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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, the issue is my desire to model small to huge settlements equally and allowing for sensible economic numbers.

The least that would require is a fully traversable world map and simulation of all populations.
 
@Azel Well determining what numbers are present where shouldn't be that difficult. We already have populations for the most part, and the "busywork" of determining what grows where, what's produced where and what's imported/exported has already largely been done for us.

So you could be OCD about it and build an economic model from pre-existing data out there on the internet from all the similarly obsessed ASoIaF fans, or you could just build a system with much less complexity which could equally account for population numbers that we're considering, and allows PCs to derive all the same mechanical benefits, but improved due to obvious increased availability due to levels of trade, availability of goods and money which has been sunk into the city's public works.

Though considering you were talking the most about creating a sensible baseline for the economy in general to help determine what our costs and incomes should be, maybe you should just go full-bore on such a system. It's not like you wouldn't already be doing the work.
 
@Crake, thing is that I don't really have the time anymore these days. My own quest is requiring a lot of background work, which is a huge timesink.
 
Um, don't know if I'm too late but, I'd like to argue about putting a whore's face on the tree. The entire economy of Lys is based on the sexual exploitation men, women and children. Furthermore, the slaves here are literally bred like livestock for that purpose. A reminder of that by something that's meant to make the lives of these people better isn't a good idea in my opinion.

Plus, I believe we were going transition away from the sex trade or at least work to diversify the city's economy more so they are less reliant on it? I think a face that reflects that not everything comes back to that would be better in my opinion.
 
I thought pretty much exactly the above, @Helo89.

But then I realized it would be a pointless argument. I do not want to talk about how the sex industry will basically never die, nor how it won't ever not be a vital component, in some form or another, of Lys in particular with its highly service-based economy. They've modeled the city on being a huge resort, with their mainland holdings keeping it afloat with massive imports.

Of the cities I expect to remain largely intact with high populations after our conquests of the Three Daughters, it is actually Lys I expect to be a shell of its former self. I expect mass immigration from it, a huge amount, almost ridiculous when compared to the people likely to immigrate away from Tyrosh or Myr to account for our economic re-balancing.

So glorifying courtesans a little isn't that damning... there's nothing particularly wrong with the profession, just with the exploitation of the Magisters inherent in Lyseni society. Braavosi-centric Viserys look down upon the sex industry I think not, mostly because when he thinks 'sex industry', his mind immediately drifts to what amounts to high society and women of culture, not the brothels of King's Landing or the pleasure houses of Lys.
 
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Part MDCCC: Song of Spirits Great and Small
  • Threadmarks
    • Song of Spirits Great and Small​

    Twenty-First Day of the First Month 293 AC

    Touching the dry bone of the unliving sorcerer that you may carry him up by the swiftest way sends a shiver of disgust and apprehension through you. Too well you know the deathly chill that foul touch can bring without even a hint of a spell. Yet you trust in the strength of your mind and flesh and in Ser Richard standing to the dead one's other side, Oathkeeper drawn at the ready.

    Thus do you come into a place of twisted agonized life in the company of death. Vines rustle upon broken stonework like restless serpents, thorns scratch against dry bones, the claws of a beast just out of sight. The ground shifts beneath you ever so slightly with the tremor of anticipation.

    "We'd best do this swiftly," Lya cautions, looking over the burbling energies of the arcane fount with worry. "The warp and weft of magic becomes more tangled with every heartbeat."

    With one last warning look at the corpse garbed in flickering glamours you will yourself away back to the Deep where Vee had set aside a slender weirwood sapling carefully harvested from the keep's godswood. You breathe a quiet sigh of relief as you see nothing had changed in your absence... it seems there is some twisted honor to your erstwhile foe after all.

    "... would that I had a dragon to buy life enduring with it," you catch him saying bitterly to Malarys.

    The once-priest of Balerion responds politely enough, but he cannot quite fully hide the disgust in his eyes from those who know where to look.

    An echoing crack of splintering stone draws your attention abruptly away. The fountain had broken... no better to say it was wearing away as though scores and hundreds of years were pouring over it with every moment. Naught but dust remains as the earth under it writhes and bubbles. Pale worm-like roots sift through the soil like diseased and feverish fingers leaving a circulate patch of rich black soil almost nine feet across... a prodigious expectation to match.

