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A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

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One Autumn Leaf said:
Also, we are going to drag the Earth Mother and the Storm Father kicking and screaming into the Imperial Pantheon. We didn't even use all of the divine gods in the Imperium.
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For those two, the only kicking would probably be Void-tainted and Far Realm ass, and the only screaming being invectives at all the Andals and First Men wasting time killing each other over thousands of years instead of building up in preparation for round two.
 
Crake said:
For those two, the only kicking would probably be Void-tainted and Far Realm ass, and the only screaming being invectives at all the Andals and First Men wasting time killing each other over thousands of years instead of building up in preparation for round two.
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Right...speaking of which. Is there anything we can do to help the two gods along? Maybe more propaganda? Or feeding them monsters?
 
One Autumn Leaf said:
Right...speaking of which. Is there anything we can do to help the two gods along? Maybe more propaganda? Or feeding them monsters?
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Just feed the Storm God some monsters and he'll eventually wake up fully and start pulling his weight. Mother Earth not really much to do other than just spread those rituals and watch her slowly get more clerics. It'll take patience beyond that.
 
Of the two, Mother Earth is useful albeit less immediately relevant with any appreciable timescale. If she takes a couple of centuries to really kick herself into gear and climb the ladder back up, she'll still be in good stead. We might want to subtly push her worship with farmers anyway, because she might be useful for countering any attempts to cause famine across the Imperium.

Father Storm however we really wanna beef up, fast. Him and Zathir are our only true shot at contesting control of weather and the sky in general, so that we can use our air force against the Others when they march. If literally all they do for us is stalemate them, and maybe stop literally apocalyptic snowstorms from burying entire areas, that'd be gravy. And Father Sky is a war god, which we are actually kind of lacking. We have plenty of Gods who are dangerous because of their domains, but really mostly in the right circumstances.

But a God of War is useful for mass combat. Imagine battlefield scale blessing, @Duesal @Goldfish.

Or hell, just more immediate exercising of powers. We got to see Anu-Simung do the traditional smiting game, and he wasn't even a war god. He was basically Hephaestus.

I'm willing to bet a fully roided up god of storms could blow that out of the park.
 
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We could shove a Dawn Tree sacrifice both their ways. Also, I recall the effort we put to do that and now how casual that statement is. Level ups man. Truly the ultimate drug.

Edit: If I remember for next turn I am gonna push for it.
 
One Autumn Leaf said:
We could shove a Dawn Tree sacrifice both their ways. Also, I recall the effort we put to do that and now how casual that statement is. Level ups man. Truly the ultimate drug.
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To be honest, we cheated this time around. Hard.

Back then, it was just something we were saving for, socking away every sacrifice for the most part until we felt the time was right.

I would say this isn't something we want to do often... or even occasionally. It's a pretty risky move. Something you want people to not really see coming.
 
Crake said:
Of the two, Mother Earth is useful albeit less immediately relevant with any appreciable timescale. If she takes a couple of centuries to really kick herself into gear and climb the ladder back up, she'll still be in good stead. We might want to subtly push her worship with farmers anyway, because she might be useful for countering any attempts to cause famine across the Imperium.

Father Storm however we really wanna beef up, fast. Him and Zathir are our only true shot at contesting control of weather and the sky in general, so that we can use our air force against the Others when they march. If literally all they do for us is stalemate them, and maybe stop literally apocalyptic snowstorms from burying entire areas, that'd be gravy. And Father Sky is a war god, which we are actually kind of lacking. We have plenty of Gods who are dangerous because of their domains, but really mostly in the right circumstances.

But a God of War is useful for mass combat. Imagine battlefield scale blessing, @Duesal @Goldfish.

Or hell, just more immediate exercising of powers. We got to see Anu-Simung do the traditional smiting game, and he wasn't even a war god. He was basically Hephaestus.

I'm willing to bet a fully roided up god of storms could blow that out of the park.
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I want all of that. Battlescale blessings are wonderfully OP. And imagine permanent war blessings for our gigantic war machines, too.
One Autumn Leaf said:
We could shove a Dawn Tree sacrifice both their ways. Also, I recall the effort we put to do that and now how casual that statement is. Level ups man. Truly the ultimate drug.

Edit: If I remember for next turn I am gonna push for it.
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Crake said:
To be honest, we cheated this time around. Hard.

