Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

VOTE
[X]Plan Duplicity
-[X]Turn 1: Powerup(while Eiko was transforming): Viridian Legend Exoskeleton + Steelskin: 2m
-[X]Turn 2: Combat
--[X]Attack Action: Attack + Melee Excellency: 1m
--[X]Defense Action: Parry + Melee Excellency
--[X]Movement Action: Stay between Eiko and your backup
-[X]Clippy: Text standby to those outside
-[X]Gard: Work up a Binding/containment rune as a backup
-[X]Lydia: Defend Gard/standby as secondary backup, next to wooden furniture for improvised stake if necessary.
[X]STUNT: Dark Sun snaps to full expansion with a hiss as Usum slides out of your other hand with a smooth, menacing purr, the blade glistening wet with in the light of the fires of your soul as you view the shower with satisfaction. Noone sneaking up on your team in this, you think, even with a veil. As the now familiar chanting starts up with the glowing writing crawling across your clothes, as infernal brass sheaths your skin, you murmur over your shoulder "Gard? Binding or containment. This one's a living messenger and a message." As Lydia moves up on your left, you rest a hand on her wrist, your shaking head drawing attention from your hand tracing out "Wood stake. Standby" on her skin. "Guard Gard." Then you move.


ACTIVE
All Things Betray: -3DC to Perception rolls, scenelong
Windborn Stride: x3 movement speed, x2 Initiative, passive
Demonic Primacy of Essence: -3DC to social rolls against lesser CoDs. passive.
Boiling Sea Mastery: -1DC to all rolls. passive
Viridian Legend Exoskeleton: scenelong
Steelskin: +sux to Stamina, cap of 8. Scenelong
Melee Excellency: 3/3 turns

Movement: 96 yards/combat turn


RATIONALE
It takes 3 combat turns to activate Demon Shintai.
So while she was powering up, so was Molly; Molly was just polite enough to let her finish.

Fire Soul is madness frenzy.
No duration given, but presumably a scene. Magical bindings, or a magic circle that can hold her that long in the event that she frenzies and cant be Intimidated into sitting down are the primary backup.

First option: Molly beats her down until she can plausibly surrender
Second option: If she frenzies, Gard getting her contained with a rune is our first option
Third option: Molly or Lydia stunts a wooden stake from the lobby furniture and impales her

Eiko is Shikome, and they are Yin-balanced.
Yin-balanced kueijin are vulnerable to being disabled by impalement by wood; Yang-balanced kuejin to being impaled by metal.
Having Molly use her demonblade to cut a stake out of lobby furniture, or having Lydia do it, is a viable stunt.
 
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Iron Mountain Discipline doesn't really protect against Agg unless you have the 8-dot power. If she doesn't have it, she's kind of helpless against our ability to consistently do large amounts of Agg damage.
It allows you to use Stamina for soaking Agg, up to your level of Iron Mountain.

So if she had 2 Iron Mountain, she would soak 2 more aggravated damage (Well, 2 more dice to soak).
 
I got the 1000 hells book. Bad places all told. But at least I was able to find names for a few more hell in case we ever make custom charms.
  • Hell of Eternal Paralysis
  • the Hell of Unceasing Failure
  • the Hell of Exquisitely Slow Disintegration
  • the Hell of the Ceaselessly Violated Spouse
  • the Hell of Absolute Self-Loathing and Self-Sabotage
  • The Little Hell of Despair (also known as the Ebony path)
  • The Hell of upside down sinners
  • The Hell of the 7 boiling seas
  • The Hell of Eternal Castration
  • The Hell of Those Who Sell Their Children
  • The Feverish Hell of Tou Shen
  • The Hell of Being Cut to Pieces
Reading though the book gave me an amazingly powerful urge to dethrone the Yami kings.
 
fairly sure without the needed shields or equivalents up even senior council members could be killed by a normal sniper. Their all very squishy well I wouldn't say all actually sorry simply cause a lot of them hide tricks and deals and pacts they've made for things across the years. Also it goes without saying its unlikely to happen simply cause their paranoid and have precautions for stuff like that.
 
