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

[DragonParadox]

Looming Storm ​

Twentieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

"Euron, brother of Balon and son of Quellon, sent this man here with treachery in his heard and dark sorcery in his hand," you proclaim at last to the assembled Ironborn. "I will not call him Greyjoy for he has forfeited that name when he sought his niece's death for his own gain." Asha gives a nod of thanks to Mereth and one to you, but her dark eyes do not reflect the fear of many of her elders. Instead you read there anger and a cold determination that may only be sated with the death of the Crow's Eye.

Recalling the image glimpsed in the assassin's mind and considering the tools the 'Great Captain' used to achieve his twisted ends you know she has a long road ahead of her, and so do her people. Unfortunate as Bloodraven's choice to use him as a tool was you have no doubt the man is extraordinary if he caught the Last Greenseer's wandering eye.

Her people had best be wary too. You warn them that Euron and his ilk might attempt other ploys now that their more overt plot has been stopped. Onto the Ironborn you bequeath that day talismans of clarity of mind only to find that many of them already possess such wards against enchantment, for the same stubbornness that made them a bane to the lands of Westeros and beyond also made them most disinclined to bend to a sorcerer's will. However it is your second gift you offer, that of knowledge and books, that is taken least well.

What do they have need of such trifles, what good can scribbles on paper answer of the true dangers of the world? They ask, not in so many words it is true, they mutter and they look away, they give the tomes the same looks a fisherman might give a particularly unpleasant catch.

"Tell me captains, what do you think the first man to ever lay down greased charcoal to parchment and draw a map was told by his fellows?" you speak out loud and clear over the mounting whispers. "Was he lauded for his cleverness, or instead disdained as a fool who made more complex the art of sailing they had been practicing for long ages? ]My grandfather's grandfather sailed these waters with aid of naught but star and wave], might have said a man who would be in the end lost at sea and dashed against an unfamiliar shore..."

In the silence that follows Maelor jests without voice: "That's a lot of mummery, think we'll need to get some stage hands and glamor-wrights from the mirror shows to spruce up the curtains?"

"I'll take that under advisement," you reply dryly as the Sparr admits that he 'has quite the collection of maps' when it comes to not running afoul of the rocks and shoals of this new world. With that... well you would not say the floodgates open, books are still counted less precious than magic, certainly less precious than gold or steel, but not lightly discounted the truths recounted therein, you hope at least.

Lost 140 Protections From Evil Amulets

For now there are darker matters to consider, threats you cannot simply set in a book, nor loudly proclaim from the crest of Nagga's Hill. Old Wyk is drowning and the Iron Islands may yet drown with it if something is not done to stem the tide. As soon as the last of the captains has returned to their shore side camps to ponder their future and that of the Islands you and your companions go to work. Augur's smoke rises against the thin sunlight and carved dragon bones rattle against the black stone.

There are no easy answers.

"Whatever's doing this is working really far down," Vee explains, obviously frustrated by her own vagueness, but the living earth could only say so much about the molten heart of the world. "Black and veiled for longer than trees have grown and fish have swam."

"Why not just stop the water then?" Ser Richard offers. "Get folks off Old Wyk and then have the Merling King stop the wave..."

You glance towards the Reader, but the man shakes his head gravely. "There's over a hundred thousand people and more spread out all over the island. Even if you could move them all by magic, convincing them to move wouldn't be easy by far."

Asha does not look angry at this as you had expected, but haunted. "Some Lady I'll be to start my reign with a hundred thousand dead and one less Island. There will be Drowned Men popping up preaching doom like frogs after the rain, and not without cause."

You had not considered that. The Deep Ones may be acting from more than spite and rage, a hammer blow preparing the chisel strikes to come, undermine Asha's position and your rule in the Islands all at once. What do you do?

[] Into the Depths: Travel down to the roots of the island where the Doom of the Ironborn is wrought and prevent the sundering of Old Wyk

[] God's Shield: Try to evacuate as much of the island as possible and then stop the resulting wave through the power of the Merling King

[] Elder Roots: The Old Gods held sway here once, they can do so again. Attempt to create a network of weirwood roots that can hold Old Wyk together

[] Write in

OOC: Elder Roots is beyond what you can obtain through sacrifice alone, you don't have enough sacrifices to make, but the Old Gods really like you and the really hate the Deep Ones. If you give them the channel to act in the world to that scale they will try to hold the island together by their own strength.

