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ASOIAF Gaemon REDUX (SI)
Thread starterStrangerOrders
Start dateMar 2, 2018
Tags1: dance of dragons house hightower house targaryen i cannot be clear enough about magic less magic but still magic magic is a thing and it will come up. planetos is high fantasy sort of warning: magic z: and to be clear: magic. z: did i mention magic? there is magic
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Mar 25, 2018
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#681
LuxEterna
Doragon said:
Word gets to those who wear the REAL pendants.
thats my point if the forgers set it up intelligent then they will use gaemons scary overprotective reputation to keep anyone they decieve quiet
so those that wear the real pendants nor gaemon will ever be aware of those deeds unless they specifically ask about it
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Mar 25, 2018
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#682
Grouchio
*Walks into the thread* So what has changed so far?
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Mar 25, 2018
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#683
Shiva
LuxEterna said:
thats my point if the forgers set it up intelligent then they will use gaemons scary overprotective reputation to keep anyone they decieve quiet
so those that wear the real pendants nor gaemon will ever be aware of those deeds unless they specifically ask about it
The thing to remember about scams like that is that eventually someone will talk. There is no honor among thieves and eventually someone in the group making fake pendants will do something stupid (usually unrelated) and get caught and then start talking to save their own skin.
A Death in Scotland... Or what if James VI of Scotland dies at age 4?
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Mar 26, 2018
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#684
Garm88
Shiva said:
The thing to remember about scams like that is that eventually someone will talk. There is no honor among thieves and eventually someone in the group making fake pendants will do something stupid (usually unrelated) and get caught and then start talking to save their own skin.
Click to expand...
Then legs get broken.
I really want to see Gaemon get a hilariously thuggish follower with a dirt poor commoner accent that takes care of all of his shady shit.
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#685
IslandHopper
Garm88 said:
Then legs get broken.
I really want to see Gaemon get a hilariously thuggish follower with a dirt poor commoner accent that takes care of all of his shady shit.
Maybe even Gaemon doesn't even realise he's got an enforcer and legbreaker straight outta a Guy Richie movie, who does all the shady shit without Gaemon knowing it. Though of course Ebermen and the White Jaws know.
"Wait, I've had a personal stereotypical Flea Bottom legbreaker for years and never knew about it?"
....
"As you say."
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#686
RichardWhereat
Aye. A big hulking Serjeant from the City Watch joins Gaemons retinue in the background.
General Snippets - D&D Snippets - Mechanic of Ottery HP SI
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Mar 26, 2018
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#687
Praetor98
RichardWhereat said:
Aye. A big hulking Serjeant from the City Watch joins Gaemons retinue in the background.
Or perhaps a disgusted captain by the name of Vymes?
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Mar 26, 2018
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#688
RichardWhereat
How do you mean updated? Which one? What changed?
And Praetor, that'd be interesting, but I was thinking of Blood the Butcher.
General Snippets - D&D Snippets - Mechanic of Ottery HP SI
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#689
TheRealDeal
RichardWhereat said:
How do you mean updated? Which one? What changed?
And Praetor, that'd be interesting, but I was thinking of Blood the Butcher.
the one posted earlier was just the first half and has changed now
Yup, I am indeed, The Real Deal!
Deal or No Deal! I am still, The Real Deal!
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#690
Garm88
StrangerOrders said:
Chapter done and updated.
Feels appropriate for what's coming.
Spoiler
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Mar 26, 2018
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#691
fsponholz
This thing about the basement sounds new, at least I don't remember it from the previous story, it sounds ominous.With Gaemon's luck he will have a few visions and probably a worse reputation in Oldtown.
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#692
Doragon
I feel bad for Nessa, having to deal with Hurricane Arral every day.
I do wonder what her reputation has become? Must be unusual for non-royal women to share in the lessons of their charges. She certainly works hard.
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#693
Threadmarks Chapter Twenty: The Dark, the Damp and the Cthulu.
Index
StrangerOrders
Chapter Twenty: The Dark, the Damp and the Cthulu.
Twenty Second Day of the Fifth Month, 113 AC.
"This place is profoundly unsettling," I muttered as we walked through the 'halls' beneath the Hightower. I kept a hand on Clearsky's neck to reassure myself while we continued on.
"As you say," Ebermen snorted.
By 'halls' I mean the freakiest cave system one could imagine. The walls were pitch black stone which glimmered greasily as it at the light of the torched hung from metallic stands. Hanging them on the walls would have been pointless since the black stone was known to be indestructible.
I was no stranger to things in Westeros being strange or even freakish. Dragons, impossible architecture, magic and so on.
But the 'halls' were an entirely different thing.
For one thing, they were huge, our entire party walked down the pathways with ample room between us, and one of us was a pony-sized dragon.
For another thing, the caverns were perfectly round as if they had been burrowed by some great serpent, the floors beneath were in mortared stone overlaid onto the bottom of the tunnels to make the place easier to navigate.
"No need for worry!" Arral's laugh was somewhat distorted. "Well! Actually you should all be worried! Some of the vaults are filled with filth! Try not to breathe too much!"
Said Archmaester had opted to join us in my attempts to map out the halls of my foster home and Lord Lymon had felt that it would be a good excuse for a lesson on the subject at any rate.
It is worthwhile to know the history of ones ancestors, the lord had shrugged at my request. I fear that it will not be too exciting for you once the novelty of the walls wears off however.
The fact that the Archmaester was wearing some sort of breathing apparatus that resembled balloons tied to a welding mask by an assortment of hoses and bronze pieces. That it was sealed onto his hooded robes did not exactly reassure me given the hunched posture of the old man.