    The weirwood sapling looks small and out of place amidst the expanse, though it shall not be so for long, you vow. What strange devotion you have to the gods, you think, with a faint smile even now.

    "Ready?" Lya calls, a vial filled with purplish-red mist in her hand.

    At your signal she tosses it to the ground and the carrion-fiend, once a figure of terror, lies splayed upon the ground. In a fit of artistry you mold it into a ungainly vulture in truth, which Waymar grabs firmly by the throat. For all his misgivings about blood sacrifice, he would be the last to refuse casting a fiend from the world.

    Dark Sister flashes in your hand carving out the demon's heart and spilling its foul ichor into the hungering earth, and this time the spirit of the blade does not object to the use near as much as the last, sensing the import of the moment even as you do. The air turns thick and still, heavy with the expectant sight, whether of watchers kindly or not you cannot say.

    Then Lya casts out the second and third vials, these ones containing creatures with just enough likeness of natural life to make their oozing many-eyed countenance all the more revolting. Again spell steel digs deep ending a chorus a thousand screaming voices... Then at last the final sacrifice is at hand. You hand the strange weeping doll to the dead sorcerer, along with a dagger of spell-steel, a fitting end for a son of Valyria to end his days however they may have been lived, you must admit.

    "Farewell to silence and to gloom," the final deathly whisper falls, and then the dagger plunges into the soul anchor, driven by the hand of its creator. Both to dust and ashes fall... and then the world goes mad.

    The ground buckles beneath you like a maddened beast as a great many-voiced harmony beautiful in its wild joy rings out. All at once it is the rush of water and the roar of stones falling, the song of birds and the calls of beasts, and though it all the the True Tongue singing, like a thread of silver through the green.

    The weirwood tree shoots up... and up and up, a pillar of white to dwarf those that adorn the temples of men. A storm of red leaves swirl around you as they grow fall then grow again until the entire courtyard is covered in a deep crimson carpet. Two-hundred feet and more, you marvel.

    From the corner of your eye you see that the tree's roots had tumbled down the stones of the ruined garden before burying what is was left, though from amid the ruin rose tall black oaks, not set in any pattern by the hand of man, but simply rising where their seeds been buried beneath the grasping vines.

    Yet your attention is for the tree, for your task is not yet done. With skill of sorcery born you carve into the tree the face of Lys not as it is perhaps, but as it might one day be, a gentler, kinder place that would still be true to its roots, an isle of serenity such as the long dead dragonlords imagined, yet without the horrors they have wrought.

    A face fine-featured and bejeweled, such as one might find from pleasure houses to the halls of the mighty, yet the smile does not lie, it does not hide horror and pain, but simply shows a sly amusement, inviting the viewer to partake. Upon the tree strange ivy blooms and then grows laden with golden berries, blessed to heal and sustain. An air of... peace falls over the godswood.

    Heart Tree of Peace and Plenty Carved
    CL 20 Hallow Effect
    Secondary Effect 1: Safe Clearing
    Secondary Effect 2: Goodberry
    Secondary Effect 3: Remove Disease

    "Well," Waymar says dryly. "I don't think anyone will be missing th..."

    "What's that?" Dany hisses, motioning with a wing.

    It seems that not only vines and trees had benefited from the blood spilled this day. At the base of the great tree among its many roots a clump of brown mushrooms specked with red as if by drops of blood was growing, then to your surprise, for the boon of true-sight had long since been spent, the mushroom rustles and changes. Red specks become many eyes blinking in bewilderment and a circular mouth filled with pale fungal teeth opens surprised as small clawed hands burst from its toadstool stem.


    Had this been any other place and any other time you would have been far more weary when dealing with such a thing, but here and now you know it must be a servant of the Old Gods. Not all that grows and lives is pleasing for mortal eyes to look upon after all, though even the most unsightly things have their place.

    "Hail," you try in Bastard Valyrian, not trully expecting a reply.

    "You are the fire and the claws... yeees... yes... it is good. Big things, bad things, things that should not be should be killed. Not by such as me no no, but once they dead I-we can make good-good things from them."

