A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
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- Tags
- 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
- Location
- Texas
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Will we try to get Rina's eidolon next month too?
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I would like to if at all possible. She's not too far off from her next level up, where she will really need the Eidolon, so the timing of it would be pretty convenient. It would also be a really big moment in the story for her, becoming a Winter Fey, like what the Others were before being tainted by the Void.
- Location
- Germany
[X] Crake
Canon Omake: Shadows Linger, Duty Follows
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Shadows Linger, Duty Follows
Twenty-Sixth Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
<<<Previous Next>>>
Garin watched with amusement as Ser Criston Storm paced the same circuitous route through the luxurious Yunkish estate, having gone winding through the outer courtyard before, then through the gardens, and as shadows told by the flicker of magelight and the shifting of incense smoke. He walked through the desolate halls and back onto the balcony where the last dying rays of sun were greeted by the steady glow of cold-fire, as he did now, stopping at the same place he had the last three times. His hands even touched upon where he had leaned over to stare at the Yellow City the last time.
Uncomfortably, Mia and Anya traded awkward glances where they sat nearby, sharing a bowl of dates and trying to unravel an eastern puzzle box. Then both glanced over at the table that Garin and Ceria matched wits in Cyvasse, as good a way to pass the time as there ever was while waiting for Malarys to come out of another ritual chamber. He met the woman's gaze, his eyes black as the night creeping in finally coming alight with the sort of mischievous joy Prince Oberyn likely felt whenever trading barbs with the bastard-born Stormlander.
Ceria merely scowled in response. "Criston, stop moving around. You're not going to run into more Sons of the Harpy out there, or in here. Lord Drekelis would chance upon them far sooner than you would, or they would any of us, for that matter."
"Such faith you have in my abilities," Garin said with a chuckle, moving his catapults forward. She half stood up, leaning over the board with a critical eye, shooting her head back up as though she wanted to accuse him of cheating, but of course being beyond such childish behavior. She ran two hands through her raven-tresses, so inordinately frustrated Garin could not help but laugh. To be truthful, it reminded him of halcyon days in Braavos and spending long afternoons sequestered away from rainy gloom with Wyla, than anything else, though the roles were quite reversed.
"Criston?" She spoke more uncertainly when he didn't reply.
He chanced a look back toward the knight at Ceria's uncertain call, having stopped abruptly, some ephemeral intuition perhaps making her realize something was truly wrong. Garin could see from the slant of his shoulders, gripping the balcony's edge with a white knuckled grip, something indeed was amiss.
Mia and Anya glanced between the two again, rising panic only abated by a gesture from the Grand Inquisitor, more nervous than before. He suppressed a sigh, they were fine when they were put to task, but still quite unused to interacting with anyone who had any semblance of past authority or standing in the world that was, some notions unable to entirely leave them at ease in their presence. Though it was better when he had talked to them about how the way which they carried themselves had also reflected upon the King.
One could say the Inquisition was his invisible hand, but Garin rather called it unobtrusive in the moment, and inexorable in an instant. The sight of the Book and Sword brandished upon a chain or the lapel of a doublet was not for the faint of heart. That was fully intended.
"Perhaps we should excuse ourselves," Mia said loudly yet cheerfully as he drew her attention. He let a small smile form and nodded gratefully. Anya paused on the way out and leaned over to whisper something to Ceria, who reached over and patted her arm, a serious look on her face, but the gesture was touching nonetheless. All my subordinates get along quite well, he thought absently. Perhaps that should actually be somewhat worrying, since what else had he missed about them while focused on other matters? Dragon-God cultists and abyssal worshipers or no, until he had a handful of Lord Inquisitors to delegate things to, it was faintly uncomfortable to him that he could not flip through a file and reveal everything he had missed month to month in the lives of those entrusted to him.
"She asked about Shara's brother and sister," Ceria explained. "The two of them are good friends. I like that about them," she said with a faint smile. "It's not easy to do this without the comfort of... something routine," she chanced. "Not normal, just..."
Garin nodded, eyes still on the Stormlander who hadn't moved an inch. "I understand," he replied, "I feel the same way whenever I return to see Selyse and my children."
"She loves them," Ceria said, still not smiling, "She never had siblings of her own, so..."