"I find it hard to believe that my ancestors dwelled here," I commented. If I recalled correctly, the Hightowers had lived for millennia in the depths of the blackstone fortress before they figured out how to bypass physics with wood, stone and probably bullshit.
"Nine thousands, four hundred and eighty one years-ish!" Arral nodded enthusiastically while tapped the solid tunnel wall to produce a thudding sound.
"That seems implausibly specific," I raised a brow. Most of the books I had read seemed to struggle with even relatively precise records any farther than thirteen centuries into the past to say nothing of eight millennia. "I had thought that there were no records on the subject?"
"I had understood that the first Hightower in the songs was Uthor of the Tower," Ebermen frowned, which by Ebermen standards meant that the edges of his mouth might have turned downwards minutely.
The maester snorted derisively and waved me off as I followed behind him with the dragon and the bull at my back.
"Horribly name! Uthor of the Tower! Bah! He commissioned the thing! Then I should be known as Arral of the Haniwa-well not exactly, I technically stole that! But that is hardly my fault! I asked to be allowed into the tomb but the empress was still a bit touchy about her daughter and her cousin, how unreasonable! They suggested it! Still, I did pay the Iron Price- in as much as it counts if the owner is already dead when you kill them!" The Archmaester stopped and gave his beard a few tugs. "Where was I? Oh yes! Uthor! Being known by what you commissioned! Hah! But no, I have confirmed the age of habitation!"
It took considerable restraint to not ask for details whenever Arral launched into one of his tangents, the man did not strike me as a liar but half of his stories seemed like the ramblings of a madman.
The farther we descended into the tunnels, the more space there was between individual torches.
"Bones!" Arral smiled. "I have studied burials in the proximity of the city and created a rough timeline of development but much to my fascination, the burials just stop after nine thousands, four hundred and eighty one-ish years! Give or take a few decades! But it was so fascinating! There were older burials! Misidentified by some of the elder maesters! The oldest bones most of all!"
Archaeological techniques which should not exist aside, I could not resist delving into what I suspected was a fairly creepy story to augment the already unnerving surroundings.
"The bones are different!" The Ironborn Maester (still an odd notion to think about) almost purred the words in his raspy and high-pitched voice. "Little things, very little things! Some irregularities in measurements, some shapes were odd! Strange! Wrong! Weird!"
I had a very bad feeling but restraint had never been my specialty, yet I still felt my arm pulling my closer to the dragon that crawled along next to me as if Sky were a security blanket.
"In what way?" I asked.
"The traits were wrong!" Arral repeated and I could hear the Ironman's smile beneath his mask. "Too tall, too heavyset, arms too long! Some were monstrous even! I have a theory as to the subject! Ser Ebermen! Do you recall the tale of Uthor's marriage?"
"He took the hand of Maris the Maid, saving her from Argoth Stone-Skin," The Shield said in his typical monotone.
Runciter had always disliked that tale if I recalled correctly, I thought that he disliked the vanity it encouraged. I could not blame him for that given how vain Rhae turned out. I loved her but I would never claim that the Realm's Delight was a humble girl.
"It is a metaphor!" Arral cackled. "It is my belief that Uthor was a metaphor for the influx of some population migration which assimilated the original inhabitants of the region!"
"And how did this slip by the elder Maesters?" I asked with a strange curiosity.
"They mistook them for giant burials!" The maester snorted rudely. "Anything bigger than the average man is a giant! They should go north of the Wall for a season! The dimensions are all wrong!"
I thought about that for a moment before nodding, "That is fascinating."
"As you say," Ebermen added.
"Come, come!" Arral laughed as he picked up speed. "Let me show you!"
"Show me what?" I asked.
"The burials of course!"
…
That the fortress was labyrinthine was no surprise, the upper levels had arrows and symbols painted in white ink along their walls which made it somewhat navigable.
Deeper in, the directions stopped and the corners, up and downs became less and less predictable. Sometimes one would need to go up a turn to come down another or a downward turn was merely a dip before a long climb.
From the outside, the fortress was fairly large and made more imposing by its stern, square walls but it seemed small compared to the structure built over it.
Much to my regret, the nameless fortress stretched deep beneath island and according to most everyone, it probably ran deeper and wider than Whispering Sound over which Battleisle stood. There were even legends and tales of hidden entrances to the structure beyond the Sound.
Yet Arral navigated the maze with ease as we tailed behind him, deeper and deeper in the maze.
The torch stands grew more and more sparse with each level and the darkness grew with it.
I was thankful that the Hightowers were a bit of a paranoid bunch. Some two hundred men patrolled the depths of the fortress in regular shifts and it relieved me every time we had to stop as Ebermen explained what we were doing in the vaults while the men shied away from Clearsky.
The dragon herself was taking to the depths just as poorly. Clearsky was normally not as claustrophobic as most dragons, having spent the bulk of her life indoors but the place had her growling. Every few minutes she would exhale a plume of bright, narrow fire which momentarily banished the darkness.
At least her training is paying off, I counseled myself. The little dragon still seemed to only be able to manage a controlled burn for a little while before spending a few minutes wheezing for breathe but it was something.
As we went, Arral continued going over his theory.
As far as the Maester was concerned. The theories regarding the fortress being created by the Mazemakers of Lorath or the Valyrians were ludicrous. The scale was wrong for the first and the style was wrong for the latter.
More, he argued that the Valyrians were discounted by simple math. The keep predated the Valyrians and quite possible every other civilization by millennia.
