Yeah that's very possible, but he's probably not supreme the way the Rh'llorists imagine him, more a first amongst equals leader, as the Others started as the various Fey who refused to deal with the time of mortals beginning, not one court that was corrupted, but parts of multiple courts.
I doubt that King and Queen are the true rulers, that story just go that a White Walker seduced a Black Brother, who declared himself the Night King and her his Queen, I doubt she was the leader of the Others, if the Leader of the Others had moved like that, it would probably have caused far more chaos, than that story describes.
We have evidence there's an entity that's called the Night King who was once mortal, we have no evidence at all he's the leader of the Others, or even a part of the leadership, from how the story goes, I would guess that he's merely a champion, one of the strongest monsters the Others have access to, but not one of the group that calls the shots.
There really isn't much of a thing as "over-prepared", yes. DP has demonstrated that people who aren't full-casters will use tools and methods to work around their innate limitations, approaching a problem at an oblique angle that Viserys apparently wouldn't think of because he can just lay down an explosive rune or do a high level ritual or cast a spell of the Seventh Circle and call it a day.
My bet is, this Maester had a sending stone, so this "CONSTANT VIGILANCE" expy probably has that and more tricks.
+2 deflection AC, feather fall on wearer, stormrunner's ward 3/day
Very nice. And market price is 20,000 gp? So that would be 2,000 IM to craft, or 10 days using base crafting time before bonuses. Definitely worth it for any dragonlord.
What can we sacrifice?
Generally enemies who prey on mortalkind (Fiends, Fey, Deep Ones, Efreeti, Undead, Winterborn, etc.), as well as magic items of sufficient power that weren't made by us. Refer to the Larder for details on our current stockpile.
What can we sacrifice to/for?
There are several different avenues of sacrifice. We can sacrifice to the Old Gods, Yss, or the Merling King for various boons, or we can sacrifice for the creation of Magebane Poison, or Valyrian Steel.
How does sacrifice to the Old Gods work?
For the most part, sacrifice to the Old Gods is used to grow Weirwood Heart Trees via the following rituals:
Day of Blood (Blood Magic, Greater)
School: Transmutation & Divination; Level 8
Casting time: 80 minutes
Material Components: The powdered remains of a sentient (Int greater than 3) creature or creatures of no less then 8 HD (bonemeal, dried organs, etc...)
Blood Component: Sacrifice of 16 HD worth of sentient creatures who must be hung from the tree, or if the branches will not support them, impaled before its roots.
Special: The value of the sacrifice is modified by the following factors:
Low Intelligence (Int 3 to 6): -50%
Native Outsider: +25%
Fey: +30%
True Outsider (Called): +35%
Aberration: +35%
Undead: +40%
Cold Subtype: +50%
Creature Capable of casting spells (not SLAs): +25%
Willing Sacrifice (no magical compulsions): +100%
For each secondary effect desired the Blood Cost increases as follows:
1 Secondary effect: 24 HD worth of sacrifices
2 Secondary effects: 36 HD worth of sacrifices
3 Secondary effects: 54 HD worth of sacrifices
Sacrificing more than needed may lead other gifts as the gods will. Required Caster: Druid or Adept (Old Gods) level 4; Arcane caster level 7
Backlash: All base metal objects in a 50 ft radios of the Nascent Heart Tree fall to dust
Effects:
Primary: Grow a Heart-Tree from a sapling in the span of the ritual, which serves as the focus of a permanent CL 20 Hallow or Unhallow spell (Primary caster's choice)
Secondary: Select an effect or effects to be tied to the Hallow or Unhallow effect from the list ordinarily permitted for such a purpose, up to a maximum of three.
Failure: Primary caster becomes bound to the site of the weirwood and may not travel more than 100 ft from it until such a time as the ritual is complete. If the ritual fails a second time while a creature is so bound the creature dies, its remains feeding the Heart Tree allowing it to grow to full size regardless. A creature so slain cannot be returned from the dead save by the spells Reincarnate and True Reincarnate.
Day of Change (Greater)
School: Transmutation & Divination; Level 8
Casting time: 80 minutes
Material Components: The powdered remains of a sentient (Int greater than 3) creature or creatures of no less than 8 HD (bonemeal, dried organs, etc...)
Special: Artifact(s) to be sacrificed. Minimum (combined) caster level:
8 for the primary effect
12 for for the first secondary effect
16 for the second secondary effect
20 for the third secondary effect
The effective caster level of the artifact is increased as follows if its origin bears some afinity to the Old Gods' domains, as follows:
Travel, Strength +2
Protection, Magic +4
Time +7
Objects with no affinity have a 20% chance to be rejected. Should this happen, the primary caster will not suffer the failure condition, but all material components will be lost. Sacrificing more than needed may lead other gifts as the gods will.
