Drum

Kayla tipped her head back, staring up at the light blue sky as the drums and rhythm bones echoed around her. She passed a group of An'o dancers, the bones on their takhasar rattling softly under a chant she barely knew the words to. She turned to face the drummers, feeling the sound of the drums in her chest as much as she heard it. Next to the drummers sat the bone player, reciting the chant with a smile on his face.
But the drummers had to stand, because the drums were huge.
She had seen drum sets in her time on Earth, and had a picture of what a drum might look like, but the bone and hide constructions the Stenza used as instruments were completely divorced from that stereotype. One of the players clicked their claws on one of the exposed ribs down the barrel of the drum, a quick little trill to punctuate the rest of the piece. Kayla weighed whether this was meant to be there, or was a dramatic flourish on part of the drummer.
"Usually people get captivated by the dancers," Saeh'han quipped next to her, and she jumped out of her skin.
"The drums are giant," she replied.
"They give a nice, rich sound, don't they?"

Manufacturing process

Six to eight large rib bones (commonly from a Basket Horns or animal of comparable size) are arrayed in a circle, one end of each bone embedded into the ice to keep it in place while a portion of prepared leather is stretched over the set. The hide is secured around both ends of each bone by thin cords, although imperfections in the skin can lead to exposed bone (this is more of a feature than a bug). The surface of the drum is secured with an interior rim made of rawhide (leather which has not been tanned), after which the drum is complete.

Item type

Musical Instrument

Manufacturer

The Nine Systems

Owning Organization

The Nine Systems

Dimensions

~1m tall

Raw materials & Components

With most traditional tools and instruments, the preferred material for anything sturdy is bone. In the case of the drum, examples of a drum with wooden ribs are completely nonexistent. Bone is considered so far the superior choice that either no one thought differently in tens of thousands of years or the few examples when someone did have been lost to time. It is unknown why this is, but it may be due to the connections bone has with the Frozen Wastes and by extension the Snow Warrior, an entity so ancient he was likely recognized as winter itself when drums were first invented. Like the takhasar it appears there are ancient spiritual connotations that have been lost.