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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 MMDCCXXX: Exile's Fate
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    • Exile's Fate​

    Twenty-Ninth Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC

    "Though I have never met your mother, I know your uncle Lord Commander Mormont and found him a just and honorable man. I see no reason to doubt your words, least of all regarding such grim news as this. Still, proper procedures must be followed and the man given a chance to explain why he fled his home."

    All around the legionnaires nod at the logic of your words, though Alysane is less moved by caution and restraint. "Lord Stark himself sent word to Bear Island that Jorah present himself to Winterfell for trial. That's cause enough to drag him back on its own," she grumbles.

    "Be that as it may before your oaths, neither Eddard Stark nor Robert Baratheon rule here," you reply bluntly.

    "I'll not look a gift horse in the mouth," she sighs. "We'll take along whoever you send." At these words Alysane's reticence makes a good bit more sense. She thought you were about to saddle her with a spy on the hunt for her fugitive cousin.

    "Magic can do more than find him, it can also take us to him in but the blink of an eye," you explain.

    Alysane had clearly seen more than her fair share of sorcery for she takes you at your word at once and rushes off to find the others in her band, promising to be up at the keep in an hour's time. Though tempted to point out you would not need help in capturing one exiled lord, you keep your peace. This is their task, and it would not do to cheapen it if you would then ask for the Northerners' allegiance.

    ***​

    The hour is not even done when a group of four makes their way into your audience chamber. Besides Wyl and Alysane there are two other men with a look of kinship to them, though in garb, bearing, and the power that moved with each of them they could not have been more different. Where Walter looks around the chamber with sharp-eyed interest only amplified by the fiery red hair sticking out at odd angles, his cousin Oddric looks more jumpy than the shadowcat that slinks at his heels as the intricate series of bone toggles hung at his waist clanked and clattered.


    Still, the polite greeting absent of any Essosi flourish does help put them all more at ease, enough so that Walter starts asking questions about your magic that make his wife shake his head in frustration. "Wait and see. We aren't here to talk spellwork. There's a job that needs doing."

    "Indeed," you reply, though giving the man a sympathetic look. You would have likely be just as eager to learn more in his shoes.

    Under your will the mirror's surface ripples like the surface of a windswept lake. A moment later, then the face of a knight ripples into view, a man approaching middle years, his hairline already drawing back to reveal lines of worry and anger. The chamber around him has the look of a middling guest chamber in a magister's home.

    You draw out the Wayfinder, keeping the map of Essos in mind, Myr. Easy enough to find and return him, them.


    Before you can address Alysane and her company, a woman enters the eye of the mirror, garbed in white silk and rich furs, golden braids framing a delicate face set in an expression of faint discomfort. You can well imagine how miserable she would have been in bleak and cold Bear Island... and how Jorah would be so overcome by infatuation as to not consider the possibility when he asked for her hand.


    "Of course she'd be around," Wyl sighs. "She ruined him you know, with all her pouts and nonsense. Asking for silks and a harper from Lannisport if you can imagine."

    "She hardly put a dagger to his throat," you note, a touch annoyed. The poor woman likely had as little to say in the matter of her husband selling poachers into slavery as she did in her own marriage to a man dwelling at the other end of the world. You do not relish the thought of leaving her without any means of support in a foreign port. Then again, Ser Jorah would not be needing any silver at the Wall or the block...

    ***​

    In a spell shrouded moment you are no more in Sorcerer's Deep but in the chamber with them. To his credit the exiled knight draws his sword and pushes his wife behind him at your sudden appearance, though after a startled moment she looks more curious than afraid.

    "What the fuck are you...?" Jorah begins to shout at his cousin.

    "Jorah Mormont," you interject firmly before before this can degenerate into a pointless row. "You were summoned to Winterfell to answer allegations of slaving. That you instead chose to flee to what was then a slaver port makes a poor argument for your innocence. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

    "I... what do you care for Baratheon's laws?" he blurts out.

