Remove ads

Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

Reader mode
[X] Yog

Yeah, I was going to stay out of the vote, then @uju32 annoyed me with his irrational arguments and fear-mongering enough to explicitly vote for this.

Dude, if you were going to bring this up, you should have done it before we voted to use one of our limited recipes on this. We could have gotten the +Ability potion to boost our Etiquette before the upcoming social combat with Mab, or basically any other two-dot potion that could have been useful. Letting us vote for it without argument and then fear-monger against us using it to its full potential doesn't look good for you no matter how you look at it.
 
DragonParadox said:
*checks both versions of sorcerer*

Not given in canon. I'll have to think about this for a bit I don't want to make it too easy to mass produce, but at the same time there should be some ability to scale.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Makes sense. I was just trying to judge where we were on the scale of "Molly can only make enough potions for herself" to "Molly can make enough potions for her minions" with the modifier of "healing potions get used rarely, coffee potions get used daily"
 
DragonParadox said:
Bob: It is possible for other people to be better than you at stuff boss, sane way they can be easier on the eyes. :V

Normally I would say that the above is not IC and he would never say so, but this is Bob, he totally would do that and then probably add some details about how Molly is easier on the eyes
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Thing is that Dresden would retort that he made that potion under Bob's instructions, to Bob's recipe, and under his eyes.
So if there was something wrong with it, it would have been Bob's fault.

Yog said:
You aren't addressing the other parts of the argument, I see. Molly's power providing her with impossible and always correct knowledge is something that has been established both for MIchael and Harry. They saw that happening multiple times. The power told Molly it's safe to use the potion. This, then, comes, to a matter of trust between Molly and them. Is Molly lying about her power saying it's safe? If no, it's safe.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yes I am.
Noone's saying it wont work, or will kill her. Or even that she's lying.
Just that they wont believe her understanding is necessarily complete.

And that there's entirely too much history behind this to expect everyone to be rational.


And Michael, in particular, has had recent personal experience about things like prophecies being incomplete.
At the beginning of Death Rites, Michael came to Dresden with a prophecy about his dying if he got involved with the plot.
It just turned out to be incomplete.
Yog said:
We can also show Dresden and Bob the theory behind it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There was nothing wrong with the theory of the one that Dresden made either.
IIRC, he made it to Bob's specifications, under Bob's eyes.
He's just likely to count it as evidence that you cant expect to take this stuff repeatedly without possible issues.

JayTar said:
This whole argument seems bizarre to me. Like, Molly's relationship with her family isn't that bad. This isn't politics. We can bring up a subject and talk about it like adults without them suddenly thinking we have gone off the deep end or something. Maybe they will disagree, or maybe they will be hesitant, but we can talk things out.

This doesn't cost credibility, it builds credibility.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
She got arrested and sentenced to community service over drug possession.
It was the proximate reason for Charity's attempted clampdown that got her to leave the house.
This is a fraught issue in the Carpenter household.

And between her and Rosie for that matter.

bengalqueen said:
[X] Yog

Yeah, I was going to stay out of the vote, then @uju32 annoyed me with his irrational arguments and fear-mongering enough to explicitly vote for this.

Dude, if you were going to bring this up, you should have done it before we voted to use one of our limited recipes on this. We could have gotten the +Ability potion to boost our Etiquette before the upcoming social combat with Mab, or basically any other two-dot potion that could have been useful. Letting us vote for it without argument and then fear-monger against us using it to its full potential doesn't look good for you no matter how you look at it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I wasnt here for the previous vote, as you can check for yourself.
I had RL issues to deal with, and only freed up time this afternoon. Didnt even have time to do a commentary.
I had no involvement in the previous vote.

I have no trouble with using the potion on a as-needed basis. I VOTED to use the potion on an as-needed basis.
I just have IC and OOC objections to using it all the time.
I have mentioned some of those objections before on this thread, even before this vote.

@Yog will testify to it.

And for the record, I really dislike being accused of fearmongering for attempting to make a case for a vote.
Please dont.
 
Last edited:
uju32 said:
Thing is that Dresden would retort that he made that potion under Bob's instructions, to Bob's recipe, and under his eyes.
So if there was something wrong with it, it would have been Bob's fault.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This would lead to a less humorous but still relevant digression into the fact that the potion was made by a rusty wizard not that used to making potions in a rush and with limited resources. It was the best product Harry and Bob could make under the circumstances they were making it in

To which Dresden would likely reply something along the lines of 'so she can mess up?'

Indeed Molly can of course, but excellencies, dice adders and DC reducers are all a thing.

