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

Eleventh Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC

While it is true that Wyla owes Naath protection and good lordship so do you as her liege. Thus you persuade her to return to Myr while you gather a hunting party for whatever flying terror haunts the island. By turn you pass by the Scholarum where you gather the three most senior mages set to sail off for Yi Ti and then a handful of dockside taverns looking for the Greyjoy siblings. Though Asha welcomes the chance for a fight, Theon is more withdrawn, almost sullen in his acceptance. It does not take you long to realize why as a woman's voice floats down the stairs. It seems you have interrupted a tryst.

"You can have the head of the biggest monster we kill," you offer in half-jesting apology.

"Don't do that," his sister counters. "If he didn't have to work for the exploits to impress women with he would never get better with that bow of his."

"I'm sure there will be plenty of work for all of us," you offer diplomatically while the remainder of the mages shuffle awkwardly, not knowing whether to laugh or not in the company of kings and princes. Lawful position within the realm aside it will take a while for common born mages to find their footing socially you wager.


The jungles of Naath steam in the early afternoon sun as dozens and scores of vividly colored birds fly, sing, and quarrel. Once or twice you even catch some of them echoing back other jungle sounds, the snarl of a great cat and the hiss of a serpent coiled to strike to name a few. Men are strangers in these halls of green, trespassers yet among the wild things. As if hearing your thoughts a strange beast lumbers across the trail.

It's coat is thick and brown like a bear, though far larger than any you have ever seen, the size of a true elephant at least, but the strangeness does not stop there. It moves with a strange uneven gait, as though walking on its knuckles to protect the heavy gouging claws on its front limbs. Small beady eyes observe your group from either side of a long snout.


Theon's painted lizard hisses, but the lumbering giant pays it no mind and simply moving on, lazily tearing the leaves from shrubs as it does.

"That would make a decent rug," Asha says idly as the creature passes, leaving you feeling oddly melancholy. As slow and unwary of men as these creatures are they would likely be hunted to death by enough determined fur traders.

You do not however have long to ponder the fate of bears for a palisade rises directly ahead, the village where foresight had pointed you towards. Here the Naathi live as they have done for centuries, barely aware that the long isolation of their people is at an end having barely encountered Wyla precisely twice. Once when she demanded their submission during her conquest of the isle and the second time yesterday when she had come to see about the killings.

Though the palisade gate opens at once when confronted with your strange cavalcade most of the villagers do not even dare open their doors as you pass through the muddy paths. Doubtless if you could hear them whispering they would be sharing some superstition or rumor about the evils of magic, just as their kindred in spirit if not blood across most of Essos and Westeros do... You cut off the thought for true though it may be it is unkind. These people have no protection against monsters hunting in the night and all the sorcery they have seen is frightful. Why would they imagine it to be aught else but wicked? Hopefully your deeds here will help change that.

Though the grieving families have no more to tell you than they did Wyla a careful search of the goat pens does reveal a sign she had missed. Theon holds up single oily black scale almost invisible in the rich dark earth. "I don't know of any beast with scales like this, though that ain't saying much round here eh?" the boy jests. Though he tried to keep smiling even his irreverent good humor has been dented by seeing the sorrow writ upon the faces of the mourning parents and siblings.

"Give it here..." You draw a mirror from your cloak and spin upon it sorcery that in the eye of power stands revealed the monster you are hunting.

In body it looks like a crooked-baked lizard with a mane of spikes running down its back, a long sinuous tail in place of back legs, and wide crimson wings like those of a bats', but its head looks like onto that of a mad starving hound with a long curling tongue slipping out between serrated fangs as it suns itself on a rock.


Though your ability to shift perspective is limited you can still tell there must be more than twenty of these things. Thankfully they do not look particularly sturdy nor too clever in their gathering, seeming to communicate in snaps and hisses, not any true tongue. Still, their numbers might prove too much of a challenge for Theon, Asha, and the mages to face alone. How much to help while letting them test themselves, you ponder.

How do you hunt the bests?

[] Write in battle plan

OOC: The reason Viserys still did not recognize the things is because he rolled a nat 1 on his knowledge check when Wyla first described them and you only get one of those per creature in any given encounter.