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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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[X] Plan Call and reinforcements
-[X] The call
--[X] Ask more questions about his deal, try to see how sincere he is
--[X] Empathy excellency, ATB with willpower
--[X] Crown Question: [Focus: Call] What circumstances brought Broken Seeker here?
--[X] Binding agreements can be a bitch, you can sympathize with that. Would it help if you murdered all his employers, their families, allies, and cute little pets? You and a lot of others (allude to but don't mention Denarians and Winter) need Dresden alive, and intact without interruptions to those states.
--[X] How long does he have until he really needs Dresden dead?
--[X] Reiterate that the moment real harm comes to your friends, all deals are off and you'll be finding and killing Broken Seeker. Unhealthy habits for an immortal monstrosity of a bygone age or not, these are your mortals, and you put work into them.
-[X] Reinforcements
--[X] Indicate to Harry (by writing on a piece of paper) to call Alphas for help in evacuating Izzy and Alec
--[X] Have Harry call Murphy about the developing situation



I definitely want to make sure not to break our word. I also feel inclined to believe he means this ?compromise? in good-ish faith. And I'm not sure that Harry being technically dead and missing something minor is a bad end condition for this situation.
 
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uju32 said:
Citation needed.
Because Im pretty sure this is egregiously false.
In the Dresden Files AND in Kindred of the East.
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Have you read well any cultivation stories which are the keystone of Eastern stories. Raging against the heavens and killing those that assume themselves your better, is a core facets of eastern philosophy. Just like the east did not have words, for concepts like Inherent human rights, until the 1800s. In eastern world view those on top rule and order the world to their likely. And that is the nature of things, until someone more powerful comes along, kills the current rulers, and asserts their worldview. Those on top rule all else are little more then slaves to the rulers.
 
Earth-Destroyer said:
Have you read well any cultivation stories which are the keystone of Eastern stories. Raging against the heavens and killing those that assume themselves your better, is a core facets of eastern philosophy. Just like the east did not have words, for concepts like Inherent human rights, until the 1800s. In eastern world view those on top rule and order the world to their likely. And that is the nature of things, until someone more powerful comes along, kills the current rulers, and asserts their worldview. Those on top rule all else are little more then slaves to the rulers.
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Yes, the Monkey King is an agent of chaos who smashes up Heaven not because Heaven is natively a monkey's paradise but because he is just really strong/clever/disruptive. Or more generally the rules can be subverted, but they are still the rules, the hero is the hero because they can break things,

One's word has weight and meaning, one's name from your own lips has power, hospitality defines a host, all these things are in some way universal, though they are interpreted though different lenses and none of them are absolute.
 
uju32 said:
While your enemies, even the Red Court can.
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And here's the counterexample.

The Red Court have done far worse trickery, during negotiations or otherwise, and people are still dealing with them.
BronzeTongue said:
think you're underestimating the importance of this stuff, but that aside we're still operating in that space even if there are areas that don't.

I'm not saying to let two innocent people die over it, but personally I'm not satisfied that this is actually necessary or effective.

Broken Seeker isn't going to leave himself open at this age, so we're not actually solving the problem.

He's not just going to hand over his hostages, send his minions out of town, and show up alone to say hello or something.

What we need if we want to change the equation is leverage beyond basic violence; BS has done an excellent job making that route too costly for us to want to traverse and he'd be an idiot to let any of it go until he has what he wants and is out of reach.
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To be fair, my plan adresses that.

I don't expect Seeker to hand over the hostages, I suspect he'll have his minions keep a claw on their throats until after he is out of town.
But to do his part of the deal he himself here proposed he has to get in our reach, while at the same time leaving the hostages without him.

That's an opportunity we can use on both ends, with Micheal keeping our friends alive while Jado Dogs, Alphas and whoever else we can get attack the hostage-holders.
While at the same time we, Harry and Lydia can murder a demigod who richely deserves is and has for centuries.
 
Yog said:
Yes we can if we offer a valid alternative and have firepower to back it up. "I keep my word, but word given under duress means nothing" is a valid way to do deals with people.
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No, thats not how it works.
You dont change society standards with firepower.

Yog said:
Or he's actively, actually, honestly, fully is telling the truth. He is kinda sympathetic to Molly, and regards her if not favorably, then like something of a very distant kin / potential future ally. So, he doesn't want to mess with what's hers, but can't get out of the contract. So, he's looking for compromises.

