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

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Canon Omake: The Artisans Pride
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    • The Artisans Pride I​

    Gogossos, somewhen during the 12th month 293 AC

    Even at the height of the Freehold, there had never been more then a few of the creations that had been commonly labelled "Flesh Forge". Knowledge about them and their workings was anything but widespread, partially due to the distaste many felt for the art, partially because of dedicated efforts to suppress it. Thus there was never an effort to find a word more adequate then "Forge" to describe it.

    It was, in Qyburns humble opinion at least, a sure sign that institutionalized shortsightedness and the cultivation of ignorance as a virtue were not invented in the Citadel. Or that they managed to spread these things as far as Valyria.

    Words and names had power. Not just in this age of awakening, but since the time the first syllable was spoken and the first name bestowed on a thing. To coax the power of magic along well beaten paths by repeating chants in dead tongues came long after, just another function of their true value. To give meaning. To express ideas. Be it a priest dividing into purity and wickedness or a king into right and wrong, words allowed to them to cut the world much farther then a blade alone.

    And thus Qyburn hated the term "Flesh Forge" with a passion. It was a very limited view of the true wonder he had been granted access to. It evoked the image of a man standing behind an anvil and bashing a piece of iron into shape with a hammer. Certainly there was value in the study of metallurgy and the former maester was the last one to disparage another persons honest achievement. Some would contest the latter, though it was often those with the loudest voices who had the least of value to say, and he simply had better things to do with his limited time then to waste on their self-importance.

    No. The wonder beneath Gogossos was a forge in the same way that mans thumbs were good for grasping things. Technically these statements were true, but they missed the point so badly to be meaningless. What lay beneath Gogossos was not a thing to make other things with. It was alive. Living flesh, bone and sinew, pliable as clay and yet with that spark that allowed it to grow. If there was a forge out there that could make more of itself, Qyburn had yet to see it and he would wager that it would still be just a whole lot of magic controlling tools instead of a person doing so.

    The implications of this were staggering. Far beyond what the soldiers and smallfolk on the surface could even imagine. Perhaps even beyond what the reincarnated fleshcrafters could conceive, blinded by the prejudices and follies of their teachers. And if even half their complaints about the obsessions and proclivities of their peers in other cities were true, he shuddered to imagine the sheer work and potential that had been wasted by some old "master" forcing his students to slave away decades in the pursuit of the perfect cat of all things.

    But luckily, there was no "master" he had to defer to. No moron elevated into authority by simply being the oldest one still capable of keeping their own bladder under control for a whole night. No one to parcel out snippets of his knowledge like threats to a dog, just to die and take half of it with him before anyone was "worthy" of it. Sure, there was the former Valyrian queen and the fused snake, but their work was considered "heresy" by their own standards too. The mind boggled how a word Qyburn associated mostly with fanatics burning books and the people who wrote them managed to intrude into this craft, but those rules died with Doom and good riddance as far as he was concerned.

    There was certainly oversight, both by them and the king, but mostly they left him alone. When he had proposed some adjustments to parts of the Gogossos Complex, they had outright dissected every little thing about it. But they had the good sense to defer to him in matters he knew better then them and in the end, in not a small part thanks to the support by Wisdom Marita, he had gotten their approval. Of course there was the caveat that had he erred and threatened to damage the Complex, they would burn out his work with no regard to who or what else they would purge in the process. A sensible approach to a failed and dangerous experiment and it was not as if he would have proposed the additions if he had doubted his work.

    His own little realm, grown into the very bedrock by the Complex just as he had envisioned it. All it took was some careful prodding. A few reconnected nerves here, some glands shuffled around to direct the growth and a healthy infusion of arcane energies to adjust the nature of the new flesh. It was no different then surgery on a man, though he needed somewhat larger tools and a few of the Seekers lending a hand to haul the parts around. And just like that he had his private laboratory space, larger then the entire Dreadfort and better equipped then even the Archmaesters own surgery rooms in the Citadel.

    It felt as if it was just yesterday that he took the musty old storage room in the Dreadfort as the best workplace he would likely find. Some well sharpened barber tools and what little he had been able to salvage when he left Oldtown the only things he had. That and the melancholic memory of well ordered anatomic reference texts and cupboards full of everything from essence of nightshade to fine embalming fluids. Now he had entire cabinets full of knives and saws, each and every one so sharp that you wouldn't even feel them cut, and access to every more herbs and reagents then he had ever even heard about.

    And yet his greatest tool remained that in which he walked. When he had worked for Lord Bolton, there had always been this nagging voice in the back of his head. Every day, every bit of progress, it was always there, faint at first but growing louder and louder. What if he erred? What if he walked the wrong path? The most dreadful fate he could imagine would have been to see his work succeed, just to have it turn into a slaves collar around his neck. After all, who except him could make his creations? There was far more to it then merely chanting some words over half-rotten bones like some Necromancer.

    This was the other reason that Qyburn detested to hear the Complex derided as a mere Forge. As many a Qohoric smith had learned since the Doom, a forge could become your destiny, never to do anything beside work, eat and sleep. But him, Gogossos had set free. He still remember his first attempts to carve a femur into smaller parts to make something entirely his own. How frustrating it was to see the small bones shatter and crumble each and every time, the energies dissolving them instead of giving them new vigor as in a full corpse. What he had pieced together from the records of the Red Kings was illuminating in that regard, even though sadly the most vital parts of the manuscripts had been lost long ago, leaving him just a few clues short of the riddles solution.

    It still gnawed at him. This itch of not knowing something. Especially something so vital to his work. For now though, it would do, for the Complex made the matter mood for now. He needed no carving tools to coax a bone into the right shape, needed not to layer a muscle into shape by hand. All he needed was to carve the mold and the Complex would see it filled, the bones and muscles growing just like he needed them and ready to be plucked like ripe apples from the tree.

    They had it. Whatever yet elusive property of Life it was that got imbued into their shape as they grew, it was perfect just the way it grew, ready to take on the energies of Unlife and be truly born as one of his creations. True, his creations were still somewhat limited in their abilities compared to the work of his colleagues, but the potential was undeniable. All he needed was bone and muscle, ligament and sinew. No miles upon miles of carefully grown nerves or wheelbarrows worth of internal organs that were thrown into some of their creations. All so simple and so easy to grow as long as the Complex was fell fed.

    True, there had also been the occasional setback. Like the unfortunate explosion in the stomach pits. With all the cows and goats and other ruminants that they fed the Complexes voracious appetite, it seemed prudent to use the abundant stomaches for something useful. After all, Archon Saan had his people and some of Qyburns creation beat back the jungle with axe and spade, so they might as well use all the left over leaves and shrubbery to feed Gogossos greatest treasure. They had anticipated the issue of volatile gasses and added ventilation shafts for them. They had not anticipated some idiot crawling into one of them with a lit torch. The divinations showed him only a greedy idiot on the prowl for said treasure, not a spy sent by one of the kings many foes, though there was sadly not enough left of him to be entirely sure of that.

    The main floor of his lab still reeked of the incident, though soon enough the smell of cleansing and embalming fluids would take over again. There was so much of it being used these days that it was hard to imagine a stench persistent enough to survive it. As Qyburn watched his creations from his balcony, he felt an odd warmth at seeing their scurrying.

    Here there were skeletal servitors prying their future brethren out of their growing pods, then carrying them over to the armoring benches where they would be encased in the black steel that gave them their name. In another corner, a few seekers were busy bathing the remains of the titanic snakes he had acquired into the third cleansing bath, making them almost ready for enchantment. Meanwhile another few were hauling away the small pyramid of barrels labelled an assortment of things ranging from spices, over cheese to a particularly nasty smelling kind of ibbenese spirit. The first batch of Spitters had raised some eyebrows, for the creatures still reeked of the cleansing fluids and he hoped that the other strong smells would adequately mask theirs for the duration of the shipment.

    "Gathering wool again in our old days, are we Wisdom Qyburn?" He had long outgrown being startled when someone surprised him in his workshop, too much ruined work over such things, but this voice still managed to interrupt him more then a unnecessarily belligerent experiment. The Lady Marita had a way to sneak up on him. Or maybe he was growing less vigilant, what with her being the only one venturing this deep into his lab outside of the usual meetings of the Fleshcrafters.

    He tore his gaze from the vista before him, looking straight at the empty, bloody sockets of the Kyton woman. "It is cruel of the deathless to mock us mere mortals for the foibles of age."

    All his reprimand earned him was a slight chuckle while she glanced over the cavernous hall full of servitors living and unliving making more of their kin. "Spoken almost as if you believed in your own mortality. Don't think I do not notice when you stretch the schedule here and there to squeeze in some time for something that interests you."

    Then it was his turn to chuckle, tearing himself from the bone wrought banister and walking with her towards the new lab they shared. "I assure you, it is all in the name of knowledge."



    AN: Some slice of life from Gogossos with a little insight in Qyburn and the average workday there.
     
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    • DragonParadox said:
    The next beast to draw your eye is no more blessed with sorcery but strange to behold nonetheless, a toe-bitter the size of a horse, able to rip a man in two in one bite, though surprisingly tame given its enormous girth. They are sold as something akin to guard dogs for long trading journeys, clever enough to train and as fiercely loyal to their owners as they are dangerous to their foes. The trader making the hook-limbed insect do loops to entertain passersby and entice potential buyers assures you that he can procure as many as two hundred of them should you so desire.

    Making a note of the offer and moving on it is Lya again who spies the next beast, though more by luck than intent. What had at first appeared to be a patch of pond scum and tangled seaweed with a few large fronds at the center bursts into a churning strangling action when a small shark corpse is thrown in. Asking back home by means of Lya's other body you discover that the Forge in Lys does not have the template for such a beast so it might be worth considering at least, though they do seem to be ambush predators and not the most hardy at that.

    Towards the center of the market you come upon a grizzled merman selling a dozen elephant sized crabs with sea silk palanquins already built onto their backs to tempt any curious nobles in search of an exotic conveyance you imagine, though you are more interested in its uncannily swift claws for such a large beast. Perhaps the most dangerous creature you encounter however is more akin to the strangler weed than the armored behemoths, grasping tendrils and razor sharp spines it can toss further than a crossbow's arc the blood lily has surely earned the name for more than the enticing crimson of its petals.

    "So it can reproduce on its own...?" you prompt, there is after all only one of the deadly flowers available. Your words are suddenly drowned out by a fearsome roar besides which a lion sounds like little more than a tomcat... there is rage and hunger to that sound yes, but there is magic too. The creature that produced it is scarce less savage in appearance, with the pelt and warding blubber of a seal and the tooth-filled maw of a shark, the bunyip would make an excellent steed for triton champions, assuming they could train it at least.
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    I definitely want all the crabs and murder seals. I'm less sure about the toe biters, but wouldn't mind them for the Tritons.
    Azel said:
    Then it was his turn to chuckle, tearing himself from the bone wrought banister and walking with her towards the new lab they shared. "I assure you, it is all in the name of knowledge."
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    FOR SCIENCE!!!
     
    One Autumn Leaf said:
    Excellent. Does this change the forge order in any way? @Goldfish
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    Not this time. The stuff we ordered this month with the Aquatic template added are better off with it rather than Aqueous, since they all have more than 5 HD, which would add another +1 CR.

    It's a good template to add to our tool kit, though.

    As for the creatures that are only sale here, we should keep in mind that once they're added to the Forge database, we can grow them for half price and make further modifications. We just spend a bit over 1.7 million IM on Forge-grown servitors, another half million IM getting the Imperial Kobold project started, and over 800,000 IM on an army of Undead. All told, it was over 3 million IM.
     
    Goldfish said:
    As for the creatures that are only sale here, we should keep in mind that once they're added to the Forge database, we can grow them for half price and make further modifications. We just spend a bit over 1.7 million IM on Forge-grown servitors, another half million IM getting the Imperial Kobold project started, and over 800,000 IM on an army of Undead. All told, it was over 3 million IM.
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    So buy one of each and then proceed to make our own in our Forges after melting them.
     
