Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
- Location
- Germany
[X] Yog
- Location
- Germany
And that would be something worth knowing too.
Besides, we have similar risks ourselves, as we noticed when cutting a bit too deep in our first day back in school with this rando in the hallway.
- Location
- Germany
Okay, this might sound weird, but I'll make an argument for feeding in highschools:
Premise:
The major problem of Whampiric Feeding is that it reinforces the emotion it feeds on. Thus feeding in creases lust/fear/despair, rather than draining it from the target.
This is not so much a problem for the Raiths, but it is for Skavis, since too much despair can lead to very bad decision, up to suicide.
Premise 2:
The majority of problems for highschoolers are short-lived and not as serious as a hormonal teenager with a limited pool of experiences thinks they are.
That is not to say that the situation of a highschooler can't actually be terrible, of course it can, but often enough a break-up with a short-time boy/girlfriend or failed test can seem like the end of the world.
Argument:
If most highschoolers that feel despair do so over temporary issues and have a halfway decent support-system from home or school, then a slight increase in despair from minor Feedings is unlikely to spiral into worse issues.
Compare to other sources of despair, people who lost someone important and might spiral into depression, people with serious diseases that might loose the will to fight, people who really have few if any perspectives or experience overwhelming loneliness and might harm or kill themselves...
Conclusion:
Feeding on highschoolers is not good, but propably less likely to lead to permanent harm than most other opportunities for Skavis.
Premise:
The major problem of Whampiric Feeding is that it reinforces the emotion it feeds on. Thus feeding in creases lust/fear/despair, rather than draining it from the target.
This is not so much a problem for the Raiths, but it is for Skavis, since too much despair can lead to very bad decision, up to suicide.
Premise 2:
The majority of problems for highschoolers are short-lived and not as serious as a hormonal teenager with a limited pool of experiences thinks they are.
That is not to say that the situation of a highschooler can't actually be terrible, of course it can, but often enough a break-up with a short-time boy/girlfriend or failed test can seem like the end of the world.
Argument:
If most highschoolers that feel despair do so over temporary issues and have a halfway decent support-system from home or school, then a slight increase in despair from minor Feedings is unlikely to spiral into worse issues.
Compare to other sources of despair, people who lost someone important and might spiral into depression, people with serious diseases that might loose the will to fight, people who really have few if any perspectives or experience overwhelming loneliness and might harm or kill themselves...
Conclusion:
Feeding on highschoolers is not good, but propably less likely to lead to permanent harm than most other opportunities for Skavis.
You dont test that on people. They may be dumbshits, but they are still people's children.
You dont respond to a case of possible bullying by turning a juvenile supernatural with questionable impulsiveness loose on the presumed perps with a hunting license.
And if Bella fumbles, we have fewer cleanup options.
We arent Whampires. We dont get to threaten civilians to shut them up, or to have them committed to a mental institution if they keep talking shit.
No, we are potentially a lot worse.
But we have a much better idea of our limits, we have Essence to spare, and nothing to prove.
Bella does have shit to prove, and a limited power tank, and teenage impulsiveness.
Thats a hazardous combination to turn loose on other teenagers.
QM probably made an error.
Bella is supposed to be 17-19 years old; that was Molly's assessment when they met.
There arent many 19 year old sophomores from wealthy families. And Whampires generally arent actually stupid.
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She might be mature looking. Certainly, I knew girls who looked 18+ at 14.
I think everyone has met people like that.
But in this case? Mature looking, sure. Not the same thing as mature, though.
Molly had ATB running for that entire encounter. She's unlikely to have mistaken a sophomore-age girl for a senior/college age teenager, just based off of social cues.
If she says 17-19, Im inclined to believe her.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
Just as a note, I followed my mom to the voting booth once when I was like, 14, and the lady there thought I was there to vote, because she thought I was an actual adult. I was wearing a coat at the time, so my shape was slightly obscured, but I'm still willing to swallow people misjudging ages by a large margin as plausible, especially considering that White Court fledglings probably "mature" faster than normal teenage girls.
These are teenagers. They lack the life experience for perspective.
The fact that stuff is objectively speaking not as critical doesnt make it any less critical to them.
