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

First Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC

Though the Hall of Mirrors known to most as a place where the future can be glimpsed or the hidden present unveiled, there is another place in Sorcerer's Deep whose purpose revolves around an enchanted mirror's gleam. From a beggar's rags to a prince's silks, the customs and the dress of east, west and south had passed before the silvered mirror to be revealed then across the realm, a glamour quite apart from the sorcery played out with hundreds of thousands watching.

"Right this way, Your Grace," High Stagemaster of the Mirror Plays says in a somewhat strained tone. "If you need something, a backdrop, music..."

"If he was somehow lost the ability to cast even simple glamours we are all in deep, deep trouble Careno," Azema notes dryly, causing the poor man to swallow his tongue.

You smile as much in reassurance at the flustered former Braavosi mummer as in amusement at Azema's words. "Not to worry, good man, I can handle it from here." Though you could, of course, have taken the mirror into your study again, scheduling conflicts between shows appearing in different parts of the realm mean that taking it away would risk delaying one show or the other. Alas, your task here today is not to entertain but warn.

"Do you really think people wicked and just plain wrongheaded enough to still be practicing slavery when there are so many better ways to make money are going to be looking up at the mirror, or care what you have to say?" Dany asks softly before you are to speak.

"Some perhaps, but not many no. Yet such magisters do not live in a void, they have associates, family, freinds even trusted retainers all more likely to listen. In any case it cannot hurt to try," you reply. "If nothing else, hearing it addressed might assure that work is being done to end their plight, that they are not forgotten and perhaps more of them might step forward to aid in the investigation of their would-be masters."

Turning to the mirror, folded into a perfect silver cube to fit into the chamber, you begin somberly: "It saddens me to have to make such a formal address, given the subject matter, so soon after many causes for joy and the heartening circumstances which brought us together to share it. Unfortunately, I must."

Leaving but a moment's cause to allow the mood of the distant crowds to settle, you continue: "Worse than mere sedition, the tragedy of it all is even with my writ carried across a great swathe of Western Essos it has been circumvented in some cases, held in contempt, despite all evidence of the prudence and effectiveness of my policies, spurred on by the sheer audacity of men and women who have witnessed the division that has been wrought upon these lands, the corruption, mismanagement and lack of prosperity it has shepherded, and failed to move them to then once."

Unfortunately, you suspect most magisters did not care for the prosperity of the land or lack thereof, perhaps a point closer to home might drive the message into sharper relief. "That being, quite simply, the peril which hangs above our heads, that folly might visit us at anytime when men are yoked like cattle, when hatred curdles in their heart, that darkness might incubate inside of it and then breed madness."

Again you pause this time to lend weight your next words: "I speak of slavery." With a soft and wholly sincere sigh for all it fits smoothly into your words, you continue. "What can I say of slavery, that has already not been said? Nevertheless, it appears some might need to hear it from my own lips for it to, at last, finally sink in. For every moment slavery endures in this world, in every place where civilization might flourish, we play with fire so hot that it burns at the very soul."

You think back to all the markets filled with clanking chains, from your first sight of Tyrosh to the Bazaar of Beggars to the defiled memory of paradise under a shattered sky. "How many lives have been saved by pulling that thread to the very end of the spool? How many lost instead by yanking upon the tether binding the fate of others? Tighter, and tighter, eventually something will snap and break. It is... inevitable. How much have the horrors from the furthest ends of creation been stymied in their insatiable greed and hunger by denying it, one mirrored in kind by the very men and women who perpetuated nigh uncountable atrocities over long centuries since the Doom had came upon Valyria the Fallen?"

It is admittedly a touch frustrating to make a speech where you can neither look upon the crowds you are addressing nor hear them, almost enough to make you wonder if you aught to invest in more mirrors for that purpose alone, but in the end you dismiss the notion. One cannot address a dozen gatherings as one whole and standing together. "We are not made better by the actions of one man alone, even a Dragon, but by recognizing that the path forward is one we must take in the first place. I am merely one voice in the chorus that has been echoing since elder days, when despair was all we had ever known. So why then, must we walk alone, chasing a figment that was never as we imagined it to be, mired in lies as it was?"

Yet that is the message of your speech for there are more ways to stand side by side than in the flesh. "To avoid our own ruin, to build something we can both be proud of, yes, but which will also endure the trials and tribulations besetting us each and every day. So many have claimed to be champions of such causes, and yet ignored the lesson made implicit by it. That can only be done together. To weave harmony where there had been chaos, to spread compassion where there had been cruelty, to grant enlightenment where there had been ignorance. That was my hope for all, one that I like to believe many share with me, for the alternative is... madness. Folly and madness."

