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

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Daredevil_Dave said:
The moment all the dragons died during the Dance should have been it me thinks. The one thing keeping everyone from killing the Targs and forming their own kingdoms just got merked by the Targs themselves, their incompetence, and peasants. That should have been the death knell for the dynasty. But suprisingly, no one tried anything...well, no one succeed, I guess.
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Given Peak's behavior during this, the answer is that everyone tried something, but it was mostly to try to take over for themselves, and there were so many people TRYING to do that apparently that they forgot it would just be easier to break away into distinct Kingdoms again.

The only ones who really benefitted from the Targs ruling is the Riverlands, who at least got a generation of peace in-between big wars for once.
 
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Crake said:
Given Peak's behavior during this, the answer is that everyone tried something, but it was mostly to try to take over for themselves, and there were so many people TRYING to do that apparently that they forgot it would just be easier to break away into distinct Kingdoms again.

The only ones who really benefitted from the Targs ruling is the Riverlands, who at least got a generation of peace in-between big wars for once.
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I mean the Crab Bucket theory really works in your favor if you're the one crab already sitting on the rim looking down.
 
Crake said:
Given Peak's behavior during this, the answer is that everyone tried something, but it was mostly to try to take over for themselves, and there were so many people TRYING to do that apparently that they forgot it would just be easier to break away into distinct Kingdoms again.

The only ones who really benefitted from the Targs ruling is the Riverlands, who at least got a generation of peace in-between big wars for once.
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That is kind of like a man being so busy trying to dance that he forgets he can walk, independence should not be some forgotten notion that you have to be crazy to consider, it should be reflexive to the feudal lord faced with a weak central power. As dumb as the King in the North is in canon the cultural impetuous to make it is obvious and should have been much more prevalent IMO.
 
Crake said:
Given Peak's behavior during this, the answer is that everyone tried something, but it was mostly to try to take over for themselves, and there were so many people TRYING to do that apparently that they forgot it would just be easier to break away into distinct Kingdoms again.

The only ones who really benefitted from the Targs ruling is the Riverlands, who at least got a generation of peace in-between big wars for once.
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I'm actually surprised Dorne didn't to be independent again to be honest.
 
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Daredevil_Dave said:
I'm actually surprised Dorne didn't try it to be honest.
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Dorne actually has a half-way decent excuse. Everyone got together and had a grand old time shitting on the Dornish, and Dorne came away from that the winner, but only due to DUMB FUCKING LUCK and a lot of incompetence in the other kingdoms' part. They really should have all been murdered and their lands stripped away, and maybe some trustworthy foreigners to come in and occupy parts of the lands since it wouldn't have taken much to make the arable parts productive while knights persecuted the less good parts of the place that the natives were forced to retreat to.

Staying apart of Westeros but culturally distinct enough that no one bothered them for the most part because it was just too much of a hassle without the appropriate casus belli and much more valuable intrigue to be conducted in Central Westeros, was probably the right call.
 
DragonParadox said:
Dorne was independent at the time. It is not until the Young Dragon that it is taken.
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I think he means, why not break away during any of the other calamitous events that took place afterwards, like any of the multitude of Blackfyre rebellions, even in the aftermath after everyone was tired from all the fighting, or after / during the Great Spring Sickness when no one could fight a war anyway.

They didn't because it really didn't change things too much for them. Taxes to the Iron Throne? Meh. That's annoying, but they tried TWICE to get greater power through marriage ties to the Crown, and while both attempts are a mixed bag, politically speaking it was the right call to make in either canon or ASWAH timelines, if only for a lack of ANY options, better or worse. It was either sit back and be a non-entity, or participate in politics and if things go wrong... probably give a token effort in any war your banners are called to participate in before fucking off back home, just like you did in the previous four Blackfyre rebellions.
 
Crake said:
I think he means, why not break away during any of the other calamitous events that took place afterwards, like any of the multitude of Blackfyre rebellions, even in the aftermath after everyone was tired from all the fighting, or after / during the Great Spring Sickness when no one could fight a war anyway.

