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

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Speed53066 said:
[X] Crake

So who is in favor of getting a Blood Raven clone for Blandish?
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I for one would be behind "ironic deaths". Maybe divesting him of all magic, then tossing him in his own spit-of-land's Keep and sealing all of the entrances and removing anything he could use to dig or smash his way out with and just enough food and water to survive on for a year and a day.
 
@DragonParadox It's chapters like these that make me remember that for Viserys, manipulations and intrigues like these are pure child's play. He's honed himself to a razor's edge against sly and treacherous Essosi. Westeros really is unprepared to deal with him.
 
I think we should look into the lord and the widow more before we commit to taking an oath from them. We owe them certain protections and advantages as a liege that would be a pain to fill if both of them are unworthy of the post.

Just because the guy is a scholar doesn't mean he's a good leader or good person; all we know is that he likes to read natural philosophy and doesn't like to use force on irritating peasants. Those are good signs, but not definitive.

[X] Bottle ser Bryan, then use the greater ribbon of disguise to stumble out of the tavern, going for the outhouse if this Tavern uses one, in his appearance. If that's not possible, pretend to be going out looking for some "company" if it can be done subtly // we need to confuse the issue of his disappearance somehow.
-[X] sneak into the castle and investigate the dreams of the current lord, widowed lady, and Janna.

On an unrelated note, when is a good time to bring up insane research projects of dubious viability? I didn't want to interrupt turn planning with mad science.
 
Edit: Misquote, meant to tag @BronzeTongue

Uh, no. Ser Bryan is utterly unsuitable as anything more than an abject example, and Janna doesn't have the right or ability to impress a claim, unless we were seated on the Iron Throne itself and no one could protest the decision. The only other options are literally laid out before us, besides distant cousins we don't have time to search for, those being Lady Blount, the Lord's mother, and the Lord himself, who at the very least we will ensure does the bare minimum of his duties in exchange for protection.
 
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Crake said:
Uh, no. Ser Bryan is utterly unsuitable as anything more than an abject example, and Janna doesn't have the right or ability to impress a claim, unless we were seated on the Iron Throne itself and no one could protest the decision. The only other options are literally laid out before us, besides distant cousins we don't have time to search for, those being Lady Blount, the Lord's mother, and the Lord himself, who at the very least we will ensure does the bare minimum of his duties in exchange for protection.
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Did you mean to quote yourself?

Oh, and the idea that Westerosi are somehow inferior schemers to Essosi is weird. Where did you ever get any evidence of that? Canon is full of Westerosi schemers, after all.
And Bloodraven is Westerosi. Enough said.
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
Did you mean to quote yourself?

Oh, and the idea that Westerosi are somehow inferior schemers to Essosi is weird. Where did you ever get any evidence of that? Canon is full of Westerosi schemers, after all.
And Bloodraven is Westerosi. Enough said.
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And to be honest just experience. You point to canon and yeah we've had examples but they're the exception, very much not the rule. Many Lords appear to be politicians at best, but inveterate schemers? The only family full of them I can name off the top of my head are the Lannisters/Tyrells... and Freys.
 
BronzeTongue said:
On an unrelated note, when is a good time to bring up insane research projects of dubious viability? I didn't want to interrupt turn planning with mad science.
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There is no bad time to discuss mad science. It certainly doesn't hurt to brainstorm and speculate, though we might not get to the point of implementation for a long time, if ever.
 
[X] Crake

Crake said:
And to be honest just experience. You point to canon and yeah we've had examples but they're the exception, very much not the rule. Many Lords appear to be politicians at best, but inveterate schemers? The only family full of them I can name off the top of my head are the Lannisters/Tyrells... and Freys.
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And to be fair what we have seen of the Lannisters and Tyrells has been very disappointing. The Frey's are a little too obvious, but it works for them for the most part so I am not going to cast shade on them for it.
 
Crake said:
Edit: Misquote, meant to tag @BronzeTongue

Uh, no. Ser Bryan is utterly unsuitable as anything more than an abject example, and Janna doesn't have the right or ability to impress a claim, unless we were seated on the Iron Throne itself and no one could protest the decision. The only other options are literally laid out before us, besides distant cousins we don't have time to search for, those being Lady Blount, the Lord's mother, and the Lord himself, who at the very least we will ensure does the bare minimum of his duties in exchange for protection.
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I was keeping him around for the sake of having proof; if we just kill him it makes our argument seem shakier to me. The further investigation was more to figure out if we were going to have to manage a limp noodle lord.

