Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

The way I see it with Porter, the time limit on renovating the nest is when Porter feels like chastising us for not fulfilling our obligations. I don't know if he can pull fae level shenanigans and don't want to find out, which is why I want to establish a good faith effort to get started as soon as possible. Him not being Fae means the spirit of the agreement can be a thing. I don't know the rules which is why I want to deal with this as soon as reasonably possible. Porter may be an Earth Spirit with a slow sense of time but that is no reason to treat it like there is no time limit.

Also for all we know investing enough Action Points in it will let us get the supplies from Cleaveland. @DragonParadox do you feel like weighing in on what level of return we can expect for a given AP investment in more detail??

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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files) Crossover - Fantasy

Porter's Passage 22st of July 2006 A.D. Maybe it's just paranoia, but the memory of just how well that specter had played the part of Lydia sticks to you: "We need to check that thing isn't around anymore..." What you would not give to have Harry's Sight right about now. "She would struggle...


The letter of what we agreed to just for general convenience: Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files) Crossover - Fantasy
  • 1 AP would be enough to get the supplies there and ensure the general security of the area (white court dregs, ghouls etc...), Porter will see Molly starting to fulfill the job she has taken on
  • 2 AP is where you start work in earnest cleaning the place up and doing structural repairs
  • 3-4 AP is where you start to work in actually replacing the physical infrastructure in the tunnels
  • 5-6 AP is when you improve the infrastructure, things like ensuring internet and cell connectivity
  • 7-8 AP is when you deal with tapping the Dragon Nest and start building fully magical infrastructure like the alchemy laboratory
 
I guess Porter will have to wait for us to get around to fixing up his station.
Adhoc vote count started by Goldfish on Dec 5, 2022 at 12:10 PM, finished with 144 posts and 36 votes.

  • [X]Plan Diamonds Are Forever
    -[X] Masterworks for Money: 1AP
    --[X] Diamonds are a girl's best friend
    -[X] Look into the Minor Talents of Chicago: 1 AP
    --[X] A Rose's Tale
    -[X] A Friend in Need: 1AP
    --[X] Dreaming True
    -[X] The Bridges of the Spirit: 1AP
    -[X] Not a Wizard, but: 1AP
    -[X] Restoring the Last Station(0/8): 1AP
    [X] A Nest for Porter
    -[X] Dreaming True, Rosie is going to need help, training to manage her gift eventually, look around for information, books or ideally a teacher
    -[X] The Bridges of the Spirit, continue your training with Brother Divsimar in the perilous, powerful arts of his order
    -[X] Restoring the Last Station (x4): You promised Porter that you will help restore the Last Station to its former glory, a task what will not be easy or quick even with all your talents, though you are sure it will be rewarding in the end (0/8)
    [X] A Rose and a Porter
    -[X] Dreaming True, Rosie is going to need help, training to manage her gift eventually, look around for information, books or ideally a teacher
    -[X] The Bridges of the Spirit, continue your training with Brother Divsimar in the perilous, powerful arts of his order
    -[X] Look into the Minor Talents of Chicago, so far you have been isolated from the supernatural scene of Chicago, now that you can get in touch with them without necessarily having your dad with you all the time the time has come to change that... though given how both Mouse and McCoy thought you were bad news at first maybe you should bring dad or Harry along to some of them just as an introduction
    --[X] A Rose's Tale: Follow up on Rose of Autumn, you are sure she will be happy to learn what became of the Pathfinders in Cleveland
    -[X] Restoring the Last Station (x3): You promised Porter that you will help restore the Last Station to its former glory, a task what will not be easy or quick even with all your talents, though you are sure it will be rewarding in the end (0/8)
    [X]Plan Small marvels of hellish beauty
    -[X] Masterworks for Money: 1AP
    --[X] Small marvels
    -[X] Look into the Minor Talents of Chicago: 1 AP
    --[X] A Rose's Tale
    -[X] A Friend in Need: 1AP
    --[X] Dreaming True
    -[X] The Bridges of the Spirit: 1AP
    -[X] Not a Wizard, but: 1AP
    -[X] Restoring the Last Station(0/8): 1AP
    -[X] Instead of taking a shower in the morning and in the evening, get into the habit of using TTC and excellency for supernaturally good body (and hair and nail) care and beautification procedures
    [X] Foundations of a Nest for Porter
    -[X] Dreaming True, Rosie is going to need help, training to manage her gift eventually, look around for information, books or ideally a teacher
    -[X] The Bridges of the Spirit, continue your training with Brother Divsimar in the perilous, powerful arts of his order
    -[X] Restoring the Last Station (x3): You promised Porter that you will help restore the Last Station to its former glory, a task what will not be easy or quick even with all your talents, though you are sure it will be rewarding in the end (0/8)
    -[X] A Big Score, your Crown isn't really made for picking out random numbers in a mundane draw, but it is still your power so you can push it that one time to win a lottery... any lottery. You will have to find the balance between payout and anonymity and some place to park the money but that seems reasonably doable with some help from mom and dad, and unlike some of your other plans they are unlikely to object to this form of cheating at gambling. WRITE IN: Take Black Rider on a day trip to Oklahoma and buy the winning ticket in a store with no cameras before August the 2nd.
    [X]Plan Small marvels of hellish beauty
    -[X] Masterworks for Money: 1AP
    --[X] Small marvels
    -[X] Look into the Minor Talents of Chicago: 1 AP
    --[X] A Rose's Tale
    -[X] A Friend in Need: 1AP
    --[X] Dreaming True
    -[X] The Bridges of the Spirit: 1AP
    -[X] Not a Wizard, but: 1AP
    -[X] Restoring the Last Station(0/8): 1AP
 
