Your vote is not going to be counted like this, the correct format for the second part is: -[x] (Stunt) In a clean glass please. Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Your vote is not going to be counted like this, the correct format for the second part is: -[x] (Stunt) In a clean glass please. Cleanliness is next to godliness.
[X] Normally, order a root beer
I think the phrasing could use some work, since it's a bit too specific about consequences that we can only speculate on. Mab probably won't get violent, especially towards us since we're meeting her under what's effectively a truce, but it's still possible that she might do something personally that isn't induced by third party back stabbing.
Which would make it awkward after we implicitly assured Murphy that any trouble wouldn't be either of our fault.
It might also be worth taking a minute to explain what the hell is going on politically if we actually tell her about Mab specifically rather than saying that we're meeting someone powerful. Infosec is important, but hiding common knowledge isn't necessarily helpful.
Murphy gets most of her info from Harry at this point, so it's genuinely possible she's only got the loosest idea of the fact that they fey are actually organized into sizable nations and that Mab isn't a petty warlord with a single frozen city in the wilderness to her name.
Maybe just that? Tell her we're meeting some big wig winter reps, explain what that means in general terms, and stipulate there isn't currently a reason to think it'll go south in an immediately dangerous way.
The stunt is sort of insulting if it isn't picked up properly on Mac's end.
The base vote you're using isn't intended for dropping a hint for him, so it might be a good idea to stick your stunt on the subterfuge specific one instead.
I wouldn't say it's her jurisdiction yeah, but I view it as insurance of a sort. If it goes well we build up some credit and get her more used to taking our information seriously.
If it goes poorly then we're inarguably covered under our agreement and build more credibility.
The costs of this line of action are all in what information we choose to reveal. As long as we don't get into anything past the public level it's close to free.
It's a tad manipulative, but even going as far as saying our meeting is with a high official of the court would technically be the truth. Which isn't an idea distinction to make, but is justifiable as trying not to piss her off if we need to later.
It'd cost us some of our credit if things went sour, but I think we'd still come out ahead in that case.
Seems like pretty low cost and risk for a moderate reward. Not the most profitable operation ever, but if you see a few dollars on the ground you might as well pick them up.
Revealing the comings and goings of the queen of the winter Court is how you get more enemy dots. Like what if some asshole reads her minds and places an ambush for mab. I would be fine with it if it was someone else but mass everything is top secret. Its like telling the local bear cop that American president is visiting.
The potential disfavour with mab is not worth the potential favour with Murphy.
[X] Normally, order a root beer
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING AT THE APOCALYPSE
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
Some small amount of leeway is likely if you are revealing the basics to better the ground upon which any dealings are made. Keeping interference away and whatnot, as you might see when a noble makes arrangements with his own court to ensure another noble is given all due respect and full protection under guest right. If that means bringing aside your marshal you bring aside your marshal.
But its dangerous as fuck to her. At that point she would be treated as a member of our household and our sins are hers, hers are ours, and her chances of offense skyrocket.
Leave it to actual crises in the case of temperamental figures of great power.
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Elder Solar: What is this a-doo-lut-hud you speak of? Can be it be crafted into an abomination against nature/bound to eternal service?
Yes actually.
Uriel showing up is a lot like Gandalf showing up in the Lord of the Rings; a herald of Interesting Times.
It would be like her being a Chicago cop and the state AG or the FBI director making an unannounced visit to Chicago over some case or other; she would very much want to know.
1)The skinwalker had been about Chicago for a while before we figured it out too, but I dont think anyone can reasonably argue that its presence wasnt her business either.
Jim Butcher explicitly calls MacAnally very dangerous, so its not like Im making this up.
2)It most definitely is covered by our promise, given that Mab was attacked in her capital by persons unknown commanding a small army and wielding Hellfire.
An attack that Molly certainly walked through the aftermath while leaving Arctis Tor.
Yes it does. I respectfully but strongly disagree with you.
Molly was at Arctis Tor.
During their escape, Molly would have seen the remains of the massive battle that was fought in the courtyard and in front of the walls of Mab's capital, complete with actual Hellfire being thrown at the walls.
The last two hundred yards or so were completely open, with no trees or undulation of terrain to shield our approach from the walls of the fortress. I lifted a hand to call a halt at the edge of the last hummock of stone that would shelter us from view. Lily's butterfly drifted in erratic circles around my head, snowflakes hissing to steam where they touched it.
I peered over the edge of a frozen boulder at Arctis Tor for a long time, then settled back down again.
"I don't see anyone," I said, trying to keep my voice down.
"Doesn't make any sense," Thomas said. He was panting and shivering a little, despite Lily's warding magic. "I thought this was supposed to be Mab's headquarters. This place looks deserted."
"It makes perfect sense," I said. "Winter's forces are all poised to hit Summer. You don't do that from the heart of your own territory. You gather at strong points near the enemy's border. If we're lucky, maybe there's just a skeleton garrison here."
Murphy peered around the edge of the stones and said, "The gate's open. I don't see any guards." She frowned. "There are… there's something on the open ground between here and there. See?"
I leaned next to her and peered. Vague, shadowy shapes stirred in the wind between us and the fortress, insubstantial as any shadow. "Oh," I said. "It's a glamour. Illusion, laid out around the place. Probably a hedge maze of some kind."
"And it fools people?" she asked uncertainly.
"It fools people who don't have groovy wizard ointment for their eyes," I said. Then I frowned and said, "Wait a minute. The gate isn't open. It's gone."
"What?" Charity asked. She leaned out and stared. "There is a broken lattice of ice on the ground around the gate. A portcullis?"
"Could be," I agreed. "And inside." I squinted. "I think I can see some heavier pieces. Like maybe someone ripped apart the portcullis and blew the gate in." I took a deep breath, feeling a hysterical little giggle lurking in my throat. "Something huffed and puffed and blew the house in. Mab's house."
The wind howled over the frozen mountains.
"Well," Thomas said. "That can't be good."
Charity bit her lip. "Molly."
"I thought you said this Mab was all mighty and stuff, Harry," Murphy said.
"She is," I said, frowning.
"Then who plays big bad wolf to her little pig?"
"I…" I shook my head and rubbed at my mouth. "I'm starting to think that maybe I'm getting a little bit out of my depth, here."
Thomas broke out into a rippling chuckle, a faint note of hysteria to it. He turned his back to the fortress and sat down, chortling.
I glowered at him and said, "It's not funny."
"It is from here," Thomas said. "I mean, God, you are dense sometimes. Are you just now noticing this, Harry?"
I glowered at him some more. "To answer your question, Murph, I don't know who did this, but the list of the people who could is fairly short. Maybe the Senior Council could if they had the Wardens along, but they're busy, and they'd have had to fight a campaign to get this far. Maybe the vampires could have done it, working together, but that doesn't track. I don't know. Maybe Mab pissed off a god or something."
"There is only one God," Charity said.
I waved a hand and said, "No capital 'G,' Charity, in deference to your beliefs. But there are beings who aren't the Almighty who have power way beyond anything running around the planet."
"Like who?" Murphy asked.
