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

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Crake said:
I feel as though part of the cost of being able to just grab some elementals and stuff them into your power source is the fact they're inherently unstable. If the binding apparatus is pierced, you've got a giant elemental surging out of its containment field, and even the most genially disposed ones would wreak havoc on the confines of the ship.

Otherwise, Genie empires that have had literally thousands of years to perfect containment and design couldn't alone have the need to pump ships out into their war explain why they're so prone to exploding into a million pieces.
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Crake said:
presumably the Genies use rituals for most things on them except the weapons, meaning aside from slapping together the hull/dealing with the logistical issues and material acquisition, the time it takes to commission a ship is vastly smaller than ours.
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You already answered this yourself for why we've seen their ships do that.

To assume ALL their ships are unstable seems unreasonable, over-engineered yachts and flagships likely exist somewhere.

Regardless I intend to create something new while leveraging what we can from their design, we can chuck out the nonsense and the Queen Rhaella doesn't seem at all likely to explode so we have options.

Pretty sure Geniekind never had a Millenium Old Druidic Hivemind to help out with the spirit binding.

Edit:

Actually by the current vote we know everything the Efreeti Mage knew due to Scribe's Binding and Commune with Texts.

We probably have significant knowledge of various Efreeti ship types, even if only from the perspective of someone with a lot of favour and cash to throw around.
 
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Speaking of loot and vassals, do we have an integration office for newly freed extraplanar slaves or something? These guys are liable to find a beachfront house strange and alien right? Fitting them in and dealing with post slavery issues could be a problem in these numbers. We have things for humans, but can they handle "suddenly unstable fire spirits"?

I'm envision some of these guys doing things like trapping the hell out of their houses on reflex, or burning stuff down from misunderstandings/ptsd.
Maybe we could get Bloom on it?
 
BronzeTongue said:
Speaking of loot and vassals, do we have an integration office for newly freed extraplanar slaves or something? These guys are liable to find a beachfront house strange and alien right? Fitting them in and dealing with post slavery issues could be a problem in these numbers. We have things for humans, but can they handle "suddenly unstable fire spirits"?

I'm envision some of these guys doing things like trapping the hell out of their houses on reflex, or burning stuff down from misunderstandings/ptsd.
Maybe we could get Bloom on it?
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I assume we have an Immigration Bureau already. Obviously these are more non-standard individuals, but we have Outsiders on tap, mages with the right knowledge on them, and spies keeping an eye on everyone behaving unusually with divination and boots on the ground.
 
We have Glyra and her troupe which is basically shaping up to be a Social/Shadow Inquisition.

It is insane how much power her troupe is poised to develop in our Empire, she already directs action across a good fifth of the planet.

Once Westeros opens up she's looking at a third.
 
Deliste said:
We have Glyra and her troupe which is basically shaping up to be a Social/Shadow Inquisition.

It is insane how much power her troupe is poised to develop in our Empire, she already directs action across a good fifth of the planet.

Once Westeros opens up she's looking at a third.
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Glyra will be a terrifying Fey Queen.
 
