Remove ads

Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

Reader mode
uju32 said:
Yes.


Note that you are free not to agree with Mr Butcher's interpretation; there's plotholes to my eye afforded by the existence of the NeverNever. But thats offical Word of Jim on the subject.

I assume that most(not all, but most) people caught in witch hunts were talents or lesser sorcerers or really young newbies or changelings. Not fullscale White Council-class wizards; there were relatively few wizards, and they had a lot of tools at their disposal to evade the common mob.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
also people who were never guilty in the first place.
 
BronzeTongue said:
I kind of doubt that. I bet he could do a lot of damage, but this isn't a white room fight and everyone else would get a say too. I'd bet on them figuring it out and shooting missiles at him before he managed more than a few serious strikes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

For one thing, it's hard to fire missiles into the Nevernever; and for another, it's also hard to identify who to shoot if a super volcano erupts and a string of terrible accidents happen to senior people officials.
 
BronzeTongue said:
I doubt most of the real wizards would even be caught if it came to that. Wizards are really good at countering threats when they have time to prepare; regular mortals can do a lot with mundane engineering , but unless they go full clarketech they can't stop a wizard from doing things like fucking off into another dimension with a moment of effort if they want to.

In terms of defenses we know from comments Harry made in canon that a somewhat common warding tactic is binding summons to trigger conditions on your defenses. Which sounds like a plausible work around to the first law to me, and means that if you do find a wizard's hidey-hole even them appearing being alone doesn't mean they're vulnerable or that you can take your time figuring out how to exploit gaps in their defenses.

The only ones that are likely to get caught in that scenario are the really young and really unlucky.


I kind of doubt that. I bet he could do a lot of damage, but this isn't a white room fight and everyone else would get a say too. I'd bet on them figuring it out and shooting missiles at him before he managed more than a few serious strikes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
note that nevernever travel can and often is very dangerous also you can't stay in there long term if your mortal you'll die from well starvation and losing matter in your body. There's also uplifting your life and moving a country away which would of been rather difficult in older times especially where they might have to move to a place they don't know the language or a lot of other things. Note they still can do these things its not all easy though.
 
LightLan said:
What do you think about my addition?

-[] Have Clippy search for highway camera's along the route you drove with Harry today. Let's see if we can find an alibi.

Harry being in two locations ought to look awkward to them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Excellent reasoning, and we don't need to look at the highway. Harry was visible in town with us today, and in fact took point on questioning people while playing at being a tourist, so we have several witnesses who can verify his location.
DragonParadox said:
Line of sight with your actual eyes, so if you see a satellite though a telescope that is a valid target. Yes I know that is terrifying, that is just how the exalted roll. :V
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As a plan Y (not sure what our plan Z is yet) I say we make a deadmans switch with instructions for a cyber demon tied to the International Space Station. If the situation is slightly less severe we can merely hold it hostage(wonder what the ransom price would be), if we actually die we can order the demon to take control of the station and crash it into the planet as revenge.
 
BronzeTongue said:
I kind of doubt that. I bet he could do a lot of damage, but this isn't a white room fight and everyone else would get a say too. I'd bet on them figuring it out and shooting missiles at him before he managed more than a few serious strikes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
When he can glamor, veil and step out into the NeverNever, missiles are not really a great option.
Dude's strategic mobility is prohibitive.

Note that according to some of the ancillary data, improving human societys standard of living has been a longterm, multigenerational project of thousands of wizards. They live here after all, and its in their direct interests.
Destroying that would be a tremendous own goal.

But in a genuine no morals, gloves off extermination fight between the Blackstaff and the United States, the US goes down hard.
There will be survivors, but the corporate entity wont survive.

Forget Yellowstone, or diverting a couple hurricanes. If Nicodemus caused the Black Plague to kill a third of Europe in the Dark Ages, and can brew up a magical global plague with the equivalent of scraps in a cave and a fake replica of the Shroud of Turin, imagine what strains of magic hyperCovid the White Council could disperse over the US in a war.
 
uju32 said:
When he can glamor, veil and step out into the NeverNever, missiles are not really a great option.
Dude's strategic mobility is prohibitive.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Even nuclear weapons aren't enough to hit someone who slips into the Nevernever. IIRC, Morgan killed a Skinwalker by tricking it into the blast radius of a nuclear weapon test then stepping into the Nevernever to avoid the explosion.
 