"Old Greek and Roman and Norse deities. Lots and lots of Amerind divinity, and African tribal beings. A few Australian aboriginal gods; others in Polynesia, southeast Asia. About a zillion Hindu gods. But they've all been dormant for centuries." I frowned at Arctis Tor. "And I can't think what Mab might have done to earn their enmity. She's avoided doing that for thousands of years."
Unless, of course, I thought to myself, Maeve and Lily are right, and she really has gone bonkers.
"Dresden," Charity said. "This is academic. We either go in or we leave. Now."
I chewed my lip and nodded. Then I dug in my pockets for the tiny vial of blood Charity had provided, and hunted through the rocks until I found a spot clear enough to chalk out a circle. I empowered it and wrought one of my usual tracking spells, keying it to a sensation of warmth against my senses. Cold as it was, I would hardly mind anything that might make me feel a little less freeze-dried.
I broke the circle and released the spell, and immediately felt a tingling warmth on my left cheekbone. I turned to face it, and found myself staring directly at Arctis Tor. I paced fifty or sixty yards to the side, and faced the warmth again, working out a rough triangulation.
"She's alive," I told Charity, "or the spell wouldn't have worked. She's in there. Let's go."
"Wait," Charity said. She gave me a look filled with discomfort and then said, "May I say a brief prayer for us first?"
"Can't hurt," I said. "I'll take all the help I can get."
She bowed her head and said, "Lord of hosts, please stand with us against this darkness." The quiet, bedrock-deep energy of true faith brushed against me. Charity crossed herself. "Amen."
Murphy echoed the gesture and the amen. Thomas and I tried to look theologically invisible. Then, without further speech, I swung out around the frozen stone cairn and broke into a quick, steady jog. The others followed along.
I passed the first bones fifty yards from the walls. They lay in a crushed, twisted jumble in the snow, frozen into something that looked like a macabre Escher print. The bones were vaguely human, but I couldn't be sure because they had been pulverized to dust in some places, warped like melted wax in others. It was the first grisly memorial of many. As I kept going forward, brittle, frozen bones crunched under my boots, lying closer and thicker, and twisted more horribly, as we drew closer to Arctis Tor. By the time we got to the gate, I was shin-deep in icy bones. They spread out on either side in an enormous wheel of horrible remains centered on the gate. Whoever they had been, thousands of their kind had perished here.
Charity's guess about the portcullis had been bang on. Pieces of it lay scattered about, mixed among the bones. Where the gate arched beneath the fortress walls, there were still more bones, waist-deep on me, and slabs of planed dark ice, the remains of the fortress gate, stuck out at odd angles. The walls of Arctis Tor had been pitted with what I could only assume had been an acid of some kind. There were larger gouges blown out of the walls here and there, but against their monolithic volume, they were little more than pockmarks.
I pushed ahead to the gate, plowing my way through bones. Once there, I caught a faint whiff of something familiar. I leaned closer to one of the craters blown out of the wall and sniffed.
"What is it?" Thomas asked me.
"Sulfur," I said quietly. "Brimstone."
"What does that mean?" he asked.
"No way to tell," I half lied. But my intuition was absolutely certain of what had happened here. Someone had thrown Hellfire against the walls of Arctis Tor. Which meant that the forces of the literal Hell, or their agents, were also playing a part in the ongoing events.
Way, way, way out of my depth.
I told myself that it didn't matter. There was a young woman inside that frozen boneyard who would die if I did not burgle her out of this nightmare. If I did not control my fear, there was an excellent chance that it would warn her captors of my approach. So I fought the fear that threatened to make me start throwing up, or something equally humiliating and potentially fatal.
I readied my shield, gripped my staff, ground my teeth together, and then continued pushing my way forward, through the bones and into the eerie dimness of the most ridiculously dangerous place I had ever been.
I peered over the edge of a frozen boulder at Arctis Tor for a long time, then settled back down again.
"I don't see anyone," I said, trying to keep my voice down.
"Doesn't make any sense," Thomas said. He was panting and shivering a little, despite Lily's warding magic. "I thought this was supposed to be Mab's headquarters. This place looks deserted."
"It makes perfect sense," I said. "Winter's forces are all poised to hit Summer. You don't do that from the heart of your own territory. You gather at strong points near the enemy's border. If we're lucky, maybe there's just a skeleton garrison here."
Murphy peered around the edge of the stones and said, "The gate's open. I don't see any guards." She frowned. "There are… there's something on the open ground between here and there. See?"
I leaned next to her and peered. Vague, shadowy shapes stirred in the wind between us and the fortress, insubstantial as any shadow. "Oh," I said. "It's a glamour. Illusion, laid out around the place. Probably a hedge maze of some kind."
"And it fools people?" she asked uncertainly.
"It fools people who don't have groovy wizard ointment for their eyes," I said. Then I frowned and said, "Wait a minute. The gate isn't open. It's gone."
"What?" Charity asked. She leaned out and stared. "There is a broken lattice of ice on the ground around the gate. A portcullis?"
"Could be," I agreed. "And inside." I squinted. "I think I can see some heavier pieces. Like maybe someone ripped apart the portcullis and blew the gate in." I took a deep breath, feeling a hysterical little giggle lurking in my throat. "Something huffed and puffed and blew the house in. Mab's house."
The wind howled over the frozen mountains.
"Well," Thomas said. "That can't be good."
Charity bit her lip. "Molly."
"I thought you said this Mab was all mighty and stuff, Harry," Murphy said.
"She is," I said, frowning.
"Then who plays big bad wolf to her little pig?"
"I…" I shook my head and rubbed at my mouth. "I'm starting to think that maybe I'm getting a little bit out of my depth, here."
Thomas broke out into a rippling chuckle, a faint note of hysteria to it. He turned his back to the fortress and sat down, chortling.
I glowered at him and said, "It's not funny."
"It is from here," Thomas said. "I mean, God, you are dense sometimes. Are you just now noticing this, Harry?"
I glowered at him some more. "To answer your question, Murph, I don't know who did this, but the list of the people who could is fairly short. Maybe the Senior Council could if they had the Wardens along, but they're busy, and they'd have had to fight a campaign to get this far. Maybe the vampires could have done it, working together, but that doesn't track. I don't know. Maybe Mab pissed off a god or something."
"There is only one God," Charity said.
I waved a hand and said, "No capital 'G,' Charity, in deference to your beliefs. But there are beings who aren't the Almighty who have power way beyond anything running around the planet."
"Like who?" Murphy asked.
"Old Greek and Roman and Norse deities. Lots and lots of Amerind divinity, and African tribal beings. A few Australian aboriginal gods; others in Polynesia, southeast Asia. About a zillion Hindu gods. But they've all been dormant for centuries." I frowned at Arctis Tor. "And I can't think what Mab might have done to earn their enmity. She's avoided doing that for thousands of years."
Unless, of course, I thought to myself, Maeve and Lily are right, and she really has gone bonkers.
"Dresden," Charity said. "This is academic. We either go in or we leave. Now."
