Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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.

That choice, to listen to the Fallen when it is in your head is compromised to a point that the White God dislikes it enough that he sends the Knights to save the Denarians.
 
They still get the choice though same for stuff like red court before they go full red court and white court.

It's not the same though because the Fallen are so much more able to cheat with carrot and stick, or who knows maybe the White God feels guilty because they are his rebel angels. Regardless I do not think it is a matter of debate that he cares a lot about restoring the free will of the Denarians and preventing the harm the Fallen can do through them.
 
It's not the same though because the Fallen are so much more able to cheat with carrot and stick, or who knows maybe the White God feels guilty because they are his rebel angels. Regardless I do not think it is a matter of debate that he cares a lot about restoring the free will of the Denarians and preventing the harm the Fallen can do through them.
In fairness Dresden rejected them which from a mechanical standpoint doesn't make sense unless you gave Dresden excellencies or something cause he often resists the diplomacy of mab or the fallen.
 
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.
Because its the same Charm that was copypasted and tweaked across all 3x varieties of Solaroids in the book.
Editing errors carry over.

You can go look at the original Solar charms for reference:

Harmonious Academic Methodology

Cost: 10m, 2wp
Mins: Lore 5, Essence 3
Type: Simple (Dramatic Action)
Keywords: Obvious, Touch, Training
Duration: One week
Prerequisite Charms: Any two Lore Excellencies

Enlightened Lawgivers bring wisdom to the masses. This Charm involves training an organized social group such as a class, ministry or guild. This action requires five or more hours of effort in any given week to bear fruit. In each week of training, the trainer picks one trait to train: Conviction, Temperance, Perception, Intelligence, Craft (Air, Earth, Fire, Water or Wood), Investigation, Lore, Linguistics, Performance, Presence or Socialize. This Charm increases that trait for each member of the unit by one dot, to a maximum of 4. The Solar can train with the group or as a solo character, increasing her own traits. She cannot increase others' traits past her own.

Tiger Warrior Training Technique

Cost: 10m, 2wp
Mins: War 4, Essence 3
Type: Simple (Dramatic Action)
Keywords: Obvious, Touch, Training
Duration: One week
Prerequisite Charms: Heroism-Encouraging Presence

Under the banner of the Solar Exalted, even bandits and peasants become deadly warriors. This Charm involves training a military unit. This Charm requires five or more hours of effort in any given week to bear fruit. This Charm increases the Drill of a unit by one for each week of training, to a maximum of Drill 5. In each week of training, the trainer picks one trait to train: Valor, Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Archery, Dodge, Martial Arts or Melee. This Charm increases that trait for each member of the unit by one dot, to a maximum of 4. The Solar can train with the unit or as a solo unit, increasing her own traits. She cannot increase others' traits past her own.
I think the precedent is pretty clear.
Especially as Solaroids were generally a lot more powerful in Ex2.
Exalted are human. Very, very human
So are at least four Faerie Queens we have seen in this series canonically: Maeve, Sarissa,Lily,Molly.
So is Gard, and Kattrin. So was Kemmler.
So was Leonid Kravos when Michael assisted Dresden and SI at bringing his ass in back during the backstory of Grave Peril.

So, arguably, would Cowl if he had pulled off the Darkhallow.

Dont assume that mortal ancestry provides a get out of jail free card.
The White God and his agents are entirely capable of going "that doesnt count. Breaks the spirit of the rule".
And have done so.
 
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That choice, to listen to the Fallen when it is in your head is compromised to a point that the White God dislikes it enough that he sends the Knights to save the Denarians.
Going to note that the first time we hear of Dresden and Michael operating together in Grave Peril?
It was against the-then human Leonid Kravos, who was a smalltime sorcerer and cult master at the time. And Uriel's intervening to keep Dresden alive was after Lasciel just spoke seven words to him.

So its worth keeping in mind that the White God's rules about impaired free will are a lot more nuanced than it might first appear.
 
