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

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Adhoc vote count started by Goldfish on May 24, 2020 at 8:46 PM, finished with 76 posts and 9 votes.
  • [X] Duchess Asha Greyjoy, Captain of the IMS Hunter's Moon
    -[X] Asha budgeted for over a year as a successful chain-breaker and accomplished sailor, eventually earning her own commission and captaincy through her own hard-wrung efforts.
    -[X] She recognizes the need for her people to change, that the 'stupidity' tax on expected behavior from the Ironborn is simultaneously unsustainable and self-perpetuating. Only by serious efforts to integrate it with the wider realm, through trade and diplomacy, will its people fundamentally become better than reavers and brigands in the night. That their unquestioned skill at sail can be put towards better ends, such as slaying the numerous monsters crawling and slithering out of the tide. The same boldness which has been accursed in Westeros for thousands of years might instead be looked upon with respect and not scorn.
    -[X] She will never be a conventional noblewoman like many a lady of the Reach but then the empire that King Viserys is building is bigger than one kingdom, it is a whole world of diverse cultures who could stand to learn things from each other. To scorn or tarnish the name and word of another without letting their actions and deeds testify to their character does no one any credit.
    -[X] Asha is of course determined to build House Greyjoy into a powerful ally of House Redwyne and has all of the concrete information necessary (cue the ledgers and portfolios of some of the people who could greatly ease setting up new industries in the Iron Islands, as well as raw numbers like the amount of acreage in farmland that could be set up for cash crops and vineyards, forests and grains, all using rich volcanic soil and magic). That's all less relevant and not the focus of Asha's efforts, rather portraying a character of a serious, determined and mature woman would be.
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DragonParadox said:
The Devil You Know ​

Thirteenth Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC

Drakefort, Painted Mountains, Eastern Approaches


OOC: The reason the erinyes is not more annoyed by Ser Jon's obvious gawking is that she gets to torture an imp to find out where it came from and how. This update is about more than the possibility of lords throughout the realm trying to gain the affections of the Sisters of Vengeance though, it's a bit of a glimpse into those minor fiend troubles that are normally abstracted away that we talked about recently.
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Fantastic chapter DP, I always enjoy the fleshing out of the little things and seeing the integration and interaction results of our magpie tendencies.

I'm now imagining the next Imp trying the same tact on sowing discord but with an increasingly informed leadership.

Imp: She's a devil you fool!

Imperial Leadership: Ackshually!...
 
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Crake said:
@DragonParadox that last comment about dealing with dragons really puts our position in regards to our dragon vassals into perspective. We already hold all the cards, so practically any deal we make is extremely generous by any standard. Meaning a dragon does not have to set their own price lest they overreach as they would normally in this situation where they are negotiating their services, deciding their contributions are worth a disproportionate amount of the spoils simply because the person they work with isn't guaranteed to want to fight them after all is said and done.

Whereas with us, the dragon keeps its own company (barring Amrelath who is trying to replicate what we did, but also discovering that those relationships are only as valuable as they weight them interpersonal-wise, not valued in gold alone) and we keep company with Archmages and high CR warriors garbed in a Kingdom's ransom in equipment each.

The Golden Company does not have the same leverage because while they have lots of high CR PCs, none of them trust each other enough to present a truly united front.
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I wish I had another Insightful, and also shows that Baelish is perhaps the greatest unintentional ally of unaffiliated Dragons.

The "Ladder of Chaos" being the perfect environment for them to throw their individual weight around.
 
Deliste said:
I wish I had another Insightful, and also shows that Baelish is perhaps the greatest unintentional ally of unaffiliated Dragons.

The "Ladder of Chaos" being the perfect environment for them to throw their individual weight around.
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Yeah. Instilling order is easy when the results on your kouhais is so clear.

'Viserys can become as successful as he is... maybe he's onto something?' Etc.

Perhaps the best mark of our success is when people just do stuff for us without our knowledge or prompting and we reap the rewards for it.
 
