Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

uju32 said:

Thats still an afternoon we could spend doing literally anything else.
Making diamonds. Hunting renegade whampires. Spending time with the jawas.
Hanging out with our other friends.

Furthermore, it would outshine everyone else at the wedding. Including the bride, and everyone else's gifts.

Could vs should is one of the core conflicts at the center of Exalted.
A lot of the things we can do are things we have to consider how they impact everyone else
How they make us look. The impact on our IC characterization. All the Consequences.

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Molly doesn't optimize her time to anywhere close to the extent where she can't spare an afternoon. And we could not announce to everyone that we were the one making the cake.

EDIT: As to "could vs. should" I very much want Molly to be generous with her power.

DragonParadox said:

As she said in the update she barely uses it, both because it disrupts weather patterns and because it would get her noticed.

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Fair. I was mostly wondering if that translates to something like "once a year to keep in practice" or if she uses it for stuff when she thinks it won't be an issue.

BronzeTongue said:

Fair. I was mostly wondering if that translates to something like "once a year to keep in practice" or if she uses it for stuff when she thinks it won't be an issue.

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The last time Maria used her gift was last Christmas when she moved the snowfall from the 28 up three days so as to her a white Christmas, reasoning that a difference of three days on moderate snows was not going to do much to the weather and since it was such a portentous time of the year all sorts of other powers were moving around helping to mask her working.

BronzeTongue said:

Mort is a powerful sorcerer, but he's still limited to his area of focus. He's strong enough to contest a wizard there, but he can't do anything else. Elaine was head hunted by Harry's master and come to the city because Dresden was there.
Neither are good representations of the frequency at which full wizards emerge in a population.

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We know nothing about full wizard incidence other than Word of Butcher.
I will also point out that Molly had active magic for around 2-3 years according to her before Harry figured it out.
If someone doesnt want to out themselves, and takes some care, it can be hard to figure it out.

Yog said:

Molly doesn't optimize her time to anywhere close to the extent where she can't spare an afternoon. And we could not announce to everyone that we were the one making the cake.

EDIT: As to "could vs. should" I very much want Molly to be generous with her power.

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Literally why we did the vote about AP
If she has free time, she isnt short of ways to spend it. I dont see a reason to introduce ourselves into the wedding of a woman we literally just met because our friend is doing a magic trick for her.


Yeah well I dont.
Molly vs the Ordo is characterized as a whale in a pond of shrimp. A pond whose dimensions she's just feeling out. The things you characterize as being generous can have implications for people who arent her.

When you are the size of Gulliver in Lilliput, it behooves you to be careful where you step if you have any concern for people.

Anyway. Stumbled across this on Tumblr

My headcanon for Molly's Shintai Form

Cyberdemon lady said:

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Just paint the grey body patches red like the rest of the armor, and make the hair blonde.

Art is by bigmsaxon on Tumblr

uju32 said:

We know nothing about full wizard incidence other than Word of Butcher.
I will also point out that Molly had active magic for around 2-3 years according to her before Harry figured it out.
If someone doesnt want to out themselves, and takes some care, it can be hard to figure it out.

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Which is the length of time it took for her to give herself a supernatural wedgie that couldn't be ignored.

A talent who grows more powerful with practice over decades is one thing, but a wizard's power comes in much stronger and starts around the time they reach their teenage years.

It's possible, but I'm skeptical that the average wizard could be actively playing with their magic and avoid notice for much longer than Molly did.

DragonParadox said:

She cannot stir up a hurricane, she does not have the intensity aspect of the path maxed up. the best she can do in terms of intensity is

•• Rain can be called down, strong winds summoned up and temperature shifts as large as 30 degrees (Fahrenheit) can be called up or put down.

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Regardless, the point stands that even slight changes to weather are fucking MASSIVE energy shifts.

Goldfish said:

If anyone among the Order has the magical juice to make the leap to proper wizard, it would be Maria.

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Wizard, no. Sorcerer, yes. Remember, "wizard" isn't a power level classification (though the minimum is admittedly fairly high); "wizard" is "can apply that power to anything". Sorcerers are either not versatile enough (e.g.: Hannah Ascher, late-series Mortimer Lindquist) or not powerful enough (e.g.: maybe Anna?), but not both (those are considered Minor Talents). Maria might well count as a sorcerer of the first type, and certainly has the potential for it, if only her particular talent weren't so dangerous and impractical to actually gain experience with using.

