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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:
A Tale of Lights Part Four​

The Veiled Delving

On the other side of Mullendore Keep in Upland lies the domain of the Violet Court. It is, like the very best illusions, a creation of two parts. The first is a fanciful keep upon the mountain's spur, part stone, part living moss, and part masterful figment that none but the most sharp-eyed can tell where one section ends and the other begins. The second, the true domain, is hidden behind the waterfall not far from the keep where in the world under the sun there once lay graves of the Mullendores of old before they were moved to a more seemly resting place with the House's conversion to the Faith of the Seven, leaving a hollow grave made by turn a traveler's refuge and bandit camp. Layered lies upon each other stacked.

There are no walls there, no portcullises of true silver or engines of war, for in the defense of their domain the weavers of illusion fight as they do any other battle, with glamor, trickery, and traps. Passages curve and twist and seemingly coil back onto themselves, only to seemingly lead into a sunny meadow or a starlit grove. Yet there is one constant in this mad realm that the unwelcome visitor might make use of to navigate it, be illusion ever so sublime it is not truth, even in the Feywild. Always there is a sense that is not deceived, a flaw in the working, a thread to pull that all may come unwound. Be the Lady of the Dusk ever so skilled, a keen mid can forge a straight path.

Here lie the tricksters, the illusionists, the shadow-kin who stepped into the light. Beware, for they have lost nothing of their old skills in gaining a beguiling smile.

Forces likely to be deployed
  1. Choxani Mesmerists
  2. Fossegrim Beguilers
  3. Lesser Glaistig
  4. Mothmen Rogues
  5. Star Monarchs
  6. Sublime Baobhan Sith (Does not need to feed)
  7. Veiled Courtiers
Hill of a Thousand Horns

At first sight this may seem nothing more than Horn Hill as it must have been in the days of yore, before plow first cut into the soil or ax first bit into the trees, but if one listens closely to the voice of the wind in the branches, they might hear voices fair and foul, gentle and rough. A stage in bright clearings is glimpsed and upon it a thousand dramas played, the actors ever changing. War there is here, and for it castles rise from the grassy soil. Hunts there are, and beasts thus run from hunter's bows, a game within a game, a play within a play.

The mutable nature of the land makes this domain difficult to assault, but none of these changes are beyond what nature can achieve, walls can be scaled and pits can be crossed. One had best keep a keen eye out for swords in the front and daggers in the back.

Forces likely to be deployed
  1. Gathlain Archers
  2. Mistborn (Mist Creature Dryad Druids)
  3. Lycanthrope (only diurnal species native to Westeros)
  4. Remacera
  5. Spindler Sorcerers
  6. Spriggan Beserkers
  7. The Masked Ones (Naiad Transmutes and companions of the Indigo Mask)
OOC: Not my most productive day to say the least. Hopefully this cold will be gone soon so we can pick up the pace. Not yet edited.
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Here's an edited version of the chapter, DP.
 
Goldfish said:
I've added an Advanced Shrink Item Chamber to next month's crafting schedule. It uses an Extended Shrink Item spell at 10th caster level to allow items with a volume of up to 20 cubic feet to be shrunk for up to 20 days.

This will allow us to keep all of our Petrified Brimorak Demons shrunk until they're needed. It will also have a lot of additional uses in the future, especially to simply logistics.

Since it can hold much larger items than the basic Shrink Item Chamber, @Azel, we could use it for tactics similar to what we did during the conquest of Tyrosh, where our forces were equipped with multiple types of barriers that had been shrunk down. They could deploy them to block passages, form chock points, fortifications, etc. It's all well and good to be able to use Expeditious Construction and Expeditious Excavation to rapidly create sturdy earthworks, but being able to erect Hardened stone fortifications at a moment's notice will be a nice tool for our armed forces. The Praetorians and Warstriders could get a lot of mileage out of them.

Another possibility is basic kinetic bombardment. Imagine what happens when a specialty Beetle Bomb is detonated over a target using a shaped charge and the shock of it causes a hundred tiny beads to suddenly each become a 2 foot sphere of Hardened stone traveling at hyper-sonic speeds.
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Thank you for reminding me of something:
en.wikipedia.org

Lazy Dog (bomb) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

We can trivially mass-produce them and load up Wyvern bomb bays with them to utterly devastate an area on the cheap. Just by stuffing them into the bomb bays, we could carry 11,000 projectiles per Wyvern, needing no magic or anything other fancy for that payload.

But if we use Shrink Item, we can expand this to ludicrous scales.