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Canon Omake: New Machine, Old Dilemma
  • Threadmarks
    • New Machine, Old Dilemma
    ​

    Twenty-First Day of the First Month 294 AC

    Eastern Flatlands

    Lieutenant Morrigan trotted at a canter until they slowed toward the edge of the rise, a full column of Legionnaires moving steadily downwards by way of the newly stone-carved slope. A mage raised a hand without looking and an arrow shattered upon a plane of invisible force, the other hand holding a scroll rapidly burning away into the aether.

    The Legion Officer watched the silver-haired man turn it into a dispassionate yet fluid set of arcane movements, a hissing, almost reptilian lilt to the following incantation. A bright spot briefly streaked across the sky before a crevice nearby erupted into a grand blaze, shrill screams rapidly cut off as even the very air in their lungs must have ignited. "Clear!" He called in High Valyrian, then repeated it in the Common Tongue by the Westerosi reckoning. Morrigan nodded, and the mage half-jogged down the slope himself.

    Morrigan squinted, then raised his Myrish spyglass bearing enchantments for clear sight and fidelity. "Blue Hawk, this is Morningstar. Open Way, forwarding details of the target. Two hundred men on foot, or dismounted. You're looking for woodland, it's between the depressions at the edge of the woodland, thirty-degrees west, four hundred yards out from the Column. Confirm?"

    "Blue Hawk, Closed Path. Confirm," came the reply from the pouch of obsidian sand worn on a pouch about his neck.

    "From there, about that far again to the north, you'll see a stand of trees. Confirm?"

    "Confirm."

    Morrigan shifted his sight and took in the clever bastards who thought they could ambush their outriders given the opportunity, but they were really rather well organized... their equipment was far too professional, and there were a disconcerting number of auras there. Not quite an ocean or he would be sending that information to his Captain and likely the whole Column would grind to a halt momentarily to reassess their approach.

    "Now six hundred yards northeast. That grove is false. Confirm?"

    "Morningstar, Clarity, illusionary structure on site?"

    "Confirm."

    "Understood, Blue Hawk confirms all details. Solution?"

    "Engage with half-mixture incendiaries and explosive shells, clustered bomblets upon any massed enemy formation which is revealed."

    "Acknowledged, Morningstar, engaging." Morrigan watched from half a mile away as the distinctive booming noise of a flight of Wyverns traveling far faster than any dragon on the wing dived through the air faster than the enemy could possibly react before their speed tapered off as they began engaging the spot in the forest he had marked down, showering them with all sorts of alchemical munitions.

    A minute later they came around for another pass, and the tell-tale explosions of their bomb bays releasing a payload put paid to most of them, he imagined, and made the enemy's location apparent to all with ears to hear it. A cluster of Outriders broke off from the column in a smooth display of coordination, seamlessly forming up and preparing to run the survivors down. The four aircraft buzzed the moving column, who let out a brief cheer, but kept moving undeterred. The sight had become somewhat routine over the past month.

    "Blue Hawk, Open Path. Enemy eliminated. Standing by."

    ***​

    "This... doesn't paint a good picture," the Lieutenant pointed out to his commanding officer, Captain Norro grunting in reply but offering little else. The pair ducked into the command pavilion, the field headquarters crowded by a table bearing the General's Anchor, hosting an illusory display of the campaign theater.

    "Keep quiet," the Captain said softly, and Morrigan took up a position along the edges with some of the more junior officers invited into the meeting. Norro stepped forward and halted at General Torchwood's side, a muted and harsh conversation passing between the two in whispers.

    "Fuck," the Lord General swore, "You're certain?"

    "It's that, or we're being baited in." Norro shrugged, not perturbed in the slightest at possibly angering man in overall command of three Legions and associated assets charged with pacifying the region, surveying all irregularities and eliminating any brigands or enemies discovered therein.

    "I don't know if we should be insulted or flattered by the fucking welcome," Gerold Torchwood groused, leaning forward onto the table. A silver-armored woman stepped forward and changed something on the Anchor, focusing the display.

