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

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DragonParadox said:
Warped Reflections ​

Eighteenth Day of the Third Month 294 AC

As the spell takes hold and Balerion's mind clears of the demon's presence, all you can feel is relief, your own or Varys', you are not sure. He deserves better than that. Though at the sight of his possessor the feeling is washed away by anger, tanar'ri, you know that even from the glimpse of the fleeing spirit, before you see the two watchmoles vanish in the grip of shadow demons.

Your dragon perches precariously on the barren island of the Snare as you take on human shape again to run your hand over his scales. He will probably appreciate the familiarity of the touch after what he has been through. To your surprise, hissing comforting words in draconic calms him even better than Valyrian. Somewhere deep in his mind, memory of the tongue still lingers beyond even that of his first masters.

Alas, you cannot spent all your time seeing to his needs or even raising the unfortunate darkenbeast rider who helped restrain him. You turn to Mereth, first listening to her report then sending her back to the keep. "Seek out the House of Mirrors, first do a general, broad sweep of divination and then narrowing focus as intelligence grows clearer. Use inquisition assets through the proper channels to deal with any infestation, going all the way up to calling up the garrison if necessary."

"Yes, my lord," she replies and is gone in an instant, along with two of her sisters, leaving you to sooth Balerion.

The dragon butts his head against you hard enough to almost unbalance you. He does not fear battle and he does not fear death, that he has faced so many times in his long life, but what he had faced at the hands of the demon he does fear. You vow to make some stronger wards for him, but for now... "Send for Wisdom Qyburn," you call out to one of the other Erinyes.

As soon as the stone of the Snare parts, the former master glides out, his many eyes flickering from burning crimson to pale blue and a sort of deep indigo that should be beyond the ability of most eyes to see yet somehow isn't. He does not seem surprised to see you petting a dragon, though he does take a moment of silence at your question. "Could a Bloodclot Mold dwell inside Balerion inactive and without discomfort, only willing itself to act if some other external force attempts to compel him?"

"In a human or anything of comparable size it would be most uncomfortable, but a creature that size... yes, yes... I could see it being done, so long as the dragon does not instinctively reject base contact."

Unsurprisingly perhaps, Balerion is wary of a writhing mass of slimy tentacles the color of congealed blood, snorting enough smoke to cover you from head to toe thrice over and even a little flame, but in the end you coax him into allowing the mold to touch, then the spirit within explains itself with surprising deftness. Soon enough they are joined, though it takes a few moments more to convince the dragon to be parted from you.

A moment later you are surprised when the mold takes control briefly to cough up what looks at first like charred bird flesh and feathers before you notice a ruby of middling size and cut and no arcane aura. The wards around Balerion spring back to life.

Under Qyburn's curious gaze, you ask one of the watch-briars to put it into a chest for later, then you turn to the flesh-smith once again. "I might have need of your services in recovering the watchmoles. Alongside Ser Richard, of course," you add, noticing the knight about to speak up.

"With great pleasure, my lord, though I would ask for the protection of my own knights" His eyes shift at the words, both in position and color as perhaps half of them turn from their usual, glowing red to an ethereal green. A heartbeat later, they all switch once again, now to a dull blue tone. "That which I subsumed thought itself akin to a god above mere mortals, it's powers beyond their comprehension and so vast that they were nothing before it. Yet in all it's centuries, it barely ever fought in earnest. I am eager to see if I have taken more from it than empty bluster. There are many powers I wish to test upon something that is truly willing and capable to resist them."

As the corpse knights he had summoned without word march forth, one pale hand caresses your shoulder as something that might be a thread of light, or perhaps translucent slime, lingers between them. A means of sharing pain.... harm, you realize. No sense in not taking advantage of it as well.

Wyverns are already streaming overhead, but it is not from them, or the legions that you get your first news of the war already started.

"The House of Mirrors was infiltrated," a returning Azirah reports bluntly. "Nothing as crude as demon worship or enduring possession among the ritualists. Minor compulsions mostly and a sort of secret door into their minds that can only be accessed during the height of one of the scrying rituals allowing some demonic presence to feed those afflicted subtly different visions. It does not seem to be universal, perhaps even not prevalent, but the matter was urgent enough to share at once. The Commander noticed because she insisted on witnessing the rituals in person and was wary of demonic treachery. The seer in question appears to be entirely innocent of wrongdoing."

Not something a fury would have hastened to say even a few months ago, you note with a spark of pride, though it is quickly overwhelmed by your concern for the House of Mirrors.

What do you do next?