Arrange the projectiles in a 1.6m x 1.6m frame, then cast them into a thin sheet of glass. The whole sheet can now be shrunk as one item and it can be unshrunk by having the resulting 10cm by 10cm plate simply hit a nub when it leaves the bomb-rack, which would also shatter the glass in the process and release the projectiles. That way, we can cram 4,300 projectiles into a sheet, needing only 86kg of iron per sheet. After shrinking, the whole plate would be a few millimeters thick and weigh only about 25 grams. We could cram enough of those into a single Wyvern to devastate a huge area. Or just use them as a de-roofing measure during a first run, then drop regular munitions on the second pass.

Or we use stone projectiles instead. Use some stripped down Titan Tools to make the bullets out of granite, with a corundum coating for added penetration. They would be about half as dense, and thus would require twice the size for similar performance, but that would still be trivial.
 
One Autumn Leaf said:
If we are doing this we should do it in a one-two punch. One to fuck up the fey and then strike them in their newly weakened state.
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That's the general plan.

Massive blood sacrifice ritual where our strongest gods smite the Court of Stars and decimate their high nobility, and then the forces of the Imperium go in force to finish the job.

We're not employing half measures here. With this, the Court of Stars will die.
 
Azel said:
See my plan above. The moment the ritual is done, we gather every Companion and other high-level asset we have available and then go and torch down everything that is still alive.

Edit: Bloody Faceless...
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So could I take it to assume that this is also our invasion opener? Because no way in hell are we not attracting some massive attention with this.
 
One Autumn Leaf said:
So could I take it to assume that this is also our invasion opener? Because no way in hell are we not attracting some massive attention with this.
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Basically. This is slotted for the beginning of the Fourth Month once the ritual is developed and the sacrifices collected. We kill the court, and then the second the Fey are all dead we deploy the Legions.

After that we only really need to worry about beating down the Lannisters getting idiot lords to stand down. And then we can get to the juicy Westerosi politics, sorting out infrastructure and food concerns, figuring out permanent deployment of the Legions, stripping various lords of their power in our Balkanization plans, etc.
 
Do we have the bandwidth to check up on our other Westerosi threats? We seriously underestimated the CoS, so double checking that the Lannisters aren't buying fiendish mercenaries using peasant souls and/or the Chosen summoning the last of their Celestial assassination squad would be nice.

It's probably not going to happen, but it'd suck if they got off a shot in the middle of the fighting that weakened us enough for the fey remnants to kill or cripple someone.
 
BronzeTongue said:
Do we have the bandwidth to check up on our other Westerosi threats? We seriously underestimated the CoS, so double checking that the Lannisters aren't buying fiendish mercenaries using peasant souls and/or the Chosen summoning the last of their Celestial assassination squad would be nice.

It's probably not going to happen, but it'd suck if they got off a shot in the middle of the fighting that weakened us enough for the fey remnants to kill or cripple someone.
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We absolutely should check on the Lannisters, yes.

I want their Valyrian Dragons tracked down and slain as soon as we can manage.
 
BronzeTongue said:
so double checking that the Lannisters aren't buying fiendish mercenaries using peasant souls and/or the Chosen summoning the last of their Celestial assassination squad would be nice.
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Kinda added to next month's plans.
egoo said:
[] Into the Lion's Jaws: The information shared by Archmaester Marwyn may just be the key to uncover what exactly are Lannisters planning for the long-expected conquest of yours.
-[] Goals: Infiltrate Lannisters' secure facilities, get information on exact countermeasures, plans, allies, and if possible numbers of weapons under their command, prepared in order to fight the Empire.
----[] Garin; Nuri
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We have about zero OOC idea, but Marwyn did promise us some info on their defenses this month.
 
Duesal said:
We absolutely should check on the Lannisters, yes.

I want their Valyrian Dragons tracked down and slain as soon as we can manage.
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Really, no need to slay. For as big as they could possibly reasonably be, capture would be equally viable. Just gotta get the Rider while they're taking a leak and from there pacifying the mount would be trivial. The dragons are prone to going berserk if the rider is killed, but then all we gotta do is have the Riders remove their anti-enchantment item from the mount after we've dominated them into complying, then we can dominate/sedate the dragons freely and execute the riders occupying the soulbond. After that we can keep them pliable until we've found trustworthy/loyal riders for them. Monford and a Celtigar, maybe? I think there's four total, but I'm sure we can find a rider for them. Thoros Mk. 2 or some other dragonseed.
 
Crake said:
Really, no need to slay. For as big as they could possibly reasonably be, capture would be equally viable. Just gotta get the Rider while they're taking a leak and from there pacifying the mount would be trivial. The dragons are prone to going berserk if the rider is killed, but then all we gotta do is have the Riders remove their anti-enchantment item from the mount after we've dominated them into complying, then we can dominate/sedate the dragons freely and execute the riders occupying the soulbond. After that we can keep them pliable until we've found trustworthy/loyal riders for them. Monford and a Celtigar, maybe? I think there's four total, but I'm sure we can find a rider for them. Thoros Mk. 2 or some other dragonseed.
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We'd have to examine the dragons first, but I'm not opppsed to this idea. I just don't trust the Lannisters not to have fucked the Valyrian Dragons up in some desperate attempt to make them grow faster. It wouldn't surprise me to see heightened aggression there among other things.
 
