Remove ads

Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

Reader mode
I remembered something. The terms of the Non-Aggression Pact. Arc 7 Post 11

"Between you and the White Court, or your little sewer pack if you prefer, not to attack the interests of the White King specifically nor he yours. You get recognition I have a formal reason to command the elders not to meddle with you as long as you do not coerce any of the Court to your side, which you seem unlikely to do."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Sparing the Skavis's life is probably a violation of the pact if it still matters after this.
 
Do we have any idea of how many rank and file Whampires there are in comparison to their nobility? Like are there 9 "commoner" Whampires for every noble? Less? More?

I'm asking because this purge might be at least as much about dealing with traitors as Lara having a good excuse to prune some old monsters and antiquated dead weight from the top of the tree to make room for some ambitious youngsters (relatively speaking, of course) who are more amenable to her direct rule rather than continuing to act as her father's puppetmaster.

Who knows just how many Whampires Lara is actually targeting tonight? The list we gave her might not have that many names on it, but when the smoke clears and everyone has a chance to wipe the blood from their eyes, I'm willing to bet there will be quite a few more dead who "tragically met their ends at the hands of traitors and malcontents" than can reasonably be accounted for in the fighting.

A_Somebody said:
I am keenly reminded of the images I see of hippos wandering around seemingly giving zero fucks as multiple lions dangle from their hides.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Haha, those kitties don't know what kind of fresh Hell they're courting fucking with that murderbeast.
 
OctarineShrike said:
Sparing the Skavis's life is probably a violation of the pact if it still matters after this.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Depends somewhat on the terms of his parole, and in all honesty Molly probably deserves a boon after her work tonight, likely he could be her reward for work done so to speak.

Molly can't demand him without violating the agreement, but she CAN demand a reward or favor owed and say incidentally he'd fit the bill.
 
Last edited:
Yog said:
[X] Accept his surrender and some responsibility for his fate, you will save who you can

We are not Lara's executioner, and worse comes to worst we can render them human and thus irrelevant to White Court politics.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
In fairness we are still in a combat zone. I don't want to kill this guy necessarily, but we should probably write in something to get on confirming who's winning and if Lydia is okay instead of pivoting to this guy completely.

Maybe we could accept his surrender to the court's "justice system" instead of doing it in our own name and then privately demand his services as part of the spoils if he's not part of the genocide squad?

Azais said:
I hope Lara asks more favors from us after the weakening of the Court (death of the lord and heir of one of the Houses and the fact that the heir of another is possibly a puppet of the Outside) and the display of our power, when she owes us more influence we will have in the decisions of the White Court.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Don't think we need to worry too much about that; more favors are nice, but our influence in the court should be pretty secure after this, since we're so important to the image of her power here.

Azais said:
If we had MMP we could give our Wampires Elder level reserves in days (even without high discipline levels being able to play power no matter the cost is still useful), showing we have many benefits if the Court ally with us. With our Hell it will be easier, because instead of a small group from the city (albeit with the ridiculously strong leader) we will be able to talk from faction leader to another with Lara, giving more legitimacy to our future alliance
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Doubt it. Elder level reserves aren't elder powers, and they just saw a guy go crazy and destroy himself over a bad deal. Pattern recognition is a strong aspect of survival instinct, even when it doesn't always accurately reflect reality.

I think that sort of thing would spook them.

Better to play the game a bit. Instead of making them be overt about things Lara rules and we make suggestions backed by the weight of how our relationship is a cornerstone to apparent Raith power.

We should toss some deals in there as well, just to be polite, but they aren't necessary to keep worming our way in.
 
LightLan said:
But we didn't coerce the skavis?

Didn't even touch the skavis at all :p
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
He simply witnessed our glory and could not overcome his urge to throw himself at our mercy.

And possibly because so long as he remains kneeling, no one will notice that he shit himself when we ganked the Walker.
 
TheGrape said:
Man, I wonder how many vamps both realized what he was (an Outsider battle-junkie Walker) and what Molly just did (kill something that's famed as unkillable)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Goldfish said:
I wonder how many people who were present at the party really understand what just happened? And of those, how many will survive the night?

@DragonParadox, from Molly's understanding of the occult, how likely does she judge that the Walker's death will be detected throughout the supernatural world?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Anyone here with Awareness 3 or Auspex 2 knows what just happened.
So essentially every elder and a good chunk of the younger lot.

Even the people without senses that acute noticed when what was Lord Skavis began to talk in words and tones not meant for any mortal throat, and then started spamming Rank 9 discipline techniques like they were rice at a wedding reception.

OctarineShrike said:
I remembered something. The terms of the Non-Aggression Pact. Arc 7 Post 11

Sparing the Skavis's life is probably a violation of the pact if it still matters after this.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Accepting the surrender of someone who attacked you is not a treaty violation.
 
Last edited:
Why can't real life and its various interruptions just take a break for 400k words?

I just got through the Prologue, about to see Ebenezer, and I like what I'm reading so far. It would be more convenient if the winning vote was in a spoiler at the start of a post, but nothing is jumping out as any sort of issue beyond that.

Back to binging more of this. It is going to be so annoying when I catch up, and suddenly have to start waiting between posts.
 
drake_azathoth said:
Depends somewhat on the terms of his parole, and in all honesty Molly probably deserves a boon after her work tonight, likely he could be her reward for work done so to speak.

Molly can't demand him without violating the agreement, but she CAN demand a reward or favor owed and say incidentally he'd fit the bill.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
He's a guard. A member of Duke Skavis retinue means he's privileged for a mook, but still a mook.
He's not on the list of Must Die, he didnt actually attack Molly unlike the other two, and while Lara told us not to worry too much about accidentally killing mooks, she didnt say we should kill them willy nilly.

