Interlude in beta.
A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
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- 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
We never did add these to the design did we? Shame.
Interlude DCXVI: Fruits of Labor
Fruits of Labor
Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC
If one had told Salladhor Saan three years ago that he would be sailing into Gogossos of all places with a Volantene army at his back to plant a Dragon flag over the ruins he would have asked them what they had been drinking, or possibly which poisonous frogs they had been licking, yet here was his Valyrian threading the currents that separated Port Saan from the sweltering choking monster-infested shore of Sothoryos. If nothing else at least the bastards approved of the name of the ship. Truth be told he had been a might worried when he had heard the 'Tigers' would have men mostly drawn from former Volantene slaves and officers from the ranks of the sorts of prancing cocks who thought it the height of living rough to ride of those instead of lounge in a hathay. Thank be to the gods of tits and wine they had all come out soldiers.
The Thaemos of the Basilisk Isles caught the thought and pulled it out the way one would a bit of gristle caught between their teeth. He was being thankful for soldiers, he really had turned into a bloody lord, and not the kind of lord he'd been in Deepcleft either where all he had to worry about was sticking a boot up enough captains asses to move them in roughly the right direction. Now to make sure all the legionnaires in their shiny new boots stayed alive to the glory of His Grace, Viserys Targaryen, Third of His Name, and not-so-incidentally to the enduring wealth and profit of one Salladhor Saan.
***
Fifteenth Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC
"Alright, listen up here," Saan loudly began to a room full of red-cloaked officers. "I know you can all grind up a slave army or Westerosi levy the way a mill grinds spring grain, I know you've fought ghosts and grumpkins on the Rhoyne and drowned 'em in their own blood even if they didn't have any. Sothoryos ain't that. There isn't a list of every damn thing out there that wants to kill you, instead we have a list of what probably isn't gonna try. The rest of it, the air, the water, the fish, the beasts, the fucking trees, they are probably going to try at some point and if your soldiers ever feel like slacking off when raising the walls, just remind them that those walls are what's between the jungle and where they sleep."
"So, about those things that won't kill us?" one fellow asked drolly into the silence that followed.
"Follow me," the former pirate motioned dramatically down the newly cleared road. "Let's all meet our allies, the hairless magic monkeys and the bloody mole people, and do your best to keep on their good side, there's plenty of other things to kill."
Right on cue, a one-eyed monkey-thing came screeching out of the vines fit to chew off Saan's face only to be cut in two by a well placed sword swing. Of course, none of those watching would ever know just how on cue it had been since he'd had the thing captured and released right then by a couple of Essarians up in the branches.
***
"If you are up against something with too much magic to it you holler and try to run. I've met the King and he doesn't give two squirts of donkey's piss about glorious last stands, but he does care for is keeping as many of his legionnaires alive to do their jobs, so the greater chance the Sisters or the Sunwolves have to come deal with the magic the better..." Saan was just winding down from his last lecture, preceded by having one of the Furies beat a whole squad of legionnaires just to prove his point when a smiling old man in grey robes just walked up the path cheerful as you please, as though trying to wipe away every lesson he'd driven into the officers' heads
"Very good summation, very good indeed, never assume you are the top of the food chain in these jungles..." he laughed, gently leaving Saan to wonder just what a 'food chain' was and how it would try to kill you. "I would like to add one modest request to you, my friends. My experiments have gone swimmingly of late, but if you should happen in the course of your duties come across an unusual corpse, or make one, bring it to me first. I can always use more and who knows, you might see them being put to use around here eventually..."
The Volantene officers were looking at him with wider eyes than they had given the monster in a cage earlier. No danger in them assuming Gogossos was safe just because the old wizard was treating it like it was, then.
Secret of Life and Death Complete
***
Nineteenth Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC
As Saan embarked the Valyrian once more he turned his eyes away from the monster-haunted shore and onto his next task, setting up a fruit-growing business with a hundred-and-fifty-thousand Imperial Marks on his hands and the promise that the better it worked the more profit his lands would see. He had seen it in the Stepstones and in Essos too with Golden Fields, now he would just have to set the things up here too and watch the silver come pouring in. Saan wondered if the flesh-smiths could make better trees with richer yields...
