"In the commercial society, excess creates new needs." - Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share
The fundamental paradox of our economy, as Dr. Sebacia von Talgwehr first articulated in her seminal work 'The Cellular Reserve,' is that our primary currency – dead skin cells – represents both waste and wealth. The Sebaceous Exchange's vaults store trillions of corneocytes, each authenticated by specialized Histologist-Assessors who can detect counterfeit cellular structures at a molecular level. Status in Dermite society is quite literally embodied: pore-size determines voting rights in the Histologist's Forum, while scar patterns form an intricate language of social capital. The merchant-philosopher Melanix Umbra has observed that this creates a unique form of 'cellular capitalism' where class mobility depends on one's ability to manipulate the host's biological processes. Yet this system contains the seeds of its own potential destruction. The Pruritiker movement, led by the charismatic Pruritus Rex, argues that harvesting dead cells for currency artificially accelerates the hos...
From the lore of Metabolic Currency and Cellular Capitalism.