They do dumb shit like commit suicide over bullying or think their lives are over because they got snubbed by their crush.
This is the worst environment for a teenage Whampire to actively feed.
Its entirely too easy to exacernate the hormonal soup that teenage brains are brewing in to one extreme or the other with one push.
Furthermore, why is it even necessary?
Bella is from a Whampire family. They already have ways of feeding discreetly that do not involve doing so here.
There is no reason why she should be feeding here. She doesnt have the need.
And it comes back to socialization.
You have a kid raised in a vampire family to regard other humans as prey or cattle. You should not be reinforcing that lesson by telling her that her classmates, people she sees and socializes with every day, are also on the menu. We're supposed to be trying to break her of Skavis indoctrination, not reinforce it.
Sure.
But she wasnt an Exalt running All Things Betray for a -3DC buff to Perception rolls.
Like I said, its the social cues that would give her away here.
Besides, Whampires dont appear to fledge their children before late adolescence.
Of the two attempts we see onscreen, Inari Raith was a young adult working as an intern on a porn film set, and Connie Barrowhill was a college student.
I know its not a representative sample, but its all we have.
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This is arguable. Social cues from a 16 year old interacting with a millenia old elder of her clan and a potentially hostile bodhisattva-out-of-ths-box, and a 17 year old interacting witha millenia old elder of her clan and a potentially hostile bodhisattva-out-of-ths-box would be completely identical. The situation she was in (fledgling that was interrupted by a hostile OCP) didn't lend itself to provide social clues to her precise age. We can be reasonably certain that she is within expected age range for fledging in her clan. Not much else.
From the perspective of getting closer to Molly, it would make more sense to put her in the same class as Molly. If that didnt happen, it's probably because she's genuinely that age.
[X] Yog
Man, lunch is unusually terrible.
Thats a basic security implementation for setting up organizations that powerful. Where possible, you want a reset button.
And for good reason; its canon that Outsiders try to subvert Sidhe at every opportunity. Nemesis!Infected Lea tried to overthrow Mab, and Nfected!Maeve came this close to having Mab murdered and ending up in day to day control of Winter.
Mab is not a good entity. She's not an evil entity. Morality is not her function.
Neither is it Titania's function for that matter. Anyone who makes the mistake of thinking that Summer is "good" should take a look at the Mothers shared cottage, and the jars of unreleased epidemic diseases that Mother Summer has lining the walls.
Mab is Queen of Winter.
Mab is not the whole of Winter. She's not the fetches, or the hags, or the spiders et cetera. Dont conflate the day to day behavior of a lot of Winter's denizens with Mab's actual policies.
Its called the Unseelie Accords for a reason. Not the Seelie Accords, or the Milwaukee Accords, or whatever.
Nobody else cared enough, or had the power to commit the political, magical and military effort to cram the Accords down everyone's collective throats.
She, and the might of Winter, guarantee the Accords and its provisions. Noone else.
And they get fuckall from it that Im aware of.
Mab does not live in the mortal world. Does not draw power from the mortal world.
She doesnt amuse herself by playing with it; lady doesnt have the time.
Lots of fae draw power from mortals, amuse themselves with mortals, or are fascinated with mortals.
Apparently not Mab.
1)Mab is the second Mab; she had a predecessor. Mother Winter, however, has never been replaced.
2)Dont conflate Mab's public face with her private face. Post-Ghost Story, she's a lot more open with Dresden, in private.
See how people like Odin treat her in private, or suggest that Dresden do.
3)Of course Mab didnt trust Dresden then.
She cant afford to trust many people. Under the influence of Nemesis, her handmaiden tried to overthrow her, and then her daughter tried to have her killed, all in the same decade. Paranoia is her business.
Trust is earned, and she had yet to see how Dresden would handle the Mantle and its responsibilities.
Many Knights dont manage it well.
Dresden's defiance bade well for a good Knight, but he hadnt even started the job yet.
Nah.
Citation is, and I quote:
Molly was rolling -4DC to Perception rolls in that scene; -1 from Boiling Sea Mastery, and -3 from All Things Betray.
She would have been literally throwing Legendary results on base Perception + Empathy rolls.
I have no trouble believing she's be able to tell.