They didn't because it really didn't change things too much for them. Taxes to the Iron Throne? Meh. That's annoying, but they tried TWICE to get greater power through marriage ties to the Crown, and while both attempts are a mixed bag, politically speaking it was the right call to make in either canon or ASWAH timelines, if only for a lack of ANY options, better or worse. It was either sit back and be a non-entity, or participate in politics and if things go wrong... probably give a token effort in any war your banners are called to participate in before fucking off back home, just like you did in the previous four Blackfyre rebellions.
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Well yeah, also the fact that they actually had strong connections to the throne, up until Robert at least and then they had yet hope of a Targ restoration
 
DragonParadox said:
To be honest I am not sure the realm should have outlived the dragons. They were the only thing allowing a medieval king hold sway over such a huge area. The only comparison from actual history I can think of are the mongols but

A)That soon fell apart

and

B) They had a hell of a more more organization and infrastructure than the Iron Throne ever did

One of the stranger things to me was the fact that Westeros is even as culturally homogeneous as it is. Realistically I think people should be speaking distinct but related languages in places like Dorne and the Vale. I mean I kind of played fast and loose with related languages in Essos and Valyria was only 400 years ago. The Andals who are the last continent wide linguistic influence are millennia old. All well and good to say that Old Tongue +Andalic = Common Tongue but if we look at the real world Latin + Germanic = All the Romance Languages. They might have been mutually intelligible at first, but thousands of years later like no just no. Westeros is way too homogeneous.
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I mean, Spain managed to keep a colonial empire around for quite a while on strict feudalism and pretty much all former Spanish colonies kept limping along with quasi-feudal system to this very day. Mexico still is a feudal state wearing a republican mask, while strongly Mexican areas in the US were acting like feudal fiefs of local potentates until well into the 1970s.

Running a realm the size of Westeros on feudalism is possible, but Martin gives so little in terms of political, cultural and institutional background that there is no real way to say what exactly should keep a realm together.

It barely makes sense for regions like the Vale, the Westerlands or the North to have been unified. The Riverlands at least had a sensible amount of instability. Oldtown and the Mandervale should have been distinct kingdoms.

I could go on for a while...


As for the languages, compare the old Latin language of 400 AD to the local tongues of the successor states in Iberia, France, Italy and so on by 800 AD. Aside from the heavy Germanic influence in many areas, even relatively pure languages like Romanian had heavy drift by then. Even church Latin, which is by far the purest form of Latin to survive the fall of the Western Roman Empire, had marked drift by then.

It kinda makes sense for Essos to retain mutually intelligible versions of Valyrian due to a mix of cultural preservation through worship of the Valyrian Freehold and the fact that there were no signifcant barbarian conquest of former colonies, but still. Braavos having a version of Valyrian at all is supremely odd. By all means, Braavos should have it's own language that is at most loosely related to Valyrian.

As for Westeros, there should be dozens of languages. Heck, there should be at least three variants of the original First Men language surviving to this day in the Mountain Clans, the rural North and Beyond the Wall, and given the massive drift over the ages, they should be mutually unintelligible.

Why is Dorne not speaking a hodgepodge of Andal and Rhoynar? And where is the weird language isolate that is the equivalent of Basque?
 
Yeah, Braavos speaking a tongue that was mutually comprehensible with those of other cities was pure convenience on my part, way back when I gave you guys the chance to get on a ship an sail off from Braavos I decided that for ease of telling the story you would be able to understand the tongue most spoken in your destination.
 
Azel said:
I mean, Spain managed to keep a colonial empire around for quite a while on strict feudalism and pretty much all former Spanish colonies kept limping along with quasi-feudal system to this very day. Mexico still is a feudal state wearing a republican mask, while strongly Mexican areas in the US were acting like feudal fiefs of local potentates until well into the 1970s.
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The Spaniards had guns and cannons and their colonies don't. So that's a good stabilizing factor.

The Targs lost theirs. Dragons were the guns pointing at every potential rebels heads. And then the royal family turn it around, put it in each others' mouths, and pulled the trigger.
 
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I mean, fucking Basque... It's a language whose roots likely are outside of the Indo-European language family, which means it's roots predate the fucking Kurgan Expansion. The roots predate domesticated horses and patriarchal culture in Europe.

Why is there never a fantasy equivalent of this?
 
Azel said:
I mean, fucking Basque... It's a language whose roots likely are outside of the Indo-European language family, which means it's roots predate the fucking Kurgan Expansion. The roots predate domesticated horses and patriarchal culture in Europe.

Why is there never a fantasy equivalent of this?
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There are some hilarious Atlantis theories around the origin of that language.
 
Azel said:
Yeah. And given the geography of Westeros, there should be a dozen of them.
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I think the issue is that GRRM did not care that much about the languages or even the history of the setting he wrote in. He wanted the people from all over Westeros to speak the same language and to do it fluently so he could get on with the interactions. If he had say gone with a Latin-like language of the elites than he would have had to explain that yes Arya did sit and listen for those lessons, or that Catelyn had caught her Riverlander or something and again more complexity he likely did not want to deal with and to be fair to him it it clear most readers are not fussed by the fact that we have this continent wide common language.
 