[] Divine the information yourself and go on the counter-raid as planed

[] Stay behind and coordinate the response to the infiltration in the House of Mirrors

[] Write in

OOC: If Mereth had not noticed the ritual magic working oddly and recognized the hand of a demon lord you would have been sent to Lorath, presumably to kill some patsies. Not yet edited.
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Here's an edited version of the chapter, DP.
 
Azel said:
Standard procedure for the House of Mirrors has always been to have each divination done by multiple people, three for the most basic divinations and at least seven for anything of importance, then comparing the visions they received to increase accuracy of the predictions.

So that shouldn't have worked, unless the infestation is already really prevalent.
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I know. This has been going on for months though, so yes you can assume a lot of people can see what Abraxes wants though they do not always do so.

I ran a lot of rolls in the background since that time when rumors of demons first appeared in Lorath

Evaunit02mark1 said:
Honestly this feels like getting hit by one of the thread's own plans seeing how annoyingly convoluted it's getting.

I'm actually kind of flattered.
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At its core it's not that convulsed in intent at least. The House of mirrors is your eyes and unlike the inquisition it is not cell based and filled with suspicious people, that is the first thing a serious infiltrator would go for and they presumably used a light touch so as not to get spotted in routine investigations.
 
I think the House of Mirrors needs a Mind Dragon assigned there full time. If anything among our forces would be able to discern this sort of subtle mental tampering, it would be one of them.

Where would be the best place to reassign one from?
 
[X] Plan Pulling At All Threads
-[X] In regards to the House of Mirrors:
--[X] Have Garin called back from the Plane of Earth to organize the sweep.
--[X] Also pull Dany from guard duty and Lyas second body from research duty to aid him.
--[X] All ritualists, workers, guards and people even vaguely associated with the House of Mirrors will be detained by the Inquisition until all affected people and potential infiltrators have been indentified.
--[X] Dany and Lya will use their talents with magic and dreamcrafting to gather more details about the methods used to influence and spy on the ritualists and hopefully to find the vector used for the infiltration.
--[X] The Inquisition is given full authority in this matter and will treat any person trying to delay, obstruct, evade or resist their investigation as a hostile / traitor.
--[X] The Inquisition can furthermore take as many sacrifices from the larder as they deem necessary to receive divinations directly from Yss.
-[X] In regards to the raid:
--[X] Do the divination yourself and proceed as planned.
--[X] While you do the casting, have Maelor brought over to join the raid. It's been a while since the two of you roasted some demons together.
-[X] Have the gem used to suppress Balerions defenses brought to Lya, so that she can cast Touch of History on it to see if more useful information can be gleamed from it.
 
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Azel said:
[X] Plan Pulling At All Threads
-[X] In regards to the House of Mirrors:
--[X] Have Garin called back from the Plane of Earth to organize the sweep.
--[X] Also pull Dany from guard duty and Lyas second body from research duty to aid him.
--[X] All ritualists, workers, guards and people even vaguely associated with the House of Mirrors will be detained by the Inquisition until all affected people and potential infiltrators have been indentified.
--[X] Dany and Lya will use their talents with magic and dreamcrafting to gather more details about the methods used to influence and spy on the ritualists and hopefully to find the vector used fort he infiltration.
--[X] The Inquisition is given full authority in this matter and will treat any person trying to delay, obstruct, evade or resist their investigation as a hostile / traitor.
-[X] In regards to the raid:
--[X] Do the divination yourself and proceed as planned.
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We might want to consider hitting them all with an Unbinding spell to clear out any lingering tampering, once any useful information is gleaned from the investigation.

[X] Azel
 
Goldfish said:
We might want to consider hitting them all with an Unbinding spell to clear out any lingering tampering, once any useful information is gleaned from the investigation.

[X] Azel
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I trust Lya and Dany to take care of this. If they can't, we will likely get another vote on this.
silvanknight said:
@Azel maybe Maelor can help with something? It's the 18th and he has been free since the 15th of this month iirc
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Good point. Adding Maelor to tag along with the raid, since he is free manpower and I feel like more people who can burn shit down are warranted for this.

I'm also giving the Inquisition the permission to raid the Larder to get Divinations directly from Yss for this.
 
[X] Azel

As much as it sucks, its actually really nice to be so skillfully infiltrated.

I mean we have so many idiot enemies, the clever ones make this quest a lot more interesting.
 
Another addition:
-[] Have the gem used to suppress Balerions defenses brought to Lya, so that she can cast Touch of History on it to see if more useful information can be gleamed from it.
 
Can we give Mereth a raise?

She has repeatedly saved our ass so far and definitly shown us that sometimes experience counts for more than just levels.
 
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