That seems like evidence that Dresdenverse wizards don't soak agg. They are just a little better at healing it.
Thats up to the QM to adjudicate how it works in this AU.

But in canon, Dresden literally held the magic shields while his arm fried into uselessness by a flamethrower, then went ahead to go confront the White King later in the same day or the next. He wasnt immediately admitted to hospital for dehydration or lung damage or hyperpyrexia or rhabdomyolysis induced acute renal failure.

That sounds like Agg soak to me.
Yes, they also have very slow regen. They're wizards, they need it to survive their early days.
That is ignoring the Iron Mountain Discipline.
That wouldn't be visible until we try to wound her.
Not especially. Let me run you the numbers as I recall them.

▪▪▪
Buffed!Molly rolls 20 dice(Dex+Melee 9 + Excellency 9 + Stunt 2) on a single attack at DC5(standard DC6 - BSM 1).
Average 12 successes or so on a Key Ability.

Eiko rolls 12 dice(Dex 5 + Melee 5 + Demon Shintai bonus Dex 2) at DC6 to parry. Avg 6 sux.
Attack 12 > Defense 6, so we hit.
6 excess successes, which are added as bonus dice to our damage pool.

Our damage pool is base 6 damage(demonblade is Str+2), plus 6 bonus dice from the attack roll.
Total 12.
Rolled at DC5(standard difficulty 6 - BSM 1), average 7 successes.

Eiko rolls agg soak to defend.
Assuming Iron Mountain 5, Armor 2, she's rolling 7 dice at DC6.
Avg 3 sux, rounding down.

7 sux - 3 sux = 4 hls ofdamage.

Eiko has 10 HLs(base 7 + 3 bruised hls from Huge aspect)
4 damage applied to 10HLs is 10-4.
Remainder 6HLs.

Remember, she started with 10.

Essentially we just burned 40% of their health pool in one combat turn of 3 seconds.
If we burned 1 Essence on GSNF, we'd have added an extra +4hls(Str 4) of Agg damage, and she'd be down to 2HLs and -2 wound penalty in the first combat turn .

Thats why I said 3 combat turns or less.

The numbers for Molly's defense against Eiko's attack are similarly dire. Molly's Parry would be rolling 20 dice at DC4 (Dark Sun 4 + Multiaction penalty 1 - Boiling Sea Mastery 1) against Eiko's attack pool of 12 dice at DC6. Even if by some fluke Eiko got through that, she'd have to roll 10 damage at DC6 against Molly's ~13 soak at DC4(Base 6 - Scar Writ Saga Shield 1 - BSM 1).

The numbers seem pretty clear.
She wouldnt be able to scratch Molly, and Molly would kill her before the three turns of her Melee Excellency were up.
Without shintai.
It allows you to use Stamina for soaking Agg, up to your level of Iron Mountain.
So if she had 2 Iron Mountain, she would soak 2 more aggravated damage (Well, 2 more dice to soak).
See the math above; it doesnt really matter.
The disparity between a jina-tier shikome servitor/assassin of Emma-O and an E2 Infernal Exalt with significant combat investments is vast in a one on one, face to face engagement.

Its not how shikome are optimized to fight.

EDIT
Remember, what I was worrying about here was the prepared battlefield: the akuma under her command, and the suborned civilians in the hotel, possible boobytraps and so on.
There was never a serious argument about her personally being a threat in 1v1 against Molly.
 
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Ah, a small note, Eiko did not have to use three turns to turn on daemon Shintai. She has it down to two actions natively and she covered those with Black Wind+her regular action. She did all that in one turn.
 
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The numbers for Molly's defense against Eiko's attack are similarly dire. Molly's Parry would be rolling 20 dice at DC4 (Dark Sun 4 + Multiaction penalty 1 - Boiling Sea Mastery 1) against Eiko's attack pool of 12 dice at DC6. Even if by some fluke Eiko got through that, she'd have to roll 10 damage at DC6 against Molly's ~13 soak at DC4(Base 6 - Scar Writ Saga Shield 1 - BSM 1).
I disagree with that due to Black Wind.
Eiko could attack twice or more per turn, while we take increasing penalties on each attempt to parry.

