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

[DragonParadox]

Of Fate and Choice​

Elsewhere Elsewhen

The dream sweeps upon you softly, a shadow in the night, hardly known, barely felt but for the sound of bells long silenced. And in that tolling can be heard the grief of a goddess, the sorrows of a seer, the truth of an ancient tragedy. Clamor fills the sanctum... as one, three sets of eyes snap open, painfully. Three screams ring out as lids sealed closed with flesh-craft open into blooding wounds. Through the red haze you look upon the faces of your fellows for the first time since you have come to the temple and doubtless for the last.

"It has come upon us at last, the Fate we have long denied," your voice is raspy from long disuse, but not unsteady. At least you will have that at the end.

"Must you waste the last few breaths you still have upon this world on proclaiming the obvious, Laenor?" Ireana snaps. It is good to see that not even the end of the world could change her attitude. You do not bother hiding a smile.

"The wards will hold a while longer," Maergor proclaims as he steps to the window to gaze upon the sky already turned pitch black with soot and ash spat from the depths of the earth. Lyceos died screaming upon its pyre, from the great gardens where beasts of this world and others choked to death under a broken dome, to the palace of the Aedil where the last of the city's battle mages had gathered upon the walls. As though to try to fight the time with a bucket...

Spoiler: A Glimpse of Oblivion

Tears sting your eyes hotter than blood, and you welcome the veil that falls upon your sight. "Forgive me, my lady, for this vision I cannot bear to witness..." you half-whisper, not even caring if the others can hear you.

For the first time in more than three score years you think back on the frightened child you were when you first entered the temple, when the eyes of flesh had been closed that you may see with those of spirit, to the family you only dimply recalled. Did they die swiftly at least? you wonder as the voice of the bells finally fall silent beneath the screams and the roar of flame. Aerion, brother...

In the corner shadows swirl and shift, a reflection of the hellish spectacle beyond or mayhap something more: "Come to me and you will be saved..."

The whisper is so soft another might have dismissed it for the fevered imagining of a mind about to break, but a seer's senses are not so easily turned against them, even by the breaking of the world.

"Begone from the halls of Syrax, tangler of fates!" you call in wrath. "Your kind has no place here."

Melodious laughter echoes through the chamber, soft as silk yet venomous as an adder's kiss: "Your Goddess is dead, this sundered land shall be her tomb and that of all her kin, but it need not be yours, Farseer. My lord is generous, and he is willing to forgive pride for ones as skilled as you." As it speaks the demon reveals itself, a serpentine monstrosity merged with the body of a woman seemingly cut from purest jade. Jeweled rods and staffs of ebony glitter in her six hands. Beautiful she seems, more than all the vistas you had witnessed in your wanderings. The words of denial catch in your throat...

"My lord Abraxas can open your eyes to truths that would make all you see before you seem no more than a grain of dust," the creature hisses.

For a long moment that seemed to stretch into eternity you ponder the question. Yet before you can even speak the words of denial or damnation, Margor throws himself to the ground before the demon: "To the Lord of the Final Incantation I pledge..." His words fade into a gurgle of blood as a gold-hilted dagger sprouts from his neck.

Ireana looks down at him in contempt for a moment before draining a flask she had been hiding somewhere in her robes. She falls too, dead before she even hits the ground.

"Thoughtless fools the both of them," the demon woman hisses. "It is for you that I came."

The naked flattery strikes you like a blow, shoving you from the edge of damnation. "A dragonlord I was born though I rode no dragon," you declare. "A dragonlord I will die, and not as a slave at your master's feet..." A word of power is swift upon your lips, more from instinct than from any hope that the roaring tides of magic will heed your call. Yet the howling madness seems to only make it stronger, echoing beneath the vaults of time as though from the lips of the goddess herself.

Before your eyes the demon is ripped asunder... and you... fall... to sleep, grey and silent.

***​

Twenty-Third Day of the Sixth Month 293 AC

You wake not with a start, but with a sigh that one who passed such a dreadful test in the hour of final ruin would be consumed just the same. Perhaps you can honor his sacrifice by dealing the tempter a death more final than the one he could at the end. Together with Lya you meet the other in the entrance hall, Waymar still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Tyene ever ready for a new challenge, and Dany looking forward to seeing Valyria at last...

"What portents did your dreams bring?" Malarys asks, sounding almost wistful.

"How did you know?" you reply startled.

"You have the look of a man glancing towards the horizon and beyond it..."

Before the discussion can continue, Ser Richard arrives accompanied by a trio of Furies. If the presence of fiends at his back concerns the knight he does not show it. On hearing that you might face the servants of Abraxas once more, the knight shrugs. "They died well enough the first time."

Smiling, your thoughts turn to the journey ahead.

How do you travel across the Sea of Sighs?

[] By ship, slower, but less likely to be waylaid by the lingering horrors in its depths

[] By air, swift as an arrow aflame and just as obvious

[] Write in

OOC: Sorry this took so long. The interlude was tricky to piece together.

 

[DragonParadox]

A Trail of Words​

Twenty-Third Day of the Sixth Month 293 AC

The armor of Mantarys' explorers gleam in the sun like silver, not the common garb of the city's guard, forged for practicality alone that every scrap of steel be made to serve as much as it could as a ward against the city's many foes. There was something almost whimsical about it, vines and stars, laughing beasts and even blooming flowers worked into the metal. Their cloaks were gold, their eyes bright, their laughter heard as often as their words, and if that laughter had an edge of nervousness to it then you could hardly blame them, considering the road ahead and the company they would be keeping on it.

Rather than play games with glamours and trickery, risking the expedition upon a chance broken enchantment in the cauldron that Valyria has become, you bid the Furies show themselves in their true form and explain the circumstances of their service. Even with Yrael himself vouching for their truthfulness, the priests and warriors of Mantarys are ill at ease to find themselves in such company, though to their credit the Sisters themselves reserve the odd dark look only for Naeron.