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She actually is 17 and should be a senior if her home schooling was up to the standard, it is not. Despair vampires are not really focused on academic excellency at the best of times and when you add a mentor in the odd and esoteric taking up the time that might have been going to academic matters, they faked her being not-quite-16 in the paperwork.
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Mab is very explicitly an evil entity. We're not told Summer exists to protect the world from Winter. We're told Titania exists to protect the world from Mab.
This isn't about guarding against Nemesis possession, as in the same passage we're also told that Winter could defeat Summer if Mab was willing to forfeit reality to the Outsiders in the process, which she would if she were Nemesis possessed.
Mab and Winter exists is protect reality from the Outsider. Titania and Summer exist to protect the mortal world from Mab and Winter, and that protection is actively and continually required.
That's part of why the current situation is unsustainable and has to be changed, because it has a critical dependency on Mab not being subverted and there exists an Outsider entity that seems capable of subverting Mab.
Whoever allowed Mab to be in such a position of being able to hold the world hostage hasn't been doing a great job.
Note that we have a link here to Wan Kuei Eschatology, where the Demon Emperor's replacement of God to allow for a new cycle of creation to start is in some sense cosmologically necessary because God hasn't been doing a great job of running reality.
They get face. They get to be the people who know the labyrinthine rules best, so are able to help people jump through the multitudinous hoops required to become Neutral Ground or a Freeholding Lord.
And if you believe they don't abuse that power, I have several bridges to sell you.
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From the timeline we got earlier, the guys at the top have changed, but the fey have always been the foot soldiers.
I take what Mother Summer was saying differently there; she was talking about physical troop numbers and a hypothetical, not anything else.
Her mantle was made for this task and has actively edited her nature to suit it over the last thousand years. Why would it be designed to make her an asshole but not stop her from doing the one thing no one wants her to do?
The point I was trying to make about not being totally evil was supposed to be distinct from the point on her motives at the gates, my bad there.
What I was trying to get at with that is that her mantle was built for this task. Even if she could screw off to another reality or something that the outsiders wouldn't reach if the gates fell she wouldn't be allowed to. At this point her mantle is so integrated into the person wearing it that she's not allowed to want to.
Defending reality isn't her day job, it's her life's purpose.
Kornet
Quite possibly a sloth abomination
- Location
- Mother Russia
I strongly disagree with your opinion here, because I think you are firgetting a key fact: Mab is not mortal. The fact that she once was one is irrelevant, she is fae nowadays. And fae are explicitly metaphysically different from human and lack the free will (in the very narrow Dresdenverse sense) which is required to contest the mantle. She didn't lose to it, she never got a chance to fight it in the first place.
Yes. And this Mab likely was "shaped" by Mother Winter. And took the belief that such shaping of subordinates is within remit of higher Winter hierarchs from the experience.
She didn't say "I don't trust you". She said "I will never trust you". Mab knows Mab's mind. Mab cant' lie. Even and especially to herself. Mab told Dresden that she will never trust him. Not that "she won't trust him until he's absolutely and unquestionably proves his loyalty" not that "she won't trust him until he's her fully soul and mind bound slave". Never. Period. Mab is incapable of trusting Dresden. It is safe to extrapolate that outside of maybe Mother Winter and Uriel, she is incapable of trusting others period.
And this is why she can't be dealt with in good faith. Because she will always deal with others with full expectation of betrayal. Will always coach her deals in terms that protect and benefit her when she is betrayed. There will always be a knife prepared to stab us when and if we deal with her. In order to be able to trust Mab, one has to know that she can trust them in turn. Otherwise, it just doesn't work. And she can't trust others, period.
That's not quite correct. Mantles are not absolute. You can, and, I believe, are supposed to fight against them, while cooperating in things that matter. Mab lost that fight long ago.
Note that Uriel didn't say 'Mab is mistaken'. He said that Mab lied. That's totally different. And very interesting in a context where Mab generally can't lie. There may be loopholes in the restrictions on lying when it comes to the nature of the Faerie Mantles.
