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

Eighteenth Day of the Third Month 293 AC

"I remember there being more spiders the first time I came in here," you announce as Alysande leads you to her study. As she turns to look at your curiously you finish: "Ones the size of a dog that slipped in through a magic mirror the previous owner had not secured nearly as well as he should have."

"A valuable lesson," she nods sagely. Her smile is weary, but honest for all that. "Telling it to see who believes it would be a good way to show when an agent's been around enough to be trusted around cursed objects."

"They don't necessarily need to believe it," you counter. "Just go over their own precautions regardless on hearing it."

Alysande's own methods of handling things too dangerous to see the light of day certainly live up to your joking exchange. The lead-lined chest is sealed by sorcery inside a solid stone wall behind a bookcase that pointedly does not swing away, so that none may divine it as 'a secret way'. And that is leaving aside the traps she disarms with practiced ease, in spite of the faint glistening on points and barbs.

"Are those...?" Even Tyene is not that cavalier about poisons, save once when she became immune but for the most esoteric concoctions.

"Poisoned, yes, but it is meant to paralyze not kill. When the traps spring they set off bells you can hear all over the house. Barring the case where we are all gone for some reason, in which case we have far larger problems than this chest, there would be someone to confront an intruder, and it's considerably easier to get answers from a living thief than a corpse."

Carefully peering into the contents of the chest you see a pair of bejeweled daggers delicate enough that you would not trust them as anything other than a hidden weapon of last resort, a black silk neckerchief that moves and ripples gently though the air in the room is still, and a coil of bloody sinewy carefully braided with gold thread from between which peers a single bloody eyeball encased in glass.


One by one Alysande picks up the objects, careful not to touch them with bare flesh. "The daggers belonged to a dead danthienne, a gossip pixie. They are perfectly serviceable weapons, until and unless you fumble with them for the briefest moment in battle. They lodge themselves into the bearer's flesh in some painful but not deadly place while something calls out mockery in their mind."

"That seems the sort of spiteful jape a fey spirit might play to the foe who would rob them, in life or death," you reply, shaking your head in disgust.

Pointing to the patch of shadow silk, the Braavosi mage continues: "That makes one more charming, witty, and specifically seductive, but it also strangles unfaithful lovers."

"And encourages its bearers to stray?" you ask, wondering if this might be worth saving somehow.

"We can't be sure, but seeing as it killed three men in the span of a single month before we recovered it, we decided to err on the side of caution. We still have no idea who made the damn thing or why. Perhaps it is simply some piece of ancient malice returned to life by the rising tide of magic," she sighs.

"And the last two things?" You make no effort to hide the disgust coloring your words. No fiends or other horrors had perished to make those trinkets.

"The work of a poor bastard who was possessed by a chain devil. The thing had him cut up his own body and replace it with pieces with metal, while also using the flesh in its 'art'. No one tried to use either of them, and to be honest I would not authorize it, even if someone were willing. Whatever sorcery is bound in those twisted things it would not be worth the risk, however small, of an agent being seen carrying them."

"How did this devil come to wear a man's skin?" you ask, an all-too-familiar lurch in your stomach at the mention of baatezu.

Alysande shakes her head, old frustration combing to the fore. "No way of knowing, he came by ship from one of the lesser ports near Lorath, but the trail dried up there."

"What was it doing in Braavos?" you press.

The look she gives you makes it clear that she has her own questions to ask, but she replies first regardless: "It was trying to get its hooks into several keyholders..." She pauses for a moment, obviously considering how much to share. "There was a spate of unexpected inheritances by the time the business was done."

You nod, acknowledging the trust, before explaining what you learned of the plots of the Lord of the Third in the Seven Kingdoms, in as much detail as you had given the Dornish.

"I imagine you have your own reasons for delaying, but I would appreciate it if you set those realms in order," she asks solemnly.

"I will try my best, my lady, but alas there is more to taking and holding the Seven Kingdoms than seating myself on a certain uncomfortable chair."

Do you use any of the cursed items for the sacrifice?

[] Yes
-[] Write in which

[] No

OOC: As I was writing this I realized that it would only be fair to give you a chance to use the cursed objects you just discovered as sacrifice fodder, so I tied in the major Braavosi mystical news (which was voted to discuss) now instead of later since it tied in nicely.