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

Fourth Day of the Fifth Month 293 AC

You are not here to play hero against an unknown power, on a field of their choosing, you admit to yourself with some reluctance. Though wishcraft is potent, every one you utter weakens you, and that well will soon run dry if used without counting the cost. If there is any true responsibility you can be said to carry here it is to the mage you currently carry. He took your coin and accepted your protection.

Thus resolved to your task you cut down the other silk wrapped bundle in reach that might be a prisoner. Alas a few swift brows reveal that this prisoner had not been as fortunate as Alvar. Thousands of fragile silver spirit-lings pour out of the mouth and eyes of the blackened desiccated corpse of what must once have been a winged woman, likely hawk-kin. As the gruesome torrent subsides you notice that the body does not seem to be wearing or carrying anything of note. Though you have not checked the still slumbering genie-kin with any care you would wager he too had been stripped of any coin 'notes' or other precious things he may have been carrying. Another mark, if such is even needed considering something far more purposeful than the spiders had sent him here.

Just as the spiders were beginning to cautiously reappear beneath you, testing the limits of the sphere with their many legs, you utter again the words of far-traveling and in one long breath find your self back with the others.

You gain 1000 XP


Alvar's tale, once he is awakened by a philter from Phaerl and a healing a healing touch from Vee, is at once familiar and bizarre. Several years ago he had made a bet he could not pay on following a bad run at the races, setting him in the not entirely willing service of 'The Lotus of Discord', a being of pure and unfettered chaos, whom you recognize as a Lord of the Slaad, one of the mad toad-like creators and destroyers born of Limbo's tides. He had been a kind and cruel master by turn, or at least so it seemed to Alvar. By your reckoning the Slaadi are creatures wholly unconcerned with either, though mortals can certainly assign either trait to them.

The uneasy agreement came to an end when the creature has asked Alvar do something 'beyond the bounds of sense and sanity'. It takes quite a bit of persuading to actually get him to explain what that deed was, but once he does you can hardly blame him for the reaction.

"He wanted you to boil up his young to turn into trinkets?" Waymar exclaims, sickened. "How does this thing not belong in the Pit?"

"That's not the end of it," the genie-kin explains, voice shaking slightly at the memory. "The talismans I spoke of would have been distributed as tokens in his various gambling businesses. Some would confer magical blessings, others curses, and the third set would have metamorphosed the bearers into yet more Slaad to make up for the ones lost in the creation."

"That seems a flawed system," you interject, struggling to maintain an analytical view of the matter. "If there is only so much power in the sacrifices then how could merely a portion of the results birth more of these spirits than were originally utilized?"

"I can't claim to understand it all..." Alvar hesitates, obviously still a touch self-conscious at meeting your gaze even with all your attempts to set him at ease. "But supposedly something about the chance and chaos of it all would further empower the magic."

"Why did this Lord Flower decide to turn you into spider food if he needed you to weave the enchantments?" Vee asks.

Alvar blushes, the expression painfully clear against his still pale complexion. "You see, I was not supposed to be killed, only shown the price of disobedience, but I er... tried to talk to the spiders."

"You taunted them?" you guess.

"Not initially, but it may have come out that way by the end. They decided to poison me in order to make me be quiet," he admits, somewhat sheepishly

"You'll fit right in, then," Ser Richard snorts.

Embra clears her throat for attention, her expression grim and purposeful as you have rarely seen it: "I think we should work to banish this lord of Limbo back from whence he came. The Wind Wardens will move if we take this to them, but they must follow the law and gather proof. Too much time in which he could work fel magics upon the people of the skyhold."

"And we would not be condemned for such unsanctioned action?" Waymar asks, clearly dubious about acting outside the laws of the realm now that it was no longer a matter of rescuing an oath-sworn vassal.

"Not so long as we can prove it was to the betterment of Armun Kelisk and its people," Embra confirms.

What do you do?

[] Banish this mad chaos monger before he can do more harm, and claim your due for his deeds from his treasures
-[] Write in plan

[] Turn the matter over to the authorities

[] Write in

OOC: Even though you did not kill any spiders you did overcome both them and the trap, hence the XP.