Remove ads

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

Reader mode
As an aside, are these newspapers being printed like actual newspapers, or see they more like pamphlets? I'd assume the former by default, but if they copied a press built for textbooks and modified it to suit their needs I could see the end result being something closer to the latter.
 
BronzeTongue said:
Congratulating people for pulling a fast one on us seems like a bad idea, even if we don't want to discourage this particular activity.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
there is no fast one being pulled , this was the expected result of our actions taken the only thing this guy is guilty of is being the first to go into the printing business , besides encouraging intuitive ,competence and creativity are a good thing and we are still sending the inquisition to make sure things are on the up and up anyway
 
mmgaballah said:
there is no fast one being pulled , this was the expected result of our actions taken the only thing this guy is guilty of is being the first to go into the printing business , besides encouraging intuitive ,competence and creativity are a good thing and we are still sending the inquisition to make sure things are on the up and up anyway
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
One of the two default options was to react with concern at the lore left for a reason. I don't know if we actually made what is effectively industrial espionage a crime, and the fact that we wanted this knowledge to spread would probably stop us from going after him if we did, but that doesn't mean we want to encourage copy cats to go after state enterprises at random.
 
BronzeTongue said:
One of the two default options was to react with concern at the lore left for a reason. I don't know if we actually made what is effectively industrial espionage a crime, and the fact that we wanted this knowledge to spread would probably stop us from going after him if we did, but that doesn't mean we want to encourage copy cats to go after state enterprises at random.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
from what I can tell he only when into printing after we made it legal , for all we know he could have been sitting on that lore waiting for our go ahead or he has some friends with connections who gave him some insider info which he used to get a running start on the ground floor of the printing market
 
mmgaballah said:
from what I can tell he only when into printing after we made it legal , for all we know he could have been sitting on that lore waiting for our go ahead or he has some friends with connections who gave him some insider info which he used to get a running start on the ground floor of the printing market
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It states in the post that he acquired that lore by hiring away people who worked with the machines to walk an enchanter through how they worked. It's not about printing being legal, it's about the fact that he stole valuable knowledge by poaching employees instead of buying it from the people who designed a be machines and owned the operation.

We wanted this to spread so I'm not going to advocate going after him for it, but that doesn't mean we should openly congratulate him for doing so. That just signals that we're okay with more people trying, which is likely to cause us trouble in the future.
 
Remove ads
Interlude MLXXXIII: Tinder and Spark
  • Threadmarks
    • Tinder and Spark ​

    Thirteenth Day of the Seventh Month 294 AC

    Gulltown, the Verdant Vales Province

    Two men and a woman in dark grey doublets with the golden trumpet badge of the Ministry of Information walk into the future headquarters of the Gulltown Sentinel. They do not intend to linger long, especially the one who is not in truth a member of that ministry and should in fact bearing a sign of silver not gold, but Eddard Nailer, the man who had by a certain measure spied on the state for his own gain proves, affable and clever. It is not hard at all to see how he must have done it and indeed how he had managed to acquire so large a fortune in so short a span of time. The middle-aged merchant was not old money even my mercantile standards, nor did he feel the need to play at it. He had made his fortune as a middleman, buying from the Silver Serpent goods of the burgeoning Imperium and selling them off without 'the stink of dragon's breath on them'.

    Anya even meant it when she toasted his good fortune, though she knew he was the sort of fellow who would not have even glance at her enough to spit her way when she was an urchin down by the fish market. That is not why she had taken the assignment though. Eddard here was also a former associate not just of the Silver Serpent but also of the late lord Baelish, whose death had been quietly celebrated all over not just this town but King's Landing also.

    Not all that gets mud on their belly's is a swine as my pa used to say, but they could be, they could be indeed. Fortunately it seemed this was not the case this time. Oh it was clear the man before her was free of neither greed nor ambition, but that was only to be expected. He was a merchant for the gods' sake not, a begging brother, and he seemed to have no more designs for the Sentinel than to be the principal source of a new type of advertisement all throughout the city and the province, as well as providing solid news on everything from the weather to public commodity prices. His political ambitions seemed to be thoroughly nonexistent and a few glasses of wine later it was clear why.

