Continuing in yesterday's theme, another bit of weirdness to make your setting a bit more exotic.
Fiddlebugs
Description: The colloquial term "fiddlebug" refers to wide variety of related insect species, all of which are flightless beetles varying in size from 1-2" in length. The name stems from the sounds they produce by sawing their mid-limbs over their modified wing cases, which sport elaborate convolutions and hollows that serve as natural amplifiers. Much like cicadas, the insects produce noises that are shockingly loud for their small size, but they produce a sound that resembles that of various stringed instruments ranging from fiddles to lutes to violas. The beetles' tunes vary from species to species, and change based on a wide variety of poorly understood factors. Weather, lighting, odors, available food, the number and type of other beetles within earshot, and the presence of predators all influence what is played from moment to moment.
Fiddlebugs are found mostly in temperate areas, and are short-lived creatures that are most active during the summer months. They lay eggs by the hundreds in late fall and die off thereafter, with a new generation hatching out the next spring.
Aside from providing a musical track for wilderness adventures, fiddlebugs may also come to an adventuring party's attention as a somewhat unreliable alarm system if their various "calls" can be interpreted. Is the sudden ominous music a sign of danger, or a mating call? Maybe a druid or ranger can work it out?
Design Commentary: You could also tie the fiddlebugs to yesterday's piper snails as a competing or parallel fad for collecting musical animals. Foppish nobles or snooty gentry might pay well for carefully-selected specimens whose tunes harmonize well, with skilled handlers selecting not only the beetles themselves but the conditions around them to produce specific music. The greenback shorthorn fiddlebug only plays a particular refrain when fresh feywood blossoms are present? Best send some adventurers to collect a supply in those dangerous woodlands.
There might also be bad blood between Team Snail and Team Beetle, with both sides sabotaging each other for motives petty or grand. The beetles are more subject to environmental conditions but are more numerous and easier to replace, where the snails' music is more consistent but the animals are rarer, especially the older and larger ones. Beetle fans will also need to obtain a whole new band every year, although breeding them in captivity might be possible and certain mixes of the various breeds will produce fairly consistent tunes which a master beetle-wrangler can further refine.
Or perhaps the two fads merge, with the upper classes staging combined orchestral performances of piper snails and fiddlebugs?
Fits in with the collectability of the snails. For the orchestration to work maybe you have to manipulate the fiddlebugs with those mysterious factors-- say, light, heat-- near their cages to get them to play when needed.
ReplyDelete