I chewed my lip and nodded. Then I dug in my pockets for the tiny vial of blood Charity had provided, and hunted through the rocks until I found a spot clear enough to chalk out a circle. I empowered it and wrought one of my usual tracking spells, keying it to a sensation of warmth against my senses. Cold as it was, I would hardly mind anything that might make me feel a little less freeze-dried.
I broke the circle and released the spell, and immediately felt a tingling warmth on my left cheekbone. I turned to face it, and found myself staring directly at Arctis Tor. I paced fifty or sixty yards to the side, and faced the warmth again, working out a rough triangulation.
"She's alive," I told Charity, "or the spell wouldn't have worked. She's in there. Let's go."
"Wait," Charity said. She gave me a look filled with discomfort and then said, "May I say a brief prayer for us first?"
"Can't hurt," I said. "I'll take all the help I can get."
She bowed her head and said, "Lord of hosts, please stand with us against this darkness." The quiet, bedrock-deep energy of true faith brushed against me. Charity crossed herself. "Amen."
Murphy echoed the gesture and the amen. Thomas and I tried to look theologically invisible. Then, without further speech, I swung out around the frozen stone cairn and broke into a quick, steady jog. The others followed along.
I passed the first bones fifty yards from the walls. They lay in a crushed, twisted jumble in the snow, frozen into something that looked like a macabre Escher print. The bones were vaguely human, but I couldn't be sure because they had been pulverized to dust in some places, warped like melted wax in others. It was the first grisly memorial of many. As I kept going forward, brittle, frozen bones crunched under my boots, lying closer and thicker, and twisted more horribly, as we drew closer to Arctis Tor. By the time we got to the gate, I was shin-deep in icy bones. They spread out on either side in an enormous wheel of horrible remains centered on the gate. Whoever they had been, thousands of their kind had perished here.
Charity's guess about the portcullis had been bang on. Pieces of it lay scattered about, mixed among the bones. Where the gate arched beneath the fortress walls, there were still more bones, waist-deep on me, and slabs of planed dark ice, the remains of the fortress gate, stuck out at odd angles. The walls of Arctis Tor had been pitted with what I could only assume had been an acid of some kind. There were larger gouges blown out of the walls here and there, but against their monolithic volume, they were little more than pockmarks.
I pushed ahead to the gate, plowing my way through bones. Once there, I caught a faint whiff of something familiar. I leaned closer to one of the craters blown out of the wall and sniffed.
"What is it?" Thomas asked me.
"Sulfur," I said quietly. "Brimstone."
"What does that mean?" he asked.
"No way to tell," I half lied. But my intuition was absolutely certain of what had happened here. Someone had thrown Hellfire against the walls of Arctis Tor. Which meant that the forces of the literal Hell, or their agents, were also playing a part in the ongoing events.
Way, way, way out of my depth.
I told myself that it didn't matter. There was a young woman inside that frozen boneyard who would die if I did not burgle her out of this nightmare. If I did not control my fear, there was an excellent chance that it would warn her captors of my approach. So I fought the fear that threatened to make me start throwing up, or something equally humiliating and potentially fatal.
I readied my shield, gripped my staff, ground my teeth together, and then continued pushing my way forward, through the bones and into the eerie dimness of the most ridiculously dangerous place I had ever been.
The black ice walls of Arctis Tor were sixty feet thick, and walking through the gateway felt more like walking through a railroad tunnel.
Except for all the bones.
Every breath, every step, every rasp of bones rubbing against one another, multiplied into a thousand echoes that almost seemed to grow louder rather than fading away. The bones piled higher as I went, forcing me to walk atop them as best I could. The footing was treacherous. The deep green and violet, and occasionally red or green, pulses of luminance in the black ice walls did nothing to light the way. They only made the shadows shift and flow subtly, degrading my depth perception. I started feeling a little carsick.
If one of the fetches appeared at the far end of the tunnel and charged me, things would get nasty, and fast, especially given how ineffective my magic had been against them and how the bones had slowed my pace. That was more than a little spooky, and it was hard to keep myself from thrashing ahead more quickly out of pure fear. I kept a steady pace, held it in, and refused to allow it to control me.
I had been shielding my thoughts from Lasciel for a couple of years now. Damned if I was going to give a bunch of murderous faerie monsters the chance to paw through my emotions.
I checked behind me. Charity had trouble managing the awkward task of crawling over the bones while armored and holding that big old war hammer, but she stuck to it with grim focus and determination. Behind her, Murphy seemed to have far less trouble. Thomas prowled along at the rear, graceful as a panther in a tree.
I emerged from the gate into the courtyard. The inside of the fortress was bleak, cold, and beautiful in its simple symmetry. Rooms and chambers had either never been built or had been built into the walls and their entries hidden. Stairs led up to the battlements atop the walls. The courtyard was flat, smooth, dark ice, and at its center the single spire reared up from the ground, a round turret that rose to a crenellated parapet that overlooked the walls and the ground beneath.
The courtyard also held a sense of quiet stillness to it, as though it was not a place meant for living, moving, changing beings. The howl of the wind outside and overhead did not reach the ground. It was as silent as a librarian's tomb, and each footstep sounded clearly on the ice. Echoes bounced back and forth in the courtyard, somehow carrying a tone of disapproval and menace with them.
Bones spilled out in a wave from the gate, rapidly tapering off after a few yards. Beyond that were only scattered groupings of bones. Thomas drifted over to one such and poked at it with his drawn saber. The blade scraped on a skull too big to stuff into an oil drum, too heavy and thick to look entirely human.
"What the hell was this?" Thomas asked quietly.
"Troll, probably," I said. "Big one. Maybe fourteen, fifteen feet tall." I looked around. Haifa dozen other enormous skulls lay in the scattered collections of remains. Another six had fallen very close to each other, at the base of the spire. "Give me a second. I want to know what we're looking at before we move ahead."
Charity looked like she wanted to argue, but instead she took up position a few yards off, watching one way. Thomas and Murphy spread out, each keeping their eyes on a different direction.
Mixed in with the fallen trolls' bones were broken pieces of dark ice that might have been the jigsaw-puzzle remains of armor and weapons. Each fragment bore the remnants of ornate engraving employing gold, silver, and tiny blue jewels. Faerie artistry, and expensive artistry at that. "Thirteen of them. The trolls were Mab's," I murmured. "I saw some of them outfitted like this a couple of years back."
"How long have they been dead?" Murphy asked quietly.
I grunted and hunkered down. I stretched my left hand out over the bones and closed my eyes, focusing my attention on sharpening my senses, mundane and magical alike. Very faintly, I could scent the heavy, bestial stink of a troll. I'd only seen a couple of the big ones from up close, but you could smell the ugly bastards from half a mile away. There was a rotten odor, more like heavy mulch than old meat. And there was more sulfur and brimstone.
Below that, I could feel tremors in the air over the spot, the psychic residue of the troll's violent death. There was a sense of excitement, rage, and then a dull, seldom-felt terror and a rush of sharp, frozen images of violent death, confusion, terror, and searing agony.
My hand flinched back from the phantom sensation of its own accord, and for just a moment the memories of my burning took on tangible form. I hissed through my teeth and held my hand against my stomach, willing the too-real ghost of pain away.
"Harry?" Murphy asked.