    Old Ed had known the old Master of Coin well enough to have a guess how deep he was in political intrigues, how deep he had been even as far back as his time in Gulltown. "Boasted to me once about bedding both the Tully daughters he did. How a man could be so smart and so dumb all at once I'll never know. I say to him, 'Petyr, stay out of the snake pit or you're going to get bit.' He says the snakes are too blind to take a bite out of the likes of him. Foolishness... foolishness I say. It's what got him killed in the end and make no mistake. A man like him doesn't die from slipping, he gets pushed. By the Lannisters is my bet, but keep that under yer cap if you please."

    Hireos from the local Office of Information glanced at Anya in what he probably fondly thought was a surreptitious manner. He knew she was from the Inquisition, though not her rank.

    The young inquisitor shook her head, no trouble here as far as she could see. They could keep to the script.

    "You understand of course, master Nailer, that there are certain editorial standards all of us must keep when the words printed on paper reach not dozens of souls as each of us can, nor hundreds as the crier in the public square, but thousands, tens even hundreds of thousands..."

    To his credit it did not take old Ed long to realize what they were getting at and he was more than willing to play along, eager in fact. It was not like he had thought one day to get into the newspaper business without reading the only other newspapers in the world. "I am always happy to advance the cause of the Imperium by deed and word. Beyond all other considerations, I have done very well from its inception," he motioned expansively at the study with its polished oak shelves lit by fine brass lanterns that burned with smokeless flame. "How can this humble soul help?"

    "Well we do have some strange news to spread about, like these..." The ministry man set down a small winged figure, not quite an angel, painted crimson and black on he desk.

    "What... er, who is that?" the merchant asked, looking intrigued, though perhaps more at the impossibly fine workmanship of the magically shaped steel.

    "That is Fury, once servant of Mammon, Lord of the Third, whose hide the Imperator now wears like a cloak..."

    "Isn't that a bit of a heavy story to be sharing over spirits and sponge cake," the other ministry official said, sounding a touch worried.

    "Oh come now, there is nothing secret here, nothing Baron Dirt-grubber the Third did not find out months ago," Hireos waved the matter off. "We are running articles in all the other papers in parallel with spreading the models. There is even a war game a little like Cyvasse you can play with some of them..."

    "I have never gotten into Cyvasse much, a bit too much of a Dornish thing for my tastes," Nailer shrugged. "I'm sure there are perfectly nice folk south of the Red Mountains, and I hope they stay there if you catch my drift. Now, which are these figures you might have trouble explaining?"

    And so the two officials explained precisely which ones might be troublesome to the populace, with Anya keeping a close watch to make sure nothing too detailed slipped by or indeed that the merchant himself did not turn sour to the idea, which was hardly impossible when explaining man eating snake-men renegade devils and walking corpses stitched from flesh that had never lived into the guise of black knights. Far from being disturbed or disgusted Eddard Nailer was fascinated, seeming to take particular joy in the fact that the priests had been wrong about devils and angels in some way.

    "I keep telling them world's a complicated place, turns out I am right even about devils in hell and angels in heaven, or well both on earth, but you get my meaning yeah. I'll write up some fine articles about all that, don't you worry..."

    ***​

    Twentieth Day of the Seventh Month

    So he did the next month, thoughtful and well-researched even, with interviews from several of the people involved, from a esteemed Volantene necromancer talking about the nature of unlife, to a brief piece from a Fury about how she spent her free time now that she was no longer chained to the shackles of hell. The articles went down well enough among the educated elite of Gulltown, with even the most pious knowing enough discretion not to cause trouble.

    The real trouble started from the fact that the toys were designed to travel far and wide, even into the villages and hamlets of what had been until recently the Vale of Arryn and with them traveled a few of the first run of the Sentinel, to be read and interpreted by that was most often the only literate person in the village, the septon.

    It did not take long for a very many worried parents to learn from such a source what precisely were some of the 'toys' their children were playing with. The words 'blasphemy' and 'doom' featured rather heavily in such sermons and by the time the yet few inquisitorial agents had figured out what was going on it was already far too late, rumor was running wild that they were about to be invaded by devils from the mouths of people who had never actually held one of the offending figurines, much less read that the Sentinel had to say.

    More than Toys: 1 (Crit Failure)

    What do you do?

    [] Make use of the power of the local lords to quell the unrest

    [] Put pressure on the High Septon to speak against the inflammatory preaching

    [] Use direct Imperial force to put an end to this

    [] Write in

    OOC: And this is what a crit fail looks like, generally it is something that comes out of left field and takes an unlikely combination of circumstances to happen.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Honestly this isn't even "out the left field" or unexpected. I'm not sure the Vale should have reacted in any other way, and if it had, it would be because the areligious nobility (since we killed the fanatics in the invasion) would have been the ones applying pressure and they just were really good at keeping it quiet.
     