"Forget those Yi Ti!" He grumbled at one point. "Beautiful calligraphy but pretty forgery is still a forgery! All one needs to do is to read over the scrolls in the Forbidden Library of the Old Capital and compare them with the eldest tax records in the northern ruins! The writing style is wholly different! Every time they discover something older than them, they come up with a new dynasty! Or Emperor! They have a great many one Emperor dynasties! You might think it is better to be young and successful than ancient and incompetent!"
France, Rome, Greece, China, Japan, Koreas, Incas, Britain, I listed off in my head. Forging bullshit records to legitimize claims or to stroke the cultural ego was a constant of human nature. I was hardly surprised that the Westerosi (no that did not work… planet-osi?) did it as well. It was even a refreshingly normal kind of crazy.
"Who were the builders then?" I asked.
"A decent question!" Arral nodded with his heavy apparatus. "I have no notion! Or rather, I believe that we are meant to not know a thing about them! Logical really! Recording enemies is largely only done in vaguest terms in the First Men tradition! The focus is celebrating their heroes! Sanctimonious lot!"
He spit in punctuation but immediately started clawing at his helmet, realizing his mistake.
After he managed to rectify his error, we continued on our way until we reached the supposed burial.
Eventually, we were forced to take a torch with us to light the way as we passed deeper than the guard patrols seemed to go, although given the twists and turns it was quite possible that they had never found Arral's path. The paths were still paved, and ancient stands suggested that it might have been known at some point but that was long ago.
The thing that struck me was the lack of animals or dust.
The collapsed passages and blocked rooms of the upper floors seemed to vanish completely as we made our descent and there was not a single damned rat or spiderweb in our way.
The only sounds were the growling of Clearsky, Arral's chatter and the crackling of the torchflame.
It unnerved me how those echoed across the halls, but the most irksome thing was the footsteps.
They reverberated across the stones in what must have been a particularly mean-spirited architectural trick.
Thunk.
Thunk, thunk.
Our steps and the trick of the light on the reflective stone almost made it seem as if we were walking through the veins of a beating heart.
The gate reminded me more of a triumphal arch than a door, the arch was not obvious at first however. In fact, they seemed more like some sort of outgrowth at an outgrowth from afar.
But as we closed I realized that the stone there had a shape much more refined than the surroundings. Patterns were formed by the veins of white and gold and silver in the black stone, it was obvious that they were some sort of script.
The script was denominations of a square shape, with differing measurements of lines in the form of the mineral veins.
But, there was a queer familiarity to them.
"What does it say?" Ebermen asked as I looked over the letters or symbols or whatever they were. The Shield had at some point taken his mace from his belt, idly holding its hilt in one hand while holding up the torch in the other.
"Something to the nature of a warning!" The Maester snorted, his voice reverberating through the halls loud enough to wake anything within a few leagues. "The usual thing! Pay reverence to those within, they were quite impressive and do not steal their things! Painfully unoriginal!"
Can't argue with the classics, I gulped.
"Come, come!" The old maester waved enthusiastically as he walked through the gate waving us forward.
"How is it that you are armed head to toe, I have a dragon and the old man without any form of defense is the least disturbed one?" I asked my Shield after a moment.
Ebermen shrugged, I turned to see that he was as unfazed as usual. His eyes flicked occasionally to the other halls but that was far from a sign of discomfort.
I sighed, "So I am the only one bothered by this?"
"As you say," Ebermen said with the suggestion of a smile.
Clearsky snorted in agreement.
I gave dragon and man a dry looked before letting out a breath.
"Fine! Lets walk into the strange tomb buried beneath a mysterious fortress!" I grumbled as we followed the Archmaester into the burial chamber.
And no sooner did I walk into the chamber that I started looking up.
And up.
And up.
"Oh what the actual fuck," I whispered while staring numbly at the chamber.
"As you say," Ebermen agreed.
Clearsky snorted while extending her neck up.
The chamber expanded far past the light of the torch, the sides of the chamber vanished to my sides of what must have been a conical chamber of truly enormous size.
And the ceiling, if there was one I could not even see the suggestion of it.
"How far underground are we?" I whispered before blinking. "How far underground are we."
It did not feel as if we had gone down nearly for the chamber to have been completely underground, unless the labyrinth had messed with us so well that I had completely lost a sense of direction.
And the chamber was far from empty.
I slowly walked forward and looked down.
And gulped.
I came to the edge of a ledge and realized that to either side there were stairs down to the floor of the chamber, no. Not stairs, they were too smooth and awkwardly curved.
Beyond the ledge were slabs, row upon row of stone slabs rising up from the ground as if they had been pulled from the floor.
A body lain over each of the slabs.
"Quite the sight! Fifth grandest tomb I have ever seen!" Arral shouted from the edge of the torchlight, waving while leaning on one of the slabs. If he was at all disturbed by the body next to him, I did not see it.
I carefully walked down the smooth stairs while Clearsky launched herself into the vast chamber and Ebermen made to follow me. The room was easily vast enough for the little dragon to fly without concern.
The bodies were big. Each would have towered over Ebermen by a good foot in life. Large and imposing in their stature.
No, that was wrong.
They might have once been imposing but that that was long ago. Before the functions of the body sunk into them.
They were little more than skin and bone, reduced by millennia of wear yet still unnaturally preserved.
The skin was grey, grey like concrete or gunmetal.
It could have been the sheer span of time that they had spent in the place.
