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

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To be fair, of the 26 keeps we visited so far, only 5 gave any armed resistance and 4 needed warning shots before they accepted reality.
 
Azel said:
To be fair, of the 26 keeps we visited so far, only 5 gave any armed resistance and 4 needed warning shots before they accepted reality.
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Seeing an enemy you can't realistically hit floating above you will do that particularly when your land has a history of lines ended and kingdoms taken by men and women who had the ultimate high ground and a biological flamethrower. Most lords are more than clever enough to put 2 an 2 together and come up with 'raining fire bombs'.
 
DragonParadox said:
Seeing an enemy you can't realistically hit floating above you will do that particularly when your land has a history of lines ended and kingdoms taken by men and women who had the ultimate high ground and a biological flamethrower. Most lords are more than clever enough to put 2 an 2 together and come up with 'raining fire bombs'.
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Targaryens extinguishing entire lines by saying they are going to kill all of you don't even need to explicitly detail how they are going to do it. If they are outside, they are determined enough to follow through and probably at least just clever enough to succeed at it.

Viserys probably didn't need to be known as a sorcerer to intimidate people into believing that promise given history.
 
Crake said:
Viserys probably didn't need to be known as a sorcerer to intimidate people into believing that promise given history.
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Viserys: "Sweet oaths are made of tears
Who am I to disagree?
I've traveled the world and the seven seas
Everybody's lookin' for something."

"Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused."
 
Azel said:
As a side note, I checked back on what is up with the Meadows and their hatred of magic. Oops. Seems we forgot about a follow-up appointment.
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We've never met the idiot lord or his bitch mother in person, we don't made any promises to them, or taken their oaths, so I don't care if they survived the reconquista or not. I don't even understand why we ran around and personally recruited so many nameless useless lords. Having sworn to us, they either sit quietly and pray with all their might to their useless gods that we forget about them, or they try with all their might to become useful to us. They can also express their displeasure, and then we can find better lords for their lands.
To be honest, I'm a little shocked about the level of intelligence of some members of the nobility of Westeros. You can hate magic and all that, but treat it with such disdain, especially when a metal thing the size of a fortress tower flies over your head, offers to surrender, and even shoots at you… hate, fear, misunderstanding, common-sense reactions, but denial just doesn't fit in my head.
 
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Denial probably isn't the cause of this so much as fatalism, for a number of different reasons. DP has been pretty good about nuancing the reasons for Lords seeming to go to their deaths. Some if it is like Templeton's dogmatic zealotry, but hardly the vast majority of it. Even Vardis Egan was mostly just upset that he was basically denied all opportunity to die a glorious death defending his liege lord, denied all purpose of being a knight. That's the real reason he wanted a grand siege of the Eyrie. He wanted glory.
 
Sapphon said:
We've never met the idiot lord or his bitch mother in person, we don't made any promises to them, or taken their oaths, so I don't care if they survived the reconquista or not. I don't even understand why we ran around and personally recruited so many nameless useless lords. Having sworn to us, they either sit quietly and pray with all their might to their useless gods that we forget about them, or they try with all their might to become useful to us. They can also express their displeasure, and then we can find better lords for their lands.
To be honest, I'm a little shocked about the level of intelligence of some members of the nobility of Westeros. You can hate magic and all that, but treat it with such disdain, especially when a metal thing the size of a fortress tower flies over your head, offers to surrender, and even shoots at you… hate, fear, misunderstanding, common-sense reactions, but denial just doesn't fit in my head.
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We bothered with it because it might be cathartic to depose all these random noble houses but it's also a pain in the ass to pick up the pieces afterwards and get the land and local government in working order. We saved ourselves a shit ton of trouble getting the fealty of all the lords that we managed, and even then it's going to take a long time getting Westeros running to the point that we don't need to micromanage it.
 
Duesal said:
We bothered with it because it might be cathartic to depose all these random noble houses but it's also a pain in the ass to pick up the pieces afterwards and get the land and local government in working order. We saved ourselves a shit ton of trouble getting the fealty of all the lords that we managed, and even then it's going to take a long time getting Westeros running to the point that we don't need to micromanage it.
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Time will tell. Personally, I would expect 3/4 of the lords of Westeros to be of no use to us. And 1/3 at all would be right to sabotage our reforms. And this is still a very good forecast, effective if we can scare them enough. In my opinion, just invading Westeros, killing all those who did not have time to bow their heads in time and give their lands to the descendants of Grandfather Walder would be more effective.
 
