Artifact Archive · The Canticle Prelude · Major Spoilers
The Great Instrument
The kingdom-wide engine of song.
The Great Instrument turns written music into magic on a scale large enough to affect an entire kingdom—and sometimes worlds beyond it.
How It Works
The Instrument resembles an enormous metal cylinder fitted with raised pieces. As the cylinder turns, those pieces strike giant metal rods and sound the notes encoded into the mechanism. Complex songs require workers to physically reset the metal pattern before the Instrument can play them.
Magic on a Kingdom-Wide Scale
The origins of the Great Instrument are mysterious, but its power is not. A song played through it can produce effects throughout the Canticle Kingdom and even reach beyond the kingdom’s boundaries. Frederick and the queen exploit that reach when ordinary weapons are not enough against Thantos.
The Passage Rite
The Instrument is also bound to royal succession. When a queen nears the end of her reign, the Song of Passing is prepared and the Passage Rite is performed. The old queen is returned to her world and a successor is brought from that same world. The eldest patriarch of the Buchmüller line holds the traditional right to perform the rite.
Before the Great Transfer, this succession is existential: the kingdom draws its life from the queen, so a queen dying before a replacement arrives threatens the survival of the entire realm.
Michael D. Young 