Back then, it was just something we were saving for, socking away every sacrifice for the most part until we felt the time was right.

I would say this isn't something we want to do often... or even occasionally. It's a pretty risky move. Something you want people to not really see coming.
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Considering we're going to be dealing with Qohor soonish after Westeros is pacified, it's only a matter of like four, five months before we have a fuck ton of sacrifices again. They really add up even without active summoning.
 
There are safer ways to empower them. Off the cuff I'd say we should start with recruiting outsiders for them. We can trawl around the inner planes for thematic outsiders down on their luck and either convert a few to the faith or convince them to sign up to work for the faith without being part of it.

It's a lot easier to accrue worshipers if you have a fistful of earth elementals out talking you up to the mortals and doing good works in your name. It's also way less likely to explode in our faces than pulling up enough Brimoraks to eat our capitol on a semi regular basis.
 
BronzeTongue said:
There are safer ways to empower them. Off the cuff I'd say we should start with recruiting outsiders for them. We can trawl around the inner planes for thematic outsiders down on their luck and either convert a few to the faith or convince them to sign up to work for the faith without being part of it.

It's a lot easier to accrue worshipers if you have a fistful of earth elementals out talking you up to the mortals and doing good works in your name. It's also way less likely to explode in our faces than pulling up enough Brimoraks to eat our capitol on a semi regular basis.
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This isn't a bad idea, it's especially a good idea if you have them going around helping the more remote communities. In more urbanized or otherwise densely populated countryside, they have a lot of competition, so their efforts would be diluted, but out on the boonies where some people haven't really noticed much difference other than the occasional patrol of soldiers poking around making sure no one is enslaving people anymore, or lawmen in every village trying to cobble together some semblance of public order in line with the other provinces.

An elder Earth Elemental helping with construction work would go a long way for getting the local farmers to praise Mother Earth, and some Air Elementals helping scout for hunters would be appreciated. Low level stuff, but you could get some nice trickles of tasty prayer juice that way with very little investment on our part.

I believe a major temple in each city would get at least a few thousand semi-consistent worshippers a piece. Say we build one in ten cities... twenty... that's enough regular feeding to allow them to start making some moves again without pouring sacrifices their way.

Problem is, they need a starter-fund, basically. Enough divine juice to empower some priesthood to spread out among them and teach their tenets.
 
Crake said:
Problem is, they need a starter-fund, basically. Enough divine juice to empower some priesthood to spread out among them and teach their tenets.
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A divine start-up fund. The Imperial Deity pool could be the source of this but not in the early days of its inception. Plunging a fuckton of power into them would be a start. Also maybe an action to look for elementals down on their luck to spread the word sounds great. I personally hope the Earth Mother knows how to make Earth Elementals so we can get that also...she would know that right? And Father Storm would know about Storm Elementals?

Edit: Also Rhllor has the blueprints for Fire Elementals. We can get the 4 basic elementals by negotiating with Rhllor, Storm and Earth.
 
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One Autumn Leaf said:
A divine start-up fund. The Imperial Deity pool could be the source of this but not in the early days of its inception. Plunging a fuckton of power into them would be a start. Also maybe an action to look for elementals down on their luck to spread the word sounds great. I personally hope the Earth Mother knows how to make Earth Elementals so we can get that also...she would know that right? And Father Storm would know about Storm Elementals?
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He's mostly an Air guy, but he could probably learn how to make lightning elementals easier than most gods tend to learn how to do new things, since it's within his domains.

The problem with making their own stuff is right now they are basically bone dry, and it is a heavy strain for them to do anything without mojo, and perhaps the easiest, lightest touch they can possibly make is to "jumpstart" the soul of a mortal into taking up a PC class by awakening their magic, and the lightest touch of all, given the demographics of awakened characters seems heavily balanced between very old people who practiced magic decades or centuries in some cases before magic reawakened, or the very young, the person so awakened has to either already be fairly high leveled and thus have more "soulfire" than other characters, or they have to be a child, essentially, who by providence or fate is the "right person at the right time" to journey toward destiny.

To be honest, that's probably partially why Father Storm cares about his mortal descendants. Beyond sentiment, they are a lifeline. Their position, blood and the interpersonal circumstances surrounding their birth makes for a turbulent and auspicious future. Good pool for PCs. Gotta be a Cleric in the wind somewhere along the line. Maybe Gendry?
 
