Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

We dont need to blow out an entire block to fry the electronics in one shop.

Cellphone jammer will not kill a landline.
We need both their cellphones and any landlines down, and as its a shop it has a landline. Ergo, EMP bomb or techbane.
If Gard has a techbane ward or rune, great. If not, we're juryrigging a bomb.

My post also covered how to bring down the landlines. Much, much, much, much easier to put a cyberdemon in the local landline network than try to make an effective EMP. As in, we can put in the cyberdemon trivially, and we may not be able to make the EMP at all, and the cyberdemon is near instantaneous compared to possibly hours for the EMP device..

Game, not simulation.
If her parent asks for a meet after the phone call to judge who is talking to him personally, we cant do so while we're going looking for a kid.You end up with the worst of both worlds.

At least then we've tried, rather than hanging her out for dry. Also, we can mention key words that would put them on maximum alert. They don't need to meet us to know that shits got real if someone rings up talking about Dark Feasts and the Capricorpus. That would cause them to take serious precautions given it means that at best they have a massive information leak to someone very supernaturally informed. That itself means they have to act.

I don't agree this is a game versus simulation issue at all. I don't think that's how DP runs his quests.
 
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For those who missed it:

The GM has been explicit that part of Gard's reasoning is to use the FBI as ablative chaff to wear Kattrin down if she shows up.

Michael would have a problem with this. Frankly, so would Molly.
Gard is from an older school, an older era, and is thinking as a soldier, where sacrificing people to pin down a threat is a sound military decision and the sort of decision soldiers have to make. Michael and Molly wont agree.

The Feebs may be annoying but most of them dont deserve to die.
And the consequences of a mass casualty FBI event in Chicago are nontrivial.

You have to remember Gard called Katrina the last of her sisters which means the woman born at some point between Alfred and Wilhelm is younger than the one who is standing before you.

As you might imagine ye old Norse morals aren't exactly in line with modern ones. Hold our oaths tell the truth, meet your fate with courage, be generous to your vassals and to strangers on the road etc.. Giving a damn about the FBI being eaten by ghouls not so much. She also has no problem working for Marcone. I know Butcher uses Marcone's affiliations as a source of minor transitive angst for the most part, but the man is a criminal, an organized crime boss and Gard works for him. So if he tells her shoot that cop she is going to shoot that cop (within the limits of her risk assesment). After all why would she acknowledge the primacy of the US government when it's a measly two centuries and change years old.
 
You can throw a sword.
Throwing is Dex + Athletics. 5 dice.
I have my doubts about Molly's ability to throw a demon sword through a power line.
And limp severed ends of a power line remain mortal hazards.

Then their is no way to save her.
Stop being dramatic.
We are shutting down comm lines to not warn Kattrin that we're assaulting the area and moving the kid, not because we wont be done and gone before she shows up. Storming a location is the work of single digit minutes.

My post also covered how to bring down the landlines. Much, much, much, much easier to put a cyberdemon in the local landline network. Than try to make an effective EMP. As in, we can put in the cyberdemon trivially, and we may not be able to make the EMP at all.
No, we would need to spend Essence to try this, and we're already below 10 Essence, with at least two fights ahead of us

Also, people voted against telling Gard we had any ability to wrangle spirits, even after I warned that we would be hobbling ourselves in doing so.
So literally no justification for spending her time to locate and fuck with landline connections.
 
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Cindy is pretty save from the ghouls even when our attack does not go perfectly.

She is behind a warded gate after all and I don't think Kattrin would have left the key to that to a few mercs.
 
No, we would need to spend Essence to try this, and we're already below 10 Essence, with at least two fights ahead of us

Also, people voted against telling Gard we had any ability to wrangle spirits, even after I warned that we would be hobbling ourselves in doing so.
So literally no justification for spending her time to locate and fuck with landline connections.

We could just destroy the local land line interchange box if we had to. It's just less collateral and arguably more useful to subvert it.

Using Tool Transcending Constructs to make an EMP also costs Essence. It would also cost a lot of time to go and buy the materials for an EMP and build one, time we could be taking a bleach bath.
Cindy is pretty save from the ghouls even when our attack does not go perfectly.

She is behind a warded gate after all and I don't think Kattrin would have left the key to that to a few mercs.

Warded against mortals. Which ghouls aren't.

Also, there are ghosts behind the wards with her that may well be empowered to kill her to prevent her rescue.
 
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You have to remember Gard called Katrina the last of her sisters which means the woman born at some point between Alfred and Wilhelm is younger than the one who is standing before you.

As you might imagine ye old Norse morals aren't exactly in line with modern ones. Hold our oaths tell the truth, meet your fate with courage, be generous to your vassals and to strangers on the road etc.. Giving a damn about the FBI being eaten by ghouls not so much. She also has no problem working for Marcone. I know Butcher uses Marcone's affiliations as a source of minor transitive angst for the most part, but the man is a criminal, an organized crime boss and Gard works for him. So if he tells her shoot that cop she is going to shoot that cop (within the limits of her risk assesment). After all why would she acknowledge the primacy of the US government when it's a measly two centuries and change years old.
Yeah.