    "I do not care one whit for the Usurper's petty commands, but as you might have noticed I care about ending slavery a great deal." And about the political advantage handing him over will offer you, you think but do not say. Alysane does not strike you as the sort to appreciate that sort of political calculus. "You do not deny that you brought slavery to Westeros in secret against custom and law as well as the command of your liege?"

    "I did it for love..." he begins, but is soon interrupted by an unexpected source.

    "Fuck you, Jorah!" Lynesse curses, the words all but exploding from her lips with the strength of pent-up anger. "Actually no, don't. Wanting to fuck me is why you asked for my hand after the tourney. It's why you lied to me, why you brought to to the ends of the earth so I could be spat on and cursed by every bloody Northerner in that drafty barn you call a keep for wanting more music than the howling of beasts at the window and better food than old radishes and dried meat slathered in lard! Then your break the law get yourself exiled from the only thing you had that made my father even consider you for a match and expect me to feel grateful for being dragged along as your bed-warmer!"

    At these words the knight practically collapses in on himself, sword falling listlessly to his side, while Alysane opens her mouth, presumably to defend the honor of Bear Island.

    "So you will come and be tried?" you ask the knight quickly.

    "Do with me what you want," he says, sounding defeated.

    His wife ignores him, addressing you directly: "Much as it pains me to make so gauche and hurried offer of a. Your Grace, I wish to present my services to your court, both for the skills I learned in my youth and to speak on your behalf to my brother Baelor."

    What do you reply?

    [] Write in

    OOC: Easy as it is to hate Lynesse simply because her tale is presented from Jorah's PoV, it bears remembering that she was a young girl seduced by an older man then married to him and sent off to, from her perspective, the howling wilderness where everyone hated her. Also it would be best if the vote included what to do next since just the answer would make for a short update.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Accept. Speak with Rhizzneth next, asking him how things are in Sothoryos, seeing if he is willing to deepen ties.
     
    Crake said:
    Tagging @egoo for next turn minor actions. @Goldfish @Azel as they expressed mild interest.

    So we're obviously going to add more entertainment to our MirrorVision broadcasts, to make them a huge fixture to life in the Imperium. With that in mind, beyond the classics of plays, we should obviously innovate.

    [] MirrorVision Killed the Playwright... Then Performed Necromancy On Him: Part I.
    -[] We have Azema, Rhaella, Tyene and Teana put their heads together, to do some, well, headhunting, basically.
    --[] Azema will go to each and every Free City we have strong ties with hunting through all the Playhouses, all the street shows and the like, looking for hidden gems and famous mummers to form a new social elite: Actors. She will also spearhead formation of an Actor's Guild, leaning on some of our administrative and legislative people for assistance.
    --[] Rhaella will search for the most talented musicians to help with the acquisition of talented musicians and composers who can provide accompanying music, and perhaps among them some who have studied sound and could do many aesthetically pleasing things with it using magic that would ordinarily be out of their reach, for aesthetic purposes.
    --[] Tyene will acquire the services of many famous brands to help provide costumes for productions, as a form of advertising and perhaps even partnership with her and Viserys' enterprise.
    --[] Teana will be able to provide consultation, both in general matters for the aesthetic of the productions, but also and especially for the one focused on magical academics.
    ---[] MirrorVision Killed the Playwright... Then Performed Necromancy On Him: Part II
    ---[] A Production Company will be made and folded into Red Scales Holding, Name TBD.
    ----[] Three concurrent "productions" will be created for the purpose of regular broadcasting across the Imperium (and affiliated soon-to-be-annexed provinces), beginning in the writing phase, undergoing numerous revisions and leaning on all the available resources, researchers, educators and proofreaders that Azema can provide through us. Furthermore, sets will be constructed, determined to be modular or purpose-made depending on the needs of the performance. Depending on the circumstance and as an example, creative uses of environment like the recent play using a real sinking ship for authenticity will be considered.
    --[] Titles Placeholding
    ---[] Dictates & Divinations - A production following interrelated yet separate character arcs set in Sorcerer's Deep or outlying lands in the Three Daughters territory (for availability and constraints). It will follow a Lawmen department responsible for investigating the burgeoning, elaborate and sometimes dangerous smuggling trade, featuring characters that range from the cut-throat and cunning to the colorful and sympathetic on both sides. An Advocate pursuing justice for and against different high profile figures involved in trade enterprise with the eastern fringes of the growing Empire, where magic is strong, and the wild frontier where dark artifacts might be recovered. And finally an Investigator searching high and low for the most illegal contraband of all: a certain missing egg, caught in the middle of a quiet struggle between different interests.
    ---[] Chainbreakers - The story of a company of daring Outriders serving in the Legion, freeing slaves, fighting evildoers and slaying monsters with pluck, courage and a bit of grit. Braavosi flamboyance in abundance, here. This is lighter, softer and perhaps more blatantly propaganda. While no outright lies are being told, it does take more than several fistfuls of artistic liberty and runs wild with it.
    ---[] Arcane Thesis - This show struggles hard to remain as accurate as possible when in classroom setting. Any ritual or spell knowledge which could be seriously dangerous is essentially useless to a amateur cultist or unregistered/unsupervised mage. It follows the advancement of a talented but naive young mage who moved to the Deep to deepen their craft and perhaps gain the attention of an experienced master to apprentice under, swept up in life in the Scholarium, both academic struggles, romance, intrigue and cut-throat politics, with some action thrown in where appropriate. The conception of "stunt doubles" using mages and Disguise Ribbons for use of real magic during such scenes (to say nothing of special effects) will certainly see its beginnings here, and likely feature heavily in the other two for similar purposes.
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    This is great! Thanks for putting my musings into a useful form and expanding them to actually be neat.