Don't forget to vote, folks.
Adhoc vote count started by Goldfish on Sep 9, 2019 at 8:27 PM, finished with 90 posts and 6 votes.
  • [X] Cleanup Time
    -[X] Loot Distribution
    --[X] Ships
    ---[X] Give all the ships to the Shaitan, but with the understanding that we would pay for their repairs and elemental rebinding so the elementals aren't continuously tortured (or finding new oath-bound elementals if the current ones refuse the deal). Ask that the Shaitan lease all six ships to us for a suitable length of time (a decade would be ideal), along with helping us crew them. They would still technically be in service to the Opal Throne, but under our nominal control.
    ----[X] Hire Shaitan or Djinn shipwrights to repair the Swordships so that they may be used in your own fleet, and get their help in retrofitting the ships with more compliant elementals and/or bargain with the current elementals for their servitude. The latter is preferable if possible.
    --[X] Weapons
    ---[X] Claim all the Automatic Dragonslaying weapons due to the use you could have for them soon
    ---[X] In general claim the weapons on the ships we're taking (Force-Launchers & Disintegration Casters), but take special care to claim the ships that have the Disintegration Casters for maximum effectiveness.
    --[X] Mundane Loot
    ---[X] Claim the Great Brass Seals for the planned ritual in the future
    ---[X] Establish a museum in collusion with the Djinn using the art seized from the Efreeti and the Asura to educate people of both foes
    ---[X] Split the rest of the Asura's collection three ways
    ---[X] Make it clear we intend to share every piece of tactically relevant intel we recover from the Efreeti Mage book and the Asuras (this will mainly be troop movements, plans for future expeditions throughout the Spheres, the plots of the Grand Sultan and the Grand Vizier, etc.)
    -[X] Use Scribe's Binding on the soul of the Efreeti Mage and use the usual spells to quickly read the book and get the following:
    --[X] Get a list of the Efreeti Mage's spells that can potentially be learned from the book
    --[X] What was the Efreeti's goal in Valyria?
    ---[X] And how did they even find out about it?
    --[X] What treasures do they know the locations of in Valyria and how did they plan to reach them? More to the point, what stops the Grand Vizier from simply teleporting there and running off with whatever they were after?
    ---[X] Learn what contingencies where in place for that particular expedition (immediate retaliation force, the Grand Vizier himself showing up, etc) and whether or not we need to be gearing up for round two.
    --[X] What ongoing or dormant plots is the Efreeti Mage aware of that would be of interest to us or our allies?
    --[X] Get any and all relevant military information the mage knows -- fortress locations, army movements, logistics, the locations of key personnel, the locations of enemies who could be persuaded to work with our alliance, etc.
    --[X] What research projects are the Grand Vizier and his apprentices working on?
    --[X] Where is the Grand Sultan at in his quest for godhood, and what different methods has he tried so far and which ones is he currently pursuing or considering pursuing?
    --[X] What deal does the Brazen Throne have with Asuras in general? Are they being recruited en mass or was this a special circumstance?
    --[X] What are the abilities of the Grand Vizier and his other apprentices? What vulnerabilities do they have?
    ---[X] Further extract any and all intel that could be of use to the Living Brass Forge scheme or the intelligence agencies of the Shaitan and Djinn
    --[X] What would his familiar do with his body given the chance?
    --[X] Get every last outsider name the Efreeti Mage knows (from Fiends to Efreeti)
    ---[X] In particular get the name of the familiar that managed to escape -- also ask if it has any means available to have its nature changed and render its true name useless
    --[X] Before the Asurendra was slain he said, "Strike me down and you shall draw the eye of He whom you most fear, little idol." Does the Efreeti Mage know the details of this statement?
    -[X] Interrogate the Asurendra trophy
    --[X] What is the name of the Asurendra?
    --[X] Get the names of the fiends the Asurendra is aware of, along with what type of fiend they are and where they are
    --[X] Before he was slain, the Asurendra said, "Strike me down and you shall draw the eye of He whom you most fear, little idol." What, exactly, did he mean?
    --[X] Who are the Asuras at war with currently and where are the major fronts?
    --[X] What is the nature of his deal with the Efreeti?
    --[X] Are there more archfiends colluding with the Brazen Throne? If so, what are their natures (what type of outsider) and where are they stationed?
    --[X] Identify the Asurendra's loot
    -[X] Interrogate the captured Upasunda Asura
    --[X] Get her name
    --[X] Get what true names she knows
    --[X] See what she knows about the various plots woven among the Asuras, Efreetis, and Devils
    --[X] See what she can tell us of her former master in particular
    --[X] See how viable she could be as a potential recruit
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Btw it bothers me that poor Amrelath keeps calling himself "Formerly The Accursed", we need to bestow a new title upon him.
Do we know IC about his role in the war against the void? Because "Amrelath Dawnbreaker" has a nice ring to it, and there are not many beings who can claim to have been part of that battle.
 
das_slash said:
Btw it bothers me that poor Amrelath keeps calling himself "Formerly The Accursed", we need to bestow a new title upon him.
Do we know IC about his role in the war against the void? Because "Amrelath Dawnbreaker" has a nice ring to it, and there are not many beings who can claim to have been part of that battle.
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He's been calling himself Ashrisen as a testament to beating death.
 
@Duesal

I'd like to keep the trashed Flagship for our own purposes, to illustrate the lack of opportunity cost it's not even going to be repaired on the same schedule as the others due to it's significant damage.

In theory there are locales that our current type of ships like Moonchaser are incapable of traversing e.g. Dead Gravity Wells.

Like IRL it is in our interest to maintain ships of multiple propulsion types. E.g. Sail v Oars.

