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

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Thanks for looking up the items @Goldfish @BronzeTongue I'll put them in a reference site soon.

A bit of bad news too today, it is Easter for me so I'll be doing Easter things a lot, updates will probably come late and towards evening. Still I will have plenty of time to think about them, it is not what I would call mentally engaging. :V
 
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Interlude MLXXV: Lay of the Land
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    • Lay of the Land ​

    Twenty-Fourth Day of the Fifth Month 294 AC

    Raymun Darry sat gingerly on the crimson-blacked chair, as though the thing might carry some curse of dark lore that would send his mind into the depths of despair again though he knew that was folly and superstition. There was no ill will here, no malice in what had been said with sorrow and with as much care as could be managed. No more than it was an evil thing to print an account of devils and dark fey in the Times to ensure that the smallfolk had some protection against the perils they might bring. So with a prayer he sat beside the new Lord of the Twins, glad in his heart that he would no longer have to deal with Walder, for all he did not show it in his face nor voice.

    "What was the plan for the day?" he whispered, feeling as he had when he was a boy and he forgot the maester's assignment, needing to ask his brothers what he aught to have learned.

    "Infrastructure," the older man said back, not bothering to keep his voice back as much. "Time and past time if you ask me. Too many kings were worried about upsetting the High Lords and did not get aught done for all my kin profited from it. I bet you will be seeing a new way of doing things today."

    The laugh was very familiar for all it lacked the dry edge of old Walder's. Raymun was glad to have them more or less on his side, as much as the Freys could be said to be on any side save their own.

    The lord of Darry had made his points about the need of more roads in the Riverlands as soon as it became known that there would be a new Scholarum in his lands at Saltpans, forcing down a twinge of unease at the thought of so many magickers about. There are folk good and evil among those just as among any other craft, he reminded himself, and in this new world their craft would be among the most needed. One had but to walk the streets of the Deep to see that, never mind what he had heard two days past. His House and his smallfolk would be well served by such a school, but they would still need more, much more if they were to match up their neighbors. King's Landing would pull trade south as it had ever done and all the more now that...

    ***​

    "Over the next quarter I expect the Kingsroad to be improved to the standards of an Imperial Highway with arterial roads branching out to bind the North and the Vale closer to the rest of the realm. For too long have those who traveled there suffered from great peril and expense on the road, and by both have we all been made poorer and less united..." It was usually hard to read the Imperator beyond what he wanted you to hear in his voice, bright or terribly deep and forbidding. A light in his eyes that caught you, but it seemed to Raymun in that hour that he was almost offended by the road he had inherited from the greatest of his forefathers.

    Like he would rather rule over Essos and from Essos, a niggling fear kindled in his heart a little brighter even as he clapped along. One could not deny that the capital, for all its strangeness, was a Essosi city. Most of its people prayed to the fire god in his gilded temples and the tongue heard beyond this chamber rang with the oily smooth tones of Valyrian. Robes you were more likely to find here than honest breeches and shirts, and of Westeros the most you might see were the pale trees with leaves of blood that gave the new Duke Darry a chill down his spine. Not enemies no, but allies strange and unchancy and not the heralds he would have preferred in the city of the King... fuck, Imperator.

    Too many new words, too many new things to name if things were to be said aright, but he would manage.

    "...a canal shall be cut between Seagard and the Twins with the widening of the tributaries of the Blue Fork while a new city with a harbor shall be built near the Twins and the harbor at the Saltpans shall be expanded to make room for greater traffic. Thus too shall be made for trade in the manner that has been common in the Riverlands for many a long age, only made more effective with new means..."

    There was something about locomotives, whatever those were for the spell on the chamber could not find aught to translate them into the Common tongue, but Raymun was not listening anymore, already considering the implications of a new city. A Riverlander city of the sort that had not been in all the years of the realm, with high septs and wide streets, with bells to call the hour by the ring of arcane mechanism, with strong walls against invaders, but welcoming docks for traders and scholars from distant lands. He would have to talk to Cox about the taxes... though with his daughter being a Companion he dreaded being able to exert his proper authority on the old Knight of Saltpans.

    I'll have to speak to uncle Willem on the matter, and mayhap to Royce. He was a Valeman true, but not as high and mighty with it as some and with the new roads the harbor at Saltpans would be the best way to transport goods from the Narrow Sea to his own lands. If he could broker some kind of understanding between him and the Freys to vote and act together, then they would have a voting block not soon discounted and not just in the halls of the Curia.

    "Roads shall also be improved in Dorne all across the province with special care given to the connections to the Bridge of the Arm, by which goods and travelers shall be able to cross the realm from east to west and west to east without call on ship or sorcery," the Imperator finished his announcements to polite applause from most of the chamber and the sort of smug look from Doran Martell usually reserved for foxes that had made a meal of the whole henhouse.