 

[DragonParadox]

Darker Depths ​

Twentieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

"Evacuating Old Wyk is not a solution," you muse. "It's just managing the scale of our defeat." You try not to hold Asha's look of relief against her. She has not had the chance to see you rule that closely and one could easily mistake practicality in the face of foes with callousness towards one's subjects from a distance and you do count the Ironborn your subjects already, formalities be damned. A flash of anger passes through your thoughts, not extinguished but set aside for now. The Deep Ones will pay dearly for this one way or another. "Vee, I need you to prepare to hold the island together by the power of the Old Gods if need be, not a heart tree but..."

"A net of roots," she finishes, thoughts obviously running along the same path. "There aren't enough sacrifices in the Blood Larder to pay for something like that." Alas, not wholly the same path. You wince at the the Reader's troubled expression. Generally speaking when introducing someone to the notion of blood sacrifice the word 'larder' does not help, accurate as it may be.

In the meantime you, Ser Richard, Lya, Qyburn, Aife and the Twins will seek the power of the sundering at its heart. Knowledge of the arcane, the divine and even the mind arts of the Far Realm in equal measure. Hopefully it will be enough.

"One wonders why we are risking so much so readily?" Qyburn's thoughts reach out towards you with what you judge to be no more that genuine curiosity. "There are not yet so many Ironborn in peril here as to impact even the Seven Kingdoms, much less your own grander realm, and the less said of their lords the better..." he glances towards the Reader, amending himself. "Most of their lords. Still, any exceptional individuals could be preserved in good time thanks to Wisdom Vee's prescience."

"Asha was not wrong about the loss of legitimacy if the Island is destroyed even if the others are spared," You reply, knowing which of your reasons would resonate best. "How many cultists of the Deep Ones are too many?"

"Would you like an actual number? They provide a fascinating look into our enemies capabilities in more limited settings than outright war."

It takes you a moment to find the thread of humor among the alien patterns of his message, which you suppose is part of the jest. You do not feel like answering in kind, "The time for more limited settings is almost at an end."

***​

There is no convenient tunnel or cavern beneath Nagga's Hill, no steps leading into the cold dark below, only bands of rust red and ash-black chert. The gifts of a sea long vanished, a memory as old as any you have ever reached for whispers in your mind's ear. There is no sight, no sound, no smell and only the grinding textures of the stone to touch as you swim through the bedrock in strange and arcane kinship with the xorn. The weirwood staff shines like a pale lantern held delicately in your claws, for there is no reason not to show yourself a dragon down here where beasts older and more terrible still lurk.

You are perhaps nine hundred feet beneath the crest of the hill above, roughly at sea level, when Qyburn's thoughts reach for yours yet again, this time far more urgently. "Time is twisted before us, I can feel/see/hear it." You shake your head from the confusing notion of the flesh-smith not fully translating what his sense of the world to concepts that can fit within the bounds of the Spheres. "The deeper we go the further back we travel into the days past and forgotten. The working we seek is not here, it is not now, but ripples forward from the time of its casting. The leylines twisted and snarled against themselves."

"He was stronger then. I grow stronger." Aife's voice comes soft and oddly dreamlike, confirming Qyburn's words if they required any such. Fuck, you preferred time twisting when it was fey illusion, not some dreadful truth that defies the order of the world.

What do you do?

[] Press on through the temporal effect
-[] Leave arcane markers in your wake invested with your power like breadcrumbs in the tale
-[] Thread your cloak across the path, one coin at a time, more 'real' than any common magic it is more likely to stay in place but there is a risk of losing it
-[] Write in

[] Turn back, better for the Old Gods to spend some of their strength than risk a passage through eldritch chronomancy

[] Write in

OOC: Not quite twenty four hours from when the vote was made but close enough I'd say.

 

[DragonParadox]

By Arcane Faculties ​

Twentieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

A perilous path stands before you, one not built by the hand of your foes and leading you know not where, yet what choice do you have? The Old Gods could bar this path, perhaps, thread Old Wyk together with ghostly roots, but what of the next island il-favored enough to stand upon an unsecured leyline, the next city? Will you wake up one day soon to find Sorcerer's Deep itself in peril from some spell out of deep time? You cannot take that chance, so you must take this one.

The question now is how to mark the way. The cloak flayed from Mammon's hide glimmers in the dark between your scales, more real than common matter ever could be, yet you are loath to trust it to the whims fate and the twists of the untested trail. Scales... a idea comes to you as you look back at Aife, not an entirely sensible one, but perhaps you can make it more so. "Lya, do you think we could write a spell that allows one to both scry an object and destroy it at a distance when triggered?"