    "Is it Norvos or Qohor, a misdirection of some sort?" The man turned his attention onto her, but she turn toward him or shift her focus entirely away from the map, leveling it out until it became apparent what she had in mind.

    "If there's anyone competent left in either Free City who isn't just as insane as they are cunning, cultists or acolytes from yet another forgotten discipline or cabal of sorcerers... back in the War we did not content ourselves, nor distract others, with vagaries based on conjecture alone." The woman held a slightly amused tone when she spoke the word, after a fashion it might have been a jest... or as close to it as she ever got.

    "I need to act within my remit and based upon what I know, Iziah," the General replied in a put-upon fashion, drily continuing, "Not everyone here has continuous True Sight."

    "That sounds like an excuse," she challenged with a hint of a smile.

    Gerold barked a laugh, before turning his attention back to the display, features carved from stone. Eventually he spoke up again, "Burn it."

    "What?" One of the colonels seemed surprised.

    "I'm not going to play cat and mouse for two more months, and any damage we do here can be fixed later, that still puts me well within my remit and I doubt the King wants us wasting our time here flushing out rats from the grass instead of actually accomplishing something of actual substance. The villages have been cleared out as of a week ago, their inhabitants all on the road miles away from here. Put an open call on everything from Purple Point to Sourrush, that entire forest--"

    "All of it?" The red-winged woman, Iziah, didn't sound disapproving, exactly, but she did dare to interrupt.

    Gerold nodded slowly, lips pursing, then repeated the order to the Captain of the Dawnstar, and a runner was already carrying his command to the Harbinger and its merry dance of Heralds.

    Gerold noted the woman's look, his own a tad exasperated. Morrigan did not miss the roll of his eyes, even from where he stood. "Our scouts have spent more time pushing everyone truly uninvolved out of the area--or unimportant enough as to dismiss from interrogation--everyone who could be caught up in it."

    "And for those who won't make it out in time?" She challenged subtly, not seeming perturbed by the notion at all, but almost testing the command to a degree.

    "We've made it obvious by now what we're here for," he said grimly. "Everyone remaining in that area is a collaborator or an enemy."

    "To the pyre they go, then." She vanished in a puff of brimstone.
     
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    • Tomcost said:
    I'd like to see best coatl in action at some point.

    Also we need to buy DP something to guarantee his internet access. Eight hours without it is inhumane torture by modern western standards
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    I read it was determined a human right in the UN Special Rapporteur, not sure what came of that legally but it has been legislated domestically in a handful of countries.
     
    Great omake @Crake. It's nice to see the magi-tech at work and now it interacts with the legions and other conventional forces. I also enjoyed the fury character moment as she tests the new organization she finds herself in to see how much ruthlessness is appropriate.
     
    Crake said:
    "And for those who won't make it out in time?" She challenged subtly, not seeming perturbed by the notion at all, but almost testing the command to a degree.

    "We've made it obvious by now what we're here for," he said grimly. "Everyone remaining in that area is a collaborator or an enemy."

    "To the pyre they go, then." She vanished in a puff of brimstone.
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    Someone's actually suggested burning them all and letting the flames sort it out.

     
    Does the Imperium now have Furies publicly, or has she simply revealed herself on the upper echelons of this combat group?
    Truesight, red wings, reference to a 'War', brimstone-scented Greater Teleport..
     
    Azel said:
    You are forgetting that Essos has nearly no canon characters, so nobody cared all that much when I plotted the wholesale slaughter of everyone who had inconvenient opinions.

    In Westeros, I have to fight over every bloody body.
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    While the thread is sometimes weirdly interested in certain pet canon characters (Sandor and Bronn were the two most egregious examples IMO - the Starks get a pass because they're actually important and have our nephew), you're being a little unfair here.
    Everyone was fine with killing a bunch of magisters because they're, you know, Essosi magisters. They're the incarnation of a hilariously evil system and they deliberately participate in it, enforce it, and maintain it.
    It's like how nobody weeps for the nazis. They're great bad guys : because of the Holocaust, you can try to humanise individual nazis all you want and yet almost nobody will weep when Captain America blows everything up.
    Essosi magisters are basically the setting's version of an acceptable enemy. The slave system depicted in canon is so amazingly lolEvil that Book!canon!Daenerys can slaughter teenager magisters by the hundreds upon conquering them and the fanbase barely even blinks.

