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

Tenth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

Lying will not keep such a secret long, not that should you get into the habit of lying to your allies, but laying down some groundwork in light of being the first to find this place is you think more than reasonable. You make it clear to the Grandmaster you are claiming the Crucible in the name of the fifty thousand souls currently inhabiting it, with an offer of joint research and leaving the door open to further negotiations once the exact principles of the locale's workings are established, and you are certain it will not disappear from under everyone once Renly is gone or they are all made aware of their reality. Though initial reactions are as fraught as you have ever seen the stoic githzerai the virtues of caution win them over as you had hoped they would, leaving you free to look over what else had changed over the past two days.


The news that greets you on your return to the Deep is in some ways deeply relieving and in others bitter in hearing. Thanks to the unrelenting chase of the Wild Hunt the wounded Indigo Mask did not manage to come into contact with any but the least servants of the Void before he was brought at bay on the Plain of Bones, an unclaimed demesne of the Feywild that reflects the devastation of war and devastating indeed had been the battle that followed. The fury of the Wild Hunt smelling blood against the rage of a cornered beast, a war of turn-skins and shapeshifters, of elder wargs who denied the Greendream and beast-kin fighting to the last. By all accounts the Mask taunted the Lord of the Wild Hunt for marching beside the living dead when he accused the remains of the Indigo Court of seeking an alliance with Winter.

Recognizing the weakness implicit to this Relath deployed the dead at the tip of the spear in an intentionally weak position to draw the enemy in so that the Wind Hunt could shift positions so that the Heralds, Warstriders and other constructs could close the jaws of the trap upon them. The trap succeeded, but at the cost of many of the dead and no small number of the green-born who decided to stand with their shattered kin to the last.

Still, the report emphasizes the power of the Warstriders, able to burn a path of destruction through the battlefield with impunity as the fey were unable to even attempt to get past the constructs' defenses without the aid of their most powerful remaining mages, who quickly made themselves targets in turn. Relath thus covered himself in glory slaying two elder mistborn mages who had been weakened by wildfire shelling while Ashin and Sari had proven less than able to fight in pitched battle, needing to be rescued from the fray by a wings of wrinyes and Heralds, three of the latter of which were shattered in the doing.

In that same battle the Sisters of Vengeance distinguished themselves by drawing a pair of strange but fearsome owlbears out to be slain by a combination of their own arrows and your Heralds' burning breath. It is with no small measure of pride that you realize that most if not all of them have grown in your service, not just the likes of Mereth, Leto or Sarell.

Relath levels up

All erinyes level up (+1 Racial HD)


As the battle neared its denouement Winter played its hand, weak as it ultimately proved to be. Several void-wraiths attacked Nirah and his escort of nagas, seeking perhaps to pay the Herald of Yss back for the defeat above the Valley of the Thenns, but their magic proved unable to do more than cripple three of the nagas without wresting their souls from the Herald before the wraiths were in turn banished by hallowed light, and 'enough Wildfire to make and alchemist proud'.

You catch yourself smiling at the small jest hidden in the otherwise dry report from Relath, when he was not dwelling upon his own valor at least. Somewhere in the back of your mind you hear Varys grumbling at the surprise. "It is a useful tool is it not? Why dwell upon the follies that were once done with it?"

Shooting your familiar a faintly exasperated look you continue to the end of the report, where Relath summarized in few words the brief vicious duel between the Lord of the Wild Hunt and the Indigo Mask, which sent the latter into flight only to be chased down by the most fleet footed of the Hunt and put to death. The Lord of the Hunt took his corpse to serve as a trophy in the Savage Halls evermore. In exchange he offers to divide all the other corpses in your favor, three out of every five for you and only two for his own subjects. You did bring the fire, even if you did also bring a god's herald into the Feywild.


Which bodies do you claim?

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OOC: I thought about doing the split myself, but there is too much judgement value to be exercised to do so. The reason you do not get a chance to bid for the body of the Mask itself is because the Wild Huntsman really wanted to and... well, he's a mythic character and Relath isn't for all he had decent diplo and got bowled over. I thought about doing this as an interlude series but we would have likely taken a week to do so and I didn't think clearing out fey would hold your interest for that long with the conquest of Westeros coming up.