| The Shadowbeat song style was first designed by the founder of the Harbingers Guild, Nirrti, along with the help of Mahalla, the Dead Voice of an Elder Goddess who was consumed during the Elder Wars. Shadowbeat music is both melancholy and powerfully rhythmic, creating a unique musical style. |
| Composition | Master | You may compose songs expressing your own creativity. |
| Sustain | Master | The ability to maintain a song. |
| VenomDrops | Master | Increase the potency of poisons. |
| ShadowLight | Master +33% | Mother Night's shadows conceal her children. |
| DiscordantChord | Master +66% | This painful chord shall crush the disharmonic soul. |
| NightFade | Gifted | The power of night fades the ego of the weak. |
| SpiderLegs | Gifted +33% | Navigate webs with the ease of a spider. |
| Refrain | Gifted +66% | A musical structure that allows repetition of a stanza. |
| BarghestBlues | Expert | Hearing barghest howls disrupts herb balance. |
| ShadowRave | Expert +33% | No one can resist dancing to the beat of your music! |
| Shadowpulse | Expert +66% | The song of shadow increased the flow of blood. |
| CaptiveAudience | Virtuoso | Both friends and enemies hear nothing but your songs. |
| BloodyCaps | Virtuoso +33% | A song to make any redcap's mouth water. |
| DarkHeart | Virtuoso +66% | Music that inspires those touched by Glomdoring. |
| SlaughFest | Fabled | Dark fae who hear this sound will be driven to a frenzy. |
| CrowCaw | Fabled +33% | Hearing the Cawing of Crow can drive a weak mind mad. |
| WidowsMercy | Fabled +66% | The poisonous black widow looks mercifully upon your agony. |
| Encore | Mythical | Play a rousing encore performance. |
| NightshadeBlues | Mythical +33% | Hearing this sound causes the ultimate depression. |
| WyrdSong | Mythical +66% | The song of the wyrd protects its own. |
| Dirge | Transcendent | Let a funeral dirge lead them unto death. |
Composition
| Syntax: |
| COMPOSE NEW <song> COMPOSE LIST |
As your ability in your song specialization increases, you will be able to compose new songs. You can write your own song and sets it in stanzas. Each song can consist of up to 9 stanzas, and certain powers can also be invested in each stanza. Powers are divided into 3 types Low (L), Medium (M) and High (H). Low types can only invested in stanzas 1-3, medium in stanzas 4-6 and High in stanzas 7-9. Low stanzas generally have simple effects, medium stanzas have stronger effects, and high stanzas have very strong effects. Some song powers need to be targetted and others will create a passive effect that stays around you. As a general rule, you will not be able to stack passive effects.
When playing a custom song, it always begins in stanza 1, each time you play the song, it progresses to the next stanza until the song ends or you change to another song or a certain amount of time elapses, whichever comes first. Note that before the time elapses, you can take other actions so long as you continue your performance before the time elapses.
| Additional Notes: |
| Whenever you play a song, all the effects of the song (excluding targetted ones) up to whatever you've played are active as long as the song is playing, and each one will tick every ten seconds. You can't control when each effect ticks relative to the others. Thus, performing a song is more like raising defenses in advance than it is like attacking.
How long a song lasts from the last time it was played depends on your skill in Music and its specialization, and in Dramatics, plus on your intelligence and charisma, and can be extended with a Tempo enchantment. Most song effects will impact only allies or enemies, and then, only those who are not deaf and not captivated by another bard. Even you, yourself, won't be affected by your own song if you're deaf. Note that what is called a "stanza" here is really a single line, with a limit of 65 characters. If you don't imbue a power into a stanza, it won't cost mana or ego when it's played, so you can use unimbued songs for performances. Imbued stanzas will have a description when played that's impacted by the imbued power. Note that you can change the imbued power in a stanza in a song already in progress, and the change will take effect immediately. This does not consume equilibrium or balance. |
Sustain
| Syntax: |
| SUSTAIN |
This ability will allow you to slow the music you are playing to imperceptible levels, effectively freezing the music in place.
| Additional Notes: |
| The purpose of sustaining your song is to freeze it so it's inactive (none of the effects will impact anyone) but is no longer ticking down to its time running out. You can then reactivate it before you need it by playing a single stanza (or refraining, if you have the Refrain skill), which reactivates all the effects in all played stanzas instantly. |
VenomDrops
| Stanza: Low (1-3) Targetable: No |
Those of your enemies who hear the sound of this music will find their resistance to poisons dramatically decreased and thus are more susceptible to being poisoned. Also, your allies who hear this song will find themselves better able to resist being poisoned.
