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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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To suggest a stunt for knocking Harry out:

[X] Knock Harry out, he cannot call Mab if he's unconscious and she cannot even blame him for planning it if you do it now
-[X][Stunt] With unnatural speed you skip across the watery floor. Graceful steps stealing force from the water's movement and directing you at your target. One hand drives your sword's pommel into Harry's solar plexus removing any air that could incant the dangerous name, and the other wraps around to steady him. "Sorry" you whisper as you meet his eyes.

Oh and can we really really please knock Harry out here. All this discussion about Mab this or Arawn is a diversion. We need to knock Harry out to save him from himself.
 
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uju32 said:
Yes, I do. Because I understand Mab's motivations, and that she wont put personal satisfaction over her responsibilities.
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And one of her responsibilities as a ruler of winter is to enact a horrific revenge against her rebellious subject. It's called "preventative punishment". You have consistently dismissed this as a part of her motivation. This is a flaw in your reasoning. Revenge against Ankou is not just "petty sadism". It's part of Mab's duties as an upholder of the law under which Ankou has sworn his oaths.
 
JayTar said:
To suggest a stunt for knocking Harry out:

[X] Knock Harry out, he cannot call Mab if he's unconscious and she cannot even blame him for planning it if you do it now
-[X][Stunt] With unnatural speed you skip across the watery floor. Graceful steps stealing force from the water's movement and directing you at your target. One hand drives your sword's pommel into Harry's solar plexus removing any air that could incant the dangerous name, and the other wraps around to steady him. "Sorry" you whisper as you meet his eyes.

Oh and can we really really please knock Harry out here. All this discussion about Mab this or Arawn is a diversion. We need to knock Harry out to save him from himself.
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Canonically one of Dresden's disagreements with the Leanansidhe was her trying to keep him safe by denying him agency.
In a later book, Dresden almost throws down with Rashid the Gatekeeper when he tries to do what you are suggesting right here in Turncoat by knocking him out so he cant defend Morgan.

This sort of thing destroys relationships and ensures the person wont talk to you next time they're in a potential jam.

TLDR
Dont treat Harry Dresden like a child too young to make their own decisions.
He will not thank you for it.
Especially since HE's the expert here in this situation, and the person who actually knows Winter.

PS
Molly has almost walked out on her mother for making the exact same argument you are making here.
Its the centerpiece of her disagreements with her mother.
Lets not make our PC a hypocrite.

Yog said:
And one of her responsibilities as a ruler of winter is to enact a horrific revenge against her rebellious subject. It's called "preventative punishment". You have consistently dismissed this as a part of her motivation. This is a flaw in your reasoning. Revenge against Ankou is not just "petty sadism". It's part of Mab's duties as an upholder of the law under which Ankou has sworn his oaths.
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I have consistently dismissed it because It's. Not. True.
Mab's calculus is opaque and twisty, but some features are pretty consistent.

Mab is not passionless, and she is proud. When she seeks revenge its fairly prompt, it doesnt wait for almost a century.
Over the last week I've provided repeated citations by people like her sister and the Mothers in a position to know her best about what drives her, and how calculated she is.

Mab has, by our mutual agreement, had eyes on Arawn for years. She has to have to have to have tracked Lydia's growth and age.
At any point in the last ninety plus years she could have dumped a bunch of malks or Cat Sith himself to take him out.
She could have straight up had Lydia kidnapped from school to Winter, the way Molly was.

She could have even sent the Leanansidhe if she wanted to make a point of it. She didnt.
Punishment here is demonstrably not a priority.
 
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Whether Mab is evil or not is interesting and pertinent to the quest, but not really relevant to the current situation.

The fact is that we're in the middle of a delicate and dangerous situation involving powerful unknowns. We apparently have Mab breathing down our necks from the other side of the gauntlet. The necromancers aren't down for the count even if the main instigator is dead.

Now is not the time to bonk Dresden on the head and leave ourselves running half blind.

Seriously; if Mab is watching closely enough to be annoyed with Dresden and can just hop over to the mortal world whenever she likes, both of which we know from QM comments, then she already knows what's going on. She can already see where we are, and if she wanted to she could come on over.

Clearly this is part of some game about influencing Dresden, and isn't actually an operational requirement for her to do any of the nasty stuff she's capable of if she has a mind to any more.

With that in mind, we're better off negotiating without annoying her first; especially since if we stop her game she might decide to stop playing around. Which would end poorly for us.
 
uju32 said:
Canonically one of Dresden's disagreements with the Leanansidhe was her trying to keep him safe by denying him agency.
In a later book, Dresden almost throws down with Rashid the Gatekeeper when he tries to do what you are suggesting right here in Turncoat by knocking him out so he cant defend Morgan.