Crake said:
Problem is, they need a starter-fund, basically. Enough divine juice to empower some priesthood to spread out among them and teach their tenets.
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Yes, but I was thinking we could cheat a little on that by putting the weight of typical priest work on creatures that have SLAs capable of supporting it. We pay the creatures for the gods, they go out and do things that direct worship to the target deity, and the god in question gets all the prayer juice without any of the effort.

We could dramatically reduce the size of that start up fund if we play our cards right.
 
Crake said:
To be honest, that's probably partially why Father Storm cares about his mortal descendants. Beyond sentiment, they are a lifeline. Their position, blood and the interpersonal circumstances surrounding their birth makes for a turbulent and auspicious future. Good pool for PCs. Gotta be a Cleric in the wind somewhere along the line. Maybe Gendry?
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Probably. I am still for shoving a metric load of sacrifices their way. Maybe an action to find Elementals willing to join some pseudo-god thing?

Edit: Or creating a creature with Cleric template and then having them preach to word of god...I guess.
 
Gods are innately not freeloaders... unless they're Abyssal hobos who are basically cheating cheaters who do not pay back what they are given.

Fucking Tiamat, what a stingy bitch...
 
One Autumn Leaf said:
A divine start-up fund. The Imperial Deity pool could be the source of this but not in the early days of its inception. Plunging a fuckton of power into them would be a start. Also maybe an action to look for elementals down on their luck to spread the word sounds great. I personally hope the Earth Mother knows how to make Earth Elementals so we can get that also...she would know that right? And Father Storm would know about Storm Elementals?

Edit: Also Rhllor has the blueprints for Fire Elementals. We can get the 4 basic elementals by negotiating with Rhllor, Storm and Earth.
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Pretty much all they need is that starter fund of a few hundred HD, Yss style, and then after that we can Flesh Forge them a Herald of their own provided they agree to whatever terms we come up with. And they'll accept, because we're pretty damn generous when it comes to allies. After that clerics should be sprouting fairly quickly. Literally everyone can get behind farming, and a god of war and nobility is bound to get a lot of support.
Crake said:
Gods are innately not freeloaders... unless they're Abyssal hobos who are basically cheating cheaters who do not pay back what they are given.

Fucking Tiamat, what a stingy bitch...
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One of these days I want to figure out how she sustains herself without worship. We will steal that secret alongside her hoard. And her corpse. And her soul.
 
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Duesal said:
Pretty much all they need is that starter fund of a few hundred HD, Yss style, and then after that we can Flesh Forge them a Herald of their own provided they agree to whatever terms we come up with. And they'll accept, because we're pretty damn generous when it comes to allies. After that clerics should be sprouting fairly quickly. Literally everyone can get behind farming, and a god of war and nobility is bound to get a lot of support.

One of these days I want to figure out how she sustains herself without worship. We will steal that secret alongside her hoard. And her corpse. And her soul.
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Truly would not mind cutting away every piece of her until she's a shriveled little husk stuck in some kind of Divine Salient powered supermax prison, since DP told us we couldn't really kill her.

I'm against, on principle, using a BBEG as a battery for anything even vaguely important, but for her I'd make an exception, so long as it was merely powering her own prison's defense system.
 
Duesal said:
Pretty much all they need is that starter fund of a few hundred HD, Yss style, and then after that we can Flesh Forge them a Herald of their own provided they agree to whatever terms we come up with. And they'll accept, because we're pretty damn generous when it comes to allies. After that clerics should be sprouting fairly quickly. Literally everyone can get behind farming, and a god of war and nobility is bound to get a lot of support.
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Next turn, if at all possible, I want to make some sacrifices for them. Maybe a hundred HD to both at most. See how much that helps them by,

Edit: For instance there are air demons. That should be synergy
 
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One Autumn Leaf said:
Next turn, if at all possible, I want to make some sacrifices for them. Maybe a hundred HD to both at most. See how much that helps them by,
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Ehhhh, we'll see what we capture. It might be better to wait. While there are diminishing returns from bigger and bigger sacrifices, Gods seem to get more the bigger and more grandiose the sacrifice itself is in general.
 
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