"Principle of Observation and Principle of Destruction?" she asks startled, her voice echoing strangely through the stone, more felt than heard. "Given enough time that is almost certain to work... oh, you mean now? It isn't going to be pretty, but maybe something you can etch with will and wishcraft."

Somehow you can hear Ser Richard sigh through his helm and several feet of solid stone.

***​

Moving quickly you rise out of the space Qyburn warns you is shifted in time and carve a chamber from the stone, a simple dome high enough for you to stand comfortably at the center even in dragon shape, wavy bands of rust red running through the walls. As the twins settle to guard your temporary home a mage lantern flickers into being between your fingers, the first light these depths have seen since the world began.

"Holy Aife, would you agree to lend us some of your scales that we might find our way back to our proper time once our business with the Deep One wreckers is done?" you ask plainly, though not without some guile in reminding her of her patron's enmity against those who usurped his domain.

She lashes her tail once, twice against the stone, sapphire eyes narrowed in thought and worry. "Yes," she answers at last. "By those arts I was made, I shall trust them once more, them and you, Dragon King." The implication could not have been more clear, she does not wholly trust Qyburn, but she does trust you enough to allow him to work his arts upon her scales.

For her part Lya is already engrossed in the arcane riddle before her, having already drawn a set of wax styluses that work on stone and started to work up preliminary diagrams, growing exponentially more complex as she works. You catch sight of draconic enchantment, lyrical fey spell-craft and most of all rune-craft stolen by the First Men from some of those you had come here to battle. It is almost dizzying to watch her work. Dizzying and entrancing as her eyes flash with every answer and especially with every question. You quickly put those thoughts back where they belong, this is very much not the time or place.

The spell you forge is not elegant, far from it. In fact you suspect Teana would not allow any Scholarum student to even attempt to learn it. There is an not inconsiderable chance that casting it will simply detonate the object in the caster's hands, at least if the lines are not inherently part of the 'canvas' which is being worked. Fortunately Qyburn's work is up to the task even if between the three of you it took closer to half a day than a few hours to finish the work that is still faster than you had any right to hope for given the sheer complexity of the task.

Mark of Greed Created

"Excellent," you proclaim, holding the marked scales in your hand, heavier than they aught to be from the weight of both their origin and the sigils upon them. Turning to Qyburn you add: "I realize I may be asking an impossible question, Wisdom, but can you estimate how long our journey through time will take from our perspective?"

The flesh-smith hums, a deep multi-tonal sound what seems to crawl through the air, his many eyes closed in thought. "If the gradient is constant, which it should be from my limited understanding of chronomancy, than we can expect the journey to take twelve thirteenths of a day, which is to say twenty two hours, five minutes and fifty nine seconds."

In what order and with what wards do you advance?

[] Write in order of advance buffs and Qyburn's feats

OOC: I feel kind of bad closing off a chapter with this with only one update per day since it's not the most exciting vote, but I need this stuff to run an engagement properly.

 

[DragonParadox]

Broken Webs and Lifted Veils ​

Twentieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

Laboratory and the last resting place of the Golden Thread,

There was such a thing as a sight man was not meant to see, such a thing as a vision not fit for mortal eyes, that the agents of the Inquisition knew with the cold certainty of carefully collated reports, and yet they were all still here, watching and seeking, waiting and counting the horrors of the world and the depths of mages' hubris. Kyla Fairwind looked down at the great pale monstrosity, now still in death, with something that might almost have approached pity. Bands of gray and silver ringed its abdomen and legs, and its body covered in short, bristly hairs of white and silver. The markings upon it almost gave it the impression of a skull, its many milky eyes open and staring upon the faces of its killers. Not Kyla or Ysilla, no, not even Ysandryx, much as the little dragon may have preferred it, but the men and women of the Praetori, those forged anew by the flesh-smiths to be warriors of, if not beyond mortal peer, than certainly beyond what one might commonly see of arming halls and Legion compounds.

The cabal of mages who had summoned forth this particular monstrosity were hoping to obtain some means to more effectively spin silk, reaping the boons of wealth in magic that would see them match such giants as Silver Serpent Enterprises and Everfire Steel. It had seemed a harmless enough endeavor to their superiors In the Scholarum when it was only the fields of healing and transfiguration that they delved into, even some fields of enchantment had not been seen as alarming. It was only when the head of the project, a native-born Tyroshi mage called Aleor Alkaris, was observed looking into tomes of complex conjuration at the edge of his security clearance that Headmaster Horio of Tyrosh called for an Inquisition investigation of some of his most skilled pupils.