And also, Gard calls them infiltrated. Doesnt really matter to her that most of them are not bad guys when all their institutional power is being turned to evil. In her mind, and with some justification, their getting murked by Kattrin would be removing a weapon/asset out of the hands of an enemy.

And Im sure either Marcone or Hendricks told her about the FBI hexenwulfen; Agent Denton and his team, and their shenanigans.
We could just destroy the local land line interchange box if we had to. It's just less collateral and arguably more useful to subvert it.
This is a fair point.
Assuming there are no power lines in it, Molly could simply stab it into nonfunctioning.

And what is to stop them from shouting kill the kid?
The fact that the kid is underground, behind a warded door and a group of hungry ghouls.
The human thralls are upside, in the store, guarding the door that leads underground.
 
Or the noise of combat tipping off the inner lines of defence?
Do you know what a competent hostage taker doesnt do?
Put a human hostage they might need alive somewhere where ghouls can open the door for tasty manflesh. Kattrin is competent.
The ghouls cant get through that ward.

EDIT
And I fucking guarantee that ghost or spectre doesnt take orders from thralls.
 
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Do you know what a competent hostage taker doesnt do?
Put a human hostage they might need alive somewhere where ghouls can open the door for tasty manflesh.
The ghouls cant get through that ward.

The ghosts are already on the other side of it. They could well either be able to drop the ward and let the ghouls eat her or kill her themselves.
 
Ghosts are not inherently predatory, some of them are, but many ghosts are fine to use as guards or watchers, especially if you compel them to the purpose.

True, but my point was that the ghosts could have instructions to kill Cindy if it looked like she was about to be rescued, and they're on the same side of the wards as she is.
 
Gee sure would be bad if say, any deaths nearby cause the ward to fail. This is basic stuff.
Dresdenverse magic doesnt work like that.
Which you should know if you'd read the books, or even bothered to look at the wiki. Or even looked at the events of this very quest.
C'mon.
Using Tool Transcending Constructs to make an EMP also costs Essence. It would also cost a lot of time to go and buy the materials for an EMP and build one, time we could be taking a bleach bath.
Do you remember when it took us 3 Essence to put 1 demon in Agent Wright's phone because we kept failing the roll?
I certainly do.
Tool Constructs does not require such a roll.

No it doesnt.
Walking in and out of a supermarket when you know what you want is five minutes.
It takes us 15 minutes in a bleach bath to regain 1 Essence. Do the math.

We didnt tell Gard about spirits.
So we cant use spirits to disable the communication links.
Dems the breaks.

Warded against mortals. Which ghouls aren't.
Also, there are ghosts behind the wards with her that may well be empowered to kill her to prevent her rescue.
Ghouls are mortal enough to count my friend.
Again, Kattrin isnt incompetent enough to leave a tasty minor in claws reach of hungry ghouls without security measures to deny her to them.
 
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Do you remember when it took us 3 Essence to put 1 demon in Agent Wright's phone because we kept failing the roll?
I certainly do.
Tool Constructs does not require such a roll.

No it doesnt.
Walking in and out of a supermarket when you know what you want is five minutes.
It takes us 15 minutes in a bleach bath to regain 1 Essence. Do the math.

We didnt tell Gard about spirits.
So we cant use spirits to disable the communication links.
Dems the breaks.

When using Tool Transcending Constructs you need to make a roll to make the item in question, and Molly can still fail.

Making a powerful enough EMP to be sure of destroying cellphones is going to take something more than you can find in a regular supermarket. And it probably takes more than fifteen minutes to reach a big supermarket in the car.
 
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The one in Death Masks. Yeah she was killing kids, but you have to remember:

A) It was literal newborns
and
B) A lot of that was done by shorting out the various life-suport

It is relatively hard for most ghosts not like the Nightmare or similar specters to kill, that is why Molly thought 'guards or watchers'. It is easier to just use a ghost to watch.

Could the ghosts have been ordered and able to give permission to the ghouls to go through the ward, or just switch it off?
 
The one in Death Masks. Yeah she was killing kids, but you have to remember:

A) It was literal newborns
and
B) A lot of that was done by shorting out the various life-suport

It is relatively hard for most ghosts not like the Nightmare or similar specters to kill, that is why Molly thought 'guards or watchers'. It is easier to just use a ghost to watch.
That was an unintentionally dark jokes on my part then.

I was being entirely literal with the idea of a nanny ghost.

...Was that the name of the child murdering ghost? Holy crap if so.
 
That was an unintentionally dark jokes on my part then.

I was being entirely literal with the idea of a nanny ghost.

...Was that the name of the child murdering ghost? Holy crap if so.

It was in Grave Peril not Death Masks, but yeah that was a thing.

Could the ghosts have been ordered and able to give permission to the ghouls to go through the ward, or just switch it off?

Yes, if you find a relatively intelligent ghost, preferably one with some understanding of how magic works since unlike a mortal a ghost cannot just break a ward by breaking its physical component like scuffing a circle with a boot. Such a ghost would have to be given an understanding of how the ward works and how to collapse it from the inside
 
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