We asked the crown and it doesn't lie. It didn't say anything about him being mind controlled.
I said nothing about mind control.
Just undue influence, of the same relative level whicn was used against Dresden in Changes.
And frankly, there's nothing here saying that Eiko didnt simply lie about the details, or the cost to him.
She lied to us in an official diplomatic communique where she was speaking on behalf of her Hellish patron and his nationstate.
She certainly has no compunctions about lying to a mortal dupe.
They don't spend all day there, so there are opportunities.
We could also just fire bomb the meeting point and screw off. We aren't the only ones on a time limit, and ours is centered on the ritual.
If we know it's going to go off in our face anyway doing it on their terms isn't help. Their time limit is centered on how long they can be this overt without provoking a response from the other powers in the area, who decidedly aren't interested in more local competition.
There are complications with that, but I still think that letting our enemies dictate the time, place, and pace of the engagement is a losing strategy even if we have a clever trick in mind.
Their movements arent predictable, and we only have two mornings between now and our scheduled meeting
A firebombing wont kill it, and Im averse to leaving an akuma walking around Chicago with Cauldron hanging out in the open.
Sometimes risk is unavoidable in the setting, like Dresden coming into Arctis Tor after us. Or us walking into a prepared ritual site at the museum, or Ikku-Turso's 'air.
Risk is why they pay us the big bucks.
And we have options for preparation that they are unaware of.
They know about Dresden and Micnael, but not that we have Alchemy 2 and Shih arts. Or that Gard will trade.
See that Factory Fog recipe we paid XP for, and make a couple, with Holy Water as the payload.
Make some antipoison and HP potions.
Get Dresden and Porter together and see what they can do about inverting the Dragon Lines, and what it will cost us.
Get the antimuggle ward from Gard to keep muggled and thralls out. See if Lydia needs help with Command the Dead drones.
That kind of thing.
So, reading the description of Iron Mountain, it adds its rating to soak… but… the 8 dot power says it lets you apply your soak to Aggravated damage. Can they not normally apply soak to Agg damage? Have I just been taking the ability to soak Agg for granted because Exalted treat it the same as Lethal for most purposes? Is that not actually common? Is the fact that we have basically at-will access to Agg significantly better than I thought it was?
No they cant.
Vampires soak Agg with armor and vampire magic like Fortitude; Stamina doesnt usually apply.
Iron Mountain is the Kueijin equivalent of Fortitude for western Vamps, just works slightly differently.
Now to be fair, Iron Mountain isnt supposed to be used alone.
Combined with other Disciplines, like say, Demon Shintai 8, they can buy 4 points of Demon Armor(which soaks Agg) and still have an extra 7 Demon Aspects for building out their warform. And she probably has light concealable armor like Molly does.
Assuming she has Iron Mountain 8 and Stamina 7 in warform?
Add +1 soak from magic armor, and +4 Demon Armor for a total of 12 Soak against Agg.
Which is respectable compared to nonshintai Molly's ~10-11 Soak, if not quite on the level of shintai!Molly's monstrous 19 Soak.
Regardless, Agg isnt really common, outside of fire and creature-specific banes.
Akuma and Wan Kuei can get it, but its not common.
There's a reason our first Demon Aspect was Agg damage.
TL;DR: I am not impressed with their plan to fight us. It might have worked on a baby freshly-Exalted Molly, but we've put too much XP and resources into being harder to kill and have the massive amount of Agg damage to put them down in turn, and MiM means that they're not getting their souls sent back to their master to carry back intel and start again.
You're beginning to get why I've been arguing hubris and ignorance as an issue.
Im expecting a summoning or something else to buff available forces, because once Molly pops shintai herself, she will take damage but she'll go through the assembled forces like shit through a goose.
