Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

I consider Alchemy 2 with sleep reducer as a must have, given the perpetual ap hell we are in, and how much actually happens at night. That's 6 xp more.
I still totally disagree with that one by the way.

Not for IC-reasons.
But because I think getting more done per time-unit of the quest makes things slower than they have to be, makes our growth even faster than it already is (and it is damn quick already compared to Exalted or regular ExWoD games).

I like to see the world change and react to what we do, and the more we slow down things by cramming more actions and narrative into one month the less that can happen.
 
I still totally disagree with that one by the way.

Not for IC-reasons.
But because I think getting more done per time-unit of the quest makes things slower than they have to be, makes our growth even faster than it already is (and it is damn quick already compared to Exalted or regular ExWoD games).

I like to see the world change and react to what we do, and the more we slow down things by cramming more actions and narrative into one month the less that can happen.
That's... fair I guess. I mean, I completely disagree, and feel that right now we are getting to the point we are completely overwhelmed and need more time to react to stuff (and I'm not even speaking about being proactive - I gave up on that, basically). But it's fair.
 
That's... fair I guess. I mean, I completely disagree, and feel that right now we are getting to the point we are completely overwhelmed and need more time to react to stuff (and I'm not even speaking about being proactive - I gave up on that, basically). But it's fair.
I don't really have that feeling.

The only thing activly targeting us right now are the Akuma.
The Naagloshii is something we told everyone to prepare for and if it attacks Harry further, we will be ready to support him.
The Thule Society is a backround thread that we will have to pick up eventually, but that isn't in any particular hurry.

Our little gang and our company is growing fine with low investment of AP.

There are lots more of potential dangers and lots more of potential options we can deal with eventually, but that's just the result of a vibrant and living world around us, an well of opportunities that the QM can use, or we can choose to focus on, when we want to and don't have anything too pressing on our mind.
 
OK, vote closed, let's see about that XP
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Feb 14, 2023 at 2:50 AM, finished with 64 posts and 10 votes.

  • [X] Warn the Order of the Cauldron
    -[X]STUNT: In reply, you hand the letter over to Lydia. "His boss wants a meeting" you say, forcing a lightness into your voice that you dont really feel. With an effort, you stop and take Olivia's hand, squeezing it comfortably. "You did fine. " You look over to Lydia, who has just finished reading the letter, and hands it back to you, one eyebrow raised. "The soul of courtesy, that one." You weigh the letter in your hand for a moment, then fumble it into your purse, drawing Clippy out instead. "I think" you say deliberately "the Order should stay out of Chinatown, and behind thresholds at night for the next week or so." You look at your phone. "Call Anna."
    [X] Plan: I have a call list
    -[X] Warn the Order of the Cauldron
    --[X] Give a sanitized lecture "Jade Court, Yomi Wan and you" to the members, explaining as best you can how to avoid the dangers
    -[X] Talk to Lieutenant Murphy, supernatural killings are her department
    --[X] Introduce Lieutenant Murphy to the Order of Cauldron. They could use a police officer who is "in the know" and can be trusted, and she should know the community she's protecting, and could probably use some of their talents
    --[X] Ask for access to the bodies of those murdered if possible
    -[X] Call Dresden and warn him of yet another evil force in his city.
    --[X] Suggest starting a convention or something to lighten the mood
    -[X] See if Thomas heard anything about Akuma from his contacts
    [X] Talk to Lieutenant Murphy, supernatural killings are her department
    -[x] Olivia should be able to warn the order.
    [X] Warn the Order of the Cauldron and SI
    -[X]Warn SI and involve SI in Order's protection
    -[X] Stunt: In reply, you hand the letter over to Lydia. "His boss wants a meeting" you say, forcing a lightness into your voice that you dont really feel. With an effort, you stop and take Olivia's hand, squeezing it comfortably. "You did fine. " You look over to Lydia, who has just finished reading the letter, and hands it back to you, one eyebrow raised. "The soul of courtesy, that one." You move to the entrance of the graveyard, waving to Detective Stallings: "Detective, I think there's something you and your department need to be aware of. There's a group of people in danger. Please listen while I warn them, and we'll coordinate afterwards". You weigh the letter in your hand for a moment, then fumble it into your purse, drawing Clippy out instead. "I think" you say deliberately "the Order should stay out of Chinatown, and behind thresholds at night for the next week or so." You look at your phone. "Call Anna."
 
No it doesn't It allows us to detect creaturs of darkness. No hints about their true nature. Certainly no "this is akuma" vs "this is a jade court member".
Okay. One more time.
====
Hellscry Chakra said:
Hellscry Chakra (••)
Opening her inner eye and attuning it to spiritual desolation, the Infernal gains the ability to detect potential servants or rivals, and to weigh the souls of those she meets.

