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

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The solution is to build a wall along the entire circumference of the island of Sorcerer's Deep. We could place small manned fortress towers every few miles, with a much larger one between every few towers.
 
Azel said:
Just for clarities sake. The Illithid have one good reason to target cities and one good reason against. The advantage would be to pressure Viserys to capitulate by wholesale slaughter of civilians. The argument against is that they would be killing the very cattle they want.

Proactively defending civilians emphasizes that targeting them would be helpful to force a capitulation. It would incentivise to use better or more resources to attack civilians. It would provoke attacks that a local garrison could do nothing against, unless we turn the entire city into an enclosed bunker.
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What.
The Deep Ones already know that we care about civilians. That's been established already. Furthermore, they also know that our empire is a source of power for us, as it provides wealth, Legions, and even PCs. That is why I assume that they will hit our cities, and not just try to assassinate us. Hitting our cities even creates opportunities to kill us, if that's all they want!

Plus cities are resources for them, too. They have a bunch of uses for mortals (and not just "good sacrifices").
And hey, once we start using WMDs on their cities they'll probably attack ours!

I think that defending cities makes sense. It's also our duty as a ruler, so let's not start from "the enemy won't attack our cities".

Azel said:
I repeat. A Legion stationed in a city can deal with Skum just fine. They can't deal with a lot of other stuff.

You are over focusing on a threat scenario that isn't.
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A legion squad can beat a squad of Skum. It can probably beat ten squads of Skum. But can it beat a hundred?
Basically what I fear is massive Skum numbers attacking all at once, either killing our guys or simply bogging them down while all the others slaughter our citizens.
Maybe I'm dramatically underestimating the Legion or something, but I consider our significant numerical inferiority to be a problem. Which is why I want to throw up walls.

Other defensive measures I want :
  • that Efreet statue tech that redirects Teleports and Plane Shift. We could set up "arrival areas", heavily guarded and warded.
  • separate, fortified and warded artillery emplacements and/or troop bases for local defenses
  • fast-response strike teams of PCs and powerful monsters, easily able to communicate between all cities
  • good early detection of threats
A wall isn't everything. But IMO it's still a good plan when the enemy can just drown your city in Skum while your other troops and PCs are busy fighting other stuff (including other swarms of Skum).
 
...and if you follow me further along in our tour, you may observe above a French person arguing with a German the merits of static defenses vs. strategic mobility doctrines. :V
 
Goldfish said:
The solution is to build a wall along the entire circumference of the island of Sorcerer's Deep. We could place small manned fortress towers every few miles, with a much larger one between every few towers.
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That's not a solution to anything.
TalonofAnathrax said:
What.
The Deep Ones already know that we care about civilians. That's been established already. Furthermore, they also know that our empire is a source of power for us, as it provides wealth, Legions, and even PCs. That is why I assume that they will hit our cities, and not just try to assassinate us. Hitting our cities even creates opportunities to kill us, if that's all they want!

Plus cities are resources for them, too. They have a bunch of uses for mortals (and not just "good sacrifices").
And hey, once we start using WMDs on their cities they'll probably attack ours!

I think that defending cities makes sense. It's also our duty as a ruler, so let's not start from "the enemy won't attack our cities".


A legion squad can beat a squad of Skum. It can probably beat ten squads of Skum. But can it beat a hundred?
Basically what I fear is massive Skum numbers attacking all at once, either killing our guys or simply bogging them down while all the others slaughter our citizens.
Maybe I'm dramatically underestimating the Legion or something, but I consider our significant numerical inferiority to be a problem. Which is why I want to throw up walls.

Other defensive measures I want :
  • that Efreet statue tech that redirects Teleports and Plane Shift. We could set up "arrival areas", heavily guarded and warded.
  • separate, fortified and warded artillery emplacements and/or troop bases for local defenses
  • fast-response strike teams of PCs and powerful monsters, easily able to communicate between all cities
  • good early detection of threats
A wall isn't everything. But IMO it's still a good plan when the enemy can just drown your city in Skum while your other troops and PCs are busy fighting other stuff (including other swarms of Skum).
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No. The exact opposite. We got the truce with the Illithid by specifically telling them that we wouldn't cave to terror attacks on civilians.

And really. Even if we dump all those resources into defending a few cities worth 200,000 people each and actually manage to deter massed Skum assaults (which I emphatically doubt). That just means they will instead swarm the countryside which we can't defend at all.
 
Crake said:
...and if you follow me further along in our tour, you may observe above a French person arguing with a German the merits of static defenses vs. strategic mobility doctrines. :V
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You know, historically, the Germans have not beaten french static defenses, AFAIK.
Indeed, both world wars can for example be summed up as "Germans do all they can to avoid french defenses and start a war of movement, which they then win"
:D

More seriously, I'm absolutely not advocating for defenses based on static fortifications. The cornerstone of our defenses will always have to be mobile, highly concentrated force. However that isn't a reason to avoid putting up the most basic, cheapest fortifications possible.
 