Every single body was dressed in some sort of timeworn linen which had lost its color long ago, long skirts and vests. Over that were plates, gauntlets, greaves and breastplates of some odd style, slopping and rounded in its angles. The metal was as weird as everything else about the place, smoky and dark against the torchlight.
For a moment, I thought that it might have been Valyrian Steel but I reconsidered after looking at it closely. The metal was webbed in gold and marble and the texture was wrong. It was all too glossy.
"They were warriors," Ebermen commented while holding the torch over me. He had a point, they bore thin-hilted short spears and shields over their clasped arms.
"Obviously!" Arral laughed as he neared us. "But you are missing the key point! Look more closely!"
At his command I looked more closely at the body before me.
The sunken sockets which once might have contained eyes were a touch too large and the shriveling of time had pulled their lips back to reveal a fanged grimace. The bared head was next to a helm that reminded me of something I would have expected of Greek hoplite.
Their arms were indeed a bit too long at a glance and their legs were a bit longer than they should have been. Their chests were also wide relative to their hips.
But it was all… difficult to interpret.
The place was weird, the bodies were weird.
Their skin was a touch too grey, the materials they wore were unfamiliar, they were unusually tall and fanged… so what?
My skin was crawling, but the things were far more human than the Children of the Forest, the Giants, the Others or anything even a touch Cthulhu-i.
It was unnerving that the tomb was so vast but that was just Westeros.
A crypt being built beneath a castle or a fortress were similarly not at all unusual.
Yet, my skin felt like it was about to slither off my flesh.
Then I caught the glimmer in the torchlight.
I pulled myself up onto the slab to get a better view and ever so carefully reached at the body.
Please don't come to life, please don't come to life.
I sucked in a breath and ran a finger along one of the threads beneath the shrunken elbow.
It was strong and taut enough that it did not even react to my touching it.
Its entire body was pinned to the slab by the thread.
As was the body beside it and the one in front of that one.
And the next and the next.
"They're restrained," I whispered.
Well someone went out of their way to take precautions.
"Fascinating, I know!" Arral laughed. "Every single body in this chamber as well as the others."
"Others?" I asked after a moment.
"Of course! There are fourteen other burial chambers," The Ironborn nodded. "Ah yes! You likely cannot see it! Have your dragon brighten the chamber! I am sure you will enjoy this!"
I was genuinely frightened by what might happen, but I was morbidly curious as well as terrified.
"Clearsky! Dracarys!" I shouted into the chamber and heard Clearsky roar her answer from the depths of the chamber before roaring a flare-like breath.
The chamber was not just flooded with light, it positively caught fire.
Veins of gold caught the chamber and seemed to illuminate further than the light of the fire should have reached.
None of us were walking but the sound came back.
Thunk.
Thunk, Thunk.
In time with the beating of the light.
The walls were lined with hundreds of shelves.
Thousands more of the bodies sat on black stone thrones in dozens of ascending lines spiraling upwards into the expanses of the chamber.
Somehow, the last observation was nothing compared to what else lay in the chamber.
"Oh!" Arral cooed. "I had never seen those before!"
Some of the shelves were larger than the others.
Far, far larger.
Beneath them the gold veins formed the same pattern over and over again.
Familiar.
Too familiar.
"Hail Meraxes, Here Rest the Servants of the Earthbone," I lost consciousness at the sight of hundreds of dragon skulls.
My last thought?
I hope the floor is softer than it looks.
Last edited: Mar 27, 2018
Have a nice day!
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Mar 26, 2018
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#694
LuxEterna
ok one of these days we are going to need a story titled 'the adventures of arral'
because damn if those hints dont make me curious 
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#695
Azum
Oh man, Arral dropping all the juicy knowledge!
When do we get Arral's Adventures?
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#696
Doragon
the history nerd in me is begging to see the burial mounds and bones.
Damn you multiple realities and the inability to jump between them at will!
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#697
Azum
Doragon said:
the history nerd in me is begging to see the burial mounds and bones.
Damn you multiple realities and the inability to jump between them at will!
If only we could...
Although i doubt anyone would truly want to live in a world with such things
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#698
Doragon
Azum said:
If only we could...
Although i doubt anyone would truly want to live in a world with such things
Live? Oh hell no.
Visit? Here is my money, I'll take a 3 week pass.
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#699
TruthfulPanda
Gone Fishin'
I was thinkig the odd bones would be of the Children ... which are IIRC smaller than human ...
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#700
Doragon
TruthfulPanda said:
I was thinkig the odd bones would be of the Children ... which are IIRC smaller than human ...
Yeah, that was my first thought. But then Arral said they were BIGGER.
I'm thinking Trolls.
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Fandom AH
ASOIAF Gaemon REDUX (SI)
Thread starterStrangerOrders
Start dateMar 2, 2018
Tags1: dance of dragons house hightower house targaryen i cannot be clear enough about magic less magic but still magic magic is a thing and it will come up. planetos is high fantasy sort of warning: magic z: and to be clear: magic. z: did i mention magic? there is magic
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Mar 28, 2018
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#741
Daztur
StrangerOrders said:
I am largely working on issues one and two on your list.
The thing is that being too liberal with timeskips in the last one resulted in people not having enough reason to feel certain ways about characters and I at times forgot that important things in my notes were not given enough room. Hopefully the time-stamps will help with this issue but I am going to try and be more arc focused than last time.
