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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:
As for the "tangible example" I can confidently say we are not starting shit with the Opaline Vault by harboring their runaway slaves. No. Just no. That is how you get a pissed-off ally and a broken alliance.
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This just gets a liiiittle dicey as per our Constitution, which has written into law that any slave who steps foot onto our shore is no longer a slave anymore, since obviously slavery does not exist in the Imperium.

But in this case, we can smooth things over politically if the slave has also broken (likely numerous) laws over the course of their escape from the Peerless Empire (they likely have laws simply for bearing slave status and passing through certain jurisdictions without leave to do so).

Of course the above is just a ludicrous farce of an example.

We probably want to discuss this with the Sultana's diplomats very, very soon. It could cause a shitstorm. As in, this could literally start happening now that we have the Terminus.
 
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Crake said:
This just gets a liiiittle dicey as per our Constitution, which has written into law that any slave who steps foot onto our shore is no longer a slave anymore, since obviously slavery does not exist in the Imperium.

But in this case, we can smooth things over politically if the slave has also broken (likely numerous) laws over the course of their escape from the Peerless Empire (they likely have laws simply for bearing slave status and passing through certain jurisdictions without leave to do so).
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We could also make an effort to stop it from happening in the first place, via increasing the guard on the Terminus, etc. I would be furious if this of all things cost us a major alliance.
Crake said:
Of course the above is just a ludicrous farce of an example.

We probably want to discuss this with the Sultana's diplomats very, very soon. It could cause a shitstorm. As in, this could literally start happening now that we have the Terminus.
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Yeah, we'll need to get this sorted out.
 
Duesal said:
We could also make an effort to stop it from happening in the first place, via increasing the guard on the Terminus, etc. I would be furious if this of all things cost us a major alliance.

Yeah, we'll need to get this sorted out.
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Guess just have @egoo make a note of it on our minor actions.
 
Duesal said:
As for the "tangible example" I can confidently say we are not starting shit with the Opaline Vault by harboring their runaway slaves. No. Just no. That is how you get a pissed-off ally and a broken alliance.
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See that's a fair point, but the decision comes with trade offs. For one it's likely to cause party drama as you so rightly point out (assuming the slave in question is innocent of other crimes), for another how public the situation is could be a complicating factor, it would grievously harm our state propaganda efforts to be publicly known to be delivering people back to their slave masters.
I'm not really saying that I disagree with your call here, it's just a thorny series of questions that it pays to have considered in advance.

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Crake said:
We probably want to discuss this with the Sultana's diplomats very, very soon. It could cause a shitstorm. As in, this could literally start happening now that we have the Terminus.
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Smart idea in the abstract, but what would our goal in these talks be? What is a good solution to the issue?
Do we ask for them to not pursue any slaves that make it over the border so that we don't have a conflict with our Constitution and propaganda efforts? That will cost something politically, because it's asking the LN outsider empire to not follow their own laws. What are we willing to pay for such a favor?
 
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Sqweaktoy said:
See that's a fair point, but the decision comes with trade offs. For one it's likely to cause party drama as you so rightly point out (assuming the slave in question is innocent of other crimes), for another how public the situation is could be a complicating factor, it would grievously harm our state propaganda efforts to be publicly known to be delivering people back to their slave masters.
I'm not really saying that I disagree with your call here, it's just a thorny series of questions that it pays to have considered in advance.
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This is a delicate and not straight forward example in our defense, we are likely going to have to hash out between our two states why we have to have a organized response prepared for this, and then hedge like fucking hell that the military, economic and covert benefits we possess outweigh a bit of jurisdictional pride in being able to honestly say "your band of muggles better return my genie property right now".

Luckily, no genie would seriously consider saying that to a Dragon of all things, so we have that going for us.
 
Sqweaktoy said:
Smart idea in the abstract, but what would our goal in these talks be? What is a good solution to the issue?
Do we ask for them to not pursue any slaves that make it over the border so that we don't have a conflict with our Constitution and propaganda efforts? That will cost something politically, because it's asking the LN outsider empire to not follow their own laws. What are we willing to pay for such a favor?
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We would likely have to give something up, because we would be gaining a bit of prestige here ultimately, which is what the PE is essentially trading to us.

On the other hand, this also smoothes over an issue we are going to have to deal with 100% no matter what at some point. This is going to happen. We have no real choice beyond banning travel from the planes into our lands not negotiated from both ends well in advance, something that is literally impossible.
 
Crake said:
We probably want to discuss this with the Sultana's diplomats very, very soon. It could cause a shitstorm. As in, this could literally start happening now that we have the Terminus.
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Remember that the Shaitans run version of slavery that is more based on ruthless capitalism than opression for opression's sake.

A slave can eventually work off until he can pay his freedom, and there are laws preventing slave abuse. They actually have rights and are not treated like shit. The only problem is the lack of freedom, but they can actually achieve that in the long term.

I am by no means defending that system, but I'm pointing out that the cases of slaves deliberately coming here to get free and escape their masters would not be so many.
 