What the hell? The impression the death had left was so sharp, so severe, that I had actually gotten bits of the troll's memories. That had never happened to me before. Of course, I had never tried to pick up vibes in the Nevernever, either. It made more sense that the substance of the spirit world would leave a clearer spiritual impression.
"Harry?" Murphy said again, more sharply.
"I'm all right," I said through clenched teeth. The imprint had been more clear than anything I had ever felt in the real world. In Chicago, I would have thought it was only a few seconds old. Here…
"I can't tell how old they are," I said. "My gut says not very, but I can't be sure."
"It must have been weeks," Thomas said. "It takes that long for bones to get this clean."
"It's all relative," I said. "Time can pass at different rates in Faerie. These bones could have fallen a thousand years ago, by the local clock. Or twenty minutes ago."
Thomas muttered something under his breath and shook his head.
"What killed them, Harry?" Murphy asked.
"Fire. They were burned to death," I said quietly. "Down to the bone."
"Could you do that?" Thomas asked.
I shook my head. "I couldn't make it that hot. Not at the heart of Winter." Not even with Hellfire. The remains of perhaps a thousand creatures lay scattered about. I'd cut loose once in the past and roasted a bunch of vampires-and maybe some of their victims with them-but even that inferno hadn't been big enough to catch more than a tithe of the fallen defenders of Arctis Tor.
"Then who did it?" Charity asked quietly.
I didn't have an answer for her. I rose and nudged a smaller skull with my staff. "The littler ones were goblins," I said. "Foot soldiers." I rolled a troll-sized thighbone aside with my staff. An enormous sword, also of that same black ice, lay shattered beneath it. "These trolls were her personal guard." I gestured back at the gate. "Covering her retreat to the tower, maybe. Some of them got taken down along the way. The others made a stand at the tower's base. Died there."
I paced around, checking what the tracking spell had to say, and triangulated again. "Molly's in the tower," I murmured.
"How do we get in?" Murphy asked.
I stared at the blank wall of the spire. "Um," I said.
Charity glanced over my shoulder and nodded at the spire. "Look behind those trolls. If they were covering a retreat, they should be near the entrance to the tower."
"Maybe," I said. I walked over to the tower and frowned at the black ice. I ran my right hand over its surface, feeling for cracks or evidence of a hidden doorway, my senses tuned to discover any magic that might hide a door. I had the sudden impression that the black ice and the slowly pulsing colors inside were somehow alive, aware of me. And they did not like me at all. I got a sense of alien hatred, cold and patient. Otherwise, I got nothing for my trouble but half-frozen fingers.
"Nothing here," I said, and rapped my knuckles on the side of the tower, eliciting the dull thump of a very solid object. "Maybe the trolls just wanted to fight with their backs to something solid. I might have to go all the way around checking for-"
Without any warning at all the ice of the tower parted. An archway appeared, the ice that had hidden it flowing seamlessly into the rest of the tower. The interior of the tower was all shadows and slowly shifting lights that did little to provide any illumination. Inside was nothing but a spiral staircase, winding counterclockwise up through the spire.
Except for all the bones.
Every breath, every step, every rasp of bones rubbing against one another, multiplied into a thousand echoes that almost seemed to grow louder rather than fading away. The bones piled higher as I went, forcing me to walk atop them as best I could. The footing was treacherous. The deep green and violet, and occasionally red or green, pulses of luminance in the black ice walls did nothing to light the way. They only made the shadows shift and flow subtly, degrading my depth perception. I started feeling a little carsick.
If one of the fetches appeared at the far end of the tunnel and charged me, things would get nasty, and fast, especially given how ineffective my magic had been against them and how the bones had slowed my pace. That was more than a little spooky, and it was hard to keep myself from thrashing ahead more quickly out of pure fear. I kept a steady pace, held it in, and refused to allow it to control me.
I had been shielding my thoughts from Lasciel for a couple of years now. Damned if I was going to give a bunch of murderous faerie monsters the chance to paw through my emotions.
I checked behind me. Charity had trouble managing the awkward task of crawling over the bones while armored and holding that big old war hammer, but she stuck to it with grim focus and determination. Behind her, Murphy seemed to have far less trouble. Thomas prowled along at the rear, graceful as a panther in a tree.
I emerged from the gate into the courtyard. The inside of the fortress was bleak, cold, and beautiful in its simple symmetry. Rooms and chambers had either never been built or had been built into the walls and their entries hidden. Stairs led up to the battlements atop the walls. The courtyard was flat, smooth, dark ice, and at its center the single spire reared up from the ground, a round turret that rose to a crenellated parapet that overlooked the walls and the ground beneath.
The courtyard also held a sense of quiet stillness to it, as though it was not a place meant for living, moving, changing beings. The howl of the wind outside and overhead did not reach the ground. It was as silent as a librarian's tomb, and each footstep sounded clearly on the ice. Echoes bounced back and forth in the courtyard, somehow carrying a tone of disapproval and menace with them.
Bones spilled out in a wave from the gate, rapidly tapering off after a few yards. Beyond that were only scattered groupings of bones. Thomas drifted over to one such and poked at it with his drawn saber. The blade scraped on a skull too big to stuff into an oil drum, too heavy and thick to look entirely human.
"What the hell was this?" Thomas asked quietly.
"Troll, probably," I said. "Big one. Maybe fourteen, fifteen feet tall." I looked around. Haifa dozen other enormous skulls lay in the scattered collections of remains. Another six had fallen very close to each other, at the base of the spire. "Give me a second. I want to know what we're looking at before we move ahead."
Charity looked like she wanted to argue, but instead she took up position a few yards off, watching one way. Thomas and Murphy spread out, each keeping their eyes on a different direction.
Mixed in with the fallen trolls' bones were broken pieces of dark ice that might have been the jigsaw-puzzle remains of armor and weapons. Each fragment bore the remnants of ornate engraving employing gold, silver, and tiny blue jewels. Faerie artistry, and expensive artistry at that. "Thirteen of them. The trolls were Mab's," I murmured. "I saw some of them outfitted like this a couple of years back."
"How long have they been dead?" Murphy asked quietly.
I grunted and hunkered down. I stretched my left hand out over the bones and closed my eyes, focusing my attention on sharpening my senses, mundane and magical alike. Very faintly, I could scent the heavy, bestial stink of a troll. I'd only seen a couple of the big ones from up close, but you could smell the ugly bastards from half a mile away. There was a rotten odor, more like heavy mulch than old meat. And there was more sulfur and brimstone.
Below that, I could feel tremors in the air over the spot, the psychic residue of the troll's violent death. There was a sense of excitement, rage, and then a dull, seldom-felt terror and a rush of sharp, frozen images of violent death, confusion, terror, and searing agony.
My hand flinched back from the phantom sensation of its own accord, and for just a moment the memories of my burning took on tangible form. I hissed through my teeth and held my hand against my stomach, willing the too-real ghost of pain away.
"Harry?" Murphy asked.
What the hell? The impression the death had left was so sharp, so severe, that I had actually gotten bits of the troll's memories. That had never happened to me before. Of course, I had never tried to pick up vibes in the Nevernever, either. It made more sense that the substance of the spirit world would leave a clearer spiritual impression.
