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
We see multiple uses of teleportation in Battlegrounds.
Two different characters. I wont quote because Spoilers.
And Dresden says there is a section on it in the Council HQ archives under "Theoretical/Dangerous magic"
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.
It's also a really bad idea to do that sort of thing at random. Unlike creation, when you cross to the nevernever you go where the associated spot is, and have to deal with whatever's there.
Blind jumps into unfamiliar territory are just shy of suicidal.
We need to call her to ask the question.
Thats one form.
We see multiple uses of teleportation in Battlegrounds.
Two different characters. I wont quote because Spoilers.
And Dresden says there is a section on it in the Council HQ archives under "Theoretical/Dangerous magic"
If we can find Cindy from a picture we can presumably do the same for Lydia.
I don't recall the teleport stuff, but I hated battle grounds and only read it once so I don't remember many of the details.
It's worth noting however, that Kat seems to have basically grafted on extra talents for specific things. That doesn't make her a master in general capable of rare and complicated magic from across disciplines.
This is where Gard would come in when planning this. She's been at this just as long or longer, and has fought Kat before. This is Kat's big power up attempt, if Gard doesn't think she can or will pull a utility belt full of devices across multiple magic domains then she's probably right for the moment.
Gorfels literally stalled us with a small team of trash-tier lycanthropes long enough to get multiple spells off.
You have a grave misapprehension of where we currently stand on the tier table.
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.
1 freezes everybody else long enough that Michael has to protect them while she escapes.
My brother in Christ, Agg Damage CAN be healed by magic.
Thats how WE heal it.
Do not assume that a death goddess has the same 7HLs that a mortal does, or cant ignore wound penalties
Ease of Ways access depends on your personal proficiency.
A thousand year old is going to be much better at this, even if they didnt simply have a preset enchantment for this.
......
You are talking about a renegade death demigoddess thats older than England, and who has been planning this operation for at least six months. Someone who literally has minions for her minions.
An enchantress at that. Do you think all those runes we saw are for show?
You are talking about a renegade death demigoddess thats older than England, and who has been planning this operation for at least six months. Someone who literally has minions for her minions.
An enchantress at that. Do you think all those runes we saw are for show?
@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.
She obviously is not in her head, but as far as Gard and her sisters have seen the stop power is harder than the slow and the more people she uses it on the harder it gets. Mechanically she is assigning successes on her dice to freeze people and eventually she runs out of successes.
You are talking about a renegade death demigoddess thats older than England, and who has been planning this operation for at least six months. Someone who literally has minions for her minions.
An enchantress at that. Do you think all those runes we saw are for show?
Your since of scale is way out of wack. By your logic form earlier in the quest, all supernatural powers of any note have a least a few dozen WC level wizards, and at least a few thousand minor talents on tap at all times as the minimum amount of magical backup, an organization will have.
She had to go for outside help form an untrustworthy source, to get a retired minor talent to work for her. By your own logic any person of note would not have to do that, they would just fly in one of the thousands of people working for them.
Their is no reason someone would risk everything instead of using their own resources, when they have plenty of time to fly in a backup magic user to do the ritual. By your logic that means she is less then nothing in the supernatural community, she does not even have a spare hundred minor talents to work for her.
You are talking about a renegade death demigoddess thats older than England, and who has been planning this operation for at least six months. Someone who literally has minions for her minions.
I don't think Katrina is going to have had a chance to do much prepwork beforehand. She could have prepared items, of course, and minions are to be expected, but that only goes so far. The reason Harry is probably in custody now is because she needed a couple days just to setup the ritual without interference, and Harry out and about could have sensed something happening and interfered while she was setting up.
That's just an assumption on my part, but it feels right, IMO. Large-scale and/or elaborate stuff that could take weeks or months to setup, while ideal from a safety and preparedness standpoint, are also going to be more likely to be noticed by something in the large supernatural ecosystem that is the greater Chicago area.
It's also a really bad idea to do that sort of thing at random. Unlike creation, when you cross to the nevernever you go where the associated spot is, and have to deal with whatever's there.
Blind jumps into unfamiliar territory are just shy of suicidal.
Not really.
Its just dumps you in an unfamiliar place with no cues to find your way back. There arent that many actually lethal places in the near NeverNever. Short of specific places like Demonreach.