Garin closed his eyes, thinking about how to manage all of his dear subordinates with problems lurking in the background out of sight where he could not hunt them in the dark like he could everything else. "Should I..." he trailed off at the shake of her head. She stood up and he followed her over to the edge of the balcony, gazing for a time at the city walls in the distance.
"We're playing games with them," Ser Criston whispered hoarsely, gaze vacant. He gestured vaguely at the city of slaves and fools before them. "Always something more important, yes? If it's not devils bedeviling, or fey in the Riverlands, fucking man eating witches or idiot lords... it's all so much more important than that." He waved them both off as they made to speak up, simultaneously. The two traded uncertain glances behind the Bastard of Blackhaven's back. "I don't blame either of you, or the King even, I understand the stakes. Damn, I even agree with the commands we were given. I just don't get them," he spat with venom. "I've killed over a dozen fucking assassins these past few weeks alone. They're fanatics but not over anything that makes sense. Freedmen and silk-wearing third or fourth sons hoping to stab and poison and strangle the defiance out of people who can't and probably won't even fight back, or each other when there's a bone to snatch out of each other's mouths."
"Like jackals," Garin said absently, a common Volantene pejorative he couldn't quite find himself disagreeing with, given all he had witnessed over the past month. "What's really on your mind?"
Criston laughed. "I got no bones to pick on my part, don't mind me. I just aim to keep my promise to my dead friend and leave all the thinking to his boy." A dark look crossed Ceria's face, but she bit back her first response, shooting Garin a hopeful glance.
"Ser Criston... we're all doing the best we can." Garin said carefully, stance loose as he clasped his arms behind his back.
"And so are they. They'll be laughing all the way to the Pit, too, won't they, either way things shake out? And I'm thinking, it was so simple to keep that promise, too. One could wonder, mayhaps, how one draws battle lines against some... constant, that which reeks and stains all, never seen but always felt. We'll be fighting forever." He hung his head forward, solemn. "Every time I fought for the sake of duty alone, y'know, someone paid the price for it. Old Lord Ormund, he died a day, two or three... after he knightd me and Braden."
It took a moment for Garin to parse through his western genealogies before he realized he was talking about Ceria's grandfather, Ormund Baratheon. He noticed that her expression hadn't even flickered, however. Garin inwardly wondered how she would feel about him having so much of her personal history on file and buried again in another vault deep in the earth, but dismissed the line of thought in the next moment.
"You're not going to be the cause of pain or suffering on others' part, Ser Criston," Garin spoke softly, noticing the tension rising in the man's shoulders. They slumped a moment later. "That's not on you... that's on the world we live in, one we're working to change right now. I... realize I haven't been the most understanding, of your struggles in this past month."
"It's fine," he said shortly. "You were just doing your duty. Same as I." The words were faintly bitter. "Can hardly blame you for that."
"But you can blame me for putting you in this position," Garin replied, a small smile on his lips, a hint of fang to them.
Ser Criston snorted, turning to face him for the first time. Ceria winded an arm around his middle, and the man's eyes softened at the contact. "Sorry for being an arse all of the time," he grumbled at the Braavosi spymaster.
"I certainly can't help myself," Garin replied with a laugh, "You are just too terribly fun to rile up, I admit. And you certainly handled being my valet well these past few weeks. Watching you fight is sort of like..." Well, he admitted it was rather like watching a less skilled but just as terribly stubborn Ser Richard curse and batter his way through every obstacle, usually coming out the other side by the skin of their teeth and havoc all around. While a blunt instrument, he was well-behaved in every other moment, and it was quite amusing to realize that for all Ceria Storm wielded a warhammer into battle, she was the subtle one in their small company, and besides the two his presence was barely felt by their enemies, a misdirection always giving them the tracks to the wrong conclusion.
"I don't wonder about doing the right thing anymore," Criston concluded a minute later as they gathered around the Cyvasse board again, Ceria and Garin back to matching wits. "But do you think it's the wrong thing to let Denys pursue... y'know. His little 'youthful indiscretion'? With all this going on? It's a bit late for him to be having those, newly anointed Knight or no." He snorted. "Couldn't at least have the sense to pick a, I don't know... proper lady, one who likes bloody damn-fool knights out of song."
"He's not a 'proper knight' by that definition, you know," Ceria replied absently, a look of triumph on her face as she reversed her and Garin's positions in only a handful of moves. Garin had to double take, tipping over his King a minute of intense concentration later. She did look quite smug when she was getting her way, Garin wryly thought. "I think those two are a lot more compatible than you realize."
