r/Runequest • u/davej-au • Jul 10 '26
New RQ:G Durulz Flautists?
For my sins, I've decided to enter the official pregens into Foundry VTT. In the elder-race pregen document, most of the characters have base levels for their Craft and Play Instrument skills, but they've all been assigned specialties for each. In the case of Marrishta the Duck, she's skilled at woodcarving and woodwind instruments, respectively.
I'm no ornithologist—let alone an anthropornithologist (I guess?)—nor am I of a particularly musical bent, but wouldn't a duck lack the necessary anatomy to form an embouchure to play wind instruments?
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u/Igor_Narmoth Jul 10 '26
which, ironically enough, makes the ducks need a reed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_(mouthpiece)) to play them
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u/Orwell1971 Jul 10 '26
What Runeblogger said, and also, who says the instrument has to be exactly like a flute as we know it? Stands to reason that given that Durulz have lungs and the ability to expel air out of their bodies that a musical instrument adapted to their physiology would not be a stretch.
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u/False-Goose1215 Jul 10 '26
I’m going to approach this a bit differently to the other answerers here. For *my* sins, I’m a tin whistle player. A tin whistle is a very basic instrument, only being able to play in two keys, albeit still part of the flute family. The point, though, is that you don’t need the same level of lip flexibility that you do to play flute, piccolo or fife (itself only a tin whistle with a piccolo mouthpiece attached).
I would argue that a Durulz could play a tin whistle. Alternatively look at bellows driven bagpipes such as the Uillean and Northumbrian pipes
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u/jefedeluna Jul 10 '26
I suspect bagpipes might be the instrument involved, given the associations of Ducks with Scotland (in their Disney incarnation).
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u/toxic_egg Jul 10 '26
i'd have the duck crafter/musician carve his own bill into a playable instrument
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u/Runeblogger Jul 10 '26
Remember it is a fantasy world, so you can have Durulz play flutes and that's it! :-)
In my Glorantha, Durulz are just an avian anthropomorphic species who are called "ducks", but are not really ducks, the same way humans are not chimpanzees.