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

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egoo said:
Well, let's hope Lya levels.
That's really the priority for now, Arcanums get upgrooded, 9th level spells get lerned...

She wasn't there for the 'kill' against the Aboleth, but the Shoggoth-encounter and capturing the Illithid should be about enough..?
Hopefully?

Let's hope Aife didn't get too much XP eaten off by being with us. Her CR is kinda OP too.
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Ah yes. The XP. The glorious XP. :D I can't wait.
 
DragonParadox said:
You guys need to turn him back into himself to check.
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Can we just assume to have done so after we arrive back in the future?
Where is this music coming from?

With you capable of only so many safe-for-hands updates a day, I don't wanna stretch mechanical moments and write-ups any longer than 'none'.

Hell, I'm considering dropping "divine for heart trees" from the vote, there is next to no substance, narrative or mechanical, in that action.
 
egoo said:
...Whatever, now might not be the best time, but I'll post regardless as I gtg for a while.

Y'all, I need help here. Imperial Deity stuff.
@Azel seems like the go-to, but anyone else with any idea of how Imperial Deity's make-up is supposed to be are welcome too.

I am confused.

1) We got the remains of Anu-Simung's Demiplane.
That circumvents us making one for the Imperial Deity from the ground up, but we still have an RA to repair, re-wire, and make it more secure.

Question: is that the end-point of the RA-line, or do we want to research further after this one is done, and what to research for, if so?
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That should be the end-point of that particular research. Once we can nest demi-planes into layers, we can use that to make a fake divine realm. The only other thing we would need to do is growing them a whole damn lot bigger then the spel allows to, but that's ultimately just a question of throwing enough deity juice at it.
2) We have researched the Imperial Steel with Meraxes' help. Now we gotta research what we can do to turn it into proper foci for the I!Deity.

Question: are we expecting this to be a singular research action to make the foci, or that we'd have to delve into the topic with further ones, to make analogs to Heart Trees/Valyrian Pillars/etc?
I am not fully understanding/remembering year-old RA results, to see how different our plans are, for example, from the way Heart Trees work.
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This would also be the final step. We skipped a lot of the hard work by having Meraxas make the material itself.

The lore that got lost in a misunderstanding between DP and me is that Imperial Steel is a conceptual solid. It exists on the Prime Material, the Dreamscape and the Astral Plane, which is why it got integrated, unsurpressable Ghost Touch. It's also why it hurts Fey so much, as part of their resilience comes from them being creatures of stories and thus "suffering only flesh wounds" so to speak. Their nature blunts the damage of mundane weapons, but Imperial Steels metaphysical solidity leaves them no wiggle room.

That and the fact that it's highly magical makes it such a perfect conductor for energy. It makes also the perfect connector, due to being able to serve as a backbone for permanent constructs in the Dreamscape.
3) We've also learned what makes Heart Trees tick the way they do for OGs and how they connect between each-other making up Green Dream.
...I think.
It's been a while since that one.
Question: Do we actually have anything left to research on that front?
(The "follow-up pending" was before such turning moments as Drowny being turned into a battery and looting Anu's demiplane)
Do we still have anything worthwhile the effort to gain from looking deeper into the way Heart Trees tick?
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Heart Trees are done. We now just need to find a way to replicate their connection to each other with Imperial Steel. See the action directly above.
4) We've started working on Dreamscaping, as to have a mirroring network of foci (linked to the Imperial Steel ones) running through the Dreamlands, allowing for...

Question: allowing for what, exactly?
Aside from allowing the Imperial Deity to be metaphysically intertwined with reality and dreamland-copy of said reality, what's that doing?

Is it going to secure our citizens' souls naturally and offload them into the Demiplane on-death?
Is it going to "pull the Yss" and ward away Dreamlands/Astral predators?

