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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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DragonParadox said:
Eh it would be more like 'fake your own death get the spell Disguise of a New Face, start over'. :V

There is not much reason to flee when you can disguise yourself perfectly against the people who would be looking for you
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Or curse the investigation against us. Or just take our licks and go to jail thereby reforming the entire U.S. prison system when we take it over.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by Yzarc on Jun 23, 2023 at 1:54 AM, finished with 80 posts and 25 votes.
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Arc 8 Post 14: Of Virtue and Vice
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    • Of Virtue and Vice ​

    10th of November 2006 A.D.

    "Wait a sec, I have to make a call, I have something for you to look at Harry..." So saying you ask Bones to pick up the Akuma's sword from the armory, go find the Beige Wagon which you had left in the parking lot outside of Chicago Synthetics Headquarters and bring it over, adding that he should top up the car is they ask for it. As Clippy clicks off you find Harry starring at you. "What?"

    He shakes his head. "Just hard to internalize you have people now, working for you."

    Thomas just rolls his eyes behind his back, even that gesture having the kind of Bohemian elegance some people would kill for. "So you want to know about the Epulum Jovis right?" At your nod he leans back on the couch, lazily holding the beer he had liberated from Harry's fridge.. "First thing you have to know is what White Court Vampires are kind of like Puss in Boots, you know from the last Shrek movie."

    "What?" you struggle to smother a laugh.

    "Yeah, he's wearing silly clothes, has a little boots and a Zorro hat, but inside it's a solitary hypercarnivore that only comes together to mate which can and has wiped out whole ecosystems." He does laugh, but there is no joy to it.

    Mister jumps onto the couch looking suspiciously smug as he curls into a ball next to his nominal master. The wizard glances down at him and grumbles "Way to ruin a Disney movie,"

    "That's not... you know what nevermind." You decide then and there that you are getting him that cyberdevil invested TV.

    Thomas picks up where he had left off as though nothing had interrupted him"We are not supposed to have a society deep down. Human society is our camouflage, our hunting ground, but the etiquette, the rules, the hierarchies, those are like boots on a cat. Eventually they are going to try to wiggle out unless someone pushes the boots back on. That is what these festivals are about. No one has cared about Jupiter in two thousand years and more, it is about forcing scores of vampires, should be about sixty if this is an average night, into a room and making them play nice with each other, mingle with your peers without trying to mindfu... er control them, get controlled by your elders by subtler means." Bitterness drips from his words making you very glad indeed that you had not asked him to come with. "At the same time since you are not supposed to mess with people of roughly the same social standing its one of the few chances most vampires have to for a one night stand together without the risk of getting dominated. I guess it's the closest thing to a romantic get together for people who find actual love poisonous."

    "Sounds lovely," you proclaim drily, leaning close to the whispers of power to make sure pity does not show on your face. That's the last thing Thomas wants to see as demonstrated by the fact that he's carefully not looking at Harry.

    Lost 1 Essence (Subterfuge Excellency) -> Now at 13/15

    "Watch your drink in there," Thomas continues. "Stimulants are considered part of the fun and tranquilizers are... marginal as long as the victim is only embarrassed as a consequence."

    Not that you would ever admit it with Harry around but you have been to parties like that, not with vampires obviously, but then you were not... whatever you've become back then so it more than evens out.

    "Drugs?" Harry asks alarmed, confirming your thoughts. "What kind?"

    Thomas shrugs. "I don't know. What's the hottest new synthetic blend these days? I haven't been to one of these things in years." Seeing Harry open his mouth, no doubt with an even stronger objection to your presence he raises a hand. "She's supernaturally perceptive, she'll catch anyone stupid enough to have a go at her and if wants to try something out her healing's strong enough to power through doses meant for a vampire."

    "I bet Charity and Michael will see it that way," Harry cuts in sarcastically.