This logic works. He thinks he understands Molly. He spent time trying to understand what Molly was, and came to wrong conclusions. He spent time to understand what Molly's relationship with Harry was, and, filtered through the lenses of his mind, came to certain conclusions. Under this logic, everything works.
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He's a naagloshii. A god of pain and terror. One who enjoys hurting mortals. We have seen him try to kill people who he spent decades training, people who served him faithfully, simply because they got caught doing his will; why do you believe he gives a fuck about us beyond what he can get?

He has previously betrayed his oaths to the Holy People he used to serve, and betrayed the Native American tribes he was supposed to be helping train, and has betrayed the lesser skinwalkers he raised himself.
Why would you take anything he says at face value?

A person who approaches you by kidnapping your friends and threatening them with death has very little credibility, and you should not take their word for anything without multiple levels of corroboration.

Earth-Destroyer said:
Have you read well any cultivation stories which are the keystone of Eastern stories. Raging against the heavens and killing those that assume themselves your better, is a core facets of eastern philosophy. Just like the east did not have words, for concepts like Inherent human rights, until the 1800s. In eastern world view those on top rule and order the world to their likely. And that is the nature of things, until someone more powerful comes along, kills the current rulers, and asserts their worldview. Those on top rule all else are little more then slaves to the rulers.
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This is the Dresden Files, my friend, not a random cultivation story.
The rules of a fictional Eastern-flavored high fantasy society do not apply in the urban fantasy that is the Dresdenverse.
Nor do African societies have any connection whatsoever.


Once again: Is there any citation in the Dresdenverse you can present supporting your claims about the rules not being universal?
The books? Short stories? RPG? Comics?
Anything?
 
Yeah, the only one who can make and break promises at will, violate the Accords and get away with it, is Ethniu.

The one who chokeslammed every immortal who came at her, simultaneously. Which included Odin with Grungir, the Erlking, and Titania at the height of her power during Midsummer. (And Mab too, but that was both with the Eye rather than just Ethniu being swole, and Mab was also being an idiot so I wouldn't really count her)

Ethniu lost only because literally everybody dogpiled her and then threw her in jail, and it still came down to the wire. We aren't quite at that level yet; even if we could already wipe the floor with 99% of all supernatural beings in a 1v1, that's different from being able to go solo against 99% of all supernatural beings at the same time.
 
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Earth-Destroyer said:
Have you read well any cultivation stories which are the keystone of Eastern stories. Raging against the heavens and killing those that assume themselves your better, is a core facets of eastern philosophy. Just like the east did not have words, for concepts like Inherent human rights, until the 1800s. In eastern world view those on top rule and order the world to their likely. And that is the nature of things, until someone more powerful comes along, kills the current rulers, and asserts their worldview. Those on top rule all else are little more then slaves to the rulers.
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… Xianxi stories aren't a cornerstone of anyone's philosophy, though they have represented different counterculture trends.

You're also not exactly establishing a connection to the settings we're working with, which aren't reflective of reality anyway.

The Yama Kings are for White Wolf purposes all about contract law and rules lawyering. It's baked into the system.

Random other works in the same cultural space aren't evidence of anything.

Artemis1992 said:
To be fair, my plan adresses that.
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Unless it all goes perfectly they still die. A double cross is the end of their value, and BS isn't going to ignore this angle.
 
BronzeTongue said:
The problem here is that they don't care; they have standards and like them as they are.

You also sort of need to broadcast your rules in advance even if you try this sort of thing. They'll reach the part where you swore an oath then broke it and stop listening.

This is exactly like dealing with bankers after signing a contract. They genuinely don't care about your opinion, and being right or wrong has no bearing on the consequences.

Our options are to play the game till we win hard enough to change the parts we don't like or self sabotage on principle and harm our own ability to be productive.

Do you want to feel good right now or do you want to win?
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I want not to be trapped strategically, or to shoot myself in the knee.

Supernatural powers are not stupid. They are perfectly capable of understanding how mortals deal with each other, and the concept of "word given under duress to an enemy holds no weight". Fae can't use it themselves, due to their nature, but they can understand it. Normally, when dealing with mortals, supernatural has the firepower and magic to force their rules, which are mostly fae rules. This doesn't apply to us. So, again, weighing downsides and upsides, I firmly believe that making an example out of naagloshii as to why it's useless to force a promise out of us by threatening our friend is a good idea.

