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

Twenty-Ninth Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC

Oldtown looks both like and unlike you remember it in the morning light. The Hightower still looks on upon the mouth of the Honeywine, a testament to its nameless builders, the Citadel still broods behind its sphinx-guarded gate, while on the streets and byways, commerce, craft, and all the business of folk high and low flows as it had for centuries. Yet there is change, too, the most obvious of which is smaller numbers of septas and septons, the smaller crowds near the Starry Sept with the end of the Conclave, but what strikes you as most unusual are the lanterns. Forged of black iron faced with wavy glass of a sort that would bring a scowl to the face of a Myrish artisan, these lanterns are still rarer and more precious than they seem beneath the light of day, for each and every one of them is magic.

Beside you, Dany whistles. "Someone's been doing more than hunting monsters down back alleys. A faint aura of abjuration... Cerulean light?" The last question is spoken almost with disbelief. It would be prohibitively expensive for everyone from the Lantern Bearers to the Citadel to the Faith and Baelor Hightower to have bound the banishing sign to thousands of lanterns. According to rumors, a few of the embattled citadels in Nirvana had done something of that sort, but that was with thousands of years of effort in a realm where magic never faded.

Looking more closely at the lanterns, you realize their purpose is not to strike at the servants of the Deep Ones directly but empower the Lantern Bearers while they are within the circle of light. Sympathetic magic, it should allow their sorcery and steel alike to strike at creatures that would be otherwise beyond their strength.

By the Blood of Man Undone, reads one inscription in an odd attempt to write the Common Tongue with First Man runes. Now you really are looking forward to meeting the Lantern Bearers and curious to know what the other party you came to Old Town to meet thinks of this development.


Tobyn is as cheerful as you have ever seem him, which is to say only faintly scowling at the brickwork behind you as he looks around for eavesdroppers or foes. "So you've seen the lanterns, have you?"

"They are rather too numerous to miss," you point out dryly. "What exactly do they do?"

"They give us that little bit of extra power against deep things, blood signs burn brighter and longer, steel sinks deeper, even those poisons and vials you give us are stronger in their light. Easier to work exorcisms, too, for those that know the old rites." He goes on to explain that this had been a joint project to protect Oldtown over the past few months, including the Lantern bearers themselves, Lord Hightower, and the Faith. A few Maesters had been involved, too, but not the Citadel as whole, apparently over an argument with the Faith that Tobyn had not paid much attention to.


Of course, the obvious weakness of such lanterns is that they can be put out, but the artisans involved in their making had obviously seen the danger. When one of these lanterns is destroyed all the power poured into its making flashes in a single instant bright enough to kill many Far Realm Touched beings and alert the city's protectors all at once.

"It won't hold up if an army of them comes in force," the grizzled Lantern Bearer explains grimly, but at lest it makes it easier to deal with skulkers and madmen. Even to those it doesn't grant any power to, like the guard, take heart in knowing it is there, that Oldtown ain't as black as a miser's heart anymore. "What of you, Yer Grace? Heard about more monsters and fiends to hunt or are you having septon troubles like last time?"

I want to see if I can negotiate with potential illithid rebels, is not an answer you can give here and now, perhaps later if the meeting should prove worth your time. "I have found information that is worth investigating, but I can't be sure if it's a fox hunt in the dark or not," you borrow the Reacher saying to lend your words just that touch more familiarity which would make him less inclined to question them.

"Good hunting then, or best hunting, which is to say none at all," the Lantern Bearer wishes you in parting.


The headquarters of Sunset Shores investing is as discrete as you had imagined it would be, a greystone building that may have started life as a noble's townhouse, but has since been surrounded by merchant's homes and even warehouses, the docks near enough to hear the bustle upon which the hoped for fortunes of those who enter here are to be made.

As you and Dany enter, wearing not only glamors but enchantments that those glamors might deceive even a fury's sight, a small brass bell rings overhead and a clerks promptly appears asking about your business. After only the usual amount of waiting to establish your host's importance, you are greeted by a man who can count perhaps fifty, hair and beard already turning white though he moves with the brisk stride of a much younger man. His quick smile that does not quite reach his eyes.

"What can Sunset Shores to for you good Ser?"

What do you reply?

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OOC: So yeah, some very good rolls this time around. Turns out the Lantern Bearers could do quite a lot with access to Interplanar trade, the resources of House Hightower on their side and the Faith eager to demonstrate the wider use of its mages. Not yet edited.

The main antagonist makes a deal with Mephistopheles to craft a ritual to become a genius loci. His goal in the AP was to become the immortal spirit of the entire country, and I thought Qyburn might be taking a similar path after being inspired by the Gogossi Flesh Forge workers melding with the forge and outliving the Doom that way. The 'Viserys-approved' bit is because obviously we wouldn't want any of our people making deals with archdevils.