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

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[X] Azel

Well, the inquisition is going to earn their keep to day. There will be a lot of high level intrigue about to happen.
 
[X] Azel

Now that I'm thinking about it, isn't this the best time for an average citizen to get away with petty and/or white collar crimes? Stuff like some embezzlement, accepting a bribe from a smuggler you caught or getting your slightly less qualified cousin hired vs the more qualified but not connected dude. Essentially crimes, but nothing that'd really break the empire by themselves. Right now all the divinations are super focused on trying to anticipate illithids, the Effreeti, Void and similar existential things so the typical divinations used for low scale stuff has been commandeered to ensure surprise Gribbles Everywhere doesnt happen on this tempting day.
 
A_Somebody said:
[X] Azel

Now that I'm thinking about it, isn't this the best time for an average citizen to get away with petty and/or white collar crimes? Stuff like some embezzlement, accepting a bribe from a smuggler you caught or getting your slightly less qualified cousin hired vs the more qualified but not connected dude. Essentially crimes, but nothing that'd really break the empire by themselves. Right now all the divinations are super focused on trying to anticipate illithids, the Effreeti, Void and similar existential things so the typical divinations used for low scale stuff has been commandeered to ensure surprise Gribbles Everywhere doesnt happen on this tempting day.
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Selwyn, SD's new Drow resident, noticed that, too. She's already dialed into that scene and supplying information to the Inquisition.
 
I can tell you now. Over half of the people using this opportunity to smuggle egregiously will end up paying in some form in the months to follow. Greed leads to sloppiness, and our cloak testifies to that.

But the ones who go farther? Who use this to smuggle the highly illegal artifacts which are really the sole source of criminal woe in Sorcerer's Deep with how orderly it is otherwise?

Look forward to many executions, since I expect some people to go mad, buildings to catch on fire (despite being made of stone or the most part), and murders to happen due to tainted grave goods or dark magic items.

People just don't know when to give up.
 
egoo said:
This is outdated and needs revising, but it is our most comprehensive Diplo buff to date.
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Okay, based on that and his character sheet it looks like he has space for some stuff.
Devil's Ego for a +4 profane bonus to charisma
Righteous Aura for a +4 sacred bonus to charisma
Divine Presence for a +5 sacred bonus to intimidate people who don't worship our deity (presumably Viserys himself) increasing to +10 against people who have one alignment in opposition to the caster, and +15 for those with two.
Improvisation for a floating luck pool. We have luck bonuses already, but they seem to mostly be one offs. This spell would provide a pool of 2 luck points/CL which can be spent to provide a bonus equal to the points used on attack rolls , skill checks, and ability checks. You can't spend more than half your CL in points on any one check, but that's still a hell of a bump if it's needed.

Other useful effects:
Crown of Glory - for 1 minute/CL it grants you a 10 ft/CL aura of celestial authority. Anyone with less than 8 levels/HD must stop what they're doing and face you. Your words are treated like suggestion spells and a telepathic communication effect ensures they understand you even if you don't share a language with them. Note that it is an evocation spell with a good subtype and not an illusion or enchantment spell with a mind effecting one, so it arguably shouldn't be blocked by most standard mental defenses.


Adoration of the Frightful - this ones just for laughs. It lets you translate fear statuses into friendly attitudes for the duration of the spell, which is hilarious but probably not appropriate for the public audience. Might be useful for the follow up meetings though.

overall, that's another +4 to all Viserys' social checks, followed by a pair of luck bonuses somewhere north of +10 with CL buffs.

Which means that if Viserys wants to intimidate a CE asshole who doesn't worship him as a god then he could slap something north of +27 on top of his existing intimidate check. :V
[X] Azel
 
BronzeTongue said:
Okay, based on that and his character sheet it looks like he has space for some stuff.
Devil's Ego for a +4 profane bonus to charisma
Righteous Aura for a +4 sacred bonus to charisma
Divine Presence for a +5 sacred bonus to intimidate people who don't worship our deity (presumably Viserys himself) increasing to +10 against people who have one alignment in opposition to the caster, and +15 for those with two.
Improvisation for a floating luck pool. We have luck bonuses already, but they seem to mostly be one offs. This spell would provide a pool of 2 luck points/CL which can be spent to provide a bonus equal to the points used on attack rolls , skill checks, and ability checks. You can't spend more than half your CL in points on any one check, but that's still a hell of a bump if it's needed.

Other useful effects:
Crown of Glory - for 1 minute/CL it grants you a 10 ft/CL aura of celestial authority. Anyone with less than 8 levels/HD must stop what they're doing and face you. Your words are treated like suggestion spells and a telepathic communication effect ensures they understand you even if you don't share a language with them. Note that it is an evocation spell with a good subtype and not an illusion or enchantment spell with a mind effecting one, so it arguably shouldn't be blocked by most standard mental defenses.