It's still a victimless crime though.
One person who might have won the jackpot won't win it.

But he will never know, he will never suffer for the loss. He will just loose the lottery like he did the hundred before and the hundred afterwards.

Nobody plays lotto with the serious expectation of winning big, unless they are a moron, so nobody is hurt by not winning big.
It is not a victimless crime, that's the hill I'm ready to metaphorically die on.

Consider an illustrating example.

You and me are employees of a big company and voluntary participated in a New Year raffle with thousands of other employees, with part of the purse going to charity, part used for the expenses of organizing it all and part comprising a desirable big prize (e.g. a car or an all expenses paid trip to a good resort with +1) which has gone to a winner chosen at random. Except it is discovered that the winner is actually an unscrupulous employee who due to their expertise in details of implementation of badly designed RNG used by the draw process was able to predict the number of the winning ticket and thus rig the raffle.

For me this employer is obviously is a scumbag and their actions are morally reprehensible, they cheated you, me and other participants and robbed us of our chance to win, and robbed the prospective winner of their prize.

Now remove discovery, nobody knows that the raffle was rigged. The purported winner, as you said, will never know and never suffer for the loss, and all other participants including you and me will never know and never suffer for the feeling of being cheated and for being robbed of a chance to win. Yet the unscrupulous employee is still a scumbag and a cheater and their actions are still morally reprehensible, only it's just nobody knows except them.

That's why I say that rigging a lottery with CoE is morally reprehensible, it's the same in all the pertinent details, uniform game of chance with buy-in is a lottery draw instead of the raffle draw, and the knowledge which allows to preferentially select the winning ticket is provided by the CoE instead of professional knowledge on details of the draw process. Cheating of participants out of their chances to win and the prospective winner out of their prize is morally bad move, whether everybody knows it happened or only the cheater.

I see people consistently oppose me on this, am I somehow out of touch? Am I missing something, is there a hole in the logic of the argument above?
 
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I guess Porter will have to wait for us to get around to fixing up his station.
Adhoc vote count started by Goldfish on Dec 5, 2022 at 12:10 PM, finished with 144 posts and 36 votes.