Alratan said:
For one thing, it's hard to fire missiles into the Nevernever; and for another, it's also hard to identify who to shoot if a super volcano erupts and a string of terrible accidents happen to senior people officials.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I was sort of making the assumption he'd only be trying to fight the US government, not genocide North America and throw the world into a climate crisis.

uju32 said:
When he can glamor, veil and step out into the NeverNever, missiles are not really a great option.
Dude's strategic mobility is prohibitive.

Note that according to some of the ancillary data, improving human societys standard of living has been a longterm, multigenerational project of thousands of wizards. They live here after all, and its in their direct interests.
Destroying that would be a tremendous own goal.

But in a genuine no morals, gloves off extermination fight between the Blackstaff and the United States, the US goes down hard.
There will be survivors, but the corporate entity wont survive.

Forget Yellowstone, or diverting a couple hurricanes. If Nicodemus caused the Black Plague to kill a third of Europe in the Dark Ages, and can brew up a magical global plague with the equivalent of scraps in a cave and a fake replica of the Shroud of Turin, imagine what strains of magic hyperCovid the White Council could disperse over the US in a war.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
He can move around a lot yeah, but wizards are primarily tool users. I doubt he does stuff like setting off volcanoes and dropping satellites on the fly.

I can buy that the council as a whole could do some nasty stuff, but it's worth noting that the Denarians have some seriously bullshit wells of lore on their side. Them being able to Tony Stark something together isn't necessarily indicative of how hard it is to do.

We're solidly into talking about a white room to surpass metal gear here though; even if you could get all of the council on board with this, any of the big stuff would involve fighting more than a single muggle government.

In order to actually fight that war the council would need to pick fights that didn't entangle other powers, which limits their ability to deploy stuff like ebolaids and global doom volcanoes.

Within the band of stuff that is practical and won't get the initiator nailed to the wall by the whole planet the winning strategies for the council, and especially for a single wizard, are much more limited.
 
We shouldn't get hung up on the potential destruction a suitably talented and motivated wizard can deal out. That's big and obvious, the kind of attention grabbing shit that gets the job done but causes too much collateral damage.

Instead, it's the subtle or invisible effects that kill without obvious visual evidence that are really scary. You don't need to explode someone's heart or hit them with a fireball when you can cause a fatal aneurysm when they're on the toilet or transform all of the oxygen in a building into carbon monoxide.
 
[X] Go to Father Forthil like your dad suggested, see if there is anything he can do for Harry
-[X] Ask if the white council can be contacted ASAP!

The whole strategy is to scare him into folding. All that gets them is high blood pressure.
 
Goldfish said:
We shouldn't get hung up on the potential destruction a suitably talented and motivated wizard can deal out. That's big and obvious, the kind of attention grabbing shit that gets the job done but causes too much collateral damage.

Instead, it's the subtle or invisible effects that kill without obvious visual evidence that are really scary. You don't need to explode someone's heart or hit them with a fireball when you can cause a fatal aneurysm when they're on the toilet or transform all of the oxygen in a building into carbon monoxide.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Entropy curse. Falling turkey from the sky :V

More seriously?
A largely unsupported, lowpower scrub like Victor Sells from Book 1 was able to murder people by getting his hands on an arcane focus(blood, hair, semen) and tapping a storm as a power source, exploding their chests and hearts.

He could summon demons as precision hitmen.

He could make remotely activated magic killdrones that did the whole growing monster thing beloved of Super Sentai shows, making a scorpion assume the size of basically a VW Beetle, with venom to match.
Imagine what an actual White Council wizard could do if they put their mind to it.

Evil!Dresden would just have to pay one of the Little Folk pizza to steal hair from your comb, and then you're all sorts of fucked unless you're behind heavy duty wards.
 
uju32 said:
Yes, the murder happened.
And these spooks are currently letting their colleagues in the FBI Chicago Field Office(Criminal Division) and the Chicago PD run off after an innocent based on evidence they have reason to know is false, and which they have explicitly stated they can disprove.