Sapphon said:
Time will tell. Personally, I would expect 3/4 of the lords of Westeros to be of no use to us. And 1/3 at all would be right to sabotage our reforms. And this is still a very good forecast, effective if we can scare them enough. In my opinion, just invading Westeros, killing all those who did not have time to bow their heads in time and give their lands to the descendants of Grandfather Walder would be more effective.
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It's also about optics. If 1/3 are obstructionist enough to interfere with Crown officials, and we annihilate them, 2/3rd will realize, politically speaking, the smart move is to pretend they never even knew those Houses.
 
Sapphon said:
Time will tell. Personally, I would expect 3/4 of the lords of Westeros to be of no use to us. And 1/3 at all would be right to sabotage our reforms. And this is still a very good forecast, effective if we can scare them enough. In my opinion, just invading Westeros, killing all those who did not have time to bow their heads in time and give their lands to the descendants of Grandfather Walder would be more effective.
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We could have killed everyone who gave us the slightest trouble, but then all of Tywin's propaganda about us is confirmed and we're the evil tyrant from the east sweeping in to despoil Westeros. That's not the sort of bad PR we have time for. And so we decided to diplomance everyone who had a chance of working with us and leaving the rest as lambs led to slaughter. Now with most of the lords brought to heel they could certainly cause trouble with various reforms, but I doubt it'd be that much. We just bought ourselves a shit ton of political capital conquering the continent practically overnight. Mnly the most brazen or moronic westerosi would defy Viserys at this point, and most of the stupid ones are being weeded out as we speak.
 
We basically arranged things in such a fashion that all of the ones who are even a little intelligent, or at least compliant and obedient enough to be useful, are the ones we bothered talking to personally to get them to cooperate ahead of time.

The ones who would cause us issues, we left by the way side as sacrificial lambs to our imagery of the conquering hero who is just putting down traitors to the rightful ruler of the country.

This was all perfectly calculated and carefully sculpted to give us the best image. We didn't go through all that trouble for nothing. We wanted to be able to introduce our changes smoothly and with minimal fuss. We did that by only taking in the best of the social elite, and then making examples out of enough Houses that even the ones who don't agree with our reforms will be wary to do anything. If they hesitate to actually act out for at least a year, that might actually be enough time to force through most of the big changes, like tax reform, defining of borders and ensuring succession for different Houses concerned with who is going to be ruler of this patch of land or that patch of land due to having a relative who has a claim over it.

Once we handle that messy business, the social issues are more easily dealt with over a long period of time and regular diplomatic grease, not crisis situations where Viserys has to fly around to each province personally to deal with shit.

That's why we did all of this. Because we didn't want to have to do everything ourselves.
 
We are our yucky veggies so that we don't have to deal with scurvy. :V

And utter destruction is more fun and satisfying when it's powerful factions who underestimate us (aka the Court of Stars), not when it's just NPCs who would be lucky enough to hit the soft level cap,
 
Duesal said:
they could certainly cause trouble with various reforms
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I don't think they would even try to do that by this point as Viserys has made no effort to hide that he can teleport across the continent any time and anywhere he pleases for any reason and few things can discourage uncooperative behavior like the threat of the emperor himself showing up in person as it out of thin air asking very pointed questions
 
One Autumn Leaf said:
I will be blunt. The Wereboar template was worth more than that house was
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Personally, I think their castle being a smoldering ruin is the most use we got out of them. Up until now, every noble house could still think "Bah! He would never actually make good on his threats!" and now we can point to Grassfield Rubble Pile in response.

I mean, sure, a bunch of innocent people died due to no fault of their own, just because they served some stubborn idiots, but that was pretty much inevitable to happen sooner or later. At some point, someone would have called what he thinks is a bluff on our part, and I'm much happier to have done this under the guise of "warfare" than if we had to burn a keep during peace time.
 
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So I believe there was a mention at some point that the long summer was going to begin soon. Has it yet begun, and if so, have people begun to notice it yet?
 
How can anyone have the idea that Viserys doesn't have the stomach for making good on his threats, after hanging nobles like commoners?
 
Azel said:
Personally, I think their castle being a smoldering ruin is the most use we got out of them. Up until now, every noble house could still think "Bah! He would never actually make good on his threats!" and now we can point to Grassfield Rubble Pile in response.

I mean, sure, a bunch of innocent people died due to no fault of their own, just because they served some stubborn idiots, but that was pretty much inevitable to happen sooner or later. At some point, someone would have called what he thinks is a bluff on our part, and I'm much happier to have done this under the guise of "warfare" than if we had to burn a keep during peace time.
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Every conqueror needs their own Harrenhal so that people know he's not fucking around.
 
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