Spoiler: Mantarys Expedition

• Naeron (Codex Archon, Cleric, Creature 5)
• 1x Cleric 9 (Healing and Protection domain)
• 1x Paladin 7
• 2x Fighter 11

When you explain that you would rather go by air along the shore of the Sea of Sighs the codex spirit speaks up unexpectedly: "The sailors certainly will not regret the choice. They are loyal as much as skilled, but no amount of either will drive a man to joy at the thought of passing under the curse that still blackens the skies of Valyria."

"Sensible men those sailors. Alas that they won't grow rich from it, in tales or in gold," Garin jests, earning him smiles from the pair of warriors who had been previously eyeing Mereth suspiciously.

"I imagine not, but that is not the point I wished to make," the scholarly archon interjects. "Rather that without days aboard a ship there will be little time to study the records we have on Lyceos and to try to piece together what may have survived for good or ill."

Lya's eyes light up so excitedly at the word 'study' that you cannot even think to deny her the chance even if you wished to, not that you would of course. It's a long way from piecing together tales of living dead and dark spirits in Braavos, but one thing has not changed, for one facing arcane perils knowledge is power.

For his part Ser Richard takes one look between you and her before offering to find a tavern, in of course the most neutral and respectful of tones. Not that it keeps Tyene from laughing, of course. She offers to join in alongside Waymar and Garin.

***​

Thus you come to sit at a table filled almost to overflowing with ancient charts and scrolls restored through careful skill and sorcerous ritual, all while Aebys files to and fro, his claws wet with ink as he makes a correction here and a note there. The city that unveils itself to your gaze from yellowed parchment and time-lost memories is an unusual one. Crowded against the slopes of Mount Nerehos, northernmost of the Fourteen Fires, and what is now the Sea of Sighs, Lyceos was surrounded by terraces filled with sweet grapes and lush fruit trees, at least until it flowed over them and tripled in size in the span of less than a generation. It is the cause of that sudden growth that proves the most fascinating part of the tale.

"The Threefold Oracle of the Fateweaver: one to speak of what was, another of what is, and the last to utter riddles of what may yet be," Dany reads out from a poem dated just seventy years after the Doom. "Few dare their eyeless gaze and none descend as they have climbed from... eternity?" the last word is a question as she looks about the room.

Malarys sighs while looking down at the text: "I suspect whoever wrote this was trying to force the metric like a man hammering a wooden peg in place. That should probably be Eternity's Stairs. It was a test of some sort the petitioner would have to face before reaching the Three. I fear, however, that that is the limit of my knowledge on the subject, as I never saw the point of daring the gaze of the Fatespinner in such a manner."

"Did Syrax have a dark reputation?" you ask warily, for something to be counted perilous by the Valyrians who thought nothing of enslaving fiends by the scores and thousands does not inspire you with confidence.

"No, but she was the goddess of fate as much as magic, thus she derived her power as much from the act of prophecy fulfilled as from prayer. I had no intention to set my fate in stone by passing by her eye," Malarys explains. With a faint smile he adds, "Considering how improbable my future truly showed itself to be, I count myself fortunate for the choice."

"Wisely said," Lya speaks up. "Better by far to forge one's own life with every breath than to be just another thread in some tapestry of fate."

"Still no talk of a weapon, 'one the eldest fears'?" you ask, impatient in spite of yourself.

"No, but then if it were common knowledge, or even knowledge we could reasonably find, then we would not have required the tablets fortuitously falling into out laps," Dany replies reasonably. "To tell the truth I think we should visit the Aedil's palace before the temple, assuming it still stands. Centuries of taxing petitioners come from the length and breadth of Valyria would have made for quite a treasury."

"And assuming Aebys' former mistress was not misinformed on the matter, some of that wealth was put towards trying to match Oros' great library," Lya puts in. "Though that may have ultimately failed, it would be a failure I would very much like to get a look at."

"As would we all, Wisdom," Naeron agrees, and not merely for politeness' sake you suspect. While the archon may have a more narrow notion than Lya of what constitutes as 'lore worthy of study,' he is no less passionate about seeking it out. Aught you seek it here still or set off at once? you wonder.

"Regardless of what awaits us we certainly will not run out of room to keep it in," Dany smiles in amusement and anticipation both. "The sheer scale of the folded dimension would allow us to relocate if not the whole city then at least a decent chunk of it."

What do you do next?

[] Try to find more information about Lyceos
-[] Through research
-[] Through divination (write in)

[] Set off at once
-[] Write in traveling formation

[] Writer in

OOC: Over the last two adventures there has been a serious issue of insufficient background which not only make you guys hesitant when voting but I think took away from the sense of history and wonder, making places feel a little too much like 'dungeons'. Thus I decided to go with the research stage beforehand (since it also makes sense IC).

 

[DragonParadox]

Through Tainted Skies ​

Twenty-Fourth Day of the Sixth Month 293 AC

The Doom lies upon Valyria like an ashen veil, guarding against sight past and present, and the screams of the dying echo in every answer you hear, yet hear them you do loud and sharp, vivid in ways that will haunt your nightmares that weigh upon the soul and the mind.

Grotesques of burnt scrimshaw fly through tainted skies, once simple messengers of the dragonlords now haunted by the broken souls of their makers, bound to protect the Aedil's last message to Old Valyria, the final words of the seers atop their twisting spire. What secrets it might hold not even prophecy can tell...

"I would say that given the nature of the Lyceos and those who dwelt therein the message was likely some warning of what was to come," Malarys muses.

"Never knowing that it would do no good, that the gods knew, perhaps their servants also, and could do nothing," Dany shivers, though not due to cold as she delivers this grim proclamation. "Can you imagine being in their place, to see the death of thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children, kith and kin, yet be unable to to turn it aside even an inch?"

