Cutefinder: Song Magic in Golarion
When you say the words Song Magic, the first thing that may come to mind is the power of bardic performances and the spells they can weave while singing. However, while ubiquitous, it is only the surface of what the power of music is capable of manipulating. On distant planets, insight into the fabric of reality allowed technological advancements that could bestow powerful effects to even inexperienced singers, allowing for compositions that could evoke energetic forces, conjure and transmute swaths of land and even maintain life through an entrapped harmonic pattern, well beyond what stories a mere minstrel could spin.
This cosmic power remained largely isolated from external influence, however—beyond contact with rare interstellar vessels with colonies of people on their own, one of which achieving it only by chance through convergent research into similar powers, the secret of Song Magic and the principles to utilise it remained on the lone planet far, far away from Golarion. It was only through similarly cosmic misfortune that one such vessel fell from space some ten thousand years ago, its debris hammering craters into the earth and scattering dust into the sky to create a thousand years of darkness.
While bound to a tiny peninsula of Sarusan where the bulk of the ship buried itself into the crust, it was this event that brought true Song Magic to Golarion.
Song Magic in the World
The Innsmouth Tower Emulator and the Fourth Tower of Artonelico
Ordinarily, the power of Song Magic comes from a server within central tower, receiving the emotions of the singer via Dynamic H-Waves and broadcasting them back as symphonic power to manifest the effects. This tower usually likewise hosts an SH Server that provides the soulspaces of the Reyvateils linked to it, partitioned and governed by a β-6D Reyvateil, one who lacks their own body. The Innsmouth, the colony ship that crash-landed on Golarion, had a similar system built within it using their own technology, including a shadow copy of Sol Ciel's SH Server that was synchronised with it tens of thousands of years ago, albeit with its own equivalent to the standard β-6D.
While operational to some small extent for the ten thousand years it laid beneath the earth, the Innsmouth's Tower Emulator cannot broadcast with sufficient strength to the surface. Portable signal boosters operating within the personal baubles passed down by the survivors provide a connection bridge over a system not yet studied, though the broadcast range from that point is on the order of meters. However, if it was unimpeded and given full power, the tower emulator would likely be capable of broadcasting all over Golarion.
Also due to the damage, the tower's main security functions were compromised and reset to factory defaults. While this did not affect the ability for the Innsmouth Proxy Dependents to manifest their powers, they did lack the capability to execute any Extracts because they needed to be registered to the Innsmouth main server, which has been offline for untold ages, not that the descendents of the original IPDs would have the opportunity to register. On the other hand, the recently reawoken Reyvateil Mule Teiwaz Artonelico, a pure-blooded β-type from Ar Ciel, was more directly connected to the tower emulator and thus able to claim the credentials of Administrator, upon which she informally renamed it to the Fourth Tower of Artonelico, with no small hint of irony; before she joined the Innsmouth, she was locked in war with the administrator of the First Tower which the emulator was designed after.
As the Tower Emulator's SH Server is a shadow copy, it is theoretically possible that the minds of the Reyvateils of Sol Ciel and half of those from Metafalss remain dormant, long after their original bodies expired back on Ar Ciel. Unfortunately, this does not include the Infel Phira Dependents that made up the other half of Metafalss's Reyvateil population, nor the Origins, the original three Reyvateils who administrated the Towers and had entirely different, independent configurations as such. The Origins themselves may yet still be alive, but as they remain far from Golarion, it is largely irrelevant.
New Hymmnos Dialect: Shellan Ciel Note
As the Tower Emulator is built on different technology, the traditional Central Standard dialect of Hymmnos is not the only one that can run on it; indeed, it is not the most efficient when it comes to deploying Hymmnos Extracts either. When the Innsmouth sailed the stars, a prototypical alternative was created to better interface with the rest of the Innsmouth's systems, but aside from a few lines of Hymmnos it was written and executed through machine code. Long after the Innsmouth fell, the descendants of the specialised Reyvateils built to service this alternative dialect formed a cabal and wrote an interpreted lexicon for it, allowing their members to more readily create new song magic on their own while leveraging the grammar of old.
