Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

Okay, they had the full SWAT team there, but still chose to go in with three agents?
This seems weirder and weirder. Definitly not a straight-up attempt to harm Harry, the direct raid would have been worse for him.
Colliding imperatives, I'm guessing.
Whoever arranged this doesnt have the control they would wish.
And Murphy is very connected among the law enforcement rank and file.

Almost like they did not want to charge guns blazing at a wizard in his place of power or something and they had some reason to assume he would come quietly.
Yeah, but going in guns blazing would have been worse for Harry. Very few big players in the magical world would care about a few cops paying the price for that.That tells us that whoever is behind this is either not primarily interested in hurting Harry, or he doesn't have enough of a grip on the agents to make them do something like this.
It would also have been potentially much worse for every agent who went in guns blazing, especially if they have anything like an inkling of what kinda Hellfire a motivated wizard can bring down.
And those agents dont particularly want to die.

Im betting on the insufficient grip here.
As in, they have worse grip than Rudolph, and Rudolph managed to get the Feds to storm Dresden's home during Changes.
Which eventually led to them having that close up encounter with vampire assassins in the Chicago FBI building.

For all we know, this is another Father Vincent situation, and there's a dead FBI agent somewhere in this case's chain of command who is currently being impersonated by some supernatural critter. The alleged crime video already suggests there are shapehifters involved, so it could be anything from a generic Sidhe to a Denarian to a Skinwalker.

Maybe. They know enough that he was dangerous enough to bring a whole swat team, but not enough to know about his wizard tricks.The government trying to angle for a supernatural liason seems more and more likely.
Also phone successfully demonized. We can use thst hopefully.
If the government wanted a supernatural liaison they would have invited him to a nice dinner with a suitcase of cash and other favors. Not showed up with an arrest warrant for felony murder of a police officer.
This is the US government, not Saddam's Iraq.

Whatever answer we actually give, I really don't think the "What's the answer worth to you?" response is the way to go. That implies we would actually be willing to tell him, which could prompt them to try to take us in.
^^^^
Entirely too many votes and voters are forgetting that this is not an epic fantasy setting, with weak law enforcement, patchy communcications, and where the local guard only has so much power. Where you can outrun any problems by just moving to another city.

This is an urban fantasy, in a First World country.
Strong government. National law enforcement. Real time communications, and military-intelligence backup. The Feds do not have to bargain with you, and are under no obligation not to lie to you if the job so requires it.

Make no mistake that while we can retaliate against picked agents, the FBI as a corporate entity can legally make our life miserable as fuck, and we'd have limited recourse without hurting innocent people.
Under what grounds? Though being taken to wherever harry is being taken would be nice for several reasons.
Oh if they arrest us we get cracked cell circumvention.
HA!
Obstruction of an investigation. Lying to a federal officer.

Cracked Cell Circumvention out of a federal prison makes you a federal fugitive. That ends up costing us a LOT.
We are a baby Exalt. We have no inner Hell, no Flight, no disguise charms or sorcery, ancient or modern, no Background dots in anything besides Mentor. We dont have our full combat suite even.

Dont get gassed up my friend.
Seriously though, why are you guys voting for this?It's a meme line that immediately puts us back in the "dumb kid" box that revealing we knew his home office got us out of. If we wanted to stay low profile we shouldn't have said anything in the first place, not that we have we might as well do something with it.
1)We have no need to be taken seriously, and dumb kid protects us, especially since we have no idea who we are playing this entire game with.

2)Because you are dealing with a federal agent, not a fae or some merchant in a flea market.

You do not want to deal with the statutory powers in play if you become of genuine interest to the Feds. Do you want wiretaps of all your phone lines? Trackers in your car? Bugs in your house, and laser microphones down the street? Feds following you around?
Audits of your taxes?

Ask the Mafia; having Federal agents interested in your business is very uncomfortable when you do extralegal things.

We might be personally able to fuck off and ignore the US govt, but only if we are willing to abandon our life.
We have family and friends here.
Shit we'd rather protect.
 
[X] "I guessed," you glibly answer to see if you can get more answers out of a rise
This is voting to verbally spar with them. If you want to disengage your going to have to do a write in. This is a vote to make fun of the FBI agent to his face to get a rise out of him.

