The station-money of a research mission that became a nation at war. Compact Merits are physical worn chits on the frontier and digital balances on the stations — money that must work where the network barely reaches, minted now against survival as often as science.

The survivor of the old Unity's Index ledger — the closest thing to real money the galaxy has. Issued from the ringworld Sagetton, honored wherever the Contingency's battlefleets and influence reach.

The allocation-rights of a pirate swarm that shares everything, because no clone of the Voleer Experiment ever learned to keep anything for themselves. A Share is your claim on the next raid's loot — and the First Template can always feel who is owed what.

The expansionist coin of the self-proclaimed Second Imperium. Paradin Merits are money for a state on the march — every conquered economy is annexed into the ledger, and the ledger grows like the empire.