    Azel said:
    Lyseni were decent enough folks.
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    These "decent enough folks" are mostly known for breeding human being like cattle. You'll have to excuse the fact that most readers don't have much empathy for them.
    I know very little about Myr outside of its thing for skilled slaves, but a slaver city mentioned in the same breath as Tyrosh and Lys is automatically tarred with their sins in my stupid little reader mind. You participate enthusiastically in this world's system of slavery? Whoops, it seems like all the readers hate you now.

    People do sometimes blink when child-magisters are slaughtered. But violently enforcing martial law on Essosi cities and purging their insufficiently loyal leadership doesn't cause much dismay in readers as long as it's done with a bare fig leaf of "we also want to fight the most egregious corruption and punish the worst of the slavers" - which we did.
     
    TalonofAnathrax said:
    While the thread is sometimes weirdly interested in certain pet canon characters (Sandor and Bronn were the two most egregious examples IMO - the Starks get a pass because they're actually important and have our nephew), you're being a little unfair here.
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    Eh. It happened plenty of times. Tyrion Lannister, Samwell Tarly, Shireen Baratheon... I'm also not really willing to give the Starks a blank check just because Ned decided to save the son of his sister.

    It sometimes hard to say where Canon Character Bonus ends and general Pokemon collecting begins though.
    TalonofAnathrax said:
    These "decent enough folks" are mostly known for breeding human being like cattle. You'll have to excuse the fact that most readers don't have much empathy for them.
    I know very little about Myr outside of its thing for skilled slaves, but a slaver city mentioned in the same breath as Tyrosh and Lys is automatically tarred with their sins in my stupid little reader mind. You participate enthusiastically in this world's system of slavery? Whoops, it seems like all the readers hate you now.

    People do sometimes blink when child-magisters are slaughtered. But violently enforcing martial law on Essosi cities and purging their insufficiently loyal leadership doesn't cause much dismay in readers as long as it's done with a bare fig leaf of "we also want to fight the most egregious corruption and punish the worst of the slavers" - which we did.
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    Not everyone in Lys is part of the slave breeding industry. Most are just bog standard trading magnates. Well. Used to.

    I'm overall not a fan of reductionist "they all deserved it" sentiments, so don't expect me to agree that everyone that died for our Imperium in Essos was some brand of evil bastard who totally deserved it. And the source materials characters being quite openly xenophobic and racist, thus giving us a overwhelmingly negative view of certain cultures, is not an excuse I'm willing to accept. Especially not as some cultures are just thinly veiled racist stereotypes, such as the Dothraki and Ghiscari.
     
    Azel said:
    Most are just bog standard trading magnates.
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    If you're a bog standard trading magnate whose ships are crewed by slaves and/or whose home is full of slaves, can you expect the readers to like you?
    Azel said:
    I'm overall not a fan of reductionist "they all deserved it" sentiments, so don't expect me to agree that everyone that died for our Imperium in Essos was some brand of evil bastard who totally deserved it. And the source materials characters being quite openly xenophobic and racist, thus giving us a overwhelmingly negative view of certain cultures, is not an excuse I'm willing to accept. Especially not as some cultures are just thinly veiled racist stereotypes, such as the Dothraki and Ghiscari.
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    This is all true though. It's just that while people will accept it intellectually, their immediate emotional reactions may not reflect that.

    On another note, I will be forever disappointed that despite having multiple Dragons purge the leadership of a city-state and/or take lots of the wealth for their Dragon-hoards, not a single one of them literally ate the rich.
    Relath, I was depending on you!
    :p
     
    Crake said:
    New Machine, Old Dilemma
    ​

    Twenty-First Day of the First Month 294 AC

    Eastern Flatlands

    Lieutenant Morrigan trotted at a canter until they slowed toward the edge of the rise, a full column of Legionnaires moving steadily downwards by way of the newly stone-carved slope. A mage raised a hand without looking and an arrow shattered upon a plane of invisible force, the other hand holding a scroll rapidly burning away into the aether.