Basically can people have a bad reaction to this, yes otherwise it would not be a vote. Will they inherently trust Molly less for even having the idea, probably not too much in her best judgement, because she did bring it up as soon as it occurred to her rather then try to hide the notion
 
Last edited:
JayTar said:
This whole argument seems bizarre to me. Like, Molly's relationship with her family isn't that bad. This isn't politics. We can bring up a subject and talk about it like adults without them suddenly thinking we have gone off the deep end or something. Maybe they will disagree, or maybe they will be hesitant, but we can talk things out.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We nearly voted to leave the house entirely due to Charity trying to assert authority...

It has gotten better since then, but upwards from nearly rock-bottom still isn't that good.
 
uju32 said:
And that there's entirely too much history behind this to expect everyone to be rational.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is in your head only. It's plain not true. We have, in the course of this quest:
1) Used a necromantic ritual invoking the name of a Neverborn to "better than hoped for by an actual god" result. No downsides
2) Gave Dresden knowledge needed to soulgaze an Infernal Exalted. No downsides, he got a revelation out of this.
3) Plucked Mab's full plan from her mind without her realizing - Dresden was a witness to this.

We have spent months working together with Bob and Harry by now. If Molly says to Dresden "my power says it's perfectly safe, and here's the theory behind why this is safe", yes, Dresden will believe her. He might grumble, but by this point he has pretty much accepted her as an actual authority on the subjects she is speaking about. He is not blind or stupid.
uju32 said:
I have no trouble with using the potion on a as-needed basis. I just have IC and OOC objections to using it all the time.
I have mentioned some of those objections before on this thread, even before this vote.
@Yog will testify to it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I will, yes. I will also say that to me your arguments read like you have come to a certain conclusion in your mind and are trying to work backwards to do everything to justify it.

People can be irrational, yes. They are all also functional adults that can talk to each other. None of the persons involved, yes, even Charity, is a hair-trigger nervewreck who will have a flashback episode or explode in rage or become completely incapable of being convinced that Molly knows what she is talking about.

And you are ignoring Molly's history in the quest. It has been several months since she exalted. Everyone involved saw how it changed her. She has mended bridges with Charity. She has involved Charity in an actual magical practice and has shown her Mercy in Servitude's effects. Mercy in Servitude, I remind you, is "you serve me, and in exchange your curse is held at bay" charm. It's a literal cult leader / evil overlord power. And Charity was ok with that. She interacted with ghouls and (I think) whampires normally.

Molly has built a lot of trust already. Her parents trust her to run a magical business to generate obscene amounts of money, and trust her to be responsible with that money. They trust her to held a number of demonic entities (ghouls, whampires, even if we discard cyber devils) in thrall for their protection and protection of others. They trust her to deal with elementals in the city underground. Charity trusts Molly to risk her life fighting side by side with MIchael.

And that's just other parents.

If we take Dresden, he put the lives of the council on the line by trusting Molly's insights into Thousand Hells to be accurate. He trusted her when she told him about Bane - a literal curse god. He acknowledges her as being a "god queen".

The image of Molly you think people have in their minds, is not the image of Molly I believe exists in their minds.

EDIT: Oh, and in a couple of months, Molly is going to be a God Queen of a whole hell realm. How are you planning to deal with this without some intermediate steps to build trust? This, if nothing else, is a necessary escalation.
 
Last edited:
Yog said:
She has involved Charity in an actual magical practice and has shown her Mercy in Servitude's effects. Mercy in Servitude, I remind you, is "you serve me, and in exchange your curse is held at bay" charm. It's a literal cult leader / evil overlord power. And Charity was ok with that. She interacted with ghouls and (I think) whampires normally.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Charity did not have a chance to interact with the White Court Vampires yes
 
DragonParadox said:
So much that had eluded you is made clear, it's not touch, hearing. sight, smell and taste as Aristotle thought and the Council teaches still, those are reflections of a deeper balance: earth, water, fire, air and wood. The Elements five, the Directions four and four, life mortality at the crux.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
To be fair, they're using a fundamentally different type of energy than your basically-blocks-of-uranium-motes so they could still be correct too
 
Yog said:
This is in your head only. It's plain not true. We have, in the course of this quest:
1) Used a necromantic ritual invoking the name of a Neverborn to "better than hoped for by an actual god" result. No downsides
2) Gave Dresden knowledge needed to soulgaze an Infernal Exalted. No downsides, he got a revelation out of this.
3) Plucked Mab's full plan from her mind without her realizing - Dresden was a witness to this.

