Solwave

Solwave is the dominant mainstream musical language of Geba and functions as the sound of legitimacy, prosperity, and continuity. Its sound is polished, melodic, and immediately accessible, built for mass appeal and large-scale spectacle, with live performances emphasizing synchronized visuals, lighting, and controlled explosive effects. It is favored by the general population as well as wealthy citizens and direct Imperial descendants, who view it as culturally respectable and socially validating. Solwave reinforces loyalty to existing power structures by affirming that the world is functioning as intended, providing a shared emotional baseline that bridges class divides without challenging hierarchy. Artists within this genre are the most highly paid and, crucially, the most verifiably and legitimately compensated musicians on the planet, with transparent, audited income streams that serve as proof of approved success.

Performance

Solwave performances are engineered spectacles of precision and opulence. Stages span enormous distances, elevated platforms rising from polished floors while coordinated lighting arrays paint the air in shifting gradients timed to every beat. Pyrotechnics erupt at calculated intervals, their detonations synchronized so precisely that the sound itself becomes percussive. Holographic projections layer over performers, amplifying their movements into colossal silhouettes visible from the farthest seats. Every element is choreographed to the millisecond, creating an overwhelming sensory experience that leaves no room for improvisation or error.

Fashion

Solwave performers dress in the most expensive garments available, their wardrobes serving as walking declarations of Imperial legitimacy. Long robes drag behind them across the stage, mimicking the ceremonial attire of old Imperial wealth, with fabrics so finely woven they catch light like liquid. Headwear ranges from ornate crowns to elaborate sculptural pieces that frame the face in gilded geometry. Every garment is tailored to perfection, with visible brand insignias and authenticator marks ensuring audiences understand the cost of what they witness.

Fans emulate this aesthetic to the degree their finances permit, wearing their finest formal clothing to shows, investing in replica robes, and adorning themselves with whatever approximations of luxury they can acquire. The crowd at a Solwave concert resembles a cross-section of aspiration, with the wealthy in authentic designer pieces and the working class in careful imitations, all unified by the shared language of displayed prosperity.

Conwave

Conwave is aspiration made audible, defined by loudness, spectacle, and overwhelming presence. Its sound is bombastic and heavy, designed to project success, power, and upward motion in any environment. It is listened to by those attempting to rise out of their circumstances, making it the most omnipresent genre on the planet, heard in almost any random setting. Economically, Conwave is a massive financial engine and the only genre capable of rivaling Solwave in total revenue, though much of its funding comes from sources that cannot be fully verified as legitimate. Many artists begin their careers in Conwave to establish identity and visibility before transitioning into Solwave to gain legitimacy and permanence.

Performance

Conwave performances are explosions of kinetic energy that never relent. Performers move constantly, sprinting across stages, leaping from elevated platforms, and engaging directly with crowds pressed against barriers. The staging prioritizes impact over elegance, with bass frequencies calibrated to vibrate through the body and lighting designed to strobe and pulse rather than illuminate. Shows are loud in every sense, the volume pushing physical limits, the energy demanding participation rather than observation. Stillness is antithetical to the form.

Fashion

Conwave artists wear minimal luxury, but when they do, they concentrate it around their wrists, necks, and ankles, heavy chains and bands that catch light with every movement. Many perform shirtless or in very short pants, the combination deliberately strange, bodies on display as proof of vitality and hunger. The aesthetic rejects the covered formality of Solwave in favor of exposed physicality, clothing serving function over modesty, allowing unrestricted movement for performers who never stop.

Fans mirror this energy, arriving in minimal clothing adorned with whatever jewelry they can afford, chains purchased from markets or inherited from relatives, anything that signals ambition and upward trajectory. The crowd moves as a single organism, bodies pressed together, everyone reaching toward the same projected future.