Sails are fast and efficient until you hit dead winds in the doldrums (Dead Gravity Well) and you damn sure better have some oars if you don't want to waste away.

I believe that the ship designed to facilitate power drawn from an Elemental should assist us in our research towards a ship driven by willing Elementals, Dryad spirits or other similar etheric powers.
 
Deliste said:
@Duesal

I'd like to keep the trashed Flagship for our own purposes, to illustrate the lack of opportunity cost it's not even going to be repaired on the same schedule as the others due to it's significant damage.

In theory there are locales that our current type of ships like Moonchaser are incapable of traversing e.g. Dead Gravity Wells.

Like IRL it is in our interest to maintain ships of multiple propulsion types. E.g. Sail v Oars.

Sails are fast and efficient until you hit dead winds in the doldrums (Dead Gravity Well) and you damn sure better have some oars if you don't want to waste away.

I believe that the ship designed to facilitate power drawn from an Elemental should assist us in our research towards a ship driven by willing Elementals, Dryad spirits or other similar etheric powers.
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Do you intend to keep a ship so we can do our own research for making more, or do you want to specifically turn one of these into something like the Queen Rhaella with a willingly bonded elemental?

I need some idea of how you want this to work and when it can be accomplished before I write it out. I'm certainly not opposed to it since we'll probably be able to find some god to help us out via sacrifice, but at the same time it would need to be viable soon if we want it to be useful.
 
Deliste said:
@Duesal

I'd like to keep the trashed Flagship for our own purposes, to illustrate the lack of opportunity cost it's not even going to be repaired on the same schedule as the others due to it's significant damage.

In theory there are locales that our current type of ships like Moonchaser are incapable of traversing e.g. Dead Gravity Wells.

Like IRL it is in our interest to maintain ships of multiple propulsion types. E.g. Sail v Oars.

Sails are fast and efficient until you hit dead winds in the doldrums (Dead Gravity Well) and you damn sure better have some oars if you don't want to waste away.

I believe that the ship designed to facilitate power drawn from an Elemental should assist us in our research towards a ship driven by willing Elementals, Dryad spirits or other similar etheric powers.
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Moonchasers can also Plane Shift. If they did encounter an area of Dead Gravity, they can merely travel to another Plane, then transit to a location more compatible with their propulsion system.
 
Duesal said:
Do you intend to keep a ship so we can do our own research for making more, or do you want to specifically turn one of these into something like the Queen Rhaella with a willingly bonded elemental?

I need some idea of how you want this to work and when it can be accomplished before I write it out. I'm certainly not opposed to it since we'll probably be able to find some god to help us out via sacrifice, but at the same time it would need to be viable soon if we want it to be useful.
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A mixture, I don't intend to recreate exactly what they are.

They are made to be powered by enslaved elementals, I want no part of that but this is like obtaining a crashed spaceship and checking out it's advanced solar cells, wiring and batteries.

Even if it's primed to pick up light from a blue spectrum star we can learn a lot to apply for ourselves.

I expect it to be a medium term project, certainly soon enough to matter and we'd be getting into the meat of it in a timeframe that we shouldn't just be hoping for another Swordship to fall in our laps.

For now the material impact is that we don't ask the Shaitan to fix the most damaged ship meaning the overall action is cheaper and faster.
 
Deliste said:
@Duesal

I'd like to keep the trashed Flagship for our own purposes, to illustrate the lack of opportunity cost it's not even going to be repaired on the same schedule as the others due to it's significant damage.

In theory there are locales that our current type of ships like Moonchaser are incapable of traversing e.g. Dead Gravity Wells.

Like IRL it is in our interest to maintain ships of multiple propulsion types. E.g. Sail v Oars.

Sails are fast and efficient until you hit dead winds in the doldrums (Dead Gravity Well) and you damn sure better have some oars if you don't want to waste away.

I believe that the ship designed to facilitate power drawn from an Elemental should assist us in our research towards a ship driven by willing Elementals, Dryad spirits or other similar etheric powers.
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Gravity dead zone seems unlikely. We've seen plenty of examples of magic getting cut off because it relies on accessing extraplanar energy in some way, but messing the more basic rules (specifically anything that still applies in an AMF) requires active effort by someone. Part of that is an artifact of the game system making simplifying assumptions, but it still has an effect.

Places with gravity dead zones are either super rare edge cases, or enemy action. In the case of enemy action going after gravity is the hardest and most inefficient way to mess with the ship, and forgoes effecting multiple systems at once the way an anti magic field would. Playing with the elemental system is interesting, depending on the costs and interaction with our existing systems, but isn't a good backup or replacement system.

