The Osprey's Bastards, and Scourge-Flutes - Notes for Dungeon 2023

This Dungeon 2023 challenge has been making the rounds - seems to be getting more popular than most of its kind. I intend to attempt to try thinking of doing it. Already got some concepts hashed out. Here's a couple of them.

The Osprey's Bastards

In your father's father's time there was a ruthless prick of a princeling who preyed on these lands at the head of a free company called the Osprey's Bastards. It's said he strangled his own mother with the umbilical cord of his newborn brother, and fed his right buttock to the Devil to gain the power of the evil eye.

Places the Osprey's Bastards picked over fell to wasteland, their victims fled or grew desperate enough to be dangerous, and times got starveling lean. The princeling's debts mounted and he became haggard and sleepless over worry about getting stabbed in his back.

Hope - however slight, however false - came to him in the form of a map that made its way into his hands (pilfered from the belongings of a merchant whose blood was still wet on his sleeves). This map showed the path to Lacrimada, a city legendary for its marvels and grotesqueries, its reality stricken from records and memory three times by three emperors.

The princeling led his troop into that city, promising them loot beyond their wildest dreams. This they received, and much more beyond, and the Osprey's Bastards were lost to Lacrimada like so many others before them.

Their descendants, jut-chinned and fish-eyed, live still in Lacrimada's depths, having long since forgotten the way back to the sun. All metal left to them has rusted - they make do with stones and monster-bones, swaddling infants in soiled banners. They're as vicious as their forefathers, a culture of reavers, yet they're as human as they come in that city.

Osprey's Bastard Phrasebook:

Human: Osprah

Woman: Folwah

Something weaker than them: Plock

Something stronger than them: Ool

Something valuable: Salt

Give me that: Han'it

Who are you?: Name's ya

Let's get out of here!: Fallack

I surrender!: Whips me

Ambush: Buskud

This offer is insufficient, please pay me more than that: Gut dem ya go'n salt me

You are a punk-ass bitch:  Linkboy's ya

Scourge-Flutes

Maybe these things are made by the Osprey's Bastards, or maybe by another dungeon faction. I haven't decided yet.

Scourge-flutes are shaped like big, elongated commas carved from bone, with a few holes down their length and around their bulb. Each is paired with a set of collars made of densely packed, interlocking bones.

Playing certain notes on a scourge-flute will cause its collars within hearing range to tighten around their wearers' necks to a certain degree, from merely uncomfortable, to strangulating, to crushing its wearer's throat and spine. Another note will cause the collars to relax.

Each collar is marked with peculiar musical notation. Playing this marked note in combination with the flute's command-notes will then affect only that particular collar.

Those forced to wear scourge-flute collars will of course turn on the flute-bearer in an instant if they think they can kill the bearer before the bearer has a chance to play their murderous note.