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

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DragonParadox said:
Ships of Air and Sea​

Nineteenth Day of the Fifth Month 294 AC

The former Archmaester Benedict makes something of a strange sight wearing the colors and armor of the Legion, one assumes in the hope of trying to erase the memory of the grey robes of his former calling, even as taking up the name of Deepfinder does. A touch on the nose, but you chose the man for his skill in military theory, not politics or public relations. In truth, a lack of skills there might even be a selling point to a degree. The last thing the realm needs is marshals overly involved in politics. Still, it does make the confirmation a bit of a slog as several among the Vox of Braavos and Lorath call into question his experience and even make veiled comments about the supposed loyalty, or lack thereof, of those who bore a maester's chain. This is not so much an objection to a Westerosi, you guess, but to what is likely seen as another conservative voice on the Curia that will side with the landholders, be they of east or west.

No one is quite sure what to make of celestials, devils, shaitan, and azer, but everyone east of the Narrow Sea seems certain they understand their Westerosi colleagues, especially the ones who had hardly met one before. One can already hear the refrain of their debates over everything from trade to infrastructure to education. Well, you had asked for a place for them to debate... it is clear that until voting blocks form that debate is likely to swirl chaotically from one supposition to another.

Thankfully, Tyrael is sure to slip through on both his military record and the simple fact of his nature, while sharing nothing of the glaring golden light that had dazzled so many or the subtle shiver of Netzachel. In a sense, you were right, but another matter was raised over the course of the interview.

"...if I may be so bold as to ask the Air Marshal, what is to be done with the ships that yet sail upon the face of the ocean?" the Lady Doreah Phassen asks. "I make no claim that such vessels can even hold a candle to your great ships of the air, but surely defense from the sea is of grave import given those that lurk beneath the waves as well as the current dependence of most trade between east and west upon the waters of the Narrow Sea."

"You speak the truth, my lady, but I can no more speak for the readiness of the galleons any more than I can over that of the Legion," Tyrael replies. "While it is true much of the recruitment of the Air Force is among seamen, the ships themselves are not under my command."

"Well then, should not their commander be represented in this great body?" the lady asks, all too aware that the senior officers of the fleet tend to skew first to the Braavosi and then to the Myrish, Lyseni, and Tyroshi in that order. From the glance she throws to the Sealord, it looks as though there is some understanding between them in this matter.

Perhaps the first inklings of a political block east of the Narrow Sea...

Still, you do not think you can give them this victory even if you wanted to. In a matter of decades, if not years, sea going ships shall be as much a thing of the past as chariots thanks to the Deep Ones and the simple economics of air transport. How you present this fact to a chamber containing so many places with a strong maritime tradition and interests just as strong is not obvious. Perhaps you could devolve the ships back to local control or some of them at least, that would make for some very happy trading cities... but on the other hand, it would seem favoritism compared to the inland lords to whom you had just denied military improvements.

What do you do with your remaining wet navy?

[] Write in

OOC: A quick update so we can have a vote going and cover a small transitional issue.
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Made some additional edits to the chapter, DP.
 
Azel said:
We already have admirals in charge of our fleets though. People with actual naval command experience. They just never appeared, because Empire is where our Pokemon are stored.

Let's just keep them off-screen and taking orders from High Command instead of form Viserys directly for the remaining time that they exist.
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We have admirals?? Damn I don't remember that. Fair enough.
 
Azel said:
To be perfectly fair, there is no textual evidence of us having admirals, but their existence can be inferred from us having organized fleets.
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I think there might be.

I remember that we talked about making Moonsong an Admiral at some point and we decided against her, so I guess we must have chosen someone else?
 
Viserys did point out like four updates ago the composition of the curia could change as circumstances dictated so the eventual obsolescence of the navy isn't really a impediment to having naval representation here at the moment and given the medium term war with the Deep Ones it's probably still going to be relevant for a bit. Could be a nice political stop.

Dunno, spitballing.
 
Naval ships are completely useless against the Illithid though. The last time we fought them, our ships were sitting ducks that could not survive for five minutes without PC attention.

When that conflict breaks out, we will have to evacuate the ocean and start sending the Air Force.
 
