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

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[X] Accept the deal
-[X] There's a lot of magic coming back to the world, there are many cities which are full with people- over a hundred million, from Westeros to Slaver's Bay. You are a mighty king which rules over many of those cities, great and small, and has many powerful subjects. Draw a map of the world with an illusion to show which parts of the world are currently yours (include Westeros).
--[X] Use the illusion to rip off GoT's opening cinematic and show details of each location as you zoom in and travel around the map, overlaid with some narration. Xor can provide theme music.
--[X] And of course, a brief history of the Targaryens in your most dulcet tones.
-[X] Generally see how elaborate an explanation it manages to understand and tune your spiel to its level
--[X] He doesn't seem stupid, but isn't very worldly. Try and impress him to see if he volunteers to join the winning team.

Better?
 
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Harry Lloyd narrating a world map sequence?

Krieger.gif

Real talk though, we should start a Crowdfund to get his sweet, sweet dulcet tones to narrate the entirety of ASWaH. :D
 
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While we're waiting on the interlude, have another build-insertion question (still no Tier 1 classes using the re-tiering, no gear, no prestige classes, can select race and Templates as needed as long as you don't surpass the starting ECL). Would you prefer to be :
  • Dropped into ASWAH the day Viserys got his powers, but you're dropped into Sororythos as an ECL 6 character with 10 Mythic Ranks. Fey can sense your Mythic ranks upon meeting you, and will be impressed but curious. Your Mythic abilities are linked to the fact that you can see in thread's posts when you sleep. You can post Omakes into the thread up to once a year (anything that isn't in the spirit of the word "Omake" just doesn't work). You will never level past your current cap, but you can accumulate XP if you ever need to spend it.
  • Dropped into ASWAH the day The Listener took over in Mantarys, but you're dropped into Mantarys as an ECL 10 character with no Mythic Ranks. You will never gain Mythic Ranks, but can keep levelling until level 20 if you take many risks and survive. The Listener knows someone powerful just arrived in town.
 
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TalonofAnathrax said:
Dropped into ASWAH the day Viserys got his powers, but you're dropped into Mantarys as an ECL 10 character with no Mythic Ranks. You will never gain Mythic Ranks, but can keep levelling until level 20 if you take many risks and survive. The Listener knows someone powerful just arrived in town.
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Was he already The Listener at that time?

I think he might just be a regular person with great potential or at most a freshly started demon-cultist.
 
Dropped into Sothoryos--maybe but the concessions are basically you're forced to build for self-sustainability and evasion, which basically is gimping you right out the gate. You have to minmax to simply survive and be tricky to get a hold of to all the things that wanna suck out your juicy mythic ranks or even just dinos. You're weird and just having all that mythic juice means if you ever get out you may have shitty spell knowledge and abilities and hate it, but the novelty will make you valuable--but even just being a high level spellcaster will do that and you can lay low way easier at Level 10 in Mantarys than you can survive in the latter.

Granted you can change course with level-ups to a degree, but part of my point remains and you would have to continue building in that vein in your continuous level-ups, many of which you would receive far from civilization. I expecting getting out of the random ass-end of Sothoryos to take years, too.

Unoptimized but interesting, but only in that you're more appetizing to every-fucking-thing.

Or relatively powerful, not destined hero of the universe but potentially well-respected arch-mage, and minimal (in comparison) hoops to jump through?

Obvious.
 
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Interlude DXXVI: Law of the Land
  • Threadmarks
    • Law of the Land​

    Tenth Day of the Tenth Month 293 AC

    Ser Gerold Torchwood was a man of considerable and hard-won standing within the empire, a position he lived by at scores of formal events, by silence at the very least. Yet he was not without his limits, and when those limits were crossed it became far more believable that the general had once been a common sellsword. "Goat fucking son of a poxed whore! I'll cut off Naelys' balls and shove them down his throat!"

