Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
We don't have to do anything. He's going to do it all himself.
Our job is to make sure he doesn't kill himself getting there.
A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
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Our job is to make sure he doesn't kill himself getting there.
I'm not having much luck so far on anything we could leverage for this. I'm having even worse luck for soul healing stuff; everything I've found for treating soul corruption is fucked up.
Is there a good way to hand out soul vault items during this visit to help prevent stuff like this in the future?
Is there a good way to hand out soul vault items during this visit to help prevent stuff like this in the future?
Now how is he going to do it is the question. Jon gonna be asking Viserys for guidance (the man who is one of the most powerful sorcerers on the planet with lots of battle experience) or Jon gonna go on adventure by himself?
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
We have five slotless Rings of constant Soul Vault remaining in the Armory, but I would honestly rather hold on to them for more important people.
Jon could get one, of course, and maybe Arya, but the others don't seem to need it?
- Location
- ?????????
We can give him a team now. We have plenty of younglings with plenty to prove. They can join the boy on his quest. There are also plenty of barrows we can throw Jon towards.
Edit: Joran, the Druid twins to name a few of our wards.
Edit: Hell Ser Reyne exists as a character. He is level 5 rn according to the eggo chart of characters
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Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Jon Snow, Joran of Dragonstone, Young!Thoros Voronys, Gendry Waters, Reva and Liset, Ysilla and her Fairwind friends.
And if they climb a few more levels, add in Valaena. Which would incidentally be a group of five 'for certain' dragonriders. Technically the only one in that group without the blood for it would be the Fairwind and Ysilla.
So yeah, they'll be spoiled for choice for party members.
Level 6, now.
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- Location
- Who knows?
I'd say Winterfell is functionally Agnatic as there has literally never been a female ruler of Winterfell. Pretty much any time a daughter is in position to inherit she gets shunted away/force married to an uncle or something. Also sorry if you feel like I jumped down your throat re the Starks. For me it's mainly Lyanna who gets my sympathy since "the 14-16 year old girl is to blame for not fending off a 20-something adult man who is also in a position of authority over her," is just not something I grok at all. I honestly put Brandon Stark at #3 on the list of "People who caused the Rebellion" list--okay a distant 3rd after Rhaegar and Aerys--but comeon Brandon, even if Aerys was not bugnuts crazy there's no fucking way running straight to the king and telling him you want to kill his heir could be anything but disastrous for you personally.
I'd say Arya definitely. She's been dumped by the wayside in terms of personal power/blessings since Viserys became the Old God's sugar daddy, but she's still a Druid blessed directly by the Old Gods. We know that the OG get bonuses from Other sacrifices due to sympathetic connection, and that there is a specific spell/creature the Others get only by corrupting OG Druids via a comment DP made a while back.
Essentially I feel Arya's in a bad position of being relatively weak and unable to protect herself on the scale we're doing battle on, but still useful to Viserys scale enemies as a sacrifice/magical fodder due to what she is.
- Location
- Germany
I really don't want to continue this tangent, thus just a few bullet points:
- under the assumption that Rhaegar actively groomed her, I'd agree with you
- my read is different though, namely that Lyanna actively pursued him on her own
- under that assumption, Lyanna gets the full blame for starting an affair with horrendous political risks in my books
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Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
See, the general idea of this is something I can agree with, in principle, but it doesn't apply to Lyanna. That thought didn't even enter her mind, and it was only later she realized Rhaegar was as much of a madman and rapist as Aerys was, or that he couldn't really care less about her and just wanted her body.
Lyanna was a resentful little shit who wanted to get out of a marriage she knew she wouldn't be happy with, but moreover thought she could be with the Prince who was not telling her all of the things she had to stop doing in order to present herself as a proper southern lady, that they weren't an issue, because she would be a Queen, and plenty of Queens could shirk away from following proper social conventions... so long as their King had the political power to allow it. Which even a victorious Rhaegar wouldn't.
I basically agree with Talon--Lyanna a Big Dumb, but will at least allow that she wasn't privy to all of the facts and nor was she likely to be presented with the information and contextual clues necessary to suss out that Rhaegar wouldn't have been able to give her what she wanted to be happy. She was ignorant, perhaps not completely stupid once you throw everything in her face, and hardly the sole cause of a war that was basically inevitable given how many people had a stake in House Targaryen not sitting on the Iron Throne, or at least having vastly reduced powers given Tricky Rick and his alliance brokering.
