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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 Bloodied Sands ​

Second Day of the Third Month 294 AC

Bronzehold, Div's Delight, Borderlands of Stone and Flame

Sallah bin Khalid, Akvan-Slayer, Wrath of the Deadlands and Pasha of the Bronzehold, had as little use for new allies in the midst of a shifting of the front as he did for and untested blade on the eve of battle. Yet even one who had earned a Pasha's pearls in the hellscape of Div's Delight was not above the Rescript of the Opal Throne, and in this it was as clear as white diamonds and just as unyielding. These guests from the garden were to be treated with all due courtesy and comfort the Sixth Army could muster.

In his more hopeful musings, Sallah could not help but note that the Bronzehold had far less of the latter than other fortresses of the Peerless Empire, untainted by blood, ash and dust. Perhaps the strangers would ask for another posting and whatever courtier had brought them to the attention of the Sultana would be minded to give it to them.

"They have arrived," Captain Sinar's words came though the Speaking Sands far too soon. Then came a description of their guests.

"Repeat," Sallah was not used to giving that order here in his own fortress rather than out in the tunnels and ravines, but this warranted it.

He had not misheard. Five dragons, true wyrms not beasts that merely shared their blood, creatures of death and shadow besides. They would find plenty of both in Div's Delight to make use of. Even that Iblis-sworn torturer Hazim would not be looking for this. Time to make plans and quickly, before news spread.

The disdain for unknown quantities was cast to the winds in the face of opportunity. In Div's Delight chances to see the enemy's planed maneuvers while hiding your own were few and far between, and not to be squandered. Sallah would lead the diversionary attack himself to hopefully stretch enemy scouts and watchers along the front, then the dragons could slip unseen behind enemy lines, perhaps even work a touch of sabotage to go along with the spying.

The Pasha was already questioning the leader of the dragons about their magic and what enchantments might best complement them when he remembered the two humans in the room. Some use could be found for them as well he supposed, if they were not cowering in the company they found themselves in then they were either mad or competent, and over the centuries Sallah had grown quite adept at spotting madness.

***​

Fifteenth Day of the Third Month 294 AC

Sand and blood swirled crimson over the jaded stones, the ground shook and roiled under the weight of brazen boots, fire belched from the depths, bile and black sorcery, and the Peerless Legions quaked at their advance, nameless beasts roared and brayed behind them, and a thousand brazen wheels screeched under the hands of Azer smiths. The advance of the shaitan had never been meant to be more than a diversion, but now it risked a rout in place of the orderly retreat Sallah had envisioned.

He moved through the sand, a part of it now, emboldening his troops and casting fingers of cold death on enemy champions and where his staff struck the earth, time itself seemed to shiver, to give the general time to bolster the line. He had slain eight of the Brass Bastard's Dervish Lords already, yet they did not flag, tasting blood.

Common flames did not touch Sallah, an unwitting gift of the greatest foe he had faced, but the hell-flame the foe wielded burned him still. Yet the pain was nothing besides seeing his soldiers die. Time seemed to slow to a crawl around him as he danced with death among the sands, his mind awhirl with comands for his officers.

Finally they made it under the fire of their own batteries, where the wards burned steady silver under foot. Too many lost. "I hope that damn scouting was worth it," the Pasha muttered under his breath.

It was, but the news they brought was grim enough to make the pasha curse in the tongue of the Pit, for no words crafted by Shaitan tongue could encompass this contamination.

The enemy were sacrificing ifrit slaves too wounded or weak to fight on into the cursed sands through what seemed to be infernal magic to raise div that had never been genies. For now these foul rituals were few and the resulting creatures even madder than common for the div, but the Pasha could not help but wonder how much longer would it take the Brazen Throne to collar these new abominations. Much as he hated them, Sallah had to admit they were skilled in that.

Reconnaissance Assets helped uncover more about the surge in div numbers

Do your troops take part in further operations this month or withdraw?