  • [X]Plan Diamonds Are Forever
    -[X] Masterworks for Money: 1AP
    --[X] Diamonds are a girl's best friend
    -[X] Look into the Minor Talents of Chicago: 1 AP
    --[X] A Rose's Tale
    -[X] A Friend in Need: 1AP
    --[X] Dreaming True
    -[X] The Bridges of the Spirit: 1AP
    -[X] Not a Wizard, but: 1AP
    -[X] Restoring the Last Station(0/8): 1AP
    [X] A Nest for Porter
    -[X] Dreaming True, Rosie is going to need help, training to manage her gift eventually, look around for information, books or ideally a teacher
    -[X] The Bridges of the Spirit, continue your training with Brother Divsimar in the perilous, powerful arts of his order
    -[X] Restoring the Last Station (x4): You promised Porter that you will help restore the Last Station to its former glory, a task what will not be easy or quick even with all your talents, though you are sure it will be rewarding in the end (0/8)
    [X] A Rose and a Porter
    -[X] Dreaming True, Rosie is going to need help, training to manage her gift eventually, look around for information, books or ideally a teacher
    -[X] The Bridges of the Spirit, continue your training with Brother Divsimar in the perilous, powerful arts of his order
    -[X] Look into the Minor Talents of Chicago, so far you have been isolated from the supernatural scene of Chicago, now that you can get in touch with them without necessarily having your dad with you all the time the time has come to change that... though given how both Mouse and McCoy thought you were bad news at first maybe you should bring dad or Harry along to some of them just as an introduction
    --[X] A Rose's Tale: Follow up on Rose of Autumn, you are sure she will be happy to learn what became of the Pathfinders in Cleveland
    -[X] Restoring the Last Station (x3): You promised Porter that you will help restore the Last Station to its former glory, a task what will not be easy or quick even with all your talents, though you are sure it will be rewarding in the end (0/8)
    [X]Plan Small marvels of hellish beauty
    -[X] Masterworks for Money: 1AP
    --[X] Small marvels
    -[X] Look into the Minor Talents of Chicago: 1 AP
    --[X] A Rose's Tale
    -[X] A Friend in Need: 1AP
    --[X] Dreaming True
    -[X] The Bridges of the Spirit: 1AP
    -[X] Not a Wizard, but: 1AP
    -[X] Restoring the Last Station(0/8): 1AP
    -[X] Instead of taking a shower in the morning and in the evening, get into the habit of using TTC and excellency for supernaturally good body (and hair and nail) care and beautification procedures
    [X] Foundations of a Nest for Porter
    -[X] Dreaming True, Rosie is going to need help, training to manage her gift eventually, look around for information, books or ideally a teacher
    -[X] The Bridges of the Spirit, continue your training with Brother Divsimar in the perilous, powerful arts of his order
    -[X] Restoring the Last Station (x3): You promised Porter that you will help restore the Last Station to its former glory, a task what will not be easy or quick even with all your talents, though you are sure it will be rewarding in the end (0/8)
    -[X] A Big Score, your Crown isn't really made for picking out random numbers in a mundane draw, but it is still your power so you can push it that one time to win a lottery... any lottery. You will have to find the balance between payout and anonymity and some place to park the money but that seems reasonably doable with some help from mom and dad, and unlike some of your other plans they are unlikely to object to this form of cheating at gambling. WRITE IN: Take Black Rider on a day trip to Oklahoma and buy the winning ticket in a store with no cameras before August the 2nd.
    [X]Plan Small marvels of hellish beauty
    -[X] Masterworks for Money: 1AP
    --[X] Small marvels
    -[X] Look into the Minor Talents of Chicago: 1 AP
    --[X] A Rose's Tale
    -[X] A Friend in Need: 1AP
    --[X] Dreaming True
    -[X] The Bridges of the Spirit: 1AP
    -[X] Not a Wizard, but: 1AP
    -[X] Restoring the Last Station(0/8): 1AP

The vote is still pretty close and will stay up until tomorrow in any case since it's a big one
 
Maybe we will get lucky and get some undertown minions well we are down there. That should speed up work a bit.

[X]Plan Diamonds Are Forever

Spending 1 AP to start with might give us hints about what would help speed up the process.
 
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Now remove discovery, nobody knows that the raffle was rigged. The purported winner, as you said, will never know and never suffer for the loss, and all other participants including you and me will never know and never suffer for the feeling of being cheated and for being robbed of a chance to win. Yet the unscrupulous employee is still a scumbag and a cheater and their actions are still morally reprehensible, only it's just nobody knows except them.
For me the part about knowing it or not makes a huge difference though.

If people find out the whole action produced a lot of anger, frustration and generally negative feelings in hundreds or thousands of people.
If nobody found out that damage did not occour and the cheater caused no harm.

Given the fact that Molly does something that is absolutly impossible to find out, we can be certain that the discovery-scenario and the associated damage won't happen. Nobody will nail down Molly on asking the limited omniscience in her head for the right numbers.

So, no harm no foul.
 
I don't have strong opinions on the how moral the lottery option is. If there was desperate need I would pick it in a heartbeat. However we have lots of economically positive acts we can use to make money.
 
Winning the lottery saves us time that would otherwise be spent on securing our finances. That's time we can train, investigate, go on missions, spend educating ourselves in the supernatural, etc.

A financial windfall for us directly enhances our ability to deal with various supernatural factions and beings which threaten humanity.
 
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In several quests I never cared much about the legality of an action and always about its consequences and advantages, as long as our character's IC logic accompanies it.