    You even color-coded it for my OCD.

    /hug
     
    Ah, good to see Lynesse not be depicted as the devil in a woman's flesh. Sure she's the kind of idiot who lives massively beyond her means, but she's also someone whose life is really, really terrible.

    Still, canon isn't a great source of unbiased knowledge about her:
    • Is she an evil temptress who seduced a suddenly famous tourney winner hoping for glory, but then realized he was poor, boring and barbaric ?
    • Is she unwise, seduced by an idiot and then stuck with a shitty life ?
    • Is she a victim, given away to her father to be a northern barbarian's sex slave and then stuck as a poor runaway because of her husband's stupidity ?
    More likely she's a woman stuck with a terrible life trying to do the best she can, but not being especially good at it. Marrying Jorah was a poor decision, but we can't know how poor without knowing if it was her choice (did Jorah ask her father only to have that dumbass say yes ? Did she want to marry Jorah ? Did she have a crush on him, or did she think he was a path to respect, wealth and social standing ?) and we know far too little about her to say either way.

    This is a fun interpretation of her though.
     
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    @Crake, any ideas on how to best set up an "hour of faith"-type of broadcast, with prominent priests of so-damn-many-religions-we-have-in-our-state relaying their understanding of faith to audience, debating between one-another, all while being a carefully chosen and pruned bunch that will push forward our agenda?
    (Just in next month we'll have priests of: Burny, Seven, OGs, Yss, MK, Moonsinger Goddess, Weeping Lady available. And that's just prominent religions!)

    Or are we focusing on 'just' shows for now?
    Because if I know anything about the type of propaganda described above, it is that it is damn fucking effective >_<

    Just woke up, will add those things you tagged me over in a minute.

    [X] Azel
    Yes. Thank you @Azel
    Sneeeeeeks~ oWo
     
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    @Azel Updated your plan due to DP's interjection.

    [X] Accept. Speak with Rhiz'neth next, asking him how things are in Sothoryos, seeing if he is willing to deepen ties.
    -[X] Jorah can enjoy the accommodations of a holding cell, perhaps the Stannis Baratheon suite, while Team Bear wraps up their business in Sorcerer's Deep. When they are ready to depart, we will return them directly to Bear Island with their erstwhile Lord.
    --[X] Owing to the obvious despair Jorah has shown and the likelihood for his life to take an even grimmer turn in the coming days, he is to be under constant guard and supervision while in our care to prevent any incidents of self-harm.
     