"I can't nor do I wish to, but alas I can imagine all too well what might be birthed from such horror," you sigh, turning your questions towards the three seers in the tower: one a traitor, the second a murderer, and the last falling to despair in the hour of his bitter 'triumph'.

What you had feared you find in truth. The dead haunt the apex of the power, the power of their curse shrouding it from sight save for a last bleak riddle: "Burning eyes unable to close, tangled throats unable to speak, broken minds trapped in twisting coils."

"We will give it to them in the end," Naeron proclaims with a certainty of his very being as all around the table you and your companions nod in agreement. That you came for treasure and lore you will not deny, but you will do what you can to lay to rest the dead and the damned.

Last of all you ask if any others had dared the journey to Lyceos and what they may have taken from the ruins. The answer you receive is stranger than you might have hoped, though more hopeful than you had feared. "Ash raker, sword breaker, shade taker, yet he lies before the gilded door, pride now stemmed by humblest hands..."

"Ash raker could be anything to do with flame, swords break from the most common of causes." Malarys ponders aloud. "Yet not many things steal shades. Perhaps something like the fey you bargained with, Your Grace...?"

"The heart of the matter there is bargained. I do not think it could have taken my shadow in that manner. The soul is not lightly parted..."

"Rakshasa," Lya half-whispers. "They come from under the Shadow, from the lands of ash, slavers of souls and prideful beyond measure. Who knows for how many centuries one of them might have lingered in Lyceos seeking some mighty weapon, particularly if we are right and this is a weapon the gods themselves fear."

***​

So armed with knowledge as much as steel and sorcery you take flight, following the barren shore of the Sea of Sighs where the poisoned waters lap upon crumbling shores. Beyond you can at times glimpse the light of campfires from the hardy and stubborn shepherds and trappers that make Rumbling Hills their home. Naeron tells you that some of these lands are at least in part claimed by Mantarys, though the hand of the city lies lightly indeed upon them. Offers of trade and the odd patrol in force by daring guardsmen always led by one of the archon warriors are enough for the locals to faintly acknowledge that 'golden wings are better than black.'

The saying is rather telling for what comes from the south, from the wild lands where the sun drips blood red even in midday and the leaves of the trees turn grey as ash. More than once you hear shrill haunting screeches in the distance. Mereth reports things that might have once been birds now made enormous and malformed. Curious, you sweep briefly away from the group to shadow one of these beasts. Something about the uneven joining of avian and draconic forms makes fire rise in your throat on sheer instinct. This should not be...

Spoiler: Dragon Spawn

In any lands save this they would not be, you know. You can feel the twisted magics further south sliding onto your scales like a second sun, like a bitter taste upon the tongue.

"You and your sisters want to hunt that thing?" It is barely a question, for you have seen the way Mereth marked the beast.

"I have never seen its like yet it seems a worthy quarry, a way to hone ourselves for the battles ahead," she replies. After a brief pause she adds, "Perhaps your consort might even learn something of worth by carving up the carcass."

Before answering you bid Varys to see if the creature has any mind to speak of, something she does with a hiss of annoyance for your familiar has no more love of this thing than you. "It's just barely smarter than a hawk but vicious and mad..." As though the words had been some sign the monster turns dirty-yellow eyes upon you and with a screech of fury it hurls itself towards you, though it is barely half your size.

Mereth seems to take it for a challenge: "Keep it off the king, keep it pinned!"

Black arrows fly, a deadly rain from ashen skies as curse upon curse is cast upon the quarry's head. Tormented and bedeviled the thing lunges this way and that, unable to come to grips with the more nimble Erinyes as they duck and weave beneath the branches of knotted trees. The thing spits waves of sickly yellow flame, but again and again the furies weave away. Finally it manages to pin Mereth to the ground of a dry gully just as one of her sisters strikes the final blow.

Gained Giant Half-Dragon Blood Hawk Corpse (Advanced to 12 HD)

As you fly over to look at the kill you notice something gleaming in its talon, a talisman of gold set with three eyes: One open, one half closed, and one lidded shut, the symbol of Syrax. Another sign from the dead goddess? you wonder, a chill running down your spine. Was it meant to show you are on the right path or direct you to find wherever this thing had made its nest first?

What do you do?

[] Continue on to Lyceos

[] Try to find the nest first

[] Write in

OOC: I hope the atmosphere holds up.

 

[DragonParadox]

On the Path of Prophecy ​

Twenty-Fourth Day of the Sixth Month 293 AC

Finding the nest is easier said than done. While the hills have no shortage of perches upon which these half-avian horrors could lair, its wings could easily have carried it for hundreds of leagues in search of prey. Luckily, Lya happens upon a simple if rather visceral solution. "Like is dawn to like," she points out. "If this thing recently ate anything too large to gulp down at once, then it likely scattered morsels of it around its nest."

"It might also have scattered it from here to the Painted Mountains," Garin notes, meaningfully glancing at the trackless wilderness all around.

"No," you interject, pulling out a feather from its misshapen wing and crushing into dust in your hand. Just as brittle as you had thought. "This thing could not live far from the Lands of Long Summer, from the tangled skeins that lie over Valyria. We might not be heading directly to Lyceos anymore, but we are certainly heading south."

Though none of you are skilled in carving up corpses, at least ones that are not fighting back, the task is nonetheless swiftly done with one of Garin's daggers serving to part the steel-hard scales and spill out the contents of the monster's stomach.

The Furies prove the most adept at picking apart the offal, partly from being untouched by the noxious juices it is all swimming in, but also from their utter lack of revulsion at the task. Mereth even congratulates Lya on her quick thinking, though somehow you doubt your love wholly approves to be being told she 'has a mind like an Osyluth'.