    Never mind the bloody Essosi, the Dornish were about to steal a march on us all and all the trade of King's Landing, never mind Saltpans would not be worth shit beside what might come over that bridge. "Lord Frey, I would be honored if you could meet with me at my townhouse this evening. In light of recently announced spending there is much that we might speak of..."

    "Much indeed," Stevron Frey replied, puffing up looking not so much like a weasel as like an old grey pigeon with his eye on some shinny prize.

    1. Upgrading the Kingsroad to Imperial standards and building Arterial Roads in the North and the Vale (1 Action from the Ministry of Public Work)
    2. Building a network of roads in Dorne (1 Action from the Ministry of Public Work)
    3. A canal cut between Seagard and the Twins along with widening the tributaries of the Blue Fork (1 Action from the Ministry of Public Works)
    4. A Trade City with a Harbor near the Twins and expanding the harbor at Saltpans (1 Action from the Ministries of Public works or the Ministry of Administration)
    5. Making Tracks useful for train service (1 Action from the Ministry of Public Works) and Getting locomotives fit for tram use (1 Research Action)

    What next?

    [] Write in

    OOC: I still ended up rushing this a bit so I could get it out before I have to run. Hope it did not suffer quality-wise for it. I wanted to get across how the Monarchists think about politics from the inside, so a person who is not that important to you guys like Ser Quincy Cox suddenly seems very notable indeed in the eye of someone who still thinks in terms of individual relationships like the one you have with Rina.... and never mind that Rina is an immortal fey now. Duke Darry did not even meet her so far.
     
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    • DragonParadox said:
    a person who is not that important to you guys like Ser Quincy Cox suddenly seems very notable indeed in the eye of someone who still things in terms of individual relationships like the one you have with Rina
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    Is he wrong? If Rina's relationship with her family keeps improving, convincing Ser Quincy Cox of something really is a good way to make Rina hear about it. And if Rina considers an issue important, she can casually mention it to us.
    If you can't get a motion through the Curia but still hope it'll get Imperial attention, this works.
     
    TalonofAnathrax said:
    Is he wrong? If Rina's relationship with her family keeps improving, convincing Ser Quincy Cox of something really is a good way to make Rina hear about it. And if Rina considers an issue important, she can casually mention it to us.
    If you can't get a motion through the Curia but still hope it'll get Imperial attention, this works.
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    Well kind of, I mean the issue would have to get past the filter of Rina, who does love her family, but is an immortal ice fey so she does not care much about the price of turnips in Saltpans or whatever, and she would also have to convince Viserys when he can be quite hardheaded about these things.
     
    Also isn't there still some coldness between her and her father?
    Last I remember they don't exactly hate each other anymore, but she's definitly not close enough to him to support his economic interests without a good reason.
     
    Northern infrastructure should be our main focus now with Others are sharpening their knife and need to bind north more solidly to Imperium.
     
    DragonParadox said:
    OOC: I still ended up rushing this a bit so I could get it out before I have to run. Hope it did not suffer quality-wise for it. I wanted to get across how the Monarchists think about politics from the inside, so a person who is not that important to you guys like Ser Quincy Cox suddenly seems very notable indeed in the eye of someone who still things in terms of individual relationships like the one you have with Rina.... and never mind that Rina is an immortal fey now. Duke Darry did not even meet her so far. Not yet edited.
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    First of all, it actually is Raymun Darry, not Raymund. Thank GRRM.

    Secondly, this is more of a case of Viserys making most of his decisions with regards to spending and directing departments in terms of their immediate, short, medium and long term benefits, and then rating the political impetus by "how much soft power will I have to exert to smooth over disregarding politics when making those decisions?" Which is more of a job for the Ministry of Diplomacy and the Inquisition, depending on the approach.

    So far beneath the level of abstraction for him to be worrying about in terms of "who is this person and why should I care about him?" Except in scenarios where he is being approached directly, in which case Viserys is the most charismatic person in any room so he has an unfair advantage for making that person leave the room with a better impression of Viserys than when they entered it, regardless of the nature of what topic they were raising for discussion.

    Which makes me think--if people start to recognize Viserys is never going to be on the losing end of any social interaction, using relations-based politics against him really only works if you have spent large amounts of influence and time working your way up the ladder of all the strange personages he is actually attached to, not the estranged family member who owns some spit of land but is nevertheless related to one of the Governors the Imperator had a hand in instating in their position.

    Slipping little details past him like old "King's Landing is a snakepit, always has been"-type Courtiers did, like they did with Aerys, and with any number of Targs before him, isn't going to work when Viserys reads intelligence reports on the people he is scheduled to meet each day using magic to assimilate that information quickly, so is always walking into the meeting with the information he needs to understand their motives, their interests, and the Sense Motive and Diplomacy bonuses to ferret out more information than they intended to reveal in one meeting.

