The Black Company *Avaronald*

[BadThrall]

When asking Melda awhile ago about new music and trying to avoid copyright music as much as possible he pointed me to this new system that he and Jason has got going here.

I've been making a Warcraft III campaign called "The Black Company", which is based on a book called the The Black Company by Glen Cook.

It has been in development for several years now and is beginning to see the light at the end of tunnel.

This campaign is about a brotherhood of mercenaries known as "The Black Company", who have hit troubled times.

Excerpts from Story:
---
Croaker spoke to assembled Company:
In olden times the outfit consisted entirely of black soldiers. Thus the name. Its slow drift northward has seen not only its diminustion but a shift in its makeup. One-Eye is the only black man with us today.
We are the last of the Twelve True Companies. We have out-endured the others by more than a century, but I fear we're into our twilight days. I fear this may be the Company's final commission. A page of history is about to turn. Once it does, the great warrior brotherhoods will be gone and forgotten.

But Croaker was wrong...
---

This campaign, as well as the book is what is considered a dark fantasy.
Goes through a story of a bunch of mercenaries caught on the wrong side of a war where the odds are almost always stacked against them, yet they win. The Lady, who was ressurected to form the The Empire has been at war with the Rebels and the Circle opposing her. The Black Company was tricked into serving the 'evil' Lady to help fight this war. The Ten Who Were Taken, who are powerful wizards serving the Lady, use armies like chess pieces. The story blurrs the lines between good and evil, black and white. The characters can be very gray and are at times startlingly real.

The player will control the Black Company during these events.

The main character is Croaker, being Annalist, he is narrator of the events and his perspective is given during the events of the campaign.  The campaign will have 18 levels and hours of cutscenes. Traveling through many parts of Glen Cook's world.

Now for the best part, the music!:

The atmosphere of the Black Company is gritty, darkish, fantasy, soldiers, war, horrors of war, brotherly love. Along these lines.

Right now the In-Game music fits mostly, but it gets that kinda romantic war type of deal with it, which isn't appropriate to the story for the most part. And the big reason for changing: its all copyrighted, I wanted to stay away from it and plus I'd like music that was created to be more geared toward The Black Company atmosphere, which is why Im asking for help.

I was simply to give out a notice, so I can go into more detail later,(and speak about the is the exact music that is in it right now), when asked.

Right now here is an overview of what Im looking for:
In-Game Tracks (4 tracks, AVG of 6 mins)
Various 'Emotion/Event' Tracks' (More detail later)
1 Exact Cinematic Track (music that follows the cinematic exactly, I'll get into the details of this when things are set in stone)

Thats it. Thank you!

[Melda]

And I'd like to point out that I have played through a demo version of this game, as well as watched many of the cinematics, and this project looks extremely well done!

I highly recommend this project to composers.

It has our seal of approval.

[Jason]

Welcome, BadThrall, and thanks for being the first to come looking for music for your mod project! "The Black Company" sounds like a great campaign.

[Xaran Alamas]

Congrats BadThrall

[BadThrall]

Very overwhelming (for me anyway). Thank you guys!  

[Melda]

Well, this is a very promising mod. I'd offer to work on it myself, if I weren't so busy with CaQT.

[Anonymous]

is there a dev site where prospective composers can see mats?

[Melda]

I'm not sure what a 'mat' is, but here is The Black Company disucssion forum, based at SAmods.

Has links to images, information, and probably the early demo.

[Anonymous]

haha! srry...

mats = materials

 :oops:

[Avaronald]

Hello BadThrall! I'm a newbie here, but I'm interested what kind of music are you looking for your mod?

I do a bit composing myself and I'm interested in your mod...  

[BadThrall]

Hi Avaronald! I'm very happy your interested!

At this point any kind of music will do which matches the atmosphere that I spoke of above, I do have example music for this if thats what you want to hear, to get an idea.

At this point, you can use you're own creativity instead of limiting you to what I want, it's all up to you.

Tell me if you want more specifics.

[Melda]

It's excellent seeing projects that deserve music finally getting the opportunity!

Let me know if you end up writing anything for the project, Avaronald. Because then I'll have something for you.

[Avaronald]

I gave BadThrall a few example pieces to listen and he liked those, so I'm in now. (I also send you a PM, Melda.)

[Melda]

That's great news!

This project was the first to post a music request, so it's great to finally see someone willing to work on it. BadThrall must be thrilled.

Oh, and look left.

[Avaronald]

I've done some composing now, and here it goes

Music for Black Company mod:
Croaker's Annals
Something lurking in darkness

I know that the sound quality of the pieces isn't very good, because the software I use (currently I'm using Sibelius 3 and a built-in sampler KontaktPlayer that comes with it), but at least it's better than the standard MIDI...  

These are only preliminary versions of the music and they might not even be in the mod itself, when it's ready. I'll probably be also modifying them, as I'm an uncurable perfectionist. :wink: