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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'm okay with being a manipulative chessmaster, but I will point out, as far as Pol An Ning knows, we did not walk up to her and spew lies. A shifty person who was so "loosely affiliated with certain parties in the west", a transparent guise if there ever was one, offered her the world, and she was naive enough to believe him, yet what he offered wasn't a stab in the back. It was hot goods and a way to lie to raise her standing. We were fully transparent as Corlys when we spun a cover story for her. She was fully willing to lie to regain her position at court.

She lost it, and now her new patron is offering to yank her ass out of the fire... keyword, offering. I am actually somewhat expecting her to be resistant to the idea on a number of grounds, but her situation looks quite hopeless without our backing.
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Being the chess master is one thing, throwing it in someone's face is another. Xue is going to use the fact that we admitted our "crime" as a key piece of evidence to puncture any political defense that Pol An Ning will try to put together.

The implicit assumption when one makes an under the table deal is that neither party will up and admit it to the first person who asks. We didn't give our word, but she could reasonably view this as a betrayal.

From that point it isn't too much further of a leap to assume this was our plan all along. We give her just enough support to draw her into the open, then provide evidence to her political rivals to burn down her local support to facilitate an attempt to strong arm her into service. That kind of plan is stupid, but not out of the realm of possibility for a greedy and/or arrogant leader.

That kind of resentment is a poor foundation for a working relationship.
 
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BronzeTongue said:
Being the chess master is one thing, throwing it in someone's face is another. Xue is going to use the fact that we admitted our "crime" as a key piece of evidence to puncture any political defense that Pol An Ning will try to put together.

The implicit assumption when one makes an under the table deal is that neither party will up and admit it to the first person who asks. We didn't give our word, but she could reasonably view this as a betrayal.

From that point it isn't too much further of a leap to assume this was our plan all along. We have her just enough support to draw her into the open, then provide evidence to her political rivals to burn down her local support to facilitate an attempt to strong arm her into service. That kind of plan is stupid, but not out of the realm of possibility for a greedy and/or arrogant leader.

That kind of resentment is a poor foundation for a working relationship.
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You've convinced me. I don't know how to help her. We could help her save face by taking responsibility for her to the people who ostensibly hold authority over her, but there's no advantage to us if we have no intention of forming a stronger relationship with Pol Qo's court to begin with.

I guess we should just stand by it.

[X] Plan "Do you feel like a hero yet?"
-[X] You have nothing to gain by bargaining the happiness of your extended family away, just to help Pol An Ning save what little face she has left. You are done here in Yi Ti, once your business is finished... and while part of you thinks she doesn't deserve this, you have to face the reality of all of their situation: You think they are likely going to die. If Bu Gai does not kill them or drive them out of Yi Ti, there are plenty of others who seek their lives. The disunity you've sewn here by speaking a handful of sentences has done all of the work Aegon intended to at the last, and it is all to your advantage if you hope to maintain official relations with Yin.
 
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[X] Previous Plan
-[X] Shrug at Lady Xue. Then go directly to Pol Ning and offer her a place in your court, where she will be appreciated and honored, rather than cut down socially for the sake of political expedience.

For those who prefer this plan over the new one.
 
Ths is sad.
Alexa, play Despacito.

I would have like her to be grabbed as a PC but...
It is really unlikely we could manage that, showing ourselves as a cold manipulator and her last chance, or not.
Family loyalty, all that jazz. Yi-Ti shows itself far too keen on such sort of tradition so far.

The sad part to this all being, well, our effort on getting these people educated on the real threats is wasted now.
Xue turned it in a way that the Orange won't take the data as seriously as he should, now.

Worse even, our deal with Ning (she was to keep us appraised of the local threats) also falls through.

But, fuck it, we did what we could have.
No one can say we didn't try to keep people here safer in every way (beyond even killing Tiamat's pawns ourselves).
If Yi-Ti burns now, well, it is not because we failed to share some lore.
 
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egoo said:
Ths is sad.
Alexa, play Despacito.

I would have like her to be grabbed as a PC but...
It is really unlikely we could manage that, showing ourselves as a cold manipulator and her last chance, or not.
Family loyalty, all that jazz. Yi-Ti shows itself far too keen on such sort of tradition so far.

The sad part to this all being, well, our effort on getting these people educated on the real threats is wasted now.
Xue turned it in a way that the Orange won't take the data as seriously as he should, now.

Worse even, our deal with Ning (she was to keep us appraised of the local threats) also falls through.