    Crake said:
    I like the duality displayed here between Denys and Qyburn. All in pursuit of the same or similar goals... different methodologies.
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    In the end, all men and women of science are alike. The pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake attracts a peculiar kind of person and those who only seek knowledge to profit from it or to prove a point rarely amount to anything in truly scholarly circles.

    The difference is how far they are willing to go in their quest.
     
    Azel said:
    In the end, all men and women of science are alike. The pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake attracts a peculiar kind of person and those who only seek knowledge to profit from it or to prove a point rarely amount to anything in truly scholarly circles.

    The difference is how far they are willing to go in their quest.
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    Denys doesn't deny he wouldn't come away from any discussion with Qyburn having learned something new.

    Though deciding what to retain and what to reach for the brain bleach for is a fine social science all its own... in fact sometimes so difficult that he doesn't dare reach for it at all. Anyone can repress something long enough to remember it again later on when it's most needed. :V
     
    Azel said:
    The Artisans Pride​

    Gogossos, somewhen during the 12th month 293 AC

    Even at the height of the Freehold, there had never been more then a few of the creations that had been commonly labelled "Flesh Forge". Knowledge about them and their workings was anything but widespread, partially due to the distaste many felt for the art, partially because of dedicated efforts to suppress it. Thus there was never an effort to find a word more adequate then "Forge" to describe it.

    It was, in Qyburns humble opinion at least, a sure sign that institutionalized shortsightedness and the cultivation of ignorance as a virtue were not invented in the Citadel. Or that they managed to spread these things as far as Valyria.

    Words and names had power. Not just in this age of awakening, but since the time the first syllable was spoken and the first name bestowed on a thing. To coax the power of magic along well beaten paths by repeating chants in dead tongues came long after, just another function of their true value. To give meaning. To express ideas. Be it a priest dividing into purity and wickedness or a king into right and wrong, words allowed to them to cut the world much farther then a blade alone.

    And thus Qyburn hated the term "Flesh Forge" with a passion. It was a very limited view of the true wonder he had been granted access to. It evoked the image of a man standing behind an anvil and bashing a piece of iron into shape with a hammer. Certainly there was value in the study of metallurgy and the former maester was the last one to disparage another persons honest achievement. Some would contest the latter, though it was often those with the loudest voices who had the least of value to say, and he simply had better things to do with his limited time then to waste on their self-importance.

    No. The wonder beneath Gogossos was a forge in the same way that mans thumbs were good for grasping things. Technically these statements were true, but they missed the point so badly to be meaningless. What lay beneath Gogossos was not a thing to make other things with. It was alive. Living flesh, bone and sinew, pliable as clay and yet with that spark that allowed it to grow. If there was a forge out there that could make more of itself, Qyburn had yet to see it and he would wager that it would still be just a whole lot of magic controlling tools instead of a person doing so.

    The implications of this were staggering. Far beyond what the soldiers and smallfolk on the surface could even imagine. Perhaps even beyond what the reincarnated fleshcrafters could conceive, blinded by the prejudices and follies of their teachers. And if even half their complaints about the obsessions and proclivities of their peers in other cities were true, he shuddered to imagine the sheer work and potential that had been wasted by some old "master" forcing his students to slave away decades in the pursuit of the perfect cat of all things.

    But luckily, there was no "master" he had to defer to. No moron elevated into authority by simply being the oldest one still capable of keeping their own bladder under control for a whole night. No one to parcel out snippets of his knowledge like threats to a dog, just to die and take half of it with him before anyone was "worthy" of it. Sure, there was the former Valyrian queen and the fused snake, but their work was considered "heresy" by their own standards too. The mind boggled how a word Qyburn associated mostly with fanatics burning books and the people who wrote them managed to intrude into this craft, but those rules died with Doom and good riddance as far as he was concerned.

    There was certainly oversight, both by them and the king, but mostly they left him alone. When he had proposed some adjustments to parts of the Gogossos Complex, they had outright dissected every little thing about it. But they had the good sense to defer to him in matters he knew better then them and in the end, in not a small part thanks to the support by Wisdom Marita, he had gotten their approval. Of course there was the caveat that had he erred and threatened to damage the Complex, they would burn out his work with no regard to who or what else they would purge in the process. A sensible approach to a failed and dangerous experiment and it was not as if he would have proposed the additions if he had doubted his work.