I'm genuinely not sure on what exactly we are doing with every step here.
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This has multiple dimensions:
1. Once the conduit research is done, we will use Dreamscaping to create "collectors" so to speak that accumulate power from rituals, thoughts, dreams and symphatethic actions.
2. Once we got conduit research done and have a network to build on, we could research wardings to start taking control of the dreamscape.
3. Collecting souls will likely require more dreamscaping, but it's hard to say right now. We definitely need the Stillborn God actually functional and the afterlife plane ready before we can really start working on the soul collection and reforging research.

Mind that this research should carry over to other highly-morphic planes, so we might also be able to do stuff in Limbo, the Astral or the Feywild with it.
The two actions present there are just general cost / effort reductions. Expect the work I've outlined above to be hard, expensive and eating up a lot of time and effort.

On another note: We should also look into getting a special Terminus built to allow people to physically enter the Dreamscape. The Inquisition could get a lot of mileage out of that, both for work and training.
5) We've got Fey rituals to try and... something-something, have Imperial Deity's worship acts be natural things like bureocracy and army service, something-something...

Question: I am straight up not getting what this RA did for us, and how much longer do we have to go until we have our "client-side" Imperial deity base ready.
Just this RA? Any further ones?
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We figured out by that action how the energy is created. The conduit research will allow us to direct it to somewhere (namely the demi-plane resting under the Imperial Palace). This research is what we will need to store and use the power.

Once we got a pool to work with, we'll also likely find additional things to research. It would, for example, be neat to have the ability to make spell-completion items directly from divine juice. Healing and buff potions. Pseudo-scrolls that can be used by anyone. Stuff like that. Would be really neat for our healthcare efforts if we can just store a Regeneration spell as a small, divine ember and ship it to wherever it is needed.
6) Starting up the Imperial Deity.
Question: How?
Assuming all else is done, how do we connect it all together?
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1. Redesign demi-plane to provide multiple layers:
-- 1. Entrance Area
-- 2. Afterlife
-- 3. Training Facilities
-- 4. Prison
-- 5. Admin Lounge
-- 6. Energy Storage
2. Lay conduits and establish energy collection infrastructure.
3. Dump a ton of energy into the storage to start powering everything.
4. Fight off a heavy assault by literally every enemy we ever made, either because they want to hijack our creation (Brass Bastard) or definitely do not want us to wield divine power (Tiamat, Others).
5. Press "START"
6. Hold a monologue about your plan.
7. Profit.
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Also, just to try and understand, the elements of Imperial Deity from what I am getting so far:

[1] 'Client-side' rituals, so that serving in army, doing papers, being law-abiding, etc. - all counts as rites of service, all allows for "Worship"-energy to fill the Imperial Deity up. And makes the souls naturally gravitate to Imperial Dream instead of Limbo.

[2] Material side: Imperial Steel nodes, Imperial Palace as the central one - acr as an analog to Heart Trees(?)

[3] Dreamlands side - congested and wrangled Dream-stuff bound to equivalent Imperial Steel on the material side, stabilizing the Dreamlands and binding the Imperial Deity to it (???)

[4] Demi-plane side: an unassailable fortress-plane, also analogous to Green Dream of the OGs.
-[4.1] We're also planning to set up a system allowing the petitiner-souls to either stay in it, or go to their chosen Imperial Panteon's Deity's afterlife (currently: Yss, Zathir, Old Gods, Ferryman, Storm Father, Earth Mother, R'hllor, The Goddess of the Silver Moon, The Weeping Lady).
(We'll probably hash out with all other, non-Panteon Gods that the followers are free to go to theirs as well. Just leave an escort figure near our plane's gates, and if the soils want to go... we'll let them. Bottom line, it's way easier and a surefire way than grabbing soils out of Limbo.)

[5] Pantheon-side: all of the Gods we are friendly with, agree to:
- have the worshippers souls automatically sent to Imperial Dream (just a formality actually, that'd happen on it's own once it runs), retrieved to theirs at worshipper's desire.
- help defend the Imperial Dream/Deity metaphysically.
- agree to not be asshlles to each-other, some basic Pantheon rules needed there.
Get to:
- not waste effort grabbing worshuppers' souls from Limbo.
- have a steady trickle of energy from Imperial Deity, wih no pesky "change in what Deity is from the worshippers' belief" as it is technically just a fuck-huge battery or [WORSHIP].

