Obovox

The most beautiful instrument in the orchestra is the obovox. Great pieces of music have been written to feature the viola, and are now being re-scored to be performed with ghoulwood violas, which is a shame. The sphoxophone has been co-opted and is now used in many forms of quiver'n'bend. While many virtuoso pieces of music feature the screecarb, the core of any fine orchestra is its obovox section.

The obovox resembles a viol, with one or more panniers on its bottom. Like a screecarb or a bol flute, the body of the obovox has grenfing along its underside. The panniers increase the volume and resonance of the sound created by the obovox. The panniers are made of carefully selected grelb wood, which is treated with special oils and varnishes in order to bring out its beauty and tone. Different voxioneers have their own carefully guarded formulations for these treatments, which are handed down from artisan to apprentice.

In addition to its use in the orchestra, the obovox is also one of the five instruments in a pentet, along with a proper viola, first and second lunettes, and a cleaving drum. Though he was otherwise mostly useless, Rattallan composed a handful of tunes for pentet. Though his method of composition merely consisted of copying notes from other scores at random, the end result in a few instances was musical genius. (Admittedly, much of the rest of his compositions were unmitigated splak.)

Citations: Ghoulwood viola, Rattallan, Pentet.

--Brother Arfrus 09:56, 2 Sep 2005 (EDT)