We have spent months working together with Bob and Harry by now. If Molly says to Dresden "my power says it's perfectly safe, and here's the theory behind why this is safe", yes, Dresden will believe her. He might grumble, but by this point he has pretty much accepted her as an actual authority on the subjects she is speaking about. He is not blind or stupid.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Point of correction:
This is not her power. Its a product of a skill she learned from Bob. Used with inhuman expertise, but still a fundamentally human skill. And its claimed effect is in direct opposition to Dresden's own lived experience.

Odd as it may seem, she'd actually be more convincing in proposing something like Inner Devils Unleashed or the implants charm.
Or if she started sleeping in a bleach bottle to avoid nightmares.
Effects that are far more radical but are rooted totally in her power, with no external referents to suggest otherwise.

My two cents.
Yog said:
I will, yes. I will also say that to me your arguments read like you have come to a certain conclusion in your mind and are trying to work backwards to do everything to justify it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I genuinely dont think so.

Yog said:
People can be irrational, yes. They are all also functional adults that can talk to each other.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nitpick:
Molly isnt an adult yet.

Yog said:
And you are ignoring Molly's history in the quest. It has been several months since she exalted. Everyone involved saw how it changed her. She has mended bridges with Charity. She has involved Charity in an actual magical practice and has shown her Mercy in Servitude's effects. Mercy in Servitude, I remind you, is "you serve me, and in exchange your curse is held at bay" charm. It's a literal cult leader / evil overlord power. And Charity was ok with that. She interacted with ghouls and (I think) whampires normally.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
No Im not.

The fact that we have a tentative truce is why Im willing to propose Molly using Nosleep on an as-needed basis, and that our family would accept it as necessary. Under the circumstances that prevailed three months ago, I would not be going near it if we intended to maintain a relationship with our family under the same roof.

Yog said:
Molly has built a lot of trust already. Her parents trust her to run a magical business to generate obscene amounts of money, and trust her to be responsible with that money. They trust her to held a number of demonic entities (ghouls, whampires, even if we discard cyber devils) in thrall for their protection and protection of others. They t
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We didnt seek permission for any of this. The business required no parental investment, nor is it illegal or unethical.
And even if they were that sort of person to make eyes at the assets of their children, which they arent, it isnt legally possible for them to tell a 17 year old what to do with her own earned money.

And a sincere Catholic cant summarily deny people the chance of change when its pushed in their face.
After all, redeeming, or attempting to redeem fallen angels and their hosts is Michael's day job.
Yog said:
And that's just other parents.
If we take Dresden, he put the lives of the council on the line by trusting Molly's insights into Thousand Hells to be accurate. He trusted her when she told him about Bane - a literal curse god. He acknowledges her as being a "god queen".

The image of Molly you think people have in their minds, is not the image of Molly I believe exists in their minds.
EDIT: Oh, and in a couple of months, Molly is going to be a God Queen of a whole hell realm. How are you planning to deal with this without some intermediate steps to build trust? This, if nothing else, is a necessary escalation.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
1)No he didnt; the Book of Yomi Wan is all verifiable information.
Similarly, he's seen MiS at work. He isnt exhibiting blind trust, he's extending it but getting corroboration for almost everything we say. Which is where the problem is here, because his experience contradicts this.


2)Yes? I unironically think that Molly becoming godqueen of her own Hell/Horizon Realm/NeverNever domain would result in less domestic uproar than if she, for example, suddenly dropped out of school.
Because there are no real referents for it in her parents or friends experience.

The same way sufficiently outrageous events leave people unsure of how to react.
 
Maybe instead of picking a single approach now we should have a portfolio of options and pick an approach based on their reactions to the base idea.

We talk over the super coffee with Molly's parents and float the idea of a trial. If they seem cool with it in principle the trial is to just start using it, if they're concerned the trial was obviously to use it intermittently and let them observe the differences. With a consult from Dresden before and after the first week paid for out of our budget. Plus whatever other medical theatre would match their reaction.

Then we boil the frog by slowly using it more frequently as time proves us right.

Ideally we won't need any of that, but coming in prepared could save us some trouble if it doesn't go well. It also helps us avoid negotiating with ourselves so much without direct information about the party we actually need to convince.

If we do have to go with the cautious approach there are some additional benefits we could squeeze out as long as we can credibly claim to have had a plan to implement it before anyone told us to.

When doing riskier stuff that's partially out of view in the future Molly could point to this a go "You don't have to trust I'm being careful, you know it. You've seen how I operate even with relatively benign things".