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    TalonofAnathrax said:
    Ah, good to see Lynesse not be depicted as the devil in a woman's flesh. Sure she's the kind of idiot who lives massively beyond her means, but she's also someone whose life is really, really terrible.
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    Yeah, I've noticed the ASOIAF fandom does have this weird blind spot when it come spot her, it goes Mormont women good/Lynesse bad, maybe because of how different she is from them, so she gets used as a foil rather than a character in her own right.

    Then there are the people who ship Daenerys and Jorah for some insane reason. They of course need her to be a monster with fewer redeeming qualities than Lucifer so they can whitewash Jorah.
     
    Jorah is a creepy paedophile, a slaver and arguably a rapist.
    He's pretty cool in the show though, so he gets fans anyway :/
     
    DragonParadox said:
    Exile's Fate​

    Twenty-Ninth Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC

    "Though I have never met your mother I know your grandfather Lord Commander Mormont and found him a just and honorable man. I see no reason to doubt your word least of all regarding such grim news as this. Still proper procedures must be followed and the man given a chance to explain why he fled his home."

    All around the legionaries nod at the logic of your words though Alysane is less moved by caution and restraint. "Lord Srark himself sent word to Bear Island that Jorah present himself to Winterfel for trial. That's cause enough to drag him back on it's own," she grumbles.

    "Be that as it may before your oaths neither Eddard Stark nor Robert Baratheon rule here," you reply bluntly.

    "I'll not look a gift horse in the mouth," she sighs. "We'll take along whoever you send." At these words Alysane's reticence makes a good bit more sense. She thought you were about to saddle her with a spy on the hunt for her fugitive cousin.

    "Magic can do more than find him, it can also take us to him in but the blink of an eye," you explain.

    Alysane had clearly seen more than her fair share of sorcery for she takes you at your word at once and rushes off to find the others in her hand, promising to be up at the keep in an hour's time. Though tempted to point out you would not need help in capturing one exiled lord you keep your peace, this is their task and it would not do to cheapen it if you would then ask for the northerners' allegiance.

    ***​

    The hour is not even done when a group of four makes their way into your audience chamber. Besides Wyl and Alysane there are two other men with a look of kinship to them, though in garb, bearing and the power that moved with each of them they could not have been more different. Where Walter looked around the chamber with sharp eyed interest only amplified by the fiery red hair sticking out at odd angles, his cousin Oddric looks more jumpy than the shadowcat that slicks at his heels as the intricate series of bone toggles hung at his waits clanked and clattered.


    Still the polite greeting absent any Essosi flourish does help put them all more at ease, enough to that Walter starts asking questions about your magic that make his wife shake his head in frustration. "Wait and see. We aren't here to talk spellwork. There's a job that needs doing."
    "Indeed," you reply, though giving the man a sympathetic look, you would have likely be just as eager to learn more in his shoes.

    Under your will the mirror's surface ripples like like the surface of a windswept lake, a moment then the face of a knight ripples into view, a man approaching middle years his hairline already drawing back to reveal lines of worry and anger. The chamber around him has the look of a middling guest chamber in a magister's home.

    You draw out the Wayfinder, keeping the map of Essos in mind, Myr. Easy enough to find and return him them.


    Before you can address Alysane and her company a woman enters the eye of the mirror, garbed in white silk and rich furs, golden braids framing a delicate face set in an expression of faint discomfort. You can well imagine who miserable she would have been in bleak and cold Bear Island... and how Jorah would be so overcome by infatuation as to not consider the possibility when he asked for her hand.


    "Of course she'd be around," Wyl sighs. "She ruined him you know, with all her pouts and nonsense. Asking for silks and a harper from Lannisport if you can imagine."

