A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
-
- Tags
- a song of ice and fire a sword without a hilt d&d 3.5 dungeons & dragons 100% high octane dragon fuel ave corvidae battle action dragon diplomacy best sister bureaucromancy delicious soul-stuff dragon dreams come true dragon ta'veren greatest uncle hubris is a coward's word in defiance of gods and men mammon's folly mutually assured mage's disjunction qm murderhobo top tier coatl
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
BTW, I was poking around looking up Construct templates and I found this one again.
Transforming Construct (CR +1*)[3pp] – d20PFSRD
I'm perfectly happy if our Adamantine Golem only has his humanoid form...but being a Transformer would be amazing.
Hello, Optimus Prime.
Transforming Construct (CR +1*)[3pp] – d20PFSRD
I'm perfectly happy if our Adamantine Golem only has his humanoid form...but being a Transformer would be amazing.
Hello, Optimus Prime.
Last edited:
- Location
- ?????????
Guys remember that we need to send out the Greenseer twins on an adventure soon. We did promise them that.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Yeah, I'm hoping Ting and the Golem can meet up soon after the Misfits get back from Harrenhal.
- Location
- florida
I want ting to meet the golem so bad now.
Canon Omake: Cultural Shift, Debate and Synthesis
A/N This was fun to write and I liked including bits of Chinese and Asian cultures into this as well as original ideas and mixing of cultures that have developed thousands of miles apart. I just used a basic translation for this and a google search of the meanings of Chinese names so if anyone has something better I honestly welcome it, as the language really does fascinate me but I have no skill for learning languages. Even ones that use the same alphabet as me so my odds of grasping the finer concepts of one which does not are really low. Still though I hope you like it, this is more serious than my last omakes.
Ni-Long was a new woman … Literally she had changed her name to Ni-Long within the last year.
As one might have guessed from her name she was from the golden land beyond the jade sea and was indeed very far from here, the lands where the sun went to set. However this was her home and unlike her last one it was neither mobile nor unsafe. Before she had lived on a merchant galley that had circled the Jade sea for trade and had sometimes gone as far as Qarth. She had learned to navigate, to bed the men her father wished to ingratiate himself to and how to count coins, for as her father (Jin Fu) said "the man who does not value his money has too much of it". That phrase had defined him and what he had was never enough, perhaps her grandparents had possessed the gift of prophecy given how they named their moneygrubbing son gold abundance. However while gold could be useful it meant nothing to steel as the slavers had proven, she had been sold by her father for his life and ended up on a ship bound for Torturers Deep.
Nothing in her life could have prepared her for that ship, for the golden empire looked down on all cultures, but especially those from the far west and so she had no idea what she needed to do, who to please and where to go to stay safe. These Ironmen and their drowned god were savages, far more than even the Jogos Nhai. Her chains weighed heavily on her and dragged her down nearly breaking her mentally long before they broke her physically. But as her fate (from merchant in training to captive) had proven fortune could turn on the smallest and unlikeliest axis, for her salvation came from a being who was from just as far west as those beasts in the shape of men. He spoke the same tongue as them and looked like them but was nothing like them.
The Great Dragon Who Is Equal Unto Heaven came and broke her chains after the ship she was on was taken by his own (as the slavers had not known of the fall of Torturer's Deep being half a world away). She had been in a daze for quite some time afterward as the chaos her life had been thrown into and the shaking of its foundations had made being focused difficult. So she sort some form of stability and learning a new language was just the way to do that. She had begun to learn a low Valyrian dialect that had formed in the ashes of the freehold in the city of the black goat (though not anymore). Being that it was the easiest to learn, due to its proximity to the green sea of the Lost Ones and thus to the golden land. From this it had some linguistic similarities to the tributary kingdoms on the border of the golden land and the Qartheen language which she already knew. As she learned the language she learned more about the city that had once been Torturer's Deep.
It was a marvel of knowledge, reason, prosperity and sorcery. She knew sorcery had been slowly returning to the world but here it blossomed like a flower so much so that she thought it should have been called Liánhuā (Lotus). In the golden land the lotus symbolised a pure existence rising from and above an impure one which was exactly what had happened here. The pirates, slavers, cannibals and madmen had been the impurities and the islands the muck they reveled in and this city had risen out of it from the will of its master.