Molly sees no problem in the lottery action (I don't see anything illegal in the action either), it has no consequences outside the wounded conscience of some of us, and it saves us a lot of time to do a lot of things that we would otherwise have to spend to ensure resources.

Resulted? Action has my support, very simple in my view.
 
I think that's because white vamps technically have a lifespan even if it's absurdly long, while red and black ones are basically ageless.

Their method of predation probably has something to do with it as well. It's worth noting that the old monsters eventually struggle to keep up with the times, and for white vamps that's a weakness.

Even if they're technically as powerful as ever when that starts to happen, giving the appearance of weakness by messing something up with the mortals would encourage their rivals to start picking at them more heavily.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Industrial Revolution set the conditions for a massive sea change in white court internal politics that culminated with Lara's hostile takeover rather than her success being a one off thing.
I think that it is more because reds and black are R strategists well whites have to breed normally.

Actually on average I expect that red court vampires are younger then whites because they are constantly making droves of them which also die in drives. It's just some few of them do survive, but that says nothing about what their average lifespan tends to be. Most red court don't seem to last a year after turning.

Black court is similar, but all of them but the oldest and most powerful were wiped out which very much distorts the statistics.
 
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[X] A Rose and a Porter

I like this plan, because it seems that Roses tail is also on time limit.
 
Given the negative side effects of winning the lottery, we're arguably doing the alternative winner a favour.
 
[X] A Nest for Porter
Well to anyone with any sort of supernatural sense Molly does not detect as 'innocent'.

As anyone given thought to want we want our final relationship with Marconi to look like?

We ignore each out
Business relationship
We put him in jail
We kill him
He becomes our minion
Ect.
Business relationship, in my eyes. I bear him no particular enmity and mostly consider him a feudal lord born in the wrong damn century, though I in no way idealize feudal lords or pretend they weren't stained in blood up to their elbows. He is still a might bit cleaner than half of the figures we are hoping to avoid fighting where possible. I mean, Christ, we're at least trying to be able to parley with the fucking Red Court when its convenient and at that point we start needing to be philosophical about things.

So... effectively an affiliate to our Shadowrun Megacorp Wolfram & Hart. We become convenient to him and something worth his playing nice and, in exchange, we have a very competent pair of hands to trade favors with. When he wants 'more' we become the first supernatural power he calls up.
 
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Business relationship, in my eyes. I bear him no particular enmity and mostly consider him a feudal lord born in the wrong damn century, though I in no way idealize feudal lords or pretend they weren't stained in blood up to their elbows. He is still a might bit cleaner than half of the figures we are hoping to avoid fighting where possible. I mean, Christ, we're at least trying to be able to parley with the fucking Red Court when its convenient and at that point we start needing to be philosophical about things.

So... effectively an affiliate to our Shadowrun Megacorp Wolfram & Hart. We become convenient to him and something worth his playing nice and, in exchange, we have a very competent pair of hands to trade favors with. When he wants 'more' we become the first supernatural power he calls up.
If we get VEE we can very quickly start gaining influence in many places. Also Infernals have ways to make sure that any favor trading is very much in their favor.
 
I would prefer to put Marcone in jail, where he belongs to. But this task is pretty low in the list of priorities.
 
I would prefer to put Marcone in jail, where he belongs to. But this task is pretty low in the list of priorities.
So how do we respond when he offers some deal? Because we know that he is going to.

Now unlike Dresden we are in no way poor or and will only get richer so Macaroni seems unlikely to offer money if he does his homework. And he isn't going to offer threats because he isn't an idiot.

Actually nevermind maybe he isn't going to come to us with any deal. I can't think of anything that he can offer us besides his vassalage which is unlikely to be his opening offer.
 
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So how do we respond when he offers some deal? Because we know that he is going to.

Now unlike Dresden we are in no way or and will only get richer so Macaroni seems unlikely to offer money if he does his homework. And he isn't going to offer threats because he isn't an idiot.

Actually nevermind maybe he isn't going to come to us with any deal. I can't think of anything that he can offer us besides his vassalage which is unlikely to be his opening offer.
I wouldn't be surprised if he made financial or lore based overtures. Part of the process of getting rich involves actually doing business, so even if we can do it later without him lowering the barrier of entry for us is still something valuable to trade.

He'd also be a convenient way to build connections; using him that way would be dangerous since we could end up caught in his orbit for a time, but it's still technically a service he could offer to us.

Whether we find those worthwhile enough to do business with him is a totally different question, but he does have things of tangible value to offer.
 
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