Going to note that the first time we hear of Dresden and Michael operating together in Grave Peril?
It was against the-then human Leonid Kravos, who was a smalltime sorcerer and cult master at the time. And Uriel's intervening to keep Dresden alive was after Lasciel just spoke seven words to him.

So its worth keeping in mind that the White God's rules about impaired free will are a lot more nuanced than it might first appear.

On the other hand there is a reason Charity is pissed off at Dresden and that is not just that she dislikes magic. Harry has the habit of dragging Michael into fights he otherwise would not be in.

In fairness Dresden rejected them which from a mechanical standpoint doesn't make sense unless you gave Dresden excellencies or something cause he often resists the diplomacy of mab or the fallen.

Dresden did not stand up to a Fallen, he stood up to the Shadow of a Fallen, those are not the same thing, no more than a susoul is the primordial he is made from.
 
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On the other hand there is a reason Charity is pissed off at Dresden and that is not just that she dislikes magic. Harry has the habit of dragging Michael into fights he otherwise would not be in.
Point of correction:
That Charity doesnt think he should be in. Which is not quite the same thing.

Charity is a fine woman, but she is was hardly without prejudice.
She doesnt (allegedly)feel the same aggravation when other, non-magic individuals involve Michael in life-threatening situations.
As they do. And she cant exactly blame her husband for risking his life for strangers on God's command.

Dresden is magic, which she doesnt like associates with danger and evil, and lives in the same city. So she sees him rather more often than say, Shiro, rest his soul. Forthill wears a cassock. Not a safe person for a devout woman with complex feelings to focus them on. And she likes him personally. Trusts him with her kids and personal safety. He has angelic references, even.

Dresden is a much safer target for hostile feelings.

The psych boys would probably call it Displacement; a mental defense mechanism which involves focusing unacceptable feelings on an acceptable target

Its not conscious, and she'd probably be mortified if someone described it that way.
But it is there.

Edited for clarity.
 
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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.
That's also a different question from. "Is letting exalted rule actually a good idea."
 
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VOTE
[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

We are good at Social, and assuming this has supernatural factors in play, best we finish canvassing the mortal victims before we start knocking on supernatural doors. Because two Exalts and a Knight shaking the local trees is going to make Waves, which will get back to the target.
 
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Because its the same Charm that was copypasted and tweaked across all 3x varieties of Solaroids in the book.
Editing errors carry over.

You can go look at the original Solar charms for reference:
I know that charm. It can train solars or any other beings, like exalts, elementals, gods. This one can't, it can only train mortals. Not dragonblooded, not vampires, not demons. Mortals. Hedge witches and wizards at most, as far as supernatural is concerned. The tradeoff of being able to teach someone smarter, in terms of intelligence than an exalt teaching them is normal. It makes sense - you can't teach what you don't know, but you can, in fact, train someone to be stronger than you are. Hell, mortals can train other mortals to be stronger than they are, no magical BS needed. How do you think coaches work? You can have a fat, slow coach with one leg who will train you using a good program to be an olympic champion. You can have a somewhat dimwitted teacher (or, likely, nanny), who, through the use of good mnemonic techniques will make you smarter and more perceptive than they are.

It's not cheese, it's actually acknowledging how training works in real life. You can't teach others skills you don't have, but you can use your skills to get them stronger, faster, smarter than you are.
So are at least four Faerie Queens we have seen in this series canonically: Maeve, Sarissa,Lily,Molly.
Were, not "are".
 
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.
Counterpoint: homeless people.

It's grim, but most people really don't give a shit about them and many already expect them to be mentally unbalanced; especially in the 50s.

If a creature/groups of creatures wanted to repeatedly feed on the same population till they mentally fell apart they could go through the homeless like pringles and almost no one would care as long as they cleaned up the bodies.
 
So are at least four Faerie Queens we have seen in this series canonically: Maeve, Sarissa,Lily,Molly.
So is Gard, and Kattrin. So was Kemmler.
So was Leonid Kravos when Michael assisted Dresden and SI at bringing his ass in back during the backstory of Grave Peril.