Not sure it's worth the effort for its own sake, but if we've have to in the end we might as well make sure we get every scrap of benefit out of doing so.
 
uju32 said:
This is not her power. Its a product of a skill she learned from Bob. Used with inhuman expertise, but still a fundamentally human skill. And its claimed effect is in direct opposition to Dresden's own lived experience.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You said it yourself - the revelations came to her in a dream. She peaked into the ancienct impression, saw the luminescence of the Green Sun himself. It's mortal knowledge through the prism of exalted glory.
uju32 said:
Nosleep
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's less sleep, not not sleep. We have been over this already multiple times.
uju32 said:
1)No he didnt; the Book of Yomi Wan is all verifiable information.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The book of Yomi Wan is full of knowledge that would, if not carefully filtered with superhuman precision and wisdom, cause SAN damage to read about. Verifying it is risky to one's sanity, life and soul. Dresden risked a lot by trusting it.
uju32 said:
2)Yes? I unironically think that Molly becoming godqueen of her own Hell/Horizon Realm/NeverNever domain would result in less domestic uproar than if she, for example, suddenly dropped out of school.
Because there are no real referents for it in her parents or friends experience.

The same way sufficiently outrageous events leave people unsure of how to react.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm sorry, but this is kinda insane backwards strange logic that I can't follow. If you think that Charity would react less to Molly becoming a god queen of hell, given Charity's history with cults, and sincere Christian belief in the afterlife and the promise of resurrection, than she would to Molly making super coffee... Well, good for you, I think you are wrong, and I know that nothing I say will ever convince you otherwise.
 
I kind of have to wonder about 1 dot alchemy recipes. The rule is that they are like mundane chemistry, but impossible good. Which is great, but every time Molly gets 6 or more successes on a crafting roll she is explicitly doing the same thing. Crafting something better then is humanly possible.
 
fictionfan said:
I kind of have to wonder about 1 dot alchemy recipes. The rule is that they are like mundane chemistry, but impossible good. Which is great, but every time Molly gets 6 or more successes on a crafting roll she is explicitly doing the same thing. Crafting something better then is humanly possible.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The difference is that one uses magic and the other does not. Jim the super-computer operating a nano-forge on Mars could make anything you can make with crafting, but unless someone put magic circuits in him he could not do even one dot alchemy.
 
On a slightly unrelated note, please enjoy this statement that popped fully-formed into my head and I can totally see happening in the quest:

Bob: "I don't know who or what made Molly's power, but I do know that whoever did it either had never heard of the concept of "overkill," or they had heard about it, and immediately loved the idea so much that they decided that they had to use it in absolutely everything, from combat to making lasagna, and it shows."

AKA the moment Bob finally groks the general gist of how Exalted do, and finds a way to explain that to Harry.
 
Yog said:
You said it yourself - the revelations came to her in a dream. She peaked into the ancienct impression, saw the luminescence of the Green Sun himself. It's mortal knowledge through the prism of exalted glory.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Word of QM was that it was just her recontextualizing what Bob was trying to teach her
Instead of dream revelation.
So not from her power after all.

🤷
Yog said:
It's less sleep, not not sleep. We have been over this already multiple times.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Still calling it Nosleep, in imitation of the stimulant NoDoze, until you come up with a suitably catchy replacement.
:V
Yog said:
The book of Yomi Wan is full of knowledge that would, if not carefully filtered with superhuman precision and wisdom, cause SAN damage to read about. Verifying it is risky to one's sanity, life and soul. Dresden risked a lot by trusting it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You are misremembering.

The Book of Yomi Wan contains no such knowledge. Molly explicitly excluded any and all such information from a book meant to be read by a mortal. And her co-editor was Bob, who would have recognized any such information and pointed it out; being non-mortzl, it was not the same sort of threat to him.

There really wasnt the risk factor you presume, as far as I can tell.

Yog said:
'm sorry, but this is kinda insane backwards strange logic that I can't follow. If you think that Charity would react less to Molly becoming a god queen of hell, given Charity's history with cults, and sincere Christian belief in the afterlife and the promise of resurrection, than she would to Molly m
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
God queen of A hell. Molly is buff, but not buff enough to overthrow an Archangel.

Most strains of Christianity acknowledge only one Hell, ruled over by the Archangel Lucifer Morningstar, whose major functionaries are all bound and not free to wander the Earth at will.
The idea of multiple Hells, with different rulers, come from other mythologies.

Charity's husband fights Denarians.
She has some idea what the metaphysical weight of one of those guys is, and how her daughter does not have the weight to displace the claimants to THAT chair.

