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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:
An Account of the Last Journeys of Elissa Farman​

By Daenerys Targaryen​

Two months journey west from the isles named for the first King and Queen's of Westeros, the Sunchaser indeed found land again, and this was not land bereft of living folk such as the isles were. Here a great river spilled into the sea, slow and mighty, but it did not flow of its own will, for it had been dammed by clever hands and a great city of canals more populous even then Braavos stretched out before the travelers. Rice was known here and the faces of smiling gods looked out from among carefully tended vines.

At the first sight of the Westerosi ship, there was great commotion for never had a ship come here from the east and the locals had first thought them some manner of phantasm or dark spirit come unbidden. The people there who call themselves Loqua are men as other men, dark of hair and eye and garbed in bright colors that match the finest dyes of Essos, woven in geometric patterns mirroring the constellations. A land of many gods this is, and subtle spirits that linger in the shadows of tall bread-trees. Though they did not have weapons of iron, but only copper and dragonglass, they were not poor in arts nor in treasure for they held to elder arts.

Elisa and her sailors saw more magic woven in those far western lands than in all their other journeys put together, though with the eye of this new world one can call it show-weaving of the sort that endured through magic's nadir. Shrines to winged gods with the faces of their ancestors dot the land of the Loqua, places of pilgrimage and sacrifice for bequeathing intercession with the sky god who was before the heaven and whose name they will not speak outside of hallowed halls, for to invoke his attention outside the intercession of the ancestors is to call down his wrath.

It was one of these temples of the ancestors, open to the elements, but filled with offerings of masterful craft and gems bright as the sun, that were to be the undoing of the Sunchaser and Elisa. As the ship rounded the northern cape of this land, for they had almost missed it entirely and found themselves starving upon the sea, the captain decided that if the locals were minded to keep their treasures where any might grasp them, they should not complain when they vanished in the night.

There was a brief fight with priests and pilgrims, but surprise and greed carried the day and the raiders took their ill-gotten treasures into the ship to sail away, for they had seen no local ships that could match the Sunchaser's size or speed before the wind. Alas, they carried more than sacred goods with them from the temple.

A wasting sickness came upon them, one that would steal away first one's sense of taste, then smell and vision and sound, and finally touch, until the victims were like dead men walking. Most died of hunger, unwilling to keep sustaining themselves as the world faded away, but in the end the ship made it as far as Asshai by the Shadow where Elisa's luck held out one last time, for even as the last of her sailors were driven wholly mad by the poisons of that place she found a sorceress who could turn back the curse in her flesh, and paid her with her stolen treasure. The captain was warned that when death finally claimed her she would have to answer to the ancestors and the Sky God of the Loqua for her desecration.

Elissa Farman was not one to be bound, even by her own ill deeds and the commands of gods. She spent the last ten years in Asshai trying to discover some spell or enchantment that would free her. Three stolen artifacts she traded away in this time and knows not where they lie. Her end came suddenly and without warning, by poison she thinks, though the pain of death made those memories vague.

Something of the magics she had invoked and bought in the cursed city must have weighed upon her fate, for rather than being drawn to the land she had plundered she instead flew towards the land of her birth, to Westeros again, as though upon the Sunchaser's sails again, but when she again reached the isles she had named for the kings and queens of Westeros and claimed in jest for the crown, she found to her horror that this was far enough by the measure of whatever magic drove her. She would not face the judgement of the people she had robbed, but neither would she make it home. Instead she watched as the stars wheeled above and the centuries passed.

Faintly she recalls that the Loqua came to the island searching for her, but they did not survive the things that prowled the deep forests.

In the end, Elissa Farman found her way home and even once more into life, no longer under the hand of any divinely ordained doom. One might even say fortune favors her still, though I for one would judge centuries of loneliness in death enough penance for all her recklessness has cost.

What next?

[] Write in

OOC: I'm very deliberately not writing fantasy Americas here, there will be elements of that of course, but also Southeast Asia and the Philippines mixed in I hope an original manner. I'm also trying not to info-dump everything from a ghost's eye view so that you guys have an inccentive to go there and experience the place in narrative form not just as exposition. Not yet edited.
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Here's an edited version of the chapter, DP.

Very neat revelation, dude. I want to send people to explore Loqua so bad.
 
DragonParadox said:
I'm very deliberately not writing fantasy Americas
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There are more americas than Aztecs and Mayans and feathered serpents and blood gods.

For example we had a group of incredibly tall men who lived off the sea down in the southern patagonia.

Patagon - Wikipedia

(which we promptly genocided, that's why you haven't heard about them)

Still the interesting thing here is that the Shadow doesn't last all the way until the end of Essos, as evidenced by this people living there in peace.
 
Azel said:
... that ... ugh ... seriously ... of all the things ...

I'll be in the SCREAMING ROOM if someone needs me.
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Just more reason to send a competent adventuring party. It's a whole new continent, potentially a very large one, with lots of new cultures and civilizations. Aztec expies exist, we just haven't found them yet.

Since they do exist, however, and we would be sending people to find them, whoever we send needs to be able to defend themselves from most threats.
 
DragonParadox said:
Look if you guys want expy Aztecs I can write up some expy Aztecs, it will take me a few weeks of research, but I think I can have fun with it. There is plenty of room on the map.
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No. That's not it. I'm fine with no Aztecs (though I did hope for something along those line). What triggered me so hard was the "reductio ad BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" argument.

