Give the various instruments a thrall slot, allow Entertainers to be placed at & use instruments. Even if you need to record some audio tracks of full songs. Sure, a few new animations needed but how simple would they really need to be?
Maybe this could be the next thrall update. To be able to give thralls instruments, be able to chose between multiple poses for your thralls, for example lean into wall or hold spear out to block passage etc. Put thralls in chairs and assign them to walk/patroll between 2 points.
I would love to see musicians added to the game, along with the ability to play a small selections of songs for each instrument.
As an example of what this adds to a base, here’s one that I faked by placing a Thespian from the Pippi mod just right so that the Artisan animation overlaps a placed harp. Coupled with a Musiqbox that stream an appropriate track from Discord, I’d say it accomplishes what I was going for, but it took a lot more work than if it was in the base game, and it’s only possible on a modded PC server which leaves a lot of folks out of luck.
There are at least 4 instruments already in the game that the players can interact with, though not very well. It would be lovely if you could let your thralls interact with them instead. But what you did Larathiel is brilliant!
There are SO MANY great features available on mods the rest of the player base would die for, and in some cases, has been actively pleading for for close to 2 years now. Musician Thralls is one such example, along with Armor Display Manequinns (PLEASE!), Customisable Hair & Beard styles, and the ability to change crafting thralls clothing. And I dont feel that any of these requests are over the top, unreasonable or exceedingly difficult to accomodate. I always have liked and respected Funcom, and that wont change anytime soon. But by the gods I wish they would focus on accomodating some of these long running requests.