> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.ashenmarch.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# The Market
> Where your house spends its Gold — cosmetics and heraldry, convenience, scouting writs, and hired steel — plus the bright line that keeps Ashenmarch fair: nothing is pay-to-win.
The [Treasury](/en/treasury) is where your house *earns* Gold. The **Market** is where you spend it. Everything here is bought with **earned Gold** — coin your holdings paid you as tribute — and almost all of it is heraldic finery or quality-of-life. The one thing Gold buys that touches a battle is a sellsword, and even that is bounded on purpose. Real money never enters the Market at all.
## How the Market works
Every item in the Market is priced **directly in Gold (◉)** — there is no second currency, no tokens to stockpile. At checkout each item gives you a choice:
* **Buy for your house** — the entitlement lands in your own house.
* **Gift to another house** — the same entitlement, granted to a friend, a court-mate, or a worthy rival.
You can only ever gift a **cosmetic or convenience entitlement** bought with your Gold — a coat of arms flourish, a livery, a Charter of Founding. You can **never** gift Gold itself, and you can **never** gift power. That single guard is what keeps gifting from becoming a back door to buying strength.
Prices are **server-tuned live**, so the team can adjust them without an app update. The [Game Reference](/en/reference) always carries the current numbers — the amounts on this page are illustrative.
## What Gold buys
The main sink — coats of arms, liveries, banners, mottos, and titles.
Naming gates, a rename skip, and the Charter of Founding.
Commissions that send scouts over distant ground.
Hired companies — the only Gold that touches a fight.
### Cosmetics and heraldry (the great sink)
Most of your Gold, over a long life in the realm, will go here — into how your house *looks* on the map, in the Herald's dispatches, and across every leaderboard. None of it changes a single kilometre of ground; it's all pride.
Your **coat of arms** starts generous: every house gets a full free set of shields, iconic charges, and the true heraldic tinctures (see [Heraldry](/en/heraldry)). The Market sells **premium Augmentations** on top — each a permanent unlock for your house, previewed on your own crest before you buy:
* **A richer palette** — a second and third colour, finer swatches, and free-form hex.
* **Fields & bars** — the classic ordinaries and divisions of the shield.
* **A menagerie of charges** — rarer devices and figurative beasts for the shield.
* **Crest treatments** — a gilt edge, a damascened inlay, a burnished sheen laid over the arms.
Beyond the shield itself, the Market dresses the rest of your house:
* **Liveries** — patterned fills (checky, bendy, chevronny and more) overlaid on your holdings on the map.
* **Banners & standards** — a small pennant device flown over your land and walls.
* **Court crests** — heraldic beasts reserved for courts, distinct from personal charges.
* **Mottos** — a scroll beneath your arms, chosen from a set of classic devices.
* **Frames, borders, and finishes** — flourishes on your house card, your holdings' outlines, your Treasury, and the Herald's feed.
Because these are cosmetic, they can be **gifted** — a patron can grant a court-mate a coat of arms Augmentation, or send a rival a grudging livery. A gifted cosmetic is always an entitlement, never Gold.
Cosmetics sit **beneath** the map's combat signals — a livery never hides a besieged holding or a contested edge. Finery is always legible-first.
Individual finery runs from a few hundred Gold for a motto or a frame up to several thousand for a marquee coat of arms Augmentation — the authoritative prices live in the [Game Reference](/en/reference).
### Vanity titles & styles of address
The Market also sells **styles of address** — a bought epithet that renders after your house name, *"House Ashford, the Bold."* These are a deliberately **separate class** from the rank titles you *earn* on the road: they're rendered in a quieter, distinct style, and they never sit where an earned rank chip sits. Buying "the Bold" never touches your true [rank](/en/house-and-court#rank) — that is fitness-earned, and only fitness earns it.
### Convenience
Quality-of-life, not power. A handful of Market spends smooth over friction:
* **House rename.** Naming your house is **free while your identity is still private** — you can edit it freely until your first territory claim, or for a short grace window after naming, whichever comes first. Once your name is public on the map, a further rename costs Gold (with a brief typo-correction window). A paid rename doesn't reopen the free grace.
* **Territory rename — "rename now."** Renaming a holding is on a **cooldown**. If you can't wait it out, the Market sells a one-off skip so you can rename immediately.
* **Charter of Founding.** Founding your own **court** costs a Charter, bought here with Gold. The Charter sits *on top of* the [Freeman rank gate](/en/house-and-court#court) — Gold never buys past the rank, you need both. Because it's giftable, a patron can fund an ally's court.
Naming gates exist for a reason beyond convenience: locking a name once it's publicly visible closes an offensive-name-on-a-shared-map hole. The Gold cost is the deterrent, not the point.
### Scouting writs
**Scouting Writs** are the commissions you spend to send scouts over distant ground — revealing prosperity and hidden treasure before you march. You **earn** most of your writs by staying active, but the Market sells a small, **weekly-capped** top-up so a slow week doesn't leave your satchel empty.
That cap is deliberate: purchased writs can smooth over a lean stretch, but they can **never outrun** what an active player earns on the road. And a revealed treasure still has to be marched to and held — a writ buys *information*, never the prize.
How writs, Scout Reports, and treasure work — and how much a writ costs.
### Sellswords (hired steel)
Sellswords are the **only** thing in the Market that touches a battle — and the design leans hard on keeping them a gamble, never a shortcut. A hired company only ever **augments a real march you actually run**; it never fights on its own, and effort always remains the true source of power.
Three structural limits hold the line:
* **Regressive by design.** A mercenary's effect scales *inversely* with how much land you already hold — an underdog gets a real punch, a juggernaut gets almost nothing. Gold-bought muscle helps the small, not the mighty.
* **Always capped below earned steel.** A hired garrison is strictly weaker than your weakest earned Wall, and any genuine defensive run out-restores it. Real effort always beats bought muscle.
* **The Sellsword's Mark.** Hiring anyone raises a visible flag over your house and a Herald announcement that you took foreign steel — and while it flies, rivals who strike you loot a richer bounty. Using bought power paints a target.
How hiring, upkeep, the Mark, and the caps play out in a siege — with costs.
## Subscriber-exclusive cosmetics
Members see an extra, **rotating** shelf of subscriber-only cosmetics in the Market. They're still **cosmetic**, and they're still bought with **earned Gold** — a subscription unlocks *access* to the rotating set, it never sells the items for cash and never sells power.
## The bright line
Ashenmarch draws one line and never crosses it:
* **Real money is subscription-only.** The single real-money purchase in the realm is your membership. There is no à-la-carte cash cosmetic, and there is no way to buy Gold.
* **Gold is earned only.** Every coin in your coffers came from tribute your holdings paid — see [the Treasury](/en/treasury) for how it's earned.
* **Nothing is pay-to-win.** The store is cosmetics and convenience. The one power sink — sellswords — is regressive, capped below earned steel, and paints a target on you. Bought strength can never out-fight strength earned on the road.
The whole point: a beginner's personal best and an elite's still count the same, and no amount of Gold — let alone money — changes who holds the map. That's decided on foot.