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

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Duesal said:
I'd very pointedly gesture to Mereth as the soul in question here. Other than that looks good.
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I want to give them the impression we did it for some random citizen or something. It'd give the impression we might do it for their own loved ones.
In fact we probably won't, because doing that for every single soul is short-sighted and suicidal. But that's still a good impression to give, even if all it does is influence them emotionally in the moment.
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
Honestly this guy is such an incredible dipshit. Does it take more than two seconds to realize that if you're trying to keep a maximum number of people able to follow and practice their religion, maybe picking one religion to run the education system might not be great?
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Yeah. It would be such a shame if Mace has a mental break and hangs himself in his chambers later.
 
@TalonofAnathrax, I'd switch to Mereth. Yrael has slept since shortly after the Dawn Empire fell until the rise of magic. Mereth has been actively serving in Baators armies all this time. She should have a much better grip of this topic.

Which also neatly highlights why we consider it wise to recruit Fiendish expertise.
 
Goldfish said:
I wonder if his current chambers in the Palace are high enough that he could successfully defenestrate himself. Accidentally, of course.
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Accidents raise awkward questions, such as why he can't be resurrected. But a suicide? My... sounds perfectly normal that someone who killed himself would not wish to be brought back. Clearly, the loss of his mother and all the stress took a terrible toll and on the poor man... such a tragedy...
 
Azel said:
@TalonofAnathrax, I'd switch to Mereth. Yrael has slept since shortly after the Dawn Empire fell until the rise of magic. Mereth has been actively serving in Baators armies all this time. She should have a much better grip of this topic.

Which also neatly highlights why we consider it wise to recruit Fiendish expertise.
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Eh. I want to improve our PR more than the devils' PR, and I don't really care about having a good grip on the topic. He'l only giving them the broad strokes anyway ("Bad Guys Strong, here is where they, sometimes we ally with one bunch against another, and sometimes the effectively have deadman's switches because if we push them too hard they'll stop defending somewhere else")
 
[X] Plan As Talon, But With Mereth
-[X] "Gods have saved our souls for millenia, and they will continue to do so. The Imperium has helped old Gods such as Yss and Zathir better understand and shelter mortals. It has fought alongside R'hllor's own armies, and as our strength grows we will not only shield the souls of the living and ensure they are safeguarded by kindly Gods : we will continue to oppose the foes of all life in whatever realms they hide."
-[X] "I once fought an Archduke of Hell who challenged me over a soul. His skin was made into this cloak, and the souls were freed from his clutches. Victory can be ours, when the time is right and we have the strength to claim it."
-[X] "This is a war older than any of us. Your Gods fight for your souls already, and the Blood War between devils and demons has kept them both busy fighting each other for millennia. The horrors out there are many, but they are not united and they strike each other as often as they strike us. We will win this not by fighting them all at once, but by protecting ourselves and making sure each of our assaults brings us one well-timed step closer to victory for all."
-[X] Ask Mereth to present the military situation on the Planes, taking advantage of the unexpected moment to tact to drive home the notion that your baatezu are in the same boat as the rest of the Realm
-[X] Explain that Mereth's soul, due to a ritual cutting her off from Baator and which you perform on all fiends and most other Outsiders serving you, will be lost and dissipate, unless some astral predator or fiend snatches it up. It is a detail you could not explain in open session when they objected to Iziku, but you trust their loyalty because they trust you with the fate of their very souls.

@TalonofAnathrax, we got PR boosts every time we named a Celestial as a minister. Time to spend that on smoothing over objections to our less savory minions. It's also a great moment to explain our habit of cutting off Outsiders from their plane of origin.
 
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TalonofAnathrax said:
[X] "Gods have saved our souls for millenia, and they will continue to do so. The Imperium has helped old Gods such as Yss and Zathir better understand and shelter mortals. It has fought alongside R'hllor's own armies, and as our strength grows we will not only shield the souls of the living and ensure they are safeguarded by kindly Gods : we will continue to oppose the foes of all life in whatever realms they hide."
-[X] "I once fought an Archduke of Hell who challenged me over a soul. His skin was made into this cloak, and the souls were freed from his clutches. Victory can be ours, when the time is right and we have the strength to claim it."
-[X] "This is a war older than any of us. Your Gods fight for your souls already, and the Blood War between devils and demons has kept them both busy fighting each other for millennia. The horrors out there are many, but they are not united and they strike each other as often as they strike us. We will win this not by fighting them all at once, but by protecting ourselves and making sure each of our assaults brings us one well-timed step closer to victory for all."
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Too heavy on the gods.
They've had millenia to solve the issue and have not yet won.