My thing with magic however. Well, the reason that I like Exalted is because the setting is on of those rare few that explicitly does not make sense without magic. The point of a setting for me is to sell you on stakes, to make you at least understand a different worldview and consequence. I despise settings where magic becomes 'lol, random!' and is nonsensical. Most cultures with beliefs around things like witches and shaman had truly intricate beliefs with a considerable amount of logic to them if you accepted their initial premises but we tend to lampoon their lack of science in media and cast away all of the complexities they had for the whole 'severely simplified dirt-covered fools' narrative. This is my roundabout way of saying that I love ASOIAF but at the same time I loathe how unaware Martin seems to be of lay piety and his near obsession with Great Man History.
In a world with actual magic, even magic which has gone dormant, magic should still make sense once you re-orientate yourself according to its basic premises. I tried (and failed) in V1 to show Gaemon slowly being molded along the premises of Valyrian magic and becoming more of a subject to it as a result. This time I am going to have magic show up more gradually and much earlier.
To put it another way, magic done right continues 'therefore' storytelling wherein things progress in accordance to what has been said and implied. Magic done badly leads to 'and then' storytelling where causality really stops mattering because new things are introduced without warning or explanation to fix a fraying ability of the reader to buy into the story.
Much to my shame, V1 turned to the latter despite my efforts. I maintain that I always tried to foreshadow but my error lay in being subtle to the point of obtuse with it (less readers going 'eureka!' and more 'wtf?') and in my inability to persuade readers to have patience for later pay offs.
However, I do argue that this is a very clear problem with the setting that frequently crops up and kills a number of fics, even possibly threatening the otl (books, it has already pretty thoroughly undermined the show). Namely in the Others, which suffer from what i call 'Reaper Syndrome' in reference to Mass Effect wherein so much time is spent building up a threat in comparison to what can oppose it that the result is inevitably difficult to buy or find satisfying.
But, as I have said in countless (sevenish) tags, magic is here to stay. My goal is to gradually scale it up to the point where things make sense a few centuries down the line because I think gradual reorientation and introduction is better than the irritating MacGuffin which the otl seems likely to develop due to Reaper Syndrome.
A bit ranty but I hope this communicates my goals and concerns.
Click to expand...
Sorry for the delay in my response. Wanted to wait until I got caught up on the story, which I've done now. Happy to see you fleshing things out more. I was always lobbying against large time skips in the original thread and I think this version of the story is vindicating my opinion about that.
As far as magic goes specifically what I find works best in the DMing I do as in fiction is to have magic follow consistent rules that the players/readers don't know. I think a good model is the Ptolomaic model of the solar system which is muddled grasping after the underlying reality that stays just outside of reach but which is still able to produce results. In magic the personal is also important which sets it apart from more impersonal science.
Gotta thread the needle between magic being random asspulled miracles and giving long infodumps that lets the reader understand everything magical clearly.
Or to put it in your terms, magic should be "therefore" storytelling but the logic behind the therefore should be obscured or only partially glimpsed. Kind of like how I like playing in an RPG better if the DM is following the rules rather than just asspulling things but it's often fun to not know why the DM is rolling some dice behind his screen at any given moment. I LIKE saying "WTF" when magic is happening and really want the "eureka" payoff to be delayed. Didn't have any problem with that aspect of the first version of this story, was more the pacing and the stakes that needed some work.
As far as Martin's worldbuilding goes, I think that his magic system is one of the better bits. A lot of it seems to function according to set rules that are obscured from the reader that we can figure out more of the more of the books we read. For example it starts making a lot more sense why certain characters get weird dreams when sleeping in weirwood beds and on weirwood stumps but not otherwise or why Mormont's crow speaks as it does after reading more books, etc. which is why I like magic to work. But yeah, the lack of lay piety or just folk culture in general is a yawning gap in his world building and his focus on the personal which is generally a good thing in his writing does lead to weirdly skewed ideas of how history works in which just about everything driving it is personal.
For more specific stuff I like how the Oldtown arc has been improved so far. In the original version is mostly just served to age up Gaemon a bit and introduce Arral. Like to see it being given some real meat in this version.
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#742
TheRealDeal
Moar, we needz moar and nowz iz moar to arrivez!
Yup, I am indeed, The Real Deal!
Deal or No Deal! I am still, The Real Deal!
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#743
Threadmarks Chapter Twenty One: Terms of Service
Index
StrangerOrders
Chapter Twenty One: Terms of Service
The ships sailed into their berths with far less voice than one would expect from vessels of their size.
Each was a thing of staggering dimensions, a hundred feet wide and five times that in length.
Zaldrizes Logor, dragonship. A craft built of to provide a safe resting place for dragons which had to make dangerous journeys. Few existed in all of the Freehold, costing fortunes to produce and being an overt statement of ambition besides.
Beyond the Chambers of the Senate, only the Fourteen Orders could claim use of the great ships.
So had six of the vessels been claimed by the Order for their solemn journey.
The isle was known simply as the Rest or the Place of Sleep.
It was a small isle resting amid the Summer Sea, so sacred that the steps of outsiders were punishable by death regardless of status.
Gaema raised her hood and followed behind her master as he crossed the plank off of the ship.
Six other masters of the Order descended from their own vessels, each trailed by an acolyte like her. Some were years her younger and others perhaps twice over her elders.
As they dismounted, their great behemoths launched themselves from the boats, each trailed by a lesser creature as they flew towards the enormous citadel which dominated the small isle.
The ships evened out violently as they were freed from the great weight. One of the ships along could normally carry as many as four wyrms of a century but the ancients and their dragons had forced the vessels to their straining points.
To say nothing for the over one hundred Order-bound servants which had followed them.
Every master was like that, with massive dragons which seemed to shake the world around them with their wingbeats.