Backlash: All base metal objects in a 50 ft radios of the Nascent Heart Tree fall to dust
Effects:
Primary: Grow a Heart-Tree from a sapling in the span of the ritual, which serves as the focus of a permanent CL 20 Hallow or Unhallow spell (Primary caster's choice)
Secondary: Select an effect or effects to be tied to the Hallow or Unhallow effect from the list ordinarily permitted for such a purpose, up to a maximum of three.
Failure: A random artifact or 1d4 ordinary magic items in the caster's possession are destroyed. If no such objects exist the failure condition defaults to that of Day of Blood
The value of the sacrifice is modified based on the type of creature or the affinity of the item to the domains of the Old Gods. That said, Weirwood Heart Trees aren't the only things the Old Gods can grant. They have been shown to have the power to block hellish influence in devil-crafted magic items by using First Men runes, and have even displayed the power to snatch a soul from the grasp of Winter if given enough sacrifice. The Old Gods thus far have not displayed any limit for the amount that can be sacrificed to them. Additionally, a small blood sacrifice can be offered to pay for a safe Tree Stride from any Weirwood Hear Tree straight to Bloodraven—something Viserys has done multiple times.
The Old Gods only care for HD, so creatures sacrificed to them for the most part move on to the afterlife. For those that don't move on, it's because their soul has been drawn into the Old Gods' hivemind, not because they've been soul-killed. The Old Gods don't soul kill. The Old Gods will accept almost anything sacrificed to them, but they are pleased with servants of the Seven, and their greatest enemies of all are the Others.
It should be noted that the normal range for a Weirwood Heart Tree's Hallow effect is a radius of 40 ft. However, if you were to have all three secondary effects be the exact same spell, the range of the Hallow effect is enhanced through efficiency and expanded to nine times the size of a normal tree, leaving you with a radius of 360 ft. Aside from this, the only acknowledged way to increase the range of a Weirwood Heart Tree is simple aging or regular worship, so if we sanctified an already old tree the range would be bigger from the start.
Special Notes:
Exchange rate of 500 Great Brass Seals for every CL in Day of Change
Living Brass is considered +1 automatically, and resonates with the Strength Domain of the Old Gods
Valyrian Steel is considered +2 automatically
How does sacrifice to Yss work?
Yss is a bit more tricky, because after every significant sacrifice he needs to sleep, and he generally can't be called upon for help while asleep.
Where X is the number of HD it's sacrifice had, it used to be this:
CR 1-9 - 1dX Days
CR 10-15 - 1d2*X Days
CR 15-20 - 1d4*X Days
But has since been upgraded to this after we fed Yss a particularly large meal:
CR 1-9 - (1dX)/2 Days
CR 10-15 - 1dX Days
CR 15-20 - 1d2*X Days
Yss rewards for sacrifices based on their CR, though of course one must keep in mind that higher CR sacrifices will put him to sleep for longer. Yss has a wide variety of rewards he has bestowed for sacrifice, including fixing broken magic items (and even fixing a hidden flaw we hadn't detected), to empowering and improving magic items, to providing unlimited and unfailing divine teleport to Sothoryos in the middle of Wild Magic, to aiding in rebirth and renewal of things long dead.
Yss is generally accommodating of our wishes so long as we make sure he stays a fat and happy snake. He doesn't seem to eat items, but with the creatures he eats, they are soul-killed and utterly consumed. Yss' greatest enemies are servants of Lolth, and servants of Sseth.
How much if I want Yss to envenom a weapon? And how strong is the poison?
That will cost a CR 11 sacrifice, and it will be the equivalent of a +1 enchantment, with the poison itself being a DC 15 Fort save with 1d4 CON damage.
How much if I want Yss to use his 1/day Divine Curse on someone? And what are the mechanics of the Divine Curse?
The required sacrifice needs to be the CR equivalent of the victim you want cursed. The victim will advance 1d4 age categories (Will save DC 28 halves). If this would cause the victims to achieve an age category older than venerable, they immediately fall to dust and are counted as having died of natural causes.
How much if I want to harvest divine venom directly from Yss' Avatar? How strong is that venom?
This requires a CR 25 sacrifice before Yss will allow his venom to be harvested. The venom is strong enough to severely harm gods.
How does sacrifice to the Merling King work?