Create Manufacturing Business (Southlands Fruit Company) in the Basilisk Isles (7/10)
OOC: So I decided to do a three-in-one interlude above to keep up a good clip of updates. Hope it flows properly.
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Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Thanks for the reminder. Those might be the first upgrade for the Moonchaser.
Glad to help. Put on 6 and crew the by cutting out the large passenger rooms? Maybe?
egoo
Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed
- Location
- Russia
Yay!
We can teach necromancers now. Well, safely enough, that is.
Apparently this research was needed to set up basic common sense and precautions in training/work ethics of any.
Oh, and we can now make Undead that don't fuck up the world and the people around them with their driving energy.
And we can start working on "make Undead that run on energies that aren't Undeath".
And attempt to find a way to "stabilize" even sentient Undead, getting us an easy and powerful instrument to work with Liches and such with little practical concern.
This research may not have been immediately useful, but it has long-going prospects.
And Quburn is happy now, too. Yay us!
Presentation!
All this at the low cost of less bodies for the Forge!...wait a minute! Hehe seriously though this is good.
Still not sure why queburn is so obsessed with undead here though. Wasnt his thing always the trying to cure death part? There see like 6 methods for that we can use.
Ah well, whatever makes him happy.
Also the Moonchaser has a weather control station? Red Alert Intensifies.
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Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
That's really just turning back death completely, which is less attacking the problem at an oblique angle with SCIENCE! and more knocking down all obstacles with a sledgehammer that is magic.
Qyburn wanted to master death. This became especially important when it became apparent to him that there were some assholes out there planning to use undead to kill him (lesser concern for a mage) and his employers and deprive him of funding for more research.
That's not cool, obviously.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
And he was probably well aware of the Ruling=Mummery secret well before we ever came to power.
- Location
- Germany
Qyburn had this ability to look unconcerned by danger and constantly slightly distracted by thoughts on his work even before he became a great Necromancer.
Even the show-version, which gods know wasn't always great for characters, got that act right.
Even the show-version, which gods know wasn't always great for characters, got that act right.
Vote closed.
- Location
- Who knows?
Pffftt oh Qyburn. I love how Saan was luck "Whelp this doddering looking old guy is gonna make everyone think this is a holiday," when the message sent was "this is the level of crazy you gotta be to casually survive here"
You know between 20 something new trees nearly 10000 HD of corpses and over 3 million in reagents this turn for Plant Creatures. The old Gods have to feel a bit odd. Have they ever had a Month like this before? Like ever?
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The big trees probably came close, if only because of how sudden it all was.
I do worry that we're going to give the old gods diabetes or something. As much as I'd like to see if the old gods can unhinge their jaw to take in more sacrifices, I'm not enthused about figuring out how to give insulin injections to a tree.
Inserted tally
Part MMMCXXXI: Of Earnest Play and Heartfelt Gifts
Of Earnest Play and Heartfelt Gifts
Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC
The Moonchaser is no mere ship as one might know them from the works of the Arsenal of Braavos or even the docks of the City of Brass where metal and sorcery have been melded through the works of countless slaves since time out of mind. This is the work of Lya's craft and her imaginings from the arcane rituals ringing through its halls to the vast mirrored hull coming to a deadly point like the tip of some godly spear bloodied by the sunset, drawing stares and pointing fingers even in the Deep and little wonder. Nothing larger than this has ever flown these skies, even dread Balerion is barely a third its size, snout to tail. Though none of its weapons may possess the sheer fury of a Dragon's fire it has a great many of them, boiling steam its breath and quicksilver its hidden wings.
You have never seen Moonsong struck silent, truth be told you had not been certain it was possible even if one were to use magic for the task.
"She's beautiful..." she says in awe.
Were you to ask for an oath in perpetuity then and there she would accept, you knew, but you do not wish break the moment's enchantment and so you watch in silence as she rises on sure and silent wings to meet the ship, the next chapter in the story of her being.
