Ambient Music

Places can be as real as those who remember them, even imagined places.

A bard has developed a ritual that allows for the creation of an illusory space for as long as a song ‘describing’ it is played. Keeping the rite running has used up all the bard’s magic, day-by-day. They think if they can get the whole imaginary town built at once it will persist, even after their death, so long as the songs keep getting played.

The bard has spent years creating simple, catchy tunes that each evoke a building in the imaginary town they’re seeking. For example, a song about the small factory-turned-library in town starts with the squeaks of stairs, the sound of machinery, the riffling of paper - all through the medium of a drum and guitar. The wharf, a few houses, a stables, a general store, all of these have their own tunes. The main street as well, and the beach, and so on. These buildings fade into and out of existence as the songs are played.

The songs are catchy enough, and have spread far enough, that each town location has a 50% chance of existing at a given moment.

The bard is having the toughest time writing or rewriting a few buildings, doing their best to bring up the reality of the town through catchiness.

There are about twenty features of the place, and songs cycle about every hour, such that there are 24 chances per day for everything to come together. If we do some math we find that there’s a 50% chance for things to come together in 750,000 days, or 85.6 years.

Increasing the number of people playing decreases the time to completion SO MUCH, like moving the chance to 75% decreases it to just 8 days to half-likely-completion. Thus, the bard has a huge incentive to make the songs catchier and more persistent and more widely known.