I'd go along these lines:
1. Genie Empires are powerful enough to be a considerable force on the Planes, one even the likes of Hell or the Abyss can't easily challenge.
2. We are becoming a noticable factor in the war of the Genies.
3. Ergo we are getting to the point where war against the great powers of the Multiverse is at least concievable, we just need more build-up and allies.
4. Stuff like supporting Burny against that small-fry goddess of Fire was a good start in the right direction.
 
Artemis1992 said:
Too heavy on the gods.
They've had millenia to solve the issue and have not yet won.

I'd go along these lines:
1. Genie Empires are powerful enough to be a considerable force on the Planes, one even the likes of Hell or the Abyss can't easily challenge.
2. We are becoming a noticable factor in the war of the Genies.
3. Ergo we are getting to the point where war against the great powers of the Multiverse is at least concievable, we just need more build-up and allies.
4. Stuff like supporting Burny against that small-fry goddess of Fire was a good start in the right direction.
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I'll give them a speech like that when we have our Leviathan running. For now we're reassuring these people. Let's stick with the paradigm they know.

Azel said:
-[X] Explain that Mereth's soul, due to a ritual cutting her off from Baator and which you perform on all fiends and most other Outsiders serving you, will be lost and dissipate, unless some astral predator or fiend snatches it up. It is a detail you could not explain in open session when they objected to Iziku, but you trust their loyalty because they trust you with the fate of their very souls.
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That's actually a really good point. I'm sold.

[X] Azel
 
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Yrael also has a valuable perspective to share, namely that even when the Celestial Planes were intact and united, when the Good-aligned Outsiders were every bit as powerful as any Fiendish faction, the thought of actually defeating one of those other factions would have been laughable. It took an existential, reality threatening OCP showing up, namely the Void bursting through all the defenses of Heaven and shanking them to upset the balance of power sufficiently that things could go to shit like they have.
 
Goldfish said:
Yrael also has a valuable perspective to share, namely that even when the Celestial Planes were intact and united, when the Good-aligned Outsiders were every bit as powerful as any Fiendish faction, the thought of actually defeating one of those other factions would have been laughable. It took an existential, reality threatening OCP showing up, namely the Void bursting through all the defenses of Heaven and shanking them to upset the balance of power sufficiently that things could go to shit like they have.
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Not what these people need to hear right now. We can drip-feed them the rest of the situation later when they had some time to digest the basics.

Preferably when the Leviathan is online and we can point to that as our solution.
 
-[X] "Gods have saved our souls for millenia, and they will continue to do so. The Imperium has helped old Gods such as Yss and Zathir better understand and shelter mortals. It has fought alongside R'hllor's own armies, and as our strength grows we will not only shield the souls of the living and ensure they are safeguarded by kindly Gods : we will continue to oppose the foes of all life in whatever realms they hide."
-[X] "I once fought an Archduke of Hell who challenged me over a soul. His skin was made into this cloak, and the souls were freed from his clutches. Victory can be ours, when the time is right and we have the strength to claim it."
-[X] "This is a war older than any of us. Your Gods fight for your souls already, and the Blood War between devils and demons has kept them both busy fighting each other for millennia. The horrors out there are many, but they are not united and they strike each other as often as they strike us. We will win this not by fighting them all at once, but by protecting ourselves and making sure each of our assaults brings us one well-timed step closer to victory for all."
-[X] Ask Yrael to present the military situation on the Planes—he is a celestial, though one who has Fallen. Grim is likely to be his answer much as he might try to lighten it.
-[X] Explain that Mereth's soul, due to a ritual cutting her off from Baator and which you perform on all fiends and most other Outsiders serving you, will be lost and dissipate, unless some astral predator or fiend snatches it up. It is a detail you could not explain in open session when they objected to Iziku, but you trust their loyalty because they trust you with the fate of their very souls.

I think that the military situation would come better from the governor of Mantarys rather than Mereth.
 
Doesn't matter if they keep their mouths shut. If you are not Mindblanked 24/7, you are not even getting a hint of that plan. I'll readily soulkill any security risks to this project.

Just imagine Asmodeus getting wind of this early on and managing to insert a backdoor to snatch control from us.
 
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