This sort of thing destroys relationships and ensures the person wont talk to you next time they're in a potential jam.

TLDR
Dont treat Harry Dresden like a child too young to make their own decisions.
He will not thank you for it.
Especially since HE's the expert here in this situation, and the person who actually knows Winter.

PS
Molly has almost walked out on her mother for making the exact same argument you are making here.
Its the centerpiece of her disagreements with her mother.
Lets not make our PC a hypocrite.
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Tch. I'm annoyed because this is a good point you are making here.
The issue is that because of his oath we would not have been able to discuss this with him before hand anyway. There are specific immediate reasons for our actions here, not just a vague sense of over-protectiveness. And well, I don't see is quite as denying his agency like that. If he plans to not summon Mab then us knocking him out doesn't change anything.
And if he does plan to summon Mab now (however unlikely I think it so), then we are exercising our own agency to stop him so we have a chance to talk things over with Arawn first.

To achieve the best result may require Dresden's oath not being a complication.

Sometimes the really good friend is the one that will stop you from making a mistake, even if you don't want them to in the moment. (And honestly I would prefer him being a little mad at us over him eating the backlash of breaking his oath.)
 
BronzeTongue said:
Locking someone in their home doesn't become okay just because they weren't planning to go out that night anyway. Denying the choice is still denying the choice.
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Sure, but what about tackling someone about to step on a landmine? They may have even known the landmine was there, they may have even accepted that it is going to blow off their leg, but we can still disagree with them and decide to tackle them. Even if it is "denying their agency" because we have our own agency too.
And maybe they weren't planning to step on the landmine, but it sure looked like they might and we can be sheepish and apologize later.
 
JayTar said:
Sure, but what about tackling someone about to step on a landmine? They may have even known the landmine was there, they may have even accepted that it is going to blow off their leg, but we can still disagree with them and decide to tackle them. Even if it is "denying their agency" because we have our own agency too.
And maybe they weren't planning to step on the landmine, but it sure looked like they might and we can be sheepish and apologize later.
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That's not the best metaphor, because it's purely self destructive. If Harry doesn't have another play (or manages to figure something out since he's kind of good at that) then he's deliberately avoiding bringing his debts down on the people close to him and their families.

Whatever you think of his value system, that's something that matters to him. Ignoring it is minimizing how Harry defines himself and the things he cares about. You can't simultaneously respect someone and treat their core values with contempt.

We shouldn't let him take the whole weight himself, and we should talk him out of bad decisions where we can; but that isn't the same as overruling Harry because we know better than he does what's good for him and the only choices of substance he can freely make are the 'right' ones.
 
JayTar said:
Sure, but what about tackling someone about to step on a landmine? They may have even known the landmine was there, they may have even accepted that it is going to blow off their leg, but we can still disagree with them and decide to tackle them. Even if it is "denying their agency" because we have our own agency too.
And maybe they weren't planning to step on the landmine, but it sure looked like they might and we can be sheepish and apologize later.
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This is not tackling someone about to step on a landmine, its bashing the person on the head in the middle of attempting to defise the landmine because you dont trust their judgement.

Remember, Dresden is aware of the risk. He has been dealing with the Leanansidhe, Winter's Number Two, since he was sixteen. Since before he even knew she was his godmother. He has worked for Mab before at a very high level. He has regularly defied Winter's minions, and has threatened Winter Lady Maeve to her face.

He has experience with how far he can push Mab and her servants, and what consequences to expect.

We know nothing.
Our only Winter experience has been in combat, and in a brief conversation with a prisoner. We've never met Mab before.
We are coming at this almost totally blind.
JayTar said:
Sometimes the really good friend is the one that will stop you from making a mistake, even if you don't want them to in the moment. (And honestly I would prefer him being a little mad at us over him eating the backlash of breaking his oath.)
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The saying is a good friend will bail you out of jail, but a great friend will be right there in jail with you.
If a person does not trust you, you do not get the opportunity to affect their decisions. because they wont talk to you until shit blows up into a major situation.

Look at Molly's experience with Charity in canon.
Where Molly's relationship with her mother deteriorated because her mother's denying her agency of her choices, and things spiralled until she moved out of the house, used magic on a friend and found herself hanging on a tree in Winter.

All you ensure is that next time, Harry wont TALK to us for fear of our making decisions over his head.
We do not want this.
 
[X] Focus on finishing off that sub

I don't actually see the issue with mab being here when the end state of the fight doesn't have Lydia's dad dead and as leverage.

He's the one who dodged out of his deal, he can deal with it now that he's safe and his daughter is safe.

On the other hand, attacking Harry in the middle of a fight with zero prior warning is, perhaps not the best split second decision for ??? Gain?

Pissing off Harry probably, also we should kill evil bob full of kemmler necromancy knowledge who can try something like this again.