As she learned more about this place she learned about its master too, a being (she would not insult him by comparing him to a frail mortal man) but 7 and 10 years of age who came form a land of mud and shit and had built this place of stone and culture. It had stunned her to learn that, more than that it had stunned her to know that he had come so far in such a short amount of time. Her mind could not accept this and in part it had been because of the culture of the golden land, there it was considered only right to grow and mature slowly, gaining wisdom and through that victory. This had been true since the dawn but had intensified since the reign of Lo Bu and his disastrous campaign five hundred years ago. Though in the vibrancy of the Deep she saw how stagnant it had made them common sense dictated that such a meteoric rise should have led to a crashing fall. She had tried to puzzle out a solution and eventually decided on one based on rationality and necessity (if a westerner could have so much success so quickly without destiny on his side Ni's mind would implode).
Her answer came from the stories of the first emperor born of the lion of night and maiden made of light, it was said that during her pregnancy fire demons and tiger men had attacked her. When she asked why they attacked her, as she had done nothing to them being a woman of complete purity, they responded by saying "we all suffered defeat at your sons hands". The shear force of their defeat and the impact it had was so great it rippled, not just across the world, but back through time as well. Then her son appeared too as a fully grown man and killed them for good and then helped his mother to give birth to himself before departing. After they had tried to kill his mother during birth the first emperor swore revenge on those demons and tiger men in childhood, defeating them in adulthood and starting it off again. The Great sages taught that this was because the first emperor's life was so important that it was impossible for it not have occurred and that his own achievement reached backward to shape his life.
This was why she called the king the "Great Dragon who is Equal unto Heaven", she felt the same thing had happened here even if he was not aware of. While worship of the Great Dragon was not practiced commonly it was not forbidden either and Ni did not believe him to be divine … but she did think that this was the path his life was taking him in. Already he had established a pantheon that was dependent on him to coexist with each other and spread their teachings. How long before he ruled it, she could not say but she truly believe that day was coming, perhaps not in her lifetime but it was coming.
So she discarded and quickly forgot her old name, becoming Ni-Long which roughly means servant of the dragon. Next in the house she had bought, she constructed a small shrine. First she went to a botanist with bark for skin from a far off land who specialised in exotic but mundane plants and had him grow her a bonsai tree that could survive off of salt water. Then she had gone to a beast master and bought a small snake with no venom glands and finally a woodcarver and painter who made a small red statue of a dragon.
From there she tended to it carefully, growing the tree so that it was the right size and strength for the snake to nestle in its branches while carving a small face on it and clipping away any imperfections she could see and making sure it was wide enough for her purpose. Then she rooted it in a tray of soil which she changed as was needed, with sea water at the bottom and with the dragon statue perched on a plinth above it. With its wings spread as if to take flight. It covered the top part of the tree on some days and the lower part of others depending on how much sunlight the bonsai needed but the edges of the tree always peeked out beyond the wings.
Some might take this as worship and in some ways it was but she did not believe the Dragon to be a god but their was something divine about him if only through his deeds and those he was connected too on every level as well as how the world seemed to bend to his every whim as if pressed into a Kowtow by the weight of destiny itself. She took her work as an auspicious sign for later endeavors, which apparently it was as she had soon flourished. At first she had thought all her father had taught her to be useless but it had some use in certain places. She joined a ship that needed a navigator and then became the bookkeeper after the last one tried to abscond with the money and received the King's justice. Eventually she bought a smaller ship of her own which she ran on the side. Then her own ship and the one she usually sailed on allied with four others to avoid being bought out individually. They all respected the Dragon and the systems he built and companies he founded but all of them wanted to manage their own affairs.
