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

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Crake said:
Stannis is fun to read. His intractability is nicely contrasted with a sense of resignation that the world is a millstone alternately tied around his neck or grinding the hopes, dreams and ambitions of everyone in the world down.

Davos' absolute loyalty almost seems a little wasted on him... he's got good qualities but he's not a good man.
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I'm actually thinking the same about Stannis. Even though he is rather aggravating to be around, he would be a great boon to any Lord he served and that attitude might be fixable by just getting him some fun now and then.

He was brought up as the second son and thus to serve and aid his older brother. He became a good man who values honor, duty and hard work while detesting pointless excess. A sober and down to earth guy.
And then he got to meet Robert. Got nothing but abuse from the man he was sworn to aid. Suffered through the siege of Storms End because his brother threw out every oath he ever swore and plunged the realm into civil war just to chase a skirt.

It's not really surprising that Stannis has issues.
 
What I think is this, we use our inside man to call a meeting of all the people in charge, the officers or advisors, then we dynamic entry into the meeting buffed to the gills with a party of four of our best murderhobos, and tell them it's a coup.

It's blunt, but they shouldn't be able to do anything. We'd have them by the throat, and we can immediately open diplomacy and get them to at least pay attention to our first try at peaceful transitioning with AoN or VotD.
 
DragonParadox said:
Prophecy and politics do not go together, you conclude heavily after asking the vessel of Yss if High Speaker Zherys intends harm to you and yours through his deferred payment. The answer is cryptic enough as to be more of a headache than a boon: "Not harm... binding,"
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Called it. There are all sorts of binding he can attempt to force on us, and not all of them are directly magical. Viserys has enough people he cares about who would serve as a hostage that it's probably his greatest weakness, though most of those same people are quite capable of defending themselves to one extent or another.

We need to deal with him in a much more permanent fashion.
 
I like the idea of slowly putting our men in charge of the goverment as Tyroshi loyalists suffer accidents. Gerold's men in the military, and Alinor's in the administration.
 
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A binding agreement to not work against Zherys if he swears fealty to us?

And also goes anti slave for us too :p
 
My being partial to the idea of killing Zherys has not diminished at all. I just don't like the idea of someone with that much latitude and access to the ridiculous wealth and copious amounts of Valyrian lore, sorcerous bloodlines and manpower who is both LE and considers us a threat, enough so that he wishes to "bind us" in some fashion, to make sure we cannot act against him. Even in the most benign interpretation of that, anything less than him dropping down straight onto bended knee (unlikely) is just us giving him our consent to take over Volantis from the shadows and start conquering up territory... which we won't have control over! :mad:
 
Bind can also be an Alliance, remember Yss isn't precisely human ans has a weird though pattern.

But still not hoping for the best from a bloody Volantine Sorcerer, lets just kill him :V
 
It would be tremendously ironic if we show up to the meeting fully intent and prepared on killing him if he so much as sneezes, and Zherys shows up and makes a deal that's actually... disconcertingly reasonable and highly favoring our interests, at least from our perspective.

Because it'd almost certainly make everyone react even more violently than usual, because how can it not be a trap? And meanwhile Zherys is just like, "...why is he looking at me like I just insulted his mother?!"

Clearly his best hope is to neither give a deal that is too sour to swallow or a deal that is too good to be true. He has to make an offer we literally cannot refuse.
 
Maybe Zherys will actually swear fealty and help us to take over Volantis. He might have decided that being number two is better then being on fire after all his divinations came up with excessively violent deaths for him. :V
 
Riddle time, I guess! I just reread the whole 5 riddles with Garantos (and how we met Azema, with her nearly killing Waymar) last night.

Anyway, just woke up, gotta think about how we want to do this. Ideally we'd pull it off with Tyrosh none the wiser, but I'm not sure that's feasible.

@DragonParadox of the 2500 population, what's the rough ratio of to slaves/soldiers/other?
 
Diomedon said:
Riddle time, I guess! I just reread the whole 5 riddles with Garantos (and how we met Azema, with her nearly killing Waymar) last night.

Anyway, just woke up, gotta think about how we want to do this. Ideally we'd pull it off with Tyrosh none the wiser, but I'm not sure that's feasible.

@DragonParadox of the 2500 population, what's the rough ratio of to slaves/soldiers/other?
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Off the cuff Viserys would say:
  • 1000 Soldiers and sailors
  • 800 Slaves
  • 700 Civilian Freemen
 
A quick divination is 50? IM. Maybe we should leave it to closer to the meeting time to avoid a scry vs scry loop?