BronzeTongue said:

Fair. I was mostly wondering if that translates to something like "once a year to keep in practice" or if she uses it for stuff when she thinks it won't be an issue.

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DragonParadox said:

The last time Maria used her gift was last Christmas when she moved the snowfall from the 28 up three days so as to her a white Christmas, reasoning that a difference of three days on moderate snows was not going to do much to the weather and since it was such a portentous time of the year all sorts of other powers were moving around helping to mask her working.

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I would think she'd use it fairly regularly in summer just to keep cooling air moving fairly regularly in her area.
Or to encourage local fogs/mists to move along in winter
Roughly 1 dot intensity effect.

BronzeTongue said:

Which is the length of time it took for her to give herself a supernatural wedgie that couldn't be ignored.
A talent who grows more powerful with practice over decades is one thing, but a wizard's power comes in much stronger and starts around the time they reach their teenage years.

It's possible, but I'm skeptical that the average wizard could be actively playing with their magic and avoid notice for much longer than Molly did.

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Only because black magic. And that required the Gatekeeper to notice.
Harry didnt notice a thing. Still hasnt noticed his brother can use lowlevel magic either apparently.
And it still takes time for most wizards to get strong enough to qualify for the Council, after all.

The problem is that if anyone is lowkey, good odds noone will ever notice.
Especially given how its explicitly stated how the White Council has been having more and more trouble keeping track of the magical community with the population explosion.

thepsyborg said:

Wizard, no. Sorcerer, yes. Remember, "wizard" isn't a power level classification (though the minimum is admittedly fairly high); "wizard" is "can apply that power to anything". Sorcerers are either not versatile enough (e.g.: Hannah Ascher, late-series Mortimer Lindquist) or not powerful enough (e.g.: maybe Anna?), but not both (those are considered Minor Talents). Maria might well count as a sorcerer of the first type, and certainly has the potential for it, if only her particular talent weren't so dangerous and impractical to actually gain experience with using.

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^^^
Wizard is power + versatility + knowledge. All three have to be present to meet White Council standards.
According to Dresden in Dead Beat, there's at least six practitioners in Chicago that meet the versatility standard without the power one. Who knows how many didnt meet others.

Its entirely possible that Lindqvist and Ascher could have learned versatility, and still can. But didnt because they didnt have formal instruction from a patron. Just like its possible that, if noone had given Dresden formal instruction, he'd just be a Mortimer Lindqvist thats specialized in thaumaturgy.

Might I suggest burning one Crown question (either using one of the members, or maybe a regular meeting place of the order as a focus) for "the list of order members and people related to order members who knowingly or unknowingly work for supernatural or supernatural aware organizations"? We kinda need to check security.

Yog said:

Might I suggest burning one Crown question (either using one of the members, or maybe a regular meeting place of the order as a focus) for "the list of order members and people related to order members who knowingly or unknowingly work for supernatural or supernatural aware organizations"? We kinda need to check security.

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With how broad a question that is and how many supernatural or supernatural aware organizations there are I would expect that we would just get a full membership list which learns us nothing. Sometimes it feels like everyone in DF is aware of at least a tiny part of the supernatural, but they all keep quiet.

The crown is really great for running down answers when you have a hint to start with, but it isn't that useful for paranoia.

fictionfan said:

With how broad a question that is and how many supernatural or supernatural aware organizations there are I would expect that we would just get a full membership list which learns us nothing. Sometimes it feels like everyone in DF is aware of at least a tiny part of the supernatural, but they all keep quiet.

The crown is really great for running down answers when you have a hint to start with, but it isn't that useful for paranoia.

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We could tweak the question. Add qualifiers like "hostile".

Yog said:

We could tweak the question. Add qualifiers like "hostile".

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Burning an organization wide question on a shot in the dark seems wasteful to me.

But if we do, I'd recommend just asking for who's targeting the membership. That's sufficiently generic to catch everything from elicitation to outright predation, rather than being limited to people playing information games.

Tiz's guide for why you don't need to worry about Maria, but definitely need to worry about Weather Magic.

