The Tune of Horrors

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A tune too catchy for mortal ears...

Legends tell of a young aspiring bard named Kromartie who wanted more than anything to join one of the illustrious Bardic Colonies of Champerty.  Though he was not particularly gifted at any musical instrument, he practiced and practiced for years in preparation.  Finally the day arrived: he auditioned for a spot in each of the Colonies, but was rejected by each and every one.  Bitterness grew in the young man until -- seemingly by chance -- he encountered a malevolent spirit.  Though he knew in his heart of hearts the wrongness of it, out of resentment he made a deal with this spirit -- in truth, a devil.  The devil persuaded Kromartie to sign his soul in a pact.  In exchange he would be awarded an amazing feat: “the ability to play melodies both impossibly beautiful and irresistibly catchy”.  Satisfied, the devil departed leaving the young bard to test out his newfound power.

A few days later, one of the colonies with accepted new recruits in tow boarded one of its famed Boats of Braggadocio to set sail for Galik.  Kromartie made his move: he ambushed the group as they boarded and played his fiendishly enchanted tune for them.  They were utterly enraptured by the young bard’s performance, immediately revoked their rejection and begged for him to join the colony’s boat voyage.  Rather than accept, Kromartie boasted of his superior skill and savagely berated the bards to their faces, holding nothing back.  Little did he know the disastrous consequences of his song that would soon unfold upon the colony.

The next morn the boat departed as scheduled, but the journey would quickly go awry.  Far from ever reaching Galik the boat never made it beyond the Osugborn coast, instead washing up to the south of Champerty several days later with a large share of its passengers dead or lost at sea.  Those remaining reported that many of their shipmates had become bizarrely obsessed with Kromartie’s unbelievable performance, repeatedly singing and humming back the melody in attempts to replicate the tune but never getting it exactly right.  Without Kromartie there to play back the original tune, the bards argued and fought over whose approximation was closest -- whether this third was flat or raised, that interval was a fourth or fifth, and so on.  As the dark magic behind the tune fed their obsessions, these arguments quickly escalated into violence and then homicide.  Others simply dove into the ocean determined to swim the many tens of miles back to shore to find Kromartie and hear the song again.  True to their word, the devil’s bargain had not only made the young bard’s melody impossible in its beauty (and therefore impossible to replicate) but also irresistible to the musicians’ minds as they were driven insane, compelled to seek the melody at any cost or die trying.  When Kromartie learned of these events it is said he was devastated and forswore all music forever, but the damage of his bargain had been done.

Tales of the “Tune of Horrors” have been passed down through the Eras.  Once in a while, rumors of the Tune’s reappearance surface in the yarns of traveling minstrels and the gossip of taverngoers.  (The Galik Gazette, for its part, makes liberal use of such rumors during slow news cycles.)  These rumors always feature the same sequence of events: one or more victims become fixated on some song they can’t quite recall and are driven to insanity in trying to seek it out.  In the process they also spread the affliction to those nearby that hear them try to sing, whistle, hum or play back the melody incessantly.  As such, some stories feature entire villages whose inhabitants have taken to humming their own competing versions of the song over and over in a darkly amusing cacophony. If indeed the affliction can be passed to others this way, the Tune surfacing in a major population center would surely spell untold disaster...

These harrowing tales are always accompanied by claims of how one can break the insanity once it sets in the mind.  Some claim it can simply be removed with a spell like any other curse.  Others postulate that a certain powerful magical item can be attuned to in order to break the fixation, with an Earworm the example most commonly offered.  Still others believe that the only cure is to hear the original Tune itself.  Legends often mention that before he realized its dark power Kromartie transcribed or even somehow recorded the melody somewhere, though no such artifact has yet been discovered.