- Location
- United States
You have to be a special peasant.
It takes a special kind of person to break through to level 6.
It takes an even greater person to claw their way to level 10.
And so on and so forth.
A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
-
- Tags
- 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
It takes a special kind of person to break through to level 6.
It takes an even greater person to claw their way to level 10.
And so on and so forth.
- Location
- washington
Eh I didn't say its common but 1 in every few million peasants get to high levels its possible.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
What confuses me is that ordinarily these Aberration species have little to do with each other, or at the very least any alliance is of purest convenience, and liable to break down.
So what's got the horrors from beyond reality so scared?
My bet is on Elder Evils. Plural.
So what's got the horrors from beyond reality so scared?
My bet is on Elder Evils. Plural.
- Location
- Australia
PoB is quite different in setting though, maybe for whatever reason the Aberrations somehow started getting a foothold before we opened up to the broader planes.
They could spend millennium fighting each other with the very few resources they could slip through the gaps, or they could consolidate and try to secure the Garden before the rest of the planar players get in.
Perhaps we are the Planar Crimea they were trying to prevent from becoming the Planar Riverlands.
ryuan
From Zero to Hero!
The Great Other, probably, that guy from asshai, who else there might be that counts as Elder Evil?
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
It would help to know how long it has been since the remnants of the Illithid empire traveled to the past.
At this point in time, are they relative newcomers who have not yet forged their first empire in this era, or are they the struggling survivors of the collapse of that empire?
If it is the first option, they are likely allies with any beings with whom they can cooperate while they build their strength. I'm that case, we won't find any Gith to ally with, because they will not yet exist. The humans slaves which would eventually become the progenitor Gith might even come from Planetos.
If it's the latter option, they aren't allies with the other Deep Ones merely to grow their strength, but because they need them to survive. If that is the case, they are almost certain to be the junior partners in the alliance with the Aboleths running things while the few remaining Elder Brains plot to take complete control.
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- Location
- Australia
Fuck that noise, makes me mad just thinking about it.
In fact, new mission. If they think we're food, well two can play that game.
Ladies, Gentlemen and Assorted Horrors, I present to you Allfood and Hag's Seasoning.
I'll eat your godsdamned house, bitch.
egoo
Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed
- Location
- Russia
We've already learned of gith existing though, Jinn on PoA told us about them, although we didn't press on to research the topic further...
And DP didn't have a vote for us this turn, although he wanted to...
I am so fucking pushing for this next month's visit to PoA.
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Arimai
Curmudgeon
You have my support. Although from a cultural standpoint I'd prefer taking their heads instead.
- Location
- Australia
enigma1995
Gentleman Beholder
Maybe we should make that the pretense for growing the Dawn Tree 'in front of the world'. It's a hell of a statement for sure.
Canon Omake: Congress of Sun and Serpents
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Congress of Sun and Serpents
Second Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC
<<<Previous Next>>>
Arianne had heard rumors that her father's guests were quite an odd gathering of individuals, though one in particular had caught her interests, the one who was often plying the taverns of the Shadow City, though not to drink as she had initially suspected, but instead a wholly different commodity; Information.
Truth be told anyone caught in the company of her Uncle Oberyn who wasn't ending up in a ditch somewhere, piss drunk or buried in among some women or men by dawn's new light was stranger still. Her Uncle did not make any secret of the type of company he preferred to keep, and most who could stand his presence were similar in inclination. There was something ineffably queer and delightful seeing her Uncle try to make use of the Stormlander as a stand-in for his other verbal jousting partner in the Stepstones, but from his telling the man was "almost the spitting image in manner" to the Knight of Skulls and Kisses when they first met in Braavos. Left unsaid is that the story tells the King's Champion got along better with the Prince of Dorne than most, and that the two had spilled blood together side by side against foes who wielded blades of fear and dread twinned together. With the one given in comparison, she thought, you would think my Uncle has a certain kind of preference.
There was either something strange in the water, or the Princess had just realized that Oberyn liked it more that there was actually real heat and umbrage to be passed between Knight and Prince, more so still that the two had even traded blows in Sunspear's training yard without any injuries or deaths taking place. How novel! She almost thought they might like one another.