Vote closed, brought to you by this being an absurdly boring Sunday.
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Apr 26, 2021 at 10:01 AM, finished with 26 posts and 11 votes.
  • [X] The remaining navy will remain under the Imperial High Command for the time being, while it's duties (protecting trade lanes, anti-piracy measures and ensuring maritime hegemony) will gradually be taken over by the Air Force. As the need for ships contracts, they will be demilitarized and sold off to shipping companies (with most of them likely ending up in the byzantine labyrinth of Red Scales Holding).
    [X] Add a new post under the Air Marshall. Call it the Admiral of the Navy.
    [X] Creat and invest in more Aquaculture and Mariculture companies.
    [X] Have them armed with some small defenses: like crossbows and ballistas?
    [X] The Admiral of Braavos for the Main Fleet
    -[X] Privatization for the rest
Click to expand...
 
DragonParadox said:
Vote closed, brought to you by this being an absurdly boring Sunday.
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Apr 26, 2021 at 10:01 AM, finished with 26 posts and 11 votes.
  • [X] The remaining navy will remain under the Imperial High Command for the time being, while it's duties (protecting trade lanes, anti-piracy measures and ensuring maritime hegemony) will gradually be taken over by the Air Force. As the need for ships contracts, they will be demilitarized and sold off to shipping companies (with most of them likely ending up in the byzantine labyrinth of Red Scales Holding).
    [X] Add a new post under the Air Marshall. Call it the Admiral of the Navy.
    [X] Creat and invest in more Aquaculture and Mariculture companies.
    [X] Have them armed with some small defenses: like crossbows and ballistas?
    [X] The Admiral of Braavos for the Main Fleet
    -[X] Privatization for the rest
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Uhm... unless you have a holiday, it's Monday....
 
Winning Vote
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Apr 26, 2021 at 10:01 AM, finished with 26 posts and 11 votes.
  • [X] The remaining navy will remain under the Imperial High Command for the time being, while it's duties (protecting trade lanes, anti-piracy measures and ensuring maritime hegemony) will gradually be taken over by the Air Force. As the need for ships contracts, they will be demilitarized and sold off to shipping companies (with most of them likely ending up in the byzantine labyrinth of Red Scales Holding).
    [X] Add a new post under the Air Marshall. Call it the Admiral of the Navy.
    [X] Creat and invest in more Aquaculture and Mariculture companies.
    [X] Have them armed with some small defenses: like crossbows and ballistas?
    [X] The Admiral of Braavos for the Main Fleet
    -[X] Privatization for the rest
Click to expand...
 
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Part MMMDCCLXXVII: Settling Accounts
  • Threadmarks
    • Settling Accounts ​

    Twentieth Day of the Fifth Month 294 AC

    'Don't break the wheel that is still turning', goes a saying your mother is fond of with the corollary of 'especially when it is soon to be replaced with a better wheel in any case'. Thus, you simply see to it that the navy can continue its duties under the Imperial High Command until those duties can be taken over by the Air Force and Air Marshal Tyrael.

    Lady Doreah seems somewhat disappointed in the announcement, but the Sealord seems to have been expecting it. An agreement of support for something he knew would not make it past the proposal, and therefore cost him nothing? you wonder. It has the sort of elegance one expects from a Braavosi getting a foot in the door.

    The last marshal to be presented is Hazhak mo Zhoa, and his confirmation is almost startlingly smooth. Where you had thought that a man with no connections and loyalty to any major faction in the Imperium and without the cachet of age old experience would struggle, he is instead seen as inoffensive and easily swayed to this position or that. Many of the magisters and the more conservative members imagine they have a kinship with him because he is Ghiscari and everyone knows how the Ghiscari are about social matters... Not even his own soldiers like him as much as some of the others, after all. At the same time, the feudal lords in Westeros see him as one without support who might be inclined to vote with them, perhaps swayed by the Minister of War or his fellow, Marshal Benedict. There is a lot of counting of unhatched dragons going about, and in truth you might say they are counting the eggs those dragons will supposedly lay, though perhaps one can understand the point.

    After lunch, the order of the day is sorting out which fiefs you will keep and what lands you will buy for erecting military bases all over the Imperium, a matter which could prove vastly profitable for those members of the Curia who are land holders by blood or by election, in the name of their constituencies, of course.

