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

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DragonParadox said:
The Ruin of Hope​

Twenty Sixth Day of the Second Month 294 AC

As the bight southern sun wheels among wispy clouds like a dream of rain and Astapor moves to its ancient rhythms, all but the poorest of free men seek shelter from the sun in what the locals call the Slave's Hours. According to Malarys, by necessity if not inclination more accustomed to the customs of this land, even favored slaves are not allowed to work in this heat. However, you have no doubt that devils, unaffected as they are by the flames of hell, are toiling away in temples, in catacombs, and in the dark corners of this realm to bolster their position in the face of an unexpected setback.

You hope they will not have time to summon more aid from Baator, for what you have learned of the halls deep beneath the Plaza of Punishment is damning enough. Once roads and alleyways of an older Astapor, dating back some say to the days of Old Ghys, but more likely to the days of Valyrian sovereignty, the passages below have always been dangerous, havens for thieves and cutthroats as well as the more daring of escaped slaves. The Good Masters used them as training grounds for Unsullied meant for other tasks than open battle, as well as the sort of constant 'slave threat' that could be used to keep the less wealthy citizenry in line through fear.

It is little wonder that this under-city should hold temples to all manner of god come to preach to the slaves, bold priests descending in search of converts, and as often as not never returning. Some were lost to crumbling walls and and desperate folk with little respect for holy vestments. Some among those prospered, however, as much as one could be said to prosper in such a wretched place, and unorthodox beliefs flourished. Priests of the Lady of Spears taught salvation and a return to the legions of old as they sought answers delving in the dark. A pity what they and their patron found was Asmodeous.

It did not take long before they converted the meager communities lost in the dark, for were they not the purveyors of miracles and heralds of the Goddess? In yet more bitter irony heaped upon this place, the undercity soon became the seat of a conspiracy more dangerous than any the masters could have conjured. Paths already made dangerous by the hand of time were now marked with infernal runes and fel contraptions to guard against even most determined assault. Unsullied 'lost' in war and plague in distant cities slipped back by tunnels dug under the walls, and through it all the true masters of this place could navigate. After all, to a true baatezu mere physical distance is only a canvas upon which to paint their ambitions.

The passwords and safe ways into the depths where the First Shrine lies, where the Unsullied are remade, are unlikely to remain the same in detail to what your prisoners knew, precisely because they are your prisoners. Fortunately, you can at least warn your agents of the sort of threats they are likely to face. Poisoned favors are commonplace, as is fire, devils being naturally immune to both, but the devils had even moved full scale siege machines down there, ready to be redeployed at any of dozens of strategic checkpoints.

But more importantly than the insights into the labyrinth Malarys and the others must breach is the knowledge of what precisely had burned the temple in Yunkai, if not why. Asmodeous had selected not one but two of his servants to manage the conquest of Slaver's Bay. The first is sly and seductive, the orator whom you have already met twice and who had twice escaped you. The second, however, is a great champion whose stride is said to sow fear even into the hearts of demons, Puragaus, the Pyres of Immolation, or as they are called in the tomes of scholars with more boldness than sense, dragon-devil.

While your captives cannot recount their full power, you know for certain from leafing through a book that was once a judgement devil that she is the veteran of many and perilous campaigns, likely far more dangerous than her breed alone would indicate... and that she could set this whole city on fire. The best that can be said of this new foe is that she prefers not to linger long in the mortal realm, for she has little patience to spare for the secrecy that is paramount under the deimavigga's hand.

It is a sobering realization that the fiend, who but for her mastery of shadow would have slain Teana, is not even the head of the military presence here in Slaver's Bay.

What is your next target as a distraction?

[] Douquor's Pit made unholy ground dedicated to the Lord of the Ninth through carefully staged games, it is unfortunately never without an audience at this hour, but disrupting operations there would cut off a constant flow of unwitting sactrifices

[] The Bent Pyramyd, one of the oldest structures in the city, its foundations shifted under it from the long wear of time, host to a select cabal of some of the most wealthy and influential cult members, though also worryingly close to the Temple of the Graces

[] Potter's Field, a burial ground for slaves forgotten and nameless, well outside the city, but far from the greatest asset of the devils in Astapor

OOC: The devils have pretty good operational security, but you definitely learned some things that will be helpful going forward and noprisoner was blown up. Not yet edited.
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Here's an edited version of the chapter, DP.
 
Okay, so the whole place is fucked. At this point it seems like evacuating the mortals and blowing the place up would be easier than taking it, and that would be horrifically difficult to pull off in and of itself.

I guess we could just underdark the place and start releasing monsters that would make that place a nightmare for them as well, especially the kind that can tunnel around their traps.

If we can get a sample from the plane of earth, copious amounts of Earthen Spiders would work for making that place a hellhole worthy of the devils hiding in it. Add some feral Phase Fleas for added pain, then a small number of Death Worms and Tunnel Worms.
 
Well, at least we can get a lot of data from this mission. The Invasion will need to account for a lot of high-level devils, and Pretorion Grade Unsullied.
 
@DragonParadox, I don't suppose we can get lucky and stumble across an Uniila? :whistle: Well, any diabolical researcher really.

Also at the end of this I hope we get a decent accounting of the Infernal Cult itself. Not just the devils, but the worshipers, the informants, the mortal soldiers and enhanced Unsullied, the mages and clerics, etc. Planning around the devils themselves is all well and good but those are far from the only forces.
 