It doesn't really cover for any likely method of attack since it's vulnerable to the same things that threaten the main drive, and can easily be countered by tactics related to the edge case it's supposed to solve. Anyone throwing around Null Gravity fields instead of AMFs should just as easily be able to mess with gravity in other ways to impede travel unless they're built specifically to target this system.
 
BronzeTongue said:
Gravity dead zone seems unlikely. We've seen plenty of examples of magic getting cut off because it relies on accessing extraplanar energy in some way, but messing the more basic rules (specifically anything that still applies in an AMF) requires active effort by someone. Part of that is an artifact of the game system making simplifying assumptions, but it still has an effect.

Places with gravity dead zones are either super rare edge cases, or enemy action. In the case of enemy action going after gravity is the hardest and most inefficient way to mess with the ship, and forgoes effecting multiple systems at once the way an anti magic field would. Playing with the elemental system is interesting, depending on the costs and interaction with our existing systems, but isn't a good backup or replacement system.

It doesn't really cover for any likely method of attack since it's vulnerable to the same things that threaten the main drive, and can easily be countered by tactics related to the edge case it's supposed to solve. Anyone throwing around Null Gravity fields instead of AMFs should just as easily be able to mess with gravity in other ways to impede travel unless they're built specifically to target this system.
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The Planes are Infinite and I do not assume competent enemy action to be the only barrier to our success.
 
[X] Duesal
I don't really see the point for us to get those ships, but whatever.
Hopefully that won't impact Shaitan/Djinn war effort whatsoever, since, well, retrofitting and repairing is costly.
 
Deliste said:
A mixture, I don't intend to recreate exactly what they are.

They are made to be powered by enslaved elementals, I want no part of that but this is like obtaining a crashed spaceship and checking out it's advanced solar cells, wiring and batteries.

Even if it's primed to pick up light from a blue spectrum star we can learn a lot to apply for ourselves.

I expect it to be a medium term project, certainly soon enough to matter and we'd be getting into the meat of it in a timeframe that we shouldn't just be hoping for another Swordship to fall in our laps.

For now the material impact is that we don't ask the Shaitan to fix the most damaged ship meaning the overall action is cheaper and faster.
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@Deliste, would you be satisfied with the knowledge of how to make ships able to traverse gravity dead zones and then us applying that knowledge to our own ships? Because from what I'm reading you'd be perfectly happy making this a study project.

I'm pretty sure we can get the info right away from the Shaitan and the Djinn if we just ask.
 
"Gravity dead zones"?

Is it a fancy new way of saying "zero gravity"?

Because if it were a true gravity "dead" zone anything entering there would become a cloud of free floating energy or something. I think the name of this place is "negative energy plane".

Or did someone actually made that very unfortunately named planar aspect?
 
Deliste said:
The Planes are Infinite and I do not assume competent enemy action to be the only barrier to our success.
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Yes they are Infinite, but preparing for the plane of Inconvenient Physical Laws is something that should be allocated resources based on its probability of coming up. The most likely place we'd find something like this is the Far Realms, and if we decide to fly there without bringing our physics with us we deserve to fall tealwards until we can taste purple and hear chocolate.

We are certainly going to fight people who want to shoot us out of the sky. Natural effects that manipulate gravity in a way we can't resist through the engines themselves, that won't also effect the elementals ability to act seems like a pretty narrow case to me.

The ships basically impose a gravitational gradient oriented in the direction of travel. To stop them you'd need to attack the magic of the engines, directly fight them by imposing your own field, or cast something that changes how gravity interacts with mass.

The last action is fairly hard to do on the scale required; it'd be easier to just default to the first and AMF it, which would still effect the elementals. The middle action is more like two wizards fighting for control over a ship with control weather. We can work with that kind of fight.

Adding elementals here as a back up is like adding sails to propeller driven boat in case it ever ends up in the desert. Sure it could happen, but it probably won't be on accident and the sails won't help much against something that could cause it in the first place.

Its worth checking if the elementals are cheaper, add some maneuverability, or fill some other useful role in our systems. As a backup or replacement though, they don't bring much to the table (at least as far as I understand the relative abilities of the engines).
 