Thus you abide a while beside your mother, your remaining companions and a pair of new-come guests. "I never thought I would see something grander than a Dragon under the sun of mortal lands," Maester Aemon whispers under his breath, but not so soft that another who had come veiled in glamour and incarnated in a body not his own does not hear.
"Mayhap it will be enough to discourage the more foolish lords from their games, though I would not wager upon it," Brynden Rivers says, his tone dust dry.
"No intrigues and talk of lordship at my nameday," Dany warns mock-severely.
"Then pray what else aught we do while the ship and her captain prepare for inspection?" Lord Brynden asks, glancing around the room expectantly.
"We can play a game," your sister replies at once, motioning to Kyla and Ysilla's gifts upon a nearby table.
"A war game, not so far from the great game for all that," he replies even as he moves to observe the living pieces and scrutinize the booklet.
Sadly the game cannot accommodate more than enough players, but those that do not take part enjoy themselves while others call out advice to the players and cheer them on. By the end of the hour long session Bloodraven had scribbled several proposed revisions to the rules even as he won the game, though only by the narrowest of margins. "An interesting distraction for young courtiers to be sure," he proclaims at the end. "Better than cyvasse for the pieces are less abstract even when they are not animate. It is, after all, an easy thing to sacrifice a knight that is the same same as all others, an abstraction and a number, but a legion rider with the banner fluttering above to mark its history and tales, why that might incline one to be cautious rather than headlong in the search of glory or redress to perceived slights."
"You don't really think anyone is going to decide if they go to war or not on the basis of a game they played as children, do you?" your mother asks dubiously.
"Children are very malleable beings, you would be surprised how much of our early lives stays with us, Your Grace." The old sorcerer falls silent for a long moment as though uncertain of his next words. "I still remember the first fight I had with Bittersteel when I was barely older than Daenerys is now, though I have forgotten much else of my life."
No one speaks for a long moment after that, the only sound the hum of the wards you had erected around the room so that you could speak openly without the risk of being overheard.
It is Maester Aemon who breaks the the silence by presenting his own gift, a copy of a small booklet of songs composed for Queen Visenya a few years after Aegon's Conquest, melding Valyrian harmonies with Westerosi rhythm. "Would that I could have forged a sword for you, young princess, but for now this is all I could manage."
"It is good that you did not regardless, uncle, else she would have had to pester Garin to learn how to fight with two weapons," you reply while presenting one of your own gifts, a Valyrian Steel shortsword with a ruby pommel, a weapon you can hope will never be drawn outside of practice, of course, but better to have it and not need it than the reverse. From the way Dany's eyes gleam in interest you suspect there will be a good bit of practice in its future.
"Speaking of a warrior's accouterments," Bloodraven interjects softly. "Given that you no longer intend to craft the hide of the Five-Headed-One into armor.... I thought I would present the seed of an alternative." So saying he draws from an enchanted bag not a piece of armor as you might have suspected, but a single bronze scale that flickers and ripples in the last rays of the sun. "He who once bore this last was hailed by his folk as a wraith-slayer, and though they are dead and his line perished with them the Old Gods remember. Forge this into any armor and the bearer shall gain the ability to walk with spirits, whether it be to strike at the unrestful dead or to escape all too material foes."
"Thank you, Uncle Brynden," Dany says, hugging him again as she had done when he arrived.
All too soon it is time for Bloodraven to depart, for even though one might excuse having 'Varys' in Sorcerer's Deep a while longer, his duties are many and his time short.
So it is that beside your mother, your companions, and the rest of Dany's guests you ascend to the Moonchaser for her maiden journey.
How do you address the crew and soon-to be captain?
[] Write in
OOC: I thought about having Bloodraven give Dany armor, but in that case it would have had to be at most scale since the First Men did not forge plate so it would have placed you guys in the inexplicable position of choosing effectiveness or narrative weight, not to mention that IC Bloodraven would have wanted Dany as well protected as possible, hence the scale and the free +5 Equivalent enchantment as a compromise.
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- Location
- United States
This isn't quite true, @DragonParadox, we're just waiting for a stronger Aspect of Tiamat to butcher. CR 13 isn't exactly much to work with.
That said, that gift was great. I'd love to forge that scale into the armor when we make it.
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