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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:
Gathering Power ​

Twenty Seventh Day of the Second Month 294 AC

"I have no objection to peaceful protests, excellency," you answer smoothly, already considering how to arrange the matter to ensure they stay peaceful and the inquisition has a record of the organizers. More work for the clerks. "I am certain sufficiently skilled leaders can apply pressure where it is needed without slipping into undue acts." The implication is clear. You, unlike the Council of Elders, will not budge at pressure from the streets, nor are you overly concerned at gatherings here in Elyria.

"I shall take your words under advisement, Your Grace," the man, more messenger than leader you are now certain, slips back into the crowd. The ones who hold his fealty are cautious enough not to want to contradict a sorcerer in person, which fits into the reports from the negotiations. There is more than one reason why you are worried about the traders being infiltrated, after all. They are not only the most likely to have encountered the agents of hostile powers, but also the ones who could do the most damage.

Still, as the shadows from the western slopes shroud the seeming, to make the pale columns of the temples all the brighter, fealty is taken in water, in soil, and in words that have not been spoke in this place for four hundred years and more.

Altars are cold and without flame, and the only dragon flying overhead is one of steel, yet once more Elyria is sworn under the banners of empire, if one quite different from the one whose fiery death the city had so narrowly avoided.

"I wonder why this island lived alone of all Valyria's core lands," your mother muses aloud as you are moving back to the harbor in formal procession, rose petals undisturbed by the insubstantial hooves of shadow steeds. "Is there some god or power we are not seeing...?"

"No matter how many hands try to tip the table, the bones still fall as they will," Oberyn replies, looking out towards the west beyond the low crests that overlook the city to the mainland, wreathed in fire and wild magic. He apperas as pensive as you have ever seen the Red Viper. "They were lucky. Twice over at that, since the envoy whose word they swore to didn't come from a place hotter than Valyria. Probably still a few of them out there, cheering the loudest so as not to draw suspicion."

"A few devils the inquisition can deal with. They would have to possess a stranglehold on the local levers of power to move the local assemblies to their will," you answer, not overly concerned with the prospect. It is not as though geographic proximity speaks much of where devils can act once summoned to this sphere.

"They might be able to use those... protests you allowed as cover for any plots, Your Grace," Elia warns from your other side. "Once a crowd is gathered, for whatever purpose, it's easier to forge into a mob."

"The same could be said of any large gathering," you answer in turn. "Still, these gatherings will be closely watched."

What next?

[] Write in

OOC: The reason I wanted to get this up tonight is because the rolls were good enough that it's a rap here in Elyria. Not yet edited.
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Here's an edited version of the chapter, DP.
 
egoo said:
Okay, he's part of Free Action then.

But I really, really can't remember Teana's mindset IC right now.
We can let her cool for a month, she's not Viserys-grade essential.

@DragonParadox?
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Honestly it'd be the ultimate character development for Teana to go from being tormented by Ymeri to joining the war party to kill her.
DragonParadox said:
Benero is level 13 now 14 and more a preacher and administrator than a warrior. He was not invited to the 'let's kill Ymeri party' by his god.
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I figured. I was only asking because I don't know where is charactersheet is. He can do a lot of good in Prime Material in leading the mass prayers.
Azel said:
She's a fertility goddess, so I've got high hopes. The best loot would be her milk, which is explicitly a strong mutagen.
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Maybe if we're lucky she'll send down an avatar. That would be super useful.
 
Azel said:
She's a fertility goddess, so I've got high hopes. The best loot would be her milk, which is explicitly a strong mutagen.
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Hey, we can must always try and give it Mammon's deal.
Build a milk farm outta the corpse, you know?
:V

Duesal said:
Honestly it'd be the ultimate character development for Teana to go from being tormented by Ymeri to joining the war party to kill her.
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True, but I was asking about Qohor/Norvos actually.
I somewhat remember her wanting a break after Sarnor, but can't really find the line to proof.
 
Found it @Azel ! Thank you talon.

The thing that I was asking about our government is thus.

