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

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DragonParadox said:
the ivory rod straining and twisting in your hand, almost seeming alive as it empowers the magic. Were this anything but a god's gift, you suspect it might have shattered trying to empower this spell, for you are not alone outside the dominion of time but pull Tyene alongside you
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So, @DragonParadox, I take that we should expect the Rod breaking the next time we try to pull a (mythic) 9th circle spell through it?
With some (very) unfortunate consequences for it?

Or was that just narratively framing the "oh wow, that's cheesy, but rules say you can, so at least it'll be described as barely working"-sotuation with it?
 
egoo said:
So, @DragonParadox, I take that we should expect the Rod breaking the next time we try to pull a (mythic) 9th circle spell through it?
With some (very) unfortunate consequences for it?

Or was that just narratively framing the "oh wow, that's cheesy, but rules say you can, so at least it'll be described as barely working"-sotuation with it?
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It's probably worth reinforcing it with runecrafting or something.
 
Duesal said:
It's probably worth reinforcing it with runecrafting or something.
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M'yeah, maybe. It's the one we got from Snek-temple-city-ruin, yes? History should qualify.

Side note, I just realized a way for cheese, but I'm not sure on how to implement it.

Is there a way to set up a spell to automatically (or near so, in a less-than-standard action, ideally a free or a swift one, or something) upon leaving the Timestop?
And said spell be another Timestop?

For repeated "Okay you and you get blasted... Za Warudo..! Now, that the previous two got hit with the beams, you and you.."?
@Goldfish?
 
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Canon Omake: Company of Heroes
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    • Company of Heroes
    ​
    Fourteenth Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
    <<<Previous Next>>>

    After the brief panic in the city had passed, a pervasive tension and even sharper anger hung in the air in most public spaces. Drinking dens raising toasts to the health of the Queen Mother, and more than one spirited bards singing a song about stymied shadows and 'red scales singing true against spiteful black'. The sheer irony was likely not lost upon the Deep's overlord, but it had created odder circumstances by far, for the one born of the Far East.

    "Ting?" Shiera's voice was soft, her emerald robes bound by a belt of gold scales, glittering in the sunlight. His friends stood off at the opposite end of the square, surrounded by a dozen strange people in all manner of arcane accouterments and dressed in many styles, a testament to how far the King's reach spread and the hope spread with it. "What is wrong? Why are you here and not..." she gestured towards the uncommonly serious black-haired man, stout of shoulder and heavily muscled, standing beside a younger woman bearing an uncanny resemblance. His other friend, the Alchemist, stood beside a woman with bright light in her gaze and silver hair, like the King. The Knight bore a strained look upon his face at something the older man said, head hanging lower, and the bright spirit turned to him, concerned, but the words were lost at this distance.

    "Hm? It is fine," he said, sounding unlike himself, distant. He was usually always mindful of others. "Young Denys is not finished yet with his task in the West, but he had made great progress in a short time, enough to visit and reconvene on other matters."

    "Matters you don't feel the need to get involved with," the Priestess of Yss guessed, looking at the thoughtful expression on the Monk's face as he stared intently at a small stone, alight with a steady glow of evocation magic. "Who are you thinking about reaching out to?"

    "Someone who had turned away from the world of men," Ting said sadly, "With how dangerous the world has grown in such a short time, I worry if that same tendency has led him down a darker path, or if perhaps he had withdrawn even further into himself. I would like to think the best of him, a man who had given shelter to a foolish child desperate for affirmation from others, despite whatever misgivings they may have held onto..."

    "If they were someone you trusted in once, why not simply trust again?" Shiera offered softly, sitting down beside the ascetic. "Though distance could have curdled into hate, desperation might end in pathways to greater hopes, and one can realize the value in trusting others in turn. Was he wise?"

    "By some measures," Ting replied, slowly. "He taught me very much, but more was learned in realizing how truth is often most reflected outside of ideals kept in isolation in the highest mountains, where the lowly and foolish do not intermingle with them. One cannot be said to come across wisdom, if indeed the veriest fool could, with ease, point out the obvious conceit that might lie at their heart."