System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence. For the rest of the scene, the Infernal becomes aware when she stands in the presence of any creature of darkness, though she doesn't inherently know what sort of supernatural being any given individual may be. Furthermore, by concentrating on a specific individual for a few moments and making a successful Perception + Occult roll against difficulty 6, she can behold the subtleties of their anima and learn their current emotional state, as well as some clues about their nature. If you wish to embellish this with aura colors and the like, a chart can be found on page 136 of V20.
Potential servants or rivals. Weigh souls. That isnt restricted to CoDs.
Mortals are potential servants but arent CoDs. Necromancers are potential rivals but arent CoDs either.
We detect CoDs automatically; the rest we have to look and make a roll.

And as for the subtleties of the anima, I quote the referred pages in V20:
V20 page 136 said:
The listed are common colors. Vampires. Weres. Ghosts. Fae. Diablerists. Magic users.
Uncommon colors and shades are also available, but you have to make those up yourself.

There's more about what you can see in a person's aura in Karma Sight, including how explicitly you can see possessions and the like, but Im having trouble extracting that page right now.

Basically?
This is how Holden wrote the charm to be used. Thats what his chosen references indicate.
Its not just making shit up.

Basically, we have Special Investigations people right here. They are doing security for this event. We can definitely combine warning them and SI, and getting at least some of them into protective custody if needed.
We know nothing about the average SI officer, their trustworthyness or openmindedness.
Its canonically the dumping ground for people who pissed off superiors elsewhere, or whose careers deadended.

A police force's willingness to use outside consultants as long as they have results does not mean they buy into your explanations.
It takes a fair bit to go from "okay, there's some edge cases that cant be explained by modern science" to "all the myths are real, there are multiple types of Hell and they have agents walking the Earth".


Stallings, the guy who we stuck with the ghost girl? Murphy's partner? Who would have been made SI's commander in canon after Murphy was demoted? Was canonically skeptical about the supernatural as late as June this year. This despite his predecessor as Murphy's partner being disembowelled by a loup garou in a police station, along with at least half a dozen other people.

And he's a good guy. A good cop who is relatively openminded.

Rudolph? The guy who was partly responsible for getting Murphy demoted, got her fired, and eventually killed her in canon?
The guy who forged evidence to get the FBI to raid Dresden's apartment on terrorism charges in Changes?
Was Chicago PD Special Investigations before he got himself promoted to Internal Affairs.

You need to stop assuming that everything carrying a badge is trustworthy.
Thats not how it works.
Especially in Chicago.
 
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OK, vote closed, let's see about that XP
Just checking, we still have crown questions about prophecies concerning our family, and concerning the best textbooks. Are they going to be asked later?
servants or rivals. Weigh souls. That isnt restricted to CoDs.
Mortals are potential servants but arent CoDs. Necromancers are potential rivals but arent CoDs either.
We detect CoDs automatically; the rest we have to look and make a roll.
This is explicitly wrong. CoDs only, because our sight is attuned to spiritual devastation, and non-CoDs don't resonate with it. You want it to detect non CoDs.it doesn't. It very explicitly and thematically doesn't.
Stallings, the guy who we stuck with the ghost girl? Murphy's partner? Who would have been made SI's commander in canon after Murphy was demoted? While a good guy, was canonically skeptical about the supernatural as late as June this year. This despite his predecessor as Murphy's partner being disembowelled by a loup garou in a police station.
He's a good guy. That's all that matters, we have worked past his skepticism already using the ghost girl.
You need to stop assuming that everything carrying a badge is trustworthy.
Thats not how it works.
Especially in Chicago.
And you need to stop assuming everyone is out to get us. Trust is required to function in society. I can go on a long rant about how we do have reason to believe SI is, if not trustworthy, then useful in this situation, starting with how selling us out to foreign vampires would be stupid, and easily get them in trouble, but I won't, because it wouldn't convince you.

SI is a resource. Foreign murderous vampires are a threat. Betraying us to them is too much of a risk, unless they already have spies cultivated in the force.

I am not interested in further discussion on this topic, because we just plain won't agree.
 
Just checking, we still have crown questions about prophecies concerning our family, and concerning the best textbooks. Are they going to be asked later?

This is explicitly wrong. CoDs only, because our sight is attuned to spiritual devastation, and non-CoDs don't resonate with it. You want it to detect non CoDs.it doesn't. It very explicitly and thematically doesn't.

He's a good guy. That's all that matters, we have worked past his skepticism already using the ghost girl.

And you need to stop assuming everyone is out to get us. Trust is required to function in society. I can go on a long rant about how we do have reason to believe SI is, if not trustworthy, then useful in this situation, starting with how selling us out to foreign vampires would be stupid, and easily get them in trouble, but I won't, because it wouldn't convince you.