When the peasantry get unhappy enough with the way stuff is going down they have used the faith of the seven as a rallying point.

I had imagined the psuedo democratic system we were creating was designed to also give people another way to address feelings of being mistreated (that get bad enough).

As a way to both stamp down on unrest and cut down support for religions as an entity with power.
TalonofAnathrax said:
The canon Faith of the Seven is theologically hollow because its theology is ultimately irrelevant. It's vaguely reminiscent of Christianity because it's sort of meant to parallel the medieval Catholic Church, but that's about it.
No, in the plot of the books the Faith is effectively important as a social institution, not as a religious one. It effectively represents the wrath of the peasantry who have been suffering beneath the yoke of warlike Lords tearing the lands apart for reasons the people don't give a fuck about (boo hoo you took the throne I wanted/ran off with my betrothed/killed my father, now I'm going to cause a famine and kill tens of thousands to feel better), and the slow power struggle between the poor rioters led by begging brothers VS the fat high septon who's living off Lannister coin is another part of this.
The actual religion isn't important to the story, and the Westerosi nobility doesn't even bother to use to for their casus belli or anything.

Basically the Faith is the last hope of the people in Westeros. When the Lords are going around ruining your life, the Faith is where you turn to keep them accountable. Indeed, Westerosi Lords are quite a bit less pious and theologically educated than IRL medieval nobility was, which makes this even more significant.
Sure the Faith is usually just as rapacious and corrupt as any other big Westerosi institution, but when things get really bad there's a power struggle, the sparrows win, and they start bloody rebellions which can scare kings into giving lip service to basic human rights and human decency.

The lore of the setting is full of big, bloody wars of faith in which the peasantry united beneath the banner of the Faith (a sparrow-style Faith, not the Fat One's Faith) to demand peace and an end to the more unnacceptable lordly behavior. They're what killed the Dragons, scared the Targaryens, and are now bringing the Iron Throne to its knees in the capital (Tyrells and Lannisters can plot against each other for book after book, but in the end the sparrows decide to oppose them both at once and seem to be winning handily).

IMO if we're going to be complaining about the way the Faith of the Seven was used in the books we should be talking about this sort of thing, and not about their theology. The theology was never the point.

EDIT: When a peasant revolution starts, it needs some theory behind it to get real results. I'm not saying "there must be a vanguard party leading the revolution and giving orders", but there needs to be some sort of shared idea and collective demands and values. Even if you don't want to overthrow the state, you need to know what you want so that the movement keeps going until you get it. Establishing this mid-revolution is crazily hard. Westeros doesn't have concepts like socialism or Enlightenment human rights that were the ideological backbone of many successful IRL revolutions, and the peasantry doesn't even have a tribal/national identity (or clear leaders) to rally around when they fight the Lords. Therefore they rally around the Faith, which strictly speaking does have a bunch of rules that basically boil down to "human rights + don't be a dick to each other". Sure nobody applies them to the country's leaders normally, but they're there in the holy texts and have divine authority backing them, so in times of strife they're a perfect thing for the peasantry to unite behind. Indeed, IMO it's significant that the parts of the Faith's theology we know the most about are the commandments the sparrows keep invoking, and not any commandments the lords of the land could have been using to justify whatever they do (like IRL medieval nobility often did).
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Duesal said:
I've got my heart set on this.

Daughter of Shub-Niggurath – d20PFSRD

www.d20pfsrd.com www.d20pfsrd.com

I hope we see one or more of these... and that it doesn't run away before we can gank it.
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the only other location it can reasonably try to run off from us (on the plane) is the "Oily Stone CIty" in Sothoryos, and mostly because it's
1) Eldritch
2) We know jack shit about it IC
so DP could write it as on-the-spot place to flee because reasons.

The too-far-to-matter spots like Blackstone Emps' place aren't counted.

I really, really doubt it would give up the city even if pressed on all sides.
Black Goat is not worshipped anywhere else after all, as far as we know.
It'd likely explode all over us out of spite, Cell-style, but not give up.
 