After hours of work from you Dany, Malarys, and Naeron in equal measure, you finally have your token, a bloody strip of brown-black hide covered in uniform scars that almost have the look of writing to them. The simple scrying pool bordered not with arcane runes but simple stones pulled from among the dry grasses shows a rippling image of sharp-edged stone, steaming water, and crimson skies.

"Should we really be jumping about with magic 'round here?" Waymar asks, concerned.

Thankfully the answer you divine is not quite as concerning as it might have been. If the lands beyond the Wall were barred by an impassible barrier, then the ether in these lands was akin to a storm-tossed sea, dangerous for even the most canny of navigators but still passable with a bit of luck.

Arcana of the Valyrian Peninsula Revealed

Spoiler: Whirling Ether

Whirling Ether

Effects:

1. Greater Teleport acts as Teleport
2. Teleport rolls take a +25 penalty (more likely to lead to mishaps)
3. All spells that interact with the Ethereal of the Shadow Planes have a chance of failure dependent on how deep one goes into the broken lands

Thus leaving Mereth and her subordinates to help guard the others, you, Dany, Ser Richard, Lya, Tyene, Waymar, Malarys, and Garin join hands to make the journey. The way proves rougher than any you have taken in months, but in the end you find yourselves roughly where you wished to be, on a worn sandstone ledge looking up at a vista that might almost have seemed natural and was all the more uncanny for it.

Tall sharp-edged pillars stand under the crimson sun, surrounding a slow shallow river whose waters are not red like the Sea of Sighs but vivid blue-green, almost inviting but for the fact that it is steaming with bitter salts and brimstone. The creatures that come to drink here are no less odd, stoop-backed emaciated antelope with their back legs unnaturally long vie for space with bloated rust-colored lizards the size of hogs.

Spoiler: Spires

"The nest is up there," Dany points to the top of the nearest spire crowned with a thorny tangle.

Flying up to take a look reveals nothing in the way of further treasures, though from the height you notice something odd about about one of the stone piles. They lie a little too regularly to have been wrought solely by chance. Ruins, perhaps, you wonder, intrigued...

Thankfully none of the creatures gathered by the stream seem to know what to make of you, and so they keep their distance, though it is telling that your half-draconic form elicits merely the weariness any large predator might rather than terror. All thoughts of beasts fly from your mind as soon as you come close enough to see inside. Dozens upon dozens of skulls stare out at you from the under the ledge, young and old, large and small, some of them changed in some proportion but all recognizably human...

"A tomb..." Waymar breathes.

"An ossuary," Malarys corrects. "One that seems to have been in use for generations given the sheer variety of bones."

Dany steps up and gently picks up a skull that likely belonged to a child from the size, though strangely elongated towards the back. "And considering the obvious psychical changes it would be fair to assume these people lived here after the Doom."

Stepping further into the shallow cave you spot a crude altar set askew, its offerings scattered amidst the bones. Most were nothing more shiny stones and herbs that turned to dust at a touch, but you spot a few gold rings and a silver chain among them. Like as not this is where the monster had claimed the symbol of Syrax from. Perhaps the dead might tell you the rest of the tale.

"There's something on the far wall," Lya interjects.

Bringing the light closer, you realize it is a painting of sorts writ in soot and red ocher, a score of small humanoid figures prostrating themselves before what is clearly a dragon in flight.

"Fuck," Ser Richard's curse speaks most eloquently for your feelings.

"Remember that the Fourteen took the form of dragons," Malarys points out. "We could be looking at an admittedly poor image of one of Them, perhaps Syrax."

Mouth suddenly dry, you pick up one of the skulls and whisper a wish to it for swiftness: "Whose likeness is it upon the wall?"

"The One Long Awaited, the Reborn Lord in Crimson Clad from the Dreamer's blood begotten..."

The skull drops from your fingers with a clang as a dreadful suspicion comes upon you: "They had been waiting for us... for me."

What do you do?

[] Ask more questions of the dead
-[] Write in

[] Try to raise one of them, if what you suspect is true they will be more than happy return to life, however much the thought discomfits you
-[] Write in

[] Write in

OOC: Some great skills rolls this update, including Waymar critting a wisdom check of all people.

 

[DragonParadox]

Voice of the Grave ​

Twenty-Fourth Day of the Sixth Month 293 AC

Hen Anogar... Old Blood, the irony of this forgotten tribe naming itself in like manner to the magisters of Volantis and to a lesser degree all of Valyria's surviving daughter-states does not escape you, but there is little time to dwell upon it as you must question the bones before the power of your wish is spent. The people who raised this ossuary could count perhaps three-hundred people from babe in arms to elder when the bones you now hold were still clothed in flesh some four generations after the Doom.

They followed a prophet of some sort, 'a Voice' known in each generation by being the one least changed by the lingering taint of wild magic. These people did not revere magic, they feared it as they feared the twisted beasts of the land and the restless dead, but for one 'hallowed relic' beloved of a wandering people. The answers had not been all you might have hoped for, but they were still worth listening to. Gently setting the skull down back on the ledge you had taken it from, you turn to the others.

"A spell-steel bowl, it seems like an offering vessel of some sort, though I know little of Syrax's mysteries," Malarys begins. "Certainly the notion that it granted visions to this 'Voice' would seem to indicate it."

"The more pressing questions would be where is it? Where are they?" Garin asks. "Alive or dead? Scattered or simply wandered off north?"

"There were not tales in Mantarys of such a gathering emerging from the south," Lya replies. "More to the point this..." she motions at the image behind you, "...is the mark of a divine charge. One would assume a seer goddess does not lose her instruments so easily, even in death."

"Perhaps we should ask a simpler question first," you muse, walking out of the chamber and glad to be so. "Before we attempt to find where they are we should mark this place upon our maps."