    His own little realm, grown into the very bedrock by the Complex just as he had envisioned it. All it took was some careful prodding. A few reconnected nerves here, some glands shuffled around to direct the growth and a healthy infusion of arcane energies to adjust the nature of the new flesh. It was no different then surgery on a man, though he needed somewhat larger tools and a few of the Seekers lending a hand to haul the parts around. And just like that he had his private laboratory space, larger then the entire Dreadfort and better equipped then even the Archmaesters own surgery rooms in the Citadel.

    It felt as if it was just yesterday that he took the musty old storage room in the Dreadfort as the best workplace he would likely find. Some well sharpened barber tools and what little he had been able to salvage when he left Oldtown the only things he had. That and the melancholic memory of well ordered anatomic reference texts and cupboards full of everything from essence of nightshade to fine embalming fluids. Now he had entire cabinets full of knives and saws, each and every one so sharp that you wouldn't even feel them cut, and access to every more herbs and reagents then he had ever even heard about.

    And yet his greatest tool remained that in which he walked. When he had worked for Lord Bolton, there had always been this nagging voice in the back of his head. Every day, every bit of progress, it was always there, faint at first but growing louder and louder. What if he erred? What if he walked the wrong path? The most dreadful fate he could imagine would have been to see his work succeed, just to have it turn into a slaves collar around his neck. After all, who except him could make his creations? There was far more to it then merely chanting some words over half-rotten bones like some Necromancer.

    This was the other reason that Qyburn detested to hear the Complex derided as a mere Forge. As many a Qohoric smith had learned since the Doom, a forge could become your destiny, never to do anything beside work, eat and sleep. But him, Gogossos had set free. He still remember his first attempts to carve a femur into smaller parts to make something entirely his own. How frustrating it was to see the small bones shatter and crumble each and every time, the energies dissolving them instead of giving them new vigor as in a full corpse. What he had pieced together from the records of the Red Kings was illuminating in that regard, even though sadly the most vital parts of the manuscripts had been lost long ago, leaving him just a few clues short of the riddles solution.

    It still gnawed at him. This itch of not knowing something. Especially something so vital to his work. For now though, it would do, for the Complex made the matter mood for now. He needed no carving tools to coax a bone into the right shape, needed not to layer a muscle into shape by hand. All he needed was to carve the mold and the Complex would see it filled, the bones and muscles growing just like he needed them and ready to be plucked like ripe apples from the tree.

    They had it. Whatever yet elusive property of Life it was that got imbued into their shape as they grew, it was perfect just the way it grew, ready to take on the energies of Unlife and be truly born as one of his creations. True, his creations were still somewhat limited in their abilities compared to the work of his colleagues, but the potential was undeniable. All he needed was bone and muscle, ligament and sinew. No miles upon miles of carefully grown nerves or wheelbarrows worth of internal organs that were thrown into some of their creations. All so simple and so easy to grow as long as the Complex was fell fed.

    True, there had also been the occasional setback. Like the unfortunate explosion in the stomach pits. With all the cows and goats and other ruminants that they fed the Complexes voracious appetite, it seemed prudent to use the abundant stomaches for something useful. After all, Archon Saan had his people and some of Qyburns creation beat back the jungle with axe and spade, so they might as well use all the left over leaves and shrubbery to feed Gogossos greatest treasure. They had anticipated the issue of volatile gasses and added ventilation shafts for them. They had not anticipated some idiot crawling into one of them with a lit torch. The divinations showed him only a greedy idiot on the prowl for said treasure, not a spy sent by one of the kings many foes, though there was sadly not enough left of him to be entirely sure of that.

    The main floor of his lab still reeked of the incident, though soon enough the smell of cleansing and embalming fluids would take over again. There was so much of it being used these days that it was hard to imagine a stench persistent enough to survive it. As Qyburn watched his creations from his balcony, he felt an odd warmth at seeing their scurrying.

