Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Here's a fun-but-unlikely thought: maybe Pathways was actually trying to fight or contain something nasty and ended up taking the fall because the malice of the dream-monster they were fighting made their mundane cover story look really shady. And now the dream-monster is getting loose again.
I like the idea that maybe past Dreamless Sleep subjects may be at the home.
Spiritual incubation of something seems like the sort of long-term scheming a lot of supernatural things love.
Although there may still be something to the idea of it covering up some kind of torment and predation with the psychosis resulting when people remember what happened.
But seeing if there's any crossover between past subjects and current residents seems like a good lead to chase down, although I don't know how Molly could find any name lists for the drug.
Spiritual incubation of something seems like the sort of long-term scheming a lot of supernatural things love.
Although there may still be something to the idea of it covering up some kind of torment and predation with the psychosis resulting when people remember what happened.
But seeing if there's any crossover between past subjects and current residents seems like a good lead to chase down, although I don't know how Molly could find any name lists for the drug.
- Location
- Germany
Nice idea.
Pathway Pharma was fighting Freddie Krueger.
Pathway Pharma was fighting Freddie Krueger.
Because there are two reasons to stop someone having dreams / to erase dreams:
1) To protect / steal / destroy information contained in the dreams. Like, for example, a powerful spirit reaching to mortals in their dreams. Or (magically) suppressed memories leaking through while people are speaking. Or prophecies of something coming through in a local area.
2) To stop someone from the process of dreaming. If a mortal dreaming mind is disturbing something, for example.
There's also "dream erasure is accidental to the main goal of affecting the mortals", like "plant a seed of demon in their souls". In any case, by learning the content of those dreams, we test the first hypothesis. It's also possible that whatever was done to the victims, the contents of those erased dreams reflected.
The question is why though. It's possible, but mortals don't treat dreams seriously and actively avoid mental health related stuff as a general rule.
What could be worth this much trouble to cover up? Assuming that there is a connection; it seems pretty likely, but we're still making an assumption based on a name. Could be that it's actually a coincidence, which do happen sometimes, and we're just falling for a red herring. Could be that it is connected, but in the sense that a new group drove out the old one and repurposed their projects. Could be something completely out of left field.
Incidentally, this is also a lesson to us: no theme names. When we have our own corporate webs like this we should pick the most boring possible labels and makes sure they have no useful patterns for someone to notice at a glance.
Nah, obviously we should name our head corporation "Reclamation incorporated", develop the "Loom of Fate" search engine and dating app, and organize the "Deliberative" political party.
- Location
- Germany
Infernal Inc. and its 1001 subsidies and daughter-firms.
- Location
- Canada
It's also possible that removing the dreams is the point. Maybe the drug is a beacon or egg for some dream eater, and it was happily noming on people's dreams. And sometimes this kills the person.
Well the reason would be to reduce the number of incidents where people go bonkers and avoid attention.
If the feeding or event is traumatic but not inherently maddening then having an amnesic effect would allow more consistent feeding or harvesting in a given population.
People tend to avoid mental health problems but people also very much pay attention to a sudden plague of madness.
Even back in the day events of public hysteria and hallucinations generally got a lot of very sudden attention from authorities and groups.
A sudden outbreak of madness and sleeping sicknesses are also great ways to get the local Wizard's attention, a way of hiding side-effects could be very handy.
Regarding naming I recognise the good sense of avoiding themed names however I would like to counter with the fact that they are fun.
[X] Find out who the people adversely affected by Dreamless Sleep were and see in any of their close family members are willing to talk
-[X] Use the crown on the survivors, or their graves to see what the content of those missing dreams was.
-[X] Use the crown on the survivors, or their graves to see what the content of those missing dreams was.
- Location
- Germany
[X] Find out who the people adversely affected by Dreamless Sleep were and see in any of their close family members are willing to talk
-[X] Use the crown on the survivors, or their graves to see what the content of those missing dreams was.
-[X] Use the crown on the survivors, or their graves to see what the content of those missing dreams was.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I still think we shouldn't be focused so much on who was affected or how, but rather on who was not. There were more of them, and they're more likely to be alive after all this time. I also suspect many of them are now living at Soul's Rest.
In order:
It dont see why it would. However, since ExWoD leaves training times up to the GM, its really a moot point.
Definitely quicker than mortals though.
The problem with all that is while it speeds up the ancillary stuff like budgeting and organization, and potentially reduces the chance for errors, it does nothing for a lot of actual practical original research.