I figure Katrina dead and corpsetaker likely to die then we focus on evil bob and with any luck we are 3/3 of stopping this from happening again, or something similar.
 
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BronzeTongue said:
That's not the best metaphor, because it's purely self destructive. If Harry doesn't have another play (or manages to figure something out since he's kind of good at that) then he's deliberately avoiding bringing his debts down on the people close to him and their families.

Whatever you think of his value system, that's something that matters to him. Ignoring it is minimizing how Harry defines himself and the things he cares about. You can't simultaneously respect someone and treat their core values with contempt.

We shouldn't let him take the whole weight himself, and we should talk him out of bad decisions where we can; but that isn't the same as overruling Harry because we know better than he does what's good for him and the only choices of substance he can freely make are the 'right' ones.
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Fair, but is the sacrifice the more important part or the not bringing his debts down on other people the important part? To stretch the metaphor a bit it's not the stepping on the landmine which protects people, it's just that the (currently apparent) path leads to him doing so. So is the privilege of hurting himself to achieve a goal one we can't deny him?

We can also respect him and his value system while also acknowledging his flaws. Namely flaws in judgement when acting on the behalf of distressed damsels.

Good point about him maybe figuring some third option out, but well, that's a bit of a big chance to take.

But part of the issue here is that there may very well be no good choices for him here. We aren't just acting because we think we know better then him, but because our act allows for a third outcome that wouldn't necessary be possible if we only let Harry pick between the options he has. And the nature of the problem means that we couldn't have discussed it with him before hand.
 
JayTar said:
Fair, but is the sacrifice the more important part or the not bringing his debts down on other people the important part? To stretch the metaphor a bit it's not the stepping on the landmine which protects people, it's just that the (currently apparent) path leads to him doing so. So is the privilege of hurting himself to achieve a goal one we can't deny him?

We can also respect him and his value system while also acknowledging his flaws. Namely flaws in judgement when acting on the behalf of distressed damsels.

Good point about him maybe figuring some third option out, but well, that's a bit of a big chance to take.

But part of the issue here is that there may very well be no good choices for him here. We aren't just acting because we think we know better then him, but because our act allows for a third outcome that wouldn't necessary be possible if we only let Harry pick between the options he has. And the nature of the problem means that we couldn't have discussed it with him before hand.
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I see where you're coming from, but a significant part of learning to respect other people properly is to learn how to let go of the desire to micromanage. He's a grown adult of sound mind and body; it's his prerogative to make value judgements about his own life.

Not that we should let him dive off of cliffs without a word, but there is no way to argue ourselves around into overriding his decisions that doesn't implicitly infantilize him. Doing so has consequences.

This is also starting to drift a little. The primary point of concern here is that we'd be doing all of this for no gain, because if Mab is paying the sort of attention that it sounds like she is then she is fully capable of coming here without him. In which case disabling him doesn't stop anything.

What would be worse to Harry is that we'd be putting everyone there at risk to save him trouble. It's the opposite of the ethos he lives his life by.
 
BronzeTongue said:
I see where you're coming from, but a significant part of learning to respect other people properly is to learn how to let go of the desire to micromanage. He's a grown adult of sound mind and body; it's his prerogative to make value judgements about his own life.

Not that we should let him dive off of cliffs without a word, but there is no way to argue ourselves around into overriding his decisions that doesn't implicitly infantilize him. Doing so has consequences.

This is also starting to drift a little. The primary point of concern here is that we'd be doing all of this for no gain, because if Mab is paying the sort of attention that it sounds like she is then she is fully capable of coming here without him. In which case disabling him doesn't stop anything.

What would be worse to Harry is that we'd be putting everyone there at risk to save him trouble. It's the opposite of the ethos he lives his life by.
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I see the distinction in that his choices are not the only ones that matter here. There is a whole section of the payoff matrix that is unreachable by his choices alone. If all the outcomes were solely branching from his actions then I could see the argument that it was his choice to make and we should not override it. But we aren't simply forcing him to take one choice or another, we creating new possible future outcomes.

The whole thing unpleasantly reminds me of letting someone "suffer the consequences of their actions" because they "made their choices". Sometimes the only choices available to someone are bad.

As for if Mab is actively watching, well that's not something I had really considered? If so then why the whole *waves hand* everything? Maybe this is some plot to temper Harry or whatever, but it seems more likely to me that Mab is just very busy and doesn't have the attention to spare constantly watching over Harry's shoulder. That's the whole point of having an intelligent independent agent right? I would think that any such concerns would have at least been mentioned in character?
 
So, votes are effectively tied at 19 vs 19.
Adhoc vote count started by Goldfish on Oct 7, 2022 at 11:28 PM, finished with 245 posts and 39 votes.
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I stand by my initial point here.
Dresden will try to help Lydia best as he can, that's just him damsel-saving mode, even if he pisses of Mab.