At the end of the day though, there were ways to avoid that situation. Lyanna put herself in a vulnerable position while far from home. Given all of the pressure being put on her to marry Robert by her father, I find it unlikely she didn't have chaperons she didn't give the slip, and she took other risks (Harrenhal) which drew unwanted attention to her, also for dumb reasons.
I also follow the theory that while just a bit player who was manipulated at every turn, we should turn a gimlet eye toward Howland Reed, since the apparent ninja swamp-man was "incapable of defending himself" but was cold-blooded killer barely a year later who could ghost up behind and slit the throat of a man who's entire profession was to watch for assassins and was the ultimate form of that profession, the archetypical example in fact?
Bullshit. I also think that Brynden had something to do with that whole mess, but he's done us too many favors and been too useful to really poke that hornet's nest at all.
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- Location
- Germany
Funny enough, now she can get everything she wanted back then.
No unhappy marriage and freedom to take a career of her choosing without care for south-Westerosi conventions.
Once she is in an independant body she has won and can set future goals that are not rooted in teenage rebellion or desperation to protect her son, though it will propably take time and therapy to get to the point of understanding that.
Plus you know, Rhaegar was already married. To a Martell. Which not only makes everything more difficult but means that even if everything had gone according to a never quite outlined plan and she had become Queen, there would have been a lot of assassination attempts in Lyanna's future.
Pretty sure the problem with Howland is that while in a real fight he can certainly kill people, defending himself in a way that won't cause a major political kerfluffle is more complicated since it requires not stabbing people to death and he just doesn't have the build for fistfights.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Here's my theory, a fairly common one with tons of permutations in fanfiction and so on, but usually based off contextual clues from Canon. @DragonParadox, you can feel free to chime in on this if you want.
Brynden has been manipulating things for years, and honestly he is so used to using a light touch here, dream visitation and warging are both things he had access to, at the very least, before magic came back fully. That's plenty--he's a social manipulator with the best of them.
He visits Howland Reed in his dreams, tells him about this great prophecy, how things had to go a certain way, and provides him with just enough information and clues and motivation to be his triggerman. Howland becomes a badass from a young age and learns how to frame his responses and reactions from the best of them. He then uses Harrenhal to manipulate Lyanna into catching Rhaegar's eye--Rhaegar who Brynden was manipulating toward certain ends, perhaps not to intentionally kill off, but probably to start a war that would get rid of some of the obstacles who have been getting in his way to having a board capable of defending against Winter in less than two decades.
Here's where it starts to go wrong.
The Tyrells sit out the war, and Tywin comes in to clean house after the rebellion. Given what Brynden knew at the time and what happened, we can surmise that he believed he could deal with Tywin later, so long as Rhaegar didn't die. Broadly speaking Tywin was hedging even before Mace started grooming his own hedge.
Rhaegar dies--by this point we can surmise he was an earlier failed project of Bloodraven's like Euron, just in a different way, hence why he was convinced he was no longer PWWP but instead his kids would be. Brynden is Team Targ, but he's always been more loyal to the House than King, and would likely point toward the fact that not all of them are going to do the best thing for House Targaryen--and would be right, since that's generally true given previous rulers he's counseled and also watched rule for multiple decades in the North, steadily losing more and more power.
Bloodraven starts doing a cover up and preserving assets. It's no longer important for Howland to hide his capabilities--he spends the war keeping Ned alive and kills Arthur Dayne to keep one of Bloodraven's future potential tools alive--Brynden doesn't know who's going to be useful and who's not.
This is all information that would take a lot of paranoia and suspicion and--at present--baseless accusations for Viserys to ever think up himself. The only way I surmise we'll learn it is encounter Howland and watching him slip up in a massive way, or being taunted with it by some Power who saw Bloodraven's hand in everything... and we'd probably not do anything about it. Because the past is in the past and we can only work with what we've got.
Brynden has been manipulating things for years, and honestly he is so used to using a light touch here, dream visitation and warging are both things he had access to, at the very least, before magic came back fully. That's plenty--he's a social manipulator with the best of them.