We just need to clearly establish circumstances under which our rock-solid word isn't worth anything.
BronzeTongue said:
Yeah, and a rep for not keeping our promises
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Even fae are not dumb AI and are capable of understanding the difference between "not keep our promises" generality and the specific cases of "promises given under these circumstances are not valid to us".
uju32 said:
You dont change society standards with firepower.
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This is quickly going to turn political, so I am bowing out of this particular branch of conversation with "we disagree, and there's nothing more to discuss here".
uju32 said:
He's a naagloshii. A god of pain and terror. One who enjoys hurting mortals. We have seen him try to kill people who he spent decades training, people who served him faithfully, simply because they got caught doing his will; why do you believe he gives a fuck about us beyond what he can get?

He has previously betrayed his oaths to the Holy People he used to serve, and betrayed the Native American tribes he was supposed to be helping train, and has betrayed the lesser skinwalkers he raised himself.
Why would you take anything he says at face value?

A person who approaches you by kidnapping your friends and threatening them with death has very little credibility, and you should not take their word for anything without multiple levels of corroboration.
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Yes, and he thinks we are something like him - an ancient horror of a bygone age that for some reason is playing at / thinks itself a mortal. We should be happy it isn't slaughtering our friends as an intervetion.
 
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Artemis1992 said:
And here's the counterexample.
The Red Court have done far worse trickery, during negotiations or otherwise, and people are still dealing with them.
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The Red Court go to significant effort to at least give lip service to those rules where there are witnesses, and to disavow those who are caught breaking them.
And even then they are still widely regarded as untrustworthy. As are the Fomor.

Do you think its coincidence that literally everyone showed up to the Chicken Pizza Party at Red Court HQ?
ALL three Swords of the Cross. Winter's number 3 woman. Odin Allfather himself, and a whole bunch of unnamed masked heavy hitters just to burn the Red Court to the ground?

There was even an army of not-tengu ninja spirits from Japan.
 
uju32 said:
No, thats not how it works.
You dont change society standards with firepower.
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Yes you do, ask Winter.

They are forcing their Accords on most of the world because they have the firepower to do so, not because they proposed reasonable accords that everyone gladly signed freely.

BronzeTongue said:
Unless it all goes perfectly they still die. A double cross is the end of their value, and BS isn't going to ignore this angle.
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All ideas I've seen so far have a high likelyhood of them dying.

We won't give in to the ancient monster and he won't let our friends go without getting what he wants.
So whatever we do, we will very likely have to fight with our friends still being hostage and possibly being killed in the first round of the battle.
One way or the other this will end in violence, we can only try to find or construct the best situation to strike.
 
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uju32 said:
When BronzeTongue says your money wont be taken, they arent just talking about trade.
It means you arent trustworthy. Your word is not good. People cannot make agreements with you because they believe you will break it if you think its to your profit, or can justify it to yourself that its unfair.

You are near-totally incapable of operating in the greater supernatural society, where the only currency is your reputation.
While your enemies, even the Red Court can.
Even the Yama Kings' word is good, else they would be incapable of buying people's souls.

People dont realize precisely how crippling this is.
We hired Monoc on credit when we had to go up against Kakuri, and they took it because our word was good. Mab accepted we would call on her because our word was presumed good.

We're already an archdevil as far as most people are concerned.
We dont need to be known as an archdevil who cant keep their word to boot.
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No, I understand it entirely. The problem is twofold: if people die because we decided to keep our word for future gains or comfort or access to high society, it's a bad deal. You don't need some eastern philosophy for this, Jeremiah Bentham will tell you about it. Moreover, any deal that were made under duress is invalid: it is rule since Justinian's Digest, maybe earlier.

Secondly, if Molly allows to be exploited because of her connections without retribution, that means she will be exploited.

And I reiterate that your perception is heavily influenced by the Dresden Files that are constantly dealing with fairies and those who accepted their code of conduct.
 
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Yog said:
I want not to be trapped strategically, or to shoot myself in the knee.
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Then why are you advocating for the option that does that?