    You find yourself in the possession of lands in places that are almost certainly worth keeping, like the Eyrie and Casterly Rock, but also minor keeps and the ruins of minor keeps from the Reach to the Stormlands, to the Vale and the Riverlands. The only kingdoms that have not lost lords to the pacification are Dorne by the foresight of its lord and the North by your own foresight, unless one is to presume that the deed to Eddard Stark in keeping Jon alive and safe was a cunning political move, of which you do not suspect of the Duke of the Winterlands, not then and not now.

    Part of you wonders if you should treat some parts of the Stoney Shore, where the North meets the cold waters of the Sunset Sea, as crownlands simply because the land is so barren. You could found a village in those lands and be found not by the taxman that year, but by fur traders cutting their way through the woods like explorers in some strange land or by smugglers looking for an hidden alcove. There is a reason no one noticed actual slave traders heading to Bear Island, and it was not their great capacity to blend in among the local populace.

    Adding to the affairs of the day are the underground fey. Pech, bulabar, and those born of their joining have decided on where they would like to make their subterranean mountain home, or rather they had narrowed down the possibilities to three mountain ranges rich with untapped ores; the Mountains of the Moon where they had found mithral beneath one of the peeks, where Dalla had discovered her nesting hippogriffs and which by chance fell into the lands she had been granted to settle and reign over, the Western Heights near the ruined Tarbeck Hall where they had discovered a thin vein of sunsilver left behind by some ancient magic perhaps as old as the Sundering of the Spheres, and finally there are the Red Mountains, where near the springs of the Scourge in the foothills of the Red Mountains there lies undisturbed a node of viridium, as precious as it is perilous to all who would dare mine it. You suspect quite a lot of lords will be bidding this way and that to try to persuade the fey to settle in their lands and bring to light the wealth of the earth, but first the time has come to present initial land proposals.

    What lands do you wish to offer up and which to buy for military installations?

    [] Write in

    Additionally, do you wish to become involved in the bidding for where the fey will settle?

    [] Yes
    -[] Write in how

    [] No

    OOC: The fey have been trading favors like crazy to get those nodes scouted out, do not expect them to be able to do that again in so short a time.
    ort a time.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • DragonParadox said:
    Settling Accounts ​

    Twentieth Day of the Fifth Month 294 AC

    'Don't break the wheel that is still turning', goes a saying your mother is fond of with the corollary of 'especially when it is soon to be replaced with a better wheel in any case'. Thus, you simply see to it that the navy can continue its duties under the Imperial High Command until those duties can be taken over by the Air Force and Air Marshal Tyrael.

    Lady Doreah seems somewhat disappointed in the announcement, but the Sealord seems to have been expecting it. An agreement of support for something he knew would not make it past the proposal, and therefore cost him nothing? you wonder. It has the sort of elegance one expects from a Braavosi getting a foot in the door.

    The last marshal to be presented is Hazhak mo Zhoa, and his confirmation is almost startlingly smooth. Where you had thought that a man with no connections and loyalty to any major faction in the Imperium and without the cachet of age old experience would struggle, he is instead seen as inoffensive and easily swayed to this position or that. Many of the magisters and the more conservative members imagine they have a kinship with him because he is Ghiscari and everyone knows how the Ghiscari are about social matters... Not even his own soldiers like him as much as some of the others, after all. At the same time, the feudal lords in Westeros see him as one without support who might be inclined to vote with them, perhaps swayed by the Minister of War or his fellow, Marshal Benedict. There is a lot of counting of unhatched dragons going about, and in truth you might say they are counting the eggs those dragons will supposedly lay, though perhaps one can understand the point.

    After lunch, the order of the day is sorting out which fiefs you will keep and what lands you will buy for erecting military bases all over the Imperium, a matter which could prove vastly profitable for those members of the Curia who are land holders by blood or by election, in the name of their constituencies, of course.

    You find yourself in the possession of lands in places that are almost certainly worth keeping, like the Eyrie and Casterly Rock, but also minor keeps and the ruins of minor keeps from the Reach to the Stormlands, to the Vale and the Riverlands. The only kingdoms that have not lost lords to the pacification are Dorne by the foresight of its lord and the North by your own foresight, unless one is to presume that the deed to Eddard Stark in keeping Jon alive and safe was a cunning political move, of which you do not suspect of the Duke of the Winterlands, not then and not now.

    Part of you wonders if you should treat some parts of the Stoney Shore, where the North meets the cold waters of the Sunset Sea, as crownlands simply because the land is so barren. You could found a village in those lands and be found not by the taxman that year, but by fur traders cutting their way through the woods like explorers in some strange land or by smugglers looking for an hidden alcove. There is a reason no one noticed actual slave traders heading to Bear Island, and it was not their great capacity to blend in among the local populace.