Duesal said:
@Deliste, would you be satisfied with the knowledge of how to make ships able to traverse gravity dead zones and then us applying that knowledge to our own ships? Because from what I'm reading you'd be perfectly happy making this a study project.

I'm pretty sure we can get the info right away from the Shaitan and the Djinn if we just ask.
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Kind of, it is essentially a research project but with immediate practical application rather than working on paper.

To simplify it as much as possible.

At the moment we have electric vehicles and they work very well, I'd like a diesel version for when the sun throws off a massive solar flare.

I don't intend for these ships to form a significant part of our airforce but I would like some specialists, hence asking for the one mostly broken one.

As @Goldfish did originally note there is a lot for our own shipyards to learn from working on the wreck.

@BronzeTongue

It is exactly like putting Oars on a Sailboat and we did so IRL for a reason.

I've said repeatedly it would not necessarily be limited to elementals.

There is negligible opportunity cost because the flagship I want is much more significantly damaged than the rest of the fleet, we pay less and get a return faster by focusing on the superficially damaged ships being returned to service (following re-binding of non-enslaved elementals).

I'd rather be ready for the Plane of Inconvent Physics with a ship or two before someone needs to travel through it under time pressure.

By the same token I believe we should develop a ship capable of moving through stone prior to discovering we desperately need one.

Moonchaser should work for most everything else.

Edit:
Anyway decisions kind of require IC information so I'll just wait for DP if we can.
 
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Deliste said:
Kind of, it is essentially a research project but with immediate practical application rather than working on paper.

To simplify it as much as possible.

At the moment we have electric vehicles and they work very well, I'd like a diesel version for when the sun throws off a massive solar flare.

I don't intend for these ships to form a significant part of our airforce but I would like some specialists, hence asking for the one mostly broken one.

As @Goldfish did originally note there is a lot for our own shipyards to learn from working on the wreck.

@BronzeTongue

It is exactly like putting Oars on a Sailboat and we did so IRL for a reason.

I've said repeatedly it would not necessarily be limited to elementals.

There is negligible opportunity cost because the flagship I want is much more significantly damaged than the rest of the fleet, we pay less and get a return faster by focusing on the superficially damaged ships being returned to service (following re-binding of non-enslaved elementals).

I'd rather be ready for the Plane of Inconvent Physics with a ship or two before someone needs to travel through it under time pressure.

By the same token I believe we should develop a ship capable of moving through stone prior to discovering we desperately need one.

Moonchaser should work for most everything else.
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I should note that the current iteration of the plan, while it gives the ships to the Shaitan, also has all six leased to us for a decade where they would effectively be under our control for the duration. Right from the start we will have what is effectively total ownership during the time period where it matters.

How about this -- we ask that our own shipwrights and budding enchanters from the Imperium help out with rebuilding to get trained in the higher techniques so we can start doing this ourselves, and we ask for books the Shaitan might have on ship-building techniques. Given that they're getting a very good deal out of this they won't say no, and one way or another we walk away with a lot of knowledge.
Deliste said:
Edit:
Anyway decisions kind of require IC information so I'll just wait for DP if we can.
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Yeah, that's a problem. There are too many questions that need to be answered OOC.
 
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Duesal said:
I should note that the current iteration of the plan, while it gives the ships to the Shaitan, also has all six leased to us for a decade where they would effectively be under our control for the duration. Right from the start we will have what is effectively total ownership during the time period where it matters.

How about this -- we ask that our own shipwrights and budding enchanters from the Imperium help out with rebuilding to get trained in the higher techniques so we can start doing this ourselves, and we ask for books the Shaitan might have on ship-building techniques. Given that they're getting a very good deal out of this they won't say no, and one way or another we walk away with a lot of knowledge.

Yeah, that's a problem. There are too many questions that need to be answered OOC.
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Thanks, I'd love to have the wreck but this is a good compromise for me, it's just gonna be an uphill battle when the progress is 3x what it would have been.
 
Deliste said:
Thanks, I'd love to have the wreck but this is a good compromise for me, it's just gonna be an uphill battle when the progress is 3x what it would have been.
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Alright, added that request. If it's any consolation I highly doubt we won't be seeing more Skyships in the near future. Hell, the Adamantine Mine alone which we're likely going after within the year probably has dozens of Swordships patrolling it, along with those wonderful Turtle Ships.

Probably going to sleep within the next hour, if anyone has any adjustments now's a good time to speak up, because these days I almost never wake up before DP closes the overnight vote.
 
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