So the real choice here is in my view who angers Mab:
1. The Wizard who already owes her a debt and is in her power
2. The Exalt who has no prior connection to her and can ultimatly afford to have big enemies.
 
Artemis1992 said:
I stand by my initial point here.
Dresden will try to help Lydia best as he can, that's just him damsel-saving mode, even if he pisses of Mab.

So the real choice here is in my view who angers Mab:
1. The Wizard who already owes her a debt and is in her power
2. The Exalt who has no prior connection to her and can ultimatly afford to have big enemies.
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It's going to be both, no way around it. And we are still in the middle of combat. We need to deal with it first. Then we'll deal with what comes next.
 
And the point remains:
REASONS WHY WE SHOULD NOT TRY TO DISABLE DRESDEN
1)We are still in combat with significant enemies and one newcomer with unknown motives.
Reducing our allied combat power is a terrible idea, and presumes a level of assuredness about our success that is premature.

2)Dresden is also the only person who has any experience with dealing with Winter royalty. WE dont.
We dont have the reputation, we dont have the social charms beyond a basic Excellency, we dont have the personal relationships.

3)Bash him over the head, and the next time Dresden is involved in anything halfway sensitive, whether its Winter, White Court or Red Court? Even Black Council? He WONT call us except as a last resort, because we've demonstrated ourselves to not extend basic trust in his judgement.

Just like now, Molly tries to avoid involving her mother unless absolutely necessary, because Charity has issues with acknowledging Molly's ability to make her own decisions.


4)Molly is an Essence 2 Exalt with less than 40XP invested.
The idea that she can afford to have big enemies at this point in time is a pretty gross overestimation of our capabilities.

Especially compared to Dresden.

Who is a Wizard with almost 20 years experience who has multiple Enemy 5 ratings in the Black Council, Red Court and Denarians, as well as multiple Background 5 ratings representing his relationship with the Leanansidhe, Ebenezer McCoy, Archive, Lash, Summer Lady Lily, and his Chicago allies like the Za Guard.

Dresden has not been collecting bottlecaps since he got here.
Dont treat him like a child.

EDIT
5) We cannot talk about maximizing Lydia's freedom to choose and make her own life choices.
And then start by taking away Dresden's freedom to make his own choices.
Thats not what friends and allies do.

Michael has known about Dresden and Lasciel's coin for two years, and its risk to Dresden's life and his immortal soul.
He hasnt shown up at Dresden's place to knock him over the head and take the Coin away by force.
As long as he isnt hurting others, Michael trusts him to make his own choices.

We should extend the same trust.
After all, its the same trust that Dresden, our father and Father Forthill have extended to us when we showed up with an Infernal Exaltation and a demon vizier in our head.
 
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I would not say this is about trust.

We have a pretty good idea what Dresden will do, namely not calling Mab.
I think that is the right call even.

I just want to take over the burden of most of the Enemy: Mab rating that will result from this.
 
uju32 said:
Michael has known about Dresden and Lasciel's coin for two years, and its risk to Dresden's life and his immortal soul.
He hasnt shown up at Dresden's place to knock him over the head and take the Coin away by force.
As long as he isnt hurting others, Michael trusts him to make his own choices.
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Michael can't take the coin away.

He doesn't have the means to get Lash out of Dresden's head and the spirits can teach rituals that summon the Coin no matter how the Knights store it.
 
Also I'm not too worried about Mab as an enemy because it doesn't look like she can actually use her personal power against people who don't owe her something, or are her subordinates, or are in her territory.

I think she would have to rely on more undependant assets to harm us, like the Winter Knight ( oops doesn't have one) or mortals and changelings still living in the real world.
Not that that isn't a big problem still, but it can be the fun kind of problem that's good for a quest or story, instead of the non-fun kind that is Instakill;Quest over.
 
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Okay, changing my vote

[X] Knock Harry out, he cannot call Mab if he's unconscious and she cannot even blame him for planning it if you do it now
-[X][Stunt] With unnatural speed you skip across the watery floor. Graceful steps stealing force from the water's movement and directing you at your target. One hand drives your sword's pommel into Harry's solar plexus removing any air that could incant the dangerous name, and the other wraps around to steady him. "Sorry" you whisper as you meet his eyes.
 
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[X] Knock Harry out, he cannot call Mab if he's unconscious and she cannot even blame him for planning it if you do it now
-[X][Stunt] With unnatural speed you skip across the watery floor. Graceful steps stealing force from the water's movement and directing you at your target. One hand drives your sword's pommel into Harry's solar plexus removing any air that could incant the dangerous name, and the other wraps around to steady him. "Sorry" you whisper as you meet his eyes.
 
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