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The Shaitan are LN immortals. Which is to say they're exactly the type to read a copy of the legal codes when they first visit if not before. I suspect they're already aware of the problem and will, at least, not be bringing any slaves through the Terminus. Their guards on the other side are bound to be looking out for runaways too.
 
Crake said:
And yet it is still something we have to prepare for. Or we face serious political consequences.
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Of course, but, as I said, it probably won't be such a big deal. The cases are not going to be numerous, and the escaped slaves are probably going to be something that can be paid for easily.

I don't see immortal beings escaping to us when they can simply buy of their freedom. I see, though, mortals doing that. Cheap and easily replaced mortals.
 
Crake said:
Guess just have @egoo make a note of it on our minor actions.
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Added.
[] Meet with Sultana's diplomats to hash out the best way to move forward on the issue of possibility of slaves running from Peerless Empire to our borders - breaking the laws of Shaitan in process, yet not being criminals to our state.
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That's catching the gist of the problem well enough?
*sleepy*
 
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Tomcost said:
Remember that the Shaitans run version of slavery that is more based on ruthless capitalism than opression for opression's sake.

A slave can eventually work off until he can pay his freedom, and there are laws preventing slave abuse. They actually have rights and are not treated like shit. The only problem is the lack of freedom, but they can actually achieve that in the long term.

I am by no means defending that system, but I'm pointing out that the cases of slaves deliberately coming here to get free and escape their masters would not be so many.
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There is also the manner the Shaitan acquire slaves. They don't buy them from brokers who raided a hapless village, or from parents who could not afford to feed a child. Shaitan slaves are criminals working off their debt to society, prisoners of war, and people who sold themselves into slavery for one reason or another.

It's a very different dynamic compared to how slavery is practiced on most of Planetos.
 
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Tomcost said:
Of course, but, as I said, it probably won't be such a big deal. The cases are not going to be numerous, and the escaped slaves are probably going to be something that can be paid for easily.

I don't see immortal beings escaping to us when they can simply buy of their freedom. I see, though, mortals doing that. Cheap and easily replaced mortals.
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I mean, it would be nice if this didn't end with ruthless operators like the Shaitan leveraging these negotiations to make some serious gains, because let's face it, we would offer them a lot to avoid having to deal with this kind of thing, but maybe you just meant "they probably won't give us a flat no when we bring the matter to the table".

Leaving aside that personally I think the Shaitan actually like us a great deal for imposing order and progressive policies on the Material plane, since they ultimately benefit from it a lot just passively, they could leverage this into making us do something that would probably give us pause. They already see us as a piggybank of special operatives, and ideally the time distribution of our commitments would lie 100% towards the war effort against the Brazen Throne, regardless of our numerous enemies and obstacles.
 
Jeyne Weaver has been added under other adventurers, including a blurb and a picture. Said picture also reminded me of something you guys might want to take advantage of: psions do not have spell failure chance because of armor, so you might want to train her in its use.
 
DragonParadox said:
Jeyne Weaver has been added under other adventurers, including a blurb and a picture. Said picture also reminded me of something you guys might want to take advantage of: psions do not have spell failure chance because of armor, so you might want to train her in its use.
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With that in mind, DP, do you mind if we change one of her 1st level powers? I forgot you let us train for armor proficiency without requiring a feat.

Can you switch out Jeyne's Inertial Armor power with Defensive Procognition?

We've got a +1 Reinforced Mithral Chain Shirt in the armory she can wear, I think.
 
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Clearly the right thing to do here is to work out a limited extradition treaty with the seven kingdoms. Quite limited, since we've got useful but evil people to protect and they are not going to agree to the extradition of people like Tywin Lannister. But, the extradition of fugitives from justice wanted for crimes both nations consider severe and are reasonably confident happened? The only downside is the diplomatic recognition this would admittedly imply, when the current mostly retains the a polite fiction that we each view the other as not actually a thing legitimate enough to interact with diplomatically, like China and Taiwan.

Of course, Robert Baratheon would never actually agree to this with just us. But then, Westeros does not like slavers, so they would probably agree to it with Bravos if it was framed in reference to cases like this. Turn it into the Sealord holding a diplomatic conference on a treaty to help crush the last remnants of the slave trade, Robert sends his representative, and we and our puppets and allies send theirs, and we hash something out.

... This started as the setup to an elaborate joke about real-world approaches to international relations, and the possibility of putting Robert in a room with us and all of our powerful vassals, but as I wrote it the plan evolved into something that actually stands a non-zero chance of working. If it were to happen, we put Robert in the very difficult position of having to either play along or be perceived to be letting slavers get away with slaving, we begin laying the groundwork for a form of international law that we can use to retroactively go after enemies after our conquest without it looking illegitimate, and we have a golden opportunity to convince the seven kingdoms of pretty much whatever we want about our international relations and larger realm, since we would influence or control almost everyone at the conference. Could be a neat little bit of trolling.
 
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