    His tone has nothing on Thomas' though. "Yeah Heaven forbid the girl going in there to kill people as a show of force get a little LSD in her drink while she is taking part in wholesome bonding activities." He cuts himself off, visibly calms down. "Don't get me wrong I have no problem with killing the sick bastards who are planning some kind of wizard cull, but acting like taking drugs that aren't on the 'approved by the US government' list is more of a moral hazard than taking a life is... nonsense." Something tells you he would have liked to use a stronger word.

    Part of you wants to recoil at the argument, to lash out. After what happened to Rosie, to Nelson you hate drugs, but how much of that hate is trying to shift self-loathing? 'Thou shalt not kill' is a Commandment, 'Thou shalt not get high' isn't.

    How does Molly react to the argument?

    [] She remains resolved in the belief that drugs are terrible and make everything worse

    [] She inwardly acknowledges that Thomas has a point and her present disdain for them is in part her attempt to shift blame for what she did to her friends

    [] Write in

    OOC: Poor Harry is wishing the conversation would move back to the cannibal shapashifters about now.
     
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    • [X] She inwardly acknowledges that Thomas has a point and her present disdain for them is in part her attempt to shift blame for what she did to her friends

    I say this as someone who may in fact be an actual reefer, I have the family history for that but I've never tried marijuana specifically because I don't want to do that coin flip, but drugs in and of themselves are not bad. It's the way society builds up drug use, drug dealing and drug addiction that is itself bad.

    So getting Molly out of the mindset of drugs bad in and of themselves is a good idea in my book.
     
    [X] She inwardly acknowledges that Thomas has a point and her present disdain for them is in part her attempt to shift blame for what she did to her friends
     
    [X] She inwardly acknowledges that Thomas has a point and her present disdain for them is in part her attempt to shift blame for what she did to her friends
    -[X] This, however, doesn't mean that drugs, when defined as addictive substances that cause negative long-term effects on the body and/or mind, are in any way good. She has seen where they can lead people
     
    [X] She inwardly acknowledges that Thomas has a point and her present disdain for them is in part her attempt to shift blame for what she did to her friends
    -[X] This, however, doesn't mean that drugs, when defined as addictive substances that cause negative long-term effects on the body and/or mind, are in any way good. She has seen where they can lead people
     
    It's tough typing this stuff on a cellphone, so if I forgot to address anything, I apologize in advance.
    Yog said:
    Do you want me to quote you ITER regulations? Not USA, but they are pretty indicative. It's exactly because fusion (since we are using that as an example) is not well understood (and doesn't work) that it's badly regulated. You basically have 1) High voltage regulations, which are easy - that's standard industry thing. Chicago synthetics certainly would have to comply with those; 2) Dangerous gases - you are using hydrogen, so that's a thing, but, again, standard industry stuff (and, again, if we are claiming PECVD technology, or even just CVD, Chicago Synthetics has to fall under these); 3) radiation safety. Now, this one is tricky. You can get three types of radiation out of a fusion reactor. Roentgen always, because bremsstrahlung, beta decay of tritium (can be stopped by a thin sheet of metal), and neutrons, if you are actually running hot D-T reaction and have a commercial fusion setup. This one would be heavily regulated, and require certification and special construction of the buildings where reactions take place. That's a multi-million dollar thing. However, that's only for neutronic reaction. If you are claiming aneutronic reaction (and it's actually like that), then you have someone certified check for neutron flux, and that's that.
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    1)???
    ITER regulations just say they will follow applicable national laws of the Host Nation.

    Anyway, we don't have high voltage regulations to abide by. ChiSyn does not use industrially significant amounts of power, which is why we could site it in a residential neighborhood.

    2)ChiSyn doesn't use those either.

    3)Youre forgetting industrial fire regulations for processes looking to generate and contain plasmas at 9-digit degrees worth of heat. Plus whatever is involved when you are looking to generate multiple teslas worth of field strength.

    Not my professional background, but I think you are underestimating the requirements of running this kind of operation anywhere the govt isnt essentially turning a blind eye to any lapses.

