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

Twenty Ninth Day of the First Month 294 AC

You ponder your answer with care. While arming the Red Faith here in Norvos would give you a weapon to be feared, it would be more burning brand than dagger, and you do not wish to see the city set alight. So instead you offer more reliable, untraceable methods of smuggling their most vulnerable out of the city through the auspices of the local Inquisition.

Garin lays out what the inquisition is succinctly and quickly, their methods, their means, and most importantly their purpose to gather information and ensure as smooth a transition of power as can be achieved. His further advice on the matter is to keep the network tightly focused so as not to lead the First Axe into rolling up multiple cells one after another, and rather than focus on arming a slave rebellion, to utilize the resources the Book and Sword provide to gather information about the Priesthood, about the nobility and supporters of the Harrowers, their vulnerabilities and advantages which can be wrung by setting one group against another.

Offers are made and accepted, of silver passed through merchants and hidden middlemen into the hands of the Red Faith. It will take a while to get all the resources you mean to have delivered in an inconspicuous manner, but for now you deliver a small chest of silver, mostly in old worn coin, the sort of thing you keep in your cloak precisely for meetings such as this.

Lost 2000 IM

"The twilight of the priests rule has come," you promise solemnly under the shade of the rustling trees. As elsewhere in Essos where people still suffer under an iron yoke, those who have worked atrocities be it from greed or following some creed of their own will face the consequences.

"There is no neck so sainted that it cannot be fitted for a noose," Dany adds with a smile of her own that manages to startle an outright laugh from Lysandre, an unexpectedly bright silvery sound, though you imagine if there had been any Harrowers near they would not find the sound less pleasing to the ear.

Thus you part, a little poorer in coin though richer by far in assets within Norvos upon the hill. The bells ring on as ever they have done, but in this moment it is as though they are commemorating something more than the city's age old customs and rituals.

"Think she can make an inquisitor?" Tyene asks as you watch Lysandre melt back into the streets of the Lower City. She is admittedly quite good. Even keeping an eye on her, you still lose her as soon as a group of horsemen breaks your line of sight for a moment.

"Perhaps. It depends if she can bear to work within the tenets of the the institution..." you glance towards Garin.

"One more thing for them to make note of," he nods as the seven of your return to the Deep.


From there your gaze wanders far est and south of Norvos, to what were once the northernmost provinces of Valyria proper, those not rebuilt under the aegis of angels and dragons. Most of the news is good this month, with healers having properly covered both the painted Mountains and Draconys, one more reason to tempt colonists onto the wild frontier. The messenger service in Mantarys' hinterlands has been established in addition to the newly rooted inquisition presence in New Ghys.

Alas, not all news can be good news. The feeble progress in Tolos' growing infrastructure this moon-turn has made Relath suspicious and a dragon who thinks he might be cheated is a fearsome being indeed. With the aid of both lawmen and inquisitors, he managed to unveil a web of graft and corruption that had been slowly spreading through the city, one that favored some of the oldest families of Tolos. Normally that would not be an issue in and of itself, but the scandal has come to include one of Relath's wives, her own part in the affair enough to earn her decades of prison time.


"I worry that imprisoning my get's mother might turn them against me," the dragon lord of Tolos admits bluntly when he brings the matter before you. He snorts in amusement, a cloud of brine filling your solar and wafting out the open window. "That sort of thing has poor precedent. You understand more of humans than I, what do you suggest?"

What do you reply?

[] Honesty, you did not take the child's mother away out of malice but because the law upon which all good rule demanded it

[] Attention, try to bonds with all his children as much as posibile, there will be conflicting loyalties of all sorts pulling at them, best to cement the one to Relath early

[] Write in

OOC: No crit successes this time, but at least the one crit fail rolled low on scale. Not yet edited.