Gaema paid them little mind as she followed her master.
Failure was not something she could relish, it was not in her by nature and pain had only entrenched that dislike.
But that day, a mistake was even less forgivable.
The Citadel which dominated the isle was a massive construct, taller than the highest spires of Valyria and crowned with fourteen towers wrought into the shapes of the gods.
Each tower was a citadel onto itself, broader than the ships which had carried them and crested by great wings of black stone.
Twin roars reverberated as two great dragons rose from the island to greet the newcomers.
By ancient tradition two Valiants, those who swore themselves to the Order of Balerion, guarded that place. Gaema knew that each carried the gifts of many orders. Including the rarest of works, breastplates and helms of Valyrian Steel.
Fourteen Orders, for the Fourteen Gods, each blessed with power and charged to safeguard the Pact.
It was only there, where they all came to Rest. It was only there that the Orders stood as one to honor their dead.
Behind their small progression came over a hundred of the servants whose blood had served the Order of Meraxes since time immemorial. Many carried sealed urns like the one the eldest master but the chief source of mourning was the great dragon skull brought forward by a great chariot pulled by three teams of horses. The heavy steeds had long since been bred to offer no fear to dragons and they obediently plotted forwards.
They walked along the fused dragonroads from the docks towards the citadels, passing the small farms which sustained the servants and the rude little villages which they had made for themselves.
Were fear not alive in her, Gaema might have asked questions.
She had heard so much of that place, wished to go so often as a small girl.
Now she could only feel the eyes of her god upon her.
Their quiet procession marched through great gates of fourteen-hued stone and down the torchlit halls of the Rest.
There no hymns or prayers when a master passed, no gods or demons which were to be invoked or cursed. From the moment of ascension, each dragonrider to swear itself to an order had no need for such things.
Their souls were sworn to their masters in death as they had been in life.
The procession came to a stop before a sealed gate adorned with the half-made hammer of Meraxes. Their god of Crafts.
Before the gate they were awaited by two Chisels.
They dressed as did all of their order. Jade torcs and bands and rings over robes the colours of wet mud and polished marble.
Their features were hidden beneath their heavy hoods.
It did matter to Gaema. They are servants to the Shape-Giver as the masters are servants of the Earthbone. Their features and names are meaningless.
"Who comes?" They asked, words so matched that there might as well have been only one speaker.
The eldest master, the one with the urn who always wore a single earring (which was why she always called her 'the Ringed One'), answered.
"A wary servant comes, a wary servant and he who shared her life," She answered. "We who were her kin and peers come to aid her in this final journey."
"A servant?" They asked. "A servant of whom? Who was she to demand rest?"
The elder shook her head and raised the urn before her, "One who served She-Who-Is-Steel, the Earthbone, the Refiner, Meraxes who is both the Smith and the Breaker. This humble servant served her master for years beyond count, forged blades from deepest passion and honed them to their finest edge."
"Then by the terms of that pact it is our honor to aid you as kin," The twin figures nodded as they stepped back, the great gate of god-willed stone opening to allow entry.
Gaema held her breath as she followed the retinue.
Beyond them was a chamber which reached high into the heavens, revealing the conical shape of the tower-tomb's vast interior.
Row upon row of plinth awaited them within, massive columns reaching towards the distant light of day in a spiraling formation.
The vastness of the chamber struck her immediately, Gaema knew it was a trick of the Chisels, for Akaqo was ever a god fond of shapes. Their structures could seem as large or as small as they wished, Gaema knew that as well as any raised in the great fortresses at the heart of the Freehold.
But it was a matter of scale. So great was the chamber that their dragons roared distantly above them as they peered through the great oval of the ceiling, the great leviathans of the masters made so small that their forms barely impacted the perfect circle of the sky.
The ritual began as they entered the tower.
The masters and their servants slowed their steps to match pace with the servants which pulled forward the skull of the fallen dragon, before them came the eighty servants which had accompanied them on their journey.
Their column split first into two, then four and then eight columns as they walked through the great spires which lined the Order's advance.
Gaema risked glances at the pillars. Tall twists of black stone lined with small shelves, some of which already held urns and other which were bare.
Eighty bloodlines served the Order of Meraxes as did every one of the Orders, born into a service which was ordained by their ancestors dating back to the first days of the Freehold.
In life they served the masters which in turn served Meraxes.
And in death, they rested along with their masters.
They came to a stop before the lowest plinth, one which was scarcely a foot above the ground and empty save for a simply dais which lay at its very front.
Without a word the thirty men and women who had accompanied the skull lifted its great weight, a lifetime of labour and practice making the load seem inconsequential as the moved forward and laid the skull of the great beast so that it face the dais.
With well-timed practice, they picked up the heavy chains which seemed to risen from the stone rather than anchored to it. They set about binding the skull in place even as the head of their procession walked forward.
Behind her the other masters formed a semi-circle around her while Gaema and the other acolytes took their place behind their instructors and fell to their knees in deference.
Gaema felt the footsteps as every servant walked forward in time with their lady. The place of the acolyte was less than that of a servant in that sacred place, for the servant and the master were sworn in heart and in soul where the acolyte was neither, a mere aspirant rather than truly one whom belonged.
The Master of the Ring brought the urn before her face, an action imitated throughout the chamber.
"Elder," She began, the words were not commanding, they were scarcely more than a whisper. "Elder, your time has come and we must bid farewell."
Gaema risked a glance as the Ringed One kissed the urn gently and laid it on the alter.
