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

Second Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC

Maester's Tower, Storm's End

Those who knew Naria well from arcane studies and endless hours in the library would not have thought to be one to travel to far off shores or move through the shadows on the King's business, but those who knew her best would not have been the least surprised to find the incarnate called ' the Loreseeker' abroad in one of the the oldest libraries in Westeros. The Maester's Tower spiraled down almost a hundred feet, covered in polished shelving and brass hilted stairs for reaching the tomes highest above any given walkway. According to Maester Cressen you could broadly tell the year the books had come into the possession of the lords of Storm's End, or indeed the Storm Kings of yore, just by the level in the tower it was set into. Granted, elegant though the system may have been, it did come with its own problems...


"There is no unitary organization by subject-matter?" she asked a touch incredibility.

"Some of my predecessors were more diligent than others in ordering the collection, but no one so far has been quite ambitious enough to attempt a comprehensive index," the old man replied, a little short of breath from the last set of stairs still.

"One might almost think they were trying to confuse visiting scholars," Naria replied with a smile, though inwardly she would not be surprised if there was some truth to the notion. While she doubted any significant number of maesters had ever been part of any grand conspiracy to retain their scholarly preeminence in Westeros, the order itself certainly bred an atmosphere of secrecy and exclusivity that hung in the air almost as much as the scent of old parchment and fading ink. It was almost enough to remind one of the Record Keepers of the Red Faith in Volantis or the Sealord's grey robed archivists who, according to Alysande, had been slow indeed to unveil all their lore even to the Silver Eye who were sworn to the protection of the city. Was it all an echo of that long ago time when the world's knowledge was cast into the flames to ward off the chill of the first true Winter and the darkness of the Long Night?

"You have that far away look in your eye again," the maester said softly. "Thinking of some sorcery or another?"

The incarnate shook her head. "Knowledge in general and what it makes of its keepers, whether we scholars are all doomed to the roles of prying visitor and zealous guardian."

"Ah..." Cressen sighed. "Personally I do not feel that zealous in my old age, but my days of eagerly peering through tomes to find some lost gem are long behind me also."

"The conquest is not that far away, you can go to Sorcerer's Deep and look around all you want in the public section. I don't think you would have any trouble getting accreditation to study in the restricted stacks."

"I was speaking of a barrier far stronger than mere distance I'm afraid," the old maester said gently. "Time... and my time is running thin, better to spend it here offering what aid and counsel I can to Lord Stannis in these trying times than rush off as though the heedlessness of youth had come upon me again."

Naria paused as one of the industrious calligraphy wyrms darted in front of them, though truth be told it had not been that which stopped her tread. How do I say this? she wondered. Hells, with it I'm no kind of diplomat. "It doesn't have to be. Just a week past the King and High Justice Malarys wrote up a law regarding the inheritance of those who might by one sorcery or another live past what is not considered the 'natural span'." Truth be told Naria found the commonplace acceptance of death by old age more than a little disturbing. If upon walking across the river each day it would eventually break and you would drown in it seemed to her that the natural course of action would be figuring out how to strengthen the bridge, not extolling the virtues of drowning.

"That's... Well, you have given me a lot to think about." He laughed softly. "A good thing that, it is rather the point of talking to visitors from distant lands with new ideas to share."


OOC: No surprises for the Storm's End library in terms of magic and such, so I just made it a bit of a character piece.

Second Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC

You give a small nod, you had not really planned on teaching mind magics yet, not until you have more lore and preferably teachers from the githzerai, but you are not truly opposed to the notion. After all, you would be visiting the Monastery of the Unbroken Circle soon to deliver the Flesh-Forged beasts you had agreed to trade them last month.

"Alright then, I'll teach you all I can," she tries to sound confident but does not quite manage it, and little wonder as she had not trained anyone before in her life. Though you are not the perfect judge of the weaving of thought, emotion and rippling unreality that makes up her art you suspect she is only now beginning to delve into its deeper mysteries.