"She's probably right, you know," Garin spoke ironically, "As Selyse always says, a woman's intuition is a formidable thing, only underestimated when one wants to be privy to all the things they would have rather left unsaid."
Criston shrugged, helplessly. "How does that work?"
"Don't ask, it's easier that way," Garin whispered loudly.
"I can hear you both, you know," Ceria said shortly. "I think we should stay well clear of it," she opined loudly, "Her cousin is well aware of the frankly disgustingly awkward and stumbling romantic notions crossing the continent wherever Denys goes. It's out of our hands," she said, lifting both hands in a 'what can you do' manner.
"Pray tell, what would have placed this situation in either of your hands," Garin said wonderingly.
"If he had been seduced by a Lannister," she giggled, "Then we could just start restraining him and figuring out who had snared him by way of enchantment. Did you know he went on and on about 'the arch-traitors' all the way to Dorne whenever other things didn't distract us, like say, namely, fighting for our lives? He finds it quite embarrassing now, in hindsight."
Garin pondered the notion of Robert Baratheon being marked an embarrassment for all he had likely shamed and incensed the Crownlander knight for nearly a decade, put out of mind by enemies like the Sons of the Harpy, and more pertinently Asmodeus and the Court of Stars and every other threat to Viserys' rule.
No more ironic a notion than the King himself had likely contemplated, truly, but it was more stark when he thought of all of the people who had thought little and less of their cause when simple exile Viserys could have been named, driven to ambition by their very own hands. Garin certainly held no sympathy for the likes of Jon Arryn when they had him murdered in just about the most ignoble manner a nobleman could die in. He doubted Ser Denys would have lost very much sleep over the notion, if indeed he had thought of it at all. "Not the work you all imagined you would be fulfilling when you came to us, was it?" He said wryly.
"Hells! Not at all!" Criston barked a laugh. "I thought it would be the rebellion all over again, but there's probably not even going to be a single battle worth the name."
"Well, stupidity trumps common sense when power is involved," Ceria counters, resetting the board. "Like mayhaps nobody will care if you let a few bastards go missing." She glanced up with a smile on her face. "It pays to wonder what every bastard is doing these days, doesn't it? You wonder what war we'll be facing, it'll be one of daggers in the dark and men and women trying to claw their way upwards by dagger and stiletto, poison in the wine cup and Maesters' medicine ill-worked. You'll be getting your fill of that good old murder in keep and castle, on the road and in the brothel. And maybe in some feasting halls, supposing honor gets thrown right out of the window and people think lives can be sold to either Tywin Lannister or King Viserys."
"Bloody old goat would probably pay for it," groused Criston.
"Yes, well... that's what the Inquisition is for," Garin spoke up, actually faintly surprised at how sanguine Ceria sounded, "To prevent needless losses where others suppose they might have gone unseen." A moment later he realized that such disparaging notions were ones held of all bastards, that she was implying many would meet their untimely end at the chance someone was going to be opportunistic and cut the cord on the dozen or so succession crises in the making, given the state of things in the lands of Sunset. Yes, he could quite imagine many a killing being conducted for the sake of convenience during the initial chaos of invasion.
"Hah..." Ceria breathed out a laugh. "By the time you're done getting established in Westeros, you'll only find a mountain of dead. Best we count our blessings and stab the rot out instead, while the stabbing is good. We won't have many other chances afterwards."
Garin gave a corpse smile at the notion. "Charming."
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Jack vile Ripper
The swellest guy in Creation.
- Location
- Indonesia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
?? Shouldn't it be Criston Cole, instead?
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
...the Coles are super extinct. We made certain of that this month when we exterminated the Golden Company.
He's the bastard brother of the former lord of Blackhaven, Beric Dondarrion's father.
Let us not compare our beloved put-upon Stormlander alchemist-minder with Criston "The Motherfucker" Cole, thanks. A man dead since the Dance.
He's the bastard brother of the former lord of Blackhaven, Beric Dondarrion's father.
Let us not compare our beloved put-upon Stormlander alchemist-minder with Criston "The Motherfucker" Cole, thanks. A man dead since the Dance.
Jack vile Ripper
The swellest guy in Creation.
- Location
- Indonesia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh.
Oh.