It was too late for them, hours late granted, not days or weeks, just late enough that the corpses of the dead lay bloated and broken on the laboratory floor, the shells of the spider's brood spewing forth from wounds and gashes together with the liquefying remains of internal organs. What does it say about me that I can still recognize a spleen from a liver in that state, the girl asked herself. What does it say about me that among a company of former sellswords, soldiers and other killers for hire I find my stomach the least troubled?

Ysilla was eating a pocket pie as she scribbled down her report in her silly too-fine writing. There were advantages to being friends with Dany and she didn't just mean the presents, or the chance to see far off places and strange spheres. In dreams the Princess could show them things that were wondrous, terrifying or both. They often asked for both Ysandryx leading the way boldly for they feared no nightmare or phantasm and they on her side, or perhaps on her wings, unwilling to back down and be forever lesser in the dragon's eyes. Perhaps that made them fools, perhaps it made them monsters, it certainly made them less human than most...

"Hey, where'd you get that apple?" Kylla asked the praetorian walking in the room happily eating a Volantene Blood Apple, of the sort that got their color from the supposed battle blood that wet the roots of the first trees of its sort to grow, though they were more likely fertilized with ash and dung like most things. "That could be evidence?!"

The man gave her a long searching look before pretending to peer carefully at the fruit in his hand.

"Alright fine," the girl rolled her eyes. "Got anymore? Someone won't share her pies."

She caught the second apple on the first try.

Human or not there was worse company to find oneself in, Kyla Fairwind decided.

Lost 1 Wizard Level 5 and 3 Adepts Level 4

OOC: An interlude brought to you by the fact that it is the third day Christmas and I'm bored enough and stressed enough to ignore pain to do something interesting. Didn't quite feel up to writing the battle. I hope you guys will excuse the break in pacing under the circumstances. Kyla and Ysilla leveled up from this.

 

[DragonParadox]

Primeval Perils ​

Twentieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

The scales shone like shards of moonlight in water, the runes upon them as though from some unknown time, as new as springtime, as old as the world. Down, down and down you went into the cold dark, through more than space, through more than time into a place unnamed, unnameable in truth. The stone changed not into the blackness of bilestone that you might have expected, instead the stone was natural, but shattered as though by some great calamity, as though by the doom to come.

When the path opened into empty air it was shocking and as if something had come up on you. But there was nothing, only the only the faintest hiss of alien air.

"It's poison," Lya says as she slips out through the stone in the wake of the myrkdreki scout. "Also flammable," she added wryly. "Sort of like if you added swamp gas, ammonia and water together."

Qyburn's head came up with an odd squelching sound, boneless yet precise. "That's not so uncommon a material as you might imagine. He whose thoughts I took into myself was not a Remembered, not in the memory of their brood, but he knew some small measure of those secrets. Such air was the world's first breath."

The revelation resonated with something within you, some dragon dream deeper than any you have yet borne witness to. Yet the part of you that was a child of this earth, of this time, rebels at the notion that all the world arose from such a poisoned nursery. No, there's something deeper than rejection there, than disbelief. Fear.

No sooner had the thought passed your mind than something begins to shake and quiver in the dark, oily flesh that bubbles like tar, that spews and divides into pseudopods, some thin the width of a single hair, others as thick as tree trunks and eyes everywhere eyes, bright as lightning up in poisoned skies. Not one but many, not only below but above.

Spoiler: Thrashing Horror

In that moment of horrified realization you count not one but seven of the things, four twisting and turning in pools of stone and three crashing down like putrid rain from above. They had hidden well, this trap older than all the mortal kindreds of the world, enough so that even Qyburn's truesight had not caught it much less yours, and about to smash down on Lya, Qyburn and Aife. Why then had they revealed themselves now? You still have time to stop them, if only stolen time.

"Ware, Your Grace," Qyburn's mindvoice echoes within. "To twist time in this place is to be twisted in turn."

A trap within a trap then, no less than you might have expected, yet still the way the peril comes up on you like a wave upon the sea and ethereal spell wings shall not ward it off. Mad whispers fill the basalt chamber, shattering into terrible laughter off its jagged edges. These are not the worst of your foes, of that you are certain, merely a welcoming gift for any mortals who stray this deep into the realm of the Deep Ones.