But, fuck it, we did what we could have.
No one can say we didn't try to keep people here safer in every way (beyond even killing Tuaamt's pawns ourselves).
If Yi-Ti burns now, well, it is not because we failed to share some lore.
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I'm not fully invested in these characters, so part of me resents that people voted for Artemis when I tried pointing out we shouldn't do what we did, but I also didn't take a better tack and say "we should say X instead if, by chance, we want to recruit Pol An Ning later on down the road". So it's not really his fault.

Because now we've just made her an enemy, if she's astute enough to realize that we sold her out, possibly to sow strife in OJ's court and nothing more.

Or maybe just because it amused us.

Part of me hopes Viserys accepts he throws lives away like they mean nothing to him if they're just in the wrong place at the wrong time and embraces that instead of pulling away from it, it would actually lead to some character development.
 
Crake said:
Part of me hopes Viserys accepts he throws lives away like they mean nothing to him if they're just in the wrong place at the wrong time and embraces that instead of pulling away from it, it would actually lead to some character development.
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This should be something we've already embraced. Just look at how we took Lys. We negotiated with the sister of the former Triarch, and then brutally had her and her family murdered via Aedon & loaned Erinyes.
 
Crake said:
You've convinced me. I don't know how to help her. We could help her save face by taking responsibility for her to the people who ostensibly hold authority over her, but there's no advantage to us if we have no intention of forming a stronger relationship with Pol Qo's court to begin with.

I guess we should just stand by it.

[X] Plan "Do you feel like a hero yet?"
-[X] You have nothing to gain by bargaining the happiness of your extended family away, just to help Pol An Ning save what little face she has left. You are done here in Yi Ti, once your business is finished... and while part of you thinks she doesn't deserve this, you have to face the reality of all of their situation: You think they are likely going to die. If Bu Gai does not kill them or drive them out of Yi Ti, there are plenty of others who seek their lives. The disunity you've sewn here by speaking a handful of sentences has done all of the work Aegon intended to at the last, and it is all to your advantage if you hope to maintain official relations in Yin.
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There might be a middle way here; we screwed up by discarding information security, we might be able to push a little more while Xue is right in front of us to salvage something for Pol An Ning.

Right now Xue is in foreign relations mode because the biggest bad she's seen in a long while (presumably) is off the board. We could make an attempt to point out that Xue is failing utterly at her duty by playing games about who should hold the torch with Pol An Ning while they both should be looking for monsters.

Getting them to coexist -even if it doesn't last - will give Pol An Ning some space and time to dull the scandal.

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Duesal said:
This should be something we've already embraced. Just look at how we took Lys. We negotiated with the sister of the former Triarch, and then brutally had her and her family murdered via Aedon & loaned Erinyes.
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This is different though; we didn't deliberately plan out revealing anything, we just discarded information security because we didn't consider the consequences. Grappling with his ability to make mistakes is still something Viserys has to deal with.
 
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BronzeTongue said:
There might be a middle way here; we screwed up by discarding information security, we might be able to push a little more while Xue is right in front of us to salvage something for Pol An Ning.

Right now Xue is in foreign relations mode because the biggest bad she's seen in a long while (presumably) is off the board. We could make an attempt to point out that Xue is failing utterly at her duty by playing games about who should hold the torch with Pol An Ning while they both should be looking for monsters.

Getting them to coexist -even if it doesn't last - will give Pol An Ning some space and time to dull the scandal.

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This is different though; we didn't deliberately plan out revealing anything, we just discarded information security because we didn't consider the consequences. Grappling with his ability to make mistakes is still something Viserys has to deal with.
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Give me a plan and I might vote for you. I don't really know what to do with Xue. She's snake-y. I do better when I'm the snake.
 
BronzeTongue said:
This is different though; we didn't deliberately plan out revealing anything, we just discarded information security because we didn't consider the consequences. Grappling with his ability to make mistakes is still something Viserys has to deal with.
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Crake said:
Yeah, but they were also unapologetic slavers.
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Granted, my opinion here is colored by the fact that I never cared about Pol Ning and I still don't, so I'm not particularly sorry she was screwed over. It's pretty much the same in my eyes as what we pulled in Lys.
 
Duesal said:
Granted, my opinion here is colored by the fact that I never cared about Pol Ning and I still don't, so I'm not particularly sorry she was screwed over. It's pretty much the same in my eyes as what we pulled in Lys.
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Okay but, given I've never seen you vote based on driving characters or based on a purely emotional response to a situation, what do you even care about in these types of situations?
 
Crake said:
Okay but, given I've never seen you vote based on driving characters or based on a purely emotional response to a situation, what do you even care about in these types of situations?
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What we get out of the bargain is the biggest thing I care about. There are other factors that I consider, like how much I'm annoyed with a character (way back in the day I would have tried to have Relath killed in a heart-beat, for example), so it's not that I never vote based on a purely emotional response, just rarely.

