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

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.. the ideas always come before going to sleep.

We absolutely have to get rid if Viserys blood, " blood falls upon the snowy ground".
 
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Part MDCLI: Life Enduring
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    • Life Enduring ​

    Twentieth Day of the Twelfth Month 292 AC

    As you hold your sister close and warm healing light pulses through her, erasing the little harm that the ice dragon's freezing breath did to her, your mind flinches from thinking how much more it could have done. The power to unmake one until not even memory remains... Never have you more fervently wished for a god's power before, not the gasp of stillborn light you held in Mantarys but truly power divine, you own and no others' that you might turn back even the void at need.

    The sight of your own blood still dripping onto the snowy ground, the twinge of pain in your palms where you had torn at them with claws pulls you into more immediate concerns. Still holding Dany in a one-armed hug you heal yourself with a trickle of power drawn from your belt, then with a wave of a hand you scour the ground with flame to leave nothing of yourself in this place.

    "Mother witnessed all this," Dany whispers to you, then you feel her wings vanish as a dream before morning's light. "I think it might help her to see us both like this now."

    And so side by side and now entirely unchanged and unharmed, the two of you walk back to the cave you had carved in haste. Recalling the terrible powers you had wielded and the foe you had battled, you steel yourself to see fear in your mother's eyes, the raw uncomprehending terror you had seen so many times before. Instead she rushes both of you into a hug that is almost painfully tight, seeking wordless assurance. You do not know just how long you stand thus amid the swirling snow before she asks voice shaking. "Are... are you alright? Is it gone?"

    "Very much so," you assure her. "I would say it's in several thousand pieces."

    "Can you..." she swallows, visibly shaking and struggling to blink away tears, "ask the Children if more of those things are coming?"

    Nodding to herself Dany utters a brief spell to give herself the power to speak as though in the True Tongue of the Singers and ask just that though her words are oddly slow, a song twinged around them as an echo barely heard. For a moment you wonder why she can not simply gifted the power to speak the common tongue onto the Children themselves, then you realize what her worry must have been.

    After listening to Soft Strider Dany replies. "No more of them will come, they are rare as to be almost unheard of even in the Deep North, near the Lands of always Winter, and it is summer still." Of course she could not offer the true reassurance, for every move Bloodraven made the Others would counter and now that counter had been played.

    "Rare..." She shakes her head in disbelief. "That was a dragon... a dragon made of ice."

    "Such a thing could not cross the Wall, nor go around it, no more than its true masters might," you reassure her confidently. "Soon we will be at Castle Black and then beyond it where such things cannot trouble us." In your heart you know the words to be hollow in essence even as they are true in the particular. There are horrors and monsters in the south also, but your mother does not need to hear that now.

    "What were those... things?" she asks, trailing off at a loss for words.

    "Wards to guard against dark powers, and as to the shape I took that is just another working, like Dany's, though..." you offer a smile, "for obvious reasons I do not use it as often, or inside."

    "Indeed," Dany picks up the jest with a show of mock-severity. "The treasury is not so full that it can stand for you breaking keeps all the time."

    Your mother starts to laugh then, and if there is an edge of hysteria to it... well you would hardly be one to blame her. "Old Gods, New, and any others that may be listening, I'm glad you are safe," she says fervently.

    "Do we press on or make camp here, your grace?" Ser Richard asks, sounding as though he wishes to ask other questions but does not know what else is safe in present company.

    Somewhere beyond the snow-laden clouds you know the sun is well past its zenith but there are a few more hours of light still you know.

    What do you do next?

    [] Make camp here
    -[] Write in plan

    [] Ride on
    -[] Write in plan

    OOC: The write in is for stuff like looting, talking to Rhaella, talking to the Children etc... XP will be granted in one shot once you cross the Wall southwards. Also you can thank your lucky stars for Dany's high wisdom. The Children with their alien fatalistic outlook would have seen no reason not to mention why they do not fear a second dragon coming.
     