Thus you find that you are roughly three fifths of the way to Lyceos on the triangle of land between the Sea of Sighs and the Summer Sea. Given the dubious quality of any map one might find of these lands that is the best you can manage. To judge from what information Aebys was able to offer, the Old Coast road should be only a score or so leagues southwards, and that aught lead you to your destination, assuming it even survived to the gates of the city.

Spoiler: Map

As you descend, Lya steps forward with a grim look in her eye. "I don't think the people who built that tomb could have just left. I tested it, and the bones themselves fall to dust if one casts away the touch of magic from them. I think the 'Voice' was less one who spoke to the gods and more the one among their number most able to trek north and trade with the folk nearer to Mantarys."

"What would they have traded in, though?" Waymar asks. "Strange beasts, I suppose, but if those would die and crumble too..."

"Relics and treasures of Valyria most likely," Malarys interjects. "Perhaps there are even some near at hand..."

The dead reveal his suspicions to be correct, though nothing as convenient as a cash of dragonsteel under the tomb. Instead they left small hidden cashes throughout the hills. Broken whispers from the grave are hardly enough to find them, though with enough patience and the Wayfinder in hand you would doubtless be able to divine them.

What do you do next?

[] Try to raise one of those interred in the ossuary so that they may provide more complete answers

[] Fly around the hills looking for caches of artifacts by the Wayfinder

[] Continue heading south on the Old Coast Road

[] Write in

OOC: Sorry about the size of the map. The site I use gave an error whenever I tried to upload a higher resolution for some reason.

 

[DragonParadox]

Nightmares of Flesh and Spirit ​

Twenty-Fourth Day of the Sixth Month 293 AC

"I think it's best to let the dead rest," you sigh, stepping away from the cave. "Let them keep their treasures. Whether they be alive or dead they would be too long in finding, and every moment we spend in these blighted lands risks something worse coming upon us." As though in answer to your proclamation a strange shriek resounds from the south, somewhere between the call of a raptor and a man's scream of fright.

"We might leave them, but I've the oddest sense they will not leave us be so easily as that," Dany replies as she draws close to fly once more across the troubled lands. The words have a ring of prophecy to them.

Your last sight of the vale is a ragged-edged shadow passing over the face of the sun.

***​

Upon returning you find that the others in much the same place as you had found them, though in far different circumstances. The small campsite seems to have been attacked by twisted half-draconic things, many of them so malformed that they could only have lived through sorcery, which lay strewn about the parched and stony ground. Most seem to have been crushed with heavy maces or pierced with black-feathered arrows, though a few show signs of dying to either Naeron's blinding enchantments or the curses of the Erinyes. Strange bedfellows, but even more strange is how skillfully they have guarded each other.

Distantly you wonder if some echo of long dead camaraderie might have been heard in the midst of desperate battle, though you wisely keep from asking such a thing. Instead you content yourself with collecting the corpses and moving on, though that does hold one more surprise...

"There is more than the mark of dragons upon these beings," Lya says, crouching close to one bloody corpse, that shows not scales like its fellows but matted fur interspaced with thick plates of jagged horn or bone. Washing away the rotting blood, she once again shows glyphs writ in flesh, but this time one can read the meaning of them, at least in part. "I think this thing must have been shaped once, like the Seeker perhaps, but it seems to rough... unfinished."

Spoiler: Corpses

4 Hero-killer Tatzlwyrms (Advanced to 6 HD)
6 Half-dragon Doombats

"It's got hooves and a crab claw," Ser Richard gives the body a dubious look as though expecting it to spring back into murderous animation at any moment. "I'd say that's more than just 'unfinished'."

"Could they have bred?" Garin asks a touch uncertainly.

"That would indicate a severe failure of every principle, every contingency the flesh-smiths worked by," Malarys replies, then with a uncharacteristically melancholy shake of the head he adds, "In this place I would not think it unlikely."

Merely finding the Old Coastal road is far harder than you had anticipated. The farther south you fly the hotter the air grows, the hot gusts of wind that rise up from among the jagged lifeless hills seeming almost bent to some fel intent. Yet still you press on, warded by the same enchantments that saw you all warded from the kiss of primal flame.

"How long has the sun been up?" Waymar asks a few hours into the ride.

Looking up you realize he is right to worry. The sun is still staring down at you like a malignant crimson eye, no higher and no lower than when first you had seen it change. If anything it looks larger.

"We are not wholly in the world of form, I suspect," Naeron declares, drawing nervous looks from his companions, though all of them try to hide it.

Mereth snorts, though before she can comment on mortal cowardice something on the road ahead draws her eyes and yours in equal measure. A group of travelers, simple carts and donkeys alongside men walking afoot, utterly ordinary save for the hellish light and scorched ground.

What do you do?

[] Send Mereth ahead. Her gaze will pierce any illusion close at hand, and a devil would hardly be a strange sight in this place

[] Fly forward yourself

[] Approach with the whole group.

[] Write in

OOC: Sorry this took so long. There was a lot of rolling in the background fight.

 

[DragonParadox]

Shades and Memories​

Twenty-Fifth Day of the Sixth Month 293 AC

On wings of fire and steeds of ash you approach, each bracing for a fight in one's own heart, for nothing kindly could hide behind such a mirage in this of all places. So it is in truth, though not in the manner you had been expecting. Mereth sees first, as soon as her hell-wrought gaze falls upon the truth beneath the glamour: "Not many but one," she calls back to all of you. To your surprise even Naeron's wings flare in recognition and you suspect shock that she would forge, even for an instant, such an intimate connection with him.

Before you can even formulate a reply she continues: "A great geist, like a ghost ship at sea, like a worm burrowing through the ether so that only some of its coils can be seen in any one moment.."