But it was not Knight of the Stormlands who drew her interest, it was one who smelt of fresh flowers, astringent bitter droughts, and earth drawn from deep caverns lying beneath Sunspear, the Knight of the Mind she thought with a smile, though he was rather too dashing to be much alike the grey rats from the Citadel in her mind. Her niece Sarella had been bothering the poor man incessantly with questions, about magic and monsters and other things beside, like why he hadn't bothered forging a chain. "I don't trust Maesters," he had said then. "Why not?" little Sarella asked.
"There's so much danger in the world, and they're not bothering to teach anyone who's actually in the way of it how to handle it. If knowledge is power, how can you trust such miserly custodians?"
Words of wisdom. But he was not a traditional mage, as he stressed carefully. Still what he did in the lab he was loaned by her Father was magic enough since she had seen no man or woman with the robes of the Cauldron do what he had done in the past weeks with his hands alone and spare ingredients gathered personally or from under-looked places. In fact, given no one could replicate some of the work he did perfectly, maybe what was magic was his own hands and thoughts themselves, spinning spells into form in a different manner, such that some did through song, or others through solitary ritual. Arianne had heard of stranger things in these days.
"With a little care, and some luck, you can bottle something close to the real thing... but it's not as convenient or easy as just waving your hands and making it happen right in front of you. Recently though, I think I'm close to it..." The words had sounded more like a challenge than aught else, and there was little else that the Princess of Dorne loved more than a challenge... even ones not meant to be taken as such. That had been weeks ago, and she was bound to make good on her declaration.
"Show me."
Such was how she had found herself before the door the formerly irregularly used workshop, once belonging to a mage who wouldn't need it any longer, considering they were a guise worn by her Uncle, who was no longer living out his life in threadbare exile. A single light knock had seen her admitted in short order, her two guards finally settling on standing guard outside once she had convinced them she was perfectly safe in the hands of the "gallant bomb knight" and a Dragon's man besides, in intent and character she could see, if not name.
He had been so befuddled that he could only weakly correct that he had no Knighthood to his name, "...and the honor is unbecoming aside. I only did what all right thinking men would and should have done were they capable."
"And that is more foolish an argument of you to then stand upon, when there are clearly no such men that could have seen fit to stand before such challenges, meet them, and come back to tell the tale. Too often I have heard, that these dangers have been met sword in hand, and even when they have passed men have died and never has that leal service been made known, or the dangers weighed in the scale they properly measured up in, sight unseen. My Uncle says for one to have charged back into the Dornish Marches seeking death, and that you found it... is no man to underestimate."
"Wights and other dangers," he replied softly, standing nervously before glass-work that looked mighty expensive... and substances that she carefully kept well away from, lest they turned out to be more volatile than expected. She had grown more used to magic and what could be wrought of it, ever since she had visited the Deep and heard more stories from her Aunt Elia and Uncle Oberyn besides... and had taken council with her Father more and more, once she could bring herself to believe, if not trust. Those wounds wouldn't be festering again anytime soon, but they were still so raw...
He must have seen the flash of grief in her eyes, for he quickly, if awkwardly, spoke up again, "So... what would you like me to make? I have enough ingredients again to do some experimenting, but there's only so much I can make quickly... you couldn't possibly want to stand here for hours watching filtration processes occur, or the sublimation of noxious vapors into more useful chemicals."
"I can think of more than one thing that can be done in an hour or two, for a man of your talents," Arianne said blithely, almost batting her eyelashes on reflex. "Tell me, it often takes weeks even with a fast courier making the arrangement through a Silver Serpents vessel in advance, to locales where local medicine is better for the variety of herbal remedies and rare ingredients that are available, more so than one might find in the deserts of Dorne."
"Ah--" he swallowed carefully, not having any idea whatsoever what to make of her. "What did you have in mind?"
"I am out of this skin cream I normally acquire from farther East, you see..."
He walked around his workbench and pondered her request for a few moments, before quaffing a glowing concoction without even flinching. Arianne gasped, "What are you..."
He breathed out, then met her eye, and it was almost like there was a different man in front of her, his eyes narrowed and sharp, moving from her to something off to the side, before jerking back and rummaging through his equipment, rattling off both a list of ingredients and ideas that sounded vaguely recognizable as plain common.