Song Magic written for the Innsmouth Proxy Dependents takes on a different nomenclature than the usual, with a structure of <prefix>//<TYPE>;<name>/n in binary form, possibly with further descriptors dependent on the singer and source. When sung through Shellan Ciel or hybridised with normal Song Magic, the type is registered as a socket or server extension, becoming EXEC_<TYPE>_<NAME>/. or EXEC_inc.<TYPE>[;name1]_<NAME2>/. respectively.
Of the Song Magic that the Innsmouth Proxy Dependents can perform, these are the common types:
- init//TONE: Typically a low-grade song, which can be powered largely through the singer in a way similar to the green magic of Sol Ciel.
- exec//HYMME: A standard Hymmnos Word. When sung through Shellan Ciel, the end result is no different from a standard reyvateil's song.
- open:*//HARMONY: An unusual form of Song Magic, Harmony-type songs are dependent on and supplementary to Song Magic performed by someone else, and can incorporate multiple singers much like the Replekia mode of Infel Phira.
- exec=//library.*//SYMPHONY: Equivalent to a Hymmnos Extract, this form of song magic can lead to a high strain on the singer and Tower Emulator if it is used to relay the effects of the Innsmouth's own systems through the symphonic power transmission.
One example of the new song magic is exec=//library.voices//SYMPHONY;ERJOe0-4=1=, a song crafted on the fly by Forth so as to prevent her administrator from being wiped out by a Chronological Cascade event triggered by D Everywhere. Due to the events of the cascade, the song's effects were unable to be studied closely and largely forgotten as soon as the event subsided, and much of the song was corrupted as well. A more intact form of the song named EXEC_SYMPHONY_FORTUNA=WARD/. was simultaneously crafted in Shellan Ciel by Lyra, whose genes reawoke at the same time that one of Forth's temporary forks occupied the address of her soulspace, resulting in a brief synchronisation and privilege escalation.
Song Magic in Game
Reyvateils
Reyvateils are the living component of the Song Magic systems provided by the broadcasting tower, capable of transforming sounds into energy. Strictly speaking, Reyvateils are an artificial lifeform created with ancient technology that had only begun to be recovered in the Third Age of Ar Ciel, to say nothing of its state in Golarion ten thousand years after that. While constructed, they are composed of organic matter, much like the proteins of the human body. In modern times, this variety of Reyvateil is referred to as a pure-blooded type—as they are modeled after humans, they are capable of reproduction, and their genes have since passed down, resulting in the uncommon phenomenon of said genes activating and connecting to the tower, creating a Halfblooded Reyvateil.
All Reyvateils share the common trait of being female because the Y chromosome that males possess suppresses the functionality of the genes, precluding them from activating and connecting to the tower. It's possible to override that suppression by modifying the genes to force themselves to manifest, but this in turn would create a faulty connection to the SH Server, with potentially lethal outcomes. The telltale way to identify a Reyvateil is their tattoo-like install port; these can appear anywhere on a Reyvateil's body, though are frequently covered up due to a trained person being able to read their emotions through it. Likewise, the composition of an install port helps to differentiate pure-blooded and half-blooded types, with the former being a symmetrical, methodically-structured design while the latter is a chaotic branching mess of lines.
By singing in Hymmnos, a Reyvateil can draw huge amounts of power directly from the tower they are linked to. Since the tower itself takes care of the instrumentation and choruses for their music, their natural music talents and abilities have no bearing in how they sound when they sing. In other words, even the most tone-deaf Reyvateil in the world will sing marvelously as long as she does it to invoke Song Magic.
Reyvateils are mechanically presented through a Bestiary listing for the pure-blooded types, and a prestige class for advancement.
Innsmouth Proxy Dependents (IPDs)
The Innsmouth Proxy Dependents are a modified form of Reyvateil that operate on a native layer of the Innsmouth's systems, bypassing the relatively slow Tower emulation layer.
This section is a stub. Please expand it if you have extra, relevant information.
Crafting Song Magic
A Reyvateil's Song Magic is typically composed in the form of a Hymmnos Word using her feelings and experiences; while ordinarily this is done with the support of a partner using a Dive Machine to enter her mind, no such machines are known to exist in a functional state on Golarion, and the understanding necessary to use them is similarly missing. Thus, Reyvateils can only rely on themselves to come to terms with any feelings that have not yet been worked out, possibly with the assistance of old-fashioned psychological therapy.