    She nodded her understanding, feeling sorrow at his conundrum not easily solved by a bit of Paetheligos' own logic. The Freehold could hardly be said to foster paragons of great wisdom in all things. Mad genius could just as well turn out a great many fools.

    Ting looked down at the stone. Such a simple thing, easily broken to deliver brief word, hardly a thing to establish much more than a brief sentiment or a warning.

    "Another day," he spoke at last, putting it away. "What brings you here, Holiness," he asked with a smile, strained at the edges.

    She scowled mildly, a smile tugging at her own face. "What have I said about calling me that? It's Shiera to you, Ting. And I'm about to go off on my Journey of Wisdom, to better serve both my Lord and my God..." nervousness crept into her voice, though hardly at the thought of the Forever Serpent and his endless coils, or even the looming shadow cast off the Dragon King from above and beyond them. "I was hoping to join your company, in fact. A great many uses for the spells I know," and even as she spoke, her face fell at the grim expression on his face.

    "I do not think that is a... good idea, Shiera," Ting replied slowly, tone grave. "We go often to face foes that are perhaps even beyond our skill and preparations, who's weapons are not always fear and dread alone, but blades of destruction and eternal malice. Subtle and insidious arms they wield, seeking only our end."

    "I am not afraid to fight," she said, though couldn't hide the tremor in her voice. Damned if she couldn't keep it steady, even when it was this important.

    He lay a hand gently over hers, smiling sadly. "I know this, and can only hope good fortune and the Kami smile down upon you, should the day come that battle finds you waiting and ready. But there are contests outside of my own remit as well as yours, and we should do well to apply ourselves where we will be of use, instead of all situations where misfortune is coiled and waiting to strike." He stood up, gesturing to the eclectic crowd of individuals as she rose with him. "These people share a unique feature in that they have not known each other very long, such as things are, yet have shed blood beside one another more than once, have secrets and hopes they share with one another for matters beyond simple practicality. This can prove a burden just as often as it is a privilege."

    He sighed, hands tucked into his sleeves in his usual, almost aloof manner. "It is hard to convince oneself of old truisms, 'just as the light of the sun reaches the world, it too hits the moon and secrets are revealed with its phases'. When the rulers of this city so often prove that adage false, how easy is it to think you can solve every problem or what might one risk to overturn every stone in their path searching for truth?" He shook his head in dismissal. "That is what it means to walk on the path which King Viserys, a thousand years of wisdom and longevity may he rule, has now taken upon himself, from where he stands this very moment, to where his Companions stand beside him, down to the men and women who each stand in his service. It is an arduous one, one which at times risks madness."

    "So what should I do?" She asked him, feeling frustrated, and worse yet, useless.

    "I confess, I do not know for sure the best path for you to take," Ting replied honestly. "This road is one hard to turn away from, once you have set yourself down it."

    "I... I'll think on this, then." Shiera wasn't scared to fight, but the idea of dedicating herself to combating some horrible truth of the world unsettled her, more perhaps than the fiends themselves. Contempt and fear she felt for them, but also pity. They did not fight for simple joy, she had learned, and a victory of bare inches towards some nebulous goal sounded like a dreadful way to live. Truth be told, the peace she had found serving Yss was balanced with the knowledge that people such as the King kept the world in balance through their very existence. She had come upon bitter truths and dreadful knowledge through the learning of magic and of the divine, but she had also had the certainty of powerful benefactors watching over her as she tread into the unknown.

    They gathered closer to the small crowd of people, somehow isolated by the strange air of mystery that hung about them, citizens in the area keeping a polite distance. A man in armor was murmuring a prayer to the Lord of Light, most around him looking over in concern as he had not spoken up otherwise. "It's not your fault, Kennos," Ser Criston Storm spoke up abruptly, painful understanding in his eyes. "No more could you have fought a dragon in the name of one god against another than Bonifer Gods-be-damned Hasty could have, and that man would sooner die than let anything else come within ten paces of Her Grace."