I was under the impression that most noble families were bigger than this, at least if you count marriage and cadet houses. They have mechanisms in place to avoid accidental depletion of a house as a social class. As long as we don't just kill him without any time for his relatives to prepare those mechanisms would handle it for us. Not that we should plan on axing him right off the bat, just for the possibility. If we mostly care about ensuring that this area doesn't fight us a confused succession will serve just fine.
 
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BronzeTongue said:
I was keeping him around for the sake of having proof; if we just kill him it makes our argument seem shakier to me. The further investigation was more to figure out if we were going to have to manage a limp noodle lord.

I was under the impression that most noble families were bigger than this, at least if you count marriage and cadet houses. They have mechanisms in place to avoid accidental depletion of a house as a social class. As long as we don't just kill him without any time for his relatives to prepare those mechanisms would handle it for us. Not that we should plan on axing him right off the bat, just for the possibility. If we mostly care about ensuring that this area doesn't fight us a confused succession will serve just fine.
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It depends, really, the Royces definitely have a cadet branch most of the time, the Lannisters, the Tyrells, etc., but a lot of the time if it's a non-major House there's no formalization and title attached to that role. Most of the time a claim has to be dug up with just the bare minimum requisite connection and ties of blood, or someone puts forth a claim based on some precedent of marriage or really whatever the King will agree with so long as it doesn't shake things up more than his political capital can handle.
 
Hey, so for the next turn. Research action on how to make make elemental gems aoing with the one on how to purify the elemental in it?

I kinda want to do all purification research at the same time. The elemental and the ring. Maybe the research on that rock Xorn use to purify bile stone too.

Edit: why did SV turn Bile to bioengineered I have no idea.
 
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Goldfish said:
There is no bad time to discuss mad science. It certainly doesn't hurt to brainstorm and speculate, though we might not get to the point of implementation for a long time, if ever.
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Okay. I'll post the notes I've been writing in a spoiler; the tldr is magical photosynthesis to give the old gods passive income and perhaps get heart trees that act as gun emplacements or scroll farms. Not sure how to quantify the research requirements or balance the rewards.

So from the beginning of the quest we've known that magic relies on extraplanar energies leaking into a given plane; the mix of different powers end up being the fuel and/or the tools to assemble spells in the first place.

So a conclusion we can draw from this is that planes swap energy when they interact, and presumably swap more energy the more closely they do so (as we see in bleed zones like Valyria).

I'm assuming that magical energies each behave like their own energy field, with laws that govern how they flow and generally behave. Fire, for example, could radiate like heat to low magic zones (or literally follow temperature). It doesn't really matter how as long as it's consistent and likes to move from high to low concentration on average.

I see no reason that this sort of behavior should change for artificial connections, which means we should be able to make places that bleed magical energies into the world. Even if we can't, as long as we can physically reach over and draw on power, we should be able to leverage this.

Suppose we had a heart tree with 3 self targeted only gate effects configured to allow some of its roots to grow in to the plane of earth, some of its branches into the plane of air, and then shortly past that from the plane of air to the plane of fire.
That's not only a series of bleed points between all of those planes, it's also physically connected by a divine ( and magically reactive) tree. Symbolism appears to have a lot of control on how magic flows, so it doesn't seem unreasonable that a god tree mirroring the conceptual positioning of a regular one would allow/ease the flow of power into the tree. Essentially setting up magical photosynthesis for the old gods. They can then take this and use it to grow, and fuel our kickbacks.

I was originally envisioning this as a way to make gear for the old gods, but that's kind of stupid and probably OP. Stuff like X/a day direct spells from the tree (flesh to stone turrets for the Wall?), or maybe having them grow fruits/ a week that act like scrolls are plenty powerful and could be good replacements. Though I'd be happy with no direct utility as well, my main goal is to drip feed the old gods on the high magic version of a solar panel. Constant passive income will make them way stronger than intermittent sacrifice over the long term.

Sorry about the wall of text, I was trying to justify every part of this project explicitly when I wrote it up in my notes. I didn't really see a point in dropping parts out since they could come up.

