Few will ever know the depths of sorrow that fueled the art of the famed dirgesinger Cornelius Saltleven. It is reported that his songs could make a youthful man weep for weeks over a lost love that never even existed, that his funereal chants would move all assembled to wail and rend their black crepe garments, and that he was banned from performing in several villages due to the increased number of suicides that seemed to follow in his wake.
When Saltleven died, his tear-stained cittern was buried with him. Unfortunately, neither Cornelius nor his instrument were able to rest in their long-sought grave: Saltleven's body was exhumed by a doctor who wished to perform a post-mortem study of the singer's larynx to discover the biological cause of his voice's sweet melancholy timber, and his cittern was considered lost to illicit trade in morbid curiosities.
Any bard who attunes themselves to the cittern immediately finds themselves knowing the words and melodies to these songs:
Like Ash on the Wind (fly)
The Greatest Sorrow is Unseen (invisibility)
We All Rise to Meet Our Lady of the Ravens (levitate)
Thee Old Salt Circle (protection from good and evil)
Eva Maeve and the Wolf (animal friendship)
The Manor House Aflame (protection from energy [fire only])
I Held the Devil's Asp (protection from poison)
The cittern functions exactly as an Instrument of the Bards (Doss Lute).