SI is a resource. Foreign murderous vampires are a threat. Betraying us to them is too much of a risk, unless they already have spies cultivated in the force.

I am not interested in further discussion on this topic, because we just plain won't agree.
  1. The remaining questions will be in the next update
  2. Helscry Chakra reads as follows:
Opening her inner eye and attuning it to spiritual desolation, the Infernal gains the ability to detect potential servants or rivals, and to weigh the souls of those she meets.
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence. For the rest of the scene, the Infernal becomes aware when she stands in the presence of any creature of darkness, though she doesn't inherently know what sort of supernatural being any given individual may be. Furthermore, by concentrating on a specific individual for a few moments and making a successful Perception + Occult roll against difficulty 6, she can behold the subtleties of their anima and learn their current emotional state, as well as some clues about their nature. If you wish to embellish this with aura colors and the like, achart can be found on page

The fluff is vague and if that were all we had do go on I'd say it works best on CoD, but looking at the system write up it's pretty clear that it is attuned only to Creatures of Darkness
 
This is explicitly wrong. CoDs only, because our sight is attuned to spiritual devastation, and non-CoDs don't resonate with it. You want it to detect non CoDs.it doesn't. It very explicitly and thematically doesn't.
Spiritual devastation is by no means a CoD exclusive trait.
I have provided receipts.
Make of them what you will.
He's a good guy. That's all that matters, we have worked past his skepticism already using the ghost girl.

Belief in ghosts is not belief in werewolves is not belief in vampires is not belief in Hells and demons.

And you need to stop assuming everyone is out to get us. Trust is required to function in society. I can go on a long rant about how we do have reason to believe SI is, if not trustworthy, then useful in this situation, starting with how selling us out to foreign vampires would be stupid, and easily get them in trouble, but I won't, because it wouldn't convince you.

SI is a resource. Foreign murderous vampires are a threat. Betraying us to them is too much of a risk, unless they already have spies cultivated in the force.
1)A lot of things are.

Rudolph was canonically a dirty cop being protected by someone all through his vendetta against Murphy and by extension Dresden. Its canon that Marcone's influence over the justice system in this city is part of why he's been untouchable, and that the Whampires outright had people openly in the DA's office; Tania Raith was a prosecutor's assistant in Jury Duty.

2)My dude, it took a while for Murphy and Dresden to get to the level of trust.
Murphy has canonically arrested Dresden at least twice to try to get him to talk in the earlier books in this series.
Daedalus tried to do much the same thing.

Law enforcement and the justice system is not automatically our friend here.
am not interested in further discussion on this topic, because we just plain won't agree.
Agree to disagree.
 
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The fluff is vague and if that were all we had do go on I'd say it works best on CoD, but looking at the system write up it's pretty clear that it is attuned only to Creatures of Darkness
The system says, and I quote:
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence. For the rest of the scene, the Infernal becomes aware when she stands in the presence of any creature of darkness, though she doesn't inherently know what sort of supernatural being any given individual may be. Furthermore, by concentrating on a specific individual for a few moments and making a successful Perception + Occult roll against difficulty 6, she can behold the subtleties of their anima and learn their current emotional state, as well as some clues about their nature. If you wish to embellish this with aura colors and the like, achart can be found on page
That speaks of multiple effects.
Broken down, that says:
1)Automatically become aware of CoDs.
2)Roll Perception + Occult to assess a person's anima/aura. Whether CoD or not.

Did you see the V20 chart Holden used as a sample reference?
Because that pretty explicitly indicates we're looking at more than just CoDs. ExWoD has potential antagonists who arent CoDs(Mages and Weres both come to mind, as well as spirits) and Infernals would not be left without a means of magical perception against them.

Or indeed for assessing potential recruits who may be mortal or spirit, just not CoDs. Yet.
 
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The remaining questions will be in the next update
Helscry Chakra reads as follows:
Opening her inner eye and attuning it to spiritual desolation, the Infernal gains the ability to detect potential servants or rivals, and to weigh the souls of those she meets.

System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence. For the rest of the scene, the Infernal becomes aware when she stands in the presence of any creature of darkness, though she doesn't inherently know what sort of supernatural being any given individual may be. Furthermore, by concentrating on a specific individual for a few moments and making a successful Perception + Occult roll against difficulty 6, she can behold the subtleties of their anima and learn their current emotional state, as well as some clues about their nature. If you wish to embellish this with aura colors and the like, achart can be found on page



The fluff is vague and if that were all we had do go on I'd say it works best on CoD, but looking at the system write up it's pretty clear that it is attuned only to Creatures of Darkness

Since you are providing an explanation, I have another question about the charm. How does "the Infernal becomes aware when she stands in the presence of any creature of darkness" work? Does it actually identify CoDs, or only alerts us when we are in their presence?