What do you do?

[] Write in battle plan (Shoggoths have a surprise round but no one on your side is flat footed; you can use immediate actions; no further meddling with time unless you want to find out what Qyburn meant the hard way)

OOC: This took longer than I might have hoped, it takes some getting used to enunciate for the mike. We are probably still going to be at one update each day, still that's one update more than I thought we would manage so there's that.

 

[DragonParadox]

Minds of Madness ​

Twentieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

Time does not slow, for you do not dare slow it, but there is a moment there, familiar as your own breath, where you find the answer, as simple as it is elegant. "You shall not pass!" The words of High Valyrian ring out over stones that have not heard a mortal tongue since the world's beginning just as an arcane chorus swells all around you, a thousand voices and all of them Lya's. This song lifts you up to heights almost divine.

Flesh like tar and inky darkness slams against your will in a tide of madness and all too knowing eyes, then one of the shoggoths below explodes in a mass of stringy flesh and fractal angles, its 'eyes' tearing free into the luminous tail of an eel-like creature with jaws within jaws and teeth of thrice envenomed glass. Its voice had been hidden in the mad babbling, just as its flesh had been coiled in the form of its thrall. Stillness pours forth from its maws, eating into your spell like acid.

Spoiler: Omnipath

Moving on instinct as much as carefully prepared spell you twist your power just so against the walls of the world made perilously thin, a counter undone for now at least. The ward holds as flashes of searing light expand from Qyburn, Richard, the dark winged twins and brightest of all from Aife like the petals of some arcane flower. An unneeded guard for now perhaps but one that sees you draw in a gulp of poisoned air in sheer reflexive relief, there is another line of protection. Your spell is not all that stands between your friends, your allies and all consuming death.

Only then does the enemy speak, its voice like slime slipping through the cracks in your mind: "You've been foreseen, what is will be, what was is eternal. Flickering lights and dead stars, gods who were and those who would be more than gods. You will fall here, you have fallen, you have always been here."

For just a moment you see the bodies of your friends and your companions strewn from the cracked basalt floor, Aife like a discarded silver ribbon ringing the withered corpses of Lya and Ser Richard, the myrkdreki in broken heaps besides them and even Qyburn reduced to a few paltry cells squirming in the dark, a mockery of the immortality he sought. But even in this place, and in this strangest hour, you are guarded from such trickery and so are those who fight beside you. The vision fades, colors blurring together, shapes lost in the nightmare of another's forging.

Looking around you are glad to see the others resisted the lies as well as you, though each in their own manner and each prepared to pay the foe back thousandfold for the the deed. After all, there is no trap more deadly than one sprung and failed to catch its quarry.

Alas, your true foe seems to be of the same mind and by the time the figment had faded it was gone in a twist of alien thoughts and violated space, paying no mind to Aife's attempt to bind it in the name of her god. In the babble of the shoggoths' voices it left behind the strangest and most unsettling thing you had heard from one of its ilk, a nursery rhyme as old as the world and spread from the Sunset Sea to Volantis: "Won't you come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly."

What do you do next?

[] Write in

OOC: Welcome to the bullshit that is psionic augmentation at high level, expect to see more of it before this is done. I hope all the dispelling, counter-spelling and counter-counter spelling comes off coherently.

 

[DragonParadox]

Paths Divided ​

Twentieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

Lya's voice redoubles into another arcane chorus, a blessing for the divine herald, even as the power of the first remains upon you. For one blinding moment the poisoned night of the cavern is replaced with the mingled greens, blues and gold of dawn upon the sea, Aife's form arching through the air to dance with devotion and deadly purpose. A mortal adept might have needed some sign or seal, some vessel to hold their god's will, not so the Herald of the Ferryman.

Six threads of light uncoil from her mane and glide each upon a different foe, such thin bindings for whole mountains off eldritch flesh and mad eyes. Three find their mark from the first, three cast astray by lying darkness' grip. No, only two, you realize. In this strange murk you can almost see the unnatural patterns of Qyburn's magic sway the threads of fate. No doubt a first for the Merling King's servant, but a welcome one from the appreciative look in her sea-green eyes.

Fortunately, there is more than one way to bind the foe. Blood seeps from your palm, it burns to nothing before it can strike the ground. As one of the shoggoths start crawling up the wall into some crack or crevice you do not reach for its mind, having no taste for madness, instead you grip it in an all-encompassing net of unseen power. It is not so difficult a thing to give form to the formless.