They can, will, and do react to people breaking oaths this way. Spin as you like, but they're not going to ignore it and they're not invested in our narrative.

You're credit rating goes down if your don't pay your debts, doesn't matter if you needed the money to feed your kids instead.
Yog said:
Even fae are not dumb AI and are capable of understanding the difference between "not keep our promises" generality and the specific cases of "promises given under these circumstances are not valid to us".
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They aren't dumb AI, but many are incapable of distinguishing or don't care on this topic.

Wanting it real hard doesn't make people sympathetic.
 
BronzeTongue said:
I'm not saying to let two innocent people die over it, but personally I'm not satisfied that this is actually necessary or effective.

Broken Seeker isn't going to leave himself open at this age, so we're not actually solving the problem.

He's not just going to hand over his hostages, send his minions out of town, and show up alone to say hello or something.

What we need if we want to change the equation is leverage beyond basic violence; BS has done an excellent job making that route too costly for us to want to traverse and he'd be an idiot to let any of it go until he has what he wants and is out of reach.
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This is the good argument, the problem is that we are discussing the consequences of breaking a promise to BS without exactly having a plan to save the people not killing Harry in the process.
 
Frankly we should just kill him and be done with it. This guy is already an oath breaker, he could swear never to bother us again, and the next moment just kill the hostages. Their is no deal to be made because he has already proven to not keep his word.
 
All in all, if I have to pick between reputation A (Always keeps her word) and reputation B (Always kills people messing with her friends and family) I prefer B.

Better for keeping those we care about safe.

We will become more powerful anyway, that's in the nature of the game, being considered untrustworthy by Fey is a problem, but it can't change the game.

Both would be better of course, but I haven't seen a good plan yet.
 
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BronzeTongue said:
They aren't dumb AI, but many are incapable of distinguishing or don't care on this topic.
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They normally don't care because they are usually the ones with power in talks with people capable of breaking their word under any circumstances.

I care far more about our friends and followers than I do about Molly's reputation. If it looks like our meaningful promises can be extracted from us by kidnapping our friends or followers, more factions will try to kidnap our friends and minions. Or poison them. Or slip them a denarian coin. This can be remedied in two broad ways:
1) Protect our friends and minions. Be it through empowering them, moving them to our kingdom, summoning servitor spirit guardians, etc, make them hard targets, where resources needed to take them would make the endevour impractical.
2) Make applying pressure through our friends worth less. Either by allowing a few of them to be murdered to demonstrate that we don't care, exacting punitive retribution within the confines of our word later (like if we promise not to kill naagloshii, delimb it, stick it into our kingdom's most secure prison, then genocide its kind), or by devaluing any promise given under threat of our friends being killed.

Out of these options, I consider making it clear that whatever we say with our friends' lives on the line is only meant to save them, and nothing else, the best option on the balance. It costs us the least.
 
[X] Plan Call and reinforcements
-[X] The call
--[X] Ask more questions about his deal, try to see how sincere he is
--[X] Empathy excellency, ATB with willpower
--[X] Crown Question: [Focus: Call] What circumstances brought Broken Seeker here?
--[X] Binding agreements can be a bitch, you can sympathize with that. Would it help if you murdered all his employers, their families, allies, and cute little pets? You and a lot of others (allude to but don't mention Denarians and Winter) need Dresden alive, and intact without interruptions to those states.
--[X] How long does he have until he really needs Dresden dead?
--[X] Reiterate that the moment real harm comes to your friends, all deals are off and you'll be finding and killing Broken Seeker. Unhealthy habits for an immortal monstrosity of a bygone age or not, these are your mortals, and you put work into them.
-[X] Reinforcements
--[X] Indicate to Harry (by writing on a piece of paper) to call Alphas for help in evacuating Izzy and Alec
--[X] Have Harry call Murphy about the developing situation. Warn her about probable surveillance.
 
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Yog said:
This is quickly going to turn political, so I am bowing out of this particular branch of conversation with "we disagree, and there's nothing more to discuss here".
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Fair enough.

