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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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Alratan said:
Cindy has already been captured. It is going to be hard and dangerous and maybe counterproductive to try to reduce her.

Lydia may also already have been kidnapped, or may be just about to be kidnapped, and every minute we spend doing something else rather than warning her is increasing the likelihood that she is and that her bodyguards are killed in the process. This would possibly seriously endanger her father and so may make the world itself very significantly less safe by risking transferring his power to an enemy of existence.

All we need to do is make one phone call and we can warn her and through her or the bodyguards warn her father to take precautions. That would be trivial for us to do.

We have so far chosen not to do her and deliberately leave her and them in ignorance of the very quite possibly imminent lethal threat to them. We are doing nothing at the moment to prevent her kidnapping, which I say again, could happen any moment. Katrina very likely has allies who are taking care of that, so even killing her right now may not save Lydia (or anyone with her; like Daniel). Indeed; if Lydia and anyone else have already been captured or are captured in the time it takes us to go to and fight Katrina then killing the latter may trigger the murder of the former shortly afterwards as said accomplices cover their tracks.

And the Crown is line of sight. We've missed the chance to use it on her.
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If we just kill Kattrin then she won*t be in danger.

Saving Matthew's grandchild either gives us a clear shot at Kattrin as the very next action, or it even forces the confrontation if she is near the site where the girl is held.

The Ankou, if he is actually Lydia's father, is the most distant target involved in all of this and definitly won't die without a proper ritual first, so he is safe to save for the last.

Best case he never even knows that someone was after him and instead finishes his job of perma-killing the Capricorpus without our input.
 
Artemis1992 said:
Is number three absolute or can it be resisted?
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As far as Gard has seen absolute, from the way Odin... er I mean Donar the totally-not-a-god explained it to her she is not aiming at you when she does that, she is aiming at the space-time you inhabit. Unless you have some way to contest her power over that space-time you get frozen. Her limitations are as follows:
  1. She only has two eyes and they are in the front of her head
  2. The more things she freezes the harder it gets
  3. A simple tap on someone frozen undoes the spell.
Goldfish said:
I'm not sure if it's something we can easily rig up right now, but the simplest method of potentially snapping us out of Katrina's Time Stop might be to buy a pack of model rocket igniters. I used to buy these things from Wal-Mart when I was a kid in the 90s. They don't take much power to trigger and the heating element gets red hot almost instantly.

@DragonParadox, would Clippy be able to push enough power into one of these if we wired her to in through her charging or speaker port?

And if a tiny heating element strapped to our thigh getting red hot isn't enough to break the effect, if we're buying a rocket motor igniter, we could just go ahead and buy a small rocket motor to go along with it. Even one the size of a AA battery has quite a bit of kick.
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You would need an extra battery for this, but she could do it.
 
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Artemis1992 said:
If we just kill Kattrin then she won*t be in danger.

Saving Matthew's grandchild either gives us a clear shot at Kattrin as the very next action, or it even forces the confrontation if she is near the site where the girl is held.

The Ankou, if he is actually Lydia's father, is the most distant target involved in all of this and definitly won't die without a proper ritual first, so he is safe to save for the last.

Best case he never even knows that someone was after him and instead finishes his job of perma-killing the Capricorpus without our input.
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If we kill Katrina her accomplices who are currently holding Cindy will probably just murder her to cover their tracks and run.

We have no reason to believe that a ritual to summon the Eldest Ankou would take significant time, the example we have of Dresden summoning the Erlking suggests that it's very fast, minutes at most.

And Katrina probably also has accomplices on their way to or who already have grabbed Lydia to use as part of the ritual against her father. With her as a symbolic link then the dark feats could also be fast. The other mantle transfers we saw happen in the series were basically instantaneous.

Grabbing Matthews is probably one of the very last steps she's take into, as that's one of the things that could go wrong and tip others off.

And we want the Eldest Ankou to know we saved him, so he owes us a debt, and Mab owes us as well.

The Eldest Ankou is probably also one of the people that would benefit most from a warning. He can mobilise allies, get behind defensive wards, make sure he daughter is safe or even ship her out of town via the Ways or on a helicopter then private jet if her wants to keep her in the dark. All we need to do is tip him off and Katrina will be massively inconvenienced.

