Proof of Music-Based Casting

Well, less a book and more a recording. It's believed to be one the first digital recordings on Jhoutai!
This is long because it intersects the Rilaem war and some of my oldest characters.
Captured on a 200 year old refurbished phone in the possession of Alexander of Tor Jadey — the family who ruled over the Cascadian Enclave Falguoan (Saza for a division of a conquered and occupied land) and spearheaded the Aempian tech boom from human technology.
Although most members of the family had a phone, few of them took any interest in it except the youngest. Among them Nick, who received it at 17 and was told to "figure out why this was so important to humans"
Without functioning cell towers or Internet, they couldn't comprehend what they held.
Nick liked the camera, so he liked the phone. Nobody paid much attention to Nick, and didn't notice when he took it off with him to the Rilaem war, where he ended up serving alongside Jauk Shalades — a Monolith of Music and Violence who spoke in riddle and song. A Monolith with myth abound telling of his ability to break magic across the bow of his fiddle, shattering large spells and dispelling ghouls and shades with an arpeggio.

Jauk wrote nothing down. But Nick was a musician before he was a soldier, and Jauk liked that. He shared some of his knowledge with Nick, who had the sense to record it. This recording is what the Cathartics want so badly today.

Unfortunately... Nick's phone was confiscated when he died PROPAGANDA PROPAGANDA PROPAGANDA. OPEN YOUR EYES. NICK LIVED. HIS MARTYR DEATH WAS STAGED TO FUEL RECRUITMENT :BannerSorrows: in the war. It's widely believed that the Pact destroyed it, because Nick probably also filmed a whole lot of war crimes during his time in the Rilaem war.

Jauk himself did definitely die in the war. He went toe to toe with the Sovereign Executioner, Vinhibrani, and met his match in swordplay at last. The knowledge died with him

Some people believe another source for the answer is buried deep in the continental coral of Jhoutai, buried in one of the Verin Old homes and waiting to be discovered. There are plenty to who counter to say that every Old Home has been found, no more secrets of the old world remain. Perhaps even the Verin dynasties, with thousands of years of metaphysical advancement, hadn't answered this one. Perhaps the answer is that Jauk's music was a misdirection for some other power or magic.

---

The idea lives on in the public consciousness as their idea of magic. A literary magic that appears in their tales of fantasy.

Monoliths of Mathematics, Metaphysics, and Music alike grew up captivated by these stories and have theorized Grammatons — Sigils of Power made from sound rather than rune — which can generate a spell as surely as the hand of any caster. They've lost lifetimes in search of it, and have found nothing of the shape. It is known that sound does elicit a reaction from the meta... But so do light, and temperature, and most everything else that exists in the world.

It's believed that Anthem — the Neon God, the missing Deity, the Hologram Siren herself — used this to shatter the Leviathan Brood in her attack on the Aempian Capitol during the Harrowing

Navigate