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

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@Goldfish I think we're going about this questioning in the wrong way.

You should note that the Undead didn't refuse to meet or address us because we were in the company of undead, it was used as a pretext to act against us and involve us in the narrative of "Sarnor never fell". They would first willfully ignore us, and then likely find some pretext to apprehend or slay us if we refused to dismiss ourselves. Possibly they would interact with us if we acted within the confines of the narrative, but that depends on if they find it more troublesome to manufacture a pretext than not. And if they did let us in, it would indeed be escorted, but not necessarily to the source of all of this.

I think we should operate on the assumption that the soldiers are fully aware of what happened given the events that transpired in the city's fall. The motive for their current actions could be... a number of things, but someone did suggest it was out of horror and shame for their transgressions.

Personally I suspect a mastermind who has twisted the frayed wills of the soldiery towards this end of keeping them transfixed by a lie, perhaps for a benevolent cause and perhaps malicious, but definitely another individual(s) responsible for the facade.
 
Crake said:
@Goldfish I think we're going about this questioning in the wrong way.

You should note that the Undead didn't refuse to meet or address us because we were in the company of undead, it was used as a pretext to act against us and involve us in the narrative of "Sarnor never fell". They would first willfully ignore us, and then likely find some pretext to apprehend or slay us if we refused to dismiss ourselves. Possibly they would interact with us if we acted within the confines of the narrative, but that depends on if they find it more troublesome to manufacture a pretext than not. And if they did let us in, it would indeed be escorted, but not necessarily to the source of all of this.

I think we should operate on the assumption that the soldiers are fully aware of what happened given the events that transpired in the city's fall. The motive for their current actions could be... a number of things, but someone did suggest it was out of horror and shame for their transgressions.

Personally I suspect a mastermind who has twisted the frayed wills of the soldiery towards this end of keeping them transfixed by a lie, perhaps for a benevolent cause and perhaps malicious, but definitely another individual(s) responsible for the facade.
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The first potential masterminds that spring to mind are the cites lord then it's military and religious leadership after that I have no clue.
 
Crake said:
@Goldfish I think we're going about this questioning in the wrong way.

You should note that the Undead didn't refuse to meet or address us because we were in the company of undead, it was used as a pretext to act against us and involve us in the narrative of "Sarnor never fell". They would first willfully ignore us, and then likely find some pretext to apprehend or slay us if we refused to dismiss ourselves. Possibly they would interact with us if we acted within the confines of the narrative, but that depends on if they find it more troublesome to manufacture a pretext than not. And if they did let us in, it would indeed be escorted, but not necessarily to the source of all of this.

I think we should operate on the assumption that the soldiers are fully aware of what happened given the events that transpired in the city's fall. The motive for their current actions could be... a number of things, but someone did suggest it was out of horror and shame for their transgressions.

Personally I suspect a mastermind who has twisted the frayed wills of the soldiery towards this end of keeping them transfixed by a lie, perhaps for a benevolent cause and perhaps malicious, but definitely another individual(s) responsible for the facade.
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Hmm, good point. How about this instead?

[X] Perform another series of divinations;
-[X] Round One: Determine the likely response if we simply bypass the city walls, flying over them while Invisible and using Greater Hide from Undead, to seek out the leadership of the city. Also attempt to determine who we should seek within the city.
-[X] Round Two: Determine the likely outcome of the enchanted gates being Dispelled or destroyed. Also attempt to determine if the gates will respond in some way of we bypass them entirely.
-[X] Viserys and Dany, using Blood Wish and Dreamcasting respectively, cast Fortune's Path while using their Prophet's Rod and Dragonbone Divination Sticks to attempt to increase the likelihood of success.
-[X] If none of these are favorable, we will instead send one of Teana's Shadow-Traces to once more inspect the city (casting Superior Invisibility with Wild Arcana this time), now Imbued with an Arcane Sight spell so that she can inspect the spells on the gates and any other magical auras that stand out, such as wards, defenses, and alarms.
 
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@Goldfish given the number of unknowns going on here, do you think some Fortune's Path predictions would be worth the time? We can't conceivably cover all angles, so a few random grabs for relevant information could give us something to work on for more targeted questions.
 
I have a question about something related to undead disguise spells. I get how they work on undead that directly map to a living creature, but what do they do to unique ones? Like if we slapped the frankencritter running Gornath with Fleshy Facade would it try to make each part look right without paying attention to the whole? I'd assume that this kind of spell would be limited to undead that can reasonably be hidden, but this example (and I believe disguise undead as well) only requires the undead creature targeted to be corporeal and have flesh.
 
@Goldfish, just in case, please add checking whether the gates are going to self-dispell, and/or other things happening if we move in.
I'm suspicious of other cities leaving "surprises" behind in case a group of living people makes it to the ruler here, just to fuck up any chance of negotiations.

