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

Twentieth Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC

Black Walder takes being carried by magic all the way from Sorcerer's Deep to the Twins easily enough, though granted a good part of that may just have been exhaustion from having Braavosi financiers question him all night about all manner of things relating to the Frey lands and their people. "I'm gonna need to change my face with magic," he explains when told the plan to play messenger. "Most of my kin don't know where I've been these past months, but they do know I was off on Lord Frey's business and not expected back anytime soon."

"So how are you going to do this?" Dany asks, obviously still trying to pick apart the confusing tangle of alliances, enmity, and intrigue that binds the twin keeps together more solidly than even the bridge of stone.

"I hand a note to cousin Walton, who usually deals with hedge knights, minstrels, and the like. He passes it on through three or four more trusted hands until it gets to Jinglebell. He's a lackwit but well trained to take any note he's handed to Lord Frey, and no one would think twice about the fool pestering him in public since he doesn't know any better."

"Clever," you admit. It would not do much if the old lord had an imp flying over his shoulder unseen or the like, but from what Black Walder has told you of him you would be outright shocked if the Lord of the Twins did not acquire some way to see through simple glamours.

The Frey is reflectively reluctant to allow a spell of far-speech between you in order to give the signal to make your way into the keep, perhaps fearing that you would hear his thoughts on his great-grandsire and the rest of his kin, though he agrees to it in the end once you persuade him that it does not pass on anything he does not wish said.


The years had not been kind to Walder Frey, Lord of the Crossing and undisputed master of the Twins, leaving his face lined and spotted, bald on the top of his head with two locks of white hair falling to his shoulders. While you can certainly see the resemblance to the rest of his kin he looks to you to be more vulture than weasel, the cold cunning gleaming in his eyes a reminder that while such birds prefer to feast on the dying and dead their beaks can still shatter bone.


"My lord Frey," you bow perhaps a touch deeper than is necessary for a king meeting a lord of his stature. "I have come to discuss matters of mutual benefit to both our Houses." You go on to introduce Dany as herself and your mother as your master of ceremonies, still hidden behind a false identity you suspect she will soon discard.

"Heh... so I've been told," he answers, looking you up and down suspiciously as though expecting some hidden barb of mockery in the words. "No demand that I fulfill my oaths to the crown and cast down the Usurper I see."

"I do try not to waste my breath on empty commands before men who have not yet sworn themselves to me freely," you answer, allowing some of the steel to slip into your words to cut off anymore 'testing' from the old lord. After a few moments of silence have passed you smile and continue with an offer to ease the pains of age with a spell if he would allow it.

"Pains of age... these aren't the pains of age watching the Riverlands go to shit, that's the real pain you could be helping me with," the old lord half-grumbles. Still, as your magic settles upon his aged form he does not hold back a sigh of genuine relief followed by a clink of newly restored teeth. "You must be tired from coming so far. Would you like something to eat?" he asks, obviously more interested in having an excuse to eat himself than the demands of hospitality.

"No need to trouble yourself, my lord, we have come far but swiftly for magic smooths many paths," you answer, the words another veiled reminder of your strength, warning and incentive to join all at once.

"Bread and salt, then," the old lord says, looking to the two Frey knights guarding the chamber of the torch-lit study.

Neither of them move from their posts, though one calls something further along and a few minutes later a girl of about three-and-ten too well dressed to be a servant walks in with a plate of roast lamb. From her honey blond tresses you guess this must be the one Black Walder called 'Fair' Walda. The lively curiosity you glimpse in her eyes certainly seems a hopeful sign for her chances of learning if not magic then at least letters and numbers. You note with some amusement that she withdraws into a corner seeming to do her best to blend in with the stone, the better to listen in.

For now, however, you have other matters to cover, speaking to the improvements that can be made to Frey lands, the promised port and city charter with parchments before you, and touching on matters such as how fluctuations in the price of food, labor, and gold will impact the prosperity of the region. To his credit the old lord even understands the notion that gold and silver cannot be trusted as currency anymore with the opening of the planar terminus, though it takes you about an hour to convince him that the other spheres of being are as real as the ground beneath his feet and not some mage's fantasy.

"You want to build a damn bridge, don't you?" he interjects in the middle of an explanation on the rates and expectations of the Iron Bank. "Only reason why you'd start off with all this talk of long term gains and trade."

"I want to build several bridges," you correct. "The sheer volume of projected trade demands it. Tell me, my lord, have you ever seen the North? I have flow over it and found it rich indeed but lacking only in hands to turn the wealth of the land into enriching its people. New hands there will be a plenty once matters have been settled."

For a long moment the old lord takes in your words and you suspect your tone of finality. "How are you going to settle Hoster and his brood?"

"It is too early to say for the board is unsettled still," you answer just as you had to Black Walder, but unlike his great-grandson the Lord of the Twins is not so easily put off.

"How would you like to deal with him, then?" he asks. "You ask me to stake the fortunes of the House I've built over four-score-and-five years. I'll need more than pretty words and glittering coins for my troubles. Whether it be one plan or six of them just as likely as the other it matters not to me for my memory's as sharp as ever."

What do you reply?

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OOC: This part was surprisingly hard to write, since it is so easy to turn Old Walder into a caricature of himself. Hopefully I managed to get across his character and motivations across well.