I wanted to give an overview of weather magic since I'm very passionate on this topic. Maria is below where I would worry about a weather mage, but above the ability where consideration needs to be given at all. Weather magic is interesting less because it involves weather, and more because it's one of the magic types that involves the manipulation of system that tied to a series of different flows, patterns, and sequences.

The origin of the term butterfly effect refers to the idea that if a butterfly flaps it's wings the disrupted air will eventually cause a tornado (change in sequence of weather). So it must then be asked if someone can create a guest of wind, what is the ultimate result, what if they can naturally create a tornado (the threshold Maria is below) the butterfly effect expands exponentially. Then you have matters concerning rain. To call rain from an area that has it to an area that's lacking it to break a drought deprives an area of the water that was going to be naturally delivered to it's ecosystem effecting the plants, animals, and possibly spirits of an area. Additionally, if the the weather mage doesn't know the area if the drought well, they might be bringing weather to an area that naturally doesn't get a lot of water for some ordinary and correct reason and then wreck that ecosystem too. Performing the rain calling at all with disrupt the natural air currents on a local level and that can easily spiral into effecting the currents on a national or even international level depending on where the currents intercect, and again the butterfly effect. The same risk exists but worse when moving water around because not only do you disrupt the water's current but water currents effect air currents, so then you have multiple problems simultaneously.

Then you have to consider the implications of even having a weather worker. One of the oldest prayers is for weather manipulation. People have been praying for rain for thousands of years to help with famine, basically half of the Egyptian religion was based on interpreting the Nile, the rain flow, and if the river was flooding or receding. Shamanists around the world call upon local weather spirits to ask them for aid. An unscrupulous person who is uncaring of revealing the unnatural could easily pass themselves off as a miracle worker, and in an isolated community could even stop anyone who came after them by just calling on gale force winds to prevent entry.

Finally, you have to consider a true worse case scenario, a luck mage. Tying into the butterfly effect idea before, even if a weather mage sucks, if they can be directed in what actions to perform at a certain time and certain place, then 5 years later an enemy base can have a tornado, hurricane, lightning storm, and anything else that could be thrown at it simultaneously. If they can do enough working along sea currents they can shift the tectonic plates to trigger earthquakes down the line, trigger volcanic activity, tsunamis, and minorly disrupt the Earth's axis which is going to throw off enemy astrologers.

TLDR: Weather Working is powerful, versatile, delicate, and dangerous. It should only be performed by those who are both knowledgeable and have great control.

Tiz Goldeneye said:

TLDR: Weather Working is powerful, versatile, delicate, and dangerous. It should only be performed by those who are both knowledgeable and have great control.

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With weather satellites that give close to live feeds a weather witch in the modern day has access to far information then even wisest wizards of old could have possibly had access to.
[x] Show her fiance her magic
-[x]Have the cyber devils give her access to a weather website. Don't explain why the computer doesn't fry in the presence of high magic.

Yog said:

We could tweak the question. Add qualifiers like "hostile".

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Which only pings organizations that are hostile right now.
Doesnt ping those that were hostile, or will be hostile in the future.

Basically, what BronzeTongue said. Its wasteful.

Tiz Goldeneye said:

Tiz's guide for why you don't need to worry about Maria, but definitely need to worry about Weather Magic.

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1)There is a lot of inertia in the earth's weather systems, more than a single mortal can seriously impore.
Weather magic repercussions explicitly cap out at weeks or months at the very high end.
And without 5/6 dot Weather Magic, you explicitly dont have the mojo to even get that far.


2)The Fae courts explicitly have a role in weather regulation in the Dresdenverse.
Blood Rites opens with Thomas asking Dresden about, well:

Blood Rites c2 said:

I kept on smiling. "Thomas, you don't really know me. Not at all."

"I think I do. I've seen you under pressure."
I shrugged. "Yeah, but you see me what? Maybe a day or two each year? Usually when something's been warming up to kill me by beating the tar out of me."

"So?"
"So that doesn't cover what my life is like the other three hundred and sixty three days," I said. "You don't know everything about me. My life isn't completely about magical mayhem and creative pyromania in Chicago."

"Oh, that's right. I heard you went to exotic Oklahoma a few months back. Something about a tornado and the National Severe Storms Lab."