We can't just assume we can Kool-Aide man in and make the problem vanish with no collateral damage. We need contingencies and a plan B and taking steps to make sure that other people don't die along the way

And Daniel Carpenter is one of the most likely people to end up as collateral damage if we keep on ignoring the immediate and lethal threat his girlfriend is under.
 
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[X] All this talk of old Welsh spirits turned winter's fixers make you think of Lydia and in particular her globetrotting father. This is probably not how Daniel anticipated introducing his girlfriend to dad, but needs must
 
Do we even have time to try any of these fancy tricks? It seems easier to go after her vision than it would be to hack together counters on our end. Especially since they'd probably end up pretty fragile and she'd go after them pretty quickly once she realized what they do.

She has to hit us one at a time, so maybe we could get some spray paint and all try to tag her eyes before doing anything else? Or get ambitious and load a super soaker with gas, spray her face, then throw lit road flares at her while she tries to wipe it from her eyes.

Can't freeze us in time if her face is on fire.
 
DragonParadox said:
As far as Gard known Katrina can cast, in rough order of difficulty:
  1. Perception-Warp, which is an enchantment that leaves you standing around while the world spins around you and critically that you can only break with a will roll. Since she is not actually altering the flow of time she can just freely stab the victim while they cannot percieve her properly. Also good for taking prisoners in broad daylight from a public place
  2. Slow, which takes away some of your dice when fighting her, you do not know how many but it is an unfair number
  3. Stop, can be used on people, can be used on sniper bullets and like slow it gets used instantly
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All three autofail against Michael. In fact, given the events of Changes, I suspect that area shaping breaks like a twig.
The first and third fail against Molly with WP expenditure. The second might not.
No idea about Gard.

Perception Warp sounds like something for kidnapping someone who has bodyguards.
Like Lydia.
DragonParadox said:
Not as she is right now, it would take a Int+Technology roll to try to give her connectivity
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Fair.
BronzeTongue said:
Supposing she can't actually see Molly, doesn't that mean she can't see what we're about to do? A counter ambush interrupted by a highly dangerous surprise attack you couldn't account for isn't really a counter ambush very long.

Besides, if she can legitimately see that far ahead how are we supposed to do anything without her being prepared? She could just send a sniper to intercept us somewhere on the route to her main target or something. Best to assume there are some sort of limits to what she can do, but that the longer we wait the greater the risk she learns something is.
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1)Thats why I want to call Lydia now and see if we can talk to her father.
Adding Molly's Outside Fatedness to that side of the equation might alter things enough that her Sight is no longer accurate.

2)Kattrin came to Chicago in the full knowledge that Gard is here and working for Marcone on a contract.
Gard's been here since at least the events of Death Masks more than two years ago, so anyone paying attention to her or Marcone knows she's in town.

There's a good chance she has invested time and resources prepared for precisely the scenario of a roadside ambush in Chicago, because Gard's access to Outfit resources favors that sort of operation.

3)Sight is only as accurate as all the factors you can visualize.
Like I said, Dresden was allegedly fated to die early in Dead Beat when he met the Capriocorpus.
Gard walked by and intervened on Marcone's request.

DragonParadox said:
As far as Gard has seen absolute, from the way Odin... er I mean Donar the totally-not-a-god explained it to her she is not aiming at you when she does that, she is aiming at the space-time you inhabit. Unless you have some way to contest her power over that space-time you get frozen. Her limitations are as follows:
  1. She only has two eyes and they are in the front of her head
  2. The more things she freezes the harder it gets
  3. A simple tap on someone frozen undoes the spell.
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Changes suggests that just doesnt work against a Sword bearer holding their sword.
So they'd have to catch Michael without a sword in hand, or it just breaks.
DragonParadox said:
You would need an extra battery for this, but she could do it.
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Buy a RC plane/helo, put a spirit inside, have it bump into people.
:V
 
Alratan said:
And Katrina probably also has accomplices on their way to or who already have grabbed Lydia to use as part of the ritual against her father. With her as a symbolic link then the dark feats could also be fast. The other mantle transfers we saw happen in the series were basically instantaneous.

Grabbing Matthews is probably one of the very last steps she's take into, as that's one of the things that could go wrong and tip others off.

