- Location
- Brazil
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A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
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- a song of ice and fire a sword without a hilt d&d 3.5 dungeons & dragons 100% high octane dragon fuel ave corvidae battle action dragon diplomacy best sister bureaucromancy delicious soul-stuff dragon dreams come true dragon ta'veren greatest uncle hubris is a coward's word in defiance of gods and men mammon's folly mutually assured mage's disjunction qm murderhobo top tier coatl
Update in beta and vote closed, because the next interlude has a vote attached in light of what the KL party found.
- Location
- florida
It's bizzare, the idea of an adventuring party stopping to call the authorities?
It's so weird, in 5 years of paying DnD tat has never been a good, or even a reasonable option.
My paladin stopped bothering with the legal authorities after the third time it went nowhere.
- Location
- Brazil
Honestly, that should either:
a) Be a very specific and explicit thing in-setting: "the government is ridiculously corrupt, the only way to get anything done is through your own hands. Bribes are an accounted for operating expense."
b) The GM is dropping the ball.
It's not so much a case of calling the authorities as calling for reinforcements. Viserys is not the lawful authority in KL.
- Location
- Virginia
Algalon
Herald of the Titans
- Location
- Celestial Planetarium
I dunno, I'm pretty sure a lot of the residents of King's Landing would view Viserys as the proper lawful authority
Robert methaphorically ascended to the Iron Throne by walking across a carpet made out of the corpses of the residents killed during the Lannister's sacking of KL. Between that, the hopelessly corrupt Goldcloaks, and Robert's whoremongering and drinking, I have great difficulties imagining anybody seeing him as a figure of any authority.
Unless you're talking about the quality of the local whores and ale houses. Then Robert is indeed the unquestionable authority
Interlude CCCLXIV: The Spider Unseen
The Spider Unseen
Eleventh Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC
As she carefully set her bow against ornate edge if the sept roof Aradia wondered distantly if whoever had decreed that King's Landing's watchmen would be named 'gold cloaks' did so out of a bitter taste for irony or just thoughtlessness. Given what she had seen so far she would wager the former over the latter, not that you really needed gold to bribe most of them. Silver would do, or even copper in a pinch if all they had to do was look the other way.
Aldred Carter was a man with a fine appreciation for his palate and his hide both, always with his ear to the ground and, if Chataya was to be believed, his tongue on the boots of whoever was most powerful in King's Landing, and these days that was the Lannisters. However it was neither being a Lannister pawn nor a man likely to visit whores without paying his dues that had marked Aldred for death. Rather it was the suspicion that his second-in-command, the aptly named Lazy-Eyed Lurnaf, was tangled in dark magic somehow. What sort of dark magic and from where the madame did not know, only that he would not enter the brothel after it had been warded by the Golden Shields and that when one of her girls had spread her legs for him elsewhere she had glimpsed 'some kind of glowing scar'. Alas that it had been dark and she had been busy with other matters so even observing her memory of the event had not answered their questions.
Maelor had suggested simply catching Lurnaf and interrogating him, but Daenerys had argued against it saying that it would be stirring up more trouble than it was worth. 'Best to pick our killings with our eyes open instead of stumbling into it and figuring out that we're going to have to take the city when the dust clears.' A joke, but one with a kernel of truth at its core.
I'm powerful here, the incarnum thought, the realization had been coming to her slowly over the days spent in King's Landing, for though she had been sent out from the Deep before it was only for short skirmishes and then it was right back to Dragon's Roost where her maker outshone her and her sisters as the sun outshone the moon. That particular fact of her existence conjured no resentment, but it was still surprising to ponder how mighty she was here that of half a million souls a bare handful could avoid her arrows any better than the hapless Aldred.
The bow twanged and three hundred yards away her quarry fell and tumbled into the gutter, unseen by any witnesses...
Now to see just what kind of rat the deed uncovered, thought the young woman looking upon the scene of her most recent kilning with pale dispassionate stare, lightened only by a spark of hunter's interest.
***
Twelfth Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC
Lazy-Eyed Lurnaf was made a lieutenant by noon the next day and hanged by sunset, his body burned and tossed into the Blackwater for being a devil worshiper. Either the Faith, the Lannisters, or both must have known he sold his soul and yet they kept him around for some damnable reason.
"Are you sure we can't just kill some of the Most Devout? Thinning the herd as it is?" Maelor asked only half in jest as he watched Dany's conjured servitors shake ashes and bits of bone out of the sheets they had been holding unseen just below the surface of the water. There were enough pieces, if only just, to reforge the skull and question it. It had been a risk to let the execution play out, but this way whoever had recruited the gold cloak would be secure in the knowledge that the body had been disposed of and its secrets lost to the bay.
"I'm sure," Dany said as she fixed the skull with a flourish. "We don't even know who among the Faith knew about the devil worshiper, only that they moved suspiciously fast once he was within spitting distance of Janos Slynt."
The queen did not bother correcting the crude expression. She must be really upset... Maelor understood in theory that people could be devout and he knew Dany's mother had once prayed in a sept, but emotionally the idea of offering up everything you were, even your thoughts, to some 'higher' power made no sense to him, like putting on your own slave collar.
It turned out what while Lurnaf did not know where his orders came from, besides 'an imp', it was always the same imp and he could describe the thing well enough for Dany to scry it and so she did once they were back in the relatively secure confines of Chataya's whorehouse.
Her condition for turning on the Lannisters was that she be as involved in the investigation as any of them. Given that they were hoping to convince her to spy for Viserys rather than just run off to the Deep, no one had any objection to the notion... once Dany had warded her mind from foresight and enchantment.
"Why is it greeting empty air?" the madame asked, peering into the silver bowl Dany was using for a focus.
"Because it's talking to someone who is as warded as you are," Dany replied, hands white as she gripped the sides of the basin. "This has to be the conjuror."
The imp's voice, tiny from both its pitiful stature and the nature of the spell, emerged from the mirror. "I did not know he was planning to kill his superior master, stupid mortal never told me anything. You should have let me punish him, yes-yes."
A pause followed while the conjurer replied, his words as mysterious as his visage save for what might be guessed from the imp's cringing posture: "Only an arrow master, an arrow yes with a pitted iron head, common as dirt it was..." The worry that Aradia's part in setting off the chain of events might be revealed was entirely over shadowed by the imp's next words. "I am much better than your wingless, tongueless birds master, much-much better..."
"Fuck!" Maelor cursed outright and he was not the only one around the table to do so. "You don't think...?"
"We always assumed that Varys and the conjuror must be different people because we know Varys is working with Illyrio and he is working with the Golden Company," Dany said slowly. "But there's nothing that says the bastard can't be playing both sides against the middle. Hells, I was working for Tiamat with the intention of betraying her, why can't someone else?"
"It would fit an intriguer's mindset," the former queen said at last. "Right down to the arrogance to think he can sup with the devil not once but twice and come out the better for it."
"That in turn means our mission just got considerably more difficult," Aradia noted. "We should speak to the king, now."
No one objected.
In light of Varys having an item of mind blank and being the possibly treacherous agent of Mammon on the small council, what aid do you send?
[] Write in
OOC: This interlude pretty much requires a vote.
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- Location
- United States
Goddamn. I did not see that one coming.
It makes sense when you think about it, though. We've always been wondering what Varys' endgame was, how on earth he thought dealing with Tiamat would end well for him. As it turns out, he had another 'partner.' Still not sure about how this could possibly end in anything but tragedy, but Varys could theoretically play Mammon and Tiamat off of each other, while not being bound to either.
It makes sense when you think about it, though. We've always been wondering what Varys' endgame was, how on earth he thought dealing with Tiamat would end well for him. As it turns out, he had another 'partner.' Still not sure about how this could possibly end in anything but tragedy, but Varys could theoretically play Mammon and Tiamat off of each other, while not being bound to either.
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- Location
- ?????????
If his plan goes wrong at any point then everything in a ten-mile radius of the man is bone and ash... what is the fool thinking? He is mad if he thinks he can play a archdevil and a dragon god for fools...discounting that we did just that.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
He's madder than us simply because he is not THE DRAGON REBORN and thus cannot fight off anything up to a low-grade Aspect of that God or Archfiend off with his company of deadly high level PCs armed to the teeth with magic.
Let's be fair, we might be mad on a relative level, but he's mad because he's trying play Xanatos Speed Chess against two beings who have been alive mastering this game for thousands of years, one of which used to have Fate as a divine domain.
Viserys can't kill Gods (yet) but he can bitchslap them.
- Location
- Argentina
This quest needs more imps speaking like skaven. Skavenspeech never gets old, although it can't compare to the proper orc speech, though.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Also @DragonParadox Did Teana not get assigned to the Dragon Orb expedition, not the King's Landing mission? It says so in the turn plan, yet you have her here in this interlude.
Evaunit02mark1
S-s-smell the Prey, S-s-start the Hunt.
...
Once again, I have to ask, why haven't we simply burned the castle to the ground with every one of those idiots inside it.
I don't care how clever you think you are, an immortal creature that has been playing the game longer than humans have been sentient is better at it than you are.
You don't have a chance unless you stack the deck with every card you can get your grubby hands on, so why do you think you can win when he hands you a deck he's made himself?!
The difference being we knew the risks of doing both and we cheated like motherfuckers with every outside force multiplier we could get our grubby little talons on.
And even then we only managed to survive because we're a Dragon Sorcerer with all the bullshit that title implies.
And even with that it's not unfair to say that luck has had a hand in more than one of our various successes.
Whatever his plan is it will only end in failure, fire, blood, and possibly multiple portals to two different hells being opened up in Westeros.
Wait, no that's just an error.
Sorry about that guys @Duesal is busy with school and @Massgamer could not edit so the error slipped in there.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
So what's our game plan here? What does it really change?
We now know that Varys might be the one primarily manipulating the board both on Hell's playing field (or Mammon, at any rate) and Tiamat. We planned for removing Tiamat's pawn and suborning her information network (which is Varys' network, at anyrate, though clearly we've underestimated his audacity, since he has probably been feeding her just as many lies as he has Mammon's guys).
So we expected that would make Tia-chan kinda of jittery, what with then having NO information coming out of Westeros, and less information out of Western Essos now that we've chased her primary fixer out.
But removing Varys would also rile up Mammon's guys and probably provoke a response elsewhere.
Personally I still kind of suspect Baelish is in league with fiends or something, or at least Fey. He's all about chaos and shit, so maybe not necessarily Devils, but still, he could probably fake being orderly for a little while. He got people to believe he was too ordinary and lowborn to be a threat for years despite basically owning Westeros.
We now know that Varys might be the one primarily manipulating the board both on Hell's playing field (or Mammon, at any rate) and Tiamat. We planned for removing Tiamat's pawn and suborning her information network (which is Varys' network, at anyrate, though clearly we've underestimated his audacity, since he has probably been feeding her just as many lies as he has Mammon's guys).
So we expected that would make Tia-chan kinda of jittery, what with then having NO information coming out of Westeros, and less information out of Western Essos now that we've chased her primary fixer out.
But removing Varys would also rile up Mammon's guys and probably provoke a response elsewhere.
Personally I still kind of suspect Baelish is in league with fiends or something, or at least Fey. He's all about chaos and shit, so maybe not necessarily Devils, but still, he could probably fake being orderly for a little while. He got people to believe he was too ordinary and lowborn to be a threat for years despite basically owning Westeros.
- Location
- United States
So while that just happened, I have to say I'm eagerly awaiting the next part. Viserys has had some incredibly badass moments, but we've never really gone full-on Smaug. I mean, just flying in solo, going full "My scales are tenfold shields, my wings a hurricane, my breath death!" against a bunch of dipshits who absolutely have it coming and are completely fucked. It's not an aspect of Viserys' nature he ever really shows.
- Location
- Australia
I agree with you on the Teleport but weren't you just arguing it was weak and situational and we would always have better options?
I really wish we could just leave the spell as is, not everything has to be customised right up until the point of it being an entirely different spell, class etc.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
I like it, but how do we fool Mammon et. al, not to mention Tiamat?
And it would take away a Hero Unit for the long term for sure, Varys is juggling too much for it not to.
We'd also have to take EVERYTHING, all his intelligence, all his reports, notes, drain his brain for codes and encryption, etc.
Varys is also a fanatic, so there's a good chance if he has a suicide method, it isn't a poison pill in a tooth. Too unreliable with what he knows of us for sure.
I would not be surprised if he has a nuke keyed up to go off the minute transmutation magic hits his back, destroying his body and probably another one set to go off simultaneously where he keeps his notes. If he doesn't just have perfect recall using a +6 intelligence item and remembers it all by heart.
- Location
- Germany
Bronn is still in Golden Fields an very necessary there.
We also got Xor and a few assorted Arcanums.
@DragonParadox, did Lya already craft Nuri or did she want to do that after the Dragon Orb mission?