A lab animal's pregnancy isnt going to progress faster because of Speed the Wheels.
And given the number of people attached to your average RnD project, and the short duration of an Excellency, you have to ask whether an Excellency would even help, because teamwork bonuses are huge, as are research teams.
And a Mage, or a big Spirit, can whip up the same sort of Entropy-sphere effect that a Solar would be using here.
Im not arguing that Solars dont matter.
Im just disputing the assumptions advanced by some other players in this thread that this is stuff only Solars can do in this setting, or that it would have revolutionary effects.
No you cannot.
This is a port of an Ex2 charm, and they are pretty clear about how it works, and what the intended effect is. You dont train people who are better than you at what you're training them in. The fact that the author's editing on the charm text missed something( in this case, used large case Abilities instead of lower case abilities in the wrong spot) is not a loophole for cheese.
Counter argument: The Warrior short story.
Read Uriel's conversation with Dresden during that story, and what he actually considered as important , or more important, parts of the story besides dealing with the rogue Catholic priest trying to steal Swords.
The lesson is not to play Xanatos Speed Chess with people who plot potential contingency moves generations in advance.
We are an Exalt. That makes us a Big Fish.
But its a bloody big ocean out there, and there's a lot of bigger fish out there.
Counter-counter argument:
Marcone has influence in Chicago, he doesnt rule it. He had to manipulate Dresden onto a jury pool to bail out an old henchman being railroaded by the White Court; he couldnt simply shut things down.
And we dont actually know when he took up the Coin; he acquired it during the events of Small Favor, which was Year 8, while Peace Talks/Battlegrounds was in Year 14. He took it up fully at some point during the intervening 6 years, but as Dresden demonstrated, you can go quite a while with a Shadow in your head without actually bearing the Coin.
And we dont actually know when he took up the Coin; he acquired it during the events of Small Favor, which was Year 8, while Peace Talks/Battlegrounds was in Year 14. He took it up fully at some point during the intervening 6 years, but as Dresden demonstrated, you can go quite a while with a Shadow in your head without actually bearing the Coin.
Even at the pinnacle of the Red Court's power in parts of modern Latin America, they were never uncontested rulers.
1)We dont actually know that.
We know there was a pantheon, and that the Reds usurped them at some point, to the point of actually using their names. They are still alive to the best of my recollection, just imprisoned.
We dont know when they usurped the local pantheon, or any dates whatsoever. All we know is that the Red Court were in power by the time Cortez and the Spanish conquistadors came to Latin America in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. And that Dresden personally believed the Red King to be thousands of years old(NOT that he was in power for thousands of years, mind).
2)The White God's agents are people who measure move and countermove in generations, and in words and sentences dropped at the right time to people in the right place. Where do you think the Fellowship of St Giles impetus for formation came from? What do you think people like Father Forthill are? Or the small actions of well-meaning people in the right situation?
Dont fixate on the Swords. They are incredibly powerful, but only the most obvious force that the White God's faction has active in this cosmology, not the only one. From the millions of little acts of well-meaning people, to literal magical saints wielding a combination of faith magic and sorcery.
Yes, there used to be literal capital S Saints walking the Earth, and Word of Jim asserts there is still one unnamed small s saint on the Senior Council
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There is a question to be hand whether the rule of Exalts would be 'removing humanity's free will'. For better or for worse Exalts are humans, their joys and their sorrows are fundamentally those of humankind for all their power. That is what makes them different from something like a Denarian the human soul is in fact calling the shots, it's just that they are coming from a Titan-killing shotgun.
- Location
- washington
Well the red court is definitely a result of free will in every single case. Sure not easy to say no or resist it's still all free will especially for those who started it.
- Location
- washington
I'll note almost all denarians even if influenced are calling their own shots puppeting them makes it very ineffective for the fallen.
Certainly a question to be asked if an Exalt in those circumstances would count as mortal.
Any more than a White Court vampire would. I mean, the White God is not a gameable algorithm; its entirely possible that at a level of supernatural power you cross the Godzilla threshold.
Cue the music:
View: https://youtu.be/L53gjP-TtGE
Those were some obscene rolls for sure.
Anyway.
Going to note that the current company in charge has a Finnish name.
Poisons were associated with the Finnish goddess Tuonetar, co-ruler of the Underworld in the Kalevala.