Mesoamerican cultures are both unique and have a rich body of mythology, and you can easily pick something entirely different, like the Maya or the Olmec as a base if you do not want to have blood sacrifice. But mind, the Aztecs also have a fascinating culture and both the socioeconomic, religious and political rationale for mass human sacrifice is fascinating.

Seeing all this reduced to "blood sacrifice, hurr, durr" is one of my berserk buttons. Because that so neatly fits the reason we know so little about meso-american cultures.
 
DragonParadox said:
Look if you guys want expy Aztecs I can write up some expy Aztecs, it will take me a few weeks of research, but I think I can have fun with it. There is plenty of room on the map.
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Please don't, Aztecs are boring. Maybe do the Inca if you want. It would be cool to see braided spell scrolls and a vast mountain empire that doesn't run on money it would be a lot more unique then the Aztec.
Also battle llamas.
 
DragonParadox said:
Look if you guys want expy Aztecs I can write up some expy Aztecs, it will take me a few weeks of research, but I think I can have fun with it. There is plenty of room on the map.
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I've got to echo Azel's sentiment. @DragonParadox, I don't really get the logic of not including something because we already have it. This is ASOIAF. The baseline magic of the setting is sacrificial magic. Even in the awakened world, blood magic is massively prevalent because it's so powerful.

I for one would like to see an Aztec/America's expy.
 
Acolyte said:
Please don't, Aztecs are boring. Maybe do the Inca if you want. It would be cool to see braided spell scrolls and a vast mountain empire that doesn't run on money it would be a lot more unique then the Aztec.
Also battle llamas.
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Aztecs are only boring because they always get the Temple of Doom treatment in fiction.
 
DragonParadox said:
Look if you guys want expy Aztecs I can write up some expy Aztecs, it will take me a few weeks of research, but I think I can have fun with it. There is plenty of room on the map.
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I'll third the suggestion of using other Mesoamerican cultures. I don't have any issue with the Aztecs, but there are quite a few to choose from that don't get nearly as much attention.
 
Azel said:
No. That's not it. I'm fine with no Aztecs (though I did hope for something along those line). What triggered me so hard was the "reductio ad BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" argument.

Mesoamerican cultures are both unique and have a rich body of mythology, and you can easily pick something entirely different, like the Maya or the Olmec as a base if you do not want to have blood sacrifice. But mind, the Aztecs also have a fascinating culture and both the socioeconomic, religious and political rationale for mass human sacrifice is fascinating.

Seeing all this reduced to "blood sacrifice, hurr, durr" is one of my berserk buttons. Because that so neatly fits the reason we know so little about meso-american cultures.
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Damn that's some serious miscommunication. I was going for the exact opposite sentiment here, other fantasy settings go with "blood sacrifice, hurr, durr" too often so I was going to go with trying something different, inspired from both the Americas and elsewhere.
 
Acolyte said:
Please don't, Aztecs are boring. Maybe do the Inca if you want. It would be cool to see braided spell scrolls and a vast mountain empire that doesn't run on money it would be a lot more unique then the Aztec.
Also battle llamas.
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Yes, they are the ones to PRAISE THE SUN

Also they mummify and bury children alive. For some reason.
 
DragonParadox said:
Damn that's some serious miscommunication. I was going for the exact opposite sentiment here, other fantasy settings go with "blood sacrifice, hurr, durr" too often so I was going to go with trying something different, inspired from both the Americas and elsewhere.
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Nah. As I said. Stick to your plans. Just don't forget to throw me some vague stage directions for the map once you have settled on something.
Tomcost said:
Yes, they are the ones to PRAISE THE SUN

Also they mummify and bury children alive. For some reason.
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Human sacrifice to bring luck, appease the gods and so on are common in a lot of cultures.

If you are interested in the details, Wikipedia has a decent article:
en.wikipedia.org

Capacocha - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
I mean, that all sounds very interesting, but do we really want to open a whole new world here?

We would effectivly moving beyond both ASOIAF and D&D, in terms of pre-made cultures so everything has to go from ground up.
Doesn't seem worth the time and effort as of now.

Edit: Also Yi-Ti is already kinda an example of that, a lot of world to be filled out for very little practical impact on the quest.
 
We could also have a Water culture with Chinampas and everything, I wonder what would this method combined with magic do?

Maybe they herd huge garden-fishes across the lakes and rivers?
 
DragonParadox said:
OOC: I'm very deliberately not writing fantasy Americas here, there will be elements of that of course, but also Southeast Asia and the Philippines mixed in what I hope is an original manner. I'm also trying not to info-dump everything from a ghost's eye view so that you guys have an incentive to go there and experience the place in narrative form, not just as exposition.
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I was kind of hoping we would learn about fantasy Brazil and have Viserys and his companions experience fantasy Brazilian Carnival.
 
Duesal said:
Children are crappy sacrifices. Innocence doesn't make up for an unforgivable lack of HD.
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Depends on what you are trying to do I guess?
In terms of pure power provided by the sacrifice you are certainly right, but in some cases children can still be a valuable ingredient in a ritual, not as the main-fuel, but to fullfill some specific narrative element.
 
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