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

T_of_A · Sep 30, 2020

Duesal said:
At this point I don't think that many people in the city are left to be saved. The Cult of the Black Goat has been the dominant religion for centuries, and they've had access to a Flesh Forge this entire time. Qohor is done for. Which I'm pretty pissed about. I wanted this city.

If you're talking about saving the Imperium from the things in Qohor, then yes, 100% agreed.

Most of Qohor's population seems normal. The cult of the Black Goat really only got its magic back something like five years ago, was riven by internecine rivalries, and doesn't seem to have started a program to massively convert the population to the crazier extremes (most people pray, but I'd wager they don't eat babies or whatever).
This isn't Innsmouth, this is post-ISIS Raqqa (except not, because ISIS were quite overt and anyone who could fled when they rose to power, while the Cult of the Black Goat merely has an unsavory reputation but doesn't seem much worse than other slaveowning religions like the Red God's worship).

T_of_A · Sep 30, 2020

Azel said:
If we can control the city sufficiently to "save" people there (which will basically boil down to killing only half of everyone and hoping all the bad people were in the dead half or we will have to do it again), then we control it sufficiently to take the forge.

If we can't do that, the solution is to firebomb the place and killing everyone to make sure. That's what Exterminatus means. Cutting off the infected limb before the infection spreads. Not to posture about taking radical steps and then pussyfooting around the moment someone who isn't an obvious bad guy gets hurt in the process.

Ah, yes, slaughtering a city's worth of innocent civilians because an unknown percentage of them might worship the wrong god.
Yes, that sounds like a valid decision. I see nothing morally wrong with this.

Holy shit @Azel, what the hell is that post. Slaughtering everyone because it's easier than using our vast, custom-grown security and future-sight apparatus to weed out the cultists? What the actual fuck.
And didn't we just have Viserys decide that low-level cultists who didn't commit any crimes other than worship aren't to be instantly condemned to death?

And regarding the rest of your post... I think that attacking the Forge specifically makes a lot of sense. A city's worth of cultists is far less of a threat than a city's worth of cultists with a Flesh Forge in their pocket. Waiting six months before invading because we can't muster the necessary troops and police is much safer when the targets don't have a Flesh Forge that can 3D-print massive armies and bioweapons (as we've shown is possible through our own actions).
Ah, D&D : where "send in the King to murder the enemy's King and beak his McGuffin, the rest will just be mop-up" is a valid military strategy.

Azel · Sep 30, 2020

TalonofAnathrax said:
Most of Qohor's population seems normal. The cult of the Black Goat really only got its magic back something like five years ago, was riven by internecine rivalries, and doesn't seem to have started a program to massively convert the population.
This isn't Innsmouth, this is post-ISIS Raqqa (except not, because ISIS were quite overt and anyone who could fled when they rose to power, while the Cult of the Black Goat merely has an unsavory reputation but doesn't seem much worse than other slaveowning religions like the Red God's worship).

If that is your opinion, then fine. But that means we can take the forge too.

TalonofAnathrax said:
Ah, yes, slaughtering a city's worth of innocent civilians because an unknown percentage of them might worship the wrong god.
Yes, that sounds like a valid decision. I see nothing morally wrong with this.

Holy shit @Azel, what the hell is that post. Slaughtering everyone because it's easier than using our vast, custom-grown security and future-sight apparatus to weed out the cultists? What the actual fuck.
And didn't we just have Viserys decide that low-level cultists who didn't commit any crimes other than worship aren't to be instantly condemned to death?

And regarding the rest of your post... I think that attacking the Forge specifically makes a lot of sense. A city's worth of cultists is far less of a threat than a city's worth of cultists with a Flesh Forge in their pocket. Waiting six months before invading because we can't muster the necessary troops and police is much safer when the targets don't have a Flesh Forge that can 3D-print massive armies and bioweapons (as we've shown is possible through our own actions).

You have a radically different expectation of how much enemies there will be in the population then I do. I'm expecting over 30% of the population to either be part of the cult or sufficiently favourably inclined to it that they can be spurred to actions against us when we crack down on it.

This is drastically different from the scenario you assume.