The Finnish forest goddess/spirit Annikki was also apparently associated with nightmares, but there isnt very much English language information on that one.
Tuonetar (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈtuo̯netɑr]) is the Queen of the Underworld in Finnish mythology.
Tuonetar is the wife of Tuoni, with whom she rules over the Underworld Tuonela.
In the 16th song of Kalevala, Väinämöinen arrives in their kingdom. Tuonetar is delighted to offer him a golden goblet of beer, but when he looks closer he can see it is really a black poison made of frog spawn, young poisonous snakes, lizards, adders, and worms.[1] If a person drinks the brew, known as the beer of oblivion,[2] they forget they ever existed and are unable to return to the land of the living, for only Tuonetar and Tuoni's children were allowed to leave Tuonela.[3][4]
When Väinämöinen asks Tuonetar to reveal the three magic words he is seeking she refuses and vows that he will never leave Tuonela alive. She then puts him to sleep with her magic wand and has her three-fingered son weave a thousand nets of iron and copper to catch him if he tries to escape down the river of Tuoni. Väinämöinen succeeds in escaping by turning into a serpent and swimming through the nets, and when he returns to Kalevala he warns people never to sin lest they end up in Tuonela.[5]
Tuonetar is recognized as the Virgin of Death and the goddess of the subterranean worlds. She is the mother of Kipu-Tyttö, Kivutar, Vammatar, Kalma, and Loviatar,[6] as well as numerous plagues, diseases, demons, and monsters.[7]
en.m.wikipedia.org
Tuonetar is the wife of Tuoni, with whom she rules over the Underworld Tuonela.
In the 16th song of Kalevala, Väinämöinen arrives in their kingdom. Tuonetar is delighted to offer him a golden goblet of beer, but when he looks closer he can see it is really a black poison made of frog spawn, young poisonous snakes, lizards, adders, and worms.[1] If a person drinks the brew, known as the beer of oblivion,[2] they forget they ever existed and are unable to return to the land of the living, for only Tuonetar and Tuoni's children were allowed to leave Tuonela.[3][4]
When Väinämöinen asks Tuonetar to reveal the three magic words he is seeking she refuses and vows that he will never leave Tuonela alive. She then puts him to sleep with her magic wand and has her three-fingered son weave a thousand nets of iron and copper to catch him if he tries to escape down the river of Tuoni. Väinämöinen succeeds in escaping by turning into a serpent and swimming through the nets, and when he returns to Kalevala he warns people never to sin lest they end up in Tuonela.[5]
Tuonetar is recognized as the Virgin of Death and the goddess of the subterranean worlds. She is the mother of Kipu-Tyttö, Kivutar, Vammatar, Kalma, and Loviatar,[6] as well as numerous plagues, diseases, demons, and monsters.[7]
Tuonetar - Wikipedia
Operation MKULTRA, which was a CIA experiment involving administering psychoactive drugs to a lot of unwilling or unknowing subjects, started in 1953. Its predecessors, Operation ARTICHOKE and Operation BLUEBIRD, started in 1951.
The original Pathways Pharmaceuticals was using psychoactives on subjects in 1953.
Current theories:
-Finnish spirit/goddess connection
-US national security community operation,
-Archive/True Venatori attemot to eliminate local knowledge of something or someone as part of the Oblivion War
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It's not a loophole, as this typing was used consistently in all three training charms (Tiger Warrior, Legendary Curriculum, Chirality Prohibition Index). It's not cheese. It's "minds and bodies of mortals are like fertile soil under the cares of the Chosen. They bloom into the most beautiful of sights, even eclipsing the gardener for a brief moment".
You can argue that this was copy-pasted in all charms. I do not agree. I think that it's intentional. Human mortal minds and bodies are more easily molded than those of exalts. Getting them to reach the pinnacle is possible for exalts without being there themselves. It's not knowledge, or skill, it's attribute.
Exalted are human. Very, very human.
Or looking at it the other way... none of them are. I mean sure some of them sure look more independent, but then again Clive back there probably thought he wanted to give you guys access to those archives. Now imagine what the social rolls of age old angels who have been observing humanity all this time are.
The difference between a coin and an Exaltation is that the non-human part does not want to be in charge in the latter case.
- Location
- washington
I mean they're high of course that's not really any different than normal albeit intense manipulation though. At the end of the day they all made a choice and that's all that really matters apparently.
Edit: the choice to end the world is literally something mortals are allowed in Dresden files.
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