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    • So see what we can loot from remains of ice dragon and ride off to see if we can't get some more distance while also finding a better place to camp for the night?

    Near a weirwood heart tree if possible?
     
    [X] Make camp here
    -[X] Gather what you can from the dead Dragon
    -[X] Dany makes a few Daylight-lamps with her SLA
    -[X] Children who know the area can gather some wood
    -[X] Talk to Rhaella about Dragons in general, their once generally known sentience and our heritage
    -[X] Sleep with Richard guarding for the first two hours, then Viserys

    Might be time to let her know what dragons really are, not what people think today.
     
    [X] Make camp here
    -[X] Gather what you can from the dead Dragon
    -[X] Dany makes a few Daylight-lamps with her SLA
    -[X] Children who know the area can gather some wood
    -[X] Talk to Rhaella about Dragons in general, their once generally known sentience and our heritage
    -[X] Sleep with Richard guarding for the first two hours, then Viserys
     
    [X] Make camp here
    -[X] Gather what you can from the dead Dragon
    -[X] Dany makes a few Daylight-lamps with her SLA
    -[X] Children who know the area can gather some wood
    -[X] Talk to Rhaella about Dragons in general, their once generally known sentience and our heritage
    -[X] Sleep with Richard guarding for the first two hours, then Viserys
     
    We could just loot some pieces while watching out for attacks. Dany can upgrade the "cave" in the meantime to become a formal fort. Rhaella can give suggestions on what to make. Like a mother and daughter moment in making sandcastles. Only this time, they are making an actual castle.
     
    What do we even talk about that is not strange and magical?

    ...we could go over some of our infrastructure projects. But she might ask questions about our reasoning on how we can do such and such in a short timeframe, or why we've set our ambitions so high with so few people to do the work.

    Or why we think building up SD is a good idea when we'll have Kingslanding to "look forward" to. Which would lead right into a conversation about Aerys' failed new city across the Blackwater that never got built.

    I know... we could talk about romance!

    Oh, no, wait... that won't work either.

    How about... our fondness for architecture and fine edifices? Is that too closely related?
     
    Artemis1992 said:
    I mostly want to try and give her context to what she just witnessed.
    Both the icy dragon and our transformation can be neatly and simply explained with "most kinds of dragons are sapient and assholes, the ones the Targs had were the exeption".
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    This is a terrible idea. It's crushing one of the few prides that her house once held, pretty much the only thing from her past that could have been called magic, and doing so in a really awful combination of timing and setting.

    Leave that question up to her. Honestly, if we're making camp I'd prefer to offer to continue our tale into our time in Volantis. But make it an offer, and one that hinges in what she wants to know. Given how swiftly (and unrealistically, but I'm not complaining) she's progressing, we're rapidly moving past the point where we have any right to decide what she learns.
     
    Azel said:
    How about a dose of Hearts Ease instead of talking further?
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    DragonParadox said:
    Heart's Ease is not for people who are struggling to adjust, but instead a solution for those who for some reason or another have completely lost touch with reality to help them at least get a grip on it. It's not a psychological panacea
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    In other words, if we ever have to use Heart's Ease on Rhaella we will have fucked things up so badly that she lost her grip on sanity. I have no intention of allowing that to happen.
     
    Snowfire said:
    This is a terrible idea. It's crushing one of the few prides that her house once held, pretty much the only thing from her past that could have been called magic, and doing so in a really awful combination of timing and setting.

    Leave that question up to her. Honestly, if we're making camp I'd prefer to offer to continue our tale into our time in Volantis. But make it an offer, and one that hinges in what she wants to know. Given how swiftly (and unrealistically, but I'm not complaining) she's progressing, we're rapidly moving past the point where we have any right to decide what she learns.
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    Then at least let's continue the story with taking over SD and admit to Relath's existance.

    The issue with not talking about dragons is that we just turned into a big-ass dragon to fight another dragon, all while speaking draconic.
    You see why distracting from that would look incredibly, stupidly obvious in a way no bluff in the world can cover?
     
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