That made today an important day. Another independent merchant wanted to join their little group and she was the one to decide if they wanted him to, given that he was a former slaver from Tyrosh, every of the member of this consortium was anti slavery for one reasons or another but they wanted to keep an open mind so she as the most disarming one had been given full control. So she woke up, dressed herself, bowed to her shrine and lit the candles for her to sit in front of it and give thanks to it as an avatar of the king and gods that built this land where she was free. Then at the meeting with the Tyroshi (named Argos), who was very typical for a Tyroshi (Green hair, blue sideburns, a forked yellow beard with red tips and a purple mustache in a robe that contained every colour of the rainbow) she noticed something that surprised her. He wore a medallion that depicted a three headed dragon with distinctly serpentine heads and bark like scales emerging from the ocean coiling around a city that she assumed was Tyrosh.
When asked about this he explained the chaos that demons had unleased on Tyrosh and their liberation, how in the wake of it Argos turned to religion. Religion was not strong in the western free cities particularly among the three daughters but after seeing literal demons be smote by a dragon bearing the word of three gods it changed a man's priorities. He had at first chaffed against the abolition of slavery but had decided that since slavery was used by demons and the gods who struck them down banned it then perhaps it was he Argos that should change and so he had. From there the talk, which had been a tad chilly, became far more friendly and welcoming, he was inducted into their unofficial group (which more and more looked like it might become a united merchant corperation) and when that was done they discussed Theology and the Great Dragon's connection to it. It was interesting to speak to someone who before this had no views on religion at all if it did not profit him. His views affected hers and hers his, with both coming to appreciate the others opinion. With Ni-Long viewing the Great Dragon as an echo of future divinity and Argos seeing him as a prophet and wise man more like a sage than anything else. After learning the context of that word in the golden land and how it referred to wise men who may have the truth of the universe revealed to them Argos began to use the term Dragon Sage when referring to the master of the Deep.
Ni-Long began to wonder if she should start a debate group to discuss this sort of thing, after all if not a god himself one could not be so embroiled in the divine without becoming a part of theology in some way.
Cultural Shift, Debate and Synthesis
Ni-Long was a new woman … Literally she had changed her name to Ni-Long within the last year.
As one might have guessed from her name she was from the golden land beyond the jade sea and was indeed very far from here, the lands where the sun went to set. However this was her home and unlike her last one it was neither mobile nor unsafe. Before she had lived on a merchant galley that had circled the Jade sea for trade and had sometimes gone as far as Qarth. She had learned to navigate, to bed the men her father wished to ingratiate himself to and how to count coins, for as her father (Jin Fu) said "the man who does not value his money has too much of it". That phrase had defined him and what he had was never enough, perhaps her grandparents had possessed the gift of prophecy given how they named their moneygrubbing son gold abundance. However while gold could be useful it meant nothing to steel as the slavers had proven, she had been sold by her father for his life and ended up on a ship bound for Torturers Deep.
Nothing in her life could have prepared her for that ship, for the golden empire looked down on all cultures, but especially those from the far west and so she had no idea what she needed to do, who to please and where to go to stay safe. These Ironmen and their drowned god were savages, far more than even the Jogos Nhai. Her chains weighed heavily on her and dragged her down nearly breaking her mentally long before they broke her physically. But as her fate (from merchant in training to captive) had proven fortune could turn on the smallest and unlikeliest axis, for her salvation came from a being who was from just as far west as those beasts in the shape of men. He spoke the same tongue as them and looked like them but was nothing like them.
The Great Dragon Who Is Equal Unto Heaven came and broke her chains after the ship she was on was taken by his own (as the slavers had not known of the fall of Torturer's Deep being half a world away). She had been in a daze for quite some time afterward as the chaos her life had been thrown into and the shaking of its foundations had made being focused difficult. So she sort some form of stability and learning a new language was just the way to do that. She had begun to learn a low Valyrian dialect that had formed in the ashes of the freehold in the city of the black goat (though not anymore). Being that it was the easiest to learn, due to its proximity to the green sea of the Lost Ones and thus to the golden land. From this it had some linguistic similarities to the tributary kingdoms on the border of the golden land and the Qartheen language which she already knew. As she learned the language she learned more about the city that had once been Torturer's Deep.