Frankly, we're not quite sure. We haven't sacrificed that much to him, so we haven't actually figured out a proper system with him yet. What we've gotten from him so far is a Stepstones-wide blessing called the Pact of Scale and Sea:
Effects (Pact of Scale and Sea):
+20% Fishing Efficiency,
33% chance that any vessel that would be lost at sea in the Stepstones due to weather is instead blown off course in some manner deemed fitting to the Merling King
a method to use nascent water spirits for navigation purposes, an amulet with Turn/Rebuke Undead, and Valaena, Asha, and Theon even managed to get blessings of their own.
The Merling King seems to be rather generous with his blessings from what we've observed, so long as we're never friendly with the Deep Ones. We are currently toying with the idea of making our own sacrifice dagger for him. The Merling King's greatest enemies are the Deep Ones, though he also accepts anything that draws out suffering instead of giving the swift mercy of death.
Can we sacrifice to the gods to get direct personal blessings, like extra spellslots, boosted knowledge, increased ability scores, or even SLAs?
Yes, but there's a cost, and not just in the cost of the sacrifice itself. The blessings are either limited in some fashion, or they change you.
Old Gods -- blessings limited in proximity to the Weirwood Heart Tree they were granted at
Merling King -- blessings limited in proximity to the sea
Yss -- blessings will give the benefactor some kind of snakelike feature (see Azema getting snake eyes after getting freed from the Abyss). It is also confirmed that Yss' blessings do not change the alignments of those he changes, unless they have specifically bargained to have their minds warped for some reason.
How can we make Magebane Poison?
Magebane Poison is made with the sacrifice of Outsiders. It requires the combination of either Good and Evil, or Lawful and Chaotic.
Magebane Poison
Type: Injury
Save: Fortitude DC 20
Frequency: 1/round
Effect: Caster loses access to his highest level of spells known/prepared
Cure: 1 save (access to magic returns at a rate of one spell level/minute or instantly if cured by magic)
Creation: The vital fluids from 2 or more outsiders of at least 6 HD with opposing alignment sub-types (Good/Evil or Law/Chaos). 1d3+1 doses are created for every two HD over the minimum are used.
Skill to Create: DC 32
This isn't true sacrifice, it's more just harvesting their lifeblood and using it to brew poison.
How can we make Valyrian Steel?
Valyrian Steel can only be made through the sacrifice of fiends. This is not a form of true death, but rather it consumes part of the sacrificed fiend's power to fuel the creation of more Valyrian Steel. Every fiendish HD can be used to fuel the creation of 50 pounds of Valyrian Steel. All fiends qualify for this—Demons, Daemons, Devils, and Rakshasa—but only fiends can be used for this.
Spellsteel's Blessing (Blood Magic, Major)
School: Transmutation: Level 7
Casting Time: Varies depending on forging time
Material Components: 100 lbs of Hellforged Iron or 2,500 Gold worth of arcane reagents for every 50 lbs of Valyrian Steel
Blood Component: 1 HD of sacrificed fiend per 50 lbs of Valyrian Steel
I tried spoilering everything to make it more compact, but the Old Gods section just would not cooperate, so meh. Anyway, that's pretty much everything we've got on sacrifice.
[X] Plan Surprise Dragon Imperator
-[X] Let him come ashore first an move between him and his boat before decloaking.
-[X] Dany stay invisible and near the Maester in case of hostilities breaking out.
-[X] Greet him in a friendly tone, but ask him plainly why he has come to aid a poisoner from escaping justice.
-[X] If he attacks, use Freezing Glance to subdue him.
Don't forget that our maesters superiors were idiots though. They had very little to go on but immediately wanted Brune dead with no evidence that he was working for the deep ones. And that was after the Crackclaw Point houses had sought aid against the deep ones.
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Dec 26, 2018 at 2:54 PM, finished with 257948 posts and 14 votes.
[X] Plan Surprise Dragon Imperator
-[X] Let him come ashore first an move between him and his boat before decloaking.
-[X] Dany stay invisible and near the Maester in case of hostilities breaking out.
-[X] Greet him in a friendly tone, but ask him plainly why he has come to aid a poisoner from escaping justice.
-[X] If he attacks, use Freezing Glance to subdue him.
Don't forget that our maesters superiors were idiots though. They had very little to go on but immediately wanted Brune dead with no evidence that he was working for the deep ones. And that was after the Crackclaw Point houses had sought aid against the deep ones.
Well I was under the impression that the whole thing re Deep Ones was a cover to tell the patsy Maester to kill someone associated with Viserys from the anti-magic maesters. But given the Lantern bearer maybe it is someone trying to do anti-deep ones shenanigans