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Azel said:
That's not a solution to anything.
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Indeed. We can't overinvest in static defenses, because they will inevitably fail when faced with sufficient enemy PCs. If we do build walls and towers, the towers will be there as relays for Braziers to call for help and the walls will be there to slow Skum swarms. A wall around the whole island is pointless, because the enemy can move past it without us noticing (too few eyes on it, too long a wall) and because Skum won't be in range of our artillery while they get through.

Azel said:
And really. Even if we dump all those resources into defending a few cities worth 200,000 people each and actually manage to deter massed Skum assaults (which I emphatically doubt). That just means they will instead swarm the countryside which we can't defend at all.
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That's when we counterattack and kill their leadership.
Again, I'm not advocating "dumping all those resources". I'm advocating building cheap walls around our cities, and making sure that our local Legion garrison or artillery isn't murdered in their sleep.

If this is about the Teleport/Plane Shift redirectors, while those are indeed going to be rather expensive they'll also be covering massive areas, so IMO they're worth it for exactly the same reasons that the Efreet have them - good for trade, good against Teleport raids, and providing a mobility advantage to our guys (who aren't restricted).
 
Duesal said:
How many pieces of the sundered Planes do the Efreeti even have?

They had Bloom the Brijidine randomly locked away in a prison.

They had Zathir/Jazirian on his way to be devoured by the Grand Sultan.

They had the Hadhayosh fused to one of their ships.

And now they were the ones that first held the Anvil???
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They are sitting on a major trade route. Sansa interlude next, since I want to do a bit of an outside look for once, not just your actions.
 
Duesal said:
How many pieces of the sundered Planes do the Efreeti even have?

They had Bloom the Brijidine randomly locked away in a prison.

They had Zathir/Jazirian on his way to be devoured by the Grand Sultan.

They had the Hadhayosh fused to one of their ships.

And now they were the ones that first held the Anvil???
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I've had a thought, a very very bad thought.

What if the Sultan is gathering pieces of the planes to fuel his Ascension? I mean we know for a fact that heaven's gone to shit and all the other positive planes are disintegrating wrecks. To use a rather tired meme "It's Free Real Estate" so to speak.

Only he wouldn't be using that power like we would to build an afterlife, he'd be using it to build a funnel. Every poor schmuck not worth a god's notice or devil's pact would be free game, and yes while some big names would take umbrage and certainly try to fight him afterwards the initial power-boost into godhood, the fact that he has the Wish spell in addition to whatever other bullshit he might have or gained from his ritual, plus the fact he has an army of wish-capable "subjects" who he can use at will means that the ancient pact of "Fuck you Got mine" would be rather hard to break.
 
Evaunit02mark1 said:
I've had a thought, a very very bad thought.

What if the Sultan is gathering pieces of the planes to fuel his Ascension? I mean we know for a fact that heaven's gone to shit and all the other positive planes are disintegrating wrecks. To use a rather tired meme "It's Free Real Estate" so to speak.

Only he wouldn't be using that power like we would to build an afterlife, he'd be using it to build a funnel. Every poor schmuck not worth a god's notice or devil's pact would be free game, and yes while some big names would take umbrage and certainly try to fight him afterwards the initial power-boost into godhood, the fact that he has the Wish spell in addition to whatever other bullshit he might have or gained from his ritual, plus the fact he has an army of wish-capable "subjects" who he can use at will means that the ancient pact of "Fuck you Got mine" would be rather hard to break.
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Hrrrrmm, I actually think he tried doing that, but it didn't quite work, which is why all of these shards were being traded away ( Zathir/Jazirian and the Anvil fragment), or installed as evil batteries (Bloom and the Hadhayosh) Or maybe that's just the stuff that didn't work and the stuff that did is being kept close to hand
 
Possible Interludes Current List

Rumor Posts:
Essos (Last one at: Thirtieth Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC )
Westeros (Last one at: Thirtieth Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC )
Yi-Ti (Last one at: Thirtieth Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC )
Sothyros & Summer Islands: (Last one at: Thirtieth Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC )
Extraplanar general (Last one at: )
Genie War (Last one at: Ninth Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC )

Currently relevant non-Viserys actions:
Supporting rebels on the Plane of Fire
Spying on the Golden Company
Working against Devils in Slavers Bay
Salt-Tower up North being cleansed of Undead

Interludes DP expressed interest in writing:


If this helps anyone I could keep a list like this, both to keep things as a reminder for @DragonParadox and so people can look up how recent our last rumorpost was.
 
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