Duesal said:
We'd have to examine the dragons first, but I'm not opppsed to this idea. I just don't trust the Lannisters not to have fucked the Valyrian Dragons up in some desperate attempt to make them grow faster. It wouldn't surprise me to see heightened aggression there among other things.
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We can flesh forge them to fix any problems, tho.
 
Do you think we can make Tywin and Robert die of heart attacks by point out that they're a side show in the reconquest? Barring a Lannister Hail Mary or a Seven interrupt they'll be the least important people we interact with on the day we have them hanged. :V
 
At this point, I'm half-convinced they'll get themselves killed before we notice something unusual is happening.
 
@Crake, regarding who should get a Valyrian Dragon or an egg, I was thinking Monford like you said, he's been at the top of my list for a long time, but also Hermetia. Damn useful mount if she ever wants it, and an amazing prestige element for ruling over Valyrian Lys.

That aside we're waiting on the hatching results of like... what was it, four eggs? Aeie Caleris, Aelor Caleris, Reva Bealus, and Liset Bealus. Maybe they'll end up teaming up and hatching them all at the same time.
 
Duesal said:
@Crake, regarding who should get a Valyrian Dragon or an egg, I was thinking Monford like you said, he's been at the top of my list for a long time, but also Hermetia. Damn useful mount if she ever wants it, and an amazing prestige element for ruling over Valyrian Lys.

That aside we're waiting on the hatching results of like... what was it, four eggs? Aeie Caleris, Aelor Caleris, Reva Bealus, and Liset Bealus. Maybe they'll end up teaming up and hatching them all at the same time.
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Well, let's hold off on the eggs until post-conquest, I have a feeling we'll have an opportunity to get one or more of those Lannister mounts. They're not really that big of a threat considering all of the other stuff we deal with on a regular basis, and the Lannisters would basically only have access to facilities for flesh forging barely a step above the hobo-lab that Qyburn used to work out of, which in itself two steps down from what Roose provided (considering they actually had some lore and focus on undead beforehand).

Unless they looted some Deep One supplies... it's possible, I guess. We'll see, I think the key will be locating the riders. If we can do that, getting our hands on the mounts should be trivial.
 
Crake said:
Well, let's hold off on the eggs until post-conquest, I have a feeling we'll have an opportunity to get one or more of those Lannister mounts. They're not really that big of a threat considering all of the other stuff we deal with on a regular basis, and the Lannisters would basically only have access to facilities for flesh forging barely a step above the hobo-lab that Qyburn used to work out of, which in itself two steps down from what Roose provided (considering they actually had some lore and focus on undead beforehand).

Unless they looted some Deep One supplies... it's possible, I guess. We'll see, I think the key will be locating the riders. If we can do that, getting our hands on the mounts should be trivial.
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Well, they were talking about contact with the Warlocks of Qarth. Them getting access to limited flesh forging isn't completely out of reach there, given that we've seen a random sentient ship come out of that city.
 
They could be goin for some sort of plague. The Lannisters are the right mix of callous and arrogant to think they can control that kind of thing, and Quarth has the juice to actually protect themselves.
 
A plague wouldn't really do us any harm, but it would potentially backfire on them in a massive way and kill a lot of ordinary people on both sides since we've observed with global pandemics how quickly a disease can spread and how hard it is to contain.

If they made the plague very hyper-lethal, like the Flesh Eater virus, then it might burn itself out relatively fast (days rather than weeks), which is one way to do things. But then there's basically no margin for error when deploying it.
 
We should probably expect a modified version of the Feysworn prestige class among the higher lvl divine casters of the Court of Stars, especially among the Queen's personal guard.
 
I expect them to see the writing on the wall once we're done with Qohor/Norvos and go all-in with "salted earth"-approach.
They really, really hold no chance against us.
And Tywin will likely see it himself, for all he's not Lana in terms of magic knowledge.

Mercenaries, anti-dragon siege engines, massively enchanted castles, and country-wide network of hideouts for their Golden Cloaks... all this could be handled by some tool we have available.

So he'll do something grander, methinks.
Maybe as far as making deals with Devils, as y'all expected for so long, but I think they prepared... something, that they'll start setting off if we attack them.

Maybe a magic blight, but I think rather some manner of a ritual they'll force every Geas'ed mage of theirs to do in every city of the Westeros.
Torching/Blighting/Summoning Devils all around them.

Viserys' reputation as someone who cares for the people would play a role for such a decision.
I don't see Lana turning on Tywin unless his kill-count goes to hundreds of thousands with their counter-scheme.
 
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