"Harry?" Murphy said again, more sharply.
"I'm all right," I said through clenched teeth. The imprint had been more clear than anything I had ever felt in the real world. In Chicago, I would have thought it was only a few seconds old. Here…
"I can't tell how old they are," I said. "My gut says not very, but I can't be sure."
"It must have been weeks," Thomas said. "It takes that long for bones to get this clean."
"It's all relative," I said. "Time can pass at different rates in Faerie. These bones could have fallen a thousand years ago, by the local clock. Or twenty minutes ago."
Thomas muttered something under his breath and shook his head.
"What killed them, Harry?" Murphy asked.
"Fire. They were burned to death," I said quietly. "Down to the bone."
"Could you do that?" Thomas asked.
I shook my head. "I couldn't make it that hot. Not at the heart of Winter." Not even with Hellfire. The remains of perhaps a thousand creatures lay scattered about. I'd cut loose once in the past and roasted a bunch of vampires-and maybe some of their victims with them-but even that inferno hadn't been big enough to catch more than a tithe of the fallen defenders of Arctis Tor.
"Then who did it?" Charity asked quietly.
I didn't have an answer for her. I rose and nudged a smaller skull with my staff. "The littler ones were goblins," I said. "Foot soldiers." I rolled a troll-sized thighbone aside with my staff. An enormous sword, also of that same black ice, lay shattered beneath it. "These trolls were her personal guard." I gestured back at the gate. "Covering her retreat to the tower, maybe. Some of them got taken down along the way. The others made a stand at the tower's base. Died there."
I paced around, checking what the tracking spell had to say, and triangulated again. "Molly's in the tower," I murmured.
"How do we get in?" Murphy asked.
I stared at the blank wall of the spire. "Um," I said.
Charity glanced over my shoulder and nodded at the spire. "Look behind those trolls. If they were covering a retreat, they should be near the entrance to the tower."
"Maybe," I said. I walked over to the tower and frowned at the black ice. I ran my right hand over its surface, feeling for cracks or evidence of a hidden doorway, my senses tuned to discover any magic that might hide a door. I had the sudden impression that the black ice and the slowly pulsing colors inside were somehow alive, aware of me. And they did not like me at all. I got a sense of alien hatred, cold and patient. Otherwise, I got nothing for my trouble but half-frozen fingers.
"Nothing here," I said, and rapped my knuckles on the side of the tower, eliciting the dull thump of a very solid object. "Maybe the trolls just wanted to fight with their backs to something solid. I might have to go all the way around checking for-"
Without any warning at all the ice of the tower parted. An archway appeared, the ice that had hidden it flowing seamlessly into the rest of the tower. The interior of the tower was all shadows and slowly shifting lights that did little to provide any illumination. Inside was nothing but a spiral staircase, winding counterclockwise up through the spire.
Basically, Molly knows that Mab has enemies that care enough to try to invade the heart of Winter when the defenses were undermanned and throw Hellfire about. And if they are serious enough to attempt to attack her in her capital, she has every reason to worry about their attacking her in Chicago.
Especially on Samhain/Halloween, when Dresden knows full well that immortals can be killed.
@Goldfish is right that we should not be blabbing the movement details of the Queen of Winter to a mortal cop, for much the same reason that we didnt tell her anything about Eiko's plans. If we thought leaking those plans would bring unwelcome complications, an attempted, or Heaven forbit, successful hit on Mab would be even worse.
But we did make a promise to tell Murphy and didnt put any discretionary clauses in it.
Thats the problem with blank check promises. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
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fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Something to keep busy with I guess.
Yes actually.
Uriel showing up is a lot like Gandalf showing up in the Lord of the Rings; a herald of Interesting Times.
It would be like her being a Chicago cop and the state AG or the FBI director making an unannounced visit to Chicago over some case or other; she would very much want to know.
1)The skinwalker had been about Chicago for a while before we figured it out too, but I dont think anyone can reasonably argue that its presence wasnt her business either.
Jim Butcher explicitly calls MacAnally very dangerous, so its not like Im making this up.
2)It most definitely is covered by our promise, given that Mab was attacked in her capital by persons unknown commanding a small army and wielding Hellfire.
An attack that Molly certainly walked through the aftermath while leaving Arctis Tor.
Yes it does.
Molly was at Arctis Tor.
During their escape, Molly would have seen the remains of the massive battle that was fought in the courtyard and in front of the walls of Mab's capital, complete with actual Hellfire being thrown at the walls.
The last two hundred yards or so were completely open, with no trees or undulation of terrain to shield our approach from the walls of the fortress. I lifted a hand to call a halt at the edge of the last hummock of stone that would shelter us from view. Lily's butterfly drifted in erratic circles around my head, snowflakes hissing to steam where they touched it.
I peered over the edge of a frozen boulder at Arctis Tor for a long time, then settled back down again.
"I don't see anyone," I said, trying to keep my voice down.
"Doesn't make any sense," Thomas said. He was panting and shivering a little, despite Lily's warding magic. "I thought this was supposed to be Mab's headquarters. This place looks deserted."
"It makes perfect sense," I said. "Winter's forces are all poised to hit Summer. You don't do that from the heart of your own territory. You gather at strong points near the enemy's border. If we're lucky, maybe there's just a skeleton garrison here."
Murphy peered around the edge of the stones and said, "The gate's open. I don't see any guards." She frowned. "There are… there's something on the open ground between here and there. See?"
I leaned next to her and peered. Vague, shadowy shapes stirred in the wind between us and the fortress, insubstantial as any shadow. "Oh," I said. "It's a glamour. Illusion, laid out around the place. Probably a hedge maze of some kind."
"And it fools people?" she asked uncertainly.
"It fools people who don't have groovy wizard ointment for their eyes," I said. Then I frowned and said, "Wait a minute. The gate isn't open. It's gone."
"What?" Charity asked. She leaned out and stared. "There is a broken lattice of ice on the ground around the gate. A portcullis?"
"Could be," I agreed. "And inside." I squinted. "I think I can see some heavier pieces. Like maybe someone ripped apart the portcullis and blew the gate in." I took a deep breath, feeling a hysterical little giggle lurking in my throat. "Something huffed and puffed and blew the house in. Mab's house."
The wind howled over the frozen mountains.
"Well," Thomas said. "That can't be good."
Charity bit her lip. "Molly."
"I thought you said this Mab was all mighty and stuff, Harry," Murphy said.
"She is," I said, frowning.
"Then who plays big bad wolf to her little pig?"
"I…" I shook my head and rubbed at my mouth. "I'm starting to think that maybe I'm getting a little bit out of my depth, here."
Thomas broke out into a rippling chuckle, a faint note of hysteria to it. He turned his back to the fortress and sat down, chortling.
I glowered at him and said, "It's not funny."
"It is from here," Thomas said. "I mean, God, you are dense sometimes. Are you just now noticing this, Harry?"
I glowered at him some more. "To answer your question, Murph, I don't know who did this, but the list of the people who could is fairly short. Maybe the Senior Council could if they had the Wardens along, but they're busy, and they'd have had to fight a campaign to get this far. Maybe the vampires could have done it, working together, but that doesn't track. I don't know. Maybe Mab pissed off a god or something."
