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

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Goldfish said:
Don't forget that a MrQy's Happy Meal also comes with a Dawnfruit slushy.
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We are inventing Fast Food companies now. The name is going to be Mc Dragon, its pet will be Glyra, and the Ice Cream machine will never work either, unless you want to try the experimental Blue Ice Icecream, which ironically we haven't figured how to turn off.
 
On an tangentially note, I've been looking around for things to help with our defenses for the wards that we should look into if we're going on another head hunting trip off plane soon.

The wards block planar nonsense, but since we can attune to them and ignore that we should be exploiting the advantage as throughly as possible.

Phase Spiders are 8 ft 700 lbs spiders, which is bad enough on its own. Their real trick is that they can jump into the ethereal plane as a move action, and back to the material as a free one. If they do that as part of an ambush they can take a full round of actions during the surprise round.

At CR 5 they're somewhat pricy, but they're sapient so we can teach them to use items if we don't just make a primitive variety to use as attack dogs.

Phase Fleas are tiny sized fleas who can pull a similar ethereal ambushing trick. They can also fit 4 of themselves into a single square without penalty and have a decent con damage attack. At CR 4 they're also much more affordable.

If we make an unintelligent version of the fleas we could have them trained as disposable chaff for interplanar mega spider kill squads.

Just imagine how unpleasant it'd be to try fighting something like that when you barely have any spells available to detect or effect them until after they've attacked.

Elusa Hounds for tracking anyone we have running encounters with inside our own bases as we did in our raid.

With mind blank that sort of thing is usually a bust, but the way EHs work might give us some wiggle room. If their arcane aight successfully detects the aura of a creature or a spell it casts then for the next 3 hours it gets a +10 competence bonus on the survival check to actually hunt them down.

It's not exactly the same as directly divining a location, so I think it's worth looking into.

Another cheap and interesting option would be to pick up some samples of Pond Drinkers to grow as attack dogs.

Beyond being a disgusting 1-2 ft long vermin they only really have one thing going for them. They constantly produce an 15 ft radius ultrasonic aura that forces anyone casting a spell within it to make a DC 15 + spell level concentration check to successfully complete it.

For anti efreeti work specifically, pairing brown mold Moldwretches with Calathgars would work beautifully.

Fighting a brown mold moldwretch is already a pain for anything fire aligned, but adding calathgars just makes it even worse. They get fast healing from cold damage, which is explicitly triggered by the temperature of brown mold.

They do have a fire weakness, but if you kill them with fire damage they double the growth of any nearby brown mold. If there isn't any mold nearby they just decay into a patch of the stuff on the spot.

Have fun getting through that when the best tool to fight the primary environmental hazard is both your element opposite and actively empowers the mini-boss's adds.

None of this stuff is exactly mythic grade, but when fighting under the constraints of the wards they'd be a huge pain and likely lethal to any mid level mooks brought along for support.

Beyond that, to be perfectly honest I think the anyone who tries to steal our stuff should be forced to wrestle 4 times their body weight in fuckhuge spiders on general principle. Even if it doesn't kill them they'll damn well remember the experience.
 
BronzeTongue said:
On an tangentially note, I've been looking around for things to help with our defenses for the wards that we should look into if we're going on another head hunting trip off plane soon.

The wards block planar nonsense, but since we can attune to them and ignore that we should be exploiting the advantage as throughly as possible.

Phase Spiders are 8 ft 700 lbs spiders, which is bad enough on its own. Their real trick is that they can jump into the ethereal plane as a move action, and back to the material as a free one. If they do that as part of an ambush they can take a full round of actions during the surprise round.

At CR 5 they're somewhat pricy, but they're sapient so we can teach them to use items if we don't just make a primitive variety to use as attack dogs.

Phase Fleas are tiny sized fleas who can pull a similar ethereal ambushing trick. They can also fit 4 of themselves into a single square without penalty and have a decent con damage attack. At CR 4 they're also much more affordable.