She might not, since she doesn't want to win, but in a real fight we would have to rely on our soak pretty heavily.
See the math above; it doesnt really matter.
The disparity between a jina-tier shikome servitor/assassin of Emma-O and an E2 Infernal Exalt with significant combat investments is vast in a one on one, face to face engagement.

Its not how shikome are optimized to fight.
But it is how a Wan Kuei can be build to fight.

I do generally agree that she is unlikely to keep up with our damage-output from a soaking perspective, but you are too optimistic if you think an Elder Vampire, regardless of Court and details, couldn't hurt us in return.
Black Wind or Celerity are pretty OP until we have our own multi-action Charms.
 
Ah, a small note, Eiko did not have to use three turns to turn on daemon Chi. She has it down to two actions natively and she covered those with Black Wind+her regular action. She did all that in one turn.
Doesnt matter, I guess.
Molly's current spending limit is 2 Essence per turn, so while Eiko is bringing up Demon Shintai and Black Wind, Molly is bringing uo VLE + Steelskin. Then the next turn, both players roll Initiative again

And Molly first adds +2 from Usum, and then doubles hers because Windborn Stride.
Why, waste Essence on a fight we are not taking seriously?

Also why reveal such capabilities?

@DragonParadox is the plan ONLY if she goes beserk or as normal?
Because we're supposed to be selling it for any watchers, and there's only so much sandbagging you can do.
Also avoiding any avoidable injuries before the big throwdown at South Works.

Also, we're going to show much the same thing to the greater akuma, only that we're going to pop shintai there as well, and letting him or any other watcher assume this is the only thing works as a neat bit of legerdemain.
Note that Im deliberately not flying here.
I disagree with that due to Black Wind.
Eiko could attack twice or more per turn, while we take increasing penalties on each attempt to parry.
She might not, since she doesn't want to win, but in a real fight we would have to rely on our soak pretty heavily.
I dont believe thats how multi-action penalties work in ExWoD.
Too sleepy to dig up the book at the moment though.
ut it is how a Wan Kuei can be build to fight.

I do generally agree that she is unlikely to keep up with our damage-output from a soaking perspective, but you are too optimistic if you think an Elder Vampire, regardless of Court and details, couldn't hurt us in return.
Black Wind or Celerity are pretty OP until we have our own multi-action Charms.
With an elder akuma combat monster I'd be bursting out GSNF from the start.
Maybe shintai as well.

But for a shikome assassin? Nah.
Rocking up against Infernal combat monsters is not their job, they're not specced for it.
There's no shame in having a ~Dharma 5 equivalent losing to an E2 Celestial in 1v1 open combat.

And we dont actually need multi-action charms to deal with elders anyway.
Just retaliation. I know there's one in the book, cant recall its name.
 
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The Infernal counterattack charm is Spattering Grease Reprisal, a boiling oil charm that costs 2 essence and lasts for [Essence + 1] turns.

Vs Elder speedsters I think Open Eye of the Hurricane might be better as it allows free dodges against everything for a scene for 1 essence, combine it with an Athletics Excellency and its almost immunity to attacks.

Of course if you have all of them then it becomes, "fight me in melee and you just die while doing nothing," against anything not an extreme ultimate combat monster.
 
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And we dont actually need multi-action charms to deal with elders anyway.
Just retaliation. I know there's one in the book, cant recall its name.
straight retaliation charms:
seething veins prana (•••)
The Infernal's simmering hatred congeals within
her veins in the form of a boiling-hot poison.
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence to activate this Charm for a scene. Whenever the Infernal is struck and suffers lethal damage as a result, everyone within a yard of her suffers a high-pressure splatter of boiling, corrosive, toxic blood. This inflicts one automatic level of aggravated damage. The Infernal may instinctively and flawlessly track anyone harmed by this Charm un-
til they heal the damage it inflicted.
Signature Effect: Seething Veins Prana is always
active when the Infernal wears her Shintai form, and splashes everyone within (Essence) yards.