Yog said:
Yes, and he thinks we are something like him - an ancient horror of a bygone age that for some reason is playing at / thinks itself a mortal. We should be happy it isn't slaughtering our friends as an intervetion.
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He knows better. I quote:
No? Do you think the gifts of darkness and desolation are so common then? To be found by chance asking nothing? Costing nothing? You are as a wolf sister, awoken suddenly by a careless sheep. Having devoured it you then fell back to fitful slumber 'neath its flayed skin and behold you think yourself a sheep. Yet you are a dream of elder days which has crawled into the husk of mortality and for the moment forgotten herself. It will crumble eventually, no matter how many times the Shepherd repeats the lie. You and I should really be on the same side, like-minded as we face a future bright."
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Dude is out here telling the Catholic girl who has met an angel that they're all a lie.


There is no honor among these thieves. The Red Court were sharp to backstab the Fomor in Cleveland. The Corpsetaker and Grevane spent half the events of Dead Beat trying to kill each other. The Red King arranged the death of his daughter Arianna Ortega at Dresden's hands.

The person who trained Victor Sells didnt tell him the White Council was a thing, and omitted basic safety precautions.
The one who gave the FBI hexenwulfen belts ommitted to mention that they drive you insane.
I could go on.


He would be murdering them, and us if he thought he could do it without repercussions.
I recently reread Shagnasty's rampage through the Raith Manor; I remember what they are like quite well.
Im under no illusions.
Artemis1992 said:
Yes you do, ask Winter.
They are forcing their Accords on most of the world because they have the firepower to do so, not because they proposed reasonable accords that everyone gladly signed freely.
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The Accords are the latest formalization of existing society standards, with explicit penalties in order to prevent shit escalating and spilling out into mortal society. Winter is not imposing new rules out of the blue; thats beyond even their power.
 
Artemis1992 said:
All in all, if I have to pick between reputation A (Always keeps her word) and reputation B (Always kills people messing with her friends and family) I prefer B.

Better for keeping those we care about safe.

We will become more powerful anyway, that's in the nature of the game, being considered untrustworthy by Fey is a problem, but it can't change the game.

Both would be better of course, but I haven't seen a good plan yet.
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We can certainly do both hell even Mab understand the spirit of the word. We deal in good faith to those that do the same for us. And are fully willing to revoke that privilege to those that do not, is not a contrition.
 
Artemis1992 said:
All ideas I've seen so far have a high likelyhood of them dying.

We won't give in to the ancient monster and he won't let our friends go without getting what he wants.
So whatever we do, we will very likely have to fight with our friends still being hostage and possibly being killed in the first round of the battle.
One way or the other this will end in violence, we can only try to find or construct the best situation to strike.
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Then what makes this choice better? You're setting us to fail and get double tapped for it.
Yog said:
Out of these options, I consider making it clear that whatever we say with our friends' lives on the line is only meant to save them, and nothing else, the best option on the balance. It costs us the least.
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Disagree. We can make this point without oathbreaking.

The salient point is that you're assuming they care or will care anytime soon, that our perspective is really that important against a crucial community standard as they measure it.

It starts from a premise that isn't true and hopes real hard that the people around us will get with the program before the consequences catch up.
 
BronzeTongue said:
Then what makes this choice better? You're setting us to fail and get double tapped for it.
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It should have decent odds to save our friends, since they'll only be guarded by minions and potentially curses, both of which Micheal can hopefully deal with.

Important is that the Naagloshii can't be with them uf he's currently trying to eat Harry.

On the other end, the Skinwalker has to come close enough to Molly to risk a sword to the chest and if we use Shintai and speed-charm I don't see him escape without a real fight.

That's the best I can come up with.
 
uju32 said:
Dude is out here telling the Catholic girl who has met an angel that they're all a lie.
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He doesn't think we are a Catholic girl. He thinks we are an ancient god-beast who devoured the Catholic girl after she found it slumbering away in the NeverNever and for some reason, possibly amnesia, possibly dissociative personality disorder, possibly a long period of coming out of hybernation, is now thinking itself the girl. The lie is question is likely "mortals matter", or "it's all about mortals", or something to the tune of "you should be a good little godling and help mortals". Remember, it isn't omniscient, and from what we know, has come to wrong conclusions about what we are, and is operating under those mistaken assumptions.
BronzeTongue said:
Disagree. We can make this point without oathbreaking.
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I wouldn't be so sure here. Not without having to kill Dresden, or risking our friends lives. I value supernatural's fae understanding of contracts less than our friends lives.
 
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