[ ] "I guessed," you glibly answer to see if you can get more answers out of a rise

Cracked Cell Circumvention out of a federal prison makes you a federal fugitive. That ends up costing us a LOT.
We are a baby Exalt. We have no inner Hell, no Flight, no disguise charms or sorcery, ancient or modern, no Background dots in anything besides Mentor. We dont have our full combat suite even.
It applies to all rolls while someone is trying to contain you. Talk, fight, craft, magic.

The big one here being talk. We get a big boost to social rolls against someone detaining us, but yes fair point.
 
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It applies to all rolls while someone is trying to contain you. Talk, fight, craft, magic.
The big one here being talk. We get a big boost to social rolls against someone detaining us, but yes fair point.
No, it applies to rolls aimed at getting you out of confinement.
Thats a subtle but very real difference.
Incredibly powerful for what it does, but I think people give it too much credit.

Thats a QM adjudication though.

Are they opposed to making something up?
On the whole I agree however. Them faking the video seems... like there are much easier ways they could have done this. Sand trap does seem like the most likely options, though it does lead to... What the heck were they told about him.

It would be nice if we could just get a yes or no on them knowing about the supernatural or not, but its definitely not worth a crown question.
Sandtrap is one option.
We could also have a ringer who has limited influence. And its something we know a lot of supernaturals can do.

Jenny Greenteeth impersonated Georgia at her wedding in the short story Something Borrowed, and her boyfriend couldnt tell the difference. The Denarian Quintus Cassius murdered a catholic representative and took on his face and form for much of Death Rites. The fetches are all shapeshifters, and can impersonate normal humans to get invited inside a threshold.
 
No, it applies to rolls aimed at getting you out of confinement.
Thats a subtle but very real difference.
Incredibly powerful for what it does, but I think people give it too much credit.

Thats a QM adjudication though.
So it does, but the point I was trying to make was that it works just as well at helping convince people we are innocent as it does for helping us punch a prison wall down.
 
VOTE
[X] "I guessed," you glibly answer to see if you can get more answers out of a rise


I would prefer to say nothing, but too many votes have passed thus far.
Federal agent. Their powers can in theory fuck people's lives up. I'd rather know a lot more about who we're talking to before we volunteer any information, starting with rifling through his phone, email and contacts.

Dresden gets to talk, and often gets into shit because of his mouth.
Molly should shut it until she knows where she can apply it.
 
I would prefer to say nothing, but too many votes have passed thus far.

Molly should shut it.
Two things:
1. This interaction is happening privately between Agent Wright and Molly. No one is able to corroborate anything Agent Wright might accuse Molly of, so if he does go down that route, he might as well just make shit up wholesale in which case it does not matter what Molly does ro does not say.

2a. Molly giving information -> "FBI's National Security Branch". Can be passed off as a 'shot in the dark' if ever pulled up on this.
2b. "What's the answer worth to you?" -> To me this can easily be passed off as Molly being a snotty teenager and is not risky. Not 'passed off' to Agent Wright, but to anyone not aware of magic and fey and such.

The worry I have is "trying to cut some kind of deal". I don't want to try and cut a deal. I want to imply that Molly is fey-ish, and is maybe offering a deal, so as to see what Agent Wright chooses to bring to the table. To pretend that Molly is someone to cut a deal with, and that she may be amenable to said deal cutting. And I want to do it in two stages:

Stage 1: Building on the fact that Wright is obviously probing to find out how clued in Molly is and how much of a threat she is to his (bosses?) plans, I would like to set soft groundwork for either a future conversation, or a least grab what hints or information can be got within the constrains of "not saying anything that is incriminating to anyone not aware of magic"

Stage 2: After sun-up, or a nice refreshing bath of clorox; I'd like to try to do stage one again, but even more so and with more information that our new demon will have gotten for us and fresh excellency to spend on rolls.

I don't expect to have Agent Wright as anything other than a foe.
----

I suppose the best thing would be to make a write in reflecting my desires, but like. I'm kinda tipsy and it's 1:30 am. :confused:
 
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1)We have no need to be taken seriously, and dumb kid protects us, especially since we have no idea who we are playing this entire game with.

2)Because you are dealing with a federal agent, not a fae or some merchant in a flea market.

You do not want to deal with the statutory powers in play if you become of genuine interest to the Feds. Do you want wiretaps of all your phone lines? Trackers in your car? Bugs in your house, and laser microphones down the street? Feds following you around?
Audits of your taxes?

Ask the Mafia; having Federal agents interested in your business is very uncomfortable when you do extralegal things.