spattering grease reprisal (••••)
Whenever a foe is unwise enough to strike at the Infernal,
she splashes back at them, meeting violence with violence. System: Spend 2 Essence reflexively to activate this Charm. For the next (Essence rating + 1) turns, the Infernal responds to every attack that successful- ly strikes her by launching a reflexive counterattack at her full dice pool, if it's possible to strike back at the attacker. Whenever struck by an attack she cannot re- taliate against, she adds two dice to the damage of her
next successful counterattack during the scene. Signature Effect: Spattering Grease Reprisal is always active at no cost while the Infernal wears her Shintai form.

soul-sieve transmutation (•••)
The Infernal contemptuously walks through or
past attacks which should have struck her, shedding only a rain of writhing demon maggots instead of her precious blood.
System: So long as she's aware of an attack, the Infernal may soak with the highest of her Charisma, Leadership, Intimidation, or Occult ratings rather than Stamina, if she desires. If her Stamina rating is equal to or higher than all of the alternative traits of- fered by this Charm, then she adds one die to all soak rolls against attacks she's aware of.
After successfully soaking all of the damage of a
close-range attack, the Infernal may reflexively shower her attacker with demon maggots, increasing the diffi- culty of all of their actions by +2 until they spend an entire turn knocking off the writhing worms that seek to chew upon their flesh and clog their eyes and ears. She also lowers the difficulty of all attacks and Intimidate rolls against someone beset by her maggots by one
SST isn't a retaliatory attack or damage, but it is passive and hits the target with a universal difficulty enhancer and gives us an additional difficulty reduction against the target. It's unclear on if stacking applies. At some point it should stop, but more demon maggots being applied seems like it should have an effect.

In this particular case she's unlikely to make it past soak on her second or first attack of the turn, and after that she's failed that once all her following attacks are DC 8.

Or she spends a full turn doing nothing but clearing demon maggots, and we kill her via 20 dice of Agg against DC 4 that Eiko can't parry without stopping her maggot clearing action.

SGR is better for mass combat since it's a straight up retaliation effect, but the time limits are harsh with the costs involved.

SVP is just stupid; one level of Agg to everyone in a yard isn't worth leaving blood samples around in the DF.
 
Or she spends a full turn doing nothing but clearing demon maggots, and we kill her via 20 dice of Agg against DC 4 that Eiko can't parry without stopping her maggot clearing action.
If she wasn't sandbagging she could use Ghost Flame Shintai to become a big fire in that turn, or Yin/Yang Prana to become incorporeal and avoid both the attack and the maggots.

There are a lot of options for Elder Vamps.
Including some I'm not thinking of right now propably.
 
*checks again*
No, I was correct. They are forbidden to, because the Yama Kings reserve that privilege for greater akuma.
That suggests they are entirely capable of doing so if given the permission.

If nothing else, it answers the question of what lesser akuma feed on when in Yomi Wan.
Sure as hell isnt living humans or shen.

It doesn't say this is something that any given Yama King has ever lifted, or that the possibility exists. We don't know enough about akuma creation to say whether they practically could, or whether the restriction is something that the Yama Kings would have to collectively lift.

1) It does not net out.

Soul Commerce is a Intelligence + Law roll at DC8, and kueijin have no Key Abilities.
Furthermore, if the kuejin dont have No Mind or Harmony With The All from the Internalize Discipline, the difficulty becomes a DC 9 roll. Not to mention that Yama Kings and the like are free to ignore people they dont want to bargain with.


2) Most lesser akuma are not minmaxed for combat.
Kueijin go to the Yama Kings for their own purposes, which rarely involve Better Fight as a primary goal.

Half or more of the canon Investments available to a lesser akuma are for things like knowledge or Background dots or once daily extra chi regen, all of which are important to a kuejin trying to get ahead in society, or for an infiltrator working their way into position, but with very little applicability to high end combat.

How many akuma sold their soul for occult knowledge? An enemy's secrets? 4 dots of Background?