Rebelcore

Rebelcore exists as opposition made audible, giving form to political anger and social discontent rather than seeking longevity or legitimacy. Its sound is aggressive and confrontational, prioritizing force, urgency, and raw expression over refinement, often reflecting the internal instability of its listeners. The genre fractures along ideological lines: some factions direct their rage against the Shadow Rule and its hidden Imperial mechanisms, while others reject the Empire entirely, denouncing everything it is and has ever stood for. This latter strain finds its strongest following in Inland Thazvaar, where historical grievances run deep and anti-Imperial sentiment has calcified into cultural identity. Rebelcore accelerates political awareness and emboldens defiance, but its influence is intentionally curtailed through suppression, resulting in movements and artists that are often short-lived. Financially, it generates the least money of any major genre, and its artists largely do not care about wealth, a reality reinforced by the fact that many do not survive long enough for economic success to matter.

Performance

Rebelcore performances are volatile gatherings held in abandoned industrial spaces, unmarked relay stations, and temporary venues that can be evacuated at short notice. There are no stages in the traditional sense; performers occupy whatever elevated surface exists or simply stand at ground level among the crowd. Equipment is functional rather than impressive, often damaged or modified, amplifiers pushed to distortion. The atmosphere is confrontational, with performers shouting directly into the faces of attendees, physical contact between artist and audience not only expected but embraced. Shows frequently end abruptly due to enforcement raids, equipment failure, or violence.

Fashion

Rebelcore artists dress in whatever they own, aesthetic cohesion being irrelevant to their purpose. Clothing is often torn, patched, or deliberately defaced with anti-Imperial markings. Many performers are visibly armed while playing, carrying weapons not as props but as genuine tools they may need before the performance ends. Protective gear sometimes appears, helmets and reinforced jackets worn against the possibility of confrontation with authorities.

Fans mirror this practical nihilism, arriving in clothing they can afford to lose, bodies marked with temporary slogans and protest symbols. The visual language is one of expendability, every garment and accessory communicating that its wearer has already accepted the costs of attendance.

Abyssal Harmony

Abyssal Harmony operates as emotional gravity rather than spectacle, drawing listeners inward through slow, restrained, and heavy compositions that bypass conscious interpretation. Its sound is minimal and weighty, designed to induce introspection rather than stimulation. While it attracts contemplative civilians and existential seekers, it exerts a statistically anomalous pull on Vessels, who are drawn to it for reasons no authority can fully explain. Culturally, Abyssal Harmony is the most meaningfully influential genre on the planet, shaping innovators and individuals who act rather than merely consume or perform authority. Though it does not generate significant financial gain, its influence far outweighs its economic footprint, quietly aligning the minds that ultimately reshape systems rather than uphold them.

Performance

Abyssal Harmony performances are theatrical rituals designed to dissolve the boundary between performer and void. Stages are shrouded in darkness interrupted only by carefully orchestrated lighting effects, beams cutting through artificial fog to create the impression of depth where none exists. Movement is deliberate and ceremonial, each gesture weighted with implied meaning. The visual spectacle attempts to render the incomprehensible tangible, creating environments that feel less like concert venues and more like thresholds into something vast and unknowable. Heavy reliance on stage effects transforms the space itself into an instrument.

Fashion

Abyssal Harmony performers never reveal their faces, their identities subsumed entirely by the personas they inhabit. They wear elaborate costumes depicting what they believe the Velcrith or Seraveth would look like if those entities possessed physical form. These are not simple masks but full-body constructions of flowing fabric, articulated appendages, and integrated lighting elements that shift and pulse with the music. Faces are always concealed behind sculpted visages suggesting geometries that do not quite resolve into recognizable features.

Fans attend in their own interpretations of this aesthetic, wearing dark robes, face-obscuring hoods, and handcrafted masks ranging from simple fabric coverings to ambitious sculptural works. The crowd becomes an extension of the performance, a congregation of anonymous figures oriented toward a shared mystery none of them can name.