    My two cents.
    Yog said:
    Not any more than learning and then using divination for what amounts to an elaborate insider trading. Plus, again, most of this can be outsourced. If you have actual high TRL product (be it technology, device, program or anything else), you don't need to be a superhuman to sell it.
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    1)We need to learn Divination anyway for at least two reasons I am aware of:
    A) We need a plausible cover for routine Crown use
    B) Divination is reusable for investigations where the Crown will simply burn the focus

    It's an important part of our secondary suite of capabilities. The fact that we can also use it for financial trading reasons is a happy(for us)coincidence.


    2)And no, I disagree.
    You underestimate the role of everything from timing to politics in technology adoption. VHS vs Betamax. AC vs DC. The history of cellular technologies in the US. OS/2 vs Windows. The ideological opposition to EVs and solar/wind power in the US. The ideological opposition to vaccines in the US in the middle of a pandemic.
    Yog said:
    No, I used a fusion reactor as a possible example of what our kingdom might have. It wouldn't be the first thing I'd offer to the world as it is. I'll sell ever-increasing quality lithium-ion, then lithium-air batteries staying ~ 5 to 10 years ahead of the competition. If we have viable high temperature (meaning nitrogen or higher) superconductors, I'll sell those. I'll also sell chip architecture, then chip manufacturing technologies. X-ray lasers (again, for chip manufacture, that's a big thing). I would also capture the 3D printing market (even with what we have today, back in 2006 one could totally dominate the market and rake in billions). Depending on what we have access to, material science would be my next go to - advanced steels and other metal alloys, composite and meta materials (the latter ones synergy greatly with 3D printing), hydrogen storage technologies (as an energy storage system), etc. Everything that I listed in multi-billion profitable. All of these can be relatively easily independently tested and verified to be genuine. All of these are not over-regulated.

    Your experience in human medicine skewers your perspective, I fear. In the engineering world, regulation is far less stringent.

    In parallel to that, I'd release some open source things. Data compression algorithms, encryption and decryption stuff. Things that are a decade more advanced than what Earth has at least, but still far less advanced than what our world has. Use those to build up credibility (open source and math community will do that for us). If we have any of the millenium problems solved, send that solution out - it wouldn't be fast, but it would provide a huge boost to reputation.

    And before you say that it's a full time job, no, most of that isn't, as long as we have samples from our kingdom, and cyberdevils loyal to us. Half of these put together is 1 AP at most.
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    1)You are making significant assumptions about the cross-applicability of stuff in our Hell with realworld Dresdenverse technology. Or that our Hell having RnD resources to spare. A coherent magic+technology techbase means that solutions that use technology IRL might have no equivalent in our Realm because a magic solution was simpler or cheaper.

    For example, why would our Hell even have encryption/decryption stuff? It's a one world government without technological hostiles or large-scale crime. That stuff was driven primarily by military needs against peer opposition IRL.

    There's a good chance that our Hell will be importing some solutions from the real world.
    Not vice versa.


    2)I repeat:
    A research establishment pulling out mature versions of technologies from multiple disparate sectors is wildly implausible. The combined research budgets of the G20 haven't managed it, but some johnny come lately concern run by a teenager will? And not just one, but multiple?


    3)Technologies build on each other.
    This is 2006; touchscreen smartphones havent even been invented yet iirc. We're still fuzzing around with 65nm lithography in computer chips, and software encryption is a significant burden on computation resources. A lot of the things you're talking about simply aren't viable because the real world lacks the capacity to use them commercially.


    4)*points at next paragraph*
    My dude, youre out here talking about the use of superhuman social skills to push adoption and you dont think its a fulltime job?


    5) This is a fantasy quest.
    Of the three settings in play, both the Dresdenverse and World of Darkness are urban fantasy settings, while Exalted is high/epic fantasy.

    Schemes about technological uplift are not actually what the quest is supposed to be about.