If we make an unintelligent version of the fleas we could have them trained as disposable chaff for interplanar mega spider kill squads.

Just imagine how unpleasant it'd be to try fighting something like that when you barely have any spells available to detect or effect them until after they've attacked.

Elusa Hounds for tracking anyone we have running encounters with inside our own bases as we did in our raid.

With mind blank that sort of thing is usually a bust, but the way EHs work might give us some wiggle room. If their arcane aight successfully detects the aura of a creature or a spell it casts then for the next 3 hours it gets a +10 competence bonus on the survival check to actually hunt them down.

It's not exactly the same as directly divining a location, so I think it's worth looking into.

Another cheap and interesting option would be to pick up some samples of Pond Drinkers to grow as attack dogs.

Beyond being a disgusting 1-2 ft long vermin they only really have one thing going for them. They constantly produce an 15 ft radius ultrasonic aura that forces anyone casting a spell within it to make a DC 15 + spell level concentration check to successfully complete it.

For anti efreeti work specifically, pairing brown mold Moldwretches with Calathgars would work beautifully.

Fighting a brown mold moldwretch is already a pain for anything fire aligned, but adding calathgars just makes it even worse. They get fast healing from cold damage, which is explicitly triggered by the temperature of brown mold.

They do have a fire weakness, but if you kill them with fire damage they double the growth of any nearby brown mold. If there isn't any mold nearby they just decay into a patch of the stuff on the spot.

Have fun getting through that when the best tool to fight the primary environmental hazard is both your element opposite and actively empowers the mini-boss's adds.

None of this stuff is exactly mythic grade, but when fighting under the constraints of the wards they'd be a huge pain and likely lethal to any mid level mooks brought along for support.

Beyond that, to be perfectly honest I think the anyone who tries to steal our stuff should be forced to wrestle 4 times their body weight in fuckhuge spiders on general principle. Even if it doesn't kill them they'll damn well remember the experience.
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Unfortunately our new system shoots this wonderful troops down😔
 
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Part MMMDCCCXLV: Sifting Through the Ashes
  • Threadmarks
    • Sifting Through the Ashes ​

    Second Day of the Tenth Month 294 AC

    Victory tastes bitter on the tongue on such a day, but it is still victory. With the banishing of the Daughter and Herald of their god, many of the priests, those who could hear its voice, seemingly gave into despair either throwing themselves on the mercy of the legionnaires or most often seeking to end their own lives to find in death the company of their god. You can only hope for their sake they do not find it.

    Many others who had given themselves to the cult die in the vicious fighting, prescient ambushes and poisoned gardens. In places it seems that the very fabric of space was warped like unto the roots of some vast shadow thing that cast the merest presence into the streets of Qohor, though even here the Legion and their attached forces acquit themselves with honor. The dead know no fear, and those born of the Greendream are filled only with loathing at the desecration of the land. You hear one or two of the officers call it 'weeding', though only when they think they are too far from you to be heard.

    Perhaps you should have tried to put on a more cheerful front for the officers. This is their day of victory no less than it is the day which will live on in infamy for the destruction of Everfire Dale, but you cannot bring yourself to play mummery for an audience made up of the High Command. You will smile for the troops and thank them for their service and their sacrifice. You will thank the Gravjammer crews that burned swaths from the cursed woods, and you will do so with all sincerity in the smoldering fields of their work, but for the officers...

    Well, their own marshal makes no bones about the blow that was struck against the Imperium this day, and as the day winds down into an evening meal amid the half-ruined halls which had once hosted doomed 'Emperor' Aurion, he observes a moment of silence for the fallen, near and far. It is clear his thoughts run along the same path as yours. Even in victory, an officer's mind must be to their responsibilities, not merely their triumphs.