    "Aye, and it's that easy, is it, to take refuge in your own shortcomings the second a thundercloud rains down upon you overhead? 'Its just the weather, so it's not like I could have prepared for that'..." Ser Kennos of Kayce shook his head angrily, everyone taken aback by the strength of his voice. "I should never have left her side, even after we were all told it would be safe here. The Gods can only act with so many hands, so long as they are there to work with. Mayhaps Ser Bonifer might not have had a chance in Hells of stopping the beast on his own, but he'd have fared a damn sight better with me there, and perhaps Her Grace might not have been so near certain doom because of it."

    "More likely, you'd be dead and damned just the same, twice as likely in fact you would have doomed Ser Bonifer, seen him dead beside you," Ceria replied more sharply, though Shiera saw at its heart the kindness meant in the cruel barb just the same. "More easy to set your feet and dig into bad decisions if you've gotten someone into acting stupid beside you."

    "My girl speaks sense," the large, dark-haired warrior next to her rumbled. "Damned if you do, damned if you don't."

    "Denys," the bright woman, named Mercy, Shiera recalled, from a shared shift at the Houses of Healing the two of them had. "Aren't you going to tell them?"

    The knight smiled wanly, "Later."

    Mercy didn't seem to take that well, but she didn't go against him either, her frown hardly severe and a brief thing.

    "I hate the waiting, the not knowing," Ceria said quietly, "Never thought I'd be saying that, given what we're missing out on is battle between wizards and sorcerers, madmen and fiends and all manner of darker things, so horrid that they thought it best we paragons of vice and virtue," she smiled grimly as she spoke, "...that we would be safer here, rather than out in the field, doing our duty. Or don't tell me any of you believe they recalled us because we were needed to look after the city?" She seemed to oddly resent and appreciate the idea as she voiced it aloud, looking touched, fighting a smile from her lips, but her tone was fully irritated.

    "Says you," Ser Criston replied exasperatedly, "You got to do the fun stuff, pouring over cipher this, reading notes and corresponding with one informant or another. Me? Following Lord Drekelis around, it's always 'Criston, smash'. Smash goes the door. Got a reticent shop-keep? 'Criston, convince'. Thump goes the shop-keep. Or his favorite, 'Criston, kill'. And it don't make a fucking difference if it's a fiend with more blades than skin or a bloody fanatic with poisoned blades... or two dozen." He spewed a torrent of curses, half of them for Ghiscari and the other half, scandalously so, for the High Inquisitor, with a couple of 'bless his marriage and his beautiful children, damn his eyes' thrown in, here and there.

    "You make a poor showing of yourself, Ser," The one called Ser Gerold Dayne, sometimes 'Darkstar' but rarer still among this company, spoke, a wry grin on his face, "Don't you know that's just how a man goes about bonding?"

    "If he wanted to be friends," the Stormlander replied drily, "he could just buy me a tankard instead."

    "I like that kind of bonding," The fey-like dragon spoke, hanging from Ser Criston's shoulder and lazily swatting her tail. "It usually comes with the best treasure at the end." The Stormlander merely sighed by way of reply.

    "And of yourself," Ser Denys wondered, eyes on the Dayne knight. "Sporting some lofty airs yourself now, Ser?"

    A strange flash of anger and amusement crossed Darkstar's face, before breathing out a laugh, recognizing the words for what they were. "Point," he spoke, some silent conversation passing between the two. "I can still kick your ass in the yard if you're that eager."

    Shiera was a bit bewildered but relieved to witness such a strange gathering of personalities, half a dozen more strangers she did not even know chattering through even the current thick fog of unease, but all standing ready and waiting to respond to... something.

    More clearly defined was the relief to see Ting smiling back at her, fading into the background of the discussion, a solid rock sitting poised in a river.

    OOC: Shiera appears here. Brief appearances elsewhere. She's one of Yss' first Clerics, and she is precious.
     
