Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

Alternatively, get our hands on a small nuke, purchase Lydia and Molly's perfect defense charms, and hope the fight takes place someplace remote (so Uncaring Ice-Soul Redoubt rather than Ablation of Brass and Fire). No bigwig in Dresden Files has demonstrated a defence strong enough to tank even the smallest nuke, after all. Their "perfect" defenses cap out at city block-level, considering Mab's show of force against Ethniu is the best defence we've seen so far.

Oh, and cross fingers nobody starts WWIII when we set off an unauthorized nuclear detonation.

(If we don't use a nuke at some point in this quest, I will be sad; what's the point of invincibility if you don't take advantage in the most over-the-top manner possible?)
Actually just cause the damage is city block level those abilities we see have conceptual oomph. Nicodemus wouldn't be harmed by a nuke with the noose after all. We can safely assume a lot of abilities have that kinda oomph and certain beings can only directly be killed by certain things or certain times or certain items. Of course we are exalted so so that's less of a concern once we get running we can get immortal killing bullshit. Also as dp once said a nuke might in fact have some conceptual oomph lol.
 
Adhoc vote count started by Yzarc on Mar 26, 2023 at 10:14 AM, finished with 67 posts and 14 votes.

  • [X] Promise to explain to Murphy why you let Lady Eiko live
    -[X] Tell the truth
    [X] Refuse to explain (Will damage your relationship with Murphy)
    [X] Loose lips sink ships
    -[X] Promise to explain to Murphy why you let Lady Eiko live, but only after we determine that enough time has passed, and events sufficiently unfolded, that the information we reveal to her, cannot be used to our detriment by those she wishes to share it with.
    [X] Plan Kept in the Dark and Fed on Bullshit
    -[X] Explain some of the reasoning involved in why you want to keep this secret.
    -[X] [Stunt] Molly takes a breath and looks Murphy in the eyes, her full attention on her and the seriousness of the issue.
    —[X] "I'm not doing this to show off, or playing fast and loose with the law or basic decency for my own convenience" she says in a voice full of quiet confidence. "I can only imagine how frustrating it is to deal with this stuff from your end, when so much of the supernatural world looks down on mortals and treats them like mushrooms."
    —[X] With something almost like a sharp grin, she continues "I've been in the thick of it for essentially no time at all and already I'm impressed by the way you haven't shot someone for giving one 'beyond mortal ken' too many"
    —[X] "So I realize how big a request it is when I ask you to trust me here. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and the reason I want to avoid the details isn't because I don't trust you or respect your position. It's because something big just changed and just speaking about it could ruin things."
    —[X] Swallowing the impulse to conceal weakness, Molly plows forward "I'm going to ask that you let this go, for now, because I don't know precisely who or how many people it will be the difference between life and worse than death for yet. Just that it's more than one and I haven't had time to figure out where all the wrong ears are or how loud of a whisper would set them off"
 
I will say this much, the universeis not what it was, if by some dreadful mischance the souls of the Yozis were to walk the living earth the pillars of existence would shake with their alien intrusion upon reality. So comparing their powers directly to modern supernatural heavy weights does not work that well with the canvas of 'what can be done and how' having shifted in the passing of ages.
Offhand I know this is at least like 4 or more in real life years minimum. But could we ever reached essence 6 and go full tiger stuff? Or just not something this quest is able to do period? Cause most campaigns don't actually allow that to happen.
 
Their "perfect" defenses cap out at city block-level, considering Mab's show of force against Ethniu is the best defence we've seen so far.
Just to point out, large effects may not be more powerful than smaller ones. Like the difference between a heating pad and a blowtorch.

Both produce heat, but one is much more intense than the other, while being smaller.


[X] Promise to explain to Murphy why you let Lady Eiko live
-[X] Tell the truth
 
The danger to informational security Murphy poses is negligible. No one is going to magically interrogate her about this for a simple reason that she's a mere mortal. Without mental protection she might be turned against us, but chances that so eone will think to interrogate her about this using mind compulsions is negligible.

And in a relatively short time I am fairly sure we'll be picking up enchantments. Pr getting mind protection talismans from our kingdom to distribute.

Edit: And Awakened Eye of the Dragon if Murphy counts as a companion should also help.
 
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The danger to informational security Murphy poses is negligible. No one is going to magically interrogate her about this for a simple reason that she's a mere mortal. Without mental protection she might be turned against us, but chances that so eone will think to interrogate her about this using mind compulsions is negligible.
She's a huge info-risk as long as she might decide to tell the Library of Congress about this.

Even putting aside the fact that we can read her darkest secrets with no chance of her resisting, with a power that has the flavor of Kakuri no less, as long as her loyalties are to a goverment that is not really our friend she is a risk.
 
Edit: And Awakened Eye of the Dragon if Murphy counts as a companion should also help.
Companions seems to just means allies of caster who are present for Awakened Eye of the Dragon. It is just an improved version of the Rite of the Opened Caern. Given it doesn't mention any requirements or number limits I assume it just means it effects everyone present.
 
[X] Refuse to explain (Will damage your relationship with Murphy)

[X] Plan Kept in the Dark and Fed on Bullshit


Double voting for BronzeTongue's plan since it says little enough to be relativly harmless and might soften the blow to our barely-existing relationship with Murphy.
Don't really think it will help, but won't hurt.
 