Rarer are Hymmnos Extracts, special forms of Song Magic that control the Tower's own systems. These often come programmed into Hymn crystals that are downloaded by the Reyvateil through a special sequence of command words, and even then they must have the a Hymn Code with sufficient privileges to execute them.
Song Magic is typically written for a particular dialect, denoted by its prefix—if written to a Hymn crystal, it cannot be downloaded to a differently-classified Reyvateil. For example, EXEC_PAJA is an ancient extract written for Reyvateils of Sol Ciel, but would not work on the Innsmouth Proxy Dependents whose Song Magic is quite divergent (see the New Hymmnos Dialect above).
Mechanically, Song Magic often takes the form of spells modified with Musical Infusion or Metamusic, or alternatively Bardic Masterpieces.
Tattoolist Disease
Type disease, genetic; Save Fortitude DC15
Onset maturity, see text; Frequency 1/day or see text
Initial Effect Creature subtype becomes Reyvateil, Unconscious 1 week; Secondary Effect 1 Con drain and target is exhausted; Cure see text
Tattoolist Disease, a name taken from the erratic linework of a Reyvateil's tattoo-like install port that manifests somewhere on her body after her coma, is not a traditional disease in most senses. It is not contagious but rather an unfortunate consequence of the genes of a pure-blooded Reyvateil ancestor awakening in a naturally-born descendant, a rare event that leads to the prospective new half-blooded Reyvateil connecting to the local tower. Other symptoms besides the install port are fever and lethargy as the energy of the tower surging through the Reyvateil's body wears her down and burns her life force away, ending in a painful death.
Tattoolist Disease can also occur prematurely if the Reyvateil is exposed to someone undergoing IPD Disease if she herself likewise descended from an Innsmouth Proxy Dependent. Young Reyvateils only suffer from the effects of the disease once per week until adulthood.
The onset of Tattoolist Disease cannot be avoided through a Fortitude save. It likewise cannot be cured permanently by any means short of severing her connection to the tower by staying out of its range, disabling the tower or casting a Miracle or Wish spell to remove the Reyvateil genes from her outright. Its symptoms are also incurable through normal means—rest does not cure the exhaustion and Restoration cannot provide any relief unless cast in conjunction with with Remove Disease, in which together they only forestall further effects for a week and provide similar benefits to a Tranquility crystal. Diquility crystals are what's necessary to properly extend a half-blooded Reyvateil's lifespan, suppressing the disease and relieving its symptoms for a good three months, but even those lose effectiveness as the Reyvateil reaches middle age, condemning her to a short lifespan.
IPD Disease
IPD Disease is a twofold effect suffered by Innsmouth Proxy Dependents, caused by the unique systems they have, mirroring their namesake to an uncanny extent.
This section is a stub. Please expand it if you have extra, relevant information.
Tranquility and Diquility
Tranquility: Tranquility is a life-extending agent for Reyvateils in the form of a small blue crystal. Taken on its own, the effects of Tranquility are largely psychosomatic and do little to actually extend the Reyvateil's lifespan. However, it is an effective remedy for short-term fatigue from singing too long. When administered through an install port, Tranquility reduces Exhaustion to Fatigue or cures Fatigue outright.
Only Reyvateils can make use of this item. As an artifact of another civilisation, it can only be found in the ruins. However, given raw materials and a formula it can be created with a DC 20 Craft (Alchemy) check (cost pending).
Diquility: A life-extending agent for Reyvateils in the form of a roughly fist-sized blue crystal. Taken once every three months, Diquility can stave off the effects of Tattoolist Disease in half-blooded Reyvateils for that time, curing them of their Con drain and Exhaustion in the process. Like Tranqulity, Diquility is administered through a Reyvateil's install port, but the process is extremely painful and usually requires an assistant to insert the crystal slowly. For this reason, though it recovers Fatigue and Exhaustion in the same manner as Tranquility, very few Reyvateils are likely to use it for this purpose.
Only Reyvateils can make use of this item, and it is only non-purebloods who have any need of it. As an artifact of another civilisation it can only be found in the ruins, and it is beyond the ability of an individual to manufacture much less with current technology. As such, most half-blooded Reyvateils in the ruins remain in cold sleep, and those on the surface resort to rather more creative but temporary measures.
Ar Tonelico, Reyvateils, Song Magic and Hymmnos © Gust Corporation and Banpresto, used for personal purposes only. All other material is based on content from and thus released under the Open Game License.
