Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

If we stick around to fight then this would be an excellent time to give Kat a surprise dynamic entry into the tattoo parlor. The passenger is dead, so we just have to worry about making sure the cyber devil doesn't run anyone over when it slams into the building at 90 mph with the safety features disabled.

It also might mess with her control of the zombie. DF necromancy, and in particular her tradition of it through kemmler, uses a drum beat of some kind as a sympathetic association with a heartbeat to control their minions. Stop the drum, and you kill their control.

At which point the zombie either stops doing anything or goes feral. Ideally it'd go feral while she's trapped in the wreck with it, but I'll take inaction too.

We can pop up and stab her in the back while she crawls from the wreck instead of trying to win a straight sword fight.
Aren't those thugs still inside waiting on ambulance? May be we should specify slamming her into a telephone pole.
 
And if so, we definitely do not want her anywhere near a new kid like Cindy or a potential demigod like Lydia.
Im considering doing a run for it.
I don't think it's a realistic option - we don't have Lydia secured, and can't have her secured in current situation. Too much of a risk of her falling into Kattrin's hands. I think, with no risk of Matthews being there, totaling the car would be a good alpha strike.

[X] One of us can hang back with Cindy once we are closer to the surface and we can deal with Katrina once and for all

I'll think of some stunt or plan a bit later. Maybe stuff Cindy somewhere, and give her a demonic phone for company? Probably a bad idea.
 
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[X] One of us can hang back with Cindy once we are closer to the surface and we can deal with Katrina once and for all
-[X] Ask Michael to stay back. Not because he is less relevant in fight, but because he is the best option for protecting an innocent during this mess.
-[X] Ask Black Rider to crash the car into the most solid object near the tattoo parlor it can find (the one with lowest odds of demolishing a building and harming people). Activate the airbags shortly before impact, both to make them useless and to stop Kattrin from bracing for the hit. Then it's time to face her.
 
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[X] One of us can hang back with Cindy once we are closer to the surface and we can deal with Katrina once and for all
-[X] Ask Michael to stay back. Not because he is less relevant in fight, but because he is the best option for protecting an innocent during this mess.
-[X] Ask Black Rider to crash the car into the most solid object near the tattoo parlor it can find (the one with lowest odds of demolishing a building and harming people). Then it's time to face her.
Um, while the car crash won't be a masquerade breach the ensuing fight in the streets would be.
 
Getting to the surface yes, Lydia probably not, people on the move are hard to find because where they move next is dictated by their free will.
She did have a destination in mind when she came down here.
Thats what I was hoping to intersect on our way out.
Get all the civilians out of the way.

I wonder if she kept any of the Cindy's hair; she'd be trivial to track with a hair sample, if you believe Dresden.

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I have basic pattern recognition skills, so I can predict that if we leave without Lydia, she's going to fall into Kattrin's hands.
And there's a good chance that if they have the Ankou's daughter, they might not even need Mathews any longer to work whatever mojo they want, because direct blood connections are potent.

If we stick around to fight then this would be an excellent time to give Kat a surprise dynamic entry into the tattoo parlor. The passenger is dead, so we just have to worry about making sure the cyber devil doesn't run anyone over when it slams into the building at 90 mph with the safety features disabled.

It also might mess with her control of the zombie. DF necromancy, and in particular her tradition of it through kemmler, uses a drum beat of some kind as a sympathetic association with a heartbeat to control their minions. Stop the drum, and you kill their control.

At which point the zombie either stops doing anything or goes feral. Ideally it'd go feral while she's trapped in the wreck with it, but I'll take inaction too.
We can pop up and stab her in the back while she crawls from the wreck instead of trying to win a straight sword fight.
Tattoo parlor is the site of EMS and police investigations. Do that and you will kill a ton of law enforcement.
And sacrifice our only tracker, with no guarantee of actually killing or trapping her.

Also, its still mid-afternoon up top. In the middle of Chicago. Collateral damage YES. Witnesses YES.

As for whatever she brought with her, we dont know what it is.
Standard zombies require a drumbeat for control. I would not swear that whatever a Norse necromancer brings to play will have the same limitations; she knows that whatever could unpick her ward has to have some magic skill.
 
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I deeply don't care about the Masquerade.
It will either self-correct or break, as it should.
Please try to justify stabbing a woman to death in broad daylight because she's a necromancer who murdered a bunch of people several centuries ago, well past the statute of limitations of any legal system. Try proving she's a necromancer.
I'll wait.

Because you know, necromancy is not a crime under the US legal system.
Or any legal system in the West.
You cant go around enforcing laws that only have validity under the Masquerade and claim to have no care for it.

You just suggested starting a fight in the middle of the bunch of civilian residences and attempting to stab a woman to death in front of civilian and law enforcement witnesses.
 
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[X] One of us can hang back with Cindy once we are closer to the surface and we can deal with Katrina once and for all
-[X] Ask Michael to stay back. Not because he is less relevant in fight, but because he is the best option for protecting an innocent during this mess.
-[X] Ask Black Rider to crash the car into the most solid object near the tattoo parlor it can find (the one with lowest odds of demolishing a building and harming people). Then it's time to face her.
You need to have Black Rider trigger the airbags a second before the crash. That will happen so suddenly as to be extremely disorienting, making any last second avoidance of more difficult, plus it will make them unavailable to mitigate the effects of the crash.
 