If we can find Cindy from a picture we can presumably do the same for Lydia.
I don't recall the teleport stuff, but I hated battle grounds and only read it once so I don't remember many of the details.
It's worth noting however, that Kat seems to have basically grafted on extra talents for specific things. That doesn't make her a master in general capable of rare and complicated magic from across disciplines.
This is where Gard would come in when planning this. She's been at this just as long or longer, and has fought Kat before. This is Kat's big power up attempt, if Gard doesn't think she can or will pull a utility belt full of devices across multiple magic domains then she's probably right for the moment.
The problem is that every argument you've made applies to an even more significant degree on prepared ground.
She can have more summons, better prepared defenses, better knowledge of the local nevernever, prepared escape routes, the works.
Sure she would feel obligated to defend the site to an extent, but she'd also be in a better position to actually do so and make it stick. Though I question what she needed Matthews for if she could really do all this stuff herself.
If we can't beat her while fighting her in her worst possible set up then we can't beat her at her best with the same forces.
1)Its Chicago, not Boston. Not her home ground.
Hard limits on what she could have set up here ahead of time under both Gard and Dresden's noses, and Dresden has only been in jail for a day or so. And the Ankou was here as well, so three different threats to evade.
Thats why I dont expect that much of a force multiplier from fixed defenses. No time to set them up.
More goons sure, but looking at Gorfels summon/familiar thing as a template, I suspect she can access those things across much of the city anyway. Hence Michael and his +1 Sword of Holy Smite.
2) Our win condition is disrupting the Ankou ritual, not killing Kattrin. Killing or crippling her is a stretch goal.
If we kill her and the Capriocorpus, say, manages to carry through and eat the Ankou, thats a fail.
And I still worry she's not the only Thule Society heavyweight here. Just the one we've seen.
Fair enough on the social media, but the teleport stuff was a bust.
First hit I got was literally this thread, and everything else was generic Dresden stuff. I could probably dig around a bit more, but I think that this is a little more obscure than you're describing.
If no one uses it till the end of the world is looking, and even then only two people can pull it off, then it isn't a trick someone who's ultimately not that big a fish in her own right on the grand scale should be able to pull at the drop of a hat.
1)Its Chicago, not Boston. Not her home ground.
Hard limits on what she could have set up here ahead of time under both Gard and Dresden's noses, and Dresden has only been in jail for a day or so. And the Ankou was here as well, so three different threats to evade.
Thats why I dont expect that much of a force multiplier from fixed defenses. No time to set them up.
More goons sure, but looking at Gorfels summon/familiar thing as a template, I suspect she can access those things across much of the city anyway. Hence Michael and his +1 Sword of Holy Smite.
2) Our win condition is disrupting the Ankou ritual, not killing Kattrina. Killing or crippling her is a stretch goal.
If we kill her and the Capriocorpus, say, manages to carry through and eat the Ankou, thats a fail.
And I still worry she's not the only Thule Society heavyweight here. Just the one we've seen.
You're not wrong about the ritual, but if we hit now we can stop the setup from completing. At which point capriocorpus is screwed unless they manage to bodyjack someone in the next few days.
Even if you're right about the prep issues, she's still weaker when attacked by surprise and away from what support she does have. We need to stack the deck to win this.
It's another assumption on my part, but I don't expect another heavy hitter from the Thule Society to be on site to aid Katrina. They don't really have that vibe of cooperation and collective effort going on, from what we've seen so far.
If anything, I would expect Katrina to have kept this operation on the down low, if at all possible. That's probably why she needed to pressgang Matthews into helping once Gorfel was taken off the table. Another A-list member of the Thule Society showing up is more likely to interfere with Katrina's plan out of jealousy or greed rather than help her become more powerful.
[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 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.
Your since of scale is way out of wack. By your logic form earlier in the quest, all supernatural powers of any note have a least a few dozen WC level wizards, and at least a few thousand minor talents on tap at all times as the minimum amount of magical backup, an organization will have.
She had to go for outside help form an untrustworthy source, to get a retired minor talent to work for her. By your own logic any person of note would not have to do that, they would just fly in one of the thousands of people working for them.