Duesal · Sep 30, 2020

TalonofAnathrax said:
Most of Qohor's population seems normal. The cult of the Black Goat really only got its magic back something like five years ago, was riven by internecine rivalries, and doesn't seem to have started a program to massively convert the population to the crazier extremes (most people pray, but I'd wager they don't eat babies or whatever).
This isn't Innsmouth, this is post-ISIS Raqqa (except not, because ISIS were quite overt and anyone who could fled when they rose to power, while the Cult of the Black Goat merely has an unsavory reputation but doesn't seem much worse than other slaveowning religions like the Red God's worship).

I don't think this is comparable to IRL examples of terrorist cults, because the god behind the cult is very real and offers its "blessings". This isn't something we can easily root out with a few months of dedicated digging, not when the entire populace pays homage to the Black Goat as their main deity.

All the time here and what we've discovered is that even the splinter group is just another branch of Shub Niggurath's cult.

egoo · Sep 30, 2020

TalonofAnathrax said:
And didn't we just have Viserys decide that low-level cultists who didn't commit any crimes other than worship aren't to be instantly condemned to death?

/rant start

This "just" came at a time of OOC-turmoil to the quest and debates on 'morality' that only produced salt, salt, salt, and zero good story for us to follow.

All of the decisions taken then, to rehab cultists, to send some at the Wall, to limit the Inquisition, all have one thing in commmon:
They amounted to nothing in years that passed since them being taken, but we argued like crazy people about them.

And then we reverted our decision on some of those.
And that, too, amounted to nothing.

What I am trying to say is, those rulings are kinda worthless.

And most morality debates would be these days.
[] Viserys deals with Slaver Devils on Heaven.
That's, like, 100% against what morality arguments of old days set him up as.
[] We gonna summon Demons indiscriminately to kill a fuckload of 'innocent' Fey next month.
This runs contrary to at least 2 "monumental" morality votes that were forged in pure Salt.

Let's just leave morality debates behind us?
The "big picture" never ever came into play, DP only ever showed us any drama on a personal basis.

"Exterminatus" is as reasonable to the character we play here as anything else at this point.

You don't want to kill a fuckload of people to ensure safety of the Empire/setting wholesale?
Might as well leave the Forge intact for several months then, by the time we can try to save some people there we'll manage to take it too.

/rant over

What is 'moral' and what isn't aside, I, too, think we'll face degrees and degrees more of enemies in Qohor than IRL analogies can lend us as an example.

...Unless DP writes it as a conflict-less and consequence-less thing, but that's outta our hands of course.

Duesal · Sep 30, 2020

egoo said:
/rant start

This "just" came at a time of OOC-turmoil to the quest and debates on 'morality' that only produced salt, salt, salt, and zero good story for us to follow.

All of the decisions taken then, to rehab cultists, to send some at the Wall, to limit the Inquisition, all had one thing in commmon:
They amounted to nothing but we argued as crazy people about them.

And then we reverted our decision on some of those.
And that, too, amounted to nothing.

What I am trying to say is, those rulings are kinda worthless.

And most morality debates would be these days.
[] Viserys deals with Slaver Devils on Heaven.
That's, like, 100% against what morality arguments of old days set him up as.
[] We gonna summon Demons indiscriminately to kill a fuckload of 'innocent' Fey next month.
This runs contrary to at least 2 "monumental" morality votes that were forged in pure Salt.

Let's just leave morality debates behind us?
The "big picture" never ever came into play, DP only ever showed us any drama on a personal basis.

"Exterminatus" is as reasonable to the character we play here as anything else at this point.

You don't want to kill a fuckload of people to ensure safety of the Empire/setting wholesale?
Might as well leave the Forge intact for several months then, by the time we can try to save some people there we'll manage to take it too.

/rant over

What is 'moral' and what isn't aside, I, too, think we'll face degrees and degrees more of enemies in Qohor than IRL analogies can lend us as an example.

...Unless DP writes it as a conflict-less and consequence-less thing, but that's outta our hands of course.