DragonParadox said:
I think the issue is that GRRM did not care that much about the languages or even the history of the setting he wrote in. He wanted the people from all over Westeros to speak the same language and to do it fluently so he could get on with the interactions. If he had say gone with a Latin-like language of the elites than he would have had to explain that yes Arya did sit and listen for those lessons, or that Catelyn had caught her Riverlander or something and again more complexity he likely did not want to deal with and to be fair to him it it clear most readers are not fussed by the fact that we have this continent wide common language.
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He is pretty much the anti-Tolkien in that sense.
 
Now that you brought it up:

Dorne should have a different language entirely. It was first settled by First Men, then Andal adventurers (the conquering kind, not the D&D kind) came down and took over. A couple centuries later the Rhoynish refugee arrived in the tens of thousands. Their language should have been a hodgepodge of idioms, borrowed words, and slangs among other things that no longer sounds anything like the Common Tongue at all.
 
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Vote closed.
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Apr 24, 2021 at 2:06 PM, finished with 67 posts and 13 votes.
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DragonParadox said:
I think the issue is that GRRM did not care that much about the languages or even the history of the setting he wrote in. He wanted the people from all over Westeros to speak the same language and to do it fluently so he could get on with the interactions. If he had say gone with a Latin-like language of the elites than he would have had to explain that yes Arya did sit and listen for those lessons, or that Catelyn had caught her Riverlander or something and again more complexity he likely did not want to deal with and to be fair to him it it clear most readers are not fussed by the fact that we have this continent wide common language.
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The problem with that is that is leaves a lot of the world flat, boring and interchangeable. There is barely a cultural difference between core-Westeros, the Iron Isles, the North and Dorne.

I mean, you can easily say that Reacher is the Lingua Franca due to all Maesters studying in Oldtown (which is also idiotic, but one inconsistency at a time) so everyone speaks Reacher among the nobility when interacting over long distances.

There's just a ton of things you can do with that. Catelyn could be much more important in the Riverlands due to speaking the local language, justifying why Rob keeps her around. Character could show prejucides against each other based on their accents. You could flesh out Bronn as the wandering sellsword by speaking some weird hodgepode of accents, while using badly translated idioms of three different languages. Tyrion could be shown as studios by knowing how to speaking multiple languages fluently. Same for Sam. The Cleganes or Janos Slynt could speak a very broken Reacher, which is noted by other nobles to as a sign of being upjumped peasants. Arya could sneak around in Harrenhall because Tywin thinks she speaks only Riverlander and doesn't understand a word during council meetings and then comes a subplot where she is in danger of being found out because someone else notices she has a weird accent and is likely not a proper Riverlander.

There's just... so... fucking... much...

Take note that nearly all important characters in this scenario still speak the same language, but by making it an actual language instead of having a continent wide universal translator there is much more depth to the setting and the characters.
 
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GRRM isn't a "they did the research" writer. The most he can say on the subject of writing and the work that goes into it, is that you have to show dedication to your concept and keep at it, instead of just being inspired as a flash in the pan but never really finishing your work or creating something that can stand on its own.

The "Anti-Tolkien" philosophy is a good example there. People will still consume it because it is easy enough to jump right into and only focus on the stakes the characters are experiencing, even if the more observant or educated reader feels a little like they are going to a Renne Faire with a CGI budget instead of a fantasy world.
 
Crake said:
She should probably conspire with Manderly and Velaryon to get some of these.

While the nostalgia and cultural gravitas associated with sailing is some shit to deal with, until the Deep Ones have been excised from the seabed like the cancerous tumors they are, she's just painting a big ole target on her back.
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If she's really dedicated to the theme Asha could try getting a soulforged Bone Skiff style capitol vessel to sail around in. Add an at will ship wide Psychic Turmoil field, maybe replace a few of the combat arms with Shadow Arrow ballista so that it can tag underwater targets with strength damaging ranged touch attacks, and add on a Ring of Continuation style item to allow for cheap buffing and she'd have a good base to work off of.

Most of the time she'd probably want to slot in Armor of Darkness to stop people from frying her ship with AoE light based undead killing spells, but the flexibility to swap it out for something else as needed would be nice.

This whole thing would be stupidly expensive, but she could technically try it.
 
Crake said:
GRRM isn't a "they did the research" writer. The most he can say on the subject of writing and the work that goes into it, is that you have to show dedication to your concept and keep at it, instead of just being inspired as a flash in the pan but never really finishing your work or creating something that can stand on its own.
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I do feel personally attacked by this...

Which likely was not the intention, but still. 😩
 
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