[] Continue to serve
-[] In a scouting role
-[] in a combat role

[] Withdraw for now

[] Write in

OOC: The rolls were not the best for this action, but on a plus side none of those you deployed died which was a very real possibility. Not yet edited
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Here's an edited version of the chapter, DP.

Sorry for the delay. Work stuff happened.
 
Azel said:
Div's are Outsiders. They are making Outsiders out of the souls of their slaves. They have a ritual that can transform a soul into a servant.
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Hmm, this could be very helpful indeed. Hopefully it won't require Ifrits or similarly Outsider-blooded species, though, or the utility will be much reduced. Assuming, of course, that we can reverse engineer the ritual magic enough to use for our own purposes. If not, simply denying it to the Efreeti is a worthy enough goal, IMO.

Hunter Bio-Constructs could be helpful here, for their stealth and assassination abilities, and their Watchman powers, but I wouldn't try to use the Vigilant Briars or Watchmoles much here. The level of combat is well beyond their capabilities, though the Watchmoles would no doubt make very useful sentries for allied bases. The Shaitan would probably appreciate their ability to burrow and detect underground movement with their Tremoresense.

[X] Azel
 
Goldfish said:
Hmm, this could be very helpful indeed. Hopefully it won't require Ifrits or similarly Outsider-blooded species, though, or the utility will be much reduced. Assuming, of course, that we can reverse engineer the ritual magic enough to use for our own purposes. If not, simply denying it to the Efreeti is a worthy enough goal, IMO.

Hunter Bio-Constructs could be helpful here, for their stealth and assassination abilities, and their Watchman powers, but I wouldn't try to use the Vigilant Briars or Watchmoles much here. The level of combat is well beyond their capabilities, though the Watchmoles would no doubt make very useful sentries for allied bases. The Shaitan would probably appreciate their ability to burrow and detect underground movement with their Tremoresense.

[X] Azel
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Even if it does require a species that is Outsider-blooded, it would not change all that much. The main goal is learning to make out own Outsiders from souls collected in the Steel Dream and those are already petitioners at that point. Also Outsiders, just some who are still very human and need some reforging. We could also probably make some experiments with petitioners collected from the Upper Planes.

But you are right on the second thing. Even if this just ends with us having spent some high-level undead to murder a whole lot of Efreeti ritualists, we are still coming out ahead on this exchange.
 
Do we have the time to buy or craft some items of Planeslayer's Call? It's a bit pricy at level 4, but it gives everyone in a 20ft radius at the tune of casting +2CL for the purposes of overcoming spell resistance and the ability to ignore the first 10 points of energy resistance against creatures of a target alignment subtype. If they set it to evil they'll have that advantage against almost every opponent they face.

Tactical Formation is a long lasting spell that'll give 1 creature/CL a +2 deflection bonus to AC so long as no two of them are more than 30 ft apart. For the brute squads that could be useful.

For the future I think we could get a lot of use out of Collaborative Thaumaturgy if we build little units of casters around allowing the weakest of them to juice up a stronger central one.

In terms of creatures to sell them, I'd like to suggest a few different things.

A mixed unit of Calathgar and brown mold Moldwretches would really make anyone nearby regret using fire. Every time one of them died to fire damage it'd do cold damage without hurting the mold and provide fast healing to most of the creatures present. It'd also inevitably end with absolutely everyone they fought getting layered in brown mold.

A smaller number of Jesulan could be fun as well. They have this ability to inflict a disease that needs remove curse before you can treat it and turns the victim into a Jesulan after if they die from the con damage. It effects a 20ft radius AoE and is pretty hard to detect. The Efreeti could easily cure it, but it'd be expensive to do so for war slaves. After the first few cases spread themselves around camp they'll need to kill everyone who comes near one of these guys or screen all of their troops fighting them.

I'm betting that they go with the easy route, which is both expensive and an easy way to get our enemies actively trying to weasel out of going near our troops.