Ultimately, when I'm not actively ignoring that vote, I'm tolerating it as a loose guideline. It isn't a blanket "mercy must be shown to all cultists," it's mercy can be shown to cultists when deemed appropriate. Some random ex slave becomes a daemon cultist in the Imperium? Fine, they get one chance to rehabilitate. Only one. If they fail a second time, they are sacrificed. No ifs and buts. We're not showing mercy at the expense of innocent citizens. That's Batman levels of stupidity.

On the other hand, if cults are deemed too dangerous to rehabilitate, like Qohor is looking, there is nothing stopping us from killing them to preserve the lives of our own citizens. Especially when they've got goddamn Flesh Forge and Shub-Niggurath herself behind them.

T_of_A · Sep 30, 2020

Azel said:
If that is your opinion, then fine. But that means we can take the forge too.

We're thinking about things very differently, yes.
I'm assuming that this will be another conquered population, this time with a cultist problem (murders, summonings, etc). So I want to bring in the army to impose martial law for a while after we invade (like we do everywhere else), but I don't actually think that a huge part of the population will be suicidal cultists. I think that once we kill their priests, bring in other missionaries (preferably CR 5 ones at first, who can survive a knife wound), end the literal rule of the priests of the Black Goat and fight horrible abominations emerging from the Temples of the Black Goat, we won't face a huge issue.
Most people don't seem to be cultists, just normal worshippers. They don't have religious knowledge or divine boons, they don't know what's going on in the temples (beyond rumours), etc. So this will be "conquer a city where the locals are religiously opposed to you" which has been done quite a bit IRL, not "conquer a city where half the population are murderous zealots who summon monsters and die for the cause".

Duesal said:
I don't think this is comparable to IRL examples of terrorist cults, because the god behind the cult is very real and offers its "blessings". This isn't something we can easily root out with a few months of dedicated digging, not when the entire populace pays homage to the Black Goat as their main deity.

Eh. Every god is real and has real blessings, so I think it cancels out.
And according to Daenerys' view of Gods, they should all convert instantly!

egoo said:
And most morality debates would be these days.
[] Viserys deals with Slaver Devils on Heaven.
That's, like, 100% against what morality arguments of old days set him up as.

Viserys has been dealing with slavers for ages. I'm pretty sure one of the very first things we did with our money was deal with slavers. I don't see this one. Or is the issue specifically with buying slaves?

egoo said:
[] We gonna summon Demons indiscriminately to kill a fuckload of 'innocent' Fey next month.

I'm pretty sure we had big arguments about that back in the day, decided not to do it, and now it's quietly reappearing back on the vote tallies? Not cool.
I distinctly remember saying that summoning at random would just make us new enemies among the archdevils and Demon leaders, and that we should focus on outsiders whose names we have and who serve our enemies. I'm also pretty sure I won that vote, so it's a surprise to see it back. Well, I guess it's my fault for assuming that the summoning plans were still following that principle without actually checking the details.
I'll be voting against this again (if I'm logged in during the voting time, of course).

Azel · Sep 30, 2020

I would just like to know the rules at this point.

Is this supposed to be actual Cosmic Horror or are we decorating a run of the mill dungeon with some tentacles for flavour?
Because it seems the former is the intention, but it's reading like the same stuff as always.

Are Elder Gods actually Bad News, or are they just another Generic Evil Outsider?
Because some here are operating under the first assumption, others under the latter.

Do our plans actually matter or will the world keep warping to satisfy the narrative needs of the day?
Because I'm tired of getting big reveal chapters how everything is a doomsday level threat so that we can pretend to challenge the massively overpowered main party for a chapter or two.

Will there be actual consequences or can we just waltz in and the facist security apparatus will magically root out the bad guys and only the bad guys?
Because people seem convinced of the latter and if this is what they want, I'd like to know, since I'm pretty sick of that happening all the time.

Either we are still the infallible Mary Sue protagonist who can do no wrong and solves everything easily and with no bad side-effects or costs, or we are faced with a major incursion from eldritch horrors and need to do whatever it takes to survive.