"There is only one God," Charity said.
I waved a hand and said, "No capital 'G,' Charity, in deference to your beliefs. But there are beings who aren't the Almighty who have power way beyond anything running around the planet."
"Like who?" Murphy asked.
"Old Greek and Roman and Norse deities. Lots and lots of Amerind divinity, and African tribal beings. A few Australian aboriginal gods; others in Polynesia, southeast Asia. About a zillion Hindu gods. But they've all been dormant for centuries." I frowned at Arctis Tor. "And I can't think what Mab might have done to earn their enmity. She's avoided doing that for thousands of years."
Unless, of course, I thought to myself, Maeve and Lily are right, and she really has gone bonkers.
"Dresden," Charity said. "This is academic. We either go in or we leave. Now."
I chewed my lip and nodded. Then I dug in my pockets for the tiny vial of blood Charity had provided, and hunted through the rocks until I found a spot clear enough to chalk out a circle. I empowered it and wrought one of my usual tracking spells, keying it to a sensation of warmth against my senses. Cold as it was, I would hardly mind anything that might make me feel a little less freeze-dried.
I broke the circle and released the spell, and immediately felt a tingling warmth on my left cheekbone. I turned to face it, and found myself staring directly at Arctis Tor. I paced fifty or sixty yards to the side, and faced the warmth again, working out a rough triangulation.
"She's alive," I told Charity, "or the spell wouldn't have worked. She's in there. Let's go."
"Wait," Charity said. She gave me a look filled with discomfort and then said, "May I say a brief prayer for us first?"
"Can't hurt," I said. "I'll take all the help I can get."
She bowed her head and said, "Lord of hosts, please stand with us against this darkness." The quiet, bedrock-deep energy of true faith brushed against me. Charity crossed herself. "Amen."
Murphy echoed the gesture and the amen. Thomas and I tried to look theologically invisible. Then, without further speech, I swung out around the frozen stone cairn and broke into a quick, steady jog. The others followed along.
I passed the first bones fifty yards from the walls. They lay in a crushed, twisted jumble in the snow, frozen into something that looked like a macabre Escher print. The bones were vaguely human, but I couldn't be sure because they had been pulverized to dust in some places, warped like melted wax in others. It was the first grisly memorial of many. As I kept going forward, brittle, frozen bones crunched under my boots, lying closer and thicker, and twisted more horribly, as we drew closer to Arctis Tor. By the time we got to the gate, I was shin-deep in icy bones. They spread out on either side in an enormous wheel of horrible remains centered on the gate. Whoever they had been, thousands of their kind had perished here.
Charity's guess about the portcullis had been bang on. Pieces of it lay scattered about, mixed among the bones. Where the gate arched beneath the fortress walls, there were still more bones, waist-deep on me, and slabs of planed dark ice, the remains of the fortress gate, stuck out at odd angles. The walls of Arctis Tor had been pitted with what I could only assume had been an acid of some kind. There were larger gouges blown out of the walls here and there, but against their monolithic volume, they were little more than pockmarks.
I pushed ahead to the gate, plowing my way through bones. Once there, I caught a faint whiff of something familiar. I leaned closer to one of the craters blown out of the wall and sniffed.
"What is it?" Thomas asked me.
"Sulfur," I said quietly. "Brimstone."
"What does that mean?" he asked.
"No way to tell," I half lied. But my intuition was absolutely certain of what had happened here. Someone had thrown Hellfire against the walls of Arctis Tor. Which meant that the forces of the literal Hell, or their agents, were also playing a part in the ongoing events.
Way, way, way out of my depth.
I told myself that it didn't matter. There was a young woman inside that frozen boneyard who would die if I did not burgle her out of this nightmare. If I did not control my fear, there was an excellent chance that it would warn her captors of my approach. So I fought the fear that threatened to make me start throwing up, or something equally humiliating and potentially fatal.
I readied my shield, gripped my staff, ground my teeth together, and then continued pushing my way forward, through the bones and into the eerie dimness of the most ridiculously dangerous place I had ever been.She might have even been cognizant enough to hear the fighting, assuming that the Fetches got to Arctis Tor before the invaders.The black ice walls of Arctis Tor were sixty feet thick, and walking through the gateway felt more like walking through a railroad tunnel.
Except for all the bones.
Every breath, every step, every rasp of bones rubbing against one another, multiplied into a thousand echoes that almost seemed to grow louder rather than fading away. The bones piled higher as I went, forcing me to walk atop them as best I could. The footing was treacherous. The deep green and violet, and occasionally red or green, pulses of luminance in the black ice walls did nothing to light the way. They only made the shadows shift and flow subtly, degrading my depth perception. I started feeling a little carsick.
If one of the fetches appeared at the far end of the tunnel and charged me, things would get nasty, and fast, especially given how ineffective my magic had been against them and how the bones had slowed my pace. That was more than a little spooky, and it was hard to keep myself from thrashing ahead more quickly out of pure fear. I kept a steady pace, held it in, and refused to allow it to control me.
I had been shielding my thoughts from Lasciel for a couple of years now. Damned if I was going to give a bunch of murderous faerie monsters the chance to paw through my emotions.
I checked behind me. Charity had trouble managing the awkward task of crawling over the bones while armored and holding that big old war hammer, but she stuck to it with grim focus and determination. Behind her, Murphy seemed to have far less trouble. Thomas prowled along at the rear, graceful as a panther in a tree.
I emerged from the gate into the courtyard. The inside of the fortress was bleak, cold, and beautiful in its simple symmetry. Rooms and chambers had either never been built or had been built into the walls and their entries hidden. Stairs led up to the battlements atop the walls. The courtyard was flat, smooth, dark ice, and at its center the single spire reared up from the ground, a round turret that rose to a crenellated parapet that overlooked the walls and the ground beneath.
The courtyard also held a sense of quiet stillness to it, as though it was not a place meant for living, moving, changing beings. The howl of the wind outside and overhead did not reach the ground. It was as silent as a librarian's tomb, and each footstep sounded clearly on the ice. Echoes bounced back and forth in the courtyard, somehow carrying a tone of disapproval and menace with them.
Bones spilled out in a wave from the gate, rapidly tapering off after a few yards. Beyond that were only scattered groupings of bones. Thomas drifted over to one such and poked at it with his drawn saber. The blade scraped on a skull too big to stuff into an oil drum, too heavy and thick to look entirely human.
"What the hell was this?" Thomas asked quietly.
"Troll, probably," I said. "Big one. Maybe fourteen, fifteen feet tall." I looked around. Haifa dozen other enormous skulls lay in the scattered collections of remains. Another six had fallen very close to each other, at the base of the spire. "Give me a second. I want to know what we're looking at before we move ahead."
Charity looked like she wanted to argue, but instead she took up position a few yards off, watching one way. Thomas and Murphy spread out, each keeping their eyes on a different direction.