Meantime the actual murderer is out there, as is whoever actually gave them orders.
And can repeat the process.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And they know this, and they know that the murder was done by a "class 4 entity" which they can't start trying to contain with what they have, meaning that sending cops after the actual killer is just sending them to die.

Anyway,
[X] Go to Father Forthil like your dad suggested, see if there is anything he can do for Harry

nothing else sane has a chance of winning it seems.
 
Goldfish said:
We shouldn't get hung up on the potential destruction a suitably talented and motivated wizard can deal out. That's big and obvious, the kind of attention grabbing shit that gets the job done but causes too much collateral damage.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I do kinda get hung up on this, because the wiki claims that McCoy is responsible for the Tunguska event and the last time the Krakatoa broke out.

So he is something of a living proof that if a high-end Wizard stops caring about collateral, the general target-area is fucked.

Which is not even hard to portray in the system by the way.
A Mage with Forces 5 can affect large areas with direct elemental effects. And with a ritual-casting he can spend a few hours or days to get an arbitrarily high number of successes and M20 calls something done with 20+ Successes a Godlike feat.
Incinerating a city is explicitly listed as an option under those.
 
uju32 said:
When he can glamor, veil and step out into the NeverNever, missiles are not really a great option.
Dude's strategic mobility is prohibitive.

Note that according to some of the ancillary data, improving human societys standard of living has been a longterm, multigenerational project of thousands of wizards. They live here after all, and its in their direct interests.
Destroying that would be a tremendous own goal.

But in a genuine no morals, gloves off extermination fight between the Blackstaff and the United States, the US goes down hard.
There will be survivors, but the corporate entity wont survive.

Forget Yellowstone, or diverting a couple hurricanes. If Nicodemus caused the Black Plague to kill a third of Europe in the Dark Ages, and can brew up a magical global plague with the equivalent of scraps in a cave and a fake replica of the Shroud of Turin, imagine what strains of magic hyperCovid the White Council could disperse over the US in a war.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

In a genuine no holds barred war between the Blackstaff and the US a greater magical power like Mab kills the Blackstaff for being too destructive to the fabric of the masquerade.
 
Last edited:
DragonParadox said:
In a genuine no holds barred war between the Blackstaff and the US a greater magical power like Mab kills the Blackstaff for being too destructive to the fabric of the masquerade.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
not sure the masquerade is that tight honestly. Also not sure mab can actually personally attack humans unprovoked. Send others under her to do the job sure herself though not sure.
 
firefrog600 said:
not sure the masquerade is that tight honestly. Also not sure mab can actually personally attack humans unprovoked. Send others under her to do the job sure herself though not sure.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The destruction of the most powerful mortal nation on earth would be more than enough to provoke Mab and she could get involved trivially. Just show up to a meeting at the pentagon and make a deal to kill Ebenezer. That would make her involved enough to do it, assuming the Accords themselves do not just allow her to go against any who would breech it egregiously enough
 
DragonParadox said:
In a genuine no holds barred war between the Blackstaff and the US a greater magical power like Mab kills the Blackstaff for being too destructive to the fabric of the masquerade.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Fair enough.

I must point out that in the books, Nicodemus canonically magicked up the Black Plague, which IRL killed 30-60% of Europe's population over the period of a decade of the 14th century, as well as a third of the Middle East. Estimates are 75-200 million people died, at a time when the global population was less than 500 million.

Mab didnt do anything then, and Nicky is still walking around and raising hell 600 years later.

Your ruling though.
Maybe the rules have changed since then, though I will note that she didnt raise a hand to stop Nicky attempting to skullfuck the world in Death Masks with Black Plague Part Deux.
 
uju32 said:
Fair enough.

I must point out that in the books, Nicodemus canonically magicked up the Black Plague, which IRL killed 30-60% of Europe's population over the period of a decade of the 14th century, as well as a third of the Middle East. Estimates are 75-200 million people died, at a time when the global population was less than 500 million.

Mab didnt do anything then, and Nicky is still walking around and raising hell 600 years later.

Your ruling though.
Maybe the rules have changed since then, though I will note that she didnt raise a hand to stop Nicky attempting to skullfuck the world in Death Masks with Black Plague Part Deux.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Nicky isn't the Blackastaff, if Mab comes after him for something he did in the function of his power, which includes making apocalypses Anduriel is allowed to come out and play.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top