Azel · Sep 30, 2020

TalonofAnathrax said:
We're thinking about things very differently, yes.
I'm assuming that this will be another conquered population, this time with a cultist problem (murders, summonings, etc). So I want to bring in the army to impose martial law for a while after we invade (like we do everywhere else), but I don't actually think that a huge part of the population will be suicidal cultists. I think that once we kill their priests, bring in other missionaries (preferably CR 5 ones at first, who can survive a knife wound), end the literal rule of the priests of the Black Goat and fight horrible abominations emerging from the Temples of the Black Goat, we won't face a huge issue.
Most people don't seem to be cultists, just normal worshippers. They don't have religious knowledge or divine boons, they don't know what's going on in the temples (beyond rumours), etc. So this will be "conquer a city where the locals are religiously opposed to you" which has been done quite a bit IRL, not "conquer a city where half the population are murderous zealots who summon monsters and die for the cause".

Ok. Look.

You know what happens when a foreign invader comes into a city and violently suppresses the majority religion? Yes? You are aware of the results of this?

Because I'm viscerally sickened that you pretend this is a good and nice thing to do.

Duesal · Sep 30, 2020

TalonofAnathrax said:
Eh. Every god is real and has real blessings, so I think it cancels out.
And according to Daenerys' view of Gods, they should all convert instantly!

Not all gods are equal, and in Qohor the Black Goat is very much ascendant. There aren't enough followers let alone clerics of other gods to even begin to challenge the cultists.

TalonofAnathrax said:
I'm pretty sure we had big arguments about that back in the day, decided not to do it, and now it's quietly reappearing back on the vote tallies? Not cool.
I distinctly remember saying that summoning at random would just make us new enemies among the archdevils and Demon leaders, and that we should focus on outsiders whose names we have and who serve our enemies. I'm also pretty sure I won that vote, so it's a surprise to see it back. Well, I guess it's my fault for assuming that the summoning plans were still following that principle without actually checking the details.
I'll be voting against this again (if I'm logged in during the voting time, of course).

We're going to be summoning demons specifically, IIRC. They're far too disorganized to mount a meaningful resistance. If we tried summoning imps, we'd probably have a curious Pit Fiend show up wondering who's summoning all his minions.

egoo · Sep 30, 2020

TalonofAnathrax said:
I'm pretty sure we had big arguments about that back in the day, decided not to do it, and now it's quietly reappearing back on the vote tallies? Not cool.
I distinctly remember saying that summoning at random would just make us new enemies among the archdevils and Demon leaders, and that we should focus on outsiders whose names we have and who serve our enemies. I'm also pretty sure I won that vote, so it's a surprise to see it back. Well, I guess it's my fault for assuming that the summoning plans were still following that principle without actually checking the details.
I'll be voting against this again (if I'm logged in during the voting time, of course).

Thank you for assuming the worst of me, anthra, very cool.

Yes, you(?) won.
Yes, we only summoned by True Names and never went for servants of Arch-whatevers that weren't either:
a) Mammon
b) less than 2 steps removed from demons/devils/daemons we caught personally interfering without business.

But we can't win CoS with usual methods.
So a plan to summon low-cr Demons en-mass next month was devised instead, because those are the least "we give any shit about angering them" Arch-enemies at this point, being our enemies by default and literally infinite in number (unlike Daemons).

I made every proposal to change to how we run things very apparent every time I brought it up, and got shut down every time.

Unless you have a better plan for handling CoS than our "flood them with OP-pls-nerf narrativium through breaking their sleeping King's crown via and cursing them, while also having all our death-gods hit them with their mojo while dozed on thousands and thousands HD", we still gotta run that "indiscriminate summoning"-scheme next month for several thousand sacrifice-demons.

If it helps any, only changes to how we usually run things will come up for a vote somewhen after the Reconquest.
We have a plan to slowly but surely kill off dozens/hundreds/thousands of the lieutenant (cr 18) Daemons in numerous-but-not-limitless (DP's ruling on that) Daemon forces.

T_of_A · Sep 30, 2020

Azel said:
Either we are still the infallible Mary Sue protagonist who can do no wrong and solves everything easily and with no bad side-effects or costs, or we are faced with a major incursion from eldritch horrors and need to do whatever it takes to survive.

Negative consequences would be nice
A huge tone shift would be a surprise, but I'd be up for it
The end of your post sort of reads like the sort of HARD MEN MAKING HARD DECISIONS WHILE HARD stuff you find in WH40k discussions. Not a great look.

