Track 17: Leaving Tarir

Track 17: Leaving Tarir rests in a worn leather sleeve, a compact card no larger than a palm. Its edges are brushed bronze, the front etched with a ring of sigils that coil inward like a compass drawn in dry ink. A faint gilded label catches the light: Leaving Tarir, Track 17. The surface is cool to the touch, matte and slightly rough, as if the metal itself remembers the hands that once held it. A slender groove runs along the center, a micro-syllable of sound waiting to be spoken, and tiny flecks of copper dust cling to the corners where the sleeve has rubbed most often. When you tilt it under lamp-light, the runes glow with a patient warmth, and you feel as if you could hear the track before you press play. In truth, Track 17 is a music token—a fragment of a larger score that memorializes a turning point, the moment Tarir's gates opened and people spilled into the world beyond the dunes. The melody teased out from the sigils is a delicate balance of desert bells, hammered strings, and a whistle of wind that seems to pass through the card itself. The texture, though it reads as metal, carries the memory of parchment—the rough scrolls carried by writers who traced Tarir's fate across maps. In the lore the track refers to, Tarir is described as a homeland for artisans and dreamers who learned to read the wind as a map. Leaving Tarir marks not an end but a pause—the caravan is moving, the city waking to a new sunrise, and the track captures that hesitant step into a larger world. Some tavern myths claim the track was composed by a caravan musician who rode at the edge of the parade, letting the rhythm dictate the pace of the march. Others say the sigils themselves were crafted to seal the memory of the moment so that future wanderers could keep Tarir's spirit with them. Within the game-world context, Track 17 serves as more than a neat keepsake. When activated from your inventory, the track unfurls a thread of theme that overlays your exploration, guiding the mood of a trek through markets and ruins. In group content or open-world roaming, it becomes a sonic cue for camaraderie—hands on drums, voices dropping to a hush—as if inviting a storyteller to weave Tarir into present-day ventures. Collectors prize it for the way it ties memory to motion, and for how it chimes with other tracks to build a personal soundscape of distant cities. On a sun-baked lane of a market district, Saddlebag Exchange stands with a bench, a ledger, and the smell of oiled leather. The stallkeeper fingers the card with reverence, murmuring that Track 17 sits at a modest two silver coins today—a price reflecting both rarity and the weight of memory. The conversation drifts to supply and demand as caravans return with new tales to trade; a silver coin here, a tale offered there. The market's current hum wraps around the item—the way, in this world, price is as much about memory as metal. Pocketed in the sleeve, the track becomes a doorway rather than a mere object: a memory you can carry, a hint of Tarir's exodus guiding your steps through crowded streets and silent ruins alike.