    Mushrooms grow amid rot and corruption, you remember. It makes an odd sort of sense. "We?" you probe.

    "Many, many of us come, as many as..." the little creature looks at its clawed fingers for a long moment before declaring. "More than this. Come to live in mushroom, to make things better-better. Most not brave like me so they go below."

    "Can you leave this place?" Malarys asks, sounding faintly intrigued.

    "Yes-yes, make more rot go away in other places too..." Then it looks at you dubiously. "There's lots of rot down-down too. Lots of room to grow and fix."

    What do you do next?

    [] Ask more questions
    -[] Write in

    [] Go down into the flesh-forge to inspect the changes

    [] Write in

    OOC: I remember someone once saying that there are very few nice fungus creatures in D&D/Pathfinder. Well here's one of the exceptions.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • My original reasons back at post Torturer's Deep conquest, were along the lines of Viserys being a protector of whores. A patron (?) to help those who wish to leave it an out - like Selyse and Alinor - and by carving it show how anyone is worthy to depict the Old Gods...

    Something something.

    Edit: THIS IS MY NEW FAVORITE GODSWOOD!!
     
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    Helo89 said:
    Um, don't know if I'm too late but, I'd like to argue about putting a whore's face on the tree. The entire economy of Lys is based on the sexual exploitation men, women and children. Furthermore, the slaves here are literally bred like livestock for that purpose. A reminder of that by something that's meant to make the lives of these people better isn't a good idea in my opinion.

    Plus, I believe we were going transition away from the sex trade or at least work to diversify the city's economy more so they are less reliant on it? I think a face that reflects that not everything comes back to that would be better in my opinion.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    It's the opposite. It's a statement that whores and others of their social tier will have a voice and aren't overlooked, think Mary Magdalene the biblical figure. Though to be fair by making her beautiful and bejewelled she's been made a high class whore and thus probably decently well off but artistic licence is a thing.
     
    So just by the way, this is the place for wild speculation and theories right?

    Our little nosy tree-spy is really a Rogare!

    Think about it. Higher in birth than she appears, from a family obviously fallen on hard times, cannier than a pantry.

    Disprove me!
     
    DragonParadox said:
    "You are the fire and the claws... yeees... yes... it is good. Big things, bad things, things that should not be should be killed. Not by such as me no no, but once they dead I-we can make good-good things from them."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    So, we can now use our dead enemies too, besides sometimes crafting-mats.

    That means we can work more with blasting and damage instead of always having to capture, great news, more variety in fights!
     
    Hahaha, Surprise!Sequoia Weirwood!

    I hope the Red Priests were wearing their brown pants.

    Very nice chapter, @DragonParadox. Feels like we really accomplished something big this time.
     
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    So... think anyone noticed what we did? :p

    I wanna get the Weeping Lady people involved with running this, if only so as to push aside the Red Priests, so we can get the weeping lady people to deal with explaining to people what the tree does :). Wisdom and all that.

    And see if we can hire some for our Orphanarium/School system too.
    Idoncitination from youth is all very well and good, but we really do need some teachers now for clerks asap.
     
    "Yes most definitely my people, you see umm, trees are wood obviously and fire burns wood, obviously the biggest fire, our God Burny, needs the biggest wood therefore this Giant Tree is a symbol of his oversight. His great leafy oversight."
     
    So 200 feet is like 60 meters, how tall are the buildings in Lys? Because I think it is visible throughout the whole gildled quarters probably.

    Can we station an honor guard here now? Maybe Bronn wouldnt mind being stationed in Lys? ;)
     
    [X] Go and see our erstwhile snooper, arrange her reward, more for her capability in providing us an entrance into the Goblin Market than for being circumspect--after all, what hope do we have of hiding this from anyone?
    -[X] After arranging a method of contact, bid her farewell and go inspect the likely changed flesh-forge.
     
    Crake said:
    [X] Go and see our erstwhile snooper, arrange her reward, more for her capability in providing us an entrance into the Goblin Market than for being circumspect--after all, what hope do we have of hiding this from anyone?
    -[X] After arranging a method of contact, bid her farewell and go inspect the likely changed flesh-forge.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    What reward are you thinking of?
     
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