With Pol Ning I was never convinced she was that valuable of an asset to pursue, so I was content to mostly ignore her after giving her the lore.
 
Duesal said:
What we get out of the bargain is the biggest thing I care about. There are other factors that I consider, like how much I'm annoyed with a character (way back in the day I would have tried to have Relath killed in a heart-beat, for example), so it's not that I never vote based on a purely emotional response, just rarely.

With Pol Ning I was never convinced she was that valuable of an asset to pursue, so I was content to mostly ignore her after giving her the lore.
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The above example kind of shows that you're not beyond considering beyond the scope of what a character currently is, though. You're quite happy with Relath now, and that had nothing to do with you or how you voted. Someone presented a plan arguing on the basis that Relath was better off alive than dead, same with Rhango... another success story for us.

Except, keeping in mind, while you might argue "that's just the other side of the coin for me to consider, we still got something out of it so that's why I would support votes like that", those votes never happen because someone is considering first what a character, who has done nothing but antagonize us and/or proved a headache in the past, has to offer us. On the face of things, it seems like they offer us nothing at all.
 
All things considered, if we can salvage this situation, we may be able to secure a beachhead to take over Yi-Ti after our conquest of Westeros. We just need to secure our friend, or "Change" this useless mages mind.
 
I see Yi Ti as a pretty distant concern. I mean Westeros will take a while to wrassle into compliance by itself, then there's the rest of Western Essos to consider, and to really start thinking about expanding eastward, we first have to tackle Slaver's Bay and Qarth. And I mean, at that point, you might very well consider it more productive to spend a long time consolidating your gains. You will have trouble holding onto them as is.
 
Honestly if we throw up all of our social buffs do you think we could diplomance Xue into using Pol's weakened position to subordinate her at the court rather than marry her off, long enough to arrange a meeting with Orange so that we can try to diplomance him into acting like a brother should?
 
Possibly, but it again comes back to what our motive is. Speaking from the standpoint of political calculus, it is really hard to believe that Viserys would make various concessions simply because he is trying to have people get along and stop family from fighting each other. 1) We might as well ally with them by that point, and 2) it makes Viserys seem like a soft-hearted fool and thus really out of character given the context of this conversation is us holding a discussion in the waist-high ashes of the last people who mildly annoyed us.

These people think we're ruthless AF, and they're not wrong, we're just also a little mentally unstable due to dissenting opinions from the hivemind.

Err, I mean, Targaryen Madness.
 
Crake said:
The above example kind of shows that you're not beyond considering beyond the scope of what a character currently is, though. You're quite happy with Relath now, and that had nothing to do with you or how you voted. Someone presented a plan arguing on the basis that Relath was better off alive than dead, same with Rhango... another success story for us.

Except, keeping in mind, while you might argue "that's just the other side of the coin for me to consider, we still got something out of it so that's why I would support votes like that", those votes never happen because someone is considering first what a character, who has done nothing but antagonize us and/or proved a headache in the past, has to offer us. On the face of things, it seems like they offer us nothing at all.
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Regarding Relath, it's a bit of a miracle we didn't kill him. We planned to kill him and were legitimately going to celebrate it if the Dragon Duel ended in a fatality, but the dice favored him and he surrendered before we could finish him off, so we just shrugged and moved on. After that the ancient vows of lordship flipped our entire narrative with him, and he turned out to be a surprisingly good vassal when he'd been such an antagonistic acquaintance.

It's a bit more complicated with Pol Ning. Objectively, yes, there is use we could get out of Pol Ning. Any PC can be turned into a proper asset, spellcasters especially. But this family in general comes with a lot of political baggage. While I was the one arguing to keep the possibility of working with the Orange Emperor open, the more I learn about the royal court here the less I actually want to stick around.

When I say I don't care, it's not out of hatred or disdain towards Pol Ning, I've got nothing against her, it's just a lack of desire to recruit her. She might grow on me later, like Relath eventually did, though. Similarly I won't stand in the way of people who want to extend the offer to her now that the fires in the area have died down and we actually have time, but it doesn't look like she'd have all that much reason to be grateful. The only thing I can see working is an appeal to the lady in front of us to be merciful to the girl (and here we need to appeal to her in the sense of what she'd gain out of it, what reason she'd have to spare a rival in court), and/or an apology to the girl herself. But that would mainly mitigate the damage, rather than seeing a grateful woman come into our service.
 
Crake said:
Possibly, but it again comes back to what our motive is. Speaking from the standpoint of political calculus, it is really hard to believe that Viserys would make various concessions simply because he is trying to have people get along and stop family from fighting each other. 1) We might as well ally with them by that point, and 2) it makes Viserys seem like a soft-hearted fool and thus really out of character given the context of this conversation is us holding a discussion in the waist-high ashes of the last people who mildly annoyed us.

These people think we're ruthless AF, and they're not wrong, we're just also a little mentally unstable due to dissenting opinions from the hivemind.

Err, I mean, Targaryen Madness.
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When you say concessions what do you have in mind? Since while I am enough of a bleeding heart to try and help Pol because we thoughtlessly screwed her when it is only spell slots and a few updates worth of time being invested (which is what I had in mind with my prior post), if the cost is actually significant I am inclined to be as you put it "ruthless as fuck."
 
*Comes back after Carnaval + xianxia binge*

Well, let's see what's going on. Oh, another Misfits omak-
Crake said:
Weiss
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Holy shit.
Crake said:
The girls had reported that its exposed blade would burn when unsheathed, with near-to-white flames.
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Isn't it out usual Searing Fire Red?
Crake said:
Richard Lonmouth as he introduced himself initially, replied, brow furrowing deeply
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I think "Ser" is as deeply a part of his name as "Richard" at this point.

I should go into more binges if it gets omakes like this. What am I going to go d next, Vee in Stranger Things?
 
Smartphone said:
When you say concessions what do you have in mind? Since while I am enough of a bleeding heart to try and help Pol because we thoughtlessly screwed her when it is only spell slots and a few updates worth of time being invested (which is what I had in mind with my prior post), if the cost is actually significant I am inclined to be as you put it "ruthless as fuck."
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Well the most obvious would be to acknowledge Pol Qo. It's hard to trust our motives when we have dealings with Yin, the only thing mildly relaxing their paranoia about us is the fact we've had no official meeting with him, something that Bu Gai could not hide at all. The entire country would know if we'd met him within a month.

I think we could plead for mercy if we took the right tack, though. It's believable that Viserys is ruthless to his enemies, but doesn't want to see bystanders hurt because they got involved with him.
 
[X] Attempt to convince Lady Xue that bandaging or otherwise destroying Pol An Ning is a betrayal of her oaths and position.
-[X] The bitch queen is but one of many horrors, and had her eye been fully on Yi-Ti they very well could have lost even if they did everything correctly. Yi-Ti needs all of the mages it can muster, and they need to stand together to defend it.
-[X] Give Xue an overview of the threats active on the plane. Attempt to weave in anecdotes of individual victims to drive home the visceral horror of these entities and the fates of the people they take.
-[X] exiling Pol An Ning is removing a powerful resource, and forcing her to kneel would be using the solemn weight of their shared duty as a bludgeon for the sake of personal gain. To do either would make her the worst sort of parasite, and a fool besides.
-[X] Burying the hatchet and finding a way to work together as civilized people is the only reasonable way forward if she means for Yi-Ti to survive.
-[X] Ultimately, it is her choice, but it is in the face of sincere temptation that true values are defined. Will she risk mixing the ashes of Yi-Ti with those of the monsters she seeks to burn by placing herself above her position?

The tone is probably not the best, but its late here and I wanted to get the basic outline down. Plus, the thread doesn't seem to care much about offending Xue, so directness isn't risking too much.

It might seem like a little much, but there's a good practical reason for this. It's bad for business to screw people over by mistake and then flee the area. If we'd done it on purpose that'd be one thing, but messing up and leaving someone else holding the bag is a good way to drastically reduce the number of people willing to deal with you if it gets around.

Trying to talk our business partner out of the trouble we talked her into seems like a reasonably approach to take.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
I think "Ser" is as deeply a part of his name as "Richard" at this point.
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Ozpin brushed over the fact that he's a knight. I will say that Richard did introduce himself by "Ser", but such antiquated fixtures in Ozpins mind do him no favors in the post-royalist Remnant. Keep in mind, Ozpin definitely was involved with the current order of the world. He helped make all of the Academies.
 
I low how the pile of ash keep getting taller XD

Anyway, I see Viserys seeing this as an opportunity to get her, if only because she's in a position to be free from previous arrangements.

I mean, she's not a little girl. She went along a foreigner plan in order to help her brother who was doing fuck all to deal with his own enemies, and when we dealt with the GC we also made things easier to him, and since that was one of her goals it kind of accomplished her goal.

It's just that her brother wants to throw her under the bus due to politics, instead of trying to bend politics in favor of his sister who went the distance to try and help him.

I can see Viserys picking her up on principle, if only because he wants someone with that kind of loyalty, but directed at him and his Imperium.
 
[x]BronzeTongue

I like this approach, it captures my umbrage at the situation and helps to assuage the guilt of screwing Pol Ning through carelessness.
 
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