Their is no reason someone would risk everything instead of using their own resources, when they have plenty of time to fly in a backup magic user to do the ritual. By your logic that means she is less then nothing in the supernatural community, she does not even have a spare hundred minor talents to work for her.
1)Most supernatural powers of any note have at least a few dozen WC level magic users.
Some have a LOT more.
A few make up in quality what they lack in quantity.
The Thule Society is not a supernatural power; they're a terrorist group. A very well resourced one, but still a terrorist group.
2) Kattrin's fellow Thule Society board member Thorned Namshiel punked a prepared post-Soulfire Dresden like a bitch in Small Favor. The Denarian just goes through his shields like they arent even there, and picks his pocket while doing so, just to add barefaced insult to grievous bodily injury.
The Capriocorpus, that Kattrin is talking about using as bait?
Straight up jumped an entire Warden war party in Dead Beat, which had Luccio, Morgan, Dresden and Ramirez, by herself. She stole the body of Warden Captain Anastacia Luccio out from under her in the middle of a magic duel.
These are terrifying magical players that our antagonist is being benchmarked to.
The fact that you apparently think I'm being alarmist suggests to me you dont recall where the tier list stands.
3)Mab basically blackmailed Dresden into working for her in Summer Knight against his will.
Mavra had Dresden steal the Word of Kemmler for her instead of stealing it herself, putting that weapon in the hands of a dude with a known hate for vampires who had already tried to kill her instead of doing it herself or using one of her children or a thrall. Nicodemus calls in a favor from Mab for Dresden's services after pissing her off by engineering a premeditated Accords breach.
Its not the first time, and wont be the last, that supernaturals do that sort of thing for reasons of their own.
4)By Word of Gard, Kattrin murdered three Valkyries and sacrificed them for sorcerous power.
The woman has demonstrated her deep familiarity with her necromancy and death magic rituals over centuries, and her practice has only improved.
That she's using Mathews here suggests there's something else going on that we arent seeing, and we dont know what.
Maybe Mathews himself has a personal connection or significance here, whether due to his ancestry or due to when or where he was born, akin to how Dresden is Starborn due to when he was born.
Maybe its tied to the minor mystery of how come his wards are so bloody robust.
There has to be a reason why Gorfels kept showing up to make job offers when they could have, and probably did, train up replacements just fine.
We're not seeing something.
But thats just my informed speculation.Take it as you will.
Alfred the Great was 9th century AD, and the Norman conquest was 11th century AD.
Spliiting the difference she would be roughly in the region of eleven hundred years old.
Thats a lot of time for even a minor talent to grow teeth.
Fair enough on the social media, but the teleport stuff was a bust.
First hit I got was literally this thread, and everything else was generic Dresden stuff. I could probably dig around a bit more, but I think that this is a little more obscure than you're describing.
If no one uses it till the end of the world is looking, and even then only two people can pull it off, then it isn't a trick someone who's ultimately not that big a fish in her own right on the grand scale should be able to pull at the drop of a hat.
You're not wrong about the ritual, but if we hit now we can stop the setup from completing. At which point capriocorpus is screwed unless they manage to bodyjack someone in the next few days. Even if you're right about the prep issues, she's still weaker when attacked by surprise and away from what support she does have. We need to stack the deck to win this.
1) Okay, here you go. Teleportation quotes. Battlegrounds spoilers
Quote from: Battle Ground Ch.12
He watched the opening exchange with the interest of a general observing children at chess, lips pursed thoughtfully. Then he took a step to the left and . . .. . . and just freaking vanished. I don't mean that he went behind a veil, or teleported, or opened a portal to the Nevernever. I can do those things, if I have to. This guy took a step and just up and up went away, as if stepping behind a telephone pole and never appearing on the other side. Gone. Just gone.
Except that in this case, "gone" turned out to be six inches behind me.
My ears suddenly twinged hard, like when the pressure shifts in an airplane, and the empty space behind me wasn't empty anymore. I whirled, drawing my revolver, raising it—
—too late. Drakul caught the weapon's barrel in the pale fingers of one hand and simply crushed it shut.
Marcone began muttering in a language I didn't recognize and pointed a finger at the ground twenty yards away and to his left. He indicated another position to his right with his other hand, at a point equidistant from the first, said something, and there was a crackling sound in the air, like . . . broken wind chimes, maybe.