So, arguably, would Cowl if he had pulled off the Darkhallow.

Dont assume that mortal ancestry provides a get out of jail free card.
The White God and his agents are entirely capable of going "that doesnt count. Breaks the spirit of the rule".
And have done so.
All these examples were human.
Exalted, for some definitions, still are human at any point of their long or short life.
They don't have a Mantle influencing them, only an Exaltation enabling them.

Might be a difference, might not.
 
One last attempt to remind folks that we can come at this from a different angle.

[X] Find out who participated in the Dreamless Sleep study, then have Clippy track down the locations of those who survived up to this point.
-[X] We'll focus on those still living in the Cleveland area, especially any who just happen to be residents of Soul's Rest.
 
One last attempt to remind folks that we can come at this from a different angle.

[X] Find out who participated in the Dreamless Sleep study, then have Clippy track down the locations of those who survived up to this point.
-[X] We'll focus on those still living in the Cleveland area, especially any who just happen to be residents of Soul's Rest.
Well, I added that to my vote at least.
 
I know that charm. It can train solars or any other beings, like exalts, elementals, gods. This one can't, it can only train mortals. Not dragonblooded, not vampires, not demons. Mortals. Hedge witches and wizards at most, as far as supernatural is concerned. The tradeoff of being able to teach someone smarter, in terms of intelligence than an exalt teaching them is normal. It makes sense - you can't teach what you don't know, but you can, in fact, train someone to be stronger than you are. Hell, mortals can train other mortals to be stronger than they are, no magical BS needed. How do you think coaches work? You can have a fat, slow coach with one leg who will train you using a good program to be an olympic champion. You can have a somewhat dimwitted teacher (or, likely, nanny), who, through the use of good mnemonic techniques will make you smarter and more perceptive than they are.

It's not cheese, it's actually acknowledging how training works in real life. You can't teach others skills you don't have, but you can use your skills to get them stronger, faster, smarter than you are.
Yes.
Its tremendously scaled down in power, scale and applicability, and is also much more expensive, like most other charms in the repertoire. Because ExWoD is not Ex2. And they are not in Creation. Exalts in this setting are much lower powered.

As a small coda, I should note that the Infernal version trains bakemono and fomor just fine.
And the Abyssal version also trains packs of zombies.
All these examples were human.
Exalted, for some definitions, still are human at any point of their long or short life.
They don't have a Mantle influencing them, only an Exaltation enabling them.
Might be a difference, might not.
By the same metric, Cowl would be human after a successful Darkhallow. No Mantle, just power.
Despite having inhaled enough mystic power to put him in Mab's general weight class.
Gard is human as well. No Mantle either afaik.
 
Yes.
Its tremendously scaled down in power, scale and applicability, and is also much more expensive, like most other charms in the repertoire. Because ExWoD is not Ex2. And they are not in Creation. Exalts in this setting are much lower powered.

As a small coda, I should note that the Infernal version trains bakemono and fomor just fine.
And the Abyssal version also trains packs of zombies.
Yes. It still makes sense for it to be able to train others to higher attributes, but jot abilities, than your own. If mortals can do it, exalts should be able too.
 
Mind, there are rare exceptions to the power-down tendency. Back in 2nd Edition, resurrecting people was a big no-no; Solars can do it in ExWod. And actually producing Exalt-tier beings was somewhat difficult, too, while ExWoD Solars can reliably turn bog-standard mortals into the strongest oWoD splat. Oh, and a number of signature charms allows to ignore primacy of defense, which, uh. What the fuck.

...Honestly, tho, ExWoD's version of You Can Be More is just nonsense bullshit and I have no idea what sort of a sequence of thoughts let to "Oh, and Solars can mass-produce loyal Awakened Mages." It genuinely needs a nerf, this is very stupid.
 
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All these examples were human.
Exalted, for some definitions, still are human at any point of their long or short life.
They don't have a Mantle influencing them, only an Exaltation enabling them.

