Laeriarah (Patreon)

Today we have our second fully finished song. This one is entirely spear-headed by Darius, so I'll be letting him take the reigns on the post.

#######################################

Hello everyone! If you haven't heard of me before, I'm Darius and I like to play music. I was involved with the Chaldeamaltysse track if you haven't listened to that one yet, but today I'm showcasing my first full track for Starlight Divide!   

Laeriarah is the name of the starting town that the characters find themselves in, and before I started work on this track, Ame told me that she was tired of starting towns sounding happy in video games. After several iterations of writing and re-writing, I came up with this product that I would define as "poignant" if anything.   

This track was first written down as sheet music through the software, MuseScore (see below)

and was then moved to Reaper where I added a ton of effects and r e v e r b to give it some personality.

Ame had previously requested that I include some parts of the Chaldeamaltysse track in Laeriarah, and I decided the best way to do it would be re-harmonizing Chaldeamaltysse to change it into the tone I was looking for. I've always been a fan of the pulsing strings effect that you hear throughout this one, and I think that's a great way to build tension in music, so that technique is used extensively throughout the track - interspersed with regular legato strings as well for contrast. 

My personal favorite part of the track is right at 1:48 after the buildup of the piece has come to an end and the piano takes the melody on its own to restate the theme. I've always been a firm believer that the loudest sound is silence, so I'll frequently include sections of my tracks with a solo instrument or full rest to give more emphasis to the other sections where a whole orchestra is playing.   

If you made it here, thanks for listening to me nerd out about music and there will be much, much more to come from my end, so stay tuned!

###################################

Back to an Ame. In my opinion, Darius really knocked it out of the park with this, and I feel very lucky to have his talent on board for the game. I love the motions this song takes and somehow I feel like even in testing, no matter what moment I'm at when that tension drops, it just hits me. I'm super excited to have this in.

Like Darius alluded to, I'm like, mega-sick of Towns ™ in RPGs in general. I've decided that cities are great, but towns are stupid. They're always green and peaceful and therefore bland, and you have to talk to a bunch of townspeople who you're supposed to care about, and the only characters who matter are the mayor and whoever else has a unique outfit.
Unless we're in a midwest gothic, miss me with it.

I really hope that we can make our starting community, Laeriarah, feel very different from the get-go.

Qysonos-Laeria was once thought to be the safest place in Heaven-- a veritable fortress within a massif of floating islands, themselves each cogs in a massive, illusory bulwark. Laeriarah was the city at the impenetrable heart of it all. Yet, that changed suddenly in the last generation of war when, in a miraculous upset, the entire maya was ravaged in a demonic invasion. The bulwark was shattered, islands crashed into the snowdrifts below, and the city was laid to a cold and silent rest.

We begin in a meager, but dedicated effort to rekindle the former bastion to life. In a simple, small commune in the bosom of the ruins, isolated from society by icy seas and winding fjords, each soul strives, despite unceasing squalls, to restore culture and warmth to the maya, brick by placid brick. 

We are not exactly at home here yet, but still we try our best.

Come to think of it, the idea of rebuilding a city from the ground up... laying foundation and mortar between storms with the help of a caring company...
Maybe I couldn't have picked a better setting for myself, as we weather the slings and arrows of the insurmountable work of making a new game from its very start.
I stress about the workload, but thinking of it that way, it sounds pretty okay.
Once we're done, we'll have a new home for someone to live in.
Maybe it won't be perfect, but it'll keep someone warm.

I think I accidentally just talked myself into some peace and therapy.
Huh.
That's not usually how these posts go.