And while its not stated, there have to be hard limits to how many additional Investments a lesser akuma can hold.
Else greater akuma would not be as much of a big deal as they are.
Not if a Yama King can stack Iron Hands or Breath of Knowledge as they choose to the limit cap.


3)Yama Kings are both paranoid and sadistic.
None of them is out there building up their subordinates unnecessarily. Note how they dont allow lesser akuma feed from environmental chi in the material world, even though it would make their lives much easier and cost the Yama Kings nothing.

1) We're told that most akuma are experienced elder wan kuei who've had to do significant research even to learn the rituals to contact the Yama Kings to make a deal. That means they're going to prepare for negotiations. Only an incredibly stupid aspirant akuma will have a DC of 8. Every single one that has a functioning brain will pay someone with feng shui to set up their sanctum to help with the practice of law, for -1DC, and will have paid an astrologer with Tzu Wei to tell them what time/date they'll be lucky in the next week and will perform the ritual then, for another -1DC. They'll also have set up their sanctum to be extra lucky with low dot Tapestry, which means they ignore rolls of 1 and double 10s.

And yes, the sensible aspirant infernalist will have learned basic Internalise. Once again, these are generally elders. They time and access to tuition.

And this is with them not trying hard. If they are they can learn three for Tzu Wei themselves and get another -2 to their rolls if they're patients, and the Iron Mind Internalise power to multiply the number of successes they get for spending Willpower.

Elder wan kuei are also perfectly capable of investigating and learning about sorcereous alchemists, and buying ability boosting potions, given we know alchemists pay handsomely for wan kuei chi to use as an ingredient.

Generally, those competent enough to engage in Iris Bulb Commerce are competent enough to be good at it. That's deliberate. The Yama Kings want the Wan Kuei to know they have a realistic chance of winning so that people keep trying it and so they keep coming back.

This means that most akuma probably pay the listed price. And that's because the really good infernalists it's never actually become akuma by entering the service of the Yama Kings at all, because they buy what they need for a small fraction of their soul or none at all and then the various Yama Kings get wise to the fact that they're being taken for a ride and refuse further dealings.

2) The more expensive investments are terrible value. It's relatively easy for elder Wan Kuei to get dots in most backgrounds because they have supernatural powers and can just take them from mortals.

The extra chi regen is demon chi, which is a combat only resource that would only be taken to make you better at combat.

The really valuable investments, apart from Mask of Yomi which is basically a tax are the ones that allow you to cap break their dharmic limits, which are 5/6 points.

And the reason the Yama Kings want greater akuma is because they're the best and brightest of the Wan Kuei and they deny them to their enemies. I also would personally rule that you can only cap break an akuma with an investment by the given amount, so the maximum discipline you can give them is six, the maximum ability is 9, the maximum attribute is 7, the maximum Yin+Yang you can give them is 13 and the maximum Hun+Po you can give them is 15. Greater akuma can go significantly higher.

3) Depends on the Yama King. Emma-O's relationship with his Shikome is unusual, as, for example, is Haha no Fukami; who isn't sadistic at all.

RATIONALE
It takes 3 combat turns to activate Demon Shintai.
So while she was powering up, so was Molly; Molly was just polite enough to let her finish.

Or she used her Black Wind extra actions.
 
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I will say this much on the matter of Akuma combat prowess, Eiko's underlings, the ones that looked miserable from the journey did not have the look of elders to Molly, not enough poise and self-control. They looked like whatever the akuma version of footsoldiers is
 
Vs Elder speedsters I think Open Eye of the Hurricane might be better as it allows free dodges against everything for a scene for 1 essence, combine it with an Athletics Excellency and its almost immunity to attacks.
Obligatory moment to say why OEH is worse than it should be, because someone brought it up and now I have to.