    Adding to the affairs of the day are the underground fey. Pech, bulabar, and those born of their joining have decided on where they would like to make their subterranean mountain home, or rather they had narrowed down the possibilities to three mountain ranges rich with untapped ores; the Mountains of the Moon where they had found mithral beneath one of the peeks, where Dalla had discovered her nesting hippogriffs and which by chance fell into the lands she had been granted to settle and reign over, the Western Heights near the ruined Tarbeck Hall where they had discovered a thin vein of sunsilver left behind by some ancient magic perhaps as old as the Sundering of the Spheres, and finally there are the Red Mountains, where near the springs of the Scourge in the foothills of the Red Mountains there lies undisturbed a node of viridium, as precious as it is perilous to all who would dare mine it. You suspect quite a lot of lords will be bidding this way and that to try to persuade the fey to settle in their lands and bring to light the wealth of the earth, but first the time has come to present initial land proposals.

    What lands do you wish to offer up and which to buy for military installations?

    [] Write in

    Additionally, do you wish to become involved in the bidding for where the fey will settle?

    [] Yes
    -[] Write in how

    [] No

    OOC: The fey have been trading favors like crazy to get those nodes scouted out, do not expect them to be able to do that again in so short a time.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Made some additional edits to the chapter, DP.
     
    Azel said:
    We need a bunch of bases though to get a good coverage. The curse of success.

    The circle represents the area which can be reached from that airbase in one hour by a response force.

    We'd need patrol squadrons for:
    - Bear Isle
    - Skagos
    - Eyri
    - The Rock
    - Morrogos
    - Morosh
    - The Arbor
    - Sorcerers Deep
    - Volantis
    - Gogossos

    Westhaven and Harrenhall should be built out as airbases, but since those are larger installations, they don't really need dedicated patrol wings. Preferably, we would have a full squadron of Type-C Wyverns per airbase. Plus FLAK-Towers on the ground, warded hangars and so on and so forth.
    Click to expand...
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    [X] Some of the lands you need are already under governmental control or easily purchased without political consideration (Sorcerer's Deep and Westhaven, where you pretty much control all zoning to begin with and stored most of your hardware beforehand, Gorgossos which is a military colony, Skagos where you already have a trading post on Skane).
    -[X] However that leave multiple places you have only just secured coverage (Harrenhal, the Eyrie and Casterly Rock) to establish in fact before the Curia since there will be the regular concerns of having hundreds of thousands of Imperial Marks worth of military hardware stored or in use in Central Westeros, and many places you haven't any air coverage at all yet.
    --[X] Purchase land for air bases and garrisons in:
    ---[X] Bear Island
    ---[X] Morrogos
    ---[X] Morosh
    ---[X] The Arbor
    ---[X] Volantis

    With the annexation of Qarth we'll have to arrange something about them, but I'm pretty sure all other basing concerns (that bit of land unpatrolled in the middle of the Rhoynish region) will have to wait until we've conquered Norvos and Qohor since I'm kinda guessing the latter is where we're expanding our coverage toward, which incidentally would cover that land. Qarth is so remote that making that arrangement will have few internal divisions over the matter since there's A) So much EMPTY fucking land that isn't really nominally under anyone's control and B) mostly foreign ones since the Yi Tish will be unhappy about Wyverns being at most an hour away from violating their borders (and population centers).
     
    [X] Plan Air Coverage
    -[X] Military Bases
    --[X] The Rock - Air Force
    --[X] The Eyri - Air Force
    --[X] Harrenhall - Air Force / Legion
    --[X] The Arbor - Air Force
    --[X] Bear Isle - Air Force
    --[X] Skagos - Air Force
    --[X] Morrogos - Air Force
    --[X] Morosh - Air Force / Legion
    --[X] Ar Noy - Air Force / Legion
    --[X] Gogossos - Air Force / Legion
    --[X] All other minor keeps left in Westeros that have not already been earmarked for the bureaucracy or other things to move in will be handed to the local lords to do with as they please.
    -[X] Fey
    --[X] Buy the land under which the Veridium was found. The substance is too dangerous to be mined by private interests and you will keep all of it for military applications.
     
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