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

Twenty Seventh Day of the First Month 294 AC

It never rains, but it pours, you set the letter down and send Varys to let Vargo know he can expect a full investigation by your handpicked agents next moonturn. "You handle the formalities," you note to your familiar as you will yourself across the keep by magic, a bit of a frivolous use of the spell, but the day is done in any case.

"So I may not tell him he is a failure for not keeping his nest and flock safe from these unseen foes?" she checks teasingly.

Your roll your eyes, the gesture unseen but felt across the bond you share. "I know perfectly well you understand how lordship and statehood works, you know everything I do."

"Perhaps I choose not to remember because it is so very tedious," she teases back.

"Well, the sooner you do it the sooner you can go back to forgetting," you reply. It seems she can't argue that point.


Twenty Eighth Day of the First Month 294 AC

The next day dawns bright but no less filled with news, if from closer to home than Sallosh. Most of what you read is progress as expected, a littler swifter in some, a touch slower in others, but three reports catch your attention far more readily than the rest. For one, you now have an inquisition base in the Dornish Marches under the guise of a small trading company and a series of inns acquired independently. They can gather information and help increase the flow of trade through the marches at the same time. You almost expect to see a Braavosi Commissar in charge of the venture, but to your surprise it is a Tyroshi instead, the son of an ostler, perhaps that is where he had the idea.

Alas, the news coming from Tyrosh itself is less pleasant. A magister of middling wealth and less than middling wits decided that it would make great sense to seed the growing administration of the city with his kin and clients, but rather than attempt the usual and expected path of graft and corruption, he decided to try to stage a daemonic infiltration against the more likely candidates of the positions he desired.

Given the horrors the city had been through, the idiot was lucky not to be ripped limb from limb by an angry mob when his actions became public knowledge, though there was enough damage done to the docks that even the judicial confiscations of his properties do not quite cover the state's loss.

Lost 8,000 IM

Thankfully, the reports from Myr and Lys are much more heartening. Not only are guard posts and messenger services going up even beyond the city's hinterlands, but both report success in a major infrastructure project. For Myr that is improving the system of sewers and reservoirs it inherited from the Freehold, and for Lys it is the establishment of an organized system of healers and herbalists to cover the city, and all of that a month ahead of the most optimistic estimations.

To be entirely honest, you would be worried it is all a facade for some sort of corruption if you had not also received a report from the city's commissar confirming that everything was done above the board, taking advantage of the experience of the Weeping Lady's priesthood to get the state-supported healers on their feet as well as setting up a system of redundancies and open communication so that disasters such as the plague which haunted the city three years ago can be ended before spreading out of control.


How do you reward the Lyseni administrator who managed to get the job done sooner than expected?

[] A substantial cash bonus (2,000 IM)

[] Recognition in the next issue of the Imperial Times

[] A public award ceremony

[] Write in

OOC: Two thousand IM may not sound like much but the bureaucracy is not rolling in gold like the magisters and new trading and manufacturing business owners are. Not yet edited.