    Crake said:
    Honestly this isn't even "out the left field" or unexpected. I'm not sure the Vale should have reacted in any other way, and if it had, it would be because the areligious nobility (since we killed the fanatics in the invasion) would have been the ones applying pressure and they just were really good at keeping it quiet.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Yeah, but without the nat 1 you would not have had the chain reaction that lead to people reacting so fast and so strongly. Ignorance was working for you for once by softening the blow as it diffused in the population.
     
    [X] Put pressure on the High Septon to speak against the inflammatory preaching

    Don't really see the High Septon being able to do much all things considered with how divided the faith is even after the conclave. It is however better than the other options that would see us being painted as a tyrant and could damage our reputation with the citizenry and perhaps the lords as well
     
    [X] Put pressure on the High Septon to speak against the inflammatory preaching

    Fearmongering with no basis in reality is not acceptable behaviour
     
    DragonParadox said:
    Tinder and Spark ​

    Thirteenth Day of the Seventh Month 294 AC

    Gulltown, the Verdant Vales Province

    Two men and a woman in dark grey doublets with the golden trumpet badge of the Ministry of Information walk into the future headquarters of the Gulltown Sentinel. They do not intend to linger long, especially the one who is not in truth a member of that ministry and should in fact bear a sign of silver not gold, but Eddard Nailer, the man who had by a certain measure spied on the state for his own gain, proves affable and clever. It is not hard at all to see how he must have done it and indeed how he had managed to acquire so large a fortune in so short a span of time. The middle-aged merchant is not old money even by mercantile standards, nor did he feel the need to play at it. He had made his fortune as a middleman, buying from the Silver Serpent goods of the burgeoning Imperium and selling them off without 'the stink of dragon's breath on them'.

    Anya even meant it when she toasted his good fortune, though she knew he was the sort of fellow who would not have even glanced at her enough to spit her way when she was an urchin down by the fish market. That is not why she had taken the assignment though. Eddard here was also a former associate not just of the Silver Serpent, but also of the late lord Baelish, whose death had been quietly celebrated all over not just this town but King's Landing also.

    Not all that gets mud on their belly's a swine, as my pa used to say, but they could be, they could be indeed. Fortunately, it seemed that was not the case this time. Oh it was clear the man before her was free of neither greed nor ambition, but that was only to be expected. He was a merchant for the gods' sake, not a begging brother, and he seemed to have no more designs for the Sentinel than to be the principal source of a new type of advertisement all throughout the city and the province, as well as providing solid news on everything from the weather to public commodity prices. His political ambitions seemed to be thoroughly nonexistent and a few glasses of wine later it was clear why.

    Old Ed had known the old Master of Coin well enough to have a guess how deep he was in political intrigues, how deep he had been even as far back as his time in Gulltown. "Boasted to me once about bedding both the Tully daughters, he did. How a man could be so smart and so dumb all at once I'll never know. I say to him, 'Petyr, stay out of the snake pit or you're going to get bit'. He says the snakes are too blind to take a bite of the likes of him. Foolishness... foolishness, I say. It's what got him killed in the end and make no mistake. A man like him doesn't die from slipping, he gets pushed. By the Lannisters is my bet, but keep that under yer cap if you please."

    Hireos from the local Office of Information glanced at Anya in what he probably fondly thought was a surreptitious manner. He knew she was from the Inquisition, though not her rank.

    The young inquisitor shook her head, no trouble here as far as she could see. They could keep to the script.

    "You understand, of course, master Nailer that there are certain editorial standards all of us must keep when the words printed on paper reach not dozens of souls as each of us can, nor hundreds as the crier in the public square, but thousands, tens, even hundreds of thousands..."

    To his credit it did not take old Ed long to realize what they were getting at and he was more than willing to play along, eager in fact. It was not like he had thought one day to get into the newspaper business without reading the only other newspapers in the world. "I am always happy to advance the cause of the Imperium by deed and word. Beyond all other considerations, I have done very well form its inception," he motioned expansively at the study with its polished oak shelves lit by fine brass lanterns that burned with smokeless flame. "How can this humble soul help?"

    "Well we do have some strange news to spread about, like these..." The ministry man set down a small winged figure, not quite an angel painted crimson and black on he desk.