Azel said:
Will there be actual consequences or can we just waltz in and the facist security apparatus will magically root out the bad guys and only the bad guys?

Azel said:
Ok. Look.

You know what happens when a foreign invader comes into a city and violently suppresses the majority religion? Yes? You are aware of the results of this?

Because I'm viscerally sickened that you pretend this is a good and nice thing to do.

Please don't raise moral arguments after advocating for slaughtering them all, thanks.
You know exactly why I'd advocating for invading them and brutally suppressing their religion. Spoiler: it's for more or less the same reason that you wanted to kill them all. Black Goat bad, eldritch horror is effectively evil, etc.
I'm aware that this is pretty evil, and even in this lighthearted quest we've seen the "collateral damage" of our security apparatus (damn, I hate that phrase). Please forgive me for seeking a solution that's just a little bit more humane than slaughtering an entire city! It's a low bar, I know, but I'm not sure we'll manage it.

T_of_A · Sep 30, 2020

egoo said:
But we can't win CoS with usual methods.

Sorry @egoo, that was not nice of me and I apologize.

egoo said:
So a plan to summon low-cr Demons en-mass next month was devised instead, because those are the least "we give any shit about angering them" Arch-enemies at this point, being our enemies by default and literally infinite in number (unlike Daemons).

Clearly I missed the wrong parts of the discussion. I sort of assumed that our plans to get Gods to help with the CoS would wait until we filled our sacrifice-fodder while adventuring, as we usually do...

Duesal · Sep 30, 2020

TalonofAnathrax said:
Sorry @egoo, that was not nice of me and I apologize.

Clearly I missed the wrong parts of the discussion. I sort of assumed that our plans to get Gods to help with the CoS would wait until we filled our sacrifice-fodder while adventuring, as we usually do...

We're planning to kill an entire court of MR 10 fey, with their leader being kin to gods in sheer power. We're going to need a lot of sacrifices to pay for that sort of power. Our gods are damn powerful, but they need payment to pull that sort of thing off.

egoo · Sep 30, 2020

Azel said:
I would just like to know the rules at this point.

Is this supposed to be actual Cosmic Horror or are we decorating a run of the mill dungeon with some tentacles for flavour?
Because it seems the former is the intention, but it's reading like the same stuff as always.

Are Elder Gods actually Bad News, or are they just another Generic Evil Outsider?
Because some here are operating under the first assumption, others under the latter.

Do our plans actually matter or will the world keep warping to satisfy the narrative needs of the day?
Because I'm tired of getting big reveal chapters how everything is a doomsday level threat so that we can pretend to challenge the massively overpowered main party for a chapter or two.

Will there be actual consequences or can we just waltz in and the facist security apparatus will magically root out the bad guys and only the bad guys?
Because people seem convinced of the latter and if this is what they want, I'd like to know, since I'm pretty sick of that happening all the time.

Either we are still the infallible Mary Sue protagonist who can do no wrong and solves everything easily and with no bad side-effects or costs, or we are faced with a major incursion from eldritch horrors and need to do whatever it takes to survive.

NGL, I feel this is really damn relevant and has to be solved now, far more than assumed (im)morality of one action or the other.

TalonofAnathrax said:
Clearly I missed the wrong parts of the discussion. I sort of assumed that our plans to get Gods to help with the CoS would wait until we filled our sacrifice-fodder while adventuring, as we usually do...

Basically, what CoS are in their total power got sprung on us far too suddenly and there was salt of "wrf, we aren't winning dis" until we found an extremely cheesy way to cheese it.

...like, seriously, if we really wanted, we could keep at summoning thousands and thousands of asshole Outsiders one month into another with next to no problem, since we can really spice up a killbox for anything that tries to follow (up to cr 23 or so).

(Awakening the Imperial Deity with 500.000 HD sacrifice, amirite?

)

Azel · Sep 30, 2020

TalonofAnathrax said:
The end of your post sort of reads like the sort of HARD MEN MAKING HARD DECISIONS WHILE HARD stuff you find in WH40k discussions. Not a great look.

No. The exact opposite. What agitates me so much the last few days is how easily people argue for "burning down the entire forest", "torching everything" and then pairing it with "but save everyone".

