Acoustic Integrity Guild

The Acoustic Integrity Guild is a chartered body of the Tower entrusted with the capture, transport, and enshrinement of terminal vibrations, and with the curatorship of the Gallery of Ossified Whispers since the 1,900th ascent. Its members, styled curators, are the only persons below the 14,000th floor licensed to remove sound from a room it has not yet finished occupying. The Guild is distinct from, though frequently confused with, the Office of Acoustic Integrity, the Acoustic Dampening Guild, and the Acoustic Weavers’ Guild; a standing note in the Guild's register reads, "We are the ones with the jars."

Founding and charter

The Guild was constituted under the Fourth Concordance on Sound and Its Keeping, Annex 7, which assigned to "a body of sober persons" the duty of collecting those vibrations which have nowhere further to travel. The charter names no founder. The earliest minutes of the Guild, rebound in 1,412 after flood damage to its house on the ninth landing, begin mid-sentence with a motion to adjourn. Librarians of the period treat the omission as settled procedure.

From its founding the Guild has answered to the Spire Wardens' Guild in matters of structural integrity, most particularly where an enshrined vibration is found to be load-bearing. The arrangement is described in the Wardens' own recension as "an old understanding, not to be written down twice."

The work of curation

Curators are dispatched on receipt of a terminal vibration, that is, a sound whose originating chamber has fallen silent or whose emitter has ceased to exist. The curator arrives with the Certified Acoustic Nullifier (CAN), records the vibration into a font of prepared glass, and seals the font with wax pressed from the Ninth Concordance's reserved stock. The font is then carried to the Gallery and set in its assigned niche.

Disputes about which vibrations qualify as terminal occupied the Guild for most of the 2,300th ascent. In the case of the Candle Room of the sixth landing, a curator enshrined the sound of a candle guttering seventeen hours before the candle went out, on the reasoning that it had nowhere further to go. The OAI ruled the enshrinement premature and had the font returned to the room. It was returned again to the Gallery the following week, after the flame expired, on a technicality. The font was carried up and down the stairwell a total of nine times.

"Let it be recorded that the vibration is neither here nor there, and that the stairwell is not a niche."

— Register of Curatorial Motions, vol. 214, entry for the ninth ascent of the font

A practical consequence of the case is that the Guild now maintains a small wooden sit-upon at the foot of the third landing stair, since fonts returned pending classification may not be set down on the step itself.

Relation to the acoustic bodies

The Guild's position among the acoustic bodies is peculiar. It does not weave, dampen, or quantify; it keeps. This places it outside the Proclamation of Acoustic Quietude, which regulates only the active production and suppression of sound, and has allowed the Guild to operate through Quietude Events licensed under the Ordinance of Remedial Quietude without the counter-signature ordinarily demanded of the Acoustic Dampening Guild.

The Acoustic Liaison, funded jointly by the Acoustic Dampening Guild and the Office of Acoustic Integrity, maintains an office on the Guild's third landing. The Guild has never funded a Liaison of its own and considers the posting an intrusion, though it lends the Liaison the use of its kettle.

Disagreement in the record

The Guild's authority rests on two Concordances that do not agree. The Fourth Concordance on Sound and Its Keeping, Annex 7, provides that the curatorship of terminal vibrations "shall not pass," which the Guild reads as perpetual. The Eighth Concordance on Acoustic Integrity, Annex 2, instead assigns the curatorship to whichever body holds the Gallery's keys at the close of each ascent. The Guild has held the keys without interruption since the 1,900th ascent, and argues that this fact settles the question in its favour.

The Guild of Acoustic Cartographers has asked, without success, that the Gallery's niches be surveyed anew, on the grounds that the Eighth Concordance presumes a floor plan the Guild has not published. The Guild's reply, entered in its register, is that the Gallery has been surveyed once and that a second survey would unsettle the tenants.

Incidents and holdings

In the winter of the 2,411th ascent, a curator enshrined a vibration from an empty room on the eleventh landing without first confirming which room it had come from. Three hundred and six chambers were closed for inspection. The chamber was never identified. The font remains in the Gallery, labelled only with the date, and the Guild has declined to relabel it. The matter was raised in the Remedial Quietude hearings of the following ascent, where the Guild's steward, Sornel Vray, gave evidence that lasted four minutes and consisted of the word "yes."

The Guild's principal holdings are the Gallery itself, the font stock, and the Register of Curatorial Motions in 214 volumes. It also keeps a sealed box it has not opened since the 1,904th ascent, described in the inventory only as "the reason for the rule about the fourth landing." Its contents are not recorded. The Guild does not comment on them and no Librarian has asked twice.