Example: we are in a room. Three people we don't know enter. Let's call them person A, B, and C. One of them is a CoD. We use Hellscry Chakra. What do we learn? "There's is at least one CoD near us", "there is exactly one CoD near us", or "person B is a CoD". Assume it's a base use of the charm, without additional roll.

2)Roll Perception + Occult to assess everyone's anima.
Not everyone's. One person at a time only.
 
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The system says, and I quote:

That speaks of multiple effects.
Broken down, that says:
1)Automatically become aware of CoDs.
2)Roll Perception + Occult to assess everyone's anima. Whether CoD or not.

Did you see the V20 chart Holden used as a sample reference?
Because that pretty explicitly indicates we're looking at more than just CoDs. ExWoD has potential antagonists who arent CoDs(Mages and Weres both come to mind, as well as spirits) and Infernals would not be left without a means of magical perception against them.

Or indeed for assessing potential recruits who may be mortal or spirit, just not CoDs. Yet.

It says if you wish to establish this with aura colors, not 'this is as broad as auspex and all its colors apply'. So for the beings you can see those are the colors, at least that is how I am reading it.
 
Basically, we have Special Investigations people right here. They are doing security for this event. We can definitely combine warning them and SI, and getting at least some of them into protective custody if needed.
We have a member of SI here, and he might even be someone we trust. What he's absolutely not is someone that the Order of the Cauldron has any reason to trust. Telling the cops about the group (at least one of whom works for Marcone) would be a betrayal of their trust.

Nemesis is always a COD, even if the possessed person usually isn't?
That makes Hellscry Chakra very useful long-term, but why now? The only person we've interacted with who even knows Nemesis exists at this point in the timeline is Mab. Spending xp to counter a threat we have no way to even know about yet seems a bit premature.
 
Since you are providing an explanation, I have another question about the charm. How does "the Infernal becomes aware when she stands in the presence of any creature of darkness" work? Does it actually identify CoDs, or only alerts us when we are in their presence?

Example: we are in a room. Three people we don't know enter. Let's call them person A, B, and C. One of them is a CoD. We use Hellscry Chakra. What do we learn? "There's is at least one CoD near us", "there is exactly one CoD near us", or "person B is a CoD". Assume it's a base use of the charm, without additional roll.


Not everyone's. One person at a time only.

You can automatically see when someone is a creature of darkness if they are in your line of sight. If for some reason you cannot see them and have to judge by a less precise sense like hearing or smell you will get vaguer information 'there is at least one creatue of darkness near'.
 
That makes Hellscry Chakra very useful long-term, but why now? The only person we've interacted with who even knows Nemesis exists at this point in the timeline is Mab. Spending xp to counter a threat we have no way to even know about yet seems a bit premature.
Okay, uses for Hellscry Chakra right now:
-Notice a hidden/disguised CoD in our presence (The Naagloshii obviously, but Wan Kuei can also disguise themselves)
-Analyze people's aura for emotional clues to get social advantages
-Get clues about the nature of our foes, if we ever meet something we can't recognise with our normal lore (which went pretty well so far, admittedly)
 
Did you see the V20 chart Holden used as a sample reference?
Because that pretty explicitly indicates we're looking at more than just CoDs. ExWoD has potential antagonists who arent CoDs(Mages and Weres both come to mind, as well as spirits) and Infernals would not be left without a means of magical perception against them.

As Dragon said, the charms say you can use the chart as reference, not that it give you all the informations that the chart can give.

Basically, it is there to say that you can say *this person has a mostly orange aura with some wisps of gray* instead of *this person is very afraid and slightly depressed*.
 
You can automatically see when someone is a creature of darkness if they are in your line of sight. If for some reason you cannot see them and have to judge by a less precise sense like hearing or smell you will get vaguer information 'there is at least one creatue of darkness near'.
How does that interact with powers like the Wan Kuei's No Mind or a Vampire's Soul Mask?

Roll-off, or does the power do what it says against any aura-perception?
 
We have a member of SI here, and he might even be someone we trust. What he's absolutely not is someone that the Order of the Cauldron has any reason to trust. Telling the cops about the group (at least one of whom works for Marcone) would be a betrayal of their trust.
Somewhat, maybe, yes. If I recall correctly, "call the cops to scare off supernatural predators" is one of the OoC survival tactics (I'll have to check, I might be misremembering). If we don't talk to SI now, we definitely should later, and we definitely should establish contact between OoC and SI. It would be beneficial to both.
We do have that one debuff charm that makes every single nemesis host light up at the same time, IIRC.
Yes, yes we do. And not just light up, also disrupt what they are doing with a +2 difficulty adjuster.
 
@DragonParadox and how does it compare to Wizard Sight? Is there any reason to get both or does one make the other redundant?

I mean, you made up the mechanics for the Sight here so we have no clue how that works beyond guessing.
 
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