Scarlet Verse

Scarlet Verse transforms violence and conquest into sensual mythology, reframing historical brutality as intimacy, desire, and emotional power. Its sound is melodically heavy and melancholic without harshness, relying on deep harmonization and controlled intensity rather than aggression. The genre is dominated by female performers, who comprise approximately ninety-eight percent of artists, and its audience is likewise majority female. Scarlet Verse holds immense cultural influence among women, though its themes remain largely contained within ritualized spaces such as festivals, which are among the most frequently held on the planet. While not the most financially dominant genre, its events are consistently successful, and its influence is carefully bounded, as broader translation of its subject matter into everyday society would likely result in instability. Male listeners often pass through Scarlet Verse temporarily before gravitating toward Feral Remnant.

Performance

Scarlet Verse performances are ceremonies of radiant excess staged in arenas designed to maximize visual impact across vast distances. Stages incorporate multiple elevated platforms allowing performers to command attention from every angle, their movements choreographed to create cascading patterns of light and motion. Fire features prominently, controlled flames framing performers or erupting in synchronized bursts. The atmosphere is reverential yet charged with tension, audiences swaying in unified rhythm while performers enact narratives of conquest and submission through dance and vocal delivery.

Fashion

Scarlet Verse performers adorn themselves in metals and crystals engineered for maximum visibility, their bodies transformed into living light sources that shimmer with every movement. Polished surfaces catch and scatter illumination, ensuring performers remain visible even to audiences positioned at extreme distances from the stage. Many artists bear gems permanently embedded in their legs and foreheads, surgical modifications that blur the line between costume and body. Heavy tattooing covers exposed skin, intricate designs that tell stories of their own when examined closely.

Fans arrive in their own approximations of this aesthetic, wearing whatever reflective materials they can acquire, applying temporary gems and metallic body paint, displaying tattoos that reference the imagery of their favorite artists. The audience becomes a sea of scattered light, each attendee a smaller reflection of the radiance on stage.

Scarlet Dominion

Scarlet Dominion is an intensified and more exclusionary evolution of Scarlet Verse, operating on the same principles but within a narrower, more ideologically sealed space. It is almost exclusively performed by women and listened to by women, with open discrimination against male participation. The sound amplifies dominance and conquest themes beyond romanticization into assertion, reinforcing insular power hierarchies. Economically and culturally it mirrors Scarlet Verse but on a smaller, more concentrated scale, favoring intensity and purity over reach or expansion.

Performance

Scarlet Dominion performances occur in venues that actively exclude male attendance, creating spaces where the energy of Scarlet Verse can be expressed without moderation or external observation. The staging mirrors its parent genre but with heightened intensity, fire effects burning hotter and closer, lighting sharper and more aggressive. Performers engage with audiences more directly, the barrier between stage and crowd deliberately thin. These events feel less like concerts and more like rituals of collective assertion.

Fashion

The fashion of Scarlet Dominion amplifies the aesthetic of Scarlet Verse while stripping away any elements that might soften the presentation. Metals are heavier, gems more prominently displayed, tattooing more extensive. The overall effect is one of armored beauty, performers appearing less like entertainers and more like warriors adorned for ceremony. Fans dress in kind, the absence of male observers allowing for more aggressive self-presentation, bodies decorated with the same commitment to visible power that defines the artists they worship.

Eclipsed Soul

Eclipsed Soul is defined by emotional totality, absorbing listeners rather than entertaining them. Its sound is dense, dark, and lingering, designed to merge with the internal state of the listener rather than sit alongside it. Its fanbase is smaller than that of the dominant genres, but it is the most devout, with listeners integrating the music and its creators directly into their identities. As a result, artists become emotional anchors rather than distant figures, and when those artists disappear or die, listeners experience the loss as a collapse of self rather than fandom grief. This leads to mass suicide events in which entire segments of the fanbase follow the artists into death. Economically, Eclipsed Soul artists are not paid the most by volume, but they are materially cared for more thoroughly than any others by their fans, a devotion that ultimately fails to prevent collapse under the weight of the genre's own emotional gravity.

