A House of Ashes
Thirteenth Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC
As the discussion moves from Westeros to Essos, the secrets shared are less Bloodraven's and more the fruit of Varys's mad ambition. He sought neither more nor less than to forge the Seven Kingdoms into one under the crown of the boy Aegon, all his crimes expunged in his own mind so long as that ideal of a philosopher king should mount the Iron Throne. "A Blackfyre by blood this Varys may not be, but he is more truly than any man I have ever known the heir of Bittersteel," Bloodraven spits, his pale throne creaking in anger. "He did not walk unwittingly into his damnable pacts, but instead embraced them, plotting all the while to set the servants of Tiamat upon the devils he has himself let loose in Westeros, a war of fiends to embolden the Faith once it had been cleansed of sloth and avarice. He planned to
die upon the blade of the boy he raised to kingship as a sort of surrogate for what he might have been if fate had been kinder, if he had not been enslaved and mutilated. Thus should 'King Aegon Sixth of His Name' march north at the head of an army not of lords and princes, but of the people inspired to 'greatness'..."
"That's...
sick," Dany says, pale as a sheet, whether from anger or revulsion you cannot say. "He knew what stirs in the North, what dwells in the sea, and yet he chose to ally with things as bad as them just so he could be 'right', just so he could break everything in some ode to his own suffering."
You nod, momentarily speechless at how alike and yet how different you are from the man splayed out on the floor. He too wishes to reforge the Seven Kingdoms, to bring about a better world, but where you have been careful to leave in place as much as you dare, to spill as little blood as could be managed in the service of your vision, Varys seemingly revels in it, in his own way as mad as your father when he called to burn down King's Landing, save only that the flames that Varys conjured are unseen. Now at last the choice to send you hundreds, thousands of sick and hungry smallfolk to Sorcerer's Deep makes sense. It had not been some off-handed attempt to placate his supposed liege-lord, no, he had been trying to export misery and malcontent, to breed in that soil the seeds of bloody rebellion he had hoped would bring about a new day free of the tyranny of lords and sorcerers.
"It is a grand thing, this dream, this
nightmare the Spider wished to see made real," you say softly. "Grand enough perhaps to see the undoing of gods and devils, until the streets would run red with the blood of the highborn and wealthy, guilty and innocent all thrown together." Suddenly you remember the face of the former daemon worshiper whose sacrifice opened the path here. 'One of the masters' he had called you, hate glinting in his eye. It is that hate kin to utter despair that Varys would have sought to use to bring about his 'better world'. You shudder under that vision of the world as you had not even beneath the gaze of otherworldly horrors.
"Crazy as a rabid weasel," Vee spits, the plain-spoken insult jarring you from your horror, as you rather suspect she had intended. The girl might not care much for people, but she has known you for years now.
"Alright," you take a keep breath. "How the hells was he going to do this? Even with the head cut off it is beholden us to spike as many wheels in this madness as we can."
"And profit from it where we can, whether it be turning agents to other purposes or stealing treasures," Dany adds.
Again a ghost of a smile pulls at Bloodraven's cracked and withered lips for a moment before he begins recounting what he had learned. "The most urgent, perhaps, is the plot to have the High Flame Keeper in Volantis assassinated by some of his less reasonable followers with the intent to accuse the High Speaker of the Mysterium, plunging the city and its outskirts into civil war and forcing you to keep your gaze firmly east." He continues, recounting the names of the priests complicit in the deed as well as the
diabolic orator who had been set to oversee the project. Varys had seemingly seen the possibility that the fiend may tempt some of the priests into apostasy, further muddying the waters to be an advantage for he is mistrusting of the Red God and his motives, for his endorsement of slavery.
The hypocrisy seems almost thick enough to choke you.
Of perhaps even greater concern is a similar plot to incite bloody rebellion in Pentos on the eve of the Braavosi attack, with mobs of freemen primed to burn down the harbor including the holdings of many Braavosi merchant houses as an opening move, thus making it untenable for the Sealord to negotiate with the rebels, turning Braavos and you from liberators into seeming oppressors. He was seemingly quite taken with that particular plot as it would resonate well with the dark rumors the Lannisters were spreading about you in Westeros. At least there are no devils in Pentos, instead using Illyrio's old contacts.
Apart from that Varys had vaguely planned to overthrow the current lords of Lorath and Qohor, but his spies and agitators had been slow to recruit in the former city and sent into utter disarray by the religious conflicts in Qohor. Having finished drawing the map Bloodraven's assistant dutifully jots down the name of every agent of note throughout the east before moving on to the informants. Many of the people mentioned there will doubtlessly find themselves scrutinized by the Inquisition in the fullness of time. Some might even be cultivated as sources. Varys was certainly skilled at his craft, that much even you must admit while cursing the man's name.
As to the arcane resources he offered to his agents, while significant by any ordinary standard, nothing seems to require your urgent attention. Perhaps some fortunate Inquisitor might make his or her job easier by claiming those also.
Gained List of Varys's agents and cashes of arcane treasures in Western Essos (including the true names of active devils)
Sadly one place where Varys's agents have been even less fortunate than in Lorath has been Qarth. The Undying seem to have an uncanny ability to find and kill any devils which enter their domain, and mundane agents simply seemed to vanish as soon as they delved too deep into the affairs of the city and its sorcerer lords. Thus you are still left wondering if the Lannisters gained the weapons they sought in Qarth.
What do you do next?
[] Continue to pick apart Varys's schemes
-[] Write in
[] Interrogate Pycelle, for though his vices pale besides Varys's madness, a time of reckoning has come for him as well
-[] Write in
OOC: This feels like a good break-off point before discussing the situation of the Golden Company.