Mixed in with the fallen trolls' bones were broken pieces of dark ice that might have been the jigsaw-puzzle remains of armor and weapons. Each fragment bore the remnants of ornate engraving employing gold, silver, and tiny blue jewels. Faerie artistry, and expensive artistry at that. "Thirteen of them. The trolls were Mab's," I murmured. "I saw some of them outfitted like this a couple of years back."
"How long have they been dead?" Murphy asked quietly.
I grunted and hunkered down. I stretched my left hand out over the bones and closed my eyes, focusing my attention on sharpening my senses, mundane and magical alike. Very faintly, I could scent the heavy, bestial stink of a troll. I'd only seen a couple of the big ones from up close, but you could smell the ugly bastards from half a mile away. There was a rotten odor, more like heavy mulch than old meat. And there was more sulfur and brimstone.
Below that, I could feel tremors in the air over the spot, the psychic residue of the troll's violent death. There was a sense of excitement, rage, and then a dull, seldom-felt terror and a rush of sharp, frozen images of violent death, confusion, terror, and searing agony.
My hand flinched back from the phantom sensation of its own accord, and for just a moment the memories of my burning took on tangible form. I hissed through my teeth and held my hand against my stomach, willing the too-real ghost of pain away.
"Harry?" Murphy asked.
What the hell? The impression the death had left was so sharp, so severe, that I had actually gotten bits of the troll's memories. That had never happened to me before. Of course, I had never tried to pick up vibes in the Nevernever, either. It made more sense that the substance of the spirit world would leave a clearer spiritual impression.
"Harry?" Murphy said again, more sharply.
"I'm all right," I said through clenched teeth. The imprint had been more clear than anything I had ever felt in the real world. In Chicago, I would have thought it was only a few seconds old. Here…
"I can't tell how old they are," I said. "My gut says not very, but I can't be sure."
"It must have been weeks," Thomas said. "It takes that long for bones to get this clean."
"It's all relative," I said. "Time can pass at different rates in Faerie. These bones could have fallen a thousand years ago, by the local clock. Or twenty minutes ago."
Thomas muttered something under his breath and shook his head.
"What killed them, Harry?" Murphy asked.
"Fire. They were burned to death," I said quietly. "Down to the bone."
"Could you do that?" Thomas asked.
I shook my head. "I couldn't make it that hot. Not at the heart of Winter." Not even with Hellfire. The remains of perhaps a thousand creatures lay scattered about. I'd cut loose once in the past and roasted a bunch of vampires-and maybe some of their victims with them-but even that inferno hadn't been big enough to catch more than a tithe of the fallen defenders of Arctis Tor.
"Then who did it?" Charity asked quietly.
I didn't have an answer for her. I rose and nudged a smaller skull with my staff. "The littler ones were goblins," I said. "Foot soldiers." I rolled a troll-sized thighbone aside with my staff. An enormous sword, also of that same black ice, lay shattered beneath it. "These trolls were her personal guard." I gestured back at the gate. "Covering her retreat to the tower, maybe. Some of them got taken down along the way. The others made a stand at the tower's base. Died there."
I paced around, checking what the tracking spell had to say, and triangulated again. "Molly's in the tower," I murmured.
"How do we get in?" Murphy asked.
I stared at the blank wall of the spire. "Um," I said.
Charity glanced over my shoulder and nodded at the spire. "Look behind those trolls. If they were covering a retreat, they should be near the entrance to the tower."
"Maybe," I said. I walked over to the tower and frowned at the black ice. I ran my right hand over its surface, feeling for cracks or evidence of a hidden doorway, my senses tuned to discover any magic that might hide a door. I had the sudden impression that the black ice and the slowly pulsing colors inside were somehow alive, aware of me. And they did not like me at all. I got a sense of alien hatred, cold and patient. Otherwise, I got nothing for my trouble but half-frozen fingers.
"Nothing here," I said, and rapped my knuckles on the side of the tower, eliciting the dull thump of a very solid object. "Maybe the trolls just wanted to fight with their backs to something solid. I might have to go all the way around checking for-"
Without any warning at all the ice of the tower parted. An archway appeared, the ice that had hidden it flowing seamlessly into the rest of the tower. The interior of the tower was all shadows and slowly shifting lights that did little to provide any illumination. Inside was nothing but a spiral staircase, winding counterclockwise up through the spire.
Basically, Molly knows that Mab has enemies that care enough to try to invade the heart of Winter and throw Hellfire about.
And if they are serious enough to attempt to attack her in her capital, she has every reason to worry about their attacking her in Chicago. Especially on Samhain, when Dresden knows full well that immortals can be killed.
@Goldfish is right that we should not be blabbing the movement details of the Queen of Winter to a mortal cop, for much the same reason that we didnt tell her anything about Eiko's plans.
If we thought leaking those plans would bring unwelcome complications, an attempted hit on Mab would be even worse.
But we did make a promise to tell Murphy and didnt put any discretionary clauses in it.
Thats the problem with blank check promises.
- From what Molly knows on the matter angelic visitations are not always, or indeed often about giant wars about to happen, sometimes it's just that someone needs to hear or see something deeply personal to their own struggles
- As for Mab being ambushed in Chicago, Molly knows Mab is not easy to ambush army or no. Ambushing her while also not breaching the masquerade takes that to even more unlikely odds. Maybe Murphy would not make that judgement, but you are not bound to follow her judgement in all things. Molly made a promise like a regular human, because as far as the weird and wacky contract laws of the supernatural is concerned she is one. Her power does not wane from making such judgement calls and odds are Karin Murphy who does not know much about how promises are handled among magic folk would expect something like this
- Location
- Brazil
You will lost a lot of credibility when you try to deny the GM himself (especially since it seems like you're the only one who's following your own (and extraordinarily harsh) version of Molly's promise).
I didn't want to say this before, but it seems, from where I am, that you really are angry that the option you argued against won and now you're doing the worst possible interpretation. I know that's not your intention (or at least I hope not), but disagreeing with QM's own statements about the situation don't do much goodwill.
Isn't it better to just drop the subject?
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... Actually, it probably can. I mean, there's enough metaphorical weight to puberty, virginity (and loss thereof), first kill, and others, that a number of passage-of-age rituals exist and have existed since the down of time. In the first age, maturation and adulthood could trigger a terrestrial exaltation. So, yeah, I am fairly sure that a god of adulthood could, in fact, be found and then bound into eternal service, and that someone's adulthood could be used as a high level conceptual crafting component.Elder Solar: What is this a-doo-lut-hud you speak of? Can be it be crafted into an abomination against nature/bound to eternal service?
Several months is not multiple years, if not decades / centuries that Mac has been here. And skinwalker is an active threat to the population, while Mac, as far as Molly knows, is, and always has been, a law (and Law) abiding citizen, who is happy to work as a bartender.
We, unlike Mab, are not a fae paperclip maximizers and can use our best judgement on the matter. The spirit of the promise is what's important, and there's no magic enforcement. While "a foreign head of state is visiting on a private business for a short time" might be relevant to Murphy, she is reasonable enough to understand why we didn't tell her if anything does go down.
Well I did explicitly mention the possibility of specifying a high official and not Mab herself, but honestly I'm not sure how necessary that is.