And we want the Eldest Ankou to know we saved him, so he owes us a debt, and Mab owes us as well.
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That they will try to kidnap Lydia is pure conjecture.

We are not even sure if her father is the Eldest Ankou.
Assuming he is, we don't know how Kattrin wants to capture him, by ritual summoning or an ambush, or by taking his daughter hostage.
And once she has him, we have little idea how her Black Feast is supposed to work, since Bob thinks it can't work directly as the ritual usually does.

In short, he is the most distant factor currently and saving the girl that is definitly already abducted takes priority.
 
Artemis1992 said:
That they will try to kidnap Lydia is pure conjecture.

We are not even sure if her father is the Eldest Ankou.
Assuming he is, we don't know how Kattrin wants to capture him, by ritual summoning or an ambush, or by taking his daughter hostage. And once she has him, we have little idea how her Black Feast is supposed to work, since Bob thinks it can't work directly as the ritual usually does.

In short, he is the most distant factor currently and saving the girl that is definitly already abducted takes priority.
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Once we intervene anywhere, we start a timer. Kattrin is not incompetent, she will react when she realizes her op is under attack.

Crown of Eyes only tells us whats true RIGHT NOW.
We should not ask Cindy's location unless we're ready to go immediately.
Else her location could change in the interim and we're shit out of luck.

Talking to people before taking direct action takes priority.
Especially since calling Lydia is much faster than staging a hostage rescue.
 
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uju32 said:
Once we intervene anywhere, we start a timer. Kattrin is not incompetent, she will react when she realizes her op is under attack.

Crown of Eyes only tells us whats true RIGHT NOW.
We should not ask Cindy's location unless we're ready to go immediately.
Else her location could change in the interim and we're shit out of luck.
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I am ready to go right now.
I take a vote to find Cindy as a vote to free her right now.

We have assembled more allies than we'll propably need, we have had lots of exposition, now it's time to strike.
 
uju32 said:
1)Thats why I want to call Lydia now and see if we can talk to her father.
Adding Molly's Outside Fatedness to that side of the equation might alter things enough that her Sight is no longer accurate.

2)Kattrin came to Chicago in the full knowledge that Gard is here and working for Marcone on a contract.
Gard's been here since at least the events of Death Masks more than two years ago, so anyone paying attention to her or Marcone knows she's in town.

There's a good chance she has invested time and resources prepared for precisely the scenario of a roadside ambush in Chicago, because Gard's access to Outfit resources favors that sort of operation.

3)Sight is only as accurate as all the factors you can visualize.
Like I said, Dresden was allegedly fated to die early in Dead Beat when he met the Capriocorpus.
Gard walked by and intervened on Marcone's request.
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It might be useful, but I don't see that call as a strictly superior option.

You're not wrong about her having the opportunity to prepare, but it's worth remembering she's not a wizard. She probably can't wander around with the perfect counter to every situation she might run into in her pockets. Time, place, and context matter even if she could.

A high speed collision with a telephone pole followed by getting jumped by three melee monsters isn't an ideal place to be for those sorts of games. Especially if we get nasty and hose her down with gas and lit road flares as soon as we see her. Or even "just" a face full of bleach.

Fighting three master swordspeople while concussed and on fire/blinded isn't something a single uno reverse card can reasonably fix.
 
Could a bb break the stop? We can have a couple of mooks in the back ground shoot us if we stop. We have enough fighters to keep her away from the mooks. The only thing I fear is that her perception warp could hit a mook at range. This can be countered by using multiple mooks but I am not sure if we want to bring a lot of people to this fight.

[X] Try to ambush Katrina by her car, you know where it is and by all appearances she does not know you know
 
Artemis1992 said:
I am ready to go right now.
I take a vote to find Cindy as a vote to free her right now.
We have assembled more allies than we'll propably need, we have had lots of exposition, now it's time to strike.
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You are making a mistake.

It will take at least thirty minutes to attempt to rescue Cindy, counting urban travel times, scouting and the like. Possibly more, because Gard will likely have to talk to Marcone. It will take us a minute to call Lydia on her cell. Maybe five to talk to her Dad.
30 seconds to put HMP on her cellphone in case she's kidnapped so we can track her.

