Luthier's Shop

Oh yes, the name is definitely a misnomer - by no stretch of the imagination would all these things be available at the luthier's shop.  At the same time, however, I just felt that "instrument maker" lacked flavour, and flavour is important where it comes to a fantasy campaign.  Thus all these instruments are gathered together here.  A reminder to the gentle reader that they wouldn't all be found at the same shop anyway, only in the same general district of town.

The bard, I felt, deserved a wide selection.  The price for some of these instruments may seem astounding for those who are not familiar with the cost of musical instruments in general ... the precision in making, the materials and the timbre of the sound require more than simple expertise, and the prices reflect that.  Several of the instruments, the squeezebox or the pipes, are quite cheap.  The viola or the violin is not.  Please note that in those two instruments, it is less the amount of materials that determines the price versus the amount of precision involved in their construction.  Thus they are almost the same price although the violin is smaller.

Most of the instruments are unavailable and would consistently be hard to find without actually going to the location where the instrument is made.  I have some trouble sorting out the Asian instruments vs. the European instruments for the time being; at some point I shall have to make a distinction between the two on other tables, but I haven't yet because - heck - I've got other things to do.

Finally, a word about the organs.  I'll be honest, the 'magnificent organ' is too big an expensive to be 'found' in a shop.  The price given is the cost it would be to construct it, and its availability would be the chance of finding someone willing to do so.  I priced this according to a huge organ I was able to find details for at a cathedral in Germany ... but I did the research for it about four years ago and I can no longer remember the specific building (memory goes as you get old, you know).  Anyone familiar with organs will tell you that 29 stops is just immense.  Note the 40 ton weight of the item.  It is really just included to indicate the likely upper end of the craft.  A 3-stop organ would be fairly common, the sort of thing a good-sized church would raise money to buy.

The next list would be the mason, which I think needs a bit of work.  I'll post it tomorrow or Friday, depending on how the rest of my week goes.  Wow, it's Wednesday already.