"Elder, where you once worked and toiled, now another must take your place," Gaema wondered if it was some magic of the place which made it seem as if all spoke as one. "Come now elder, come and take your rest."
"Rest, my dear elder, and dream for ages to come," the clink as the chains which hung on both dais and alcoves were wrapped around the urns. "For the day is done and now must come the night. Elder, you must rest as must we all. For on the morrow you must work again."
The plain and impersonal nature of the burial struck Gaema, it was grand in its own way but also so different from the feasts and revelries that accompanied the burnings of the wealthy and the internment of their ashes.
Their servants burned their dead and stored their ashes in the temples of their order, awaiting the next time a Master went to their rest. Gaema had at first thought it uncaring but it had become clear that master and servant were made more akin in death than they ever had been in life.
As if to punctuate that idea, the chamber sang with the sound of unsheathing steel.
The Ringed One raised a blade high over her head.
Dark ripples over a hilt of purest white.
"Rest well, dear elder so that you may be strong when we meet again," She sang as she hilted the sword in a slot carved before the urn.
Gaema marveled at the sound of eighty blades being slid beneath alcoves across the chamber.
She did not understand how it had been done, how the cost had been surmounted.
But eighty-one blades were interred that day.
"Rest now, elder one," The Ringed Master finished. "For all men may rest."
"But we must serve."
...
The first thing I noted when I awoke was that I was drooling still, my arms were wrapped around a gorget and my legs were being held by arms.
Piggyback, I mused as the fog of sleep faded while I blinked. "My thanks, Ebermen."
The Bull snorted.
"Ah!" Arral greeted from next to us. "You awake! Horrible place to fall asleep! Take it from experience! The floors are quite hard! Conclusively hard! You are fortunate that Ser Ebermen was quick enough to catch you."
"Then I thank you for saving me from a fairly embarrassing injury," I muttered as I shifted my weight to free a hand and rub my eyes. "'And he fainted' would not be the most impressive demise in the history of House Targaryen," refreshingly normal though.
"As you say," The Bull snorted again, humor edging into his monotone voice.
"Far from!" Arral protested. "Two of the previous Litsen Lords were slain by the Bloody Flux! And there was the one slain in a brothel while dressed as a woman while engaged in the services of five boys! Quite embarrassing by the Andal custom! A touch unfair mayhaps but still!"
I opened an eye to regard the pointy-haired maester.
To my surprise he was casually riding Clearsky as the dragon crawled alongside the bull.
Grey-blue eyes met my own and the dragon raised her head up to try and nuzzle.
Despite myself I smiled and used my free hand to scratch beneath her jaw.
As for the Maester's comment...
I… I am not going to engage with that, I chuckled and smiled slightly while looking around us. We were still below the Hightower but the light from the torches suggested we were close to the surface. The interval suggested that we were only a floor or two from the surface.
"Might as well let me down," I sighed. "Enough men probably saw my little nap but no need to make a show of it."
Without word the shield fell to a knee and helped me down from his shoulders.
Unsurprisingly my balance was far from great and I stumbled a few steps before getting a hold of myself.
"Right," I said as I straightened my smoothed out my linens and straightened my leathers. "Let us get back to my apartments before I slip up."
I needed to get to my room and scream for a good few hours.
The tomb had been terrifying but the dream managed to be worse, in implication if not in sight.
Magic, I thought sourly. More and more magic. Tombs with shared elements buried beneath legends and all cloaked in the baloney of ritual. That was harsh but actually believing that the gods of Valyria had any power was ridiculous. Valyria had been sunk, exploded and was probably irradiated. If they had any real gods or some magic beyond fancy swords, forts and occasional fireproofing, it had not saved them.
It was a panicked thought and not one that I could believe.
And even if there is some truth to it, I concluded. I have no interest in it. I want the Steel but I have no intention whatsoever in being played by some abominations so incompetent that they might have gotten multiple civilizations ruined.
I needed to survive and the Steel was my meal-ticket towards that end, but if the dreams asked too much I would just happily ignore them.
Still… "It was fascinating."
"Finally!" Arral exhaled. "Finally! I have been trying to get Hightowers down there for years! But noooo! They always claim it to be boring! That they have seen the tombs many times!"
It occurred to me that they probably meant the tombs in the upper floors.
That the Maester had somehow neglected to mention which tomb did not surprise me at all. No man was perfect and one of the many flaws of Arral was that you needed to really make it clear that you do not follow his train of thought.
"I think it is better if we all agree to not mention this to anyone," I sighed. It was a long shot but I could not risk some idiot trying to loot a tomb which had 'WARNING: DO NOT FUCK WITH THIS' painted on the proverbial wall. Especially since most Westerosi could not be trusted to read.
"As you say," Ebermen said mechanically and seemingly earnestly. It was becoming harder to maintain that my habitual paranoia around the man. He had plenty of opportunities to betray my trust and yet he had singularly failed to let me down.
"Not mention?!?" Arral tilted his head a full ninety degrees. "I have been mentioning it for years! YEARS! How the dragons in the stones and the corpses of ancient men can be uninteresting is beyond me!"
...I am not sure how to react to that. If the Maesters conspired against magic then they had screwed up. If they were not, then they were incompetent.
Or…
"How detailed were you?" I asked.
"DETAILED?!?!" The man's head seemed about to snap from how hard he nodded. "I SUBMITTED A THESIS! I can't go reporting my findings without approval! Poor form! Poor form it would be! Never bad my research proposal approved! But my word was good enough for Lo Han! It should be good enough!"