[X] Goldfish
 
BronzeTongue said:
I have a question about something related to undead disguise spells. I get how they work on undead that directly map to a living creature, but what do they do to unique ones? Like if we slapped the frankencritter running Gornath with Fleshy Facade would it try to make each part look right without paying attention to the whole? I'd assume that this kind of spell would be limited to undead that can reasonably be hidden, but this example (and I believe disguise undead as well) only requires the undead creature targeted to be corporeal and have flesh.
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Either it would fail entirely, or maybe the caster would have enough influence to make it appear as a !massive Giant. Probably just fail.
egoo said:
@Goldfish, just in case, please add checking whether the gates are going to self-dispell, and/or other things happening if we move in.
I'm suspicious of other cities leaving "surprises" behind in case a group of living people makes it to the ruler here, just to fuck up any chance of negotiations.

[X] Goldfish
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Added.
 
[X] Goldfish

@Goldfish is there...

Is there a way we could divine for a military leader who is dissatisfied with the way things are being run currently? Maybe in a dungeon or re education camp somewhere?

If the dead are truly this sentient I imagine some would be very unhappy about the way things are going.
 
zxzx24 said:
[X] Goldfish

@Goldfish is there...

Is there a way we could divine for a military leader who is dissatisfied with the way things are being run currently? Maybe in a dungeon or re education camp somewhere?

If the dead are truly this sentient I imagine some would be very unhappy about the way things are going.
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If we had a name or maybe even a title to use for the Divination, we probably could find something to go one, but I don't think even a Commune spell would be able to narrow that down well enough for us to find such a person.
 
Goldfish said:
If we had a name or maybe even a title to use for the Divination, we probably could find something to go one, but I don't think even a Commune spell would be able to narrow that down well enough for us to find such a person.
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Divination should be able to untangle at least a thread we can pull?

My thoughts are thus. "If they are human enough to have gossip and rumours, then they are human enough to have crime and dissent".

I'll put that on the back burner though. Because trying to seize the military would be a coup here.
 
zxzx24 said:
Divination should be able to untangle at least a thread we can pull?

My thoughts are thus. "If they are human enough to have gossip and rumours, then they are human enough to have crime and dissent".

I'll put that on the back burner though. Because trying to seize the military would be a coup here.
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I've added trying to determine who we should seek out within the city as part of the first round of Divination. That might do the trick.
 
BronzeTongue said:
[X] Goldfish

It's always nice to be on this end of the invasive divination game.
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Let's be honest we haven't actually been subjected to the Divination Stick since after White Harbor, not to the extent where we were cursing and cussing up a storm every other arc because we were basically useless at anything that didn't involve face-rolling our hotkeyed spells in combat encounters or talking people into believing we totally aren't the bad guys, m'kay!

Like say intrigue.

And after we got Mind Blanks more often than not divination mostly dropped off in utility against 90% of the threats out there since they also had Mind Blanks. It's mostly useful against static defenses and detection nets, since you have to spread those out too much to adequately ward them unless you are basically us and can spend a fortune, time, and effort, plus are able to acquire and or purchase all of the materials to make it work (like lead-lined walls or passages/bunkers, talismans, non-detection cloaks, disguises).

Point is, divination is mostly for free exposition. Don't wanna walk around and risk random encounters trying to gather rumors and peep in on people during their private conversations and bath time? Just run auguries or something IDK, LOL!

Actually, I'm pretty sure that's mostly what we've used it for in the past year. A short-cut for boring investigatory work, so that we can spy on people who actually matter, and conveniently get clued in on the right context clues so that implausible logical deductions can basically be explained as "oh right, your MASSIVE LIBRARY has a book/scroll on that, you figured it out in no time".
 
Crake said:
Let's be honest we haven't actually been subjected to the Divination Stick since after White Harbor, not to the extent where we were cursing and cussing up a storm every other arc because we were basically useless at anything that didn't involve face-rolling our hotkeyed spells in combat encounters or talking people into believing we totally aren't the bad guys, m'kay!

Like say intrigue.

And after we got Mind Blanks more often than not divination mostly dropped off in utility against 90% of the threats out there since they also had Mind Blanks. It's mostly useful against static defenses and detection nets, since you have to spread those out too much to adequately ward them unless you are basically us and can spend a fortune, time, and effort, plus are able to acquire and or purchase all of the materials to make it work (like lead-lined walls or passages/bunkers, talismans, non-detection cloaks, disguises).

Point is, divination is mostly for free exposition. Don't wanna walk around and risk random encounters trying to gather rumors and peep in on people during their private conversations and bath time? Just run auguries or something IDK, LOL!

Actually, I'm pretty sure that's mostly what we've used it for in the past year. A short-cut for boring investigatory work, so that we can spy on people who actually matter, and conveniently get clued in on the right context clues so that implausible logical deductions can basically be explained as "oh right, your MASSIVE LIBRARY has a book/scroll on that, you figured it out in no time".
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To be fair, short circuiting the boring parts of investigation is basically what divination is for in DnD. I didn't tack a "for once" on that comment for a reason, being able to use divination to double check out plans before diving face first into a city of actively hallucinating undead is pretty nice. It's not usually noteworthy because most of the time the things we're short circuiting aren't as explosive as they are here.
 
[X] Goldfish

Divination still quite powerful when we are focusing broadly and not on individuals who have Mind Blanks making them missing spots in them.
 
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