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

Eight Day of the Fifth Month 294 AC

Well if nothing else the storm of questions, rumor and suspicion that was set upon your naming of one of the baatezu to high ministerial office should make it easier for the rest of the ministers to sneak by under cover of rain and thunder as it were, you muse ruefully as Waymar mentions the meeting with his father the next day. Unlike the matter of taxes the Ministry to Public Works raises no far reaching concerns and is unlikely to inflame passions, though the wise lord would do well to pay heed just the same. Lands crossed by wide roads are all the richer and ones linked by bridges all the safer.

Thus over steaming chocolate that Dany presses into your hand and some sort of new confection the palace kitchens had designed, more for the chefs' amusement you would assume than for your consumption, you ponder again three names and three dossiers for the post of chief architect of the realm, or you suppose chief architect herder of the realm, which is a task both less fulfilling to the soul and more necessary to the common good.

The first of these is a name you had heard before, now with a face put to it. Shad Ibm Mal, an azer, his beard and hair afire with cherry red flame and smoke ever shrouding him. His voice rumbles like thunder in the depths of the earth and his hand as fine upon the chisel as it is the pen. Skilled he is and used to working with sorcery, though not so skilled to the ways and customs of men, and like a foreigner he would need a translator for some weeks and months yet, that or magic to smooth away the creases in his path.

Yet of course he is not alone in such. Zeriah of Sallosh, one of the scholars who bears the Silver Stars, is well used to building on the water, for she has of old built much across the face of the Silver Lake, and well shall be be recalled, choosing one of the ancient dead to stand in your councils. True she is not without fault, deeply marked by the fact that she woke in an empty tomb, and one with little love of those who glory the Freehold, though perhaps that is not as much trouble as it once would have been. Even Zherys does not count the Freehold as worthy of emulating after what he had learned of their rule and the manner of their Doom.

Last and by far the strangest of those who came forward is Nineteen of Three Hundred, a bulabar name for they are the ones who account themselves by number of their hatching, but not quite a bulabar himself. Rather than the gleaming blue shell of the tinker fey he has a carapace of polished basalt, to match the substance of imperial roads, and his eyes shine like mage lanterns winking in the night's breeze, a fey of the Imperirum not merely by choice and by oath, but by the hour and manner of his birth, begotten of pech and bulabar. He wishes to hold sway over the domain of his kindred and other great works, and by them he might be made mighty indeed to the aid of all the realm, but not without cost. One of great thirst he would be, to be handed dominion over water, as they say in the lands east of Mantarys.

[] Shad Ibm Mal
+Extraplanar Connections
+Master Builder (Skilled at infrastructure projects)
+Finance Expert (Skilled in the gathering of gold)
-Taxman (Being known for parting people from their money makes few friends)
-Stranger in a strange land (Is not yet immersed in the politics and culture of his new land)

[] Zeriah of Sallosh
+Artificer (Skilled in using constructs to create infrastructure)
+Amphibious builder (Responsible for much of the infrastructure on the Silver Lake)
+Kinship with the Dead (Naming a Salloshi so high in your councils will be well see by the other sons and daughters of Sarnor)
-Miser (Having woken in a plundered tomb Zeriah has sworn to never be reduced to such paucity again and his means of ensuring that have earned him few friends)
-The Ill favored (Recalls the excesses of the Freehold all too well and looks in askance at those who glory it)

[] Nineteen of Three Hundred
+Lore of Stone and Wheels (Intrinsic knowledge and skill at improving Imperial building practices)
++Deep Tales (Could gain Mythic ranks from the very fact of raising infrastructure)
-Wandering Thoughts (Has little care for the politics of the realm when they do not relate directly to his area of expertise)
-Grand Dreams (May be inclined to overspend on impressive projects)

OOC: And with this we are done with the voted for ministries.