Frankly, I'm excited to see what he has for us. A trap, a tarp? Or maybe honest reward*

*honest reward. Ha. Unlikely.
 
@DragonParadox How many of the soldiers are slave soldiers? I know the free cities make liberal use of such, but how common they are for both Tyrosh in general and Westhaven in particular?

I'm a bit surprised at how many freemen are in the port, but I guess a lot are slavers basing out of it, craftsmen, and pirates paying a "harbor fee." And by this point they'd be the pirates who'd rather "live free" than kneel to our rules (well, here and deepcleft).
 
Diomedon said:
@DragonParadox How many of the soldiers are slave soldiers? I know the free cities make liberal use of such, but how common they are for both Tyrosh in general and Westhaven in particular?

I'm a bit surprised at how many freemen are in the port, but I guess a lot are slavers basing out of it, craftsmen, and pirates paying a "harbor fee." And by this point they'd be the pirates who'd rather "live free" than kneel to our rules (well, here and deepcleft).
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There are no Unsullied in Westheaven, they are far to expensive to be deployed to such an insignificant posting.
 
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Omake: No, Signs Point To Yss
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    • Azel said:
    Maybe Zherys will actually swear fealty and help us to take over Volantis. He might have decided that being number two is better then being on fire after all his divinations came up with excessively violent deaths for him. :V
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    ...

    Omake: No, Signs Point To Yss​

    Twenty-Seventh Day of the Eight Month 292 AC

    Fortune favored the bold, some said. Another saying was that there existed bold young pirates, mercenaries and rogues, but neither of the three, typically existing in concert, achieved old age by boldness alone. Zherys would not deign to     attribute any of the typical qualities of these miscreants upon his own character, but when dealing with potential enemies, he found it helpful to put himself into their mindset. And if there was anything he could say of Viserys Targaryen, it was that he was young as they appear, bold as they come, and piratical in trade, mercenary in diplomacy and politics and roguish in demeanor. He had parceled out much of his personal resources to gather as much information on the Prince In Exile as humanly possible... and as possible by those not quite human.

    One thing that has allowed Zherys to advance as far as he has in life, is a sense of... self awareness. He was not humble by any measure, but neither would he ever come to be blinded by pride, the watchword of youths lured to wars gilded in their fakery and impotent pointless slaughters, to keep them content in their supposed superiority and far away while old men played the game of thrones, always shifting their loyalties at the cost of each generation after them and to the grievance in equal measure of those that came before them, these, the spoiled fruit reaped from the vine, the Valyria of Old.

    And in every vision, every divination undertaken to navigate the unstable byways and paths forward, it all came back to damnable Viserys Targaryen, whose triumphs were manifold and even in death could still manage to turn his enemies' own ambitions to ashes soaked upon the tongue. It was through no disfavor of weak willed politicians and grasping nobles of the Old Blood that brought him to the realization that he must make common cause with Viserys Targaryen. Poisoning, blade and arrow, spell fire and deadly intrigue... every possible method used to seek advantage over the other sorcerer was matched in equal measure, a veritable dance of matters arcane, the future ever-shifting as one man endeavored to gain the other's measure. And what Zherys saw was not optimistic. Death... from fire. Blood. Horrors made manifest.

    It mattered not what pretensions he dared put on, for all that there existed a glimmer of respect and admiration for the Prince that started with nothing but seemed to be well on his way to grasping everything, if what he saw of their possible motivations rang true.

    Because the irksome youth. Just. Would. Not. Die. No matter how many schemes and plots he wove, if something went amiss, it could be pointed back to him with trivial ease, and from what he could tell--and he was not entirely sure if he should take it as a compliment or not--the Targaryen seemed to have prioritized him as a threat within his own sphere of influence. Being under such... august and paranoid suspicion was not as flattering on the face of things.

    He had, in a brief fit of whimsy, wondered what look of incredulous, slack-jawed surprise he could elicit if, upon their next meeting, he swore without further prompting to serve him faithfully in all things, most especially gaining influence within Valyria's eldest daughter. If only to guide the reckless dragonlord away from such folly as he's been hearing out of the Stepstones. Honestly... a sprite captaining a flagship worthy of a king?

    Amusingly, he noted, only fit for the flagship of a Baratheon king. When the Prince added a ship to his hoard, he was obviously loathe to let it go.

    He frowned, and prepared to pen another letter. After all, the machinations of great men never rest, as they inevitably fall upon their shoulders to carry out to the very end. He only hoped his own end was far... far into the future.
     
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