Like I pointed out earlier, every dead Whampire is a loss for the White Court's power in a dangerous world.
When Whampires run away to Undertown they let them instead of running them down to kill them, because some of them might come back.

And leaving the dude alive is a small enough concession, not to Molly, but to the rest of House Skavis, who will have just lost double digit numbers of Whampires in the last week.

Of course, its worth remembering that this dude was trusted to be a guard by the same man who raised his son and heir by giving him a Whampire companion as a child to torture.
Worth keeping that in mind when we start thinking of him as loot; if we knew what he's done, we might not want him.
 
Azais said:
Speaking of which, what the hell is Mab and the Gatekeeper doing? Is the summoning of most of a Walker in Chicago, a major US city and where both courts have influence and nothing? Or was it too quick to they react before we killed him?)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It was dead within 3 rounds of combat which I think means 3 seconds. Give them a break.

I am guessing that our ignoring the Mooks as they attacked us to have a conversation with the outsider was very intimidating.
 
Last edited:
Goldfish said:
I'm asking because this purge might be at least as much about dealing with traitors as Lara having a good excuse to prune some old monsters and antiquated dead weight from the top of the tree to make room for some ambitious youngsters (relatively speaking, of course) who are more amenable to her direct rule rather than continuing to act as her father's puppetmaster.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nope.
Lara is not actively reducing her Court's combat power in the middle of an ongoing world war, or creating enemies where she doesnt need to. The White Court does not exist in a vacuum, and power politics takes a backseat to survival.

fictionfan said:
It was dead within 3 rounds of combat which I think means 3 seconds. Give them a break.
I am guessing that our ignoring the Mooks as they attacked us to have a conversation with the outsider was very intimidating.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
3 combat turns is 9 seconds.
The Walker was present on Earth for less than a minute of time.
Long enough that everyone in Chicago probably has a good idea of what briefly showed up, but thats it.
 
We are on the clock, and did agree to play nice with Lara.

I don't really care about her personal victory beyond the court staying stable and it's leadership vulnerable to us. Might as well do the simple things that maximize our profits while still getting what we want.

[X] I Can't Believe It's Not Coercion
-[X] Provisionally accept his surrender… to the white court
-[X] Make clear to Lara later that we want a say in the fates of people who took up arms against us directly before a public decision is reached.
-[X] In the immediate sense prioritize the fight.
-[X] [Stunt] " You" Molly says, for a moment almost carrying the smell of wet meat and the impossible sensations of an Outsider's death on her breath " Are going to follow me, and accept the court's judgment over you"
—[X] " Face it, and you will likely face mine. Flee from it and I'll simply take revenge."

I'm fried right now, but goal here is to basically earmark him to take if we want later or leave with the court if we don't without delaying our reengagement.
 
uju32 said:
3 combat turns is 9 seconds.
The Walker was present on Earth for less than a minute of time.
Long enough that everyone in Chicago probably has a good idea of what briefly showed up, but thats it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
9 seconds of a world war two artillery barrage reenactment in the mystical senses, if it was necromancy perhaps even literally.
 
fictionfan said:
It was dead within 3 rounds of combat which I think means 3 seconds. Give them a break.

I am guessing that our ignoring the Mooks as they attacked us to have a conversation with the outsider was very intimidating.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
In it's own hellish, ear-hurting inhuman clicky language like the two of them were old golfing buddies and trying to kill each other was making par, yes. After their patriarch summoned the horrific thing that hurts your eyes to look at into his own body as a doomsday solution, yes.

"Outsider? Me? Nonsense, I took a tire iron to the Winter Lady the other day and Mab thanked me for it."
 
Last edited:
OctarineShrike said:
How can we acknowledge his begging without such an offer though?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We don't need to take him into our service in order to accept his surrender.
BronzeTongue said:
In fairness we are still in a combat zone. I don't want to kill this guy necessarily, but we should probably write in something to get on confirming who's winning and if Lydia is okay instead of pivoting to this guy completely.

Maybe we could accept his surrender to the court's "justice system" instead of doing it in our own name and then privately demand his services as part of the spoils if he's not part of the genocide squad?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think it's just a general "throw down your arms, and you get to live until at least the active fighting is over" situation, no specifics intended.

And if Lara strongly objects, we could turn him human.
The Insaniac said:
I'm inclined to agree. The Demon Empress of the Sixth Age to Come as born from Molly is decidedly more Theion's unquestionable glory than Malfeas' infinite hate in theme.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Indeed. This is also something to follow up on.

We have two foci: the audio recording of the Walker's speech (I assume Clippy was recording), and the ashes left by Skavis's body. Do we have anything else? Because we have rather more than two questions. Or at least I have more than two:
1) Who and what are "the princes of the earth"? This would give us very much needed context on what an exalted is. This is the first solid clue, really. We could also try variations of the theme, like "where do I find lore about Princes of the earth" etc.
2) Who is Empyrean Chaos? That's the big one. It should do things to Usum's memory, and it would give us knowledge of Theion. All very world-shaking but, really, this question is a necessary step to the third one
3) In what way is Molly a spawn of Empyrean Chaos? Recontextualizing her existence as a nascent Primordial is not something I would expect Molly to figure out easily without clues. And this is a big one. And it's an incredible step in character development, and something I want very much.

Then there are questions about the Walker itself - what was its story, identity, who were its victims, enemies, allies, goals, etc.

We need answers. We really, really need answers.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top