Adoration of the Frightful - this ones just for laughs. It lets you translate fear statuses into friendly attitudes for the duration of the spell, which is hilarious but probably not appropriate for the public audience. Might be useful for the follow up meetings though.

overall, that's another +4 to all Viserys' social checks, followed by a pair of luck bonuses somewhere north of +10 with CL buffs.

Which means that if Viserys wants to intimidate a CE asshole who doesn't worship him as a god then he could slap something north of +27 on top of his existing intimidate check. :V
[X] Azel
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@Goldfish, be a good fish, write-up a focused "all the buffs we can possibly use for diplomacy cast at once"-list with numbers, from this and that old post.
I'll keep track of that un for y'all.
 
@DragonParadox

So looking like...

Various Westeros Regions: All Lords Blatantly Summoned
Various Western Essos Regions: Cordially yet Implicitly Invited
Orange Court of Yi Ti: Sent Delegates
Azure Court of Yi Ti: Sent A LOT of Delegates
Yellow Court of Yi Ti: Has a Bitchin' Fellbeast Mount
Vahar: ???
Ibben: ???
Nefer: ???
Summer Isles: Lord of Last Lament, ???
Peerless Empire: ???
Air Caliphate: ???
Maridar Emirates: ???
Vialesk: ???
City of Brass: :V 💎🙌
The Far Realm: :thonk:
The Abyss and Baator: Viserys' Cloak and the stunted little yappy heads of Tiamat
 
that mention of a hydra goose reminds me. don't we have some Hydras? like we had Yss bless them and i think one guards his temple in Tyrosh? or am i missing something
 
Rovos said:
that mention of a hydra goose reminds me. don't we have some Hydras? like we had Yss bless them and i think one guards his temple in Tyrosh? or am i missing something
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Yeah, there is that one, and one in SD.

It's been a fucklong while however, and they fell by wayside as utterly irrelevant - by nature of being too sentient to just harvest for meat/scale in my cringeworthy scheme, and not smart enough to use without training by anyone but Vee - meaning, patently not worth the time-investment when we had the forges in hand.

They are just background stuff.
 
now i just want to read about some random dude going to the temple of Yss for the first time and taking a wrong turn thus running into a Hydra
 
Rovos said:
now i just want to read about some random dude going to the temple of Yss for the first time and taking a wrong turn thus running into a Hydra
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By this point everyone has heard about those. It's not a random turn these days, more likely they are there to drop off treats and hoping some good luck rubs off on them.

If you inundate people with something bizarre for long enough, they just get their own ideas about it.
 
Crake said:
By this point everyone has heard about those. It's not a random turn these days, more likely they are there to drop off treats and hoping some good luck rubs off on them.

If you inundate people with something bizarre for long enough, they just get their own ideas about it.
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i meant someone who isn't from Tyrosh or the deep. like the visiters to the coronation
 
Rovos said:
i meant someone who isn't from Tyrosh or the deep. like the visiters to the coronation
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I don't really care about tourists. Gawkers will eventually leave and spread all sorts of crazy rumors about what they see, which drives people to come and visit and spread even more since things have changed sufficiently across the whole city by the time those old rumors reached the ears of the new visitors.

The thing about Sorcerer's Deep is that it's evolving every day and week, at a fast enough clip that even when we spread magitech and industry and the benefits of magic in public works and trade opens up and magical goods become ubiquitous and many new Scholarum branches open up...

...Sorcerer's Deep is going to still seem bizarre to everyone who doesn't live there, as the nexus between multiple different Planes, the center of a multi-continental empire, and the place that the eccentric ruler and his Archmage friends keep their loot, their experiments and the people they've collected along the way to act as their retinue / entourages.

It doesn't really bear repeating at this point, basically.
 
Rovos said:
i meant someone who isn't from Tyrosh or the deep. like the visiters to the coronation
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It'd feel a little forced for them to not be at least somewhat prepared by the time they got that far honestly.

I think an inversion might work better for the sort of encounter you're talking about. We have plenty of nonhuman employees at this point, and some of them do have business that could take them out to the sticks. Instead of the bumpkin somehow getting through most of SD without adapting a bit, they bumble into each other out where it's a genuine surprise.

Stuff like a naga's first attempt to convert humans while setting up all those little temples to Yss we had made, an erinyes on Inquisition duty trying to deal with being idolized by a child she just rescued, a giant trying to buy supplies at a peasant village halfway through a journey across the disputed lands, and that sort of thing.

Then you can play the culture clash in two different directions at once without making once side chronically ignorant.
 
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