Why the hell would a White Court struggling against the Us-goverment be more likely to intervene in a conflict between two unrelated powers?
They would have no additional incentive, but they would have a lot of reason to fear the White Council deciding to aid the investigations even in minor ways.
Neutral Wizards are much better for them in any scenario.
Because even if they couldnt win on their own,(and they could) they would seek allies.
And the Red Court would be all too willing to help break the US govt, for a price. So would the Fomor. The Denarians would make deals, as would various necromancers. Papa Raith had a working relationship with Outsiders.
This is almost precisely how we got into WW1 in the first place.
The White Council are at war. The events of Dead Beat, where they lost more than 50% of the pre-war Warden force, was less than a year ago. It was less than three months ago that Michael saved a chunk of their trainees. They frankly would not have the resources to back up the US against the White Court at this point in time, and would have to triage.
I mean, Dresden was training sixteen year olds to be Wardens at Camp Kaboom in early 2007.
That does not sound like a situation where they have tactical military forces to spare. The strategic might of the Senior Council and the old wizards remains, but those are not the prople who have to do the day to day ground work.
Do you not remember the events of the Fomor War? Where despite Dresden essentially wiping out the Reds, large chunks of the US was relying on the White Court to keep the Fomor at bay, and the White Council had to triage most of their available force to contest Europe? While the Fomor were holding coastal footholds in the US while contesting Europe?
The Council doesnt have all that much manpower on the ground to spare right now.
Unless the Elder has an incredibly unusual skillset for a vampire his attacks will be personal-scale and without more collateral damage than some broken houshold items in our current location. His only sane option for beating us is heavy use of Celerity and Potency to kill us with regular weapons.
And that is only if he does not waste time and blood on trying mental Disciplines that auto-fail against us.
I mean, there's an outside chance that he has some colateral-damage power like the highest levels of Lure of Flames, or top-tier Protean or Serpentis to shift into huge warforms.
But that really doesn't seem to be thd norm for White Vamps.
EIt's much more likely that the fight would be pretty normal close-quarter combat only with tougher and faster people.
Canon Dresdenverse Whampires have been demonstrated to have magical Investments(Papa Raith, antimagic) snd high end magic talismans(Madrigal Raith, countermagic) to back up their physical capabilities.
ExWoD elder vampires can have
Ancient Blood Sorcery.
Yes, a vampire knockoff of Invulnerable Skin of Bronze or Brilliant Flight of the Raptor? On the table.
This is an elder Skavis.
He is not nobility, but someone rolling around with at least Fortitude 7 and some combination Disciplines indicates that the QM is using some of the ExWoD base guidelines for vampire Elders(ExWoD pg 305):
-some Attributes/Abilities in the 7-9 range
-Willpower 8-10,
-a bunch of elder Disciplines(6-10)
-Generation 4-5
And since he thinks he'd be fighting something on the scale of a Kuei-Jin elder, he'd be going all out.
I think that you are still way underestimating the potential scale of any confrontation here.
And thats leaving aside that forcing a fight would be hella dumb.
Both tactically and strategically.
EDIT
Also worth keeping in mind is that OOC? Lara Raith is one of the Archive's local commanders in the Oblivion War.
Just as Thomas is a foot soldier.
We really dont want to weaken the internal defenses against the Old Ones.