    Here there were skeletal servitors prying their future brethren out of their growing pods, then carrying them over to the armoring benches where they would be encased in the black steel that gave them their name. In another corner, a few seekers were busy bathing the remains of the titanic snakes he had acquired into the third cleansing bath, making them almost ready for enchantment. Meanwhile another few were hauling away the small pyramid of barrels labelled an assortment of things ranging from spices, over cheese to a particularly nasty smelling kind of ibbenese spirit. The first batch of Spitters had raised some eyebrows, for the creatures still reeked of the cleansing fluids and he hoped that the other strong smells would adequately mask theirs for the duration of the shipment.

    "Gathering wool again in our old days, are we Wisdom Qyburn?" He had long outgrown being startled when someone surprised him in his workshop, too much ruined work over such things, but this voice still managed to interrupt him more then a unnecessarily belligerent experiment. The Lady Marita had a way to sneak up on him. Or maybe he was growing less vigilant, what with her being the only one venturing this deep into his lab outside of the usual meetings of the Fleshcrafters.

    He tore his gaze from the vista before him, looking straight at the empty, bloody sockets of the Kyton woman. "It is cruel of the deathless to mock us mere mortals for the foibles of age."

    All his reprimand earned him was a slight chuckle while she glanced over the cavernous hall full of servitors living and unliving making more of their kin. "Spoken almost as if you believed in your own mortality. Don't think I do not notice when you stretch the schedule here and there to squeeze in some time for something that interests you."

    Then it was his turn to chuckle, tearing himself from the bone wrought banister and walking with her towards the new lab they shared. "I assure you, it is all in the name of knowledge."


    AN: Some slice of life from Gogossos with a little insight in Qyburn and the average workday there.
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    Ah, good ol' Qyburn.

    I'm imagining his first tour of the Flesh Forge as something akin to the children's tour of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, but with slightly more affronts against nature and sanity (but only barely...Wonka got up to some shady shit, after all).

    Neat chapter, dude. I like the mention of how the Forge is so readily expanded and modified. That meshes well with our use of it to grow large numbers of very large creatures, along with many, many smaller ones.
     
    Come and see, waiting for me, a world of pure imagination~
    Take a look, and perchance, find a putrid creaaaatiooon~
    We'll start, with a rinse, of this ghoulish expulsion...
     
    @Goldfish @Azel how many undead can we fit into our attack realistically? Have we already caught up to our quota for the assault, or are we able to fit more goodies into the attack? With a city as large as that of Brass, I'm expecting we'll need a ton, but OTOH not too many beyond the realm of reason because we can bottleneck our enemy and pick and choose our targets, and they can only shove so many forces into one place. Well, you know, so long as we square up in terms of CR. I bet we could even gank of a couple of their high CR big bois. Because we absolutely have no need to fight fair.
     
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    Crake said:
    @Goldfish @Azel how many undead can we fit into our attack realistically? Have we already caught up to our quota for the assault, or are we able to fit more goodies into the attack? With a city as large as that of Brass, I'm expecting we'll need a ton, but OTOH not too many beyond the realm of reason because we can bottleneck our enemy and pick and choose our targets, and they can only shove so many forces into one place. Well, you know, so long as we square up in terms of CR. I bet we could even gank of a couple of their high CR big bois. Because we absolutely have no need to fight fair.
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    I'm not sure, but given that Undead don't need much in the way of personal space and can be packed in like zombie-sardines, we can probably pack quite a few of them into each of those Efreeti ships we captured on the Valyrian raid.

    At the very least, we should pack each ship full, along with strategically placed surprise!Undead being released in other locations.

    We're also planning to use them against the Deep Ones, and there is bound to be quite a bit of attrition among the Undead units during those fights. Good thing we can make more.
     
    Goldfish said:
    I'm not sure, but given that Undead don't need much in the way of personal space and can be packed in like zombie-sardines, we can probably pack quite a few of them into each of those Efreeti ships we captured on the Valyrian raid.

    At the very least, we should pack each ship full, along with strategically placed surprise!Undead being released in other locations.

    We're also planning to use them against the Deep Ones, and there is bound to be quite a bit of attrition among the Undead units during those fights. Good thing we can make more.
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    Seriously... aquatic undead pseudo-constructs? They are going to wonder WTF we came up with that bullshit on the fly. 😂
     
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