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Sound- Misc. Information [Sburb Glitch FAQ Guest Chapter]

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Miscellaneous Information - SOUND

  TENDENCY: Canary in a coal mine

Sound happens to be the element of communications, interference and exposure to outside influence- which boils down to "if you're a sound player you pick up on problems like greasy, disgusting fast food lightning". A Sound player is in tune with the environment and the universe in terms of mental effects and transmissions- which means that you're going to hear everything. Angel in the proximity? You'll hear angelic choirs. Others corrupting a player or Others nearby? Unholy chanting. A Sound player will become intimately familiar with the theme songs and voices that every event and enemy projects- but, since they're psychically open, they'll also get debilitated by psychological effects or Corruption way faster than any other player. Keep away from SBURB diseases, Sound kids.

GLITCH: I hear...

This one kind of makes sense, actually, since Sound is the element of communication and all- Sound players are supposed to possess a passive buff to their hearing, but since SBURB is a ridiculous, badly-coded game held together by shoestring, spit and chance, that buff will wrap your stat right around the status maypole- either to the undefined super-hearing value of SONIC APPRECIATION DAY or down to a DEAFNESS condition. So your Sound player is probably either deaf, or so good at hearing that they feel pain from all the noise- that is to say, effectively deaf.

TENDENCY: ...and obey

A player who's really getting their groove on with Sound and the Orchestra- exhausted after a powerful skill, for example, or sleeping in a Skaian Summoning, or just really in tune with Sound- is extremely suggestible. And I'm not talking "sure-I'll-put-his-hand-in-warm-water" or "yeah-I'll-get-you-a-chocolate-bar-but-I'll-grumble" kind of suggestibility; I am talking straight-up Looney Toons sleepwalking/hypnosis bullshit. A Sound player in the midst of his mojo can't tell his helpful headvoices from you at this point; he will leap off cliffs if you suggest it strongly, swim in a pool with all his clothing on, fight the Black King armed with nothing but shoestring and a purse, or tap-dance naked in front of his Denizen. It's honestly kind of hilarious.

Once I knew a Sound player who got so into his groove during his dreams that we could sort of tell his sleeping realself to do stuff. Whenever he went to sleep in the Skaian Magicant, we made sure he wouldn't wake up by bumping into anything, then got his snoozing body to go to an alchemiter and alchemize us some popcorn and a VCR. So he was basically Skaian Movie Night Butler. Which was great until he woke up.

TENDENCY: You're talking to who?

A Sound player's Whisperings- the Orchestra- aren't just nice little coincidences. No, a Sound player can literally hear the voices of their Whispering in their head, as a massive conglomerate of musical accompaniments and advising voices- and they never.

Shut.

Up.

Being a Sound player is like having a massive legion of brain parasites who never leave and talk to you all the time. Hopefully, you can make friends with them, because if you don't they will make your brain a hellish place to be. If you are friendly, though, they can advise you as to courses of action and grant some nice little benefits, like singing mental lullabies to improve Sleep Ratio or waking you from Snoozyville McFlyingtime when something wicked your way comes.

WARNING/GLITCH: Not the best psychotherapists

Sound players were apparently meant to have a fair range of psy-buffs in their arsenal- for example, the skill [Echo Chamber] is supposed to provide temporary immunity to mental communication, as a reprieve from Other songs and brain control and all that. Then someone who programmed the game hit the wrong slider and boosted the skill so hard that it ceases all outward influence on the mind. When you get hit, you're trapped in your own head, you can't hear anything outside your own body, and you have no idea where it came from or how long it's going to be before you get back, and generally when you do get back you're freaking out on a level roughly consistent with Phrenic Phever. It's essentially an anti-Psy-buff. Same goes for [Can Anyone Hear Me], [Rhapsody in Green] and [The Rough Music]- possibly good for breaking a PK past even their murderous bullshitathon, but not for casting on people you want upright and not sobbing, dream-zombified or un-Berserk Triggered.

TENDENCY: Talkers

Eventually, a Sound player will stop using whatever electronic communications system you've got on you- they're the spirit of communication, remember? So they'll talk directly into your head. And they won't ever, ever stop.

A Sound player can and will play elaborate musical compositions in the head of every person in their session because they found a cool song on the internet. Remember how the Sound player has voices in their head? Well, they'll start thinking of that as normal eventually, and then they'll boot up [Psychommunication], cast it for everyone and leave it on for the rest of the session. And you will get EVERYTHING- idle thoughts, urgent messages and- with one girl I knew- elevator music. Hours and hours of elevator music.

I still sob a little when I hear it.

GLITCH: I'm singin' in my brain

One of those "actually beneficial" glitches you hear about sometimes. The actually advantageous ones, you know.

You know how the Sound player has all those shrieking, irritating voices in their head, constantly saying whatever's on the mind of the player's subconscious or their dreamself or the other players or the landscape or whatever the hell it is. Well, if you select "Voice" as your Instrument and then designate the voices in your head as backup singers, then they'll automatically sing appropriate Player Commands.

So you don't even have to stop and pause to play Calamity when you're being pursued by a high-level monstrosity- the voices in your head will sing it for you. Or you can have a constant recast of Song of Light in every cave, at all times. Heck, you might not even have to touch an instrument until after the Slaying of the Beast (remember, though, that you still have to play a Land Instrument yourself. You can't just let your multiple personalities wing it.)

On the other hand, this depends on your Whisperings liking you. If they don't, you might get Homefree'd when you're about to grab a reward, and you have to go all the way back to the dungeon, all the way back through every room, and then get zapped away again until you make nice.

Berserk Trigger

When Sound players decide that everything sucks, they'll autocast [Up to Eleven] and ruin the day of anyone with a working mind. See, Sound, as I've drilled into your heads, is the element of communication and psychic interference. [Up to Eleven] takes that psychic hotline to/from Sound player and  into a sort of communications hub- so everything sentient within range can hear literally every thought of every other sentient within range, every one of their own thoughts, and every thought of the Sound player. So everyone loses their mind in the sheer psychic noise- including the voices of Whisperings and Exiles.

I personally recommend either a drop-kick to the head (as it takes a huge amount of focus to not freak out when you're channeling Sound that hard and thinking the thoughts of everyone in range) or (as the second choice) running far, far away. Even if you're far off, you'll still get painful psychic echoes, but at least you won't, y'know, break your mind.

Don't hug. Hugging does not help.

P.S. Once I got hit with [Up To Eleven] on Prospit, in the middle of one of those parade whatevers that the Prospitians do for dead dreamselves. And I mean all the Prospitians. I could hear every single one of them inside my head, and it was pretty fucking unpleasant. As in, unconscious for a week, still hear it when I try to sleep unpleasant. It was not an enjoyable experience.