Ethniu came out of the water with the Eye already bursting forth in a tidal roar of red energy, lashing out unstoppably at Marcone. Marcone simply stepped to his left and vanished into a chorus of broken wind chimes—reappearing at the point he'd pointed to with his left hand, clear of the beam.
Ethniu shrieked in rage, slewing the gaze of the Eye around wantonly, though the motion was slower than it should have been and seemed to take physical effort from her straining neck muscles as she swept her gaze around, searching for Marcone. She spotted him with another scream, but he simply took a second step, vanishing from the first point of the triangle he'd indicated, and appeared in the second in another shower of clinking-crystal sounds.
Holy crap. Direct point-to-point translocation was something that the White Council kept in a section called "Highly Theoretical and Dangerous Magic" in the wizard's library at the complex in Edinburgh. I knew, because years ago when I'd asked about it, I'd been put on the no-access list for the entire section.
Which . . . well, to be fair, probably wasn't entirely unwise.
2)Kattrin has been preparing for this since at least Gorfels started showing up around Dec/Jan.
Im not sure if she's working with the Capriocorpus, or just using her as a stalking horse.
But I dont think its safe to assume that the Capriocorpus does not have contingency plans. I remember Dead Beat and Ghost Story.
She's bloody terrifyingly powerful. Even when dead.
It's another assumption on my part, but I don't expect another heavy hitter from the Thule Society to be on site to aid Katrina. They don't really have that vibe of cooperation and collective effort going on, from what we've seen so far.
If anything, I would expect Katrina to have kept this operation on the down low, if at all possible. That's probably why she needed to pressgang Matthews into helping once Gorfel was taken off the table. Another A-list member of the Thule Society showing up is more likely to interfere with Katrina's plan out of jealousy or greed rather than help her become more powerful.
I will point out that the Heirs of Kemmler cooperated as much as they fought each other.
Cant really make the assumption these guys wont work together at need; if they didnt, there would be no Thule Society.
I'm benchmarking off what happened during Dead Beat, when a bunch of Kemmlerites came to town.
Each of the sorcerers in town then brought backup; Grevane brought ex-Denarian Quintus Cassius, amd raised several score superzombies. Cowl brought Kumori. The Capriocorpus was the only one without sorcerous backup, and she brought a ninja ghoul.
Then raised several hundred ancient materialized ghosts in Chicago. By herself.
We only get Essence regen per scene.
Else the revelation of the nature of Kattrin's betrayal and how she expanded her powers initially would count for an extra 2 Essence.
One thing we are not seeing - how do sacred bones fit into all of that? Remember, the ones that started our interaction with Thule Society in the first place? The ones that White God sent Michael to protect?
One thing we are not seeing - how do sacred bones fit into all of that? Remember, the ones that started our interaction with Thule Society in the first place? The ones that White God sent Michael to protect?
One thing we are not seeing - how do sacred bones fit into all of that? Remember, the ones that started our interaction with Thule Society in the first place? The ones that White God sent Michael to protect?
Well, those bones were turned into some kind of necromatic artifact, so I'm guessing whatever the Nazis enchanted them to do would have been useful for whatever their plan is. Or was, before losing the bones caused them to change their plans.
For all we know, those bones were enchanted by Kemmler himself back in the day, and do something completely unfair.
Maybe Gorfel just payed Marcone with the bones for some services in the city and for staying his territory?
Then Marcone sold them back to the monks and Gorfel got greedy and tried to get them back?
As to the current vote, hmm. Have we been regularly tracking what Katrina has been up to meanwhile?
I don't really like the currently leading vote. Feels like we are revealing our hand too early. Even if we can go in quick enough to prevent them from raising the alarm, it will still put us on a ticking clock.
[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
Really low in my estimation. If she had that sort of mojo going for her Uriel would probably be a lot more active here, and we certainly wouldn't have walked away so easily.
On a more meta level, adding exalted all over the place right from the start would displace a lot of DF stuff from the narrative. It'd be a lot more fun if we got to run around learning about the intersections of the settings alone for at least a while before other exalts show up, if they ever do.
While I'm not sure I disagree I'm gonna note angels can and will let the universe end if its a result of free will. At least large chunks of the world. Not that I think their a siddie in any scenario.