Do the math.
Do not mistake Haste for Speed.
 
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BronzeTongue said:
It might be useful, but I don't see that call as a strictly superior option.

You're not wrong about her having the opportunity to prepare, but it's worth remembering she's not a wizard. She probably can't wander around with the perfect counter to every situation she might run into in her pockets. Time, place, and context matter even if she could.

A high speed collision with a telephone pole followed by getting jumped by three melee monsters isn't an ideal place to be for those sorts of games. Especially if we get nasty and hose her down with gas and lit road flares as soon as we see her. Or even "just" a face full of bleach.

Fighting three master swordspeople while concussed and on fire/blinded isn't something a single uno reverse card can reasonably fix.
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She's not a wizard, but she is a thousand plus year old renegade death demigoddess with Prophecy who planned this operation to occur in hostile territory. She had six months of preptime, counting from when Gorfels started showing up here.
She has both allies and minions to tap.

I'll eat my baseball cap if she does not have preset enchantments for precisely this sort of surprise contingency.

The woman has survived multiple centuries while being a mortal enemy of Odin's crew.
You dont live that long without being paranoid about personal security.
Besides, I would not want to fight someone so uncaring of mortals anywhere like a road where mortals could come by.
 
Current Tally:
Adhoc vote count started by uju32 on Sep 3, 2022 at 1:39 PM, finished with 79 posts and 15 votes.
  • [X] Search for Cindy with the Crown if you can get her out Katrina loses her leverage on Matthews
    [X] All this talk of old Welsh spirits turned winter's fixers make you think of Lydia and in particular her globetrotting father. This is probably not how Daniel anticipated introducing his girlfriend to dad, but needs must
    [X] Try to ambush Katrina by her car, you know where it is and by all appearances she does not know you know
    [X] Try to ambush Katrina by her car, you know where it is and by all appearances she does not know you know
    - [X] Try to catch her on the highway alone in her car. Use the spirit in her car to ram it into a tree or telephone pole at full speed. THEN drive up and jump her.
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uju32 said:
She's not a wizard, but she is a thousand plus year old renegade death demigoddess with Prophecy who planned this operation to occur in hostile territory. She had six months of preptime, counting from when Gorfels started showing up here.
She has both allies and minions to tap.
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None of which can intervene or assist if we ambush her. That is the whole point of an ambush.
uju32 said:
I'll eat my baseball cap if she does not have preset enchantments for precisely this sort of surprise contingency.
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Nobody has teleportation magic which is the only thing that could save her.
 
BronzeTongue said:
It might be useful, but I don't see that call as a strictly superior option.

You're not wrong about her having the opportunity to prepare, but it's worth remembering she's not a wizard. She probably can't wander around with the perfect counter to every situation she might run into in her pockets. Time, place, and context matter even if she could.

A high speed collision with a telephone pole followed by getting jumped by three melee monsters isn't an ideal place to be for those sorts of games. Especially if we get nasty and hose her down with gas and lit road flares as soon as we see her. Or even "just" a face full of bleach.

Fighting three master swordspeople while concussed and on fire/blinded isn't something a single uno reverse card can reasonably fix.
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She is not a wizard, she could kill about 90% of wizards dead on first encounter before the Wardens came after her in force. Think about how rare the manipulation of time is among the White Council. We only see the Gatekeeper do it and there is a Law against going to deep into it so even those who might have the talent might be hesitant to mess with it.
 
uju32 said:
She's not a wizard, but she is a thousand plus year old renegade death demigoddess with Prophecy who planned this operation to occur in hostile territory. She had six months of preptime, counting from when Gorfels started showing up here.
She has both allies and minions to tap.

I'll eat my baseball cap if she does not have preset enchantments for precisely this sort of surprise contingency.

The woman has survived multiple centuries while being a mortal enemy of Odin's crew.
You dont live that long without being paranoid about personal security.
Besides, I would not want to fight someone so uncaring of mortals anywhere like a road where mortals could come by.
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There have to be limits somewhere. I can buy she's very dangerous and well prepared, but if she had perfect counters for everything in her pocket I'd expect her to have Batman'd her way into seeing more about what we did to her car, or turn her ritual site into a fortress that it's essentially futile to attack.