Because people want to be the Hard Man making the Hard Decision, but shy away from having to deal with the consequences, instead shifting the goalposts until the Hard Decision was ultimately moral and only Bad Guys got hurt.

What I meant to convey is:
Will everything be sunshine and sugar, even if we use orbital bombardment on a city, or will we have to make actual sacrifices for once? Will everything conspire to make sure our choices are entirely right and justified afterwards, or will there actual repercussions for having done something horrific?

TalonofAnathrax said:
Please don't raise moral arguments after advocating for slaughtering them all, thanks.
You know exactly why I'd advocating for invading them and brutally suppressing their religion. Spoiler: it's for more or less the same reason that you wanted to kill them all. Black Goat bad, eldritch horror is effectively evil, etc.
I'm aware that this is pretty evil, and even in this lighthearted quest we've seen the "collateral damage" of our security apparatus (damn, I hate that phrase). Please forgive me for seeking a solution that's just a little bit more humane than slaughtering an entire city! It's a low bar, I know, but I'm not sure we'll manage it.

You have been misreading me the entire time.

My argument is that either the situation is hopeless and burning it all is the only way to avert much worse damage, or the situation can be contained with less drastic means, which also means the forge can be salvaged.

I did not advocate for one or the other. I only pointed out how farcical it is to assume that 99% of the population can easily be saved, but somehow nkt the flesh forge.

Duesal · Sep 30, 2020

egoo said:
NGL, I feel this is really damn relevant and has to be solved now, far more than assumed (im)morality of one action or the other.

Basically, what CoS are in their total power got sprung on us far too suddenly and there was salt of "wrf, we aren't winning dis" until we found an extremely cheesy way to cheese it.

...like, seriously, if we really wanted, we could keep at summoning thousands and thousands of asshole Outsiders one month into another with next to no problem, since we can really spice up a killbox for anything that tries to follow (up to cr 23 or so).

(Awakening the Imperial Deity with 500.000 HD sacrifice, amirite? )

Yeah, the read from the Court of Stars is essentially:

1. The Queen is not abandoning her plans to turn the Reach into Feywild 2.0
2. The lords of the subordinate courts are not willing to turn against the Queen
3. The Court of Stars outguns us in terms of high level PCs, hilariously so. We can bring our entire might to bear against one of the lesser courts, that's it. More than one, forget it.
4. If the Reach is abandoned, we send a signal to the entire Imperium that we just got our asses handed to us, and it starts a death spiral.

T_of_A · Sep 30, 2020

Duesal said:
3. The Court of Stars outguns us in terms of high level PCs, hilariously so. We can bring our entire might to bear against one of the lesser courts, that's it. More than one, forget it.

Eh. Depends how much you're willing to cheese it.

Arguably, we can start each encounter fully rested and healed if we use temporally accelerated demiplanes to rest in between each one. So we could set ourselves against each lesser court one after the other in the same day, taking down their leaders!
...
Yeah, no. I don't want to open that Pandora's box, especially against Fey.

Duesal said:
4. If the Reach is abandoned, we send a signal to the entire Imperium that we just got our asses handed to us, and it starts a death spiral.

How about bargaining in support from other polities? Efreet, Djinn, etc?

Duesal said:
1. The Queen is not abandoning her plans to turn the Reach into Feywild 2.0

Can she actually finish things without the crown? IIRC she wants to, but she doesn't have an obvious next step and we don't know if it'll take her six weeks or sixty years to figure out what to do next.
And IIRC we can collapse her entire plan by murdering selected Reacher lords, or by going some magical geoengineerning and getting rid of the Reach. Ethically dubious, but narratively a lot more satisfying than gathering sacrifices offscreen and having our Gods much an entire polity. Doing that raises questions like "why not do it to us?", etc.

egoo · Sep 30, 2020

TalonofAnathrax said:
a lot more satisfying than gathering sacrifices offscreen

Sorry, not this time

Not only will a very large part of the sacrifices be getting summoned at least somewhat on-screen by Viserys and Lya, DP all but promised complications along the way.

