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

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Part MMDCXXVIII: Corpses and Worms
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    • Corpses and Worms ​

    Fifteenth Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC

    "You are welcome in Sorcerer's Deep to stay as long as you desire, my lady," you answer Melisandre, not bothering to hide a sigh of relief. All of you here knew what the stakes were, impolite though it may be to speak them aloud. "Should you wish to accompany us into the ruins your aid will be greatly appreciated." You look at her in askance, not wishing to test the fragile trust between you on asking the obvious question.

    "I know what lies at the heart of this place, the cursed egg that holds one of the elder wyrms, the weapon the Freehold feared." She falls silent for a moment. "Will you believe that I did not mean to use it against you, I wonder?" When you do not answer at once she continues: "Like most of my order I was a slave bought and sold, Your Grace. I know well the hatred that even the most feeble of slaves can nurse in their hearts, the peril they can pose to their masters. How much more dangerous than to try and bind a sorcerer who can don a dragon's skin in full? Madness..." she trails off, shaking her head.

    The words have the ring of truth to them and so you nod and agree, though you suspect that if Melisandre should ever think the stakes are high enough she would not shy away from such madness. Given that the peril she fears is the End of All That Is you cannot begrudge her the theoretical ruthlessness, though you hope that whatever she will learn in the Deep might turn it fully towards the foes of life and sanity. "What did you intend for the orb, then?"

    "There have long been tales of dragons flying over the blasted wreck of Valyria, great Firewyrms burrowing through the earth. With the orb in hand I might harness them, but it is for the use its last owners meant it for." Here she smiles not only to you but to the others, inviting laughter, fellowship. You are not the only one trying to build bridges. "Only in this instance it would not bind the great dragon-flights but instead the monsters squatting over the bones, lore, and treasures of the Freehold. It would be as dreadful a waste to allow such things to lie forgotten when we have need of every weapon against the coming Night."

    "You planned to go to Valyria, alone?" Lya asks, startled. "I mean no disrespect of your skills, but you have only one pair of eyes and hands and there are many perils to face in the broken land."

    "I had hoped the Lord of Light would guide my steps to companions I might trust on such a journey... and perhaps he has." The priestess vaguely indicates all of you before rising to her feet in turn and walking over to the corpse reeking of power. "Three times he forced me to retreat by dint of his dead hosts," she explains clinically while looking over the salt-encrusted bones. "I could slay them of course, but never fast enough, and it would use the swirling sand to veil himself. I wonder who it was to guard Quthresh so diligently after these many years?"

    Rina clears her throat: "I could find out, draw the knowledge from the bones?" It is more than half a question.

    "Yes, yes of course," Melisandre assures her at once. "You have made a fine point as to why one should not begrudge you the use of your power, one I shall not soon forget."

    The younger woman blushes at the compliment, though only for a moment before picking up dead mage's skull and placing it upon a nearby stone scoured flat by the sands. Her words catch and twist the desert wind and from the noonday heat they coax an alien chill. Cold blue flares the light in the hollows where its living eyes once rested.

    "What is that tongue called?" the Red Priestess asks, sounding at once fascinated and repulsed.

    "The proper name would be Skroth," Rina replies. "That just means 'the Utterance' or 'that which moves the wind with purpose'."

    "Teach me," Melisandre asks, surprising not only Rina but the rest of you also. Seeing the reaction she adds: "It is agreed upon by great minds of the East and the West alike that the first step to winning a war is to know the enemy. A language can tell one much of the thoughts of its makers."

    "I'll try..." Rina hesitates. "I seem to be missing a lot of the words, though."

    "Are they words that have to do with the living of mortal life, simple, commonplace things?" you guess. At her nod you continue: "Then I would say they most likely do not exist. So it is with the tongue of dragons and the Elder Wyrms. For all their ageless greed and malice they were far more alike to mortalkind than that which stirs in the Farthest North."

    Questioning the skull reveals many of the answers you sought, though they may not have been what you wished to hear. The dead one is not the only guardian of the orb, rather he is the only one who can wander beyond the broken fortress that the Quthreshi had been mining for metals and stone... once they had breached the inner vaults at least. The tale of the dying town is as predictable as it is tragic. Desperate for more wealth to trade for food, the miners had gone against age old injunctions in search of treasure. What they found instead was death and slavery beyond any mortal chains as the orb's guardians, sworn to protect it for eternity, had long since been driven mad by their solitary vigil, and so they had extended their sway, the better to guard it.

    Of more immediate concern is the fact that the seat of the dead mage's soul is still buried in the heart of the crumbling fortress alongside its grimoire, still guarded by its remaining fellows: a disgraced general who sought to expunge his shame in eternal service and the thing it describes only as 'the Shackled Worm', a fearful thing coiled around the base of the fortress, meant to protect not from peril without but within.