Assuming she isn't an unbeatable omniscient prep master an attack away from her static defenses is the point where she has to be most vulnerable.

I mean, what's your plan exactly? We call someone who may or may not be related to this situation and hope they can counter it without being able to tell them what exactly they need to defend against? If she's a hyper plotter with perfect prep work how do we know she hasn't already established a back up plan for capturing the guy if he learns of her in advance?

Are we supposed to engage her then, on her own ground with no fundamental change in our side's power?
 
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Suggestion:

Call Lydia. Ask for her father.
After talking to him, use HMP to put a cyberdevil on her cellphone.
If she is kidnapped, we can track the phone as long as she has it on her.

Earth-Destroyer said:
None of which can intervene or assist if we ambush her. That is the whole point of an ambush.
Nobody has teleportation magic which is the only thing that could save her.
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1) She breaks a precast item, summoning a swarm of spirits or bound ghosts like the Capriocorpus did.
Or breaks out a mistfiend like Peabody did.

She freezes everybody there.
She uses a recovery item like Dresden's belt buckle thing, or has a bound spirit to heal her like Gorfels did.
At worst, she opens a Way and ducks into the NeverNever.

You literally have no idea what a person with resources and preptime can pull.

2)Teleportation magic was literally demonstrated by Dresden in Book 1.
Using a potion, for that matter.
And thats not the only option; enhancement magic to move faster. Rashid has a bloody flying carpet.
 
uju32 said:
Call Lydia. Ask for her father.
After talking to him, use HMP to put a cyberdevil on her cellphone.
If she is kidnapped, we can track the phone as long as she has it on her.
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Can we at least spend a question confirming that this isn't useless supposition first?
uju32 said:
2)Teleportation magic was literally demonstrated by Dresden in Book 1.
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That was a wind transformation with seriously limited range. There's a reason no one ever used them for anything later on, even though they were easy and cheap enough for perpetually broke Dresden to make in an afternoon.
 
BronzeTongue said:
There have to be limits somewhere. I can buy she's very dangerous and well prepared, but if she had perfect counters for everything in her pocket I'd expect her to have Batman'd her way into seeing more about what we did to her car, or turn her ritual site into a fortress that it's essentially futile to attack.

Assuming she isn't an unbeatable omniscient prep master an attack away from her static defenses is the point where she has to be most vulnerable.

I mean, what's your plan exactly? We call someone who may or may not be related to this situation and hope they can counter it without being able to tell them what exactly they need to defend against? If she's a hyper plotter with perfect prep work how do we know she hasn't already established a back up plan for capturing the guy if he learns of her in advance?

Are we supposed to engage her then, on her own ground with no fundamental change in our side's power?
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Unbeatable master no. Experienced renegade with preptime yes.
I would expect her to handily escape a roadside ambush one way or the other, whether because she has enough firepower in her pocket to win, collateraling mortals and throwing chaff in our face as a distraction, or just using some sort of evasion magic.

When we have to fight her, I would like it to be somewhere she feels obligation to defend, like her ritual site.
Else she's going to just run if she thinks the correlation of forces is adverse, and we have no way to stop her.
Gard named her coward for a reason.
 
uju32 said:
1) She breaks a precast item, summoning a swarm of spirits or bound ghosts like the Capriocorpus did.
Or breaks out a mistfiend like Peabody did.
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Trash mobs won't help or save her, from an Exalted sword thou the heart.
uju32 said:
She freezes everybody there.
She uses a recovery item like Dresden's belt buckle thing, or has a bound spirit to heal her like Gorfels did.
At worst, she opens a Way and ducks into the NeverNever.
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1 can't freeze Micheal, Molly can willpower to ignore. 2 the whole point of Aggravated damage is you can't heal it with magic so that is out. 3 Not easy to duck into the ways, and not before an exalted seperates you head from their body.
uju32 said:
You literally have no idea what a person with resources and preptime can pull.
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Dude listen to yourself your overblown her to the point, I would think she had killed Odin. Not spent the last thousand years hiding from him.
 
@DragonParadox, what can Gard tell us about the cost to Katrina for using her various Time-related magic effects? I can't imagine the Slow or Stop effects are cheap or easy to use, else she would be a much more widely known threat.
 
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