I don't read the quote to say the Winter Court have always been the foot soldiers, but even if you do. There are lots of faerie that aren't members of the fey courts, and faerie as a category is much bigger than the sidhe. Faerie are those beings of the Nevernever that are part mortal:
That means that while the beings guarding th gates may have always needed to be part mortal for some reason, what the identity of those beings beyond those specific characteristics. When other people with in charge of the Gates they may have had their armies of part mortal part-Nevernever soldiers to guard them, but they may have been completely different to modern Winter Fey. Back when he was in charge Odin's Einhrejar may have counted as faeries as they're part mortal part immortal, and it's only with the Norse pantheon's authority over the mortal world being reduced that they no longer count as mortal enough to be a Faerie. Similarly, back in the day when the pantheons were in charge on Earth, things like Malks and Fetches may not have had the authority to straddle both worlds, and so may not have qualified as Fae.
The Sidhe who lead the Courts are the currently dominant type of Faerie, but they were made by someone:
The Sidhe, for example, could have been engineered by the Celtic and Germanic pantheons as an officer class for their armies who later became part of a coup.
We know that the three big Mantles of each of the Fey Courts aren't cosmological constants, so the Courts themselves probably aren't either. They were created by empowerment rituals similar to the Darkhallow using the stone table:
I don't read the quote to say the Winter Court have always been the foot soldiers, but even if you do. There are lots of faerie that aren't members of the fey courts, and faerie as a category is much bigger than the sidhe. Faerie are those beings of the Nevernever that are part mortal:
Exactly what are the Outsiders? Are they like the fae, or are they something else entirely?
They are something else entirely. All the fae are part mortal. There is some bit of mortal in every single one of the fae. The Outsiders are something that comes from way beyond that. Their more the generic Hellboy fangs and tentacles croud.
Matter from the Nevernever dissolves into ectoplasm in the real world, but the faeries leave a corpse when they die. Explanation?
Faeries are a unique case in the Nevernever, as the beings who basically straddle the worlds. Plus there are other reasons which are none of your beeswax just yet.
They are something else entirely. All the fae are part mortal. There is some bit of mortal in every single one of the fae. The Outsiders are something that comes from way beyond that. Their more the generic Hellboy fangs and tentacles croud.
Matter from the Nevernever dissolves into ectoplasm in the real world, but the faeries leave a corpse when they die. Explanation?
Faeries are a unique case in the Nevernever, as the beings who basically straddle the worlds. Plus there are other reasons which are none of your beeswax just yet.
That means that while the beings guarding th gates may have always needed to be part mortal for some reason, what the identity of those beings beyond those specific characteristics. When other people with in charge of the Gates they may have had their armies of part mortal part-Nevernever soldiers to guard them, but they may have been completely different to modern Winter Fey. Back when he was in charge Odin's Einhrejar may have counted as faeries as they're part mortal part immortal, and it's only with the Norse pantheon's authority over the mortal world being reduced that they no longer count as mortal enough to be a Faerie. Similarly, back in the day when the pantheons were in charge on Earth, things like Malks and Fetches may not have had the authority to straddle both worlds, and so may not have qualified as Fae.
The Sidhe who lead the Courts are the currently dominant type of Faerie, but they were made by someone:
You've previously said that the Sidhe and Mab came from origins like Toot Toot and kind of took on responsibility and grew. You've also said that every single Fae have come from mortal origins like changelings and Scions and stuff. Could you reconcile these two apparently contradictory origins?
I could but I won't *sing song* I'm not gonna tell you.* The Sidhe were created for a reason though. They were created specifically by certain agents who no longer had as much influence on the world as they once did.
I could but I won't *sing song* I'm not gonna tell you.* The Sidhe were created for a reason though. They were created specifically by certain agents who no longer had as much influence on the world as they once did.
The Sidhe, for example, could have been engineered by the Celtic and Germanic pantheons as an officer class for their armies who later became part of a coup.
We know that the three big Mantles of each of the Fey Courts aren't cosmological constants, so the Courts themselves probably aren't either. They were created by empowerment rituals similar to the Darkhallow using the stone table:
cowl with darkhallow – really? just a bunch of spirits…
If he'd succeeded, he'd have had the collective power of all of those supernatural beings and then some. He'd have been clearly stronger than the Ladies, and a full-on equal to Mab. I mean, why do you think the Erlking was summoned as part of that ritual? Because that's how the big E got so boss in the first place.