Speed53066 said:
Well, at least we can get a lot of data from this mission. The Invasion will need to account for a lot of high-level devils, and Pretorion Grade Unsullied.
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I don't think an invasion is a good idea; the city is now window dressing for a bunker designed and defended by a high ranking devil who knows exactly what they're doing. Resource limits might hold them back some, but any victory would be pyrrhic.

We still have to try, but I don't see a way to bring an army into this that doesn't turn into a hellish tunnel fighting and urban warfare followed by a long insurgency in the best case scenario.
 
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...do we care if the city ends up on fire?
Long as Devils dont get to use Slavers' Bay as a staging ground, I find turning it to desolate wasteland a fine enough solution.

Azel said:
Praetori are actually better then what the Devils got going here in terms of pure augmentation.
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From what little I got (it is really hard for me to summon interest in reading this ark, for some reason. I mostly skipped.) about them, Devils seem to focus on the quantity over quality here?

Worst case we can face is 1-to-1 Legion to Devil-Forged!Patsies encounter, and Praetorians aren't nearly as numerous even when we'll have had several months of making them.
 
Artemis1992 said:
The more likely scenario is that the Puragaus, whose minions think she can set the city on fire, will in fact set the city on fire if pushed.
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Good point; I specified best case as one where we had something vaguely worth fighting over, but they might be positioned well enough that we won't be able to stop them completely.

As an aside, I have a better proposal than "add horrifying spiders until dead" for dealing with this. Permanent Lost Locale on the whole thing. We can boost Viserys CL high enough to make it stupidly difficult to remove, making their minions useless for a long time.

They can't possibly have a majority of their forces be protected or completely immune to mind effecting affects, and even a good will save isn't a perfect defense for this. Anyone the spell can effect has to take a survival check to avoid getting lost, failing the will save just applies a penalty equal to twice the spell's CL to that check.

I'd bet that even their direct devil employees aren't exactly rocking sky high survival scores, and the humans involved will have to make the will save to avoid a minimum penalty of -40 on the check. Anyone who fails will also stay lost for 1 hour/ CL after they leave the spell's area, so they'll still be useless for about a day after escaping.

This would also make those traps awfully inconvenient unless they have built in IFF, which sounds too expensive for devils to bother with.
 
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I think that we should pull our demiplane fuckery and evacuate the city, or at least the poorer classes and slaves.

No slaves, no eocnomy, no unsullied.
 
Tomcost said:
I think that we should pull our demiplane fuckery and evacuate the city, or at least the poorer classes and slaves.

No slaves, no eocnomy, no unsullied.
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How though? That kind of thing isn't fast even when everyone knows the plan and more or less wants to cooperate. We can't just roll up and go "get in the Demiplane losers, we're going to SD" and expect to get anything substantial done before the devils (or good masters for that matter) respond.
 
BronzeTongue said:
How though? That kind of thing isn't fast even when everyone knows the plan and more or less wants to cooperate. We can't just roll up and go "get in the Demiplane losers, we're going to SD" and expect to get anything substantial done before the devils (or good masters for that matter) respond.
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Just thinking up loud, the devils would respond and likely start murdering civilians left and right
 
Greetings Comrades!
One Autumn Leaf said:
I mean what are the consequences of doing a protracted propaganda campaign in the region?
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I think if we push too hard, the entire region will be engulfed in a slave revolt ... which, if you think about it, isn't so bad.
Hey, what if you try to capture the three cities of Slaver's Bay next month, without using companions? Nirah, Adamantium Golem, Fire Bull, add various dragons, organize a slave revolt, and capture these cities. Appointing Zherys as chief, he always disliked Ghis.
It's just that the Qohor seems to me to require the presence of companions rather than the army, but with the cities of Ghis everything is the opposite.
 
Sapphon said:
Hey, what if you try to capture the three cities of Slaver's Bay next month, without using companions? Nirah, Adamantium Golem, Fire Bull, add various dragons, organize a slave revolt, and capture these cities. Appointing Zherys as chief, he always disliked Ghis.
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We don't have infinite Legions or the time for a prolonged guerilla campaign in the entire Ghiscari region.
 
Sapphon said:
It's just that the Qohor seems to me to require the presence of companions rather than the army, but with the cities of Ghis everything is the opposite.
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We might be able to do Qohor without an army (maybe), but as Azel pointed out if we take Qohor, the already nervous Norvos will likely strike out at us.
So we need the army there anyway, not in SB.
 
Capturing places via local revolt is a bit too dicey for my tastes. Sure the locals are relatively cooperative, but they're also effectively an independent power structure that's going to have some degree of self preservation in mind. It could go off without a hitch, or we could end up with a firmly established local power structure that wants as many of the benefits of being in the Imperium as it can get for as few concessions as it can get away with.
 
Azel said:
We don't have infinite Legions or the time for a prolonged guerilla campaign in the entire Ghiscari region.
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I agree, but they have already taken a lot of time from our secondary adventurers, and have already reached the level of taking away time from the main team ...
Damn it, how much easier it would be to burn them to hell. And the most offensive thing is that there is no benefit from them even after the capture, except that Meereen stands at the intersection of land routes, and it's just a headache being in the ass of the world.
 
On that note, people keep forgetting that we would also have to take New Ghis.

None of the Ghiscari would just quietly ignore the Neo-Valyrian Empire coming at their people to finish the job.
 
Azel said:
On that note, people keep forgetting that we would also have to take New Ghis.

None of the Ghiscari would just quietly ignore the Neo-Valyrian Empire coming at their people to finish the job.
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I have not forgotten about him, just as I understood there the cult of Asmodeus could not take root, and without the devils, slavers look frankly worthless.
 
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