Finally, Eye Killers are a neat sort of snake thing we could make great use of (supposing we can get our hands on some anyway). They're chaos and have a save or die with a decent DC that can be pumped up by increasing their con score. If we kept the numbers low we could easily pump them up in the forge, then layer on some items, and make their death ray stupidly dangerous.

From there they could make for fun officer hunters or (relatively) cheap anti champion weapons.
Edit:autocorrupt
 
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[X] Azel

I love it when the people we fight come up which such useful things for us to use. I am sure we can fix that little insanity thing. I mean we have managed worse hurdles.
 
CandyCoatedChaos said:
[X] Azel

I love it when the people we fight come up which such useful things for us to use. I am sure we can fix that little insanity thing. I mean we have managed worse hurdles.
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Now that we're looking into this kind of thing we should probably take a peek at Heaven's outsider forging process.

They're dead as a faction, so it's probably a lot easier to steal the particulars of their angel forging process than it would be to get the kind of secret out of an active power.

Plus, if we want people to willingly subject themselves to this process, we need to keep the unpleasantness to a minimum and ensure continuity of consciousness. Heaven's notes would probably be useful for shaping our system in that direction.

[X] Azel
 
BronzeTongue said:
Do we have the time to buy or craft some items of Planeslayer's Call? It's a bit pricy at level 4, but it gives everyone in a 20ft radius at the tune of casting +2CL for the purposes of overcoming spell resistance and the ability to ignore the first 10 points of energy resistance against creatures of a target alignment subtype. If they set it to evil they'll have that advantage against almost every opponent they face.

Tactical Formation is a long lasting spell that'll give 1 creature/CL a +2 deflection bonus to AC so long as no two of them are more than 30 ft apart. For the brute squads that could be useful.

For the future I think we could get a lot of use out of Collaborative Thaumaturgy if we build little units of casters around allowing the weakest of them to juice up a stronger central one.

In terms of creatures to sell them, I'd like to suggest a few different things.

A mixed unit of Calathgar and brown mold Moldwretches would really make anyone nearby regret using fire. Every time one of them died to fire damage it'd do cold damage without hurting the mold and provide fast healing to most of the creatures present. It'd also inevitably end with absolutely everyone they fought getting layered in brown mold.

A smaller number of Jesulan could be fun as well. They have this ability to inflict a disease that needs remove curse before you can treat it and turns the victim into a Jesulan after if they die from the con damage. It effects a 20ft radius AoE and is pretty hard to detect. The Efreeti could easily cure it, but it's be expensive to do so for war slaves. After the first few cases spread themselves around camp they'll need to kill everyone who comes near one of these guys or screen all of their troops fighting them.

I'm betting that they go with the easy route, which is both expensive and an easy way to get our enemies actively trying to weasel out of going near our troops.

Finally, Eye Killers are a neat sort of snake thing we could make great use of (supposing we can get our hands on some anyway). They're chaos and have a save or die with a decent DC that can be pumped up by increasing their con score. If we kept the numbers low we could easily pump them up in the forge, then layer on some items, and make their death ray stupidly dangerous.

From there they could make for fun officer hunters or (relatively) cheap anti champion weapons.
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I'm not a fan of Planeslayer's Call, at least not on an item. It's situational as a prepared spell, but as a 5th level spell, it would be very expensive for relatively limited effect.

Tactical Formation isn't bad. Kinda like a limited form of Mass Shield of Faith. I can see the utility, though it wouldn't stack with the +2 Deflection bonus from our people's PfEs.

I hope Collaborative Thaumaturgy is a standard spell learned by Scholarium mages who prepare their spells. Working in concert with one of our Combat Sorcerers, a small group of 5th Scholarium Wizards could turn them into an improvised artillery platform.

