Symphony

**Symphony** is the largest city of intelligent sounds within the Tumult.

## Background

Symphony's population numbers in several hundred thousand sounds or more and can be conceptualized as a city, despite also being built from sound. Each section of Symphony serves as a resonance island, and possesses its own unique aural character. The city's primary inhabitants are grazions, though risk taking scordaturns also reside here.

### Background Resonance

The series of linked resonance islands that compose Symphony are connected via a background resonance whose aural character seems a mellifluous aesthetic similar to strings and mellow woodwinds. Its character is carefully maintained by a group of grazion gardeners who prune edge feeders and slay any chant spiders that will sometimes infest its fringes. The gardeners are always suspicious of newcomers, but will direct them inward to the Grand Bazaar, where strangers can commonly mingle with the populace.

The head gardeners, which manifests as a two-tone standing wave, is named Ghev. Ghev secretly keeps several chant spiders within "cages," despite there being conventions to the contrary, Ghev also holds secret scordaturn sympathies, and will participate in chant spider races that are held beneath the city.

### Grand Bazaar

The Grand Bazaar within the heart of Symphony is a resonance island unto itself, possessing an aural character of changeable beats, modal harmonies, and chordal patterning that rises and falls across scales. It's a vast sprawl of interconnected markets and "open-air" shops. What do intelligent buy? Thousands of complex musical arrangements that are akin to art, different living sounds gathered from around the Tumult which can be prepared as either food or decoration, special overtones that provide cypherlike abilities, services of every kind, and many other things that lack any direct translation to someone from the base dimension.

Begas is a well-known vender within the Grand Bazaar, known for traveling to and from the farthest parts of the Tumult and returning with exotic sounds, unexpected arrangements, and even some odd information. Begas is a scordaturn and spends about 2 weeks in Symphony before heading off on yet another expedition that could last for months. A few times, Begas has found intelligent sounds throughout the wilderness who claimed to be interdimensional travelers. He returned them safely to Symphony, but lost track of them afterwards. It's highly possible they found their own way back, but then again, Begas might've just sold them to an interested collector. Regardless, Begas is always on the lookout for entities to accompany him on his next expedition. IT may be dangerous there, but it's also wondrous.

### Modal District

The linked resonance island's character for Modal district is frenetic, changeable, and also ominous. For all that, it keeps to rhythms that dimension walkers might find to be "danceable". This is where most of the scordaturns reside within Symphony, though not always for long. The district is well-known for intense celebrations where literally intoxicating music is generated. Here, scordaturns will gamble for all sorts of prizes, dangerous creatures are put on display, or are made to fight each other.

Intelligent sounds that come into conflict can just fight, but they choose to contend via a modal duel, which are held solely in the Modal District. Modal duelers are matched up in what are essentially singing competitions. The sound whose performance is judged to be the most delightful (from the point of any scordaturns that happen to be in the audience) will be victorious. Usually, this is enough to also conclude the underlying squabble.

A sound called Vehz takes bets on all manner of events that can occur within the Modal District. Payments are made through musical arrangements. If losers fail to pay then they'll tend to disappear afterwards. A trio of basso notes who call themselves the Cadence will always accompany Vehz.

## References

1. ↑ Cordell, Bruce, “The Tumult.” Into the Outside, Monte Cook Games, LLP, 2018, pp. 92. Numenera. ISBN 978-1-939979-47-6
2. ↑ Cordell, Bruce, “The Tumult.” Into the Outside, Monte Cook Games, LLP, 2018, pp. 92. Numenera. ISBN 978-1-939979-47-6
3. ↑ Cordell, Bruce, “The Tumult.” Into the Outside, Monte Cook Games, LLP, 2018, pp. 92-93. Numenera. ISBN 978-1-939979-47-6
4. ↑ Cordell, Bruce, “The Tumult.” Into the Outside, Monte Cook Games, LLP, 2018, pp. 93. Numenera. ISBN 978-1-939979-47-6