"There are others you might learn from," you explain to the knight. "Not here, not of this world, former slaves of the Deep Ones who make war upon them now across the Infinite Spheres."

Ser Harras opens his mouth to ask something of the matter, but thinks the better. "Don't need to bother a king with telling tales, I'd rather read an account."

The pyromancer looks rather upset at the decision but he does not second guess it. "You've a means to take us to Volmark Keep as you did to... wherever that was before, do you not, Your Grace?"

"Gogossos," Vee explains shortly. "No point in troubling the boy's mother with anything she might have heard of the place. It's safe as... well it's safer than 'round here really."

"Alas, I cannot gainsay you," the knight says. "I hope that it will not always be thus," the words are perhaps a a touch more sincerely meant than they would have been an hour ago.

Thus you set off at first upon the ether striding, and then once you are on Harlaw flying unseen on shadow steeds following the knight's directions to the southwest of the island where on a lonely finger of stone thrust into the ocean lies your destination. Volmark Keep is typical of the Iron Islands, which is to say squat heavy towers worn by wind and wave, the crenelations butting into the cloudy sky like the half-rotted teeth of some leviathan that had dragged itself upon the shore, perhaps the very beast that flutters upon its banners.

Perhaps unsurprisingly you are greeted with suspicion by the garrison the Reader had left there, lessened only slightly by the presence of the Knight of Grey Garden. Whether learned from the Watch or discovered on their own the Ironborn too knew the trick of asking unexpected visitors to bleed and step away to prove themselves human.

Once you pass the gate you enter a keep filled with nothing but echoes and ghosts, the marks of battle ever-present, here the stone is scorched by alchemist's fire, there blood had seeped into the wood of the door staining it perhaps for centuries to come, but as you descend deeper into the keep less wholesome things than blood and death make themselves known. Fragments of enormous shells with scraps of meat still rotting within filling the air with a heavy reek, shattered vases from whose remains you can just make out forms humanoid and ichthyic twisting, embracing, merging. Even you cannot make out what the statute that dominated the former temple had been, the attackers had broken it very thoroughly indeed.

"This way," Ser Harras motions past the torn and burned remains of a tapestry to what must have once been a hidden entrance.

As soon as Jeyne crosses the threshold she starts, looks back over her shoulder, eyes at first narrowed in concentration then then wide in confusion. "There are remains everywhere, but I can't sense anything behind us..." she takes an experimental step back and looks at the rest of you. "And now I can't sense anything in front of us, there is veil here, opaque both ways."

"Yes, I... noticed," Ser Harras says a touch awkwardly, unused to speaking so openly of his powers. "Loras was able to see through it well enough with his magic, even found the door with what he called a simple spell."

"That's odd..." you muse. Had the Eaters of Minds known of the Harlaw knight's powers and taken pains to guard against them specifically? A bit more experimentation confirms the distinction. You, Vee and even Ser Richard who has trained himself to see auras without need of a spell can see through the veil as though it were not there, yet to Jeyne and Harras it is as a curtain of lead. As there is not much more you can learn at a glance you move deeper.

"This shit again," Vee curses as oily black veins coils through the granite you like worms through a carcass, bilestone.

The ritual chamber seems wholly carved out of it, a perfect octagon carved by magic, not mortal hands. All along the floor and walls countless curves and spirals intertwine forming patterns the eye strains to follow. A drain of sorts in the ceiling still dribbles salt water. Beneath it you spot a single small shoe. It had likely lost by one of the children in the chaos of the battle as Ser Harras and his men were struggling to get the children to safety.

"Water was pouring down from here on the children, almost like the 'Blessing of the Sea' the Drowned Men give," he explains. "I'm not certain if the Mind Eaters position mattered, we were too busy killing the damn things."

"Of course," you nod, looking over the chamber. What tongue would this chamber speak in? you wonder. Would you understand its whispers? Would you even wish to?

How do you investigate?

[] Use Legend Lore on the whole keep

[] Use Stone Tell on the bilestone

[] Use Touch of History on the shoe

[] Write in

OOC: And here we are at the on site investigation.