The last of the horrors, seeing itself outmatched, gives a long cacophonous keening and vanishes from sight, called forth by some unseen master.

"How considerate to give us all these samples and test subjects," Qyburn speaks aloud for once in his excitement, though there is wariness there as well. Even he, or perhaps especially he, is not at ease in this place.

"Let's make sure we don't end up their samples and bloody test subjects first," Ser Richard says gruffly. "Which way down from here?"

"Wait," Lya says while looking suspiciously at the last monster, its hate filled eyes reflected and warped in the sapphire atop her staff. "Why did this one try to flee through the wall when it could just vanish or be called elsewhere?"

"Maybe whatever saved the other one wasn't ready yet," you posit, not wanting to divest yourself of such a potentially useful and expendable scout.

"I could control it more thoroughly," Qyburn offers as a bloodmold half-crawls half-scuttles from somewhere inside his robe. "Even work some simple alterations..."

Ser Richard gives the former maester what might for another have been a long-suffering look, but for the knight it is merely somewhat flat. "I don't trust it."

Before the flesh-smith can answer, Aife lands beside him with barely a sound on padded feet and offers unexpected support: "These creatures belong here, if they can be said to belong anywhere within the Spheres. It is their sea, so let them swim in it to our gain."

Alas, you do not have as much time as you might hope for at that very moment the stone above begins to crack and heave, great chunks of basalt raining down like knives hurled by an angry giant. When the tremors stop the way forward is clear as day, a gap wide enough to fit a dragon... or a shoggoth continuing upwards at an angle. But that is hardly the strange thing about it, you smell salt and sea, the true sea, not this mad alchemist's admixture of elements and faintly, ever so faintly, you hear the sound of distant chanting.

"Well, if that's not a trap I'll eat my shield raw," Ser Richard says, glancing up at the path.

You tap the Staff of the Old Gods to the stone and call to the despairing spirits of Old Wyk, a question, a call for guidance. The answer you receive is muddled, perhaps by distance, perhaps by genuine confusion. The answers you seek, the doom you wish to avert, lies both upon the strange path and down through the cold stone and the grinding ages.

Where do you go?

[] Up on the path to the sea and indistinct chanting

[] Down through the stone (requires burrow or earth glide)

Do you have Qyburn use the shoggoth?

[] Yes
-[] Write in how

[] No, let Aife bind it too

OOC: This update fought me some, a lot of things the text-to-speech program did not know how to write out so I had to type. Still, only about 10% by volume of words.

 

[DragonParadox]

Swords of the Forsaken​

Twentieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

Richard Lonmouth breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the King say they were going down not up. Granted, most sworn shields would not feel entirely at ease at knowing their charge was marching after tamed horror into the bowels of... well, not hell, that would be less strange and easier to deal with, but something akin to it. Richard had learn to take his victories where he could find them, like not walking into the obvious trap.

Never leave a live enemy behind you, he heard Oathkeeper chastise him, but only shot back: What's behind and what's in front here? To that the sword had no answers, as much a stranger to these tunnels as Richard himself. The only one familiar with them was the flesh-smith currently making a puppet of the boiling mass of eyes, teeth and tar-black flash now shot through with blood red veins that pulled it this way and that. There were also a lot more claws growing at impossible angles from the mass of flesh, some meant for tearing through stone and earth, others dripping with what was probably poison.

The tunnel was large enough that the King could pass through it in dragon's shape so Richard chose to fly himself at about head level, reasoning that anyone planning to kill a dragon would probably try to hit the eyes, mouth or nostrils. It also gave him the chance to keep his shield hovering near Lady Lya, near enough his queen as to make no difference.

It was only that reflexive care that allowed him to see the flicker of movement ahead just as quickly as the King with his dragon's eyes. Howling darkness in the shape of a blade... As they had done a thousand times before pearly wings stretched out to guard their whole company. It wouldn't work this time, Richard knew as surely as he knew his own name. Valyrian steel arched up to meet the screaming emptiness of some realm even darker than this and for a moment Richard tasted salt and iron in his mouth and heard the distant cries of what might once have been humans. Oathkeeper holds and a moment later the herald of the Ferryman calls out a spell to banish the black blade.