"Hail, travelers from the Outlands," a strong voice, seemingly a young man's without any hint of sinister purpose, calls. "What do you seek upon the road this day?" In form 'he' is no less ordinary seeming save for the fact that the reddish light does not seem to bathe him as it does the blasted stones and trees charred to ash. Instead to your eye it seems as though he is perhaps standing under some clear blue sky, the sun reflecting golden from his many talismans. The group advances steadily to the sound of brindle bells, though you suspect any living beast that tried to walk the old road would become mired in the ash and tar.

Spoiler: Caravan Master

Though your company would have been strange indeed, even in the days before the Doom ripped apart Valyria, he does not seem to notice or care that angels, devils, and dragons fly together above the boiling black ribbon of the Dragon Road. "If you are heading to Lyceos you aught to know they barred the gates. Some rider's shit at the Aedil's palace..." he breaks off spotting Malarys, seeing him as he does not see the rest of your odd cavalcade. "Pardons, Wisdom. My tongue has ever been too free..."

To his credit the magelord answers instantly: "Well then, see to it that you keep it in your head so that it is not misplaced."

The cold supercilious tone seems to be just what the dead man, if man you can still call him, expected, for he falls to flattery with the swiftness of long practice: "I am Argaer and these are my kinsmen, humble traders upon the Straight Roads. We know not the graces of the most high, but we are ever willing to give what meager aid we can to those greater than us."

As the discussion is taking place the caravan comes to a halt, and now at last the first hints of their true nature begin to show. There is a jerkiness to the movement of beasts and carts, a strange evenness in how they stop. Puppets on unseen strings.

"Humble, I would hate to see you at your most prideful then," Malarys snorts, but allows his expression to soften. "Tell me what drove the Aedil to close his gates and I will count your earlier folly expunged."

"The way I heard it three days before we reached the city gates the Aedil's young children and their tutor vanished clean away as though they had gone up in smoke, and no one was able to find any of them, not the priests of Balerion calling for justice, nor the mages with their silver glasses. I even heard told that the seers up in the tower wouldn't even talk about it. So they closed the gates so none could slip by 'em. Supposedly their mother went out looking for them with her dragon and the beast ate some folk, citizens even, I heard. Maybe the Aedil's as worried about his wife being tried as his missing children..." Throughout the conversation the words become more and more rushed, tumbling over each other. By the end they feel like far more than a recitation of gossip. Odd how much he would know from presumably talking to the gate guards.

Though tempted to speak up you keep your peace. A talking dragon might break whatever delusion holds the specter fast. Instead you wait and listen, hoping the Essarian mage can thread the needle in your place.

Malarys' next words are carefully wrought indeed for you hear the faint echo of foresight upon them. "How many days is the ban on entry to be in effect?"

"Five days we were told." The words are almost a whisper, as though too weighty to be spoken clearly. "Five days then it's over. It's all over..." He shakes his head. "Come, night is almost upon us. Share our fire and we will speak more of things near and far." A charming smile, or at least the simulacrum of one, crosses 'Argaer's' features. "I have often wished to see the beauties of Essaria. I've an ear for accents, don't I?"

A look of pain almost too fleeting to see crosses Malarys' features. Skilled though he may be at this mummery, you suspect it is quite painful for him.

What do you do?

[] Stay the 'night' and try to obtain more information
-[] Write in line of questioning

[] Continue on to the city
-[] Stay on the road
-[] Scout and enter by air

[] Write in

OOC: Malarys rolled really well for diplomacy so far, but you have a sense he is walking a knife's edge. Anything that can help him out without giving the game away would be a great benefit.

 

[DragonParadox]

Lost upon the Road​

Twenty-Fifth Day of the Sixth Month 293 AC

You ponder the choice at length. The tangled weaves of gods and spirits are not ones you wish to thread if you can help it, but you wonder if can you truly afford to do so? There is something to this caravan of the damned, a mark of destiny, riddle you have yet to answer. How did they know so much of the goings on in Lyceos? Why had they and they alone been bound to this hellish existence? If nothing else might there be some way to end it, to give them peace? Through Varys' mind-voice you converse with the others and find most curious or sympathetic to the fate of those eternally lost upon this cursed path. Above all else, however, you speak to Malarys, as it is upon the fulcrum of his skill and his pain that this deception must turn.

"Can you do this, my friend?" the last two words come naturally, as easily as ever you have spoken them to Vee or Garin. With an inner start you realize that in this place under the scorched skies of Fallen Valyria you have finally come to consider the last of its children a friend as much as a vassal or companion in battle.

"I can," the answer acknowledges the concern, a thread of wordless thanks running through it.

***​

Bedding down for the 'night' under the hellish crimson radiance is nerve-wracking. Every moment you expect Malarys' mask to slip somehow or the specters to suddenly see some glimpse of the truth around them. Your muscles ache from the strain of being ready to dive at any moment, fire licks the inside of your throat waiting to be unleashed, yet through it all the magelord plays his part masterfully. Imperious without quite being rude, charming without being verbose, you watch him take non-existent tea from charred cups and even 'unwind enough' to give legal advice for cases that had died four centuries and more ago. Usually petty things of course, trespassing and smuggling most prominent among them, but as the evening wears on the dead grow more restless, the spectral campfires sputter and spark with balefire, the beasts paw at dust and stone.

Finally 'Argaer' approaches you not half an hour after you finally deem it safe enough to abandon the skies for the pose of Malarys' young Lyseni cousin. "How do you think your cousin would feel if we asked him about something a little bigger than a touch of 'misplaced' liquor or 'forgotten' emberwood, for a friend of course?"

"And what sort of trouble has this 'friend' gotten himself into?" you ask, daring to let the guise of naiveté slip ever so slightly in the hopes of unraveling the traders' tragic tale.

As he draws close to whisper you can smell the scent of burning flesh upon his breath but you do not flinch. "Politics..."