ShadowLight
| Stanza: Low (1-3) Targetable: No |
When your allies hear the sound of this music, they will become shrouded. Shrouded enemies that hear this music will become exposed.
DiscordantChord
| Syntax: |
| PLAY DISCORDANTCHORD <target> |
| Power: Variable (Any) Damage Type: 100% Magic |
The discordant chord is tuned to especially harm those ears which are already suffering the tonal ailments of a musician, doing greater damage the greater the number of these afflictions the victim has. The power cost is 2 power for each affliction the victim has from among: manabarbs, powerspikes, egovice, and an achromatic aura. If the hapless victim suffers all four of these tonal disorders, their suffering shall be grievous indeed - losing half their mana and ego in addition to immense pain.
If you have an octave active in the room, its magical ability to block the curing of auric ailments will prevent then from being consumed by the discordant chord. Additionally, it will increase the damage of your chord for no extra power cost.
NightFade
| Stanza: Low (1-3) Targetable: No |
Those who hear the vibrations of this music will find their ego dwindling, like the light during dusk. If it is actually night time, more ego will be drained.
SpiderLegs
| Stanza: Low (1-3) Targetable: No |
When you and your allies hear the sound of the Spider Legs, you can free yourself from webbing and other entanglements with greater ease.
Refrain
| Syntax: |
| PERFORM REFRAIN <song> [<target>] |
Instead of moving forward in the stanzas of a song, you can repeat the last stanza you performed as a refrain. You can refrain as many times as you desire.
| Additional Notes: |
| Refraining allows you to keep a song going without running out of stanzas to play, and also can be used to repeatedly use a targetted power. |
BarghestBlues
| Stanza: Low (1-3) Targetable: No |
Those who hear this sound, which is reminiscent of the howling of barghests, will find their herb balance to be disrupted.
ShadowRave
| Stanza: Mid (4-6) Targetable: No |
Those of your enemies who hear the shadow rave will not be able to resist dancing to the beat.
Shadowpulse
| Stanza: Mid (4-6) Targetable: No |
Personal enemies who hear this haunting tune will find their heartrate increased dramatically, causing additional bleeding damage. In addition, those who bleed profusely will find the melody freeze their blood, causing paralysis.
CaptiveAudience
| Syntax: |
| CAPTIVATE AUDIENCE |
This will effect all allies and enemies in the room who can hear and are not already captivated by a bard. Those who are captivated will only pay attention to your songs and thus will only be affected (either negatively or positively) by your song effects. Blanknote or Blankchord will break the captivation.
BloodyCaps
| Stanza: Mid (4-6) Targetable: No |
Any enemy who hears this sound will begin to bleed profusely.
DarkHeart
| Stanza: Mid (4-6) Targetable: No |
This rousing music will inspire members of Glomdoring to greater heights, causing the damage they do to be increased. This powerful sound was inspired by the lyrics of "Heart of Darkness" by Nirrti, the first guildmistress and founder of the guild.
| Additional Notes: |
| Affects all Glomdorians who can hear it, even if they're unallied or enemied. |
SlaughFest
| Stanza: Mid (4-6) Targetable: No |
Barghests, redcaps and slaugh who hear this music will be driven into a frenzy and attack faster than they normally would.
CrowCaw
| Power: 2 (Master Ravenwood Tree) Stanza: High (7-9) |
By imbuing your music with the sound of the Caw of Crow, you can direct this powerful music at a single enemy. Hearing that sound will drive your target utterly mad, mad, MAD!
WidowsMercy
| Stanza: High (7-9) Targetable: No |
The music of the black widow - deadliest of the spiders - will course through the veins of your allies, turning their poisonous blood into a deadly acid that will burn attackers when they are bleeding. The pain will be increased if Venomdrops is also playing.
Encore
| Syntax: |
| ENCORE PERFORMANCE |
| Power: 5 (Any) |
By playing an encore performance, you will speed quickly through your song at a faster tempo - your recovery of equilibrium when playing songs will be halved.
NightshadeBlues
| Stanza: High (7-9) Targetable: No |
Those enemies who hear this sad melody will find that most things that causes their mana to go down will cost twice as much.
WyrdSong
| Stanza: High (7-9) Targetable: No |
When you and your allies stand on wyrded ground and hear this song, the wyrd itself will work to protect you and yours from harm.
Dirge
| Power: 3 (Master Ravenwood) Stanza: High (7-9) |
Send your opponents off unto death with a dirge to remember them by. Once you start singing this killing note, you can do nothing that will disrupt the song.
| Additional Notes: |
| Any action disrupts the attack, which takes eight seconds and has two messages before the final (and fatal) third message. If the victim is gone or deaf at any of these messages the song will fail. |