    And so too must an Imperator's. The forest had been burned back to the parts that rejected the touch of flame and in their depths the foul progeny of That Which You had faced in the depths of the Forge still lingered. Tainted fey still cavorted madly in what had once been an aspect of their realm, and was now something other. Yet according to Vee, the tainted ground had ceased trying to grow over the patches that were sterilized with wildfire, and in Qyburn's very authoritative opinion on the matter, those within are very unlikely to act in concert in the absence of the progenitor you had banished below.

    Watch-posts were already being planned, and they will no doubt have to be here for a long time indeed, until the land forgets the hand which had befouled it, but the forest is very much the lesser of your worries. You are not, for the most part, the Imperator of trees but of people, and the people of Qohor much like those of Torturer's Deep before it are... touched by the Beyond. From 'mere' mutations of the flesh and flashes of nightmare visions, to strange magics of fecundity that are in their form nearly druidic, though to make the comparison would be insulting in the extreme to the servants of the Old Gods, to strange and wild psionic powers, Qohor is a city in which a rare few have escaped the touch of their once-god.

    Thankfully, none of their highest priests had chosen to surrender, sparing you the trouble of potentially having to execute their holy men and women to heathen gods, but some of the low ranking priest had given themselves over particularly when it became clear the forge served a new master now.

    "Some of them think he is their new god now. Qyburn, I mean," Lya explains bluntly. "I am not sure what he would do with them, but it probably would not be very pleasant."

    "And the mage-smiths?" You are uncomfortably aware that after the disaster at Everfire Dale, you now need the mage-smiths of Qohor far more than you thought you did when you drew up the plans for the invasion.

    "About half of them surrendered, counting the ones who sort of came out of the woodwork since they were being hunted by the Green Faith, but the trouble is all of them, unlike many of the priests we have, did commit blood sacrifice. Of criminals, yes, but in Qohor blasphemy was a crime. If they had committed the acts they did under Imperial law most of them would have gone to a Tree. I am not sure clemency for past deeds should extend that far." There is an edge of disgust to her words for all she tries to hide it.

    "Do you think they are still under the power of their former master?" you ask thoughtfully.

    "Form the first investigations, no, they do not pose a threat in that manner."

    What are to be your policies in Qohor?

    Towards those who show psionics:
    [] Direct them to get cleansed at the Fount of the Merling King
    [] Let the Inquisition deal with them, perhaps they can even hire some new talent
    [] Let them live their lives as they will
    [] Write in

    Towards the priests who surrendered:
    [] Allow them to present themselves to Qyburn, asking to serve
    [] Try to direct them to mind healers with careful Inquisition oversight
    [] Try them as cultists and servants of a Forbidden God
    [] Write in

    Towards the sorcerer-smiths:
    [] Induct all of them, their former crimes forgotten
    [] Accept only those who were enemies of the Green Faith into your service
    [] Try them as cultists
    [] Write in

    OOC: With the Daughter fizzling and so much else going on I do not think it was worth going into detail in the pacification, it would have just been make work while the narrative focus would be on what happens with the Efreeti. So instead have some policy decisions before we deal with the aftermath of Fantasy Pearl Harbor.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • DragonParadox said:
    Sifting Through the Ashes ​

    Second Day of the Tenth Month 294 AC

    Victory tastes bitter on the tongue on such a day, but it is still victory. With the banishing of the Daughter and Herald of their god, many of the priests, those who could hear its voice, seemingly gave into despair either throwing themselves on the mercy of the legionnaires or most often seeking to end their own lives to find in death the company of their god. You can only hope for their sake they do not find it.

    Many others who had given themselves to the cult die in the vicious fighting, prescient ambushes and poisoned gardens. In places it seems that the very fabric of space was warped like unto the roots of some vast shadow thing that cast the merest presence into the streets of Qohor, though even here the Legion and their attached forces acquit themselves with honor. The dead know no fear, and those born of the Greendream are filled only with loathing at the desecration of the land. You hear one or two of the officers call it 'weeding', though only when they think they are too far from you to be heard.