Despite myself, I chuckled. "I will get you approval if you agree to keep it quiet for now."
Arral considered that, he tugged at his beard a few times, his face wrinkled up in consideration.
"Very well! Yes! A bargain!" The old man nodded.
Good, the last thing I needed was to have word spread about the crypt until I had the means to prevent idiocy.
However…
There was something to be said about rites of initiation…
Last edited: Mar 30, 2018
Have a nice day!
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#744
Eboniska
StrangerOrders said:
they great behemoths
*their
But other than that...
OOMMMGGGGGGGGGGGG THIS IS SO AWESOME!
[COMING SOON] Queen of Blood and Vengeance: A Helaena Targaryen AU (NOT SI)
[DELAYED TILL FIRE AND BLOOD RELEASED] How to make Sons of the Dragon Era even worse- An SI
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#745
Garm88
Don't let a tomb robber know all that steel is own there.
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#746
IslandHopper
StrangerOrders said:
"For all men may rest."
"But we must serve."
This hit like a gut punch it's such a cool idea. Is this a uniquely Order variant or is this the actual original line in your setting? Before being bastardised after centuries.
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#747
Trivia Freak
Yn dohaerisi.
The Simpsons is arguably the greatest American cartoon to have ever existed.
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#748
RichardWhereat
StrangerOrders said:
She sang as she hilted the sword in a slot carved before the
Before the?
General Snippets - D&D Snippets - Mechanic of Ottery HP SI
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#749
TarMiniatur
RichardWhereat said:
Before the?
dais? It would make sense.
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#750
hemdahl
Is it Hightower? Or some other random misterious tomb?
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#751
fsponholz
hemdahl said:
Is it Hightower? Or some other random misterious tomb?
Other tomb, The Hightower is ancient, and Gaema herself is training only a few centuries before the doom.
Edit: The Hightower must be an tomb for a proto-order from before the rise of the Freehold.
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#752
Doragon
fsponholz said:
Other tomb, The Hightower is ancient, and Gaema herself is training only a few centuries before the doom.
Edit: The Hightower must be an tomb for a proto-order from before the rise of the Freehold.
They said they were in the Summer Isles, so they are nowhere near Hightower...but as you say this could have been a proto-order...
StrangerOrders said:
The vastness of the chamber struck her immediately, Gaema knew it was a trick of the Chisels, for Akaqo was ever a god fond of shapes. Their structures could seem as large or as small as they wished, Gaema knew that as well as any raised in the great fortresses at the heart of the Freehold.
Click to expand...
Oh good, the Order likes to give the finger to physics. Starting to understand why Varys hates magic so much...
CtP: Critique this Person
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#753
thor2006
Doragon said:
They said they were in the Summer Isles, so they are nowhere near Hightower...but as you say this could have been a proto-order...
Oh good, the Order likes to give the finger to physics. Starting to understand why Varys hates magic so much...
Click to expand...
Gaemon is at HightTower. Gaema is in an island in Summer Sea near the Valyria peninsula. So a small island nearby the Valyrian Peninsula.
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#754
TruthfulPanda
Gone Fishin'
I see that the Valyrian fleet has dragon carriers. And uses deck-spotting to increase the size of their air groups ... 
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#755
Crimson Reiter
hahaha yeah, I'm really looking forward to the moment he note that little detail 
And godsdamnit! That complex easily should be one of the marvels of the world! And the idiot who wrote the book lived next door!! sdgdfgasdfagsf Eat your own heart, maester!
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#756
jkarr
Question: Is the Valyrians were really this powerful and potent....Why didn't they conquer all of Essos and Westeros? Kinda the problem of the Valyrians.....we get so many pointers to how they were so powerful, especially with Dragons and Magic and then you realise....wait....if they were that strong, why the hell wasn't everything under them long before the Doom?
Thats the one fault GRR did for me...he based them off the Romans obviously and in Essos you can see that....but hhe also gave them Magic powers and fire breathing, flying, sentient, death machines....so really...it never really made sense why they failed so miserably (and the whole ignoring they've only being around for 5k years, meaning why their gods were so ancient and stuff....they were remarkably young compared to every other race, including westerosi ones).
Just something that always bugged me so much....But glad your adding some lore!
I'm just a poor little silver haired Khalessi
But if you fuck with me, I'll torch your whole family. So do yourself a favor and bend the fucking knee.
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#757
Doragon
The Masters and their Work are for their Gods, not for the idiots who ruled Valaryia.
CtP: Critique this Person
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#758
TarMiniatur
StrangerOrders said:
Chapter done.
Nice addendum. So you 're saying there is a very lootable abandoned Valyrian island somewhere in the middle of the ocean, with tons of valyrian swords in every tomb?
also
StrangerOrders said:
I was drooling steel
foreshadowing or "still"? 
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#759
Spanks
StrangerOrders said:
Always bugged me as well. There will be elaboration for that for this Valyria.
My pet theory is that the Valyians feared skin changers and Greenseers. Wanted to avoid having their dragons stolen by them.
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#760
Balerion
I'm just wondering here: are these Lister lords another Andalic House that Arral is mentioning or are they the proto Hightowers?
My thought on Valyria seemingly mucking about for 5 millennia is that they stagnated like the Roman Empire and fell victim to a series of civil wars(explains the amount of religious refugee Free Cities formed), Valyrian magic/dragons stagnated the further away they were from the 14 flames/a volcano(would show how Targaryen dragons always gathered near Dragonstone even the wild ones), or bear with my on this one-invisible hand that is GRRM didn't think that far back.
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