    The Legion Officer watched the silver-haired man turn it into a dispassionate yet fluid set of arcane movements, a hissing, almost reptilian lilt to the following incantation. A bright spot briefly streaked across the sky before a crevice nearby erupted into a grand blaze, shrill screams rapidly cut off as even the very air in their lungs must have ignited. "Clear!" He called in High Valyrian, then repeated it in the Common Tongue by the Westerosi reckoning. Morrigan nodded, and the mage half-jogged down the slope himself.

    Morrigan squinted, then raised his Myrish spyglass bearing enchantments for clear sight and fidelity. "Blue Hawk, this is Morningstar. Open Way, forwarding details of the target. Two hundred men on foot, or dismounted. You're looking for woodland, it's between the depressions at the edge of the woodland, thirty-degrees west, four hundred yards out from the Column. Confirm?"

    "Blue Hawk, Closed Path. Confirm," came the reply from the pouch of obsidian sand worn on a pouch about his neck.

    "From there, about that far again to the north, you'll see a stand of trees. Confirm?"

    "Confirm."

    Morrigan shifted his sight and took in the clever bastards who thought they could ambush their outriders given the opportunity, but they were really rather well organized... their equipment was far too professional, and there were a disconcerting number of auras there. Not quite an ocean or he would be sending that information to his Captain and likely the whole Column would grind to a halt momentarily to reassess their approach.

    "Now six hundred yards northeast. That grove is false. Confirm?"

    "Morningstar, Clarity, illusionary structure on site?"

    "Confirm."

    "Understood, Blue Hawk confirms all details. Solution?"

    "Engage with half-mixture incendiaries and explosive shells, clustered bomblets upon any massed enemy formation which is revealed."

    "Acknowledged, Morningstar, engaging." Morrigan watched from half a mile away as the distinctive booming noise of a flight of Wyverns traveling far faster than any dragon on the wing dived through the air faster than the enemy could possibly react before their speed tapered off as they began engaging the spot in the forest he had marked down, showering them with all sorts of alchemical munitions.

    A minute later they came around for another pass, and the tell-tale explosions of their bomb bays releasing a payload put paid to most of them, he imagined, and made the enemy's location apparent to all with ears to hear it. A cluster of Outriders broke off from the column in a smooth display of coordination, seamlessly forming up and preparing to run the survivors down. The four aircraft buzzed the moving column, who let out a brief cheer, but kept moving undeterred. The sight had become somewhat routine over the past month.

    "Blue Hawk, Open Path. Enemy eliminated. Standing by."

    ***​

    "This... doesn't paint a good picture," the Lieutenant pointed out to his commanding officer, Captain Norro grunting in reply but offering little else. The pair ducked into the command pavilion, the field headquarters crowded by a table bearing the General's Anchor, hosting an illusory display of the campaign theater.

    "Keep quiet," the Captain said softly, and Morrigan took up a position along the edges with some of the more junior officers invited into the meeting. Norro stepped forward and halted at General Torchwood's side, a muted and harsh conversation passing between the two in whispers.

    "Fuck," the Lord General swore, "You're certain?"

    "It's that, or we're being baited in." Norro shrugged, not perturbed in the slightest at possibly angering man in overall command of three Legions and associated assets charged with pacifying the region, surveying all irregularities and eliminating any brigands or enemies discovered therein.

    "I don't know if we should be insulted or flattered by the fucking welcome," Gerold Torchwood groused, leaning forward onto the table. A silver-armored woman stepped forward and changed something on the Anchor, focusing the display.

    "Is it Norvos or Qohor, a misdirection of some sort?" The man turned his attention onto her, but she turn toward him or shift her focus entirely away from the map, leveling it out until it became apparent what she had in mind.