It was a marvel of knowledge, reason, prosperity and sorcery. She knew sorcery had been slowly returning to the world but here it blossomed like a flower so much so that she thought it should have been called Liánhuā (Lotus). In the golden land the lotus symbolised a pure existence rising from and above an impure one which was exactly what had happened here. The pirates, slavers, cannibals and madmen had been the impurities and the islands the muck they reveled in and this city had risen out of it from the will of its master.
As she learned more about this place she learned about its master too, a being (she would not insult him by comparing him to a frail mortal man) but 7 and 10 years of age who came form a land of mud and shit and had built this place of stone and culture. It had stunned her to learn that, more than that it had stunned her to know that he had come so far in such a short amount of time. Her mind could not accept this and in part it had been because of the culture of the golden land, there it was considered only right to grow and mature slowly, gaining wisdom and through that victory. This had been true since the dawn but had intensified since the reign of Lo Bu and his disastrous campaign five hundred years ago. Though in the vibrancy of the Deep she saw how stagnant it had made them common sense dictated that such a meteoric rise should have led to a crashing fall. She had tried to puzzle out a solution and eventually decided on one based on rationality and necessity (if a westerner could have so much success so quickly without destiny on his side Ni's mind would implode).
Her answer came from the stories of the first emperor born of the lion of night and maiden made of light, it was said that during her pregnancy fire demons and tiger men had attacked her. When she asked why they attacked her, as she had done nothing to them being a woman of complete purity, they responded by saying "we all suffered defeat at your sons hands". The shear force of their defeat and the impact it had was so great it rippled, not just across the world, but back through time as well. Then her son appeared too as a fully grown man and killed them for good and then helped his mother to give birth to himself before departing. After they had tried to kill his mother during birth the first emperor swore revenge on those demons and tiger men in childhood, defeating them in adulthood and starting it off again. The Great sages taught that this was because the first emperor's life was so important that it was impossible for it not have occurred and that his own achievement reached backward to shape his life.
This was why she called the king the "Great Dragon who is Equal unto Heaven", she felt the same thing had happened here even if he was not aware of. While worship of the Great Dragon was not practiced commonly it was not forbidden either and Ni did not believe him to be divine … but she did think that this was the path his life was taking him in. Already he had established a pantheon that was dependent on him to coexist with each other and spread their teachings. How long before he ruled it, she could not say but she truly believe that day was coming, perhaps not in her lifetime but it was coming.
So she discarded and quickly forgot her old name, becoming Ni-Long which roughly means servant of the dragon. Next in the house she had bought, she constructed a small shrine. First she went to a botanist with bark for skin from a far off land who specialised in exotic but mundane plants and had him grow her a bonsai tree that could survive off of salt water. Then she had gone to a beast master and bought a small snake with no venom glands and finally a woodcarver and painter who made a small red statue of a dragon.
From there she tended to it carefully, growing the tree so that it was the right size and strength for the snake to nestle in its branches while carving a small face on it and clipping away any imperfections she could see and making sure it was wide enough for her purpose. Then she rooted it in a tray of soil which she changed as was needed, with sea water at the bottom and with the dragon statue perched on a plinth above it. With its wings spread as if to take flight. It covered the top part of the tree on some days and the lower part of others depending on how much sunlight the bonsai needed but the edges of the tree always peeked out beyond the wings.
Some might take this as worship and in some ways it was but she did not believe the Dragon to be a god but their was something divine about him if only through his deeds and those he was connected too on every level as well as how the world seemed to bend to his every whim as if pressed into a Kowtow by the weight of destiny itself. She took her work as an auspicious sign for later endeavors, which apparently it was as she had soon flourished. At first she had thought all her father had taught her to be useless but it had some use in certain places. She joined a ship that needed a navigator and then became the bookkeeper after the last one tried to abscond with the money and received the King's justice. Eventually she bought a smaller ship of her own which she ran on the side. Then her own ship and the one she usually sailed on allied with four others to avoid being bought out individually. They all respected the Dragon and the systems he built and companies he founded but all of them wanted to manage their own affairs.