She'll contextualize it as another NeverNever domain. Which it is.
Just as she has contextualized cyberdevils, ghouls and fetches.
 
DragonParadox said:
The difference is that one uses magic and the other does not. Jim the super-computer operating a nano-forge on Mars could make anything you can make with crafting, but unless someone put magic circuits in him he could not do even one dot alchemy.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
@DragonParadox

QUESTION
1)Can Lydia buy Paths? Or do we need to buy the Hedge Magic Merit for her first?

2)Can we get Lydia's list of charms bookmarked under Informational?
So that when making plans, we can look at the list to determine what to buy?
 
uju32 said:
Still calling it Nosleep, in imitation of the stimulant NoDoze, until you come up with a suitably catchy replacement.
:V
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Super Coffer, "Blood of Green Sun" blend.
uju32 said:
You are misremembering.

The Book of Yomi Wan contains no such knowledge. Molly explicitly excluded any and all such information from a book meant to be read by a mortal. And her co-editor was Bob, who would have recognized any such information and pointed it out; being non-mortzl, it was not the same sort of threat to him.

There really wasnt the risk factor you presume, as far as I can tell.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It contains the knowledge. It's just coached in the safe way, and limited by mortal english language medium:
DragonParadox said:
A brief note on the Hells and the kind of information you are writing.

Any book on the Yama Hells, particularly Lanka and Kakuri would provide insight that is literally inhuman, not only what Usum saw with his own eyes and heard with his own ears while he was part and parcel of one of the major weapons of the realm, but also secrets writ in the tainted Essence which has laid there for ages of the world uncounted. Harry calls them magical constants, the ever-shifting rules by which all magic operates, well no human really knows what those look like in say Kakuri because the will of Emma-O lays on that place like a blanket. But there are still layers beneath the cold darkness and everlasting snow, ever-crumbling never-fallen pillars of another age beyond even the blackest nightmares of man. That is the kind of things Molly has insights into when he stretches. Granted her ability to share them is limited by the fact that she is writing in English and the fact that is wants to avoid driving the reader insane. This is Bob scale insight

That said all the above would make it worth a hell of a lot of favor, especially the part where it is not a danger to the human mind to engage with it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
uju32 said:
There really wasnt the risk factor you presume, as far as I can tell.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
To verify the information, a wizard would need to at the very least travel to Yomi Wan, or summon greater Yomi Wan residents. That's, to say the least, risky.
 
uju32 said:
@DragonParadox

QUESTION
1)Can Lydia buy Paths? Or do we need to buy the Hedge Magic Merit for her first?

2)Can we get Lydia's list of charms bookmarked under Informational?
So that when making plans, we can look at the list to determine what to buy?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
  1. She can yeah, she has the library and her mentor to learn from. On top of that the Hedge Magic merit feels like a bit of a hollow prerequisite to me. If you are as magical as an Exalted you should be magical enough to wield the lesser of mortal magics
  2. I'll handle it in the morning, it's past midnight for me right now

On that note good night guys, see you tomorrow with the turn vote
 
Yog said:
Super Coffer, "Blood of Green Sun" blend.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nah, not catchy enough.
Sorry.
Yog said:
It contains the knowledge. It's just coached in the safe way, and limited by mortal english language medium:
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It didnt.
Your own quote literally says she was contrained by not wanting to drive readers mad.
And the QM subsequently says that the unexpurgated version of the Book of Yomi Wan would buy us a Wan Kuei army.
Yog said:
To verify the information, a wizard would need to at the very least travel to Yomi Wan, or summon greater Yomi Wan residents. That's, to say the least, risky.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Some of the information has always been out there. Oracular spirits, existing reference works, et cetera. Bob references some of them while we were writing; nothing as good as this mind. And I will point out that summoning spirits for information is what wizards do. Dresden himself used to summon a demon called Chaunzaggaroth, Chauncy for short, as an information broker.

It doesnt require that you crosscheck every page.
A random cross-section of information from the book is often enough to pick up on attempts at misinformatiin.

DragonParadox said:
  1. She can yeah, she has the library and her mentor to learn from. On top of that the Hedge Magic merit feels like a bit of a hollow prerequisite to me. If you are as magical as an Exalted you should be magical enough to wield the lesser of mortal magics
  2. I'll handle it in the morning, it's past midnight for me right now

On that note good night guys, see you tomorrow with the turn vote
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Time to make up a thematically appropriate list of Paths for an Exigent of a Death god.
G'nite.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top