    Yog said:
    Rossi was able to persist for decades. There are many like him. Unlike them we would have an actual working thing, and not in prototype stage, but as a mature technology. We would also have superhuman social skills, which they lack. Also, I obviously wouldn't lead with complex stuff like "compact fusion reactors" (not unless our kingdom cracked simple cold fusion systems that can be built in a cave with a box of scraps by complete mundanes the moment they learn one weird trick). See the list of stuff (in rough progression; if asked for, I could outline a more detail roadmap) I mentioned above.

    Also, it need not be Molly who pitches those. Find a patsy, like we did with Thomas. There are a lot of scientists our there that are at least somewhat established, can be bought and would be glad to help in this.
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    1)You dont seem to understand the issues with presenting whats supposed to be mature dualuse tech a couple decades in advance of local capabilities on the research budget of a community college.

    The rest of the planet arent actually all stupid, and there's enough analysts out there to red flag this shit. Nevermind what this actually does for geopolitical stability.

    I mean, to pick just one, do you realize what better batteries alone does for improving the viability of SSK conventional submarines against SSNs? Or the viability of cheap compact drone munitions in the hands of military and irregular civilian forces? And thats just off the top of my head.


    2)Yes, superhuman social skills to push their adoption. Which amplifies the "teenager from nowhere with multidisciplinary breakthroughs" problem. When you start talking about using Exalted social skills to convince scientists, captains of industry and politicians? You are, IMO, very much heading into "Swallowed a spider to catch a fly" territory.


    3)Patsies like Thomas do not exactly grow on trees. Especially patsies who will come under the scrutiny of natsec agencies from every country in the G20 and quite a few outside it.
     
    [X] She inwardly acknowledges that Thomas has a point and her present disdain for them is in part her attempt to shift blame for what she did to her friends
     
    Earth-Destroyer said:
    Look at how the Wizard suffer from not having access to modern tech. It is a major win for us, if our enemies abandon tech. Going from potentially having your tech stuff subverted to not having it at all, is shooting your foot over a hangnail. Advanced tech provides such an overwhelming advantage, that not having it makes thing much much harder.
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    Electronics =/= modern tech.

    Furthermore, you assume that alternatives are not a thing, and that pushing them to patronize the providers wont make some of our enemies stronger. The Fomorians have man-portable energy weapons.

    fictionfan said:
    Honestly the bad guy avoiding using electronics altogether sounds like something of a win to me. As for the scaling limit we are nowhere close to reaching it and we aren't going to reach it without actually putting a little effort into summoning more Cdevils
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    They won't avoid using electronics altogether except in the most important cases, because ultimately Molly is just one person who can't be everywhere.

    They will overhaul data security, begin to attempt to ward or otherwise protect their devices, have their meetings in SCIFs, and will avoid bringing electronics with sensitive data into our presence, plugging holes we have been able to exploit to our advantage and making our job measurably harder.

    See the dead Skavis and how he was only carrying a fresh burner phone with no contact list and only a couple text messages? Imagine if every enemy agent from now on did that.
     
    [X] She inwardly acknowledges that Thomas has a point and her present disdain for them is in part her attempt to shift blame for what she did to her friends

    Drugs are not great, but it takes a collection of bad circumstances to make them particularly bad.
     
    [x] She remains resolved in the belief that drugs are terrible and make everything worse
    - [x] Don't drink and wield cosmic power. She has too much to be comfortable with such things.
     
    [X] She inwardly acknowledges that Thomas has a point and her present disdain for them is in part her attempt to shift blame for what she did to her friends

    While recreational drug use, especially of harder substances, can easily spiral out of control and have many dangerous consequences, it is not the drugs alone that do the damage, at least not at first. People, whether under pressure from their friends, others around them, their environment or by their own volition, also have to make the choice to start (assuming they aren't involuntarily drugged or that there isn't any kind of magical property making the drugs supernaturally addictive of course). And of course, poor choices are an avenue to many more just as if not more so dangerous than drug abuse... so we need to be able to acknowledge our own (mistakes), if we are to truly learn from them and be at peace with them.
     