"It's a concoction that helps me think better... I was about to do research anyway, so the timing is just as well."
He said that like drinking strange substances brewed in dark chambers was the most ordinary thing in the world... maybe it was. He worked for a time before she could no longer restrain the urge to ask.
"Are there any... risks, to that?" Better to know now than later if she had just watched a man poison himself. The Dornish were best at making an antidote, second at drawing out a poison, it was said. You don't become good at the latter without being great at the former. Maybe she should call the guards to fetch someone.
"It will make my muscles feel shaky for a day or two... better sooner than that, if I ask Ceria to heal me." That opened up an entirely new line of inquiry as far as the Princess was concerned, though before she could think to ask he spoke up, "Feel this," he said, offering a paste within a mortar. She worked a bit of it onto her wrist then, and gasped, "It's... very smooth."
"It's not finished, but that's probably on the right..."
The door opened, admitting a flash of jet black hair and stormy eyes... with a stormier expression. Arianne took secret delight in thinking of what this mage would think if she had known Arianne referred to her as 'that', even for a moment. She had pricked this one's pride and seen them swallowed it enough times to count one two hands. "So this is what you've been doing? I've been waiting for hours and..." she stopped, realizing Arianne was there, and not at all bothered by the two large and irate guards standing right behind her. Though neither was eager to actually lay hands on her, come to think of it. She wonders how engrossed she had been in the mixer's work to miss what was probably a rather heated argument outside the door.
"A--" he paused, blinking the light coming in from outside from his eyes. "We were... going to meet today?"
The mage, Ceria, she remembered, did not stomp her foot, though Arianne thought it was a close thing. "We were going to play Cyvasse," they said simply, instead. And by 'play Cyvasse', which was obviously code for something else, though probably not, she thought, what immediately came to mind. The man wasn't outright celibate from what their occasional brief interactions had told her, but he wasn't liable to sleep with someone he hadn't rescued from terrible danger or the wicked clutches of some monster, like a knight out of tale. Or at least someone he wasn't hand-fastened to. At least, she thought, not so quickly as that.
"Ah... that's is true." He glanced at Arianne, took in her half-lidded expression, one shared by his companion as the silence quickly became oppressing. Quickly, Arianne realized, he's off in his own little world after drinking that toxic concoction. She wondered if that had started to become habit with him. He tapped his fingers on the workbench for a few more moments, the other mage now fuming.
"I would really rather get back to work now," he decided, instead.
Oh, Arianne thought, In some ways, I almost pity her.
***
"...and then she shoos me away! Like I was something the cat dragged in and across her dainty slipper clad feet--"
"Well, you were intruding," Oberyn Martell said, nearly laughing aloud, showing extreme wisdom in not doing that. She was also lucky that they had a stock of good favor with him, as he had managed to extract her from that little blow-up quickly enough to ensure Arianne wrote it off as "rather funny" instead of something worth holding a grudge over. There was something to be said of the peculiarity of sorcerers granting some leeway when it came to exercising proper courtesies... and at least Ceria hadn't said anything outrageously egregious to his niece. While on some level the Red Viper thought that a confrontation between those two, with the man he had fought monsters crawling out from underneath ancient barrows with in the middle of it, as no less than nearly the highest form of amusement, it was better that he kept those two separate, for now.
Though he could really do without the Easterner hovering around like a chaperone to the girl.
He had only thought about sleeping with her a few times.
Today.
"I have something to take your mind off of it," he began, with even the wherewithal to restrain the urge to smirk salaciously.
"Hopefully something I would not need to leave the room for," the man known as Ting said drolly, drawing a snort from the Prince of Dorne.
"Nothing so untoward," he promised. He slid a flier across the table, which the two bent over to take a look at. "I found this floating around passing hand to hand in the Shadow City earlier today, or rather one of my men did..."
Across it, in startling clarity and burnt into the page with mystic fire, was the silhouette of Sorcerer's Deep, surrounded by an artist's rendition of the many wonders on offer for a traveler to see, with interest accruing in the announcement for those who could read better than most taking in that particular bit of news, which is to say any literacy at all.