Might be a difference, might not.
I think it would make a difference on a technical level, but not as full insulation.

The knights of the cross would probably be turned towards policing the exalted's government and would only topple it if it went way over the line.

I think they could do it too. Micheal killed a dragon on his own, and one of those guys is at minimum a full circle's threat. The exalted don't have titan slaying strength anymore, so they can't even meaningfully slay the white god's subsouls at the moment.

So the line gets drawn where he draws it unless someone breaks into the upper half of the essence band and brings every exalt in existence with them.
 
I think it would make a difference on a technical level, but not as full insulation.

The knights of the cross would probably be turned towards policing the exalted's government and would only topple it if it went way over the line.

I think they could do it too. Micheal killed a dragon on his own, and one of those guys is at minimum a full circle's threat. The exalted don't have titan slaying strength anymore, so they can't even meaningfully slay the white god's subsouls at the moment.

So the line gets drawn where he draws it unless someone breaks into the upper half of the essence band and brings every exalt in existence with them.
As a baby, baby exalt we were able to get Michael's sword away from him, if only for a moment. Against an E5 circle, he genuinely stands very little chance, I feel. The sword probably gets banished or bound, really. It wouldn't be a simple fight, but I don't think it'll be one he'll win. He'll take several exalts with him, though.
Mind, there are rare exceptions to the power-down tendency. Back in 2nd Edition, resurrecting people was a big no-no; Solars can do it in ExWod. And actually producing Exalt-tier beings was somewhat difficult, too, while ExWoD Solars can reliably turn bog-standard mortals into the strongest oWoD splat. Oh, and a number of signature charms allows to ignore primacy of defense, which, uh. What the fuck.

...Honestly, tho, ExWoD's version of You Can Be More is just nonsense bullshit and I have no idea what sort of a sequence of thoughts let to "Oh, and Solars can mass-produce loyal Awakened Mages." It genuinely needs a nerf, this is very stupid.
I think the power down is thematic. "Reality is much thinner. Even chaos is much thinner. Everything is much weaker, permeable, mutable, low power". And then you throw an exaltation, which axiomatically couldn't have been diminished, into it. And the effects it produces tear through reality. The world can't handle them. So they power down. But there's the other side of the coin too. If you tried shoving enough power into mortal's soul to turn them into a reality warper in the First Age, their soul would explode from overload. Nowadays, the reality is weaker, so it takes less concentrated power to start bending it into pretzels. The human can soul can survive the transition. Same with resurrection, and partially the same with time travel (which had IC reason to be absolutely forbidden in the first age, and those reasons have expired).
 
Mind, there are rare exceptions to the power-down tendency. Back in 2nd Edition, resurrecting people was a big no-no; Solars can do it in ExWod. And actually producing Exalt-tier beings was somewhat difficult, too, while ExWoD Solars can reliably turn bog-standard mortals into the strongest oWoD splat. Oh, and a number of signature charms allows to ignore primacy of defense, which, uh. What the fuck.

...Honestly, tho, ExWoD's version of You Can Be More is just nonsense bullshit and I have no idea what sort of a sequence of thoughts let to "Oh, and Solars can mass-produce loyal Awakened Mages." It genuinely needs a nerf, this is very stupid.
Rule of Cool.
And loyalty only lasts for the rest of that arc/story anyway.
Michael's dragon was a scrub, IIRC. That said, Swords are rated for non-scrub capital D-Dragons, too. IIRC again ofc.
No he wasnt.
Siriothrax was weaker than Ferrovax, true, but Ferrovax is the greatest living Dragon, and recognized him as a great Dragon. There were only half a dozen or less left when Michael killed him.

But Swords are rated E for everyone.
Yes. It still makes sense for it to be able to train others to higher attributes, but jot abilities, than your own. If mortals can do it, exalts should be able too.
You are trying to use real world rules to determine the magic powers of a game character balanced for fun and setting thematics.
That....seems unwise.
🤷
 
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