"I was doing the new Summer Lady a favor, running down a rogue storm sylph. Got to go all over the place in those tornado chaser geekmobiles. You should have seen the look on the driver's face when he realized that the tornado was chasing us."

"It's a nice story, Harry, but what's the point?" Thomas asked.

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When Mab got involved in Small Favor, a major blizzard enveloped Chicago, making it easier for Dresdrn to evade the Summer fae hunting him. After the invasion in Battle Grounds, Chicago went through a bout of very mild weather after Dresden convinced them it was a good idea.

Hell, when the Heirs of Kemmler were messing around, storm weather hit Chicago for the Darkhallow and a tornado ripped though the ritual site.


3)Note that we've seen Weather Magic in this very quest.
When we were coming to Dresden's home after rescuing Cindy and a fog suddenly started creeping in around Dresden's neighborhood. On a summer afternoon/evening. And Gard had to dispel it.

There's lots of applications of low-level weather magic that arent going to do anything to the wider system.

In exalted, the gameline that gave the most gab about heredity and keeping hold of dragon nests for maximizing the chance of 'powerful children' was the dragonblooded. I'd keep that mechanic for them, if they appear, instead of magicians who are supposed to be the inheritors of lore and most pass on torches by apprenticeships, not power and blood.

BronzeTongue said:

Burning an organization wide question on a shot in the dark seems wasteful to me.

But if we do, I'd recommend just asking for who's targeting the membership. That's sufficiently generic to catch everything from elicitation to outright predation, rather than being limited to people playing information games.

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... No it doesn't? This is why I specified using either a meeting place or one of the members as a focus.

[X] Yog

Votes as they stand.

SCO said:

In exalted, the gameline that gave the most gab about heredity and keeping hold of dragon nests for maximizing the chance of 'powerful children' was the dragonblooded. I'd keep that mechanic for them, if they appear, instead of magicians who are supposed to be the inheritors of lore and most pass on torches by apprenticeships, not power and blood.

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The fact that magic runs in families is a big plot point multiple times on the Desden-verse.

Was it? I stopped reading dresden files before the book he died in, but i can't remember anything like that on the white council, and dresden family being 'magical' has nothing to do with them being magic iirc (maybe except his mother, i can't remember that well). Molly and her mother is another example i guess, but not much more i can recall.

Apropos of nothing, I figured out what is up with positively microscopic Terrestrial-Dragonblooded essence pools.

They are allowed to use Jade Talismans for the purpose of essence storage; reusable mana potions, essentially.

I was rereading exalted vs wod revised and found this ancient sorcery spell:

Calling the gulls With Beaks of steel
The sorcerer speaks a curse against a building,
trapping all its occupants within. Moments later, a
great flock of seagulls descends and surrounds the
building, balefully eyeing all obvious exits. They swoop
down and attack anyone who tries to leave the build-
ing with their cruel, iron-shod beaks. The gulls persist
in attacking until their targets either make it at least
a block away from the building, or until they retreat
back inside.

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This is literally the Hitckcock movie 'The Birds'.

edit: there is a rain of spiders spell, aptly called 'rain of spiders'. What is this obsession with making area denial weak attacks using terror.

All in all, kind of disappointing. The spirit binding spell is kind of morally icky and the exorcism spell causes horrible damage to any interesting target besides demons and takes a long time. Invulnerable skin of bronze is cool but worth 10 xp, nope.

SCO said:

Was it? I stopped reading dresden files before the book he died in, but i can't remember anything like that on the white council, and dresden family being 'magical' has nothing to do with them being magic iirc (maybe except his mother, i can't remember that well). Molly and her mother is another example i guess, but not much more i can recall.

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The crime that needs solving that drives the plot of White Knight is about killing off women with minor talents because doing so will prevent a lot of the next generation of human magic users from being born. This is presented as a known thing that was of such significance that succeeding would produce such political capital that it would allow the White King to be overthrown and replaced by the people behind the plot. All the people who should know whether it worked or not completely bought into it.

The plot of Changes is about using the fact that the Blackstaff, the most militarily potent member of the White Council is Harry's grandfather and so his daughter's great-grandfather to use that daughter as the ritual focus of a bloodline curse to assassinate the Blackstaff.