Mind reading isn't exactly a casual scan most people can do going through a crowd in the DF. In a week where nothing immediately interesting is happening to motivate an assault that particular vulnerability isn't very significant.
More enemy dots would be way beyond what we'd see in reaction to this, because it isn't a serious problem or necessarily something unexpected.
I mean we're here to tell Mac about this situation so we can use his bar, and we're about to have that conversation while half the patrons in the place try to listen in without looking like they're listening in. Which Harry hasn't so much as bat an eye at.
If we reached out to her enemies and gave them the details directly or something like that we'd probably get some blowback, but this isn't that.
There is explicitly people like that one shadow here angel or the archive that have very wide range information powers.
You don't risk conflict with mab over things like the cop probably won't leak the secrets.
If Anduriel is watching over our shoulder he already knows. We haven't exactly been taking precautions against him in the multiple conversations we've had with people on this, or even the one we're about to have with Mac right now.
The wide ranging super information gathering powers are actually pretty rare, and usually defined by very specific rules, for all the outstanding ones steal the show.
I'm not saying there's no concern here, because there's at least a little risk in everything. Just that over the time period we're talking about, the level of information it's worthwhile to divulge, and the number of times it's already been exposed the additional risk is minimal.
Unless something goes so catastrophically wrong that Murphy's opinion of us is the least of our worries we're essentially only talking about the equivalent of a couple bucks in profit, so I wouldn't exactly be broken up about skipping it, but I think it's unreasonable to treat this specific thing like a live hand grenade.
It is a hand grenade tho, like this is the head of a sovereign state. Most of their information is normally confidential.
Acting responsible wins again.
*Mac and Harry feel sudden inexplicable relief as though a great wind of chaos had passed them by*
*Mac and Harry feel sudden inexplicable relief as though a great wind of chaos had passed them by*
Arc 6 Post 56: Words Few and Wise
Words Few and Wise
22th of October 2006 A.D.
"Root beer please," you answer, cool as a cucumber, tamping down hard on all the angel puns that come to mind,. It's hard to tell what's going on behind brown eyes that seem at first as commonplace as the worn coasters that slide across the bar. But the more you look the more you can see, sparks of amber dancing like fireflies in twilight, a seeking mind and potent will expressed for the most part in a turn of the head there an eyebrow almost read here.
Regain 2 Essence -> Now at 11/12
The more you see the bartender interact with Harry the more you get the sense that they are speaking their own language, like a platonic ideal of guy-speak that can only be spoken around the Ur-Baseball game. Maybe you get docked points for emoting too hard, you laugh to yourself as you notice Harry get less expressive and more comfortable at the same time, but as Harry talks about the meeting with Mab at the museum, carefully sanitized for witnesses you notice something else odd, enough so in fact to keep focusing on... Harry is having fun trying to prod Mac into a reaction, stretching out his legs on the stool as he complements the stake sandwich and gets into the beer. McAnally's a mystery sure, but he's a comforting sort of cypher, a rarity for Harry Dresden PI, and even more so for the Warden of Chicago. I guess if you do bar side psychology long enough you learn how to do it in under twelve syllables per hour
Lost 2 Essence -> Now at 9/12 (Keeping the buffs up)
Case in point. "I'll clear things out."
"You don't have to lose business..."
Mac just points at the plaque above the bar, carved in oak framed in white yew, one for life and one for death: 'Accord Recognized Neutral Territory.'
"I'm not a signatory," you quip cheerily. "Just looking around to see what's what..." The casual listener might understand 'looking for a place to meet', though should a more fine-tuned ear hear. 'I'm looking around to see if the Unseelie Accords are worth joining' you are not going to complain. So far you are not impressed, they seem to just lay down the etiquette of dealing with other supernatural powers without in any way facilitating peace over war, like an arcane Code Duello, no wonder the Knights of the Cross do not want to be part of it.
"I have a copy." Four words, not judging, not advising, simply an offer to let you form your own opinion.
"Thank you, I've always been curious to read an up to date version of it. Might get me some insight into the mind of the woman whose brainchild it is."
Harry sighs like you had said something silly, though it's soft enough that you would not have noticed if you were not bending Essence to sight and insight alike. "Mab's not a woman Molly not really, she might have the shape of one when it pleases her, but she's more like a blizzard and the glacier from whence it came from all at once."
Yeah well I dreamed of being a city of demons, you think, biting your tongue against saying aloud.
"But she can understand people right?" you ask instead. At his cautious nod you continue: "There you go then, if she can and will study me then not doing to match her is... like starting a battle by refusing to send out scouts out of fear that they cannot navigate the terrain."
"You are not in a battle with Queen Mab and you should pray you are never in one," he bites back, the calm that had seeped into his face with the beer and the company leeching off his face in an instant.
So you don't roll your eyes and you don't point out that woman is from what you have seen constitutionally incapable of not turning any conversation into a battle of wills. "It'll help me understand the wold as a whole better then." Turning back to Mac you ask. "Do you have a list of signatories as well?"
"Yes." He hands you the root beer. It's nice, obviously not as good as what Harry is having, but you're not going to ask him to break the law over that.
"OK, do you take credit or..." you start.
The silence says more than words could
This time you do sigh. "It's valuable information that is hard to find and which you do not share with anyone. I'd be fine with owing you a favor normally, but I already have two of those penciled, not counting making tanks . I figured money is the easiest currncy since you do run a business."
"You're powerful, good for you to know the rules." The intonation gives you pause, not 'good for you', but generally good 'for you to know the rule'. Fair, I guess. Doesn't mean I'm going to follow them.
On to other stuff then. "So if I we do meet here can I help in the kitchen?"
Again he points at a plaque, this one far shorter but no less definitive. No outside food.
Gained Unseelie Accords Provisions and Signatory List
How do you prepare for meeting Queen Mab?
Choose Three Options
[] Question Bob about...
-[] The powers of Winter
-[] The strategies of Winter
-[] Mab's history
-[] Write in
[] Read the Accords
-[] Provisions, what is this pact Mab put her power on the line for
-[] Signatories, the Knights of the Cross, but you know the White Council, all the Fey courts and three of four vampire courts signed. Who else is in there?
[] Meditate together with Usum, maybe he can shake loose some of the things he heard in Arctis Tor
[] Dad has to know something about Winter right? Ask him about how to dealing with them
[] Harry does not like to talk about his dealings with Mab and her subjects, given the circumstances he is willing to offer advice
[] Write in
OOC: And your prize for not causing chaos is... Ye Olde Diplomatic Paperwork. Well OK, that is actually very valuable, but still expect Molly to grumble a little about homework if you choose to study that.
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Rolls
Molly Poker face vs Mac to notice (Mediocre rolls for both; but you are the only one ignoring 1s)
Realizing that at least part of how Mac interacts with Harry is for his own benefit
Molly Poker face vs Mac to notice (Mediocre rolls for both; but you are the only one ignoring 1s)
Realizing that at least part of how Mac interacts with Harry is for his own benefit
Somewhere a harem anime is missing it's protagonist of black-hole level density with regards to women, and Harry Dresden is the better off for it.
Here he can be painfully ignorant in relative peace.