Performance

Eclipsed Soul performances are intimate gatherings even when held in larger venues, the staging designed to create a sense of proximity regardless of actual distance. Lighting is minimal, often limited to single sources that cast long shadows or leave performers partially obscured. There is no barrier between artist and audience, no elevation that places the performer above those who have come to witness. Movement is slow and deliberate when it occurs at all, many performers remaining nearly motionless throughout their sets, allowing the music to carry all necessary weight.

Fashion

Eclipsed Soul performers dress in dark clothing, their wardrobes dominated by blacks and deep grays that absorb rather than reflect light. Robes and cloaks are common, layered garments that obscure the body beneath. A distinctive element of the aesthetic is the relay tracker worn as fashion, devices typically used for location monitoring repurposed into visible accessories, a symbolic acknowledgment of the connection between artist and audience that persists beyond the venue. Occasionally performers incorporate stark whites into their appearance, the contrast creating visual focal points that draw the eye.

Fans adopt this same visual language, arriving in their darkest clothing, wearing their own relay trackers as declarations of devotion, some matching their idols so precisely that distinguishing performer from audience becomes difficult until the music begins.

Feral Remnant

Feral Remnant is permitted savagery, designed to strip identity down to instinct through extreme intensity, speed, and aggression. Its sound is violent, overwhelming, and deliberately dehumanizing, serving as a tool for emotional priming rather than persuasion. It is favored by soldiers, mercenaries, hunters, and combat-adjacent individuals, and it is one of only two genres commonly blasted on active battlefields, the other being Conwave. Culturally, Feral Remnant encourages extreme prejudice and lowers psychological barriers to violence, but it is widely accepted because it does not compel action, only amplifies an existing mindset. Financially, its true scale is unknown, as many producers are active combatants who do not rely on the genre for income; those who do live comfortably but never approach the wealth generated by dominant genres.

Performance

Feral Remnant rarely manifests as live performance, the genre existing primarily as recorded material distributed through military and mercenary networks. When performances do occur, they are chaotic and unstructured, held in venues that can withstand physical damage. There is no choreography, no synchronized lighting, no attempt at spectacle. The sound is delivered at volumes that cause physical discomfort, the experience closer to endurance than entertainment.

Fashion

Feral Remnant performers wear nothing in particular, their appearance dictated by practical considerations rather than aesthetic intent. Many are armed while playing, weapons carried not as costume elements but as tools of their primary profession. Clothing tends toward the durable and functional, items that can survive the physical intensity of both performance and the lifestyles of those who create this music.

Fans, when they gather, dress similarly, their wardrobes reflecting their own proximity to violence. Like Rebelcore audiences, there is an armed presence, though the weapons here are carried by those who use them professionally rather than those preparing for potential confrontation with authorities.

Thundered Dirge

Thundered Dirge is living ancestry expressed through sound, originating as a Frost Sentinel cultural rite in the high passes of Ngorrhal. Following assimilation into the Geban Empire, it was explicitly permitted to endure as a protected form of cultural expression rather than being absorbed into imperial ceremony. Though it originated exclusively among the Frost Sentinels, the form was later recognized by Yuvaari culture as resonant with their own endurance-based traditions. Yuvaari participation emerged much later and remains explicitly acknowledged as adoption rather than origin. Its sound is slow, heavy, and ritualistic, built around repetition and endurance rather than entertainment. Performances are rarely recorded and often occur only once, existing as unique moments rather than commodities. Thundered Dirge carries no economic function whatsoever, as those who perform it do so to preserve continuity of identity rather than for payment or recognition.

Performance

Thundered Dirge performances are ceremonial events that unfold over extended durations, sometimes lasting entire days. There is no stage in the conventional sense; participants arrange themselves according to tradition, often in circular or processional formations that have remained unchanged for generations. Instruments are played until arms fail, voices sustained until throats give out, the endurance itself constituting part of the meaning. Audiences do not exist as such; all present are participants to varying degrees, the boundary between performer and witness deliberately unclear.

Fashion

Thundered Dirge performers wear traditional Sentinel attire regardless of whether they themselves are Sentinels. The clothing is ceremonial and heavy, layered furs and treated leathers bearing markings that indicate lineage, achievement, and mourning. Non-Sentinels who participate adopt this attire with appropriate modifications indicating their outsider status, honoring the tradition while acknowledging they stand adjacent to rather than within it.