Spoiler: Black Blade of Disaster

Besides him the King cursed, as much in worry as anger, Richard knew. "How the hells are they setting traps for us?! We're the ones making this tunnel!" His head snapped around first to the walls then to the ceiling. "Not a trap, an ambush... Rats in the walls." With a slash of his left claw he banished something unseen to Richard, most likely a diviner's eye.

As though to give lie to any sense of safety the it gesture might have brought another shard of darkness, sharper than any blade, came whistling out of the dark, this time aiming for the King himself. Swiftly banished, but not without cost. For the first time in months Richard considered what it would be like for the mages to expend all their power down here. They didn't know how far the tunnel went nor what foes they might meet at its end.

"I don't think this is just the work of some distant sorcerer," Aife interjected softly. "Ser Knight, what did you feel when you met the blow?"

"Salt, iron and screams," he replied. "Sounded desperate."

The sea cat nodded as if that made some kind of sense, which being a cat maybe it did. Unlike most cats Richard knew she was at least inclined to explain herself after the fact. "They have set the dead of the Iron Islands upon us, those souls which wished to enter the halls of the Drowned God, but by their own understanding fell short of admission. So now there trying to kill us in defense of the doom of their kin."

What do you do?

[] Try to reason with the dead
-[] Write in how

[] Run the gauntlet
-[] Write in how

[] Return to the upper path

[] Write in

OOC: I know that's a ninth level spell, but we're talking about an underworld's worth of souls. They're going to have a lot of power to throw around.

 

[DragonParadox]

By Time's Cruel Waves​

Twentieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

Three bright star-shaped pendants are hidden beneath steel plate and silken robes, one each for you, Lya and Ser Richard, lest their light give away your presence. Then by all your arts you weave spell to ward against the living dead and yet another subtle enchantment that might ensnare living men as much as spirits of old. At last you bequeath onto Qyburn's dread puppet that most precious of gifts, speed.

Through twisting stone, uncanny angles, and ways that flow like water on the storm tossed sea you pass unknown, unseen, shadows in life in dead men's halls. No more swords fall from above, no more foes showed themselves. It was almost worse for it. The ceiling flowed and parted, cracks transmuting into shadows deeper than even a dragon's eyes could see, and shadows in turn seemed as clouds on some long forgotten night.

As the shoggoth leading you passes like an omen of doom over an alien sea, where ships long sunk flounder in death's grip, Lya asks, "Are we digging or flying?"

"Yes," Qyburn whispers, almost too soft to be heard. "What is has been, what was will be..."

Spoiler: Ship Graveyard

The passage is silent with no time to see the men on the ships below, no chance to know if they are praying so fervently to the powers beneath the waves, though you can guess what became of them, reapers on the fields of blood. Dead ships rise from the waves, tattered sails waving in the poisoned wind, an image of a sea onto which no man has ever sailed, onto which no man could ever sail.

That which is dead may never die, but rises again harder, stronger.

It takes you moment to realize the bitter laughter is coming from your own throat. This should have been a battle, one where the shades of those deceived by the lie of the Drowned God and drowned long ere they had taken their last breath would fight and die again that their descendants might in turn drown with the death of Old Wyk. But you cannot fight what you cannot see.

Aife looks down with a pitting eye upon the scene, then to your surprise reaches out with one paw, silver claws extended and utters... a benediction, sight beyond mortal reckoning.

"Was that...?" You shake your head, the implications are heavier than the weight of stone you know to be above you though you cannot see it.

"Only a nudge, a glimpse of the truth where their fellows were blinded," the herald replies, her voice filled with an uncanny admixture of sorrow and triumph. "The Gold Price had to have started somewhere, mortals so love their lucky coins..." With that she drops the single imperial mark to fall upon the bloody decks below. Would you be able to find it again if you looked in some ancient Ironborn's treasury? you wonder. Or does it lie corroded at the bottom of the sunset sea, the mark of ancient treachery after another captain under the thrall of the Drowned God wished to take it by the Iron Price.

Alas, whatever the fortunes of his kindred, you see the captain Aife had chosen again before the vision ends, if vision it can be called, and his end is not a kind one. You see his withered husk drawn between two posts in a cruel mockery flight. His executioners had drawn his lungs out of his body like bloodied wings, long since left to dry out. Little more than bone and salt weathered skin remained. The corpse's head turns to look up on his one time savior and through the bag that had been drawn over his head he rasps: "Why?"

Spoiler: Blood Eagle

In Aife's cold answer you are reminded that she serves a god of death: "Because it was not yet time."