For that matter, how do you think the Mothers and Queens and Ladies established their original base of power? That big old sacrificial, power-sucking stone table in Tir na noth isn't there for its primitive decorative aesthetic.
If he'd succeeded, he'd have had the collective power of all of those supernatural beings and then some. He'd have been clearly stronger than the Ladies, and a full-on equal to Mab. I mean, why do you think the Erlking was summoned as part of that ritual? Because that's how the big E got so boss in the first place.
For that matter, how do you think the Mothers and Queens and Ladies established their original base of power? That big old sacrificial, power-sucking stone table in Tir na noth isn't there for its primitive decorative aesthetic.
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So homeschooling.The favored way of isolating children from their peers during their developmental stages.
I dont see the benefits of putting Bella in the same school but a different grade; she essentially will never see Molly.
Maybe it has to do with her father being older than dirt, and not really grokking how modern education works.
And I suspect her mother's dead or gone.
It does speak to this family messing up their priorities that a teenager with a private tutor is unable to maintain the same academic grades as her peers when children in entertainment and sports with literal fulltime careers are capable of keeping up.
Very poor showing.
And one more datum suggesting her mother isnt around.
It might be interesting to introduce her to Charity.
Not the Daniel or the jawas.
Just Charity and Michael. Should leave an impression.
Betting she dips after we graduate. Question is whether she gets a GED or not.
Gonna delete the math tutor bit then.
This is a materially false assertion, as the lawyers would say.
Mab has canonically walked through the angelically reinforced protections and guardian squad of the Carpenter household after Michael's retirement without triggering the countermeasures that would come from nonhuman evil or hostile intent.
Uriel has literally connived at empowering her chosen agent.
This is not true. They guard the Outer Gates. They already had face from everyone who matters.
The current Unseelie Accords are roughly twelve years old at this point, having been implemented in 1994 after a clash between factions spilled over into the real world and made Milwaukee disappear for several hours.
Most of the Accords govern relationships between supernatural factions.
Winter does not arbitrate the Accords; mutually-chosen mediators do, such as when Ortega showed up.
The text of the Accords are open, written records to everyone to learn about; Dresden canonically has a copy in his apartment as of Death Rites. Winter has no advantage there over any other faction.
Literally any three existing signatories can sponsor members, thats how Marcone got in via the sponsorship of Monoc + White Council + White Court.
Winter literally cant sponsor you alone according to the rules we know.
And yes, I believe they dont abuse it. Its supposed to be written that way, and the protagonist has a copy.
When Dresden was a wizard of the White Council, he didnt complain about how it advantages Winter.
Now he's Winter Knight, he doesnt giggle about how its in his favor.
Kornet
Quite possibly a sloth abomination
- Location
- Mother Russia
And that's where I think you are wrong, as I believe a mantle on a chassis with free will and on a chassis without free will are fundamentally different cases. And that is one of the very few and narrow applications of dresdenverse free will.
No, he didn't. He said "lies". Mab was speaking them, but didn't need to be aware they were lies to spread them. If, as I hypothesize, she herself was indoctrinated into Winter Law and told these lies, she might believe them to be true.
The problem is that to exercise that free will, you need to buckle the mantle. And Mab doesn't.
Kind of... Mechanically Isabela has academics 2 which would put her at College level, but it is not in fields American High Schools recognize as important, things like an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the Roman Empire, up to and including part of it modern historiography does not recognize because the source is 'I was there', being able to describe in detail the campaigns of Alexander the Great and offer a analyses on them that would impress a military historian or a creepily detailed understanding of how plagues spread historically and nowadays.
You have to keep in mind these people are vampires, they do not see themselves as part of human society, it would be psychologically unhealthy to engender a feeling of kinship to the the ones they must prey on.
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- Location
- Germany
You claimed that her mentor is propably of Roman age.
And even if he isn't quite that, he's definitly old, powerful and a relative outsider among his court.
I can totally see him having different priorities than modern tutors and if you let your daughter be mentored by an ancient monster, then you should let him do his thing with minimal interference.
I would not fault her father.