Edit: fixed a sentence.
 
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Abhishek M said:
Hey, so for the next turn. Research action on how to make make elemental gems aoing with the one on how to purify the elemental in it?
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With the line-up of current moment we don't really have the people to spare.

I mean, we could start doing this "purify" thing...
But everything else is a bit more important than one very situational (and not very powerful to boot) minion we can possibly get out of this.

I'll give ya an explanation for each action on the plan I penned tomorrow if ya want, can't really do that from phone.
 
BronzeTongue said:
Okay. I'll post the notes I've been writing in a spoiler; the tldr is magical photosynthesis to give the old gods passive income and perhaps get heart trees that act as gun emplacements or scroll farms. Not sure how to quantify the research requirements or balance the rewards.

So from the beginning of the quest we've known that magic relies on extraplanar energies leaking into a given plane; the mix of different powers end up being the fuel and/or the tools to assemble spells in the first place.

So a conclusion we can draw from this is that planes swap energy when they interact, and presumably swap more energy the more closely they do so (as we see in bleed zones like Valyria).

I'm assuming that magical energies each behave like their own energy field, with laws that govern how they flow and generally behave. Fire, for example, could radiate like heat to low magic zones (or literally follow temperature). It doesn't really matter how as long as it's consistent and likes to move from high to low concentration on average.

I see no reason that this sort of behavior should change for artificial connections, which means we should be able to make places that bleed magical energies into the world. Even if we can't, as long as we can physically reach over and draw on power, we should be able to leverage this.

Suppose we had a heart tree with 3 self targeted only gate effects configured to allow some of its roots to grow in to the plane of earth, some of its branches into the plane of air, and then shortly past that from the plane of air to the plane of fire.
That's not only a series of bleed points between all of those planes, it's also physically connected by a divine ( and magically reactive) tree. Symbolism appears to have a lot of control on how magic flows, so it doesn't seem unreasonable that a god tree mirroring the conceptual positioning of a regular one would allow/ease the flow of power into the tree. Essentially setting up magical photosynthesis for the old gods. They can then take this and use it to grow, and fuel our kickbacks.

I was originally envisioning this as a way to make gear for the old gods, but that's kind of stupid and probably OP. Stuff like X/a day direct spells from the tree (flesh to stone turrets for the Wall?), or maybe having them grow fruits/ a week that act like scrolls are plenty powerful and could be good replacements. Though I'd be happy with no direct utility as well, my main goal is to drip feed the old gods on the high magic version of a solar panel. Constant passive income will make them way stronger than intermittent sacrifice over the long term.

Sorry about the wall of text, I was trying to justify every part of this project explicitly when I wrote it up in my notes. I didn't really see a point in dropping parts out since they could come up.

Edit: fixed a sentence.
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I really like the idea of a Heart Tree rooted in multiple Planes, but I don't think the OG would go for it, not if Gates are being used to allow the roots to spread.

I think the rest major hurdle would be figuring out how to get the Weirwood tree roots to borrow through the Planar boundary.
 
Goldfish said:
I really like the idea of a Heart Tree rooted in multiple Planes, but I don't think the OG would go for it, not if Gates are being used to allow the roots to spread.

I think the rest major hurdle would be figuring out how to get the Weirwood tree roots to borrow through the Planar boundary.
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I was thinking along the lines of it literally growing through a gate into a prepared anchor location. Depending on the scale and difficulty of the project, we could move the type of reward it generates around. This would basically be a generator, so if placement is complicated the we just make a smaller number of larger ones.

If we made an automated scroll orchard, for example, and scaled the effect to the size of the tree (based on initial sacrifice) we could free up crafting time. Not to mention the new stuff we could try with reliable scroll production that didn't eat valuable labor.

There'd probably need to be a level or type cap on the scrolls though. Maybe only spells that touch on their domains level 5-6 and below? Or possibly variable growth time based on the power of the effect, assuming that would be allowed at all anyway. Using the power to grow rare reagents the old gods know about but we don't have access to on a monthly basis might be a more reasonable reward.

Edit: misread your post. I was assuming having the old gods in active control of the gates would make them more comfortable with the idea; especially if the sites we chose on the other ends are defended/hidden.
 
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