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

Twenty-Sixth Day of the Tenth Month 293 AC

Some say the Goblin Market is a place, a tangle of streets and narrow passages wrapped around the oldest parts of the city, where once beautiful statues now lie shrouded in lichen like some creeping illness, where shadows dance their merry way around souls willingly lost. Some say that it's a moment, the witching hour when the night is darkest and spirits that fear the candle's light and the priest's incense come out to wreak their mischief upon an unsuspecting world. Others claim that it is naught but a twist of thought, that if you search for boons beyond mortal's ken or gods' will you'll find them no matter the time and place, perfumed veils shrouding clawed hands, balefire bright eyes hidden in the tip of a broad-brimmed hat. Those wisest in the ways of magic or closest to the tricksome Fey know that it is all three and much more.

With Rina and Ser Richard at your side you follow Glyra on her way through little walked paths, the morning light fading the further you step, as though it had been stolen by evening come too soon. The distant barks of feral dogs take on an air of menace, almost a melody, the clotheslines sway in an unfelt wind with the shirts seeming alive as they move, whether to ward away or beckon is more than you can say. And then with no fanfare a peddler of a kind you've seen a dozen times before reaches into his coat, but instead of pulling out some trinket or petty bauble, it is a handful of balefire he holds and by his light his nature is revealed. Features too sharp, ears tapering to a point like a fox and eyes bright as a star-filled sky.


"Come, little girl, warm yourself by the fire if you hate the ice so much," he calls to Rina, his voice like a harp just a hairsbreadth out of tune. "You'll only get colder the longer you stay out."

She looks past him and sighs: "Well we are definitely here, Your Grace."

"Does that happen often?" you ask, struggling against the urge to show the trader in unasked for boons some real fire.

"They do seem to have a preference for making me offers for whatever reason." With a firm shake of the head your friend adds. "I do my best not to listen to them like Glyra advised."

"If a merchant here's offering you something that you didn't pay for, be it soft words or a cup of fresh clear water on a hot summer day, they're doing it for their own sake and not yours," the little Gremlin explains in the closest thing to a serious tone you have ever heard her use. "If you want to make a bargain you walk up to them and say your piece, not the other way around. The ones that try to draw you in like a fresh-caught trout ain't planning to make a fair deal."

"I'll keep that in mind," you reply, though you have no interest in masking any bargains here save with the lord of this place once you have all the tokens in hand.

Bright banners fly through the night air, colors too bright, strange and fanciful dancing between them, teasing the eye and the mind. Did that eye blink? Did that foot move? Yes, you pay such trickery little mind, hand pressed against the moss-covered stone of the shop beside you intoning a spell that is little more then a cantrip, yet in this place stronger perhaps than the blows of a battle-mage's working:


The Harbinger had passed through here with its steel tread and voice of fire. Rumors were bound to spring in its wake, questions and rumors bound to flourish. You are not disappointed.

"They say the hunters have grown wary of being collared," one panicked voice, a Sprite or House Spirit by the tone, proclaims. "They've found a way out of the Hooded Lord's grasp and they're coming for us all."

"Fear not the shadows for the light lies best, a mad mortal who thinks himself wronged comes to burn us all, to feed us to the Dragon." This voice is deeper and echoing in the distance, likely a Stone Fey of some kind.

"No, not a mortal... the Burning Queen, the Burning Queen she comes, she comes to fight the Dragon and us caught in the middle." This voice upon the wind you cannot recognize, though it sounds almost human, the sound of heavy latches being closed underlying it. "First she sets us on each other, then she sets the mortals on us."

Other rumors you hear less credible too, that the Harbinger was the Hooded Lord in disguise testing the loyalty of those who buy and sell in the Goblin Market, that all this a test you yourself designed and those who would not betray the Hooded Lord would burn in dragonfire, even that Aedon the Fool was plotting from beyond the grave.

"What did you hear?" Rina asks curiously.

"Well according to the rumors, credible rumors that is, it's either that the Ankous have escaped their pact somehow and are moving to hunt everyone, a mortal with a grudge... or Ymeri."

"Fire I can deal with," Rina says, her confidence all the clearer for being plainly spoken.

"And the missing trinket?" Ser Richard interjects.

Again you call upon your magic, this time a far grander seeking, one that none but the strongest wards can foil and can find anything or anyone known by name or form. The answer is not by any measure what you had expected. "It's in the treasury of the temple of R'hllor," you reply slowly.

What do you do?

[] Continue to explore the market and try to learn the truth of the rumors
-[] Write in

[] Go to the temple and try to recover the Spindle
-[] Write in

[] Write in

OOC: I think this may be the first time when I write a verse that actually has proper rhythm in addition to rhyme for whatever that's worth, though it did take way longer than it should have I think it works to add to the otherworldly atmosphere.