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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

@Crake, IIRC the Deep Ones aren't just mind flayers. They're a faction of psionic beings whose race varies (and I'm not just talking about their slave races). IIRC we've fought powerful Deep One Aboleths in the past.
 
Goldfish said:
Let's just hope they weren't vivisected before being rendered down for parts or disassembled to extract whatever it is which the Deep Ones are seeking. The Deep Ones are alien monsters and the Mindflayers callously feast on Human brains because they're tasty, but they're generally not cruel unless the cruelty itself serves a given purpose.

[X] Azel
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The Aboleths are... weird, but they definitely seem to recognize what viciousness is. The Mind Flayers however are only too aware of cruelty and I think too quick to leap to that when they are trying to interact with humans on a level beyond sustenance. They also do surprisingly have the time to experience xenophobic contempt for other races, not enough to avoid all interactions, but all the ones that don't immediately have some benefit to them. Then there's the Beholders who are just universally homicidally xenophobic (because they're budded from the same one).
 
DragonParadox said:
They are dead or worse. Generally speaking there is no possibility of and immediate rescue. When you vanish into the sea following the call of blood and twisted minds older than the gods you do not generally get to come back.
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Should we flesh forge Ser Kennos a new body just in case the Deep Ones try to call on his blood as well?
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
[X] Azel

@Crake, IIRC the Deep Ones aren't just mind flayers. They're a faction of psionic beings whose race varies (and I'm not just talking about their slave races). IIRC we've fought powerful Deep One Aboleths in the past.
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...I just implied as much in the same post you are referencing. And I've been participating in this quest for as long as we've had interactions with them. :wtf:
 
Crake said:
...I just implied as much in the same post you are referencing. And I've been participating in this quest for as long as we've had interactions with them. :wtf:
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Sorry, I must have misunderstood you. I read your post as basically saying "the Deep Ones can hire an Aboleth", which seemed weird because they have in-house Aboleths ;)
And I'm aware that you've been in this quest for years. I just thought you might have forgotten an old detail or two.
 
@TalonofAnathrax I see where the confusion is now.

Do you think by "hiring", some transactional exchange isn't going down when they choose to cooperate? The Aboleths are in no way likely to be under the direct control of the Elder Brain, no matter how OMGWTFBBQ sauce powerful it is, and it is that.

They have their own cities, and their own even more alien goals. That they have managed to align that with the Illithids despite canon lore showing their extreme concern for their origins not withstanding, each unique aberration part of their faction is likely to keep each other at one removed distance. They only seem universally aligned because the type of squabbling that humans get up to just can't be observed here--and clearly that's not entirely correct recently, since there's a whole splinter group we weren't even aware of that are trying to overthrow the Elder Brain. And we can barely tell the difference between the two, since they're both still complete monsters.
 
We simply have no idea what Aberration politics are since we never observed any of them. What we see are war parties, one instance of a shared research project, and one Aboleth way back when in an Illithid fortress we nuked by destabilizing a portal in it. For all we know, those were the only two Aboleths in the history of the universe who willingly worked with the Illithid. Or the Illithid destroyed the Aboleth realms and enslaved them at some point slightly to the f'thagn of our layer of space-time.

Imagine that we were to invade another planet from which the regular D&D cosmology can not be reached for some reason. All exposure to Fey or Devils these people would have would be Imperial strike teams containing them. How would they know what our relationship to Devils is in any detail? They might reason that all Devils in existence are working for us, because that's the only place they ever encountered any.

Same problem here. If we want to poke Aberration politics, we should go to Elyisum and visit some of their cities that are open to outsiders.
 
Azel said:
We simply have no idea what Aberration politics are since we never observed any of them. What we see are war parties, one instance of a shared research project, and one Aboleth way back when in an Illithid fortress we nuked by destabilizing a portal in it. For all we know, those were the only two Aboleths in the history of the universe who willingly worked with the Illithid. Or the Illithid destroyed the Aboleth realms and enslaved them at some point slightly to the f'thagn of our layer of space-time.

Imagine that we were to invade another planet from which the regular D&D cosmology can not be reached for some reason. All exposure to Fey or Devils these people would have would be Imperial strike teams containing them. How would they know what our relationship to Devils is in any detail? They might reason that all Devils in existence are working for us, because that's the only place they ever encountered any.

Same problem here. If we want to poke Aberration politics, we should go to Elyisum and visit some of their cities that are open to outsiders.
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What we really need to do is bookify the first Aboleth we can and have Qyburn read it for us.
 
Duesal said:
What we really need to do is bookify the first Aboleth we can and have Qyburn read it for us.
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I mean... every single one of these things with tons of forbidden secrets hidden in their heads has had extensive counter-measures taken to prevent mind-reading.

Apparently it's such a concern that even the Platinum Bullshit that is Scribe's Binding requires a highly specialized dedicated researcher with top of the line protections to get anything out of it.

@DragonParadox this impression would be greatly alleviated if we heard word back on what Qyburn got out of that one Void Daemon book we made...
 
Considering that each Aboleth shares a common genetic memory stretching back millions of years, possibly even longer, it's possible that the Scribe's Binding spell simply cannot encompass such a vast store of information, no countermeasures needed.
 
@Crake, the basic problem is less that we need a researcher and more that Qyburn is the one guy we have who can easily deal with memetic hazards. Like how he had the Daemon book drive him insane over a thousand times to figure out what it wanted.
 
Goldfish said:
Considering that each Aboleth shares a common genetic memory stretching back millions of years, possibly even longer, it's possible that the Scribe's Binding spell simply cannot encompass such a vast store of information, no countermeasures needed.
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The memory storing structures in their spine must be some kind of highly efficient medium for containing information.
 
Crake said:
@DragonParadox this impression would be greatly alleviated if we heard word back on what Qyburn got out of that one Void Daemon book we made...
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I'll see when I can fit that in, though what I can say now is that the Void and the Deep Ones are not the same in this regard. Jeyne is made with Deep One flesh-smithing and she is wielding their mental arts while being perfectly safe otherwise. Contrast to Rina who not only needed divine intervention to help out, but who also became Winter Fey not one of the Void. The far realm and its arts are incidentally corrosive to the world, the Void willfully so.
 
Azel said:
@Crake, the basic problem is less that we need a researcher and more that Qyburn is the one guy we have who can easily deal with memetic hazards. Like how he had the Daemon book drive him insane over a thousand times to figure out what it wanted.
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I just had the sudden desire to read a story about Qyburn somehow ending up in the Shadowrun setting.

The megacorp that secured his services would be salivating at the shit coming out of his labs. What would you even call a clinic that is more cutting edge than a black Delta facility? Ultraviolet?
 
Goldfish said:
I just had the sudden desire to read a story about Qyburn somehow ending up in the Shadowrun setting.

The megacorp that secured his services would be salivating at the shit coming out of his labs. What would you even call a clinic that is more cutting edge than a black Delta facility? Ultraviolet?
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Vantablack.
 
Goldfish said:
I just had the sudden desire to read a story about Qyburn somehow ending up in the Shadowrun setting.

The megacorp that secured his services would be salivating at the shit coming out of his labs. What would you even call a clinic that is more cutting edge than a black Delta facility? Ultraviolet?
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The Corp is one thing, but imagine an elite runner team being sent to kidnap him for a rival.
 
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