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    Yog said:
    [X] She inwardly acknowledges that Thomas has a point and her present disdain for them is in part her attempt to shift blame for what she did to her friends
    -[X] This, however, doesn't mean that drugs, when defined as addictive substances that cause negative long-term effects on the body and/or mind, are in any way good. She has seen where they can lead people
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    As a note about this, no mundane substance can have a long term effect on an Exalt's body or cause them to become addicted. These are the people who invented the dinosaur that pissed cocaine back in the High First Age. Magical substances can cause an Exalt to become addicted though, blood bonds work on them in the base game, though the act of Exaltation itself burns out any previous ones. In this Red Court narcotic spit works as well.
     
    [x] She remains resolved in the belief that drugs are terrible and make everything worse
    - [x] Don't drink and wield cosmic power. She has too much to be comfortable with such things.
     
    [X] She inwardly acknowledges that Thomas has a point and her present disdain for them is in part her attempt to shift blame for what she did to her friends
    -[X] This, however, doesn't mean that drugs, when defined as addictive substances that cause negative long-term effects on the body and/or mind, are in any way good. She has seen where they can lead people

    "Drugs" is a ridiculously broad category. Weed and say meth really shouldn't be regarded the same way.

    There's also the distinction between personal opinion and public policy; there's no contradiction between thinking something is a bad idea but also that you don't have the right to stop other people from doing it.
     
    BronzeTongue said:
    "Drugs" is a ridiculously broad category.
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    Just to be clear the reason Molly uses it like that is because she is a (previously very sheltered) teenager, just like the reason Thomas has the opinions he has is because he is a man with a literal demon in his soul who has tried more substances than he can recall the names of to control it. He has never killed someone because of something he took, but his first interaction with his Hunger like that of practically all White Court Vampires was killing someone because of it.
     
    [x] She remains resolved in the belief that drugs are terrible and make everything worse
    - [x] Don't drink and wield cosmic power. She has too much to be comfortable with such things.
     
    [X] She inwardly acknowledges that Thomas has a point and her present disdain for them is in part her attempt to shift blame for what she did to her friends
     
    DragonParadox said:
    Of Virtue and Vice
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    COMMENTARY
    Lol Mister.Good Boy is sus. Very sus.
    I wonder if he's a jotun of the White God
    :V

    Cheapest way to solve the Dresden problem would be to buy Enchantment 1/2 and buy the ritual that allows us to make stuff that doesnt break down, then handmake all his shit. Second, and much funnier, would just be to buy Blessing of the Wood Dragon and use it to enchant his stuff, just to see his reaction to ancient sorcery being used to proof off the shelf consumer electronics against failure.


    Thomas' testimony is very much the testimony of a dude speaking from bad experiences and a significant amount of self-hate.
    And has to be taken in that spirit.

    There's significant evidence in this AU and in canon to suggest that Whampires are precisely as good and as bad as humans get, just with the complicating factor of an indwelling Hunger with appetites of its own.


    Sixty seems low for a Court gathering.
    That's barely 20 people from each major House.
    The Raith Deeps fight in White Night had a hundred Whamps in attendance, and those were primarily the high nobility of the WC in formal political meeting; you'd expect a social gathering to be at least 200-300.


    Speaking of drugs, Exalts roll at -2DC to resist, meaning that Molly is rolling at DC4 even before anything else. And Transcendent Lord of Flies might well apply in this situation. Someone trying to drug her mundanely is going to have an interesting time.

    We should get the anti-poison charm soon tho.
     
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    DragonParadox said:
    Just to be clear the reason Molly uses it like that is because she is a (previously very sheltered) teenager, just like the reason Thomas has the opinions he has is because he is a man with a literal demon in his soul who has tried more substances than he can recall the names of to control it. He has never killed someone because of something he took, but his first interaction with his Hunger like that of practically all White Court Vampires was killing someone because of it.
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    She's not really sheltered in that area?

    She has taken drugs, been arrested because of drugs and seen her friends getting addicted.
    All before exalting and the story start.
     
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