This goes wildly beyond our once-a-month reporting on fully backgrounded summoning

Duesal · Sep 30, 2020

TalonofAnathrax said:
Eh. Depends how much you're willing to cheese it.
Arguably, we can start each encounter fully rested and healed if we use temporally accelerated demiplanes to rest in between each one. So we could set ourselves against each lesser court one after the other in the same day, taking down their leaders!
...
Yeah, no. I don't want to open that Pandora's box, especially against Fey.

We've devised a plan to cheese it -- bulk sacrifice. Call on the power of the Old Gods, Yss, the Merling King, and R'hllor, and channel it through the crown, strike down the leadership and go from there.

TalonofAnathrax said:
How about bargaining in support from other polities? Efreet, Djinn, etc?

It's a really bad look to have to call in support from our allies like that. We are trying to present ourselves as having equal if somewhat junior standing to the Djinn and the Shaitan empires, and that image would be harmed quite a bit if we begged them for help. Calling for help against Efreeti is one thing -- we're all in that fight together -- but calling them for anything else is a different story.

TalonofAnathrax said:
Can she actually finish things without the crown? IIRC she wants to, but she doesn't have an obvious next step and we don't know if it'll take her six weeks or sixty years to figure out what to do next.
And IIRC we can collapse her entire plan by murdering selected Reacher lords, or by going some magical geoengineerning and getting rid of the Reach. Ethically dubious, but narratively a lot more satisfying than gathering sacrifices offscreen and having our Gods much an entire polity. Doing that raises questions like "why not do it to us?", etc.

The bigger problem is their anticipated interference with the conquest. When we march against Westeros there's nothing stopping the fey from casually destroying the Legions in the Reach, especially since we've made it known we're working to stop their Feywild 2.0 scheme. Also this isn't going to be entirely offscreen. The second the ritual is done, we're going to take every high level PC available and march into their realm to finish the job and decapitate their leadership.

And then at the end we're going to grow weirwoods over every Feywild entrance, metaphysically nailing them to stay in one spot.

egoo · Sep 30, 2020

I get to have people annoyed with multiple consecutive on-screen summoning-centric chapters.

It is all cyclical, and all is right in the world.
get it? Because I even started keeping track of sjit after those 3 chapters in a row? Fuck I am pathetic

DragonParadox · Sep 30, 2020

Vote closed.

Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Sep 30, 2020 at 3:45 PM, finished with 42 posts and 7 votes.

6 people have voted
[X] Turn back, it's not worth the risk
- egoo
- silvanknight
- Takesis
- Goldfish
- Othan763
- Tomcost
1 people have voted
[X] Go on alone
- Massgamer

T_of_A · Sep 30, 2020

You see, I thought that we were doing a counter-ritual to their ritual. That's cool, I like that. It's knowing that apparently our final counter ritual will boil down to "beg gods for help" that feels weird.
I hope that when the chapters come it's presented a little differently.

DragonParadox · Sep 30, 2020

TalonofAnathrax said:
You see, I thought that we were doing a counter-ritual to their ritual. That's cool, I like that. It's knowing that apparently our final counter ritual will boil down to "beg gods for help" that feels weird.
I hope that when the chapters come it's presented a little differently.

Well the fact that you will be calling on multiple gods whose themes don't exactly mesh means you will have to actually cast a proper ritual with skill checks.

Just begging the gods for help works if you are addressing a singular god or at most a pantheon. what you guys are planning will take arcane skill.

Duesal · Sep 30, 2020

TalonofAnathrax said:
You see, I thought that we were doing a counter-ritual to their ritual. That's cool, I like that. It's knowing that apparently our final counter ritual will boil down to "beg gods for help" that feels weird.
I hope that when the chapters come it's presented a little differently.

It's more wrangling the gods to do what we want them to, and paying them to do it. But the gods kind of have to be the centerpiece here. Yss and the Merling King both have Death domains which will be instrumental to bring down the Queen, the Old Gods have the knowhow for how to pull this off due to being former fey (and having the knowledge of wide reaching curse rituals as a relic from the days of King Theon Stark vs Andals) along with a Time domain to shield us from feywild shenanigans, and lastly R'hllor for sheer firepower.

If anything it's bribing. We're very good at bribing.

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

Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed

Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed

Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed

Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed

Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed