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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:
On Twisted Paths ​

Fifteenth Day of the Second Month 294 AC

The account of the cult was more detailed than one would have expected of a member who had only been inducted a few months ago, Garin realized. It looked like Xor had lucked out in finding someone with a natural curiosity for the madness going on around her, who had not gone utterly mad from indulging it. Or maybe the poor woman had been trying to get out.

In the beginning, the cult of the Black Goat was separated into two orders, priests of noble blood and high standing who played a role in the ruling of the city since its founding by Valyrian exiles who wished to found a city in their image, and lay brothers who did the dirty work, whether that is spilling ink over parchment or spilling entrails over cold altars. According to Ryelle, by the year of her own birth some twenty years before, most of the priests were not what you would call faithful, though they retained more of the old magics than most places in the days of waning magic... knowledge of warding to keep the forest out.

The one they called the Green Man, the high priest of their faith, had been a lay brother, a dogsbody. He had found faith, faith in the same thing the old priests used to worship, he said to his following, and Garin had no reason to doubt him in that at least.

"So they have powers over nature and green growing things...?" Garin quickly recounted some druidic magics of the sorts other sorcerers would struggle to call on. Normally that sort of thing would be anathema to the Far Realm, but if there was something he learned in more than four years of this business, it was that things had a way of running together, like ink and oils. Ice fey could be summer's allies and devils could turn a true oath against hell, and that was just the wholesome part of it.

"Yes... yes..." she sounded shy, a sort of soft whisper behind her words that made Garin suspect the heavy cloak was hiding more than the odd bit of webbed toes you saw in a few Old Deepsmen. Wisdom Elaheh should be able to help her get all the way back to what she was, or maybe something a little better...

What she explained next put Garin's thoughts entirely off any speculations of Flesh Forging. Ryelle descried a revel or rite in the forest, the sort of thing you would expect of madmen worshiping the Far Realm and that which dwelt in it. Only this wasn't under cover of night, fearful of the law seeing. They were the law.

It wasn't the things she described, the monsters of suppurating flesh and fungus fused to human sinew that moved with maddened will that sent a chill down Garin's spine, it was the place, paths in the deep woods that moved with a will of its own, time and space warping and reshaping to some eldritch clock.

"That sounds like..." he glanced at Xor, not wanting to jump to deeply unpleasant conclusions.

"It was the Feywyld, now no more. All the fey there have been transformed, brought under the Shadow of the One with a Thousand Young. Now it is a wound, a canker among the spheres, influenced by the Far Realm and that which dwells within." The gentle spectator stopped gravely. "Not a Gate, thank whatever fate and fortune were watching over this place, but it is still filled with dangerous and likely maddened beings. The fey were not meant to be exposed to the influences from beyond."

"So bloody mushrooms, strangle-weeds and killer druids," Nuri interjected with a touch of what sounded to Garin's ears like forced irreverence. "Should we just burn it all down then?"

"The trouble is, I think the deeper places can just decide not to burn..." Xor replied, glancing at his source with two of his stalk eyes. "Ryelle you can go now."

Once the door had closed behind her, the Spectator explained. "She wasn't in the best of mental states when she partook in that ritual, asking her for details will just give her nightmares. I already tried memory magics, but there are some things the mortal mind does not want to remember for its own sake. I think we are going to have to find someone in the inner circle to find out what the cult wants, and I don't think being friendly about it will do it unfortunately."

What next?

[] Show up at the meeting Nuri arranged

[] Try to use Xor's supposed convert status to get close to and inner circle cultist

[] Scout the Forest of Qohor looking for tainted fey or other guardians

[] Try to find the entrance of the Flesh Forge using Zherys' map

[] Write in

OOC: Sorry for being late again guys, the cold is getting better, but it's still a few days off being cleared up. Not yet edited.
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Here's an edited version of the chapter, DP.
 
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Crake said:
@DragonParadox You say some parts can just choose to "not burn".

What if R'hllor didn't give it a choice?

If so, that's probably our next sacrifice.
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I still think we should be careful about giving him power. It's just going to make him harder to change, and therefore more of a problem. His ideology is fundamentally incompatible with the state we're building long term, even if we don't give a damn.

The OG are a good alternative for this, since they can oppose this thing directly on most fronts with a home field advantage.

edit:autocorrect error. Goldfish's kindle is clearly contagious.
 
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BronzeTongue said:
I still think we should be careful about giving him power. It's just going to make him harder to change, and therefore more of a problem. His ideology is fundamentally incompatible with the stars we're building long term, even if we don't give a damn.

The OG are a good alternative for this, since they can oppose this thing directly on most fronts with a home field advantage.
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I like this! Get a fuckton of weirwoods planted down there until the forest stabilizes.

Or uproot them as Vampiric Treants and have them bash the aberrations to death.
 
...we can start summoning right now y'all.