    Perhaps you should have tried to put on a more cheerful front for the officers. This is their day of victory no less than it is the day which will live on in infamy for the destruction of Everfire Dale, but you cannot bring yourself to play mummery for an audience made up of the High Command. You will smile for the troops and thank them for their service and their sacrifice. You will thank the Gravjammer crews that burned swaths from the cursed woods, and you will do so with all sincerity in the smoldering fields of their work, but for the officers...

    Well, their own marshal makes no bones about the blow that was struck against the Imperium this day, and as the day winds down into an evening meal amid the half-ruined halls which had once hosted doomed 'Emperor' Aurion, he observes a moment of silence for the fallen, near and far. It is clear his thoughts run along the same path as yours. Even in victory, an officer's mind must be to their responsibilities, not merely their triumphs.

    And so too must an Imperator's. The forest had been burned back to the parts that rejected the touch of flame and in their depths the foul progeny of That Which You had faced in the depths of the Forge still lingered. Tainted fey still cavorted madly in what had once been an aspect of their realm, and was now something other. Yet according to Vee, the tainted ground had ceased trying to grow over the patches that were sterilized with wildfire, and in Qyburn's very authoritative opinion on the matter, those within are very unlikely to act in concert in the absence of the progenitor you had banished below.

    Watch-posts were already being planned, and they will no doubt have to be here for a long time indeed, until the land forgets the hand which had befouled it, but the forest is very much the lesser of your worries. You are not, for the most part, the Imperator of trees but of people, and the people of Qohor much like those of Torturer's Deep before it are... touched by the Beyond. From 'mere' mutations of the flesh and flashes of nightmare visions, to strange magics of fecundity that are in their form nearly druidic, though to make the comparison would be insulting in the extreme to the servants of the Old Gods, to strange and wild psionic powers, Qohor is a city in which a rare few have escaped the touch of their once-god.

    Thankfully, none of their highest priests had chosen to surrender, sparing you the trouble of potentially having to execute their holy men and women to heathen gods, but some of the low ranking priest had given themselves over particularly when it became clear the forge served a new master now.

    "Some of them think he is their new god now. Qyburn, I mean," Lya explains bluntly. "I am not sure what he would do with them, but it probably would not be very pleasant."

    "And the mage-smiths?" You are uncomfortably aware that after the disaster at Everfire Dale, you now need the mage-smiths of Qohor far more than you thought you did when you drew up the plans for the invasion.

    "About half of them surrendered, counting the ones who sort of came out of the woodwork since they were being hunted by the Green Faith, but the trouble is all of them, unlike many of the priests we have, did commit blood sacrifice. Of criminals, yes, but in Qohor blasphemy was a crime. If they had committed the acts they did under Imperial law most of them would have gone to a Tree. I am not sure clemency for past deeds should extend that far." There is an edge of disgust to her words for all she tries to hide it.

    "Do you think they are still under the power of their former master?" you ask thoughtfully.

    "Form the first investigations, no, they do not pose a threat in that manner."

    What are to be your policies in Qohor?

    Towards those who show psionics:
    [] Direct them to get cleansed at the Fount of the Merling King
    [] Let the Inquisition deal with them, perhaps they can even hire some new talent
    [] Let them live their lives as they will
    [] Write in

    Towards the priests who surrendered:
    [] Allow them to present themselves to Qyburn, asking to serve
    [] Try to direct them to mind healers with careful Inquisition oversight
    [] Try them as cultists and servants of a Forbidden God
    [] Write in

    Towards the sorcerer-smiths:
    [] Induct all of them, their former crimes forgotten
    [] Accept only those who were enemies of the Green Faith into your service
    [] Try them as cultists
    [] Write in

    OOC: With the Daughter fizzling and so much else going on I do not think it was worth going into detail in the pacification, it would have just been make work while the narrative focus would be on what happens with the Efreeti. So instead have some policy decisions before we deal with the aftermath of Fantasy Pearl Harbor.
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    Made some additional edits to the chapter, DP.
     