    None of the staff officers present seemed to find the outburst excessive, though a few did offer carefully weighted looks of sympathy. It was not every day one found out that one of the most ostensibly loyal and reasonable magisters in the Western Flatlands had been not only flaunting the King's law by selling off debtors and criminals in his lands into slavery as bed slaves, but he had subverted three imperial judges in order to do so. The worst part was that it had not even been discovered by any internal review, but by the fact that Magister Naelys decided to branch out into treason along with his other dealings with Slaver's Bay.

    An example would have to be made.

    ***​

    Fifteenth Day of the Tenth Month 293 AC

    Were this any other army, be they lord's retainers, sellswords, or the citizen armies of yesteryear, that example would have begun with sword and fire, but the Torchbearers, despite their name, did not carry fire as a weapon. 'Light the Way,' the King had said, and light it they would, for far wandered the eyes of the Commander of the First, and few among the enemies of the Dragon King were warded against it. A call went out to the Deep, one wrapped in a ribbon of royal crimson. The House of Mirrors would spy and the Inquisition would seek where to strike. The three ships the traitorous magister had prepared for a hasty escape were seized by Darkenbeast wings even before he knew he had earned the ire of the Legion, and all his known accounts with the Iron Bank frozen until a verdict was reached and only then did the legion march on his estates.

    As he rode through the busy cobbled streets of Oxcross, Gerold thought again of how prosperous it seemed, how unlike most of the shithole towns one was likely to find out here where the latifundia were often absent and four-hundred years of war had ravaged the land. He would have made a perfect linchpin for the area, an example for his peers perhaps. Now he would just make a distinguished corpse for the crows to peck at.

    Between alchemical concoctions and the Legion's engineers, it took less than a day to overcome the manse's defenses, though the opposition was skilled and determined enough to make the Torchbearers bleed in the narrow corridors.

    "Remember, any man caught looting or raping gets to share the gibbet," the commander had reminded them before the battle. Three of them men did not listen, thus three more nooses were tied.

    How long would it take before they would all listen every time? Gerold wondered, before noticing the knotted white scar of a slave collar around the neck of one of the corpses. Probably until most of the Legion wasn't made up of former slaves. I'll be old and grey by then, or maybe I'll the young again in a fresh body like that wily bastard Flowers. He shook the thought away.

    "I want heralds in every village that looked to Oxcross, making known the magister's treachery to get ahead of the rumors," he commanded as the diminutive golden Calligraphy Wyrm scribbled cheerfully away. Best damn gift the King had ever given him, spared him having to waste a good officer on scribe's work.

    "Do you think we should round up the smugglers, too, Ser?" Martyn Grey, one of his most experienced staff officers asked. "They were mixed up in the escape plans right enough, most likely the slave trade, too."

    "Send a letter to the Inquisition in Tyrosh first," Gerold replied after a moment's thought. "Seeing as they were so kind as to unveil this viper's nest, I would not want to pay them back by treading on any toes."

    "As you command, Ser." There was a faint note of disdain in the old sellsword's tone at the notion of working with smugglers. He was one of those who had taken to enforcing the law like fish to water.

    Idly, Gerold wondered what he would think if he knew the King himself dabbled in smuggling before he built his kingdom. Instead he made a mental note to see if Martyn might not do better in the Greycloacks. There was room for all kinds in the service of the Dragon King.

    OOC: The discovery in this interludes is owed to one of your 'find spies' Inquisition actions.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • It seems we still have some rats....

    I think we need to do a bit of purging, mounting expeditions to free those taken, and more.

    I presume those who bought them are also learning that ignoring pur laws leads you to great pain and suffering?
     
    Was... was he an idiot? What was he thinking selling people into slavery in the middle of the Imperium?

    There is such a thing as too stupid to live. :facepalm:
     
    Great chapter, @DragonParadox. Goes a long way toward illustrating how the Imperium has grown, both for the good and the bad.

    Assholes are gonna be assholes, especially on Planetos.
     
    Ah, the satisfying kind of jackbooting. I like it.