"Ah, well as to that there's no more skilled help you are likely to get than my cousin. He's not one to keep his nose in the air to the troubles of common folk, and better yet he's not from around here so has no stake in whatever you... that is your friend is tangled in. So if you need an advocate's help..." you trail off.

For a long while there is silence broken only by the sound of your breathing, then finally, reluctantly, the spirit speaks, "Remember those kids we talked about?"

"Yes?" you prompt.

"Well..." another long sigh. "What we told you is the story going around Lyceos, but it ain't the truth. The Aedil's wife handed them off to us alongside two chests full of treasure. She said to take them north to Mantarys. The tutor apparently has it in for them, and he's 'not what he seemed,' though as to what that meant the lady didn't want to tell the likes of us."

With utmost care not to seem to eager you ask: "Are the children still with you?"

"The boy is but he's sick, or maybe just playing at it... the girl..." A look of confusion enters his eye. "You know, I'm not sure where the girl is..."

The fire hisses and sputters angrily.

"I'm sure they are both still right where you left them," you interject hastily. "Where else would they be?"

"Right, of course... they are in there," the spirit points towards one of the larger tents towards the center of the camp.

After signaling to the others where you are going again with Varys' aid, including a mentally grumbling Ser Richard, you step through where you are bid. There is no light inside and even the light of the cursed sun seems to stop at the threshold as though from some unseen command.

"How are you here? Are you alive?" The words echo as though from a great distance, spoken from unnaturally pale lips. A boy of perhaps ten stares back at you through bloodshot eyes. He had obviously been crying... and he was just as obviously dead, though you could see no mark on him.

As though reading your thoughts he says in a chillingly matter-of-fact-tone: "I took poison. I didn't want the flames to take me. Like they took the others, like they must have taken Aenie."

"Where is your sister?" you ask at once.

"She stayed with one of the farmers a few days back... before It. She said she had a dream had bid her stay, but mama said get to Mantarys since that was the only place that would be safe from Baegor-who-wasn't-Baegor."

The words spark a suspicion in your mind, though it is best to ask before assuming, given that the child seems to talkative. "What was he, then?"

"He looked sort of like a tiger..."

It seems you had found the Rakshasa, in a manner of speaking at least, though that does not take you any further into realizing how to break the curse that binds these unfortunate souls to their endless trek.

What do you do next?

[] Write in

OOC: Wow, Malarys is on fire, he got a natural 20 to follow up the other high rolls.

 

[DragonParadox]

Of Oaths and Omens​

Twenty-Fifth Day of the Sixth Month 293 AC

"Can you leave...?" You hesitate a moment, unsure if the question will add yet another barb to an already torturous existence. "Will the others object?"

"Where is there to go?" the boy asks in turn, resigned, though any bitterness in his voice has long since worn away over the centuries. "The world died, the dreams were false, and he was right... there is only fire."

"He? The rak... The tiger man?" You cut yourself off from speaking the true nature of the monster lest it have some way of hearing its name spoken. Not lightly would a dragonlord in the heart of her power send her children away.

"Yes, he said that only the shadow could guard us from the flame, that he would lead us to it, if only we gave him some blood." The dead child tilts his head in an achingly innocent manner as he explains: "You aren't supposed to give blood you know, not to anyone who isn't kin. Even if they are a great lord or a priest, 'blood to blood be given, blood for blood paid'." He ends on the faintly singsong note that brings to mind a macabre nursery rhyme.

Without much hope you ask, "Do you know why he needed your blood?"

"Something... a gift, an off... My head hurts. Please make it stop," he begs between bloodied lips.

It is all that you can do not to conjure flame in that very moment, to give him the pyre and the rest he has long been denied, but you cannot be sure it will be enough and so you stay your hand and will. "It would help me if you remembered. I can't make magic if I don't know what I'm making magic on," you rephrase your trouble in the simplest manner you can think of, hopefully one he had heard before in life, for the dead are poor learners.

"He was... going to put our blood in a bowl to open the doors to the big tower where the seers live..." The words trail off in an almost soundless gasp.

Something niggles at the back of your mind. "What did this bowl look like? What happened to it?" you ask urgently, before the pain can overcome him and leave you with nothing but more questions.

"Aenie took it from him when we ran to find the guards. It was steel but not norma..." Before he can gasp out the last words he collapses.

"I'm sorry," you whisper, reaching out to touch his cold cheek and wishing upon him whatever fleeting semblance of peace your sorcery can give him, even as your mind races with the answer you had received. It seems the token of Syrax had not lead you astray, nor had the girl 'Aenie' been deceived by her dreams, she had lived through the Doom where the whole of Valyria had perished, and she had like as not led that first desperate band of survivors. Did her bones lie among the ossuary you had found?

Walking quickly out of the tent you send out your thoughts through Varys to Malarys, explaining what you had found and offering a plan to escape the hospitality of the dead without invoking their wrath. You find him wary and relieved to be given a chance to step away from the mummery he had been playing at.

"You are at risk of a grave injustice being done to you and your people, master Argaer, and for that alone I would offer my council," the magelord begins, to obvious skepticism. "Worse of all, the fate of two children of the noblest blood has been left to the winds of chance and the veil of secrecy. I do not doubt your heartiness upon the road, bur what could you do against a foe that would so bedevil a dragonlord of the Forty?"

The last is obviously more reasonable to the dead, for instead of denying it the mouth of the company of shades merely proclaims: "We aren't giving them up, we swore we wouldn't until we reach Mantarys." The words send uneasy ripples though the boiling air. That is their anchor, likely as not. Getting them to the road's end in five days by their own measure is alas easier said than done, as there is no way they would make it at the rate they are riding.

