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

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Basically the rub was we could sacrifice the Orb (I think) ... and release the dragon.

But we couldn't sacrifice the orb and the dragon.

So... INTO THE CLOAK IT GOES! A McGuffin here to stay.
 
Crake said:
Basically the rub was we could sacrifice the Orb (I think) ... and release the dragon.

But we couldn't sacrifice the orb and the dragon.

So... INTO THE CLOAK IT GOES! A McGuffin here to stay.
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Only for a few levels more, once we are about level 20, and our companions are at that level too, we should be able to gather everyone, and sacrifice the orb, then kill the dragon if it don't take our job offer.

That's of course if it's CR23, we will have to check it's CR before releasing it, but if it's CR23, then we should be able to take it in a few levels, in a prepared battle field of course.

I mean it's not that much tougher than Mammon's Avatar, and we can prepare the battlefield even more than we did against him.
 
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Crake said:
There's no point in doing that?
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A CR23 corpse, which we can either harvest dragon reagents from, or feed to the Fungus Forge to make a batch of high CR beings, and the reward from sacrificing the orb, it's a major Artifact, the reward for sacrificing it is likely to be major.

Then there's the load of EXP it would give, all in all there's plenty of reason to do it.
One Autumn Leaf said:
Look for all we know Yss could probably eat the damm thing with no issue and until we have confirmation on that end we shouldn't make plans.
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For all we know he can't, we just don't have confirmation that he can't, but multiple people remember a statement that he can't, so I will go with my memory being right, unless DP tells me I'm wrong.
 
I am maximum TURBED by this long update.

Hopefully it's just time for another riot quest.
 
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Part MMDXCI: Into the Spider's Web
  • Threadmarks
    • Into the Spider's Web ​

    Thirteenth Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC

    When you explain your plan to Nuri she does not beam or clap for joy as you had come to expect from the expressive incarnate. Instead she nods with startling intensity, her only show of pleasure a slow smile of anticipation. So might a tiger smile on the eve of a hunt. "They have disguises here, don't they? For the Silver Eye?" she asks. "Those would likely be better suited for the city than anything I'm carrying with me..."

    The sprite in the corner is more than happy to help her find them, not so much because of the alliance between you and Braavos but simply to help along what he calls 'a marvelous show'.

    As Nuri rushes into adjourning room with a armfuls of clothes your mother unexpectedly offers to help. "I may not be much of a spy, but one does not get far at court without a talent for getting ready quickly."

    When they return moments later Nuri is dressed a manner befitting a Braavosi busker: canvas blouse and pants both died black covered in brightly-colored linen patches, obviously salvaged from some nobler garb, cheap brass jewelry clinks at her neck belt and ankles, conveniently hiding the talismans she is wearing. Her cheeks are dusted with shinning mica dust while her long red hair is has been left to flow free to the small of her back. For something that had taken a little more than five minutes to put together the effect is startling.

    "Excellent," you declare. "Now...."

    "I should come to, to play for the dance," your mother interjects firmly. Only now do you notice she had taken her fiddle out, as well as trading her arcane glamour for a headscarf and a simple dark red dress. Even her eyes are changed, seeming darker rather than their natural lilac, likely through some alchemical concoction of Tyene's.

    "Mother, it's dangerous..." you begin.

    "More dangerous than what you and Daenerys are doing?" she cuts you off. "It will be easier for Nuri to draw a crowd dancing to music and singing with accompaniment than wandering in alone. The whole plan depends on gathering a crowd quickly so Varys cannot simply drift away with the ebb and flow of the crowd. Even if to does come to a fight I cannot imagine him striking at me or Nuri over the immediate threat which would be you."

    You open your mouth to counter that you are far harder to hurt, that you have magic to ward you and a measure of a dragon's hardiness even in this form, then you close it with a sigh. This is not an argument you can with with logic alone, you see it in her eyes. She will not back down unless you order it, and that would hurt her every bit as much as you or Dany might be in her place. "Alright, let's go..."

    ***​

    The Moon Pool is no stranger to songs, from love-struck bravos serenading courtesans to troupes of mummers accompanying their scenes with music to wet the public appetite, to buskers singing with a hat at their feet, but the song drawn from the old fiddle's strings is still enough to draw the ear of every passerby. Softly it begins like a spark catching to kindling, but it rises ever higher, ever bolder set to verses common as they are oft sung:

    A young man walked through the forest
    With his quiver and hunting bow
    He heard a young girl singing
    And followed the sound below
    There he found the maiden
    Who lives in the willow     ​

    Nuri's motions are soft and dream-like, long shallow jumps that seem to hang in the air more than they aught, gentle sighs of the simple shepherd's fiddle leading the listener on. As the song wore on her dance grew more urgent as though she were drawn first this way then that, unsure of where to tread, though every step is graceful and you see in the scryer's glass every step is planned.

    He called to her as she listened
    From a ring of toadstools red
    "Come with me, my maiden
    Come from thy willow bed"
    She looked at him serenely
    And only shook her head    ​

    The dancer spoke at last, her words answered the song, her tread more urgent still, and with each motion the soft clink of her bracelets only seemed to add to the song, drawing in more and more of the crowd, not only bravos out to see and be seen but those who had before walked with a purpose across.

    "See me now
    A ray of light in the moondance
    See me now
    I cannot leave this place
    Hear me now
    A strain of song in the forest
    Don't ask me
    To follow where you lead"    ​

    "He just moved past a lady in a dark green dress trimmed with Myrish lace,"     you call to Aradia, finally noticing someone distinctive enough near the false emptiness at the center of the mirror's gaze.

    You feel a surge of cold satisfaction a moment before the words cross the arcane link. "I've got him. He's disguised as an old noblewoman taking the air, he's heading for the crowd, though he is keeping a 'proper distance'."

    Keeping his options open, smart, you admit grudgingly to yourself. All the more so since you doubt he realizes he is being hunted at this very moment.

    Drawing the mirror back into the folds of your gilded cloak you rush out of the room afoot with Vee at your side, both of you wearing faces meant to hide in the crowd and dark long oiled wool cloak to cover yourselves where simple glamour might fail. Unless Varys has eyes sharp as a Fury's, you should be upon him before he can react.

    Having had the thought you spend the short journey turning the possibility over in your mind, though in the end you must conclude that there is no way you could have accounted for it in the time you had available. There is only so much one can do do disguise faces quickly without magic, and it would not be enough to trick a discerning eye in any case.

    The song is still being sung when you arrive, though now it winds towards its melancholy end as the woodsman slays she whom he loves, by trying to possess her. Nuri's last arching sinuous motions end in seemingly a boneless fall that is probably one of the hardest things to get right without actually cracking her head on the cobbles.

    ...Her feet had walked but a distance

    From the green land of her birth    ​

    As you approach the disguised eunuch you must admit his craft is complete. Even knowing that he is behind the guise of the elderly lady with her steel-grey hair drawing into a severe bun and her ebony walking stick you can barely see the lines of his face beneath the powders and lotions.

    "Now!" you call to Dany and Vee in your mind.

    In the same instant Vee casts her unraveling and your sister dives from where she had been flying unseen besides Aradia and casts upon your foe a spear of emerald light which spills out around him, binding him to this place and this time that he might face his fate.

    For the briefest moment he freezes then he flings the cane away and begins to run towards the moon pool itself, but you are already far too close. Reaching out to grip his wrist in the confusion you weave a spell to bind him into the bottle in your hand... but the spell flickers and dies on your fingers, meeting an indomitable protection.

    Shaking you off with surprising strength Varys reaches into the folds of his dress to draw a pair of wands, one in each hand, one milky white and the other black as pitch...

    Time bends to your will as it has done so many times before and in that frozen instant you draw forth a sphere of amber to trap the spymaster in mind and body both. This spell he could not know to ward against so easily...

    Close as you are the piece of amber strikes true, but rather than enveloping him you watch in horror as it bursts into a corona of impossible colors, the weave of magic turned inside out. The last thing you see before the world goes dark is Varys' cold reptilian smile.

    A moment that might have been a eternity late.r The film of amber around you breaks, you sense the timber of Dany's magic to it, though it is not without cost. Paying the price of her own chronomancy, Dany falls from the air some fifteen feet away.

    "However did you find me here?" the eunuch asks almost conversationally, seeing you recovered. "I would have thought not even you could recover anything from my flesh puppet." He shakes his head sadly. "No matter, I will have time to question you later."

    A spear of deathly cold flies from the point where his wands cross, thin and deadly as a needle dipped in poison. It sinks into your bones, trying to bind you in its power even as you had months ago bound the dragon that haunted the dreams of Volantis, yet you keep your feet.

    You take 9 dexterity damage

    What do you do next?

    [] Write in

    OOC: For anyone wondering how Varys cast cast with two wands, he has Double Wand Wielder so he can use two wands at once as a full round action. I changed the prerequisites so he could take it without a crafting feat.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • ...I don't like this.
    And I don't mean the chapter, DP, just... the whole situation. It feels like a failure. And it tops off the general anxiousness this whole hunt caused me.

    @Goldfish, be so kind, have him dead or captured by the next update.
    I can't take this nervousness he causes me, for some inexplicable reason.

    *leaves the thread for now*
     
    This is why I hate competent enemies, I don't understand how Varys was able to protect himself against all that if we hit him with dispel which should have temporally removed protective item and spell powers unless they are natural abilities in which case crazy.

    I rather be doing festival and interludes but we have to deal with this cocksucker.
     
    egoo said:
    ...I don't like this.
    And I don't mean the chapter, DP, just... the whole situation. It feels like a failure. And it tops off the general anxiousness this whole hunt caused me.

    @Goldfish, be so kind, have him dead or captured by the next update.
    I can't take this nervousness he causes me, for some inexplicable reason.

    *leaves the thread for now*
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    I'm sorry my writing made you feel this way:(

    The reason I design these fights to be hard is to keep the narrative tension going rather than just breezing though. It might help to think of how much more meaningful it is to beat powerful opponents.

    Massgamer said:
    This is why I hate competent enemies, I don't understand how Varys was able to protect himself against all that if we hit him with dispel which should have temporally removed protective item and spell powers unless they are natural abilities in which case crazy.

    I rather be doing festival and interludes but we have to deal with this cocksucker.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Dispel only has a chance to remove buffs and it does nothing to items unless it is aimed at that particular item.
     
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    Okay so what is the play here? He has spell turning, so 8th level spell immunity and of course the irritation of the fact that somehow he is this strong. Hmm we can bludgeon him with melee or we can cast something else.
     
    how the hell he have what seems like permanet level 8 spell up that stood up against a boosted Greater Dispel Magic and a level 7 spell spell turning* ?

    *even if he has items for that from where did he get these considering how fucking expensive these are
     
    Last edited:
    DragonParadox said:
    Into the Spider's Web ​

    Thirteenth Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC

    When you explain your plan to Nuri she does not beam or clap for joy as you had come to expect from the expressive incarnate, instead she nods with startling intensity, her only show of pleasure the slow smile of anticipation. So might a tiger smile on the eve of a hunt. "They have disguises here don't they? For the Silver Eye?" she asks. "Those would likely be better suited for the city than anything I'm carrying with me..."

    The sprite in the corner is more than happy to help her find them, not so much because of the alliance between you and Braavos but simply to help along what he calls 'a marvelous show'.

    As Nuri rushes into the adjourning room with an armfuls of clothes your mother unexpectedly offers to help. "I may not be much of a spy, but one does not get far at court without a talent for getting ready quickly."

    When they return moments later Nuri is dressed a manner befitting a Braavosi busker: canvas blouse and pants both died black covered in brightly colored linen patches, obviously salvaged from some nobler garb, cheap brass jewelry clinks at her neck belt and ankles, conveniently hiding the talismans she is wearing. Her cheeks are dusted with shinning mica dust while her long red hair is has been left to flow free to the small of her back. For something that had taken a little more than five minutes to put together the effect is startling.

    "Excellent," you declare. "Now...."

    "I should come to, to play for the dance," your mother interjects firmly. Only now do you notice she had taken her fiddle out, as well as trading her arcane glamour for a headscarf and simple dark red dress. Even her eyes are changed, seemingly dark blue rather than their natural lilac, likely through some alchemical concoction of Tyene's.

    "Mother, it's dangerous..." you begin.

    "More dangerous than what you and Daenerys are doing?" she cuts you off. "It will be easier for Nuri to draw a crowd dancing to music and singing with accompaniment than wandering in alone. The whole plan depends on gathering a crowd quickly so Varys cannot simply drift away with the ebb and flow of the crowd. Even if it does come to a fight I cannot imagine him striking at me or Nuri over the immediate threat which would be you."

    You open your mouth to counter that you are far harder to hurt, that you have magic to ward you and a measure of a dragon's hardiness even in this form, then you close it with a sigh. This is not an argument you can win with logic alone, you see it in her eyes. She will not back down unless you order it and that would hurt her every bit as much as you or Dany might be in her place. "Alright, let's go..."

    ***​

    The Moon Pool is not a stranger to songs, from love-struck bravos serenading courtesans, troupes of mummers accompanying their scenes with music to wet the public appetite, to buskers singing with a hat at their feet, but the song drawn from the old fiddle's strings is still enough to draw the ear of every passerby, softly it begins like a spark catching to kindling, but it rises ever higher, ever bolder set to verses common as they are oft sung:

    A young man walked through the forest
    With his quiver and hunting bow
    He heard a young girl singing
    And followed the sound below
    There he found the maiden
    Who lives in the willow     ​

    Nuri's motions are soft and dream-like, long shallow jumps that seem to hang in the air more than they aught, gentle sighs of the simple shepherd's flute leading the listener on. As the song wore on her dance grew more urgent, as though she were drawn first this way then unsure of where to tread, though every step is graceful and you see in the scryer's glass every step is planned

    He called to her as she listened
    From a ring of toadstools red
    "Come with me, my maiden
    Come from thy willow bed"
    She looked at him serenely
    And only shook her head    ​

    The dancer spoke at last her, words answered the song her tread more urgent still and with each motion the soft clink of her bracelets only seemed to add to the song, drawing in more and more of the crowd, not only bravos out to see and be seen but those who had before walked with a purpose across.

    "See me now
    A ray of light in the moondance
    See me now
    I cannot leave this place
    Hear me now
    A strain of song in the forest
    Don't ask me
    To follow where you lead"    ​

    "He just moved past a lady in a dark green dress trimmed with Myrish lace,"     you call to Aradia, finally noticing someone distinctive enough near the false emptiness at the center of the mirror's gaze.

    You feel a surge of cold satisfaction a moment before the words cross the arcane link. "I've got him. He's disguised as an old noblewoman taking in the air, he's heading for the crowd, though he is keeping a 'proper distance'."

    Keeping his options open, smart,     you admit grudgingly to yourself. All the more so since you doubt he realizes he is being hunted at this very moment.

    Drawing the mirror back into the folds of your gilded cloak you rush out of the room afoot with Vee at your side, both of you wearing faces meant to hide in the crowd and long dark oiled wool cloaks to cover yourselves where simple glamour might fail. Unless Varys has eyes sharp as a Fury's you should be upon him before he can react.

    Having had the thought you spend the short journey turning the possibility over in your mind, though in the end you must conclude that there is no way you could have accounted for it in the time you had available. There is only so much one can do to disguise faces quickly without magic and it would not be enough to trick a discerning eye in any case.

    The song is still being sung when you arrive, though now it winds towards its melancholy end as the woodsman slays she whom he loves, by trying to possess her. Nuri's last arching sinuous motions end in seemingly a boneless fall that is probably one of the hardest things to get right without actually cracking her head on the cobbles.

    ...Her feet had walked but a distance
    From the green land of her birth    ​

    As you approach the disguised eunuch you must admit his craft is complete, even knowing that he is behind the guise of the elderly lady with her steel-grey hair drawing into a severe bun and her ebony walking stick you can barely see the lines of his face beneath the powders and lotions.

    "Now!" you call to Dany and Vee in your mind.

    In the same instant Vee casts her unraveling and your sister dives from where she had been flying unseen besides Aradia and casts upon your foe a spear of emerald light which spills out around him, binding him to this place and this time that he might face his fate.

    For the briefest moment he freezes then he flings the cane away and begins to run towards the Moon Pool itself, but you are already far too close. Reaching out to grip his wrist in the confusion you weave a spell to bind him into the bottle in your hand... but the spell flickers and dies on your fingers, meeting an indomitable protection.

    Shaking you off with surprising strength Varys reaches into the folds of his dress to draw a pair of wands, one in each hand, one milky white and the other black as pitch....

    Time bends to your will as it has done so many times before and in that frozen instant you draw forth a sphere of amber to trap the spymaster in mind and body both. This spell he could not know to ward against so easily...

    Close as you are the piece of amber strikes true, but rather than enveloping him you watch in horror as it bursts into a corona of impossible colors, the weave of magic turned inside out. The last thing you see before the world goes dark is Varys's cold reptilian smile.

    A moment that might have been a eternity later the film of amber around you breaks, you sense the timber of Dany's magic to it, though it is not without cost. Paying the price of her own chronomancy Dany falls from the air some fifteen feet away.

    "However did you find me here?" the eunuch asks almost conversationally, seeing you recovered. "I would have thought not even you could recover anything from my flesh puppet." He shakes his head sadly. "No matter, I will have time to question you later."

    A spear of deathly cold flies from the point where his wands cross, thin and deadly as a needle dipped in poison. It sinks into your bones, trying to bind you in its power as you had months ago bound the dragon that haunted the dreams of Volantis, yet you keep your feet.

    You take 9 dexterity damage

    What do you do next?

    [] Write in

    OOC: For anyone wondering how Varys cast cast with two wands, he has Double Wand Wielder so he can use two wands at once as a full round action. I changed the prerequisites so he could take it without a crafting feat.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Damn. Son of a bitch has bantz.
     
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