A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

Twenty-Second Day of the First Month 293 AC

There is something particularly ghoulish about taking off the head of a man you've had tea with, yet better by far a moment's queasiness than a dead man back to haunt you. Of all people you know death is no true impediment to a truly determined sorcerer, and whatever else Tor was he was certainly that.

You set the body beneath the heart tree, under the gaze of the Old Gods who hold no love of the lingering dead, guarded at all times. Just to be certain. As far as you know you had scoured all trace of him from the alleyway in Pentos, so when your business is done here there will be nothing of Longstrider but his skull that you may draw whatever secrets he held... Odd how you begin to understand the legendary Lord of the Whispers for whose dealings with the dead the ruined keep was named.

"I'd almost forgotten him," Tyene notes as she approaches, looking from the fire-scoured skull in your hand to the body at your feet. He seems so small... almost insignificant from the distance of all that has happened. She shakes her head. "Listen to me, talking like an old woman... I'm glad the son of a bitch's dead for what he did and what he may have done besides."

"Find anything of use among his things?" you ask, settling in an easy stride beside her.

The old magician's treasures had been set aside besides those of the lich... and to give him some credit, the midnight-blue robe and cunningly crafted sword-cane are far less conspicuous than the whip made of linked bones you recovered from the living horror's secret chest. On the other hand, the three 'potions' you had taken from Tor are all clearly blood, though one might not be mortal blood. So much for the notion that he might have changed his ways.

Gained Spine-Wrought Whip

Gained Unknown Lich's Potion

Gained Eagle-headed Sword-Cane

Gained Tor's Robes

Tyene further confirms that none of the treasures you have gained were cursed with any malignancy or unwelcome willfulness, though she does add that Lya would rather look through the unliving mage's grimoire before meddling with his possessions, and Malarys agreed. Tor lived in the world and was a part of it, so you would at least credit him with a certain practicality in his enchantments. Not so the mad wizard that lay enthralled for ages.

Gained Lich's Grimoire

"Ready?" you ask Malarys as you enter his chamber with a soft knock on the door. Irrational is it might be, you would rather not have Dany interrogate the bleached skull of a man who gave her name-day presents, something your sister must have sensed and accepted if not approved of given the distance she is keeping from the proceedings.

"Quite so, eager in fact," he replies. "The man sounded like a gifted amateur in the mystical arts which given the splinters of lore he had to work with is... rather remarkable. The appeal to parasitic magic does show an unbecoming recklessness, but one must make allowances for the heedlessness of old age."

"Isn't that 'young age'?" you ask, setting the skull on the table between you.

"No," comes the almost off-handed reply. "The approach of death makes one hurry as the horizon of one's life contracts. Not a problem either of us will have, I imagine."

As Malarys begins chanting the spell to speak with the dead, you make a note to ask what precisely his plans to cheat death are. Unfortunately, however, Tor proves as stubborn in death as in life. Of all the questions you ask, regarding his projects, his slaves living and dead, and any contingencies in the event of his death, the bones only answers three: naming his home in the Vine-Leaf Gardens, the fate of his dead slaves—incineration—and his current project, ironically enough, an attempt to fill the void left by Illyrio and his allies in the world of Pentoshi Esoterica.

What do you do next?

[] Raid Tor's home
-[] Write in

[] Deal with the spy first

[] Write in

OOC: The magic items will be identified as soon as someone gets the time to use a ritual on that.