While you had been pondering the greater riddle Malarys continues, presenting his point. "Of course, no one would expect you to break an oath. A poor priest of the Lord of the Skies I would be to say so. We will step aside from the road for a few hours, the better to work divinations without being seen and heard by ill-wishing sorcerers or beings in their thrall."

"Leave the road? You can't..." Sparks of red almost like a reflection of the malignant sun above begin to form in the 'man's' eyes as all around you the rest of the caravan stops as though turned to stone.

"To make sure the children are safe and that you reach your destination," you soothe. "Roads are good for moving quick, but not staying hidden." With a self-deprecating smile you add, "Even I know that much."

"Yes... yes, of course," the words come out, almost relieved. "Go with our blessings."

What do you do?

[] Return to the ossuary to try and find out where Aenie and her mysterious bowl might be
-[] Write in how

[] Try to get the caravan to Mantarys
-[] Write in how

[] Write in

OOC: Some mixed rolls thus update, but you pulled out in the end.

 

[DragonParadox]

Riding to Ruin's End ​

Twenty-Fifth Day of the Sixth Month 293 AC

As your small company sits perched on one of the barren hills, you measure out your options one by one, from Tyene's notion of simply conjuring a mirage of the gates of Mantarys to trick the dead into believing their charge fulfilled, to Malarys' notion of teleporting the boy and then allowing them to glimpse him in the scrying mirror's eye. Yet for all both options have their merits in not actually leading a cavalcade of specters into populated lands, neither is certain to be heavy enough in whatever damnable scale the curse is measured by.

"I'd almost rather carry their damn carts myself and set them all on phantom horses," you grumble, rubbing away an oncoming headache from your temples.

"Phantoms riding phantoms, wouldn't that be a sight," Waymar laughs, you suspect more at the relief from being away from the dead than the mental image alone.

"Why do they need to ride anything?" Dany asks. "They are specters, lighter than a feather upon the wind, able to pass through any barrier as a man might part a curtain. The only reason they can't move any swifter than they are now is because they are still playing out their failed escape. So what if we were to..."

"Offer some false blessing or enchantment," you nod thoughtfully before turning to Naeron. "Though I hold Yrael's oath, I would hear your word on this, bright one..."

"The peril of leading the dead through the lands of life is not to be discounted, yet I would be derelict not only in duty but compassion also to bar the way. Let us be vigilant and hopeful in equal measure," the codex spirit replies in a voice like muted bells.

Through all this Mereth and her kin choose to remain in the sky, circling the gathering of spirits, watchful as hawks, but silent on the particulars, whether they suspect their voice would not be welcomed or simply do not care you know not, but something about that fact is oddly upsetting. They too are wise with the experience of scores and hundreds of lives of men, and though that wisdom may be tainted by malice it still has worth.

***​

"Balerion has showed me a path," Malarys' proclamation has the air of rote to it, intentionally so, for he explained that the priests of his order were expected to possess a certain flair for the dramatic, masking naked ambition. 'I never thought I would have to play into that image again, but times make fools of us all do they not,' he said almost wistfully. Yet here he is taking up the role once more, the obvious lie to hide a deeper and more terrible truth. He speaks of a grand ritual that will help you all reach Mantarys by sunset. At the slightly incredulous pitch of the whispers he quickly amends them to tomorrow morning, whatever sunset and morning might mean in these broken lands where the sky itself has sickened.

Words of power do you speak in time with the magic of a false ritual, power to make blades cut true and deep, playing the part of 'cutting the air ahead of you' and 'splitting moments as a ship's prow parts the waves'. Here you are again upon the borderlands of shattered Valyria addressing a company of the damned and forgotten with the same skills Corlys Waters used to milk silver from dockside moneylenders. Tis almost enough to draw a smile. Fates willing you will be able to smile about this once they have been laid to rest at last.

Racing into the north beside the dead and damned is a far different experience than walking into their camp. You can see the people fading into and out of sight, you can hear their voices fading and reemerging as they tread well-worn paths. Gossip four-hundred years old and rumors of trade born of cities that now lie in broken rubble pass from one to the other, no more than the sound of a serpent rubbing its scales together. Yet beneath it all you can feel an edge of hope, you can feel it like an impossible breath of cool air in the cursed cauldron that the Doom has wrought.

"Trouble behind us and moving far too fast..." Mereth's quiet words jar you from your contemplation like a blow."Hell hounds, or something that looks uncannily like them to our eyes."

"What are they doing?" you ask, now cursing your own place in this charade rather than above watching over it with the others.

"Hunting, but not alone, the shape of the pack is wrong for that, nothing on the flanks. They are driven to the caravan by something mightier riding from behind would be my guess," she replies. Thoughtfully, she adds, "Perhaps they simply seek to break through the specter's delusion and drive them to rage and grief on the edge of salvation."

Looking back over the carts and riders you spot them, creatures of roiling flame and blackened bone. Not devils you realize, but also not quite specters, some foul conjoining of restless dead and spirits of tainted fire, the wardens of this realm of torment perhaps...

Spoiler: Hound Horrors

Still only sparks in the distance to most eyes but advancing far, far swifter than even their tireless gait should be able to take them. Some vengeful power drives them, of that you are certain. Perhaps one of Valyria's other restless souls is unwilling to release its fellows in suffering. A part of you wishes to take to the sky at once, but caution weighs against it. The dead might see the 'impossibility' before their eyes and so be woken to the true nightmare of their being. Perhaps one final bit of mummery will serve or else you could leave it to your friends and companions above.

What do you do?

[] Call out the attack, justifying it in a manner that maintains the delusion of the dead
-[] Write in

[] Let the others handle this
-[] Write in tactical suggestions (optional)

[] Write in

OOC: This is not a random encounter, but a consequence of what you are trying. I'm trying to move away from random encounters in the traditional sense because they are not as narratively satisfying and engaging I've found. Hope this works.