SHIRE OF CROSSTON, PRINCIPALITY OF THE MISTS, KINGDOM OF THE WEST – The bardic community is up in arms that they will soon be replaced with Google’s AI Chatbot “Bard”. While Bard is yet to roll out, news of the updated technology is making waves. A SCAdian employee of Google spoke with The SCAllion on the condition of anonymity. “The upside of this replacement is you won’t have to pay the bard who shows up in your camp with ale. Your phone and a set of battery operated speakers and you can have whatever original period music you want!” When pressed on details, the employee admitted that the technology was still unstable. “It’s in beta,” they admitted,”the quality of the music is not yet reliable. I asked for an Old English version of To The West and I got rickrolled with shawm & viol instead.”
The bardic community is roiling with resentment, repeated outbursts of righteous rage, and rampant alliteration. Inside Discord servers, across Facebook, and in rehearsals, musicians are talking animatedly about art, ownership, and the anticipated lack of alcoholic offerings. “It’s not fair,” said Martine Courtois of the Outlands, “I’ve been working on learning the lute for years, honing my craft and performance sense… and now an out of period machine will pump out tunes? Where’s the ambiance? Where’s the craftsmanship?”
Calontir has a unique take on the machine learning tool: “Because it outputs words in nonsense order, no one can sing along! It’s only good for solo pieces, it’s not a real bard!” said a bardic Pelican upon condition of anonymity. “We are a community bardic kingdom. Other places are welcome to this single-person nonsense.”
The SCAllion staff room had been bopping along to the faux bardcore until the editors noticed that we were writing out the random word order into our stories. We are now back to listening to artisanal bardcore.
the SCAllion 