Oh yeah. We probably shouldn't. I don't want Garin's favourite Kneebreaker's history to be sullied by that cuckolding backstabbing turn-coat.
*sigh*
Now you made me thinking of Rhaenyra and I can't be helped but to be sad again...
Great job on the omake @Crake, I had not really considered how his current assignment would impact Ser Criston, though I should have. Garin is more right than he knows comparing him to Ser Richard. It's not just their fighting styles that are similar. Rchard too was troubled about the strange paths his duty lead him down, though in his case it was more one big shock at the beginning in the form of haveing to join Gorthos' crew rather than a slow grinding concern.
Jack vile Ripper
The swellest guy in Creation.
- Location
- Indonesia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Bugger, that's a name I haven't heard in years. I wonder, how the old bastard's doing?
Oh wait, he's too busy being six-feet under! Hahahahaha.
egoo
Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed
- Location
- Russia
iir, we only had the following changes:
@DragonParadox, can we get the stats on that lecturer?
And then we voted for "two thirds".
Whether to add them now, or later... eh, that's your demesne there, really.
Level 12, 8 ranks of profession teacher. He won't be doing any combat so I think that's all that's relevant.
- Location
- France
I'll be needing his class (or at least I'll need to know if he's prepared or spontaneous, arcane or divine). I presume he's some sort of Sorcerer, right? Or is he a wizard?
All sheet edits will be done soon (TM) as I'm meant to be working from home and therefore can't do it right now this second.
Oh, right, he's a sorcerer base.
No rush on the sheets, we are still a ways off from the end of the turn.
- Location
- florida
@DragonParadox Could we write more books like this? But going the other way?
Put something on the curriculum to help our diplomats and baby devil binders.
Put something on the curriculum to help our diplomats and baby devil binders.
Jack vile Ripper
The swellest guy in Creation.
- Location
- Indonesia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Uh... are you sure there, bud? I means it's inevitable that one day we're gonna be broaching on the subject of Summoning. But, isn't it a bit too early for that?
Although I agree on the reverse part! Gaining insights from an Immortal Outsider alongside their backgrounds and perspective is going to be interesting, to say the least.
- Location
- florida
Have we started issuing licenses yet? I was under the assumption it was something the scholarium just handled in the background.
Jack vile Ripper
The swellest guy in Creation.
- Location
- Indonesia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Eh, kinda iffy on that. If they did, we should've gotten a way lot more Fiend population on our midst.
Something that is... not too clear at the moment, considering our hectic activities during this few months.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
It's not really a practice in anything but its infancy. We do not have a great cadre of greater than Level 5-6+ casters who can actually summon Outsiders who we do not know by name personally (Major characters, basically), and part of being licensed would being judged capable of restraining whatever it is you're attempting to call, and while under a controlled environment.
This is a thing that will only be relevant far beyond the scope of the quest, when our empire is thoroughly saturated with high level casters, not all of which are always directly performing some service for us (or more than likely when a faction with major resources is doing so). Right now that's only us, essentially.
This is a thing that will only be relevant far beyond the scope of the quest, when our empire is thoroughly saturated with high level casters, not all of which are always directly performing some service for us (or more than likely when a faction with major resources is doing so). Right now that's only us, essentially.
Jack vile Ripper
The swellest guy in Creation.
- Location
- Indonesia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hmm...
What I'm proposing is something that is dangerous, stupid, dangerously stupid, and stupidly dangerous.
If you say it's impossible, just say the word and I won't begrudge you for it.
*inhale*
...what would it take for us to recruit a Pit Fiend?
What I'm proposing is something that is dangerous, stupid, dangerously stupid, and stupidly dangerous.
If you say it's impossible, just say the word and I won't begrudge you for it.
*inhale*
...what would it take for us to recruit a Pit Fiend?
- Location
- florida
Pathfinder recommends this as a starting point.
Pit Fiend (SR 31): Pit fiends, the greatest of all the non-noble devils in Hell, are rarely tempted to answer a summons; when called, most of them come to see the stupidity or the arrogance that brought them to the Material Plane before snatching the wizard away for an eternity of torment. Only the greatest of promises, such as a noble offering the enslavement of an entire empire, a priest offering the destruction of holy relics, or an antipaladin pledging the delivery of a helpless and noteworthy angel for the pit fiend's pleasure, might induce the pit fiend into service.
They generally don't roll out of bed for anything less than damning an entire country though.
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