"A festival?" Ting said slowly. "A Tourney after the Westerosi manner. When is this occurring?" He handed back the flier.
"Quite soon," Oberyn said lazily. "I was going to be on a fast ship to the Deep in a day or so, and I am quite sure Sunspear could do without your presence for awhile yet. I am sure your friend Ser Criston will welcome the change of scenery." Oberyn let all of the other things about that acquaintanceship be left unsaid, though the impish smile was still on his face. The other man had requested nothing untoward be said here, after all.
Ceria eyed her cup of wine with vast longing, "The sooner the better."
It was then the Prince of Dorne thought, Perhaps I had not been quick enough in untangling that patch of briar.
OOC: First part of two that @DragonParadox requested I do. Next we see the Misfits coming into the Deep. Also, I plan to write the adventures they had in the Dornish Marches still, and some other character pieces. But it makes most narrative sense for them to be here now.
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Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
A combination of being really likable and also figuring that Viserys knew pretty much exactly the type of person he was and being fine with it.
Black Walder has to deal with having a sour reputation/feared by the people around him, and now he's in front of someone who struck up an instant rapport with him, knows the right things to say every time, and also promises to help him out in a "you scratch my back I scratch yours" manner, all without sneering down at him like we're too good for Freys.
I mean, sure, we don't hide that we know what Freys are all about, but we also don't come across like snotty nobles who dislike them purely from the manner of their birth and non-ancient lineage. That's pretty much an instant circumstance bonus in diplomacy with any Frey. They are literally shit on by any Noble who has even an ounce more prestige than them. It's practically a Westerosi past time, something anyone can bond over during dinner or over a spar.
- Location
- Chile
.... but, the Freys hate each other! Its widely acknowledged that the whole family will descend into a fatricidal mini civil war once Walder Prime croaks. These people have been looking at each other's faces and tormenting one another in the Twins flr ages, the last thing they'll want is to interact with each other in SD.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Habits are hard to break, and even Freys have to form alliances just to get by living in the Twins.
That said, I think the fear of Frey influence is overblown, seeing as how Viserys is aware of just what kind of people they are, and can curb anything he doesn't like the look of in a hot second.
The guy is a helicopter ruler and we have direct authority over every major institution, including the Scholarium. We are not above subtler messages like a few failing grades and pointed messages to be focused more on their studies than quarreling with noble scions over supposed perceived and entitled honors not upheld.
And woe betide anyone caught actively trying to bully around students of lower birth when "can literally be in multiple places at once" Headmistress Teana and "don't you talk to me or my student ever again" Velen are major figures there.
Ten bucks the first toxic clique that forms becomes a positive influence on the school within a week of Velen catching wind of their antics.
Apparently not being a jerk to someone could go well? When has that happened?
But seriously yeah you are making good points. Black Walder dealing with all that then meet a charming young man like Viserys got to make him more relaxed and respect Viserys greatly. Would love a interlude of him in the future.
Edit: Black Walder getting that off his chest must of felt good for him too. Viserys just being understanding with not judging him and mean it really helps too.
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ryuan
From Zero to Hero!
I think he means that the people that we send to the Scholarium are the kind of people that could form groups.
- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
Ah Arriane, as soon as you mentioned Tyene's poisons as if they were her main stregnth and then on that basis compared a bit of dagger practice to being anywhere near as useful/capable as her, I knew you would disappoint me
And @Crake 's marvelous Omake has reinforced that quite a bit, but in a really... human and believable way. I dislike the charcheter, mildly, but she is so well written I enjoyed reading her more, because I dislike her.
Bravo!
And @Crake 's marvelous Omake has reinforced that quite a bit, but in a really... human and believable way. I dislike the charcheter, mildly, but she is so well written I enjoyed reading her more, because I dislike her.
Bravo!
- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
I went with hugs, and then thought again, realised that it amuses me to read your statement as "I tried to portray elements of her character that an observer, from a distance might find slightly irritating" So have a funny
But seriously, the Researcher hero dude, the Mage woman, Arriane, fantastic foibles and flaws in all of them
- Location
- washington
I think you did a good job crake.