We might be personally able to fuck off and ignore the US govt, but only if we are willing to abandon our life.
We have family and friends here.
Shit we'd rather protect.
Then why say anything in the first place? If goal of the exercise wasn't to needle him then telling him we knew his home office was just tipping our hand.

Part of the problem is that we dipped our toes out of the stupid kid box by saying something, and are hopping back in by back tracking. But now we're more suspicious because we managed to surprise them once, so we're worse off than before.

Better than them being too interested, but still a net loss.

[X] Molly smirks, and turns her head away, obviously finished with the conversation.
 
Not a fan of this option, but I'm going with it in hopes of preventing the other, much worse option from succeeding.

[X] "I guessed," you glibly answer to see if you can get more answers out of a rise
 
I'm pretty neutral on what happens I don't think anything good is gonna happen in the short term for dresden here. Don't think there is a magic bullet to fix this (well there is we don't have those charms yet) problem for now at least dresden seems pretty fucked.
 
[X] "What's the answer worth to you?" Usum suggests trying to cut some kind of deal and he claims step one of that is showing you have power and are not minded to reveal it for free.
 
Then why say anything in the first place? If goal of the exercise wasn't to needle him then telling him we knew his home office was just tipping our hand.

Part of the problem is that we dipped our toes out of the stupid kid box by saying something, and are hopping back in by back tracking. But now we're more suspicious because we managed to surprise them once, so we're worse off than before.
Better than them being too interested, but still a net loss.

[X] Molly smirks, and turns her head away, obviously finished with the conversation.
Because, like I said previously, we needed Harry Dresden to know it before any conversations happen.
And there were other people in the room; cant tell him without the agents overhearing, and we're not a telepath.
So say it openly and carelessly, and hopefully it comes off as some dumb kid savant mouthing off.

Two things:
1. This interaction is happening privately between Agent Wright and Molly. No one is able to corroborate anything Agent Wright might accuse Molly of, so if he does go down that route, he might as well just make shit up wholesale in which case it does not matter what Molly does ro does not say.

2a. Molly giving information -> "FBI's National Security Branch". Can be passed off as a 'shot in the dark' if ever pulled up on this.
2b. "What's the answer worth to you?" -> To me this can easily be passed off as Molly being a snotty teenager and is not risky. Not 'passed off' to Agent Wright, but to anyone not aware of magic and fey and such.

The worry I have is "trying to cut some kind of deal". I don't want to try and cut a deal. I want to imply that Molly is fey-ish, and is maybe offering a deal, so as to see what Agent Wright chooses to bring to the table. To pretend that Molly is someone to cut a deal with, and that she may be amenable to said deal cutting. And I want to do it in two stages:

Stage 1: Building on the fact that Wright is obviously probing to find out how clued in Molly is and how much of a threat she is to his (bosses?) plans, I would like to set soft groundwork for either a future conversation, or a least grab what hints or information can be got within the constrains of "not saying anything that is incriminating to anyone not aware of magic"

Stage 2: After sun-up, or a nice refreshing bath of clorox; I'd like to try to do stage one again, but even more so and with more information that our new demon will have gotten for us and fresh excellency to spend on rolls.

I don't expect to have Agent Wright as anything other than a foe.
----

I suppose the best thing would be to make a write in reflecting my desires, but like. I'm kinda tipsy and it's 1:30 am. :confused:
1)This is not a private interaction.
Its a conversation in public, in front of Harry's apartment, and while Agent Wright is trying to keep his voice down?
There's no real expectation of privacy. Keen ears, listening devices, magical or technological eavesdroppers.

Note how some evidence suggested that when we were inside, they were getting information from someone.

2)Thats the hope.

3) Explicitly talking about trying to impersonate the fae here to a federal agent?
Without actually considering that by trying to pretend to be fae, you are telling anyone in the know that seventeen year old Molly is either a changeling, meaning that Michael isnt our dad or is fae himself.

Or that someone kidnapped/murdered and replaced the real Molly at some point.
Do you see how badly that could go?

Never mind considering that the fae might take offense at human impersonators, and express their displeasure harshly.
We dont have so many friends we can afford to lose any to some ironic lesson.
Classic case of swallowing a spider to catch a fly.

4)Its worth remembering that as far as Dresden's wards were concerned, Wright and his associates were apparently vanilla human.
There is absolutely nothing preventing them from lying about a deal.