Those who attend wear whatever approximations of traditional dress they can manage, some inheriting pieces through Sentinel lineage, others acquiring reproductions that preserve form without claiming full authenticity. The visual effect is one of temporal displacement, a gathering that could belong to any century of Ngorrhali history.

Resonant Mourning

Resonant Mourning is ceremonial sound used to structure grief and remembrance, with its form varying by culture while its meaning remains universal. It is performed during periods of loss, often lasting days or longer, with singers rotated continuously to prevent collapse. The genre is entirely non-commercial, as charging for it would be considered obscene. Its purpose is to allow communities to endure grief collectively, culminating either in closure or celebration of the dead depending on tradition.

Performance

Resonant Mourning performances are not scheduled but emerge from necessity, beginning when death occurs and continuing until the community agrees the period of mourning has concluded. Singers rotate in shifts, ensuring the sound never ceases, creating an unbroken thread of vocalization that may persist for days. There is no audience; all present are mourners, and participation shifts fluidly between listening and contributing. The space transforms around the sound, daily activities suspended or conducted quietly at the margins while the central ritual continues.

Fashion

Clothing for Resonant Mourning is entirely culture-dependent, varying so dramatically across Geba that no universal description is possible. Some traditions require specific colors, others specific garments, still others the deliberate absence of ornamentation. What remains consistent is that the clothing carries meaning within its cultural context, marking the wearer as a mourner and indicating their relationship to the deceased. Those unfamiliar with local custom are typically guided by community members, the correct presentation of grief considered too important to leave to chance.

Blood Royal

Blood Royal is not a public cultural genre but an ideological mechanism expressed through structured vocal hymns and minimal instrumentation. Its sound prioritizes message over form, serving belief rather than entertainment. No one openly admits to listening to Blood Royal, and its audience is only ever identified retroactively through investigation, often after violent or extremist actions have already occurred. It does not produce a measurable economic footprint, as funding and patronage are irrelevant compared to outcomes. Blood Royal converts doctrine into conviction and conviction into action, making it one of the most dangerous genres on the planet despite its invisibility.

Performance

Blood Royal has no public performances. Its transmission occurs in closed spaces among verified believers, gatherings that are never announced and leave no records. What occurs in these spaces cannot be described as performance in any conventional sense; it is closer to ritual indoctrination, participants joining their voices in unison to hymns that have been refined over generations to maximize psychological impact. There are no audiences, only participants.

Fashion

Blood Royal has no associated fashion because it has no public presence. Those who participate do so in whatever clothing they normally wear, their involvement invisible to outside observation. Any identifying markers that might exist are known only to other participants and are deliberately subtle enough to escape detection by authorities. The absence of aesthetic is itself the aesthetic, anonymity serving as the most effective camouflage.

Crimson Dominion

Crimson Dominion is not a genre in the traditional sense but a system of embedded signals hidden within other music. There are no identifiable artists, releases, or markets, as those who encode its signatures operate at levels where money is no longer the primary currency. Recognition is limited to individuals at the highest levels of society, including executives, assassins, and strategic operators, who use it for silent alignment and confirmation. Its cultural impact lies entirely in coordination and separation, remaining invisible to the vast majority of the population.

Performance

Crimson Dominion has no performances because it has no independent existence. It lives parasitically within other genres, its signals embedded in music that serves as carrier wave. Those who encode these signals do so within productions that appear to belong entirely to other categories. Those who receive them do so while ostensibly consuming something else entirely. The genre exists only in the space between transmission and recognition, invisible to anyone not already initiated into its vocabulary.

Fashion

There is no fashion associated with Crimson Dominion because there is no community to display membership within. Those who use these signals dress according to their public roles, their participation in this hidden system expressed through no visible marker. Any aesthetic identification would defeat the purpose entirely. The only fashion statement is the absence of one.