Question: Did I miss any part here?
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No, that's roughly the shape of it.
 
Azel said:
That should be the end-point of that particular research. Once we can nest demi-planes into layers, we can use that to make a fake divine realm. The only other thing we would need to do is growing them a whole damn lot bigger then the spel allows to, but that's ultimately just a question of throwing enough deity juice at it.

This would also be the final step. We skipped a lot of the hard work by having Meraxas make the material itself.

The lore that got lost in a misunderstanding between DP and me is that Imperial Steel is a conceptual solid. It exists on the Prime Material, the Dreamscape and the Astral Plane, which is why it got integrated, unsurpressable Ghost Touch. It's also why it hurts Fey so much, as part of their resilience comes from them being creatures of stories and thus "suffering only flesh wounds" so to speak. Their nature blunts the damage of mundane weapons, but Imperial Steels metaphysical solidity leaves them no wiggle room.

That and the fact that it's highly magical makes it such a perfect conductor for energy. It makes also the perfect connector, due to being able to serve as a backbone for permanent constructs in the Dreamscape.

Heart Trees are done. We now just need to find a way to replicate their connection to each other with Imperial Steel. See the action directly above.

This has multiple dimensions:
1. Once the conduit research is done, we will use Dreamscaping to create "collectors" so to speak that accumulate power from rituals, thoughts, dreams and symphatethic actions.
2. Once we got conduit research done and have a network to build on, we could research wardings to start taking control of the dreamscape.
3. Collecting souls will likely require more dreamscaping, but it's hard to say right now. We definitely need the Stillborn God actually functional and the afterlife plane ready before we can really start working on the soul collection and reforging research.

Mind that this research should carry over to other highly-morphic planes, so we might also be able to do stuff in Limbo, the Astral or the Feywild with it.
The two actions present there are just general cost / effort reductions. Expect the work I've outlined above to be hard, expensive and eating up a lot of time and effort.

On another note: We should also look into getting a special Terminus built to allow people to physically enter the Dreamscape. The Inquisition could get a lot of mileage out of that, both for work and training.

We figured out by that action how the energy is created. The conduit research will allow us to direct it to somewhere (namely the demi-plane resting under the Imperial Palace). This research is what we will need to store and use the power.

Once we got a pool to work with, we'll also likely find additional things to research. It would, for example, be neat to have the ability to make spell-completion items directly from divine juice. Healing and buff potions. Pseudo-scrolls that can be used by anyone. Stuff like that. Would be really neat for our healthcare efforts if we can just store a Regeneration spell as a small, divine ember and ship it to wherever it is needed.

1. Redesign demi-plane to provide multiple layers:
-- 1. Entrance Area
-- 2. Afterlife
-- 3. Training Facilities
-- 4. Prison
-- 5. Admin Lounge
-- 6. Energy Storage
2. Lay conduits and establish energy collection infrastructure.
3. Dump a ton of energy into the storage to start powering everything.
4. Fight off a heavy assault by literally every enemy we ever made, either because they want to hijack our creation (Brass Bastard) or definitely do not want us to wield divine power (Tiamat, Others).
5. Press "START"
6. Hold a monologue about your plan.
7. Profit.

No, that's roughly the shape of it.
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Thanks, this helps a lot.
 
Azel said:
Thank you for giving me the perfect excuse to expand the totalitarian security apparatus into peoples dreams. :V
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It would be more like adjacent to their dreams. Most people have their own narrow zone of control in the dreamlands and few can walk around freely. Many who do come untethered do not have happy fates, though you can also gain insights and premonitions.
 
DragonParadox said:
It would be more like adjacent to their dreams. Most people have their own narrow zone of control in the dreamlands and few can walk around freely. Many who do come untethered do not have happy fates, though you can also gain insights and premonitions.
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Eh. Don't worry. We will find a way to rescue those poor, unfortunate souls and to ensure that every citizen of the Imperium sleeps well, while dreaming properly patriotic dreams.
 
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