Well that and greed... but you have found greed properly channeled to be too useful in your endeavors to tar it with the same brush as the fools in Pentos. "What glory can one person alone hold in both hands, or," you pause to look down at your own hands, "even two claws, lest it shatter when gripped too tightly? Again, and again, and again, it has been proven it will always break."

Truth be told you doubt most lingering slavers have thought of anything beyond their coin pouch, but they might justify their crimes to kith and kin by appealing to some bygone pride of the Freehold and so to them you say: "Regardless of any temporal triumph, what has mere pride and self-satisfaction earned anyone alone, but for mediocrity or the envy of others? What grand dreams have been realized since those halcyon days viewed in rose-tinted glass? What greatness has endured beyond the last dying gasp of the vainglorious and the damned?"

"Nothing." you pause then speak again, a grim refrain. "Nothing at all but the taste of ashes. Only together, aware as we are of how far shared visions can stretch, can a better world be built from the broken pieces we found this one in. And yet..." This time you let the silence hang uneasily.

"Over, and over, and over again. I have repeated this. I have plead for reason, rationality, I have given warning far in advance of just cause, perhaps in some cases more than they deserved. And still, these people with their hearts of stone remain unmoved. Unlearning, unchanging, unceasing in their depravity." You raise your voice by the merest fraction, but in the silence of the chamber it weighs as heavily as a warhammer.

"No more. In Pentos, as in the Flatlands, where there had been naught but a nest of tangled laws and a den of lies before the Legion visited it, hundreds consigned to the grave, the innocent and the guilty accounted for each day, there it ends. From the city with festering wounds, still healing from the incompetence of its last administrators, to the most forgotten corner of the Velvet Hills, to the Andal Coast and the furthest marches, you will give up slavery. This has never been a negotiation. Only inexorable will. Not one will alone, no."

You do not now speak from the abstract majesty of the throne assuming the voices of one's subjects, but for the citizens of your realm. "If you fear me, you should know, it is a million voices that speak with me. If you stand against me, know that it is a million feet that march with me. Because I am not alone. From Braavos to Sorcerer's Deep, they are with me. From Volantis to Ny Sar, they are with me! From sea to shining sea, to the tallest mountains and the wide open plains, I know who you are, I know those of you who stand with me."

Abruptly you let your voice fall to an almost conversational tone you know to be disquieting in no small measure. "To those who fall outside the light of the campfire, who refuse to share our flame, I know of your abuses, your corruption and the seeds of destruction which you have sown among your fellows. I know what you have done. Should you run to the opposite end of the world, I will be there. Should you even flee beyond its known boundaries, I will be there. Even if you should prostrate yourself before the thrones of elder evils, begging for shelter, I will shout my defiance, echoed a thousand thousand times more. You will not escape. With all speed, I say unto you, go forth and dance to ruin and sing to madness, to the very ends of the world under the sun I deny you, beyond the furthest Spheres I cast you!"

It is rather helpful that you do not have to breathe as often as you once did, some distant corner of your mind notes. "Should you fail to comply, it will end just the same. If, in defiance of the law and all sanity, all who do even now hold a responsibility to their fellow citizens, who have suffered under that same dreadful yoke, one of chains, of iron, of hypocrisy... if you do not yield to my writ, I shall deliver your end."

At your silent command flames dance across the face of the Mirror, "In Fire and Blood."

"I bid you, reflect on these next words: Each time which I have spoken of sacred pacts, made a promise kept in confidence, a solemn vow, swore an oath upon my name, when has it not stood fulfilled?"

One last time you let silence linger upon the question before proclaiming: "That you were not under my laws then had protected you, just as the laws of your forebears were upheld where previous breaches did not conflict with those current. You have benefited from foresight, from restraint, not for clinging to the past. If you do not look to the future, you will have none."

The warning given as starkly as you can you end upon the same solemn note the speech had begun. "I would like to now call for a moment of silence, for those who have departed from us. Let us remember that we are building a world where such suffering can be avoided, and vow to remember those who have been lost before their time, without forgetting about tomorrow. Thank you."

For a long moment the there is silence in the chamber save for the music emerging from the mirror that had shifted from projection, at least for sound when you had marked the end of your speech, then Azema chuckles. "Well, if there did happen to be any slavers listening in to all of that the Lawmen should be able to tell from the brown stains."

Dany giggles, for once wholly in agreement with the alu demon's rather sharp-edged humor. "So other than dealing with Reachers and undersea princes, where are you going this evening?" she asks

[] Write in minor action plan

OOC: That was fun, it's been a while since we had a nice long speech.