That made today an important day. Another independent merchant wanted to join their little group and she was the one to decide if they wanted him to, given that he was a former slaver from Tyrosh, every of the member of this consortium was anti slavery for one reasons or another but they wanted to keep an open mind so she as the most disarming one had been given full control. So she woke up, dressed herself, bowed to her shrine and lit the candles for her to sit in front of it and give thanks to it as an avatar of the king and gods that built this land where she was free. Then at the meeting with the Tyroshi (named Argos), who was very typical for a Tyroshi (Green hair, blue sideburns, a forked yellow beard with red tips and a purple mustache in a robe that contained every colour of the rainbow) she noticed something that surprised her. He wore a medallion that depicted a three headed dragon with distinctly serpentine heads and bark like scales emerging from the ocean coiling around a city that she assumed was Tyrosh.
When asked about this he explained the chaos that demons had unleased on Tyrosh and their liberation, how in the wake of it Argos turned to religion. Religion was not strong in the western free cities particularly among the three daughters but after seeing literal demons be smote by a dragon bearing the word of three gods it changed a man's priorities. He had at first chaffed against the abolition of slavery but had decided that since slavery was used by demons and the gods who struck them down banned it then perhaps it was he Argos that should change and so he had. From there the talk, which had been a tad chilly, became far more friendly and welcoming, he was inducted into their unofficial group (which more and more looked like it might become a united merchant corperation) and when that was done they discussed Theology and the Great Dragon's connection to it. It was interesting to speak to someone who before this had no views on religion at all if it did not profit him. His views affected hers and hers his, with both coming to appreciate the others opinion. With Ni-Long viewing the Great Dragon as an echo of future divinity and Argos seeing him as a prophet and wise man more like a sage than anything else. After learning the context of that word in the golden land and how it referred to wise men who may have the truth of the universe revealed to them Argos began to use the term Dragon Sage when referring to the master of the Deep.
Ni-Long began to wonder if she should start a debate group to discuss this sort of thing, after all if not a god himself one could not be so embroiled in the divine without becoming a part of theology in some way.
Last edited:
Great character piece @justlove, one can see that Ni-Long has a complex cultural background into which is is trying to contextualize all the strange happenings of the last few years, but by the same token it always feels like her voice not just exposition.
I particularly like the twist on the foundation myth too.
I particularly like the twist on the foundation myth too.
egoo
Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed
- Location
- Russia
As a side-note born of me being sleepy...
It feels really weird to be all but dictating the way turn happens, @DragonParadox.
I mean...
It should be but expected, with how many things we have on plan of Minor Actions for them to take the whole month?
And there is variety in how they are taken, too.
Is it really okay, though? I did my best to be accommodating in this thing, but apparently fairly imperfect in the way I went about it still...
But mostly, it feels kinda... Rigid?
Probbably just because I wrote it all up, and it has been getting completed smoothly and methodically.
Which is great... And horribly, horribly uncommon to see/feel.
*has conflicted feelings he doesn't know how to express best*
G'night all.
It feels really weird to be all but dictating the way turn happens, @DragonParadox.
I mean...
It should be but expected, with how many things we have on plan of Minor Actions for them to take the whole month?
And there is variety in how they are taken, too.
Is it really okay, though? I did my best to be accommodating in this thing, but apparently fairly imperfect in the way I went about it still...
But mostly, it feels kinda... Rigid?
Probbably just because I wrote it all up, and it has been getting completed smoothly and methodically.
Which is great... And horribly, horribly uncommon to see/feel.
*has conflicted feelings he doesn't know how to express best*
G'night all.
Last edited:
As a side-note born of me being sleepy...
It feels really weird to be all but dictating the way turn happens, @DragonParadox.
I mean...
It should be but expected, with how many things we have on plan of Minor Actions for them to take the whole month?
And there is variety in how they are taken, too.
Is it really okay, though? I did my best to be accommodating in this thing, but apparently fairly imperfect in the way I went about it still...
But mostly, it feels kinda... Rigid?
Probbably just because I wrote it all up, and it has been getting completed smoothly and methodically.
Which is great... And horribly, horribly uncommon to see/feel.
*has conflicted feelings he doesn't know how to express best*
G'night all.