    [X] Weeding the Garden
    -[X] To those who show psionics
    --[X] Let the Inquisition deal with them, perhaps they can even hire some new talent
    -[X] To the priests who surrendered
    --[X] Have the Inquisition vet which ones are suitable, then allow them to present themselves to Qyburn to serve
    -[X] To the sorcerer-smiths
    --[X] Induct all of them, their former crimes forgotten //This is with the understanding that the Inquisition is watching, and so is Qyburn.
    -[X] Warding
    --[X] Redistribute all wards from King's Landing (10 km Dispersal, Uncertainty, & Phase Wards) to protect Qohor and the Forge. Have the wards hidden and protected adequately so as not to repeat the mistakes of Everfire Dale which saw them destroyed in aerial bombardment.


    Basically let the Inquisition do its things, get records of everyone here, and then let the people deemed nonthreatening go to live their lives.

    @DragonParadox, can we go over what's distinctive about this Forge over the next few updates? What can it make that the Fungus Forge of Lys and the Flesh Forge of Gogossos can't?
     
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    BTW, @DragonParadox, both chapters today have taken place on the 2nd day of the 10th month rather than the 9th month. I think this is a typo?
     
    Goldfish said:
    BTW, @DragonParadox, both chapters today have taken place on the 2nd day of the 10th month rather than the 9th month. I think this is a typo?
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    Ah no, this is the right date. I'm actually going to have to go back and edit in tenth month starting at the quarter vote

    Duesal said:
    @DragonParadox, can we go over what's distinctive about this Forge over the next few updates? What can it make that the Fungus Forge of Lys and the Flesh Forge of Gogossos can't?
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    What's special about it is that it is likened to the Far realm. That said it is going to take to next quarter to actually refurbish it into ebing safe and useful

    XP will be up tomorrow.
     
    [X] Weeding the Garden slightly more
    -[X] To those who show psionics
    --[X] Let the Inquisition deal with them, perhaps they can even hire some new talent
    -[X] To the priests who surrendered
    --[X] Try them as cultists and servants of a Forbidden God
    -[X] To the sorcerer-smiths
    --[X] Induct all of them, their former crimes forgotten //This is with the understanding that the Inquisition is watching, and so is Qyburn.

    Sorry, but I don't want priests of outer gods worshipping our friendly maniac here. Even if the Inquistion thinks they are okay, we have no idea how deep some madness might be buried and Qyburn is the last person who needs devoted acolytes, he needs assistants that will report it if he goes beyond what we deem acceptable. He is not one to be stopped by common sense or morals, only by the knowledge that keeping to the (very broad) rules is what keeps him alive and in a very priviledged position to pursue his work.

    Edit: Not that I don't like Qyburn, I do.
    But we should never forget that he has no line he wouldn't cross and we should not give him the opportunity to do so.
     
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    I am sort of shocked we aren't gathering cultists and aberrations along with their relics by the cart loads in order to sacrifice them to the old gods with the goal of creating some kind of mega magic tree to deal with the far realms taint and influence
     
    Goldfish said:
    @Duesal, @Artemis1992, we need to get the newly acquired Forge properly warded ASAP. I'm not sure which city needs to lose ward cover in order to make that happen, though.
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    Yeah, we absolutely do.

    I'd take the wards away from King's Landing to cover this. King's Landing is a strategic dead end, and losing the Flesh Forge in Qohor would set us back decades.

    @DragonParadox @Azel, would the King's Landing wards cover the Forge enough?
     
    [X]Cleansing The Garden
    -[X] To those who show psionics
    --[X] Direct them to get cleansed at the Fount of the Merling King
    -[X] To the priests who surrendered
    --[X] Try to direct them to mind healers with careful Inquisition oversight
    -[X] To the sorcerer-smiths
    --[X] Accept only those who were enemies of the Green Faith into your service
     
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