As for servitors, we're still not selling anything sentient, so that rules out most of what you mentioned. We do have some Jesulans of our own, though. They're a really nice base Plant creature chassis to work with. Mentioning Brown Mold does remind me that we should make available some of our Sultan's Tribute munitions to the Shaitan, @Azel.

I know we've talked about Eye Killers before, but I think we're limited by availability of a suitable corpse to get the pattern in the Forges. These things have a lot of potential with just a bit of Forge tinkering.
 
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BronzeTongue said:
Now that we're looking into this kind of thing we should probably take a peek at Heaven's outsider forging process.

They're dead as a faction, so it's probably a lot easier to steal the particulars of their angel forging process than it would be to get the kind of secret out of an active power.

Plus, if we want people to willingly subject themselves to this process, we need to keep the unpleasantness to a minimum and ensure continuity of consciousness. Heaven's notes would probably be useful for shaping our system in that direction.

[X] Azel
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IIRC, Heaven didn't really have an Outsider creation process.

Gods can make Outsiders, of course, but Heaven just kinda spontaneously generated them from Petitioners, I think?
 
Goldfish said:
I'm not a fan of Planeslayer's Call, at least not on an item. It's situational as a prepared spell, but as a 5th level spell, it would be very expensive for relatively limited effect.

Tactical Formation isn't bad. Kinda like a limited form of Mass Shield of Faith. I can see the utility, though it wouldn't stack with the +2 Deflection bonus from our people's PfEs.

I hope Collaborative Thaumaturgy is a standard spell learned by Scholarium !she's who prepare their spells. Working in concert with one of our Combat Sorcerers, a small group of 5th Scholarium Wizards could turn them into an improvised artillery platform.

As for servitors, we're still not selling anything sentient, so that rules out most of what you mentioned. We do have some Jesulans of our own, though. They're a really nice base Plant creature chassis to work with. Mentioning Brown Mold does remind me that we should make available some of our Sultan's Tribute munitions to the Shaitan, @Azel.

I know we've talked about Eye Killers before, but I think we're limited by availability of a suitable corpse to get the pattern in the Forges. These things have a lot of potential with just a bit of Forge tinkering.
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Don't we have a feral template that nerfs the base creature's int score? I thought we used something like that for at least a few of our projects.
 
Goldfish said:
I'm not a fan of Planeslayer's Call, at least not on an item. It's situational as a prepared spell, but as a 5th level spell, it would be very expensive for relatively limited effect.
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It is kind of expensive, but I'd like to point out that in this context Planeslayer's call would let the user completely ignore the electricity and acid resistance of the Divs that make up a significant portion of the Efreeti's forces.

In this situation the spell would be almost universally applicable.
 
@Goldfish Collaborative Thaumaturgy limits spell level one can cast, greatly limiting its usage for beefing up a spell. It does act as a nice support spell for those mages with AoE 2nd or 1st level effects, as it allows for a free Enlarge or Extend metamagic effect, or if a mage has been silenced or had their movement restricted free them up to cast again.

However, doing the math, the average damage from three wizards trading 3rd level spells for it rather than just casting x3 Fireballs, if you add the fourth fireball (or more likely a much better AoE spell like Firebrand), is 87.5 damage, as compared to 60, making an inferior utilization of resources in mass combat overall.
 
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BronzeTongue said:
Now that we're looking into this kind of thing we should probably take a peek at Heaven's outsider forging process.

They're dead as a faction, so it's probably a lot easier to steal the particulars of their angel forging process than it would be to get the kind of secret out of an active power.

Plus, if we want people to willingly subject themselves to this process, we need to keep the unpleasantness to a minimum and ensure continuity of consciousness. Heaven's notes would probably be useful for shaping our system in that direction.

[X] Azel
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Goldfish said:
IIRC, Heaven didn't really have an Outsider creation process.

Gods can make Outsiders, of course, but Heaven just kinda spontaneously generated them from Petitioners, I think?
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Heaven's way of converting petitioners to Outsiders was that the former entered the garden at the top of the 7th circle of Mount Celestia. Which no longer exists and everyone getting too close to the remnants...