More seriously, does anyone have any suggestions? Because right now Im kinda stumped.
The only suggestion that comes to mind is to rush to a door, make a call, hand Cindy off to Hendricks with a request to drop off at the Carpenter residence, and head back underground.
 
Please try to justify stabbing a woman to death in broad daylight because she's a necromancer who murdered a bunch of people several centuries ago, well past the statute of limitations of any legal system. Try proving she's a necromancer.
I'll wait.

Because you know, necromancy is not a crime under the US legal system.
Or any legal system in the West.
You cant go around enforcing laws that only have validity under the Masquerade and claim to have no care for it.

You just suggested starting a fight in the middle of the bunch of civilian residences and attempting to stab a woman to death in front of civilian and law enforcement witnesses.
Okay.

If you don't want to kill her in full daylight then lets wait halfway between the parlor and the prison.
It wuld waste our chance to hurt her with the car, but at least we get our fight.

I absolutly hate the idea of dancing around her any longer.

Edit: She might kill a bunch of paramedics and cops though, if she goes through the tattoo parlor. Not like she has any reason to care.
 
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More seriously, does anyone have any suggestions? Because right now Im kinda stumped.
The only suggestion that comes to mind is to rush to a door, make a call, hand Cindy off to Hendricks with a request to drop off at the Carpenter residence, and head back underground.
Command Kattrin's car to crash itself now, causing at least a delay. Use the delay to get Lydia and Cindy to safety. Locate Kattrin later using Gard or one of Kattrin's thralls as the focus of the Crown. Ambush her on our own terms.
 
Command Kattrin's car to crash itself now, causing at least a delay. Use the delay to get Lydia and Cindy to safety. Locate Kattrin later using Gard or one of Kattrin's thralls as the focus of the Crown. Ambush her on our own terms.
Why do you people want to keep crashing the car?

Poor Black Rider.

All s/he wants is a roadtrip across the entire US and further once Katrin finally bites it.

Vote to make the Demon road trip a reality, spare the Black Rider!
 
More seriously, does anyone have any suggestions? Because right now Im kinda stumped.
The only suggestion that comes to mind is to rush to a door, make a call, hand Cindy off to Hendricks with a request to drop off at the Carpenter residence, and head back underground.
We don't necessarily need to crash the car nearby. Doing it anywhere along its route could work for our purposes, since that would at the very least delay Katrina's arrival here, giving us time to get Cindy clear and possibly even find Lydia, if she's still below ground.

Depending on the route, we might even be able to have Black Rider dump Katrina and her passenger off a bridge.

We would be losing Black Rider as a spy and potential saboteur, but we should still have the GPS data from him that would let us know where he's been since Katrina left Matthews' house. There are pretty good odds that wherever she just left from is where we need to go. She really shouldn't have any reasonable suspicion that we were spying on her, either, even after Black Rider crashes. From her POV and prior experience, it would be much more likely that she or the car had been targeted thaumaturgically with a curse or magical attack of some kind.
 
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@DragonParadox is their a chamber or area in the tunnel system that we could have our allies spell up for a fight.

I mean there is the basement of the tattoo parlor itself. That is well... a basement, you know typical concrete floor and walls, filled with all sorts of random stuff that was not thrown away in good time and linked to the building above with short stair. From the basement to undertown there is a narrow hole that seems to have been dug for just that purpose with a ladder in it. It would be bad to be stuck at the bottom of that when you fight.
 
They are about 45 minutes out accounting for traffic. Retracing your steps it should take you around 30 minutes to get back in foot through the tunnels.
How bad is the traffic? Because causing a car crash now seems like it would buy us at least an hour or so, if they are 45 minutes out in a car, unless they are in a traffic jam.

Or... we could call cops on them. Can we report the car as stolen or something?

Or maybe simulate a malfunction. It's a luxury car, it could fake an issue with electronics, I think.

Basically, 45 minutes out is a lot of distance. A loss of the car now would essentially buy us all the time we need
 
Please try to justify stabbing a woman to death in broad daylight because she's a necromancer who murdered a bunch of people several centuries ago, well past the statute of limitations of any legal system. Try proving she's a necromancer.
I'll wait.

Because you know, necromancy is not a crime under the US legal system.
Or any legal system in the West.
You cant go around enforcing laws that only have validity under the Masquerade and claim to have no care for it.

You just suggested starting a fight in the middle of the bunch of civilian residences and attempting to stab a woman to death in front of civilian and law enforcement witnesses.

Well depends on how quickly emergency get here right? Gonna be frank, I can easily see 911 not really responding quickly to reports of gun violence in a lower income primarily black neighborhood. Not to mention this culture tends to be one where you don't even tell the cops something as basic as the sun is bright when questioned.

Of course we'd get a ton of attention in general and civilians recording, but I assume the Maquerade has ways of dealing since video phones and camcorders have been a thing for a whole now.
 
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