    "She hardly put a dagger to his throat," you note, a touch annoyed. The poor woman likely had as little to say in the matter of her husband selling poachers into slavery as she did in her own marriage to a man dwelling at the other end of the world. You do not relish the thought of leaving her without any means of support in a foreign port. Then again Ser Jorah would not be needing any silver at the Wall or the block...

    ***​

    In a spell shrouded moment you are no more in Sorcerer's Deep but in the chamber with them. To his credit the exiled knight draws his sword and pushes his wife behind him at your sudden appearance, though after a startled moment she looks more curious than afraid.

    "What the fuck are you...?" Jorah begins to shout at his cousin.

    "Jorah Mormont," you interject firmly before before this can degenerate into a pointless row. "You were summoned to Winterfell to answer allegations of slaving. That you instead chose to flee to what was then a slaver port makes a poor argument for your innocence. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

    "I... what do you care for Baratheon's laws?" he blurts out.

    "I do not care one whit for the Usurper's petty commands, but as you might have noticed I care about ending slavery a great deal," and about the political advantage handing him over will give you, you think but do not say. Alysane does not strike you as the sort to appreciate that sort of political calculus. "You do not deny that you brought slavery to Westeros in secret against custom and law as well as the command of your liege."

    "I did it for love..." he begins, but is soon interrupted by an unexpected source.

    "Fuck you Jorah!" Lynesse curses, the words all but exploding from her lips with the strength of pent up anger. "Actually no, don't. Wanting to fuck me is why you asked for my hand after the tourney, it's why you lied to me, why you brought to to the ends of the earth so I could be spat on and cursed by every bloody northerner in that drafty barn you call a keep for wanting more music than the howling of beasts at the window and better food than old radishes and dried meat slathered in lard. Then your break the law get yourself exiled from the only thing you had that made my father even consider you a for a match and expect me to feel grateful for being dragged along as your bed-warmer."

    At these words the knight practically collapses in on himself, sword falling listlessly to his side, while Alysane opens her mouth, presumably to defend the honor of Bear Island.

    "So you will come and be tried?" you ask the knight quickly.

    "Do with me what you want?" he says sounding defeated.

    His wife ignores him, addressing you directly: "Much as it pains me to make so gouache and hurried offer of Your Grace, I wish to present my services to your court, both for the skills I learned in my youth and to speak on your behalf to my brother Baelor."

    What do you reply?

    [] Write in

    OOC: Easy as it is to hate Lynesse simply because her tale is presented from Jorah's PoV it bears remembering that she was a young girl seduced by a older man then married to him and sent off to, from her perspective, the howling wilderness where everyone hated her. Also it would be best if the vote included what to do next since just the answer would make for a short update.
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    Never been a Jorah fan, DP, but you almost make me feel sorry for the dumbass.

    Lynesse could be an interesting way to establish contact with the Hightowers.
     
    DragonParadox said:
    That would be a good idea yeah.
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    ...Would a Curse that will apply a healing/resurrecting spell to a subject if they are trying to kill themselves and want to die, be possible?
    That would, technically, keep to the whole the "negative effect" the curse needs to have, no? :V
     
    [X] Goldfish

    Looks peachy.

    My personal take on Lynesse is that she was quite infatuated with Jorah in the tourney, this being shortly after he received lots of honors from the Greyjoy Rebellion and thus his courting of her being a young ladies every dream.

    Then reality struck. The Bear Islanders probably weren't terribly nice to her either, what with her being an Andal from the southern Reach and them being closer to the Thenns then to Andals. Catelyn Stark had the same issues after all.

    Add Jorahs non existent impulse control and utter lack of foresight and he kept doing stupid stuff to please her instead of trying to settle her in, culminating in this.
     
    I still hope he picks Ice over the Wall. Jeors last wish in canon was Jorah redeeming himself by taking the black, but I don't think the old guy will really be able to deal with Jorahs presence.
     
    Can we not curse him ? We don't really care about his suicide at this point. We can just warn Mormont of the risks and let her deal with it.
     
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