OEH is mechanically identical to three different charms had by three different other Exalted types, with the following differences:
  • Sidereals have a version that is mechanically exactly the same in all respects under their Serenity charms, except they can choose between Athletics and Performance instead of being forced to choose Athletics with no alternatives like Infernals do
  • Solars have a version that is mechanically exactly the same in all respects under their Dawn charms, except they can choose between Athletics, Melee, and Brawl instead of being forced to choose Athletics with no alternatives like Infernals do, and they get to choose between Dodge, Parry, and Block instead of being forced to choose Dodge with no alternatives like Infernals do, and they don't have to pick the defense that matches the stat, so they can Dodge with Melee if they want to
  • Abyssals get a mirrored version of the Solar charm that is exactly mechanically identical to it in every way, but is fluff-wise nearly identical to the Infernal version of the charm, since the Abyssal version works by immersing themselves in their Exaltation to "detect killing intent," and the Infernal version works by immersing themselves in the Hell of Being Skinned Alive to "detect air currents and killing intent," and yet somehow the Infernals get the mechanically vastly inferior version of the charm both of the other Solaroids get and even the Sidereals get a better knock-off of, despite there being no fluff reason for that to be the case
TL;DR: That particular charm is one of the best examples of how Infernals are the least favorite splat of the author, and every new bit of information on the matter makes me more salty about this particular charm. Especially because the Melee version would be so much better for our build.
 
I will say this much on the matter of Akuma combat prowess, Eiko's underlings, the ones that looked miserable from the journey did not have the look of elders to Molly, not enough poise and self-control. They looked like whatever the akuma version of footsoldiers is

It looks like Emma-O might be trying something new.

There normally isn't an akuma equivalent of foot soldiers. All akuma are 'officers', the foot soldiers are devils in the spirits realms and bakemono in the material world.

It looks to me like rather than his usual approach in the modern nights of exclusively recruiting experienced female Wan Kuei to serve him, letting the Courts go through the hassle of training and educating them, he's having his shikome recruit fresh Chin-Mei, probably male ones, and having his servants mentally influence them into performing the Rite of Renunciation without them selling their soul first.

That would make lesser akuma, but vastly less capable ones than the expected standard of century old ones that have become disillusioned and gradually traded away their souls for power before losing that last fraction.
 
It looks like Emma-O might be trying something new.

There normally isn't an akuma equivalent of foot soldiers. All akuma are 'officers', the foot soldiers are devils in the spirits realms and bakemono in the material world.

It looks to me like rather than his usual approach in the modern nights of exclusively recruiting experienced female Wan Kuei to serve him, letting the Courts go through the hassle of training and educating them, he's having his shikome recruit fresh Chin-Mei, probably male ones, and having his servants mentally influence them into performing the Rite of Renunciation without them selling their soul first.

That would make lesser akuma, but vastly less capable ones than the expected standard of century old ones that have become disillusioned and gradually traded away their souls for power before losing that last fraction.

Reasons why he might be doing this (and this is all Molly guessing) include:
  1. They know how the modern world works and do not stand out as much
  2. They are not harmed by holy water and can enter holy ground
  3. They just flat out to not creep sensitives and spirits out as much as bakemono which tend to get a posy called on their trail relatively fast if they show up in large numbers (OOC: This is not WoD, the local factory is not a Pentex owned addictive make-up and possessed action figure production facility)
 
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It looks like Emma-O might be trying something new.

There normally isn't an akuma equivalent of foot soldiers. All akuma are 'officers', the foot soldiers are devils in the spirits realms and bakemono in the material world.

It looks to me like rather than his usual approach in the modern nights of exclusively recruiting experienced female Wan Kuei to serve him, letting the Courts go through the hassle of training and educating them, he's having his shikome recruit fresh Chin-Mei, probably male ones, and having his servants mentally influence them into performing the Rite of Renunciation without them selling their soul first.

That would make lesser akuma, but vastly less capable ones than the expected standard of century old ones that have become disillusioned and gradually traded away their souls for power before losing that last fraction.
But much cheaper ones.

No time and energy spend on long negotiations over investment, no risk of failing against successful Infernalists.

And if even one or two of a group makes it through the first century you have the equivalent of a real Akuma, but with loyalty right from the start, experience and skill in the areas you want them to have that, rather than in random areas their Court considered important and they have no way back to Courts of the Wan Kuei, no better way they might even try to return to.
 
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