Even a few days of burst-summoning IC left in this month, and the day or two it'll take to gather our armies the next month, would be enough to get a sizable enough sacrifice to have Yss/OGs/R'hlor halp in burning Eldritch!Feywild.
 
egoo said:
...we can start summoning right now y'all.

Even a few days of burst-summoning IC left in this month, and the day or two it'll take to gather our armies the next month, would be enough to get a sizable enough sacrifice to have Yss/OGs/R'hlor halp in burning Eldritch!Feywild.
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Burny has a lot of attention on Ymeri right now, and will ahve for at least the next month, I don't think he can spare much for some forest.
 
Artemis1992 said:
Burny has a lot of attention on Ymeri right now, and will ahve for at least the next month, I don't think he can spare much for some forest.
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Yss and OGs then?

The only trouble with mass-summon starring now is, well, it'd be noticed and we may not get a chance to repeat it well enough post-Qohor for one reason or the other.

Although chances that Demons will notify everyone about us stealing low-level servants en-mass, and moreover everyone (read- Daemons, as they are the next target right after Brimoraks, if less efficient) listening to them... is pretty much zero low.
Still, a risk to think over.
 
Tomcost said:
They corrupted Fey into Aberrations.
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Is this the situation where shit squared equals somehow better, or just a metric proportion more of it?
:V

I think there were some specific anti-fey/aberration effects that ought to do double damage to the place and the inhabitants now, tho...
 
egoo said:
Yss and OGs then?

The only trouble with mass-summon starring now is, well, it'd be noticed and we may not get a chance to repeat it well enough post-Qohor for one reason or the other.

Although chances that Demons will notify everyone about us stealing low-level servants en-mass, and moreover everyone (read- Daemons, as they are the next target right after Brimoraks, if less efficient) listening to them... is pretty much zero low.
Still, a risk to think over.
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I don't think it's a good idea to try the same mass-summon scheme we plan for the Reach here too.

Mostly because we lack a focus and a defined plan.
In the Reach we have the Crown and we know that this "Hungry Wolf" Stark used the same combination of artifact and sacrifice to commit moderatly successful genocide before, with the help of the OGs that we have on our side.

Here any mass-sacrifice would be a complete shot in the blue, lacking focus, lacking a point of influence, lacking experience in directing the power where we want it.

Edit: And that does not mention the issues with trying to steal twice the number of demons from their respective lords.
 
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We might have to split this into two different missions. First to burn out the corruption in Qohor proper, and then to annihilate everything in the corrupted!Feywild.

We need a bulk order of wildfire for one thing.
 
I think that mass weirwood would work better than fire here

Or outright capturing the extradimensinal pockets of forests and either collapsing or keeping them for our use.
 
Tomcost said:
I think that mass weirwood would work better than fire here

Or outright capturing the extradimensinal pockets of forests and either collapsing or keeping them for our use.
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Burning down this section of the Feywild and growing a giant aberration-fed weirwood over the ashes radiating planar law would be a good closing, though of course we'd need to have a massive garrison defending against other incursions.

I wish we could just have unlimited runecrafters and build us Dawn Forts where the planes are weak. There are so many invasion points to cover.
 
Well, good to know that pumping Bilestone into the Feywild would have had side-effects.

Guess we are back to using Imperial Steel to shackle the Feywild to our will.
 
Artemis1992 said:
And that does not mention the issues with trying to steal twice the number of demons from their respective lords.
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...if I have anything to say about it, we aren't dropping the mass/burst-summoning after we are done with the CoS-scheme!
:V

But no, really.
Even the "post-Reconquest plans to set up a conveyor-like method of summoning and killing CR18 Daemons in the background to fuck over the Archdaemons' plans"-thing aside, this shit is too useful to stop once we get going.

We gonna constantly evolve our methods and defenses as they start setting up their own countermeasures, of course... But there is very little they can reliably/affordably do from the get-go to have us see the summoning @Goldfish threw together as "not worth it" compared to the bother of their countermeasures.
It is effectively-endless (in case of daemons) and literally endless (in case of demons) chaff we are gonna be grabbing, after all. Cant get everyone saddled with an artifact (see enchanter Uniila) or a bomb.
And even if they do, totally worth it for the expenses taken by our enemies compared to efforts by us.

At least several months of burst-summoning are gonna be possible, methinks, post-Reconquest.
 
DragonParadox said:
Hard to tell from the recollections of a cultist who only saw him at big public gatherings, though from the sheer scale of the cult Garin would not be surprised at level 8-9 magic
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That'll be fun to deal with.

So we've got the Green Cult, the original Cult, and then Shub Niggurath behind the puppet strings of everyone here.

I'm actually really happy about this. :D It's everything I hoped for.
 
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I have no idea what option we should pick, y'all. Learning toward having Garin scout the forest, though. He has multiple escape options and maximum stealth.
 
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