It was all voted on and discussed I do not think there is anything to worry about, though if a majority of the players wants to move on to the main action and do minor actions later the format is flexible enough for that too.
- Location
- Australia
This was great.
Should there even be an interruption? They could still be in class as the Tower moves around and we really only need the lobby, unless someone was in need of entering or exiting the tower but I thought it was like a boarding school in a lot of ways.
@anyone
If we haven't yet, please enquire about Agrawgh with Xorn and PoE allies.
Hurray I'm Canon.
Also do you mean the foundation of the Empire of the Dawn because yes I liked that too.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
- Location
- Australia
Very cool representation of how magic shifts from inherent power to scroll bound etc.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Very nice omake and character piece, @justlove! I hope we will see more of Ni-Long in the future?
It's a shame the Yi-Ti advance party didn't know about her. They could have picked her brains extensively before trekking east.
- Location
- Australia
We need to think carefully about where we put them, and if we want to equip/improve them.
E.g. Ensuring it speaks as many languages as possible, giving it a bug-out one shot.
For the future also keep in mind that these can be used defensively, if an ally was willing to be ghosted by one it would be very difficult for an assailant to ever know their target was not alone as these things can avoid True Sight with barely any trouble.
@Crake @LonelyWolf999
What houses would you sneak these into?
I want at least one in The Rock, if it acts patiently it should be perfectly safe.
I think we will see more of her particularly in matters of debate on theology and eastern perspectives on this decidedly western set of events
As for meeting the Yi-Ti advanced party her help would have been minimal, the sea routes she knows are well traveled and her insight into the culture may be useful but her knowledge is difficult to explain to outsiders, who lack the cultural context to understand certain parts of it. So not as helpful as you might think. As for recent news a year is a long time with all the change in the world today.
Last edited:
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I'm not sure if they can even be equipped with any sort of gear, since they're Incorporeal, but if we can, they need a +5 Competence bonus to Hide and a +2 Charisma booster to further increase the DC of their Shadow Bond ability.
The ones we're going to craft this month are going to be slightly customized, too. Their Weapon Finesse feat is being replaced with Skill Focus (Hide). Next month's batch is going to be Advanced versions, though. We'll need to come up with an upgraded version and run them by DP to get a price.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Riverrun, Yronwood.
We're making a pretty steady clip on flipping Houses at this point, I'm confident about most we've already flipped... politically speaking even House Frey has nothing to gain from betraying us whatsoever. No one can outbid us.
- Location
- ?????????
Well here is what is truly important (to me) does she know the secrets of paper production? Does she know how to make that material? Or at least what tree to carve up for it?
Edit: Also it was a very nice omake. I liked the creation myth a lot
- Location
- Australia
There should be ghost-touch gear, I know there's a splat book that includes gear like that for ghost PCs etc. I can find after shower and property inspection but they definitely exist.
I agree on these upgrades, while it's basically undetectable once attached it still needs to get attached.
Should be a routine action for it from then on though, re-attach when they're in bed and if the attempt fails they don't even notice.
Edit:
[X] Goldfish
I'm guessing we didn't enquire about Agrawgh, maybe DP will let me send a delegate to speak with the Xorn about it at least.
Last edited:
- Location
- United States
I'm not completely sure how magic-savvy you need to be in order to counter or stop creatures like this, are they basically the pinnacle of spy craft? Or are there some countermeasures that can be distributed? That'll change how I recommend they're prioritized and deployed.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
They are extremely effective at what they do.
Countermeasures wouldn't be impossible, but they are purpose built to be virtually undetectable and once bonded to a target, they can hide from even True Seeing. To develop countermeasures, you would first need to know about these things and then you would have to be very diligent forever after. Considering that we've had to go off-Plane and wait months for the ingredients to be found, I don't think these have ever been used on Planetos before. If they have, it was probably long ago, and memory fades.
Their best tactic is to slip into someone's bedroom while they are asleep and just keep attempting to form a Shadow Bond with them until they succeed. Once that is accomplished, they can renew the bond each time their target sleeps.
Last edited:
