A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
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- a song of ice and fire a sword without a hilt d&d 3.5 dungeons & dragons 100% high octane dragon fuel ave corvidae battle action dragon diplomacy best sister bureaucromancy delicious soul-stuff dragon dreams come true dragon ta'veren greatest uncle hubris is a coward's word in defiance of gods and men mammon's folly mutually assured mage's disjunction qm murderhobo top tier coatl
Evaunit02mark1
S-s-smell the Prey, S-s-start the Hunt.
[X] Goldfish
egoo
Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed
- Location
- Russia
Having thought on it, fuck the barrows, I don't care for the Thennlands enough.
We don't have enough high-level people to clear them all out in any time soon, and the Thenns need to be evacuated while we have the resources to spare.
So, I say, we just Earthquake, Hammer of Waters and SoD the location. Screw the place.
Can we all agree on the following (Minor) action, instead of painstakingly sending people to try and clear out the high-level barrows there? While we have objectively more important targets to hit? Please?
[] Also after grabbing the Thenns, their valley shall be rendered of no use for the Winter via the Earthquake, Hammer of Waters, Shadow of Doom and Control Weather (tornado-strength winds filled with volcanic ash, for one).
*is kinda stuck planning out next month's assignments without the above and 100% foregoing the far-North barrows*
We don't have enough high-level people to clear them all out in any time soon, and the Thenns need to be evacuated while we have the resources to spare.
So, I say, we just Earthquake, Hammer of Waters and SoD the location. Screw the place.
Can we all agree on the following (Minor) action, instead of painstakingly sending people to try and clear out the high-level barrows there? While we have objectively more important targets to hit? Please?
[] Also after grabbing the Thenns, their valley shall be rendered of no use for the Winter via the Earthquake, Hammer of Waters, Shadow of Doom and Control Weather (tornado-strength winds filled with volcanic ash, for one).
*is kinda stuck planning out next month's assignments without the above and 100% foregoing the far-North barrows*
The next update might take a while I seem to have a mild fever, shouldn't be anything too bad even if I did get unlucky with the current epidemic (I'm not in any kind of at risk group), but I would rather not write with a fever, from experience it's not my best work.
So to distract everyone from irl concerns, I'm going to share a paranoid theory on devil hijinks.
Thinking on how the devils will explore this situation, I can help but wonder if they've decided we're worth the next size up of stomping boot. They also want to grab as many of those sweet sweet mortal souls as possible, so something that combines frying an uppity dragon and making money would be ideal for them.
Westeros is pretty obsessive about tracking official family trees, and even has convenient labels for bastards from important families. How long do you think it would take for a cell or two to get access to that stuff and start marking down unprotected members of the companion's families?
A bastard cousin is still a cousin, and plenty of blood magic doesn't care about that degree of removal from the main line. Just to provide an example, the spell Blood Ties clearly demonstrates that at least some forms of it don't care about acknowledgment or degrees of separation that don't effect genetic similarity.
So a sufficiently powerful devil likely has better ways of doing all of this same stuff and trivial access to the information needed to use it. For bonus points they could pick a city in a region of the world we don't operate in and set up a ritual site for the main event. at the site they could then set up a substantial sacrifice of innocent people for power, and use family members of as many companions as they can get for vectors.
Getting through the protections on a high level PC is one thing, but slapping everyone related to them with something is a different animal altogether. If I was a piece of shit devil looking to screw with us, I wouldn't bother with a killing them. I'd make it something nasty and really hard to remove, like a constantly escalating pain curse, so that everyone is caught between their important work and their desire to help/avenge their families.
Once everything was in place, said devil could just sit on it and wait for us to start something important, like the reconquest or a war with the deep ones, then fire it off at an inopportune time. Something lesser aimed at our administrative apparatus would be even more effective if they could get the records.
Even if it wasn't perfectly successful, they'd still get a lot of souls and the brownie points with Mammon would be a boon to any middle manager type devil looking to move up in the world. If they were mind blanked and compartmentalized how would we know before it happened?
Westeros is pretty obsessive about tracking official family trees, and even has convenient labels for bastards from important families. How long do you think it would take for a cell or two to get access to that stuff and start marking down unprotected members of the companion's families?
A bastard cousin is still a cousin, and plenty of blood magic doesn't care about that degree of removal from the main line. Just to provide an example, the spell Blood Ties clearly demonstrates that at least some forms of it don't care about acknowledgment or degrees of separation that don't effect genetic similarity.
So a sufficiently powerful devil likely has better ways of doing all of this same stuff and trivial access to the information needed to use it. For bonus points they could pick a city in a region of the world we don't operate in and set up a ritual site for the main event. at the site they could then set up a substantial sacrifice of innocent people for power, and use family members of as many companions as they can get for vectors.
Getting through the protections on a high level PC is one thing, but slapping everyone related to them with something is a different animal altogether. If I was a piece of shit devil looking to screw with us, I wouldn't bother with a killing them. I'd make it something nasty and really hard to remove, like a constantly escalating pain curse, so that everyone is caught between their important work and their desire to help/avenge their families.
Once everything was in place, said devil could just sit on it and wait for us to start something important, like the reconquest or a war with the deep ones, then fire it off at an inopportune time. Something lesser aimed at our administrative apparatus would be even more effective if they could get the records.
Even if it wasn't perfectly successful, they'd still get a lot of souls and the brownie points with Mammon would be a boon to any middle manager type devil looking to move up in the world. If they were mind blanked and compartmentalized how would we know before it happened?
OK, fever's down.
Vote closed.
Vote closed.
- Location
- ?????????
Thanks for introducing that spell to us. Now we can make Tywin's life hell.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
With a lack of archmages, curses would be a debilitating thing to deal with and consume literally all of our attention.
We are well past that point where it would even be a speed bump. No, if someone is going to use blood magic in a grand ritual to hurt us, it will be of the "Kill them straight dead" variety, or it will be a large effect that could at least momentarily distract us, just as they send kill teams while we're unprepared. Personally I would recommend something that strips away magical blessings from as many Companions and high tier PCs as possible, then send every high CR asset on an assassination run. It it the most efficient use of those resources and having a constant array of battle buffs due to persistence is one of our greatest advantages.
An even greater one would be some kind of effect that makes us unable to interact with magical items for even a few minutes, and both together would significantly weaken our strongest combatants.
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We can skip that part and just go for Visions of Doom and Mindwipe. VoD is mind effecting, but PfE Specifies " the target is immune to any new attempts to possess or exercise mental control over the target" this spell doesn't try to control him, so it should get through fine.
Inserted tally
Part MMMCDXXIX: Upon a Brittle Arch
Upon a Brittle Arch
Twenty-Sixth Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
Best to distract him from talk of Dorne altogether, you reason. "The situation with the fey is more dire than you may realize, my lord..." Thus you recount all you had learned of the plans of the Court of Stars, if not precisely in the order you had learned it and not from the same sources. It would ill behoove you to reveal your doings at Ashford as Buttercup, and even more so to mention the pact with Crimson Lotus.
Alas, explaining the Orphne Court and why you trust them proves to be no small feat. "Rogues and whores the lot of 'em I say, they dress up pretty, but I've some experience with that I do. You'd be best served driving the lot of them out of your realm, mark my words, Your Grace. Why one of them made a bargain with the old miller down in the vilage to keep his wheel grinding so long as his wife spun white wool for them to use each day, but then they stopped saying she pricked her finger and got some blood on the thread." The lord snorts. "They said the bloody thread killed one of 'em. Bullshit, they got all they needed and left the miller to rot."
Lya gives you a worried look over his head. It is not unwarranted. The Lord of Bandallon is only just starting his tale. "Went out with some armsmen to make 'em pay what they owed and the bastards made by men get lost in some kind of magic fog. It took 'em six weeks to come back though they all swore by the Father it had only been a little while for them. Then this tart with leaves in her hair shows up, said she wants to help me fight fishmen from the Sunset Sea. Do you see any fish 'round here, Your Grace?"
"The Deep Ones are very real, my lord, and a deadly threat to all the Seven Kingdoms and beyond," you interject grimly. It serves you well enough to have him reject the Court of Stars, but not at the cost of ignoring deadly peril.
Your words do not have as much of an impact as you might have hoped. "Only fish around here are in the Willwater and we've been eating those since before there was a keep at Bandallon. The leafy tart wouldn't pay me back for the trouble with the miller, not hand over the guilty parties to put in the stocks, said it was a different sort of fey, like these shadow ones you talked about, Your Grace. Didn't believe a word of it. Like folk without the good sense to build walls and roofs would have kings or their word and pledge would be worth shit. Lies and mummery, Your Grace, it's all lies and mummery..." Lord Tybalt proclaims the last with the tone of one dispensing sage advice upon the young for all he had used the title.
Taking a second look at the man, you glimpse for the first time what lies beyond the facade of robust good cheer... fear. He does not wish the fey envoy to have been right and so he named them liars, he did not wish to acknowledge that the wyldfae could set his armsmen wandering and make a mockery of his judgement and so he named them powerless. How much of the truth can you share without making him crack? you wonder. How much can you afford to keep back?
What do you reply?
[] Write in
OOC: Not the best rolls this time around, but you made the sense motive check not to just roll over him with answers at least.
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- Location
- Germany
Oh wow.
At the beginning of that monologue I wanted to quote a part to make fun of the general idiocy, but then it kept going and going...
So I'll just stick with the relevant point.
He's not suited for ruling over a sandcastle if he can't deal with the world as it is.
Edit: Also, handing people blood-stained materials if it was for any magical purpose could kill and we certainly wouldn't pay for that if our Scholarium had needed to buy white wool either.
At the beginning of that monologue I wanted to quote a part to make fun of the general idiocy, but then it kept going and going...
So I'll just stick with the relevant point.
He's not suited for ruling over a sandcastle if he can't deal with the world as it is.
Edit: Also, handing people blood-stained materials if it was for any magical purpose could kill and we certainly wouldn't pay for that if our Scholarium had needed to buy white wool either.
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tarrangar
Fat arctic chicken
No but on the other hand, we wouldn't have just given a halfassed spin white wool request, we would have explained that it needed to be pristine, and that as it will be used for magic, they need to report even the smallest deviation in a batch.
- Location
- Germany
Okay, but to totally counter your argument: They are Fey.
Straight talk seems difficult to them.
- Location
- Argentina
So, better wait off until he gets a Darwin Award?
- Location
- Germany
Maybe keep an divinatory eye on him so that we can step in when he is replaced by the pod-people, or when he dies and his heir wants to make a deal with something.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
This dude is...brittle. I think it might be best to assure him that he was right to reject the Fey pact, that he should remain wary of them in the future, and that we will keep an eye on homelands to make sure they don't get up to any funny business. While we're at it it wouldn't hurt to promise to keep the Dornish in check, since that's another big concern for him.
And then we take our leave, slowly and with no sudden movements, because Blackbar seems a bit mentally delicate and startling him might cause him to snap.
For now he's keeping the Fey out, and that's what is most important here.
Does he have any heirs, @DragonParadox?
And then we take our leave, slowly and with no sudden movements, because Blackbar seems a bit mentally delicate and startling him might cause him to snap.
For now he's keeping the Fey out, and that's what is most important here.
Does he have any heirs, @DragonParadox?
- Location
- United States
Yikes, we're going to want to have a Scholarum mage stationed here for him to lean on.
He has a daughter of twenty two, still unmarried and three nephews from his late brother. The succession is not very clear.
Yeah, just assure this man that that if he has any sort of problem, or any weird-thing-that-is-certainly-not-a-problem-because-everything-is-fine whatsoever, he should call our guys.
We might also want to take a look at his daughter, just in case we need someone to talk to here on short notice.
We might also want to take a look at his daughter, just in case we need someone to talk to here on short notice.
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tarrangar
Fat arctic chicken
Well yeah, that was kind of my argument, they had a legitimate complaint, but the situation is just as much on them, as it was their failure to communicate, that caused her to just shrug off, spilling a drop or two of blood on the wool, which is entirely reasonable if the wool is going to be made into a shirt or something, but not for wool meant for use in magic, so it's kind of a both sides were in the wrong situation, she should have though more about what magical beings might want wool for, and they should have communicated clearer, that they needed it to be pristine.
- Location
- Germany
As long as he doesn't believe the mage, that seems useless.
[X] Retreat with a few friendly platitudes
-[X] Keep up divinations to know when he has a breakdown, dies or gets controlled/replaced by hostile forces, until then leave him alone.
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