Vote tally - A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
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[X] "Most people south of the Wall would like the shirt off your back, if only to stick a blade into it more surely, that is true, but then when two sides have been bleeding each other for thousands of years for all manner of slights or for survival..." You trail off. Part of you quails at the notion that raiding to survive would ever be viable under any circumstances, but the circumstances of the Mountain Clans and the Free Folk are such that they could never come down from their snow drifts or their fields of ice, not without being killed for ancient grudges and longstanding feuds. Given a generation you could make the lands north of the wall a rich one, with enough magic and enough hands, but you do not have that time. Winter is coming.
-[X] "But those oaths of vengeance do not exist in my own lands, nor do your enemies. If you should bring your people together to flee aboard my ships, I can feed them, clothe them, provide them with ample productive work with which to enrich themselves, and they shan't be viewed as beggars or vagabonds or raiders ill-wanted, they will just be one among the many other peoples moving across my realm to better livelihoods."
-[X] More stonily: "They need merely follow the law, like all others." When Mance protests, point out that he has been south of the Wall and he has studied the capacity to harm that the North alone has. If it was ever in such dire straights that it could not strike back against an army led by Mance, he would swiftly have to lead it south of the Neck, filled with yet more hostility, only now he would bring Winter's host at its back swollen with the dead.
-[X] "The Free Folk have never had the opportunity to grow cultural mores like that of even the men of Thenn who already swear me oaths of fealty in exchange for a lord's protection. They had to fight and scramble for survival each day, some more than others, but all sizing up their neighbors to seize what they have managed to gain. Given a decade living off the ample fat of the land, in Essos or even in Westeros, that wouldn't be likely to change without some degree of force, but after a generation or two? Your people would look to leaders like Kings, and those Kings would have riches and armies and force the rest to bow to them. Either they would be killed by those tribes and chiefs, who would then scatter in an unknown land and be simple prey to other realms, broken men and a broken people. Or the people would bow." You think of the Tritons and their circumstances. They have already made moves to swear their spears to you, and their way endured countless generations because they were a migratory people who did not bed down in one place for long. Eventually either their council would have manifested itself similar to that of Myr, always a first among equals to reign it in, or a leader would have risen.
-[X] "I can help your people skip those steps, ensure you do not have to struggle just for basic survival. But only if they all meet me half way."
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