They are defunct as a faction because they have literally no way to replenish their losses.
 
Crake said:
@Goldfish Collaborative Thaumaturgy limits spell level one can cast, greatly limiting its usage for beefing up a spell. It does act as a nice support spell for those mages with AoE 2nd or 1st level effects, as it allows for a free Enlarge or Extend metamagic effect, or if a mage has been silenced or had their movement restricted free them up to cast again.

However, doing the math, the average damage from three wizards trading 3rd level spells for it rather than just casting x3 Fireballs, if you add the fourth fireball (or more likely a much better AoE spell like Firebrand), is 87.5 damage, as compared to 60, making an inferior utilization of resources in mass combat overall.
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Yeah, it wouldn't always be ideal, but certain situations could make it useful.

Even just Enlarging a 6th level Combat Sorcerer's Elemental Fire Darts would double the range from 210 feet to 420. Those darts would be cast as 11th level and hit far harder than anything a 5th level Wizard could cast.

Assuming the Combat Sorcerer is 8th level, meaning his 3rd level spells would be eligible, the effect gets a lot more dramatic. His Fireballs would be cast at 13th level, with a range of 920 feet. One 5th level Wizard Enlarging that would push it to 1,840 feet, far beyond the range of almost any other spell that hasn't also been Enlarged. With a few such helpers, the Sorcerer could lob several of those super long range Fireballs one after the other. The Combat Sorcerers can also apply Searing Spell to their Fire magic without increasing spell level, so they could damage creatures a Wizard launching Fire spells couldn't match.
 
Crake said:
@Goldfish Collaborative Thaumaturgy limits spell level one can cast, greatly limiting its usage for beefing up a spell. It does act as a nice support spell for those mages with AoE 2nd or 1st level effects, as it allows for a free Enlarge or Extend metamagic effect, or if a mage has been silenced or had their movement restricted free them up to cast again.

However, doing the math, the average damage from three wizards trading 3rd level spells for it rather than just casting x3 Fireballs, if you add the fourth fireball (or more likely a much better AoE spell like Firebrand), is 87.5 damage, as compared to 60, making an inferior utilization of resources in mass combat overall.
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I think it's more effective when you take someone who can cart it but is otherwise not very useful and use them to pump up a more powerful caster. In the mid grade PC zone getting a free extend spell on one or two of your shorter duration buffs can be a big deal.

It also has a nice use case related to any of the spells that let you split their time among multiple targets, like the communal protection from X line. It makes it possible to protect a group of mages for fewer spell slots per minute of coverage.

That same effect is also good for summoning and area denial with stuff like Leshy Swarm and Mana Flux.

Azel said:
Heaven's way of converting petitioners to Outsiders was that the former entered the garden at the top of the 7th circle of Mount Celestia. Which no longer exists and everyone getting too close to the remnants...

They are defunct as a faction because they have literally no way to replenish their losses.
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I thought that that process was specifically for Archons. If that's not the case then this approach is dead in the water, but if the other LG outsiders have different means to mass produce themselves then there might be some stuff worth learning.
 
Goldfish said:
Assuming the Combat Sorcerer is 8th level, meaning his 3rd level spells would be eligible, the effect gets a lot more dramatic. His Fireballs would be cast at 13th level, with a range of 920 feet. One 5th level Wizard Enlarging that would push it to 1,840 feet, far beyond the range of almost any other spell that hasn't also been Enlarged. With a few such helpers, the Sorcerer could lob several of those super long range Fireballs one after the other. The Combat Sorcerers can also apply Searing Spell to their Fire magic without increasing spell level, so they could damage creatures a Wizard launching Fire spells couldn't match.
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Didn't think about it like that. Yeah, situationally, it's better, though not always. And it's contingent on having a higher level caster available.
 
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