    And he can arbitrarily reschedule a meeting to have assets confirm the truth of something far sooner than most will ever really know, since the mechanisms whereby he actually gains information are purposefully opaque while having a sufficient front presented to make people comfortable with the concept of Viserys knowing what you had for breakfast unless you worked closely enough with the Inquisition at some point that you were able to get licensed for Anti-Divination wards (since I presume this means you have some kind of Security Clearance in your file that allows you to possess knowledge ordinary people shouldn't be able to divine ever).

    A lot of this isn't obvious either, even after understanding the changes with the different branches of government taking over duties that were either mostly untouched and therefore incongruent due to there actually being someone DOING that work now, or was done unevenly and up to the whims of the current rulers. It's of a nature for a Court where you have to grow up and spend years imbedded in that kind of environment, hob-knobbing with vastly different kinds of people (business contacts, contractors, experts) rather than the traditional sort (professional/inveterate courtiers, high nobility, famous knights or ladies in waiting sworn to the right people and therefore being able to whisper in the right ears).

    Some of those things will have new positions, but many will lose a lot of their traditional weight when making political maneuvers because just having the ear of the right person or being able to get a rumor to someone at a specific time under a specific context isn't enough anymore, they also need to present information with more data backing up their claims or someone will call them out on it far faster than they are used to.
     
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    It should be worth keeping in mind that there is only so much divination resolution the House of Mirrors will ever have on most people. The spell divination is a riddle, augury has a fail chance and commune is 5th level so you had better have a resonably good reason for using it and burning up a piece of the caster's soul in the process. That said for the Dukes, yeah you can assume they are high profile enough that the Inquisition could pull up their breakfast menu if they wanted, Ironically enough if you want to plot in the Imperium you are better served being at lower levels of power and prestige.
     
    DragonParadox said:
    Like he would rather rule over Essos and from Essos, a niggling fear kindled in his heart a little brighter even as she clapped along. One could not deny that the capital for all its strangeness was a Essosi city.
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    If anything Viserys was so offended at Westerosi infrastructure that there was no way he wouldn't conquer the continent. How else would he fix everything?
     
    Crake said:
    Wonderful explanation.
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    TL;DR: Viserys not only knows that you're trying to sell him a bridge, he's got every relevant piece of paperwork already on his desk, has read them twice, and knows that you haven't even set foot on the riverbank, let alone bought any timber.

    And the fact your third-cousin gave the landowner a handjob 2 tourneys ago isn't a reputable reference.
     
    Ok, so what will happen to the seat in the Vox that was left empty after that one magister resigned frommental break? Do we have to personally select someone or will it naturally fill in?
     
    Solar Saiyan said:
    Ok, so what will happen to the seat in the Vox that was left empty after that one magister resigned frommental break? Do we have to personally select someone or will it naturally fill in?
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    Vox are elected, they will simply have an election before the end of the term. I really need to get to putting up the constitution in a more accesable place and do some more interludes with the Vox on campaign.
     
    @Crake, I have to contest that classical methods still work in the Imperial system, but that their targets shift. Now it is no longer important to sway the king directly to get something done, but instead you can usually achieve your goal by convincing the right bureaucrat of your ideas. If you want a bridge over the Mander, then the easiest way to get one is to convince the regional Ministry of Public Works official that this bridge would be a good idea.
     
    Azel said:
    @Crake, I have to contest that classical methods still work in the Imperial system, but that their targets shift. Now it is no longer important to sway the king directly to get something done, but instead you can usually achieve your goal by convincing the right bureaucrat of your ideas. If you want a bridge over the Mander, then the easiest way to get one is to convince the regional Ministry of Public Works official that this bridge would be a good idea.
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    Sure but they answer to people too, right? Who in turn answer to other people. And so on and so forth, until you arrive at the Minister of Public Works. Who then answers to Viserys.

    And Viserys lays out the mandate--if you're doing something, make sure you read the report on it. And the report will be brought back up later--do not lose that. You will need it to justify yourself when something goes wrong.

    So therefore--data points. Have them ready.
     
    Crake said:
    Sure but they answer to people too, right? Who in turn answer to other people. And so on and so forth, until you arrive at the Minister of Public Works. Who then answers to Viserys.

    And Viserys lays out the mandate--if you're doing something, make sure you read the report on it. And the report will be brought back up later--do not lose that. You will need it to justify yourself when something goes wrong.

    So therefore--data points. Have them ready.
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    That's my point though. Once you are far enough down the chain, you can generate the right data for your purposes.
     
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