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Azel said:
That looks more like something we can turn into a useful flesh-forging project.
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egoo said:
the only other location it can reasonably try to run off from us (on the plane) is the "Oily Stone CIty" in Sothoryos, and mostly because it's
1) Eldritch
2) We know jack shit about it IC
so DP could write it as on-the-spot place to flee because reasons.

The too-far-to-matter spots like Blackstone Emps' place aren't counted.

I really, really doubt it would give up the city even if pressed on all sides.
Black Goat is not worshipped anywhere else after all, as far as we know.
It'd likely explode all over us out of spite, Cell-style, but not give up.
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That's part of the reason I'm thinking there's a chance at an Avatar of Shub-Niggurath instead of just a Daughter. @egoo is right. At least on Prime Material this is her last and greatest stronghold.
 
zxzx24 said:
Found it @Azel ! Thank you talon.

The thing that I was asking about our government is thus.

When the peasantry get unhappy enough with the way stuff is going down they have used the faith of the seven as a rallying point.

I had imagined the psuedo democratic system we were creating was designed to also give people another way to address feelings of being mistreated (that get bad enough).

As a way to both stamp down on unrest and cut down support for religions as an entity with power.
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Which is why we allow protests. It means we can hear what the mob has to say and from it's size can deduct how popular those ideas are. By miring it in bureaucracy we can also neuter it to a large degree, at least until you reach the point where it's genuine civil unrest. However, it should never get that far. Make some pleasing mouth noises to placate the rabble, arrange some accidents for the leadership of the movement and then divide and conquer what is left.
 
Azel said:
Which is why we allow protests. It means we can hear what the mob has to say and from it's size can deduct how popular those ideas are. By miring it in bureaucracy we can also neuter it to a large degree, at least until you reach the point where it's genuine civil unrest. However, it should never get that far. Make some pleasing mouth noises to placate the rabble, arrange some accidents for the leadership of the movement and then divide and conquer what is left.
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Could also obviously, y'know, obviate the issues at their source so that they don't just crop up again once the sullen masses feel a sufficient amount of time has passed.
 
Crake said:
Could also obviously, y'know, obviate the issues at their source so that they don't just crop up again once the sullen masses feel a sufficient amount of time has passed.
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That's the preferable way of dealing with things, but I was talking about the "why do we have an eternal Imperator?"-kind of protests.
 
Azel said:
That's the preferable way of dealing with things, but I was talking about the "why do we have an eternal Imperator?"-kind of protests.
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Just run the footage for the last infernal/abyssal/Void incursion.

I'm sure you'll find at least a dozen shots of Viserys heroically slaying enemy champions and rallying the troops with a rousing speech.
 
Azel said:
That's the preferable way of dealing with things, but I was talking about the "why do we have an eternal Imperator?"-kind of protests.
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Given the state of the cosmos making Viserys necessary, those kinds of protests would more often than not be the results of enemy machinations, and should be promptly investigated by the Inquisition. The average citizen would be very much in favor of the Imperator being in charge and slaying the enemies of the state.
 
Azel said:
Which is why we allow protests. It means we can hear what the mob has to say and from it's size can deduct how popular those ideas are. By miring it in bureaucracy we can also neuter it to a large degree, at least until you reach the point where it's genuine civil unrest. However, it should never get that far. Make some pleasing mouth noises to placate the rabble, arrange some accidents for the leadership of the movement and then divide and conquer what is left.
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This sounds like what Bismark did in regards to the Socialist ideas that started in Germany during his service. It worked out well for him though.
 
@Azel, this fine?
Turnplan shite since I can't even begin to guess myself about better compositions of our airforces.

[] Support Genie War on the Efreerti
----[] 1x Moonchasers, 10x Manticores, 10x Type-A Wyverns, 10x Type-B Wyverns.

[] On Stand-by in SD for security:
----[] 1x Moonchaser, 21x Type-A Wyverns, 10x Type-B Wyverns.

[] To Extinguish the FeyFire...:
----[] 1x Moonchaser...
 
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