[X] Refuse to explain (Will damage your relationship with Murphy)

[X] Plan Kept in the Dark and Fed on Bullshit
 
Companions seems to just means allies of caster who are present for Awakened Eye of the Dragon. It is just an improved version of the Rite of the Opened Caern. Given it doesn't mention any requirements or number limits I assume it just means it effects everyone present.
It's an Ancient Sorcery spell worth 10XP. That's a 2.5 dots charm equivalent, which is narratively enabled by exalted having admin level access to reality's code. Adding onto that it has further requirements, like rolling against the spirit of the nest, meaning that you also need to invest heavily into occult and intelligence for it to be useful.

What I am saying is that for it to be worthwhile as a tool of returned exalted host, it's completely reasonable to expect it to empower all our companions via arcane links and direct reality manipulation.
 
Any chance I could convince people to meet in the middle on this?

My vote is basically refusing for the moment until we have a better idea of what the situation is like. We might want to involve her later anyway or keep her out entirely, but we can't exactly make an informed decision before we even have an actual plan.

Accept or reject, I also think it's important to lay out some basic reasoning behind our behavior. We don't want her to think we're being a stupid kid and stonewalling her about it as implied here:
we have to get ready and not leave an enemy on the loose so you can show off.

We also don't want her to think she strong armed us into it, because that implies we didn't really think our reason for keeping secrets through that well. If we do share we should lay out what we were thinking initially and why so that it's clear we're making calculated decisions and not flailing around on reflex.
 
While I understand your point, she is almost certainly damned to mega-hell anyway. Unless we permadeath her or we win the lottery and Emma-O is redeemed (or killed). Her soul is the property of Emma-O, when she eventually fails him significantly or dies she will be damned to kakuri and Emma-O attentions regardless.
Maybe, but I'd rather not give up from the start. We don't have to be stupid about it and fight to the death for her half baked tepid ass redemption scheme, but if we were going to screw Eiko from the start we should have killed her on the spot to spare her the attentions of a pissed off demon king.

[X] Refuse to explain (Will damage your relationship with Murphy)

[X] Plan Kept in the Dark and Fed on Bullshit


Double voting for BronzeTongue's plan since it says little enough to be relativly harmless and might soften the blow to our barely-existing relationship with Murphy.
Don't really think it will help, but won't hurt.
I think it's important to lay out your reasoning when dealing with people you respect when doing something they don't like and if possible get buy in from them on it.

Most of the time Murphy isn't treated like she has any agency when involved in the supernatural unless she currently has a gun to someone's head and they happen to be weak to whatever she's got loaded in it.

Coming at this with an explanation of why we're doing stuff that doesn't boil down to "I know better puny mortal" seems like it should make an important difference.

Edit:

Do devil eaten Akuma also have their souls stored in a vault by the way? Cause SRE is broader than I thought it was.
sapphire ritual oF exorCism
The sorcerer adorns a chamber with ritual im- plements reflecting the five elements, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the grave, then slowly focuses her Essence into a purifying mandala of absolute reality which splits apart any unnatural joining of matter and spirit.
System: The character enacts an hour-long ritual, then spends 5 Essence and makes an Intelligence + Occult roll against difficulty 8. Success ends any form of possession afflicting the ritual's subject, ejecting the possessing spirit or shade. Because of the ritual's length, its subject must usually be restrained in some way if they don't consent to the exorcism. This spell terminates possession by spirits and ghosts, mind and spirit-riding with powers such as high-level Animalism or Dominate, the Dragon-Blooded Charm Sense-Rid- ing Method, and so on. It immediately evicts demons from their hosts (whether that be mortal flesh or a graven idol), and can even separate the Bane from a fomor – although fomori suffer 10 dice of lethal dam- age as the Bane rips its way free of their flesh, rolled at a rate of one die per minute over the course of 10 agonizing minutes.
It's not just possession in the traditional sense; it also purges spirit riding, spying, and control effect.

We're talking about big leagues absolute effect magics from the dawn of time here too, so I'd bet on it superseding any effect even loosely in its area of authority.

It's even possible that her body could act as a focus to project a ritual at her soul if it is captured, freeing it to snap back to her body.

Might cost Eiko her powers, which she isn't interested in, but if that works we could still potentially steal other Akuma with less to lose switching sides.
 
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[X] Refuse to explain (Will damage your relationship with Murphy)
-[x]If you want to go back and kill her I am not going to take any action to stop you. You are a free agent after all. Maybe you could even arrest her if you kept her in a cage of wood.
 
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[X] Refuse to explain (Will damage your relationship with Murphy)
-[x]If you want to go back and kill her I am not going to take any action to stop you. You are a free agent after all.
That seems like a pointless jab. For one thing the place it still full of Akuma that would object.

For another her problem isn't precisely that we didn't kill her, though that's a factor, it's that we're behaving in an erratic way and refusing to explain ourselves. Or at least that's how I'm reading it.

Remember that Murphy is an agent of the law, she doesn't like the monsters eating people or performing summary executions.

Sharing the full truth with her here and now, or even later if she plans to go to the Library with it, is most likely a bad idea. That doesn't mean we can't attempt to make clear we aren't flailing around.

Her position isn't really that unreasonable given what is actually visible to others about what we're up to. She just doesn't have access to the information that puts our actions in proper context because we're deliberately keeping it from her.
 
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