If they made a deal with a fae or spirit and broke it, they'd be at the mercy of the wronged party whenever they chose to follow up, but with a human, even a wizard, they can lie and welch on deals with impunity.
So talking deal in the absence of leverage or confirmation of good faith is dumb.

5)US law enforcement is explicitly permitted to lie to you and deceive you in the course of their duties.
However, you cant lie to them without copping a charge. Especially the FBI, for which its a crime carrying 5-8 year jail sentence.
  1. Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully
    1. falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device[, ] a material fact;
    2. makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or
    3. makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry
    4. ….shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331),[9] imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both.
Meaning?

Its entirely possible that the entire spiel they gave Dresden about having him on surveillance footage disposing of a dismembered body with witnesses and fingerprints?
Could very well be all lies, designed to provoke a reaction.

They certainly have some evidence worth arresting him on a felony murder charge, but whether it would stand up to legal scrutiny remains to be seen. Which is why Dresden should shut up until his lawyer gets here.
 
So like. I may have not made it clear, but I intended for everything Molly might say here in this interaction to be 100% in the realm of "plausible deniability". She's 17. "I guessed and you confirmed your department" is valid. "What's the answer worth to you" as a snotty 17 year old sticking it to The Man response is vaild. And not illegal. And not actionable.
Explicitly talking about trying to impersonate the fae here to a federal agent?
Without actually considering that by trying to pretend to be fae, you are telling anyone in the know that seventeen year old Molly is either a changeling, meaning that Michael isnt our dad or is fae himself.
Imply to this particular Fed that we are fay or fay-adjacient, in an attempt to bait him in for more info later. I'm ok with that risk.

I don't think acting in such a way to make people think that Molly is a fey is going to piss of any fey, and if it is, I'm ok with pissing those fey off, 'cuz they're looking for an excuse to be pissed off.

Response to the bolded bit: Or telling people that Molly is for whatever reason, pretending to be restricted in the ways that fey are restricted.
Never mind considering that the fae might take offense at human impersonators, and express their displeasure harshly.
Actual fearmongering. Harry Dresden novels are "real world + magic".

It is more reasonable to assume that there are average teens who are into pretending to be fey and nothing bad happens to them than it is that there are fey who go about killing said teens for acting as if they are bound by fey-rules.
There is absolutely nothing preventing them from lying about a deal.
I am also lying about wanting a deal. I jut want to see what Wright ponys up for a deal so we can get more info. [edit: in a later conversation]
---
There's other points you made, but am drunk bored now and I fear that my lazy choice to not respond in a single holistic paragraph to all your points risks veering into spaghetti posting, and you don't deserve that, and no one deserves to try and parse it.
 
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[X] "What's the answer worth to you?" Usum suggests trying to cut some kind of deal and he claims step one of that is showing you have power and are not minded to reveal it for free.

I prefer this, he might say or show something that reveals how far involved in the supernatural he is.
We still have no idea what the real game here is, why this done. We need every scrap of info we can get.

We might be personally able to fuck off and ignore the US govt, but only if we are willing to abandon our life.
We have family and friends here.
Shit we'd rather protect.
Eh, if we just get one office in the FBI after us, we can propably deal with them.
Endless Torment Emanation to hinder all their projects, Cyber Devils to mess with their PCs and contained data.
They'll very soon be too busy explaining their constant failures in everything to competently make our life hell.
 
I need to go to bed but something I just realized is that we might be approaching this from the wrong angle, especially since we are still filming. We don't care what the information is worth, we care why it matters, he shouldn't have a reason to whisper. After all a legally appointed officer, legally carrying out their duties in a cross departmental case shouldn't have anything to hide here. We were the ones who brought up it was weird that the FBI was serving a murder warrant, and that's when he got weird they don't want the police to know who they are, but the police should already know who they are. So the question isn't, "What are you willing to bribe me with on camera" but instead, "Why aren't you following due process and cooperating with the relevant authorities within their own jurisdiction". We care about why these people, from this office, are at this house, in this moment. Focus on the why, not the what.

[X] "You just told me" you reply with grin.
- [X] "So why are you serving a murder warrant?"
 
Is the votes tied or are they counted separately?
Adhoc vote count started by Yzarc on Aug 25, 2022 at 2:32 AM, finished with 83 posts and 34 votes.
 
Oh. I just realized. With Harry arrested, they are almost certainly going to search his place. Bob is in a human skull. They are going to take him for identification / analysis.

This might be about Kemmler-influenced society getting access to Bob.
 
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