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

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I wonder who Relath's parents are? I can't recall reading about Brine Dragon relations between the offspring and their parents, but I have a feeling it isn't very involved.
 
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Interlude DCCX: Where Shadows Tread
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    • Where Shadows Tread ​

    Eight Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC

    There was something strange afoot among the tents of the Golden Company, Dany thought looking over the camp over the line of churned earth and tangled roots that could only be termed a ridge because the land up here was flatter than a Tyroshi flatcake with a dusting of hoarfrost in place of sugar. There had been some sort of disturbance last night and she had seen the flashes of battle magic with her own eyes, but had not dared get close enough to get a good look at their source. Even warded against divination as they were and veiled in a glamour to be unseen to the naked eye none of them dared fly too close to the camp.

    All the many-colored drakes could see as well as an erinyes and they did not seem to need sleep of any kind to keep flying. Given what they have been feeding them on that was hardly surprising... the princess shuddered a little. One of the first bits of news the umbral spies had passed from their unwitting hosts was that the drakes were not entirely creatures of this world once they matured. Flesh and blood alone could not contain the power Tiamat had poured into their forms, making them ethereal as wraiths or perhaps more precisely shadow demons, for like that most insidious breed of Tanar'ri their claws and teeth were all too real as were the points of their riders' lances. But such a bright flame could not be sustained on flesh alone either. The dragon-kin were fed upon a steady diet of magic items and, when they could get them, mages.

    'I'll feed your sorry ass to the dragons' was one of the most common threats their spies had heard among the golden tents festooned with the looted horsehair banners of the Jogos Nhai, addressed to everyone from slow apprentices to those who tried to use magic to advance upwards by stealth and treachery. One way in which the policies of Captain Myles Toyne matched Viserys' was a clean slate on entering, particularly for mages who came with lore, power and a willingness to get their hands bloody, though the rigid and disciplined hierarchy they had to obey came as an unpleasant shock to many of these sorcerers, who likely reasoned that any organization willing to forge pacts with demons like the abishai must cater to a demon's urges also. Thus a good number of those fell back into poor habits and promptly ended up as drake food.

    Was that what had happened last night? Dany wondered as she waited a touch impatiently for the Duskpaw the shadow construct assigned as messenger for his brethren to make his report. Had someone particularly powerful stepped out of line? One could hope for an outright coup of course, but that was not happening. The sellswords loved their boy 'king' too much for anyone to have much hope of deposing him. In truth, he was the only priest of Tiamat who was beloved as well as feared.

    Part of it was no doubt due to the fact that people liked believing in good and noble young kings more than they did in old priests with their faces scared as if by a dragon's claws, smelling of incense and death, but by all accounts he had earned some of it too, was still earning it even. He spent the better part of each day healing those in need among soldiers and camp followers both. Like I do in the Houses of Healing... Dany shook off the thought. Now was not the time to be feeling sympathy towards Aegon Blackfyre, maybe if he survived with his mind intact it might be worth considering but for now their task was to put an end to Tiamat's games in this world. More than most she knew the danger the Mother of Dragons.

    The sun was already three fingers above the horizon when smoke and shadow started emanating from the old rabbit burrow. Images flashed through her mind, a desperate fight among leaping shadows, wind tearing at the fabric of the tents, poisoned fumes pouring out, curses flying and at last a body falling, though one could read upon her features not fear or pain at the last... but relief. The Golden Company had been capturing and likely sacrificing shugenja, but one of them had escaped and caused quite a bit of damage in the doing.

    Dany drew the map of the camp from her enchanted bag and carefully unrolled it to mark one more place of interest in bright red ink: Mage Holding... she paused for a moment, considering before adding: Entrance, no one would actually count on flimsy cloth walls to contain sorcerers, there must be some other hidden trick to it.

    OOC: I wanted to include more characters in this, but in the end it flowed better from just Dany's PoV.
     
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    • I've just noticed that as far as I can remember, every Shugenja we've seen so far has been either extremely old or female.
    Is this a setting thing? Or just coincidence?
     
    Mages we've encountered thus far have been slightly more likely to be women. Not even very much more-so, just enough to be noteworthy. This is likely because they are more likely to be subject to the stress inducers necessary, and have the inclination to pursue it meaningfully, to become mages in the first place.
     
    Damn. The Golden Company is burning through their mages to feed their Drakes? That's fucking insane...
     
    DragonParadox said:
    Part of it was no doubt due to the fact that people liked believing in good and noble young kings more than they did in old priests with their faces scared as if by a dragon's claws, smelling of incense and death, but by all accounts he had earned some of it too, was still earning it even. He spent the better part of each day healing those in need among soldiers and camp followers both.
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    I wonder if the kid has actual morals or is only doing that in order to keep the plebs in line. What was the line, "better to be loved than feared" or some such?

    In any case his fate is only going to be a side effect in the long run, I'm just hoping we take out all of these pricks in one fell swoop.

    Last thing we need are loose ends, even if we mug Tiamat for beer money.


    Goldfish said:
    Damn. The Golden Company is burning through their mages to feed their Drakes? That's fucking insane...
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    Crake said:
    And massively inefficient...
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    It's almost as bad as boiling babies for potion ingredients.

    Christ it's like they took those rumors, saw our meteoric growth, and assumed "clearly he's using human sacrifice, there's no other explanation for his success!"

    I mean they're not wrong, but at least we have a stable system in place with exponential growth, they're just being sloppy.
     
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