    "A creature to battle a bound dragon, should the orb break. We should be cautious in approaching such a thing, you most of all, Viserys," Lya says. "Such a thing is unlikely to know one dragon from another, or care for the distinction."

    Looking upon the bastion of crumbled stone rising like a red hill from the sands you suddenly wish you had some means to see through stone, or some hope of conversing with the last undead guardian. Alas the whispers of foresight are clear upon the wind. There is no one and nothing within with which you might bargain.

    As your newly expanded company passes under the crude arch, the stone groans like old bones cracking. Fine streams of crimson sand flow down from above.

    "A moment," Melisandre calls. Raising up her pendant, she summons without word or gesture a wave of crimson flame hot as dragonfire, fussing the stone like clay. "That should hold, for a few days at least," she says simply.

    What do you do next?

    [] Try to head directly towards the inner sanctum using Find the Path

    [] Try to bait the guardians somehow
    -[] Write in

    [] Write in

    OOC: If you need more information do not hesitate to ask since I know that can be a problem with these kinds of chapters.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Find the Path should find us most of the guardians, under the assumption that the creators of the dungeon knew of the spell.
     
    A few castings of Legend Lore would be a big help here!
    I'm hoping for monster info, basic layout, or even basic passcodes or signs of recognition after two or three castings.
     
    Can we use the Titan's Tools to just shift all of the sand and stone, at least that not protected by magic, out of our way, @DragonParadox?

    Did we bring Vee or Dany with us?
     
    Huh. Does Melisandre know that we are a Dragon in truth or does she think we use a spell to shape change into one. Because based on her remark:
    DragonParadox said:
    How much more dangerous than to try and bind a sorcerer who can don a dragon's skin in full? Madness..." she trails off, shaking her head.​
    Click to expand...
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    It seems she under the impression that Viserys is using magic to shape change into a dragon.
     
    We have no mundane trap springers/disarmers btw, and something something wards against the super-useful (and therefore, common knowledge to defenders/trap makers in a magic society/institution) spell find the path should, imo, be expected.

    So, I'm expecting warded (against non xp-costing divination) traps


    Personally, I'd like to speak to the bound guardian first, see if we can't find some way of disposing of the danger it guards against, or at least offer better, supported facilities to contain danger untill we deal with it.

    @DragonParadox, this is mostly general curiosity on how you run mythic Vs normal magic, but, if one were to ward against "find the path" and not use deific/"lots of xp cost" based methods to do so, would a our mythic spellcasting ability be able to overcome such? Or is this something Viserys would not know? :)

    @Thread I wanna SCIENCE this (although due to field conditions, this is going to be too shoddy to count as small letters "science" :(), and cast normal FtP and our Mythic FtP both.

    Even though that is a terrible idea :p.

    Edit; either way we're going to need a stytar or seven.
     
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    So.

    Do we sacrifice the dragon or try to recruit him?

    I'm on the fence leaning in either direction. Both have serious opportunity costs and advantages.
     
    zxzx24 said:
    So.

    Do we sacrifice the dragon or try to recruit him?

    I'm on the fence leaning in either direction. Both have serious opportunity costs and advantages.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Here's a wild plan! Talk to it before we make that decision. But I'm angling heavily towards the sacrifice side. The sort of Dragon you have to shove into an Orb of Dragonkind is no joke.
     
    zxzx24 said:
    try to recruit him?
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    CR 23+ chromatic dragon, that was trapped in an orb for millenia.
    Sorry not sorry.
    This thng would not only be batshit insane, it would be almost impossible to put down.
    Nor would we have any way to control it, unlike even Amrelath.

    Seeing as people aren't all htat interested in utilising it, and Viserys probably having a knee-jerk reaction, it goes to yss.
    My closest approximation of Yss eating this energy field:
     
    egoo said:
    CR 23+ chromatic dragon, that was trapped in an orb for millenia.
    Sorry not sorry.
    This thng would not only be batshit insane, it would be almost impossible to put down.
    Nor would we have any way to control it, unlike even Amrelath.

    Seeing as people aren't all htat interested in utilising it, and Viserys probably having a knee-jerk reaction, it goes to yss.
    My closest approximation of Yss eating this energy field:
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Why do people keep suggesting this?

    We were repeatedly told we can sacrifice the Orb, not the Orb and the dragon inside. The orb gets eaten, the dragon gets released.

    Either we find a use for it, we break the dragon out to deal with it, or we secure it behind forty wards.
     
    Would you guys like an interlude next? Maybe something from Tyene's group? We have not heard from them yet.

    I ask because the prospect of rolling combat late in the evening is not precisely one I relish.
     
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