    @DragonParadox, there are a few typoes in the chapter. A "Her" instead of a He, and sellswords is jumbled up once. Hopefully Goldfish will do another edit at some point.

    [X] TotallyNotEvil
    I shouldn't forget to vote!

    Crake said:
    Dropped into Sothoryos--maybe but the concessions are basically you're forced to build for self-sustainability and evasion, which basically is gimping you right out the gate. You have to minmax to simply survive and be tricky to get a hold of to all the things that wanna suck out your juicy mythic ranks or even just dinos. You're weird and just having all that mythic juice means if you ever get out you may have shitty spell knowledge and abilities and hate it, but the novelty will make you valuable--but even just being a high level spellcaster will do that and you can lay low way easier at Level 10 in Mantarys than you can survive in the latter.

    Granted you can change course with level-ups to a degree, but part of my point remains and you would have to continue building in that vein in your continuous level-ups, many of which you would receive far from civilization. I expecting getting out of the random ass-end of Sothoryos to take years, too.

    Unoptimized but interesting, but only in that you're more appetizing to every-fucking-thing.

    Or relatively powerful, not destined hero of the universe but potentially well-respected arch-mage, and minimal (in comparison) hoops to jump through?

    Obvious.
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    Let me clarify : the ECL 6 + 10 Mythic Tier character won't ever level past that.
    The non-Mythic PC can level, but not this one.

    And as for escaping Sororythos or surviving it... Well, killing someone with 10 Mythic Tiers is basically impossible (it requires a Coup de Grace with an artefact), and there are Universal Mythic Path abilities that allow very fast travel and/or Plane Shift if you're willing to spend Path abilities on that.
    The choices are "ECL 6 (capped) with 10 Mythic Ranks in Sororythos" or "ECL 10 but can level further, no Mythic, start in the Listener's Mantarys"
     
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    TalonofAnathrax said:
    Ah, the satisfying kind of jackbooting. I like it.

    @DragonParadox, there are a few typoes in the chapter. A "Her" instead of a He, and sellswords is jumbled up once. Hopefully Goldfish will do another edit at some point.

    [X] TotallyNotEvil
    I shouldn't forget to vote!


    Let me clarify : the ECL 6 + 10 Mythic Tier character won't ever level past that.
    The non-Mythic PC can level, but not this one.

    And as for escaping Sororythos or surviving it... Well, killing someone with 10 Mythic Tiers is basically impossible (it requires a Coup de Grace with an artefact), and there are Universal Mythic Path abilities that allow very fast travel and/or Plane Shift if you're willing to spend Path abilities on that.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    The full breadth of PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER at my (potential) disposal and a guarantee of fathomless luxury, perhaps even Companionship if I play my cards right?

    Or one tricky boi...

    I think I've made my position clear.
     
    This was really basically modern-style human trafficking, very easy to get away with if you are in a position of authority and can subvert local law enforcement like that. The fact that we did catch it when it became treason is pretty good all on its own, divination helps a lot.
     
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    Also, @DragonParadox, I thought Gerold's blistering rage and his internal monologue about how the feather in his cap was torn out by his golden boy example Magister was a nice touch. Many of the general staff likely thought he was pissed at the slavery, and with a Braavosi wife I'm sure he was, but it is kind of like Tanya the Evil where the character acts a certain way and all of the other characters believe it was for more noble reasons, which amuses me.
     
    Crake said:
    Also, @DragonParadox, I thought Gerold's blistering rage and his internal monologue about how the feather in his cap was torn out by his golden boy example Magister was a nice touch. Many of the general staff likely thought he was pissed at the slavery, and with a Braavosi wife I'm sure he was, but it is kind of like Tanya the Evil where the character acts a certain way and all of the other characters believe it was for more noble reasons, which amuses me.
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    Now that you mention it this is totally a Tanya-style situation. "Damn it, he was so good and now I have to fire him! He's brought it on himself." It's just the sort of thing I can see happening in Youko Senki.
     
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