The bag tears away to reveal an almost fleshless skull that opens its mouth wide, the scream fit to fill the world. It grows and grows, or maybe you are shrinking...

"This way!" Qyburn calls as all of you pass into the mouth of the first Ironborn heretic betrayed by his own kin to find yourselves tumbling into what you hope is the final darkness of this place.

When you are aware again it is to the sound of the shoggoth tearing through stone again, but it is subtly changed. Worked stone not natural basalt, you realize at once.

"There is some kind of rune circle above us, I can feel the magic," Lya says, after catching her breath. "If I could get a bit closer I might be able to tell what they are without breaking through." Alas, it does not seem as though this place is minded to give you the luxury of careful scouting. From above the sounds of battle ring out, muffled by what sounds like a mere hundred feet of stone.

What do you do?

[] Send Lya to have a look at the runes

[] Burrow upwards into the battle

[] Write in

OOC: Hopefully this doesn't feel too trippy. You guys failed a knowledge check, so it's a little less understandable in character than it might have been.

 

[DragonParadox]

Of Elder Law ​

Twentieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

After taking counsel with one another as much as you could with a battle raging above, it is decided that you would be better served being late to a gathering that you knew of than early to one you knew nothing of. The myrkdreki rise like shades of flesh and blood to touch the rune circle, tracing the lines with a third claw wrought of spirit instead of flesh. At the edge of your senses you can feel Qyburn doing something to aid them in their search, like withered fingers upon some universal cord you can only guess at. For her part Lya spins fourth an echo of her whole body, not merely her hand, on whatever power lurks about, and only Aife makes no outward sign of seeking lore, merely closing her gem-bright eyes that she might speak with her patron in the stillness of her mind.

You look first to Ser Richard then to the cavern all around you and finally to Qybrun's new pet, still for now but with the green of malice still visible deep in its many eyes. You nod to the knight. Best to keep a lookout while the others are distracted.

Like sparks on the edge of a campfire, like phantom points at the edge of a tired sentinel's sight, you glimpse them, but you are not tired and there is no fire in this tunnel carved by a monster bound to the flesh-smith's will. Something is watching you. As long as its content to keep watching you will let it do so, perhaps when the enemy gives itself away you might learn something just as useful as what your companions are seeking. Maybe it's not even a foe.

You stifle a bitter laugh at the thought.

The twins start awake first, one shaking his head hard enough his horns whistle through the air, trying to beat back some unseen pain, but the other with a triumphant look in his eye. "The runes are like those the Lady is rediscovering, of the First Men, but older and cruder, from a time before Bran the Builder. They are meant to bind creatures like is that..." the myrkdreki motions to the shoggoth away from the holy places of men. "I think that if we broke it we would be letting this place into whatever and whenever lies above."

"It's a meeting ground, I think," Lya answers. "They call it Landing, the first place men came to the Iron Islands, in what would some day become southern Harlaw... The island's name is a corruption of 'Far-Law', that is the law over the water. I'm not sure what they're fighting about."

"My lord does not know what these men are fighting over," Aife replies suddenly. For the first time ever, since you have known the Herald, she sounds shaken. "But he knows he should know, something has torn the memory from him."

For a moment somber silence stretches out between you as as you consider what manner of power and hideous skill might be needed to violate the mind of a god.

"Well, if we cannot divine the answer perhaps we should reason it out," you say after a moment. "We are looking for the time and the place where the Ironborn swore themselves to the Drowned God, and we find the place where their ancestors first settled, warded against such has made Him, in the midst of battle..."

"You think we leafed through one page too many," Qyburn catches your thought. "That what lies above us is the battle, the bloodletting that preceded the act and then by opening the way we might interfere with history?" The words end on a far less firm and more questioning tone then they had begun. Not that you can blame him. The very idea that you could twist the thread that far is mind-boggling. A single coin cast on a bloody deck is one thing, this is... Even the gods could not work such a feat. And yet hearing proof that the Ferryman's memory has been tampered with, your swiftest and most reliable source of information...

"We have to do something," Lya interjects. "We are here to meddle after all..."

"Not with the Ironborn being stupid enough to worship squids," Ser Richard cuts her off. "We just need to keep whatever power they called from rippling forward in time."

What do you do?

[] Try to meddle in the battle above
-[] Write in how

[] Wait for the oathtaking (may take days or even weeks of subjective time)
-[] Write in how you wish to keep guard

[] Write in

OOC: And here we are, almost to the final confrontation, one way or the other.