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

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Duesal said:
I was really hoping for Varys vs Amrelath as well, but Riz'Neth was designed as a walking boss fight on his own, and he's been given a level 6 serpentfolk cleric of Yss and a Guardian Naga as backup. Team Inquisition is good, but this is too strong for them.
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Varys casts Mythic Baleful Polymorph :V
 
That was an awesome fight and a freaking PR boost for the Red Faith. If only we have these for religious programs, Clerics duking out to promote their god/s instead of televangelists :V

DragonParadox said:
He is and they do not yet.
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...So the knights basically see a red-haired guy strolling out into the Circle and then suddenly transform into a dragon. I swear I saw this in an anime somewhere :V
 
Takesis said:
That was an awesome fight and a freaking PR boost for the Red Faith. If only we have these for religious programs, Clerics duking out to promote their god/s instead of televangelists :V
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I mean I would pray more for sure if priests could actually perform miracles. Or be capable of suplexing a dragon. This might be heresy.

Takesis said:
...So the knights basically see a red-haired guy strolling out into the Circle and then suddenly transform into a dragon. I swear I saw this in an anime somewhere :V
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Fairy Tale has red-headed dragon slayers...hmm there is someone who has a dragon scale hand. Who transforms into a dragon in anime?
 
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Part MMDCCXXI: A Phantom in Flesh
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    • A Phantom in Flesh ​

    Twenty-Eighth Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC

    The more you ponder the matter the more suspicious you become. To survive what should have been a deadly attack by some desperate poorly remembered act of magic is unlikely. To do so and find one's magic transformed by the power of the Far Realm less likely still, and you would not even wish to contemplate the odds of Jeyne keeping her mind intact through all of this. "Varys..." you mentally poke your familiar into paying attention. "What is she thinking?"

    "Anxiety, hope, suspicion of your silence. Nothing out of the ordinary, even when she worked the spell there was nothing but a surge of mental effort. It felt natural... natural for her I mean."     So she had been listening after all. Still, the answer while hopeful is only the beginning of the investigation you must conduct, hopefully with their permission, though given the magnitude of the potential threat you would carry on regardless if need be.

    "I would take any oath given in good faith and I feel yours is so, but the misshapen things you described, the Deep Ones, are insidious and have attempted to use subterfuge against us in the past where brute force and magical power would not suffice. I fear they might have influenced you, either of you, without your knowledge."

    "I'm no fish-fucker's..." Ser Rayne begins angrily, and unless he is a far better mummer than you give him credit for, sincerely, but Jeyne just has a look of dawning horror.

    "So they could all be right after all, there might be something inside me right now ready to take me over or turn me into... "

    "Breathe," you advise in as soothing a voice as you can manage. "I did not tell you this to simply turn you away. I will help, but first I need you to cooperate. I want to place you both into a sort of magic slumber in order to transport you to a place where you can be examined without fear of Deep One meddling."

    "We don't need this shit, Jeyne... Jeyne?" The knight's angry words turn questioning as the sorceress does not respond.

    "I think we do," she says at last, her voice faint. "I can't let them be right."

    Ser 'Reyne' looks like he would very much like to object, but cannot find the words to do so. He opens his mouth in what you suspect is an attempt to threaten you, then closes it realizing the absurdity of the notion. He moves to take off his sword belt.

    "Keep it, Ser, I'm not trying to take you prisoner, just to help you." The words about two thirds true, for you would take them prisoner if it came to it.

    One wish after another you bind them in enchanted glass and head for the Snare, sending Varys to gather Vee for her skill at healing, Lya and Dany for their arcane knowledge, Malarys for his skillful use of mind magic, and Xor for his experience with the Far Realm.

    They arrive in haste mere moments after being summoned for they know the potential urgency as well as you. Still, you make no haste through the process of examining the sorceress whom you had first placed into actual enchanted slumber. First you use spell after spell, stretching your magic to its limits to unravel any sorcery that may lay upon her, but as far as you can see there is no enchantment to be broken.

    Vee has more luck than you, her own skills magnified by every blessing you can bequeath upon her. She finds that Jeyne's brain is 'odd', not malformed or diseased, just quiet. Still, you reason perhaps she simply sleeps deeply, and so you wake her. Vee looks again and shakes her head. It could just be that the nature of her magic makes her brain be quiet to conserve its strength for the strange magics worked through it... but you have no intention of assuming the more hopeful possibility in such a case.

    After calming her and setting her off once more in enchanted slumber, Malarys attempts to pick through her thoughts, the process deemed reasonably safe given the layered protections of both the Snare and his own talismans. Again he finds nothing out of the ordinary. The most remarkable thing he is able to pick out is the reason why the two Westerlanders had not paid in coin. They had apparently encountered tainted silver in their wanderings and been forced to fight for their lives against a petty conjurer and his devils.

    "They were most insistent on hunting her," Malarys muses. "I would give it good odds that it is due to whatever Deep One plot she is meant to serve."

    No one disagrees, and so you move on to divination. At Dany's suggestion you ask what would happen if you placed Jeyne in a space briefly bereft of all magic. The answer is as grim as it is confusing:

    Freedom is the sleeper's bane
    To endless nightmare she would wake
    Naught but sorrows would she gain     ​

    "What would be nightmarish about waking here?" Xor wonders, concerned. "She was anxious last time but not in such dreadful fear as the portents show."

    Lya twists around to look at him, her eyes sparking with some sudden revelation. "What if she would not wake here? What if her brain is quiet because it's not the one doing the thinking?"

    It only takes you a moment to realize what she is implying. "You think she has been a prisoner of the Deep Ones all this time, unknowingly puppeting a doppelganger of herself in her sleep?"

    Vee's belt confirms the truth of the matter. Jeyne Weaver is not truly here in flesh, at least not the flesh she had been born to.

    On hearing this Dany suggests a rescue—you had after all invaded Deep One fastnesses before. Malarys by contrast is more cautious, counseling keeping her in current 'body' bound in a bottle until you can learn more of the situation, though that does risk whoever or whatever is on the other side of this scheme growing tired of it and simply killing Jeyne, leaving you with a lifeless husk.

    It is Lya, however, who suggests the most esoteric solution—trying to draw Jeyne's consciousness fully into this body and leaving your enemies with the empty corpse. Such an endeavor would not be easy, but it does not escape your notice that succeeding would grant you access to precisely the thing the Deep Ones had sought to tempt you with, access to the magics of the mind.

    What do you do?

    [] Attempt to rescue Jeyne
    -[] Write in plan

    [] Attempt to draw Jeyne's consciousness fully into the puppet body
    -[] Write in plan

    [] Bottle the body for now

    [] Write in

    OOC: I was tempted to stop after the riddle, but given Lya's class it would not make sense not to give her a wisdom check to see if she could figure things out, and she did just that.
     
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