    "What... er, who is that?" the merchant asked, looking intrigued, though perhaps more at the impossibly fine workmanship of the magically shaped steel.

    "That is a Fury, once servant of Mammon, Lord of the Third, whose hide the Imperator now wears like a cloak..."

    "Isn't that a bit of a heavy story to be sharing over spirits and sponge cake," the other ministry official said, sounding a touch worried.

    "Oh come now, there is nothing secret here, nothing Baron Dirt-grubber the Third did not find out months ago," Hireos waved the matter off. "We are running articles in all the other papers in parallel with spreading the models. There is even a war game a little like Cyvasse you can play with some of them..."

    "I have never gotten into Cyvasse much, a bit too much of a Dornish thing for my tastes," Nailer shrugged. "I'm sure there are perfectly nice folk south of the Red Mountains, and I hope they stay there if you catch my drift. Now which are these figures you might have trouble explaining?"

    And so the two officials explained precisely which ones might be troublesome to the populace, with Anya keeping a close watch to make sure nothing too detailed slipped by or indeed that the merchant himself did not turn sour to the idea, which was hardly impossible when explaining man eating snake-men, renegade devils, and walking corpses stitched from flesh that had never lived into the guise of black knights. Far from being disturbed or disgusted, Eddard Nailer was fascinated, seeming to take particular joy in the fact that the priests had been wrong about devils and angels in some way.

    "I keep telling them, world's a complicated place, turns out I am right even about devils in hell and angels in heaven, or well both on earth, but you get my meaning yeah. I'll write up some fine articles about all that, don't you worry..."
    ***​

    Twentieth Day of the Seventh Month

    So he did the next month, thoughtful and well researched even, with interviews from several of the people involved, from an esteemed Volantine necromancer talking about the nature of unlife, to a brief piece from a Fury about how she spent her free time now that she was no longer chained to the shackles of hell. The articles went down well enough among the educated elite of Gulltown, with even the most pious knowing enough discretion not to cause trouble.

    The real trouble started from the fact that the toys were designed to travel far and wide, even into the villages and hamlets of what had been until recently the Vale of Arryn, and with them traveled a few of the first run of the Sentinel, to be read and interpreted by that was most often the only literate person in the village, the septon.

    It did not take long for a very many worried parents to learn from such a source what precisely were some of the 'toys' their children were playing with. The words 'blasphemy' and 'doom' featured rather heavily in such sermons and by the time the yet few inquisitorial agents had figured out what was going on it was already far too late, rumor was running wild that they were about to be invaded by devils from the mouths of people who had never actually held one of the offending figurines, much less read that the Sentinel had to say.

    More than Toys: 1 (Crit Failure)

    What do you do?

    [] Make use of the power of the local lords to quell the unrest

    [] Put pressure on the High Septon to speak against the inflammatory preaching

    [] Use direct Imperial force to put an end to this

    [] Write in

    OOC: And this is what a crit fail looks like, generally it is something that comes out of left field and takes an unlikely combination of circumstances to happen. Not yet edited.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Here's an edited version of the chapter. DP.
     
    [X] Put pressure on the High Septon to speak against the inflammatory preaching
     
    Having grown up in a small, extremely conservative and religious town in rural North Carolina, this outcome is so easily to believe.

    Ever had to explain how playing D&D doesn't mean that you worship 'the Devil'? I have.
     
    Goldfish said:
    Let's just say it went a long way toward firming up my current level of misanthropy. 20+ years later and its still going strong.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Man you know I would not exactly call Romania a bastion of social progress, but that still seems really strange to me. I mean I have seen the videos of old news stories and really silly fundamentalist propaganda on the scale of Santa is Satan, but it is just hard for me to get emotionally that anyone would care enough about kids playing an RPG to even notice, much less decide they have to do something about this game. You would think 'it's like a board game' would cover it.

    *shakes head in sad bewilderment*:???:
     
    DragonParadox said:
    Man you know I would not exactly call Romania a bastion of social progress, but that still seems really strange to me. I mean I have seen the videos of old news stories and really silly fundamentalist propaganda on the scale of Santa is Satan, but it is just hard for me to get emotionally that anyone would care enough about kids playing an RPG to even notice, much less decide they have to do something about this game. You would think 'it's like a board game' would cover it.

    *shakes head in sad bewilderment*:???:
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Because it was during a time when WASPs were encouraged by their government to react fearfully to anything that fell outside a specific substrate of social engineering.
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top