    "If there's anyone competent left in either Free City who isn't just as insane as they are cunning, cultists or acolytes from yet another forgotten discipline or cabal of sorcerers... back in the War we did not content ourselves, nor distract others, with vagaries based on conjecture alone." The woman held a slightly amused tone when she spoke the word, after a fashion it might have been a jest... or as close to it as she ever got.

    "I need to act within my remit and based upon what I know, Iziah," the General replied in a put-upon fashion, drily continuing, "Not everyone here has continuous True Sight."

    "That sounds like an excuse," she challenged with a hint of a smile.

    Gerold barked a laugh, before turning his attention back to the display, features carved from stone. Eventually he spoke up again, "Burn it."

    "What?" One of the colonels seemed surprised.

    "I'm not going to play cat and mouse for two more months, and any damage we do here can be fixed later, that still puts me well within my remit and I doubt the King wants us wasting our time here flushing out rats from the grass instead of actually accomplishing something of actual substance. The villages have been cleared out as of a week ago, their inhabitants all on the road miles away from here. Put an open call on everything from Purple Point to Sourrush, that entire forest--"

    "All of it?" The red-winged woman, Iziah, didn't sound disapproving, exactly, but she did dare to interrupt.

    Gerold nodded slowly, lips pursing, then repeated the order to the Captain of the Dawnstar, and a runner was already carrying his command to the Harbinger and its merry dance of Heralds.

    Gerold noted the woman's look, his own a tad exasperated. Morrigan did not miss the roll of his eyes, even from where he stood. "Our scouts have spent more time pushing everyone truly uninvolved out of the area--or unimportant enough as to dismiss from interrogation--everyone who could be caught up in it."

    "And for those who won't make it out in time?" She challenged subtly, not seeming perturbed by the notion at all, but almost testing the command to a degree.

    "We've made it obvious by now what we're here for," he said grimly. "Everyone remaining in that area is a collaborator or an enemy."

    "To the pyre they go, then." She vanished in a puff of brimstone.
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    Aww, @Azel beat me to the "I love the smell of Alchemist's Fire in the morning!" comment.

    That's some quality Legion action, dude. Great way to incorporate the Legions, Wyverns, Gem Tables, and magitech. It all comes together to do a passing imitation of a much more modern battlefield, complete with real time communications, intelligence gathering, air support, etc. than most would expect on Planetos.

    This is the action dealing with our response to that suspiciously organized "bandit" group which raided a Legion armory bear the eastern periphery of our realm, right?
     
    Vote closed.
    Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on May 25, 2020 at 7:27 AM, finished with 99 posts and 13 votes.
    • [X] Duchess Asha Greyjoy, Captain of the IMS Hunter's Moon
      -[X] Asha budgeted for over a year as a successful chain-breaker and accomplished sailor, eventually earning her own commission and captaincy through her own hard-wrung efforts.
      -[X] She recognizes the need for her people to change, that the 'stupidity' tax on expected behavior from the Ironborn is simultaneously unsustainable and self-perpetuating. Only by serious efforts to integrate it with the wider realm, through trade and diplomacy, will its people fundamentally become better than reavers and brigands in the night. That their unquestioned skill at sail can be put towards better ends, such as slaying the numerous monsters crawling and slithering out of the tide. The same boldness which has been accursed in Westeros for thousands of years might instead be looked upon with respect and not scorn.
      -[X] She will never be a conventional noblewoman like many a lady of the Reach but then the empire that King Viserys is building is bigger than one kingdom, it is a whole world of diverse cultures who could stand to learn things from each other. To scorn or tarnish the name and word of another without letting their actions and deeds testify to their character does no one any credit.
      -[X] Asha is of course determined to build House Greyjoy into a powerful ally of House Redwyne and has all of the concrete information necessary (cue the ledgers and portfolios of some of the people who could greatly ease setting up new industries in the Iron Islands, as well as raw numbers like the amount of acreage in farmland that could be set up for cash crops and vineyards, forests and grains, all using rich volcanic soil and magic). That's all less relevant and not the focus of Asha's efforts, rather portraying a character of a serious, determined and mature woman would be.
    Click to expand...
     
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