He visits Howland Reed in his dreams, tells him about this great prophecy, how things had to go a certain way, and provides him with just enough information and clues and motivation to be his triggerman. Howland becomes a badass from a young age and learns how to frame his responses and reactions from the best of them. He then uses Harrenhal to manipulate Lyanna into catching Rhaegar's eye--Rhaegar who Brynden was manipulating toward certain ends, perhaps not to intentionally kill off, but probably to start a war that would get rid of some of the obstacles who have been getting in his way to having a board capable of defending against Winter in less than two decades.
Here's where it starts to go wrong.
The Tyrells sit out the war, and Tywin comes in to clean house after the rebellion. Given what Brynden knew at the time and what happened, we can surmise that he believed he could deal with Tywin later, so long as Rhaegar didn't die. Broadly speaking Tywin was hedging even before Mace started grooming his own hedge.
Rhaegar dies--by this point we can surmise he was an earlier failed project of Bloodraven's like Euron, just in a different way, hence why he was convinced he was no longer PWWP but instead his kids would be. Brynden is Team Targ, but he's always been more loyal to the House than King, and would likely point toward the fact that not all of them are going to do the best thing for House Targaryen--and would be right, since that's generally true given previous rulers he's counseled and also watched rule for multiple decades in the North, steadily losing more and more power.
Bloodraven starts doing a cover up and preserving assets. It's no longer important for Howland to hide his capabilities--he spends the war keeping Ned alive and kills Arthur Dayne to keep one of Bloodraven's future potential tools alive--Brynden doesn't know who's going to be useful and who's not.
This is all information that would take a lot of paranoia and suspicion and--at present--baseless accusations for Viserys to ever think up himself. The only way I surmise we'll learn it is encounter Howland and watching him slip up in a massive way, or being taunted with it by some Power who saw Bloodraven's hand in everything... and we'd probably not do anything about it. Because the past is in the past and we can only work with what we've got.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
This is... equally likely. It would be funny if I come at Howland with some of these questions trying to poke a response out of him, and he's just like "What was I fucking supposed to do, stab them? That's how you start wars! I'm five foot three, how am I supposed to knock their lights out?! I didn't ask Lyanna do to that, either!"
Which would be ironic, and take the wind out of my sails for certain... but come on the whole situation is way too fishy to be that simple!!
I couldn't possibly comment on the theories above, but I'll keep them in mind as suspicions at the back of Viserys' mind.
- Location
- Germany
In terms of D&D it's propably really that easy?
I mean, a decent Rogue can kill a fighter with his handfull of D6, but in fistcuffs against a bunch of warriors he could still get the shit kicked out of him.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Yeah, I will admit Howland may be innocent--at least as far as intentionally being an agent of Bloodraven and intentionally hiding his ability to defend himself to get Lyanna to do the Big Dumb.
It could really just be that he didn't have a way to win that fight which wouldn't be escalating things massively.
- Location
- Germany
*Reed surrounded by corpses, some poisoned, some throat-slit, one being eaten by crocodile right now
"They were mean though".
😳
Well Howland could of tried to stop what Lyanna was doing by either trying to convince her or go to one of the Starks to stop her. Probably ruined any friendship they had if he did the later but she would be safe.
Honestly surprised Lyanna even won against those knights that trained to joust for a big part of their lives while she only knew how to ride a horse.
Honestly surprised Lyanna even won against those knights that trained to joust for a big part of their lives while she only knew how to ride a horse.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
After a while, people get used to the classic "Pocket Sand!" technique, but no one ever has a chance to grow accustomed to the dreaded "Pocket Crocodile!" maneuver.
consequences
Not A Nice Person At All
- Location
- Jerkville
My issue as a vaguely interested mostly lurker is that if we say there's sweet FA we can do, we're pretty much begging for a Stark to go shopping for a mystical power that will promise them results. If we're lucky it will just be a Stark by marriage who hasn't unaccountably been given absolute powers of negotiation.
If we really need to convince them to take the Void seriously, we can show them Hellven... though with Viserys's diplomacy we can probably manage the same effect with a lot less existential dread.
- Location
- Germany
And what can the Starks offer a greater power, that is worth enough for this power to decide to roll up its metaphorical sleeves and go up against the Void for a round of bareknuckle-fighting?
We would have trouble convincing the OGs to help us here and they are naturally the most interested in keeping Stark-souls from the Void (or messing with Winter in general), so every other god would need even more convincing.
Edit: Maybe Burny would help, but we have a decent working relationship, so I'm optimistic we would get a warning first.
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