credit emerges when coin circulation fails.
+- Trust networks become temporary payment rails.
+- Dual pricing appears under stress.
+- Labor markets freeze quickly when wages cannot clear.
+
+---
+
+## 5. Canonical Success Condition
+
+If the participant stops asking:
+
+“How much money is in the city?”
+
+and starts asking:
+
+“Who can settle today?”
+
+then this dialogue is functioning correctly.