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    • Artemis1992 said:
    F

    They were never meant to fight Viserys. At least not by me.
    A B-Party, a part of the Gorgossi garrison or maybe what troops our Saan could have gathered in a fleet.
    Not the dragon archmage.
    Witness their doom:
    🧀🧙‍♀️👑
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    In the words of immortal Man Emperor:
    "Activate the Cheese Shields".

    More seriously though, chances are, some of them survive and will be booking it if they see as much as a chance to.
    And Mindblanked hidey-holes are apparently far too often seen in this setting now :/


    So, uh, what's left...
    1) Check if the Undead's proper dead, kill/loot any that aren't.
    2) Kill/loot the rest of the shanty town of theirs.
    3) Get back to Golden Company, finish looting.
    4) Try to Miracle ourselves foci to scry on Mindblanked escapees sans Illyrio (fuck shadowlands).
    5) Hunt for aforementioned escapees; Scry onto the Mindblanked Reds/the Nightmare that attacked Rhaella via the WoE/any found scales/blood respectively.
    Sounds about right? Am missing something?
     
    egoo said:
    1) Check if the Undead's proper dead, kill/loot any that aren't.
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    We'll have to be especially careful about the Old Mother, VIserys identified her a few updates ago: Llorona – d20PFSRD
    She likely won't leave any remains as a ghost, so we'll have to use someone to keep watch here for a week and capture her once she reforms.

    Edit: Or we can try to Hallow the location where she originally died, maybe divination can help us find the place?
     
    egoo said:
    So, @DragonParadox, I take that we should expect the Rod breaking the next time we try to pull a (mythic) 9th circle spell through it?
    With some (very) unfortunate consequences for it?

    Or was that just narratively framing the "oh wow, that's cheesy, but rules say you can, so at least it'll be described as barely working"-sotuation with it?
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    Enhancing 9th level mythic spells is rather hard on meta-magic items. It would not go amiss to talk to Yss about strengthening it if you want to make a habit of it

    Great omake @Crake. It's nice to see Ting's worry about his master, all too often the wise master atop the mountain is not really a charactyer for whom others fear others can be concerned, but just a dispenser of wisdom. Exploring the complexities of these sorts of paths on ll too human people is one of my favorite things about ASWAH.
     
    DragonParadox said:
    Great omake @Crake. It's nice to see Ting's worry about his master, all too often the wise master atop the mountain is not really a charactyer for whom others fear others can be concerned, but just a dispenser of wisdom. Exploring the complexities of these sorts of paths on ll too human people is one of my favorite things about ASWAH.
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    That's why Brynden is my favorite character whenever he appears on screen. To everyone else he's just a cut-out strawman for why sorcerers and spies are bad.

    To Viserys he's the closest to a paternal figure he has or ever will have.
     
    egoo said:
    And Mindblanked hidey-holes are apparently far too often seen in this setting now :/
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    Wow, you're salty. We've seen a grand total of ONE so far, IIRC. This isn't exactly a huge thing. And it was known to a centuries-old Dragon with ancestral memories who is in service to a Goddess, not some rando.

    Furthermore, it's been official D&D core book fluff that such locations exist in every single edition since 3.0, AFAIK. "Magic being weird in certain places" and "some highly magical areas naturally thwarting teleportation and/or divination" is a normal part of D&D. They're also great to loot! We can put dead drops or bases there, or study them and see if we can improve our own wardings a little!
    [Obviously such things are never replicable very much, otherwise they'd be all over the place]
     
    TalonofAnathrax said:
    Wow, you're salty. We've seen a grand total of ONE so far, IIRC. This isn't exactly a huge thing. And it was known to a centuries-old Dragon with ancestral memories who is in service to a Goddess, not some rando.

    Furthermore, it's been official D&D core book fluff that such locations exist in every single edition since 3.0, AFAIK. "Magic being weird in certain places" and "some highly magical areas naturally thwarting teleportation and/or divination" is a normal part of D&D. They're also great to loot! We can put dead drops or bases there, or study them and see if we can improve our own wardings a little!
    [Obviously such things are never replicable very much, otherwise they'd be all over the place]
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    There are also Mindblank Lair Wards that have this effect.

    There's one in our Shadow Tower.
     
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