Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

Cavalar said:

I can't really understand why people are so eager to open gates of Molly's world to strangers from the White Council. Brass Courts are self-sufficient now, so we don't need external help from WC, before the chance to root out Peabody and other (sleeper) agents among wizards. And if you presume that someone influenced by the Black Council won't try to be in the diplomatic mission or won't try something dangerous in Molly's soul, you are too optimistic.

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Goldfish said:

This is my issue as well. Even without meta knowledge, we know the White Council is compromised. I can't understand why so many people are voting to invite the WC into the FCF.

And so many of y'all are voting to just do that without even asking for anything in return, like we should be grateful for the Merlin offering to send people there for some reason.

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My answer is "I have faith". Our courts are the position of our maximum strength. Nowhere else in Creation are we and those who follow us as strong as we are there (barring maybe friendly Malfeas with Ligier perfectly active and no Ebon Dragon). Any delegation that is sent there will be under constant watch via magic and technology, subject to the best of information gathering, subversion and monitoring techniques the best our spy agencies (we have those!) have to offer.

Wizards are more powerful than Path magic users. They are not so powerful to steamroll specialized agencies with millenia of experience and industrialized magic.

Merlin, on seeing a true magitech industrially made device near crapped his pants. He is old enough to remember colonialism and industrialization. In his mind, there's a real possiblity that we can do that to Earth's supernatural community, if not Earth entire. I suspect that at least Ancient Mai will be in full agreement with him.

And the probability of anyone compromised being sent approaches zero. Because, again, it will be an unspoken understanding that those sent will be under constant super-intrusive watch. It would be stupid to send someone compromised - it has too high a chance of giving them away. Because WC, and everyone else do not know any of our capabilities. For all they know, there are fully functioning third circle demons in there, with perfect social attacks and perfect investigation charms. Or, hell, Maidens are asleep under each of the pillars, and are about to wake up.

Those inside our soul will be going into a place of power they understand nothing about, with no hope of getting back save by our sufferance.

[X] I showed you mine, now you show me yours
-[X] "I allowed your divination, so in the spirit of cooperation and establishing further ties, would you consent to a divination of my own?"
--[X] Assuming he agrees, warn the gathered wizards to expect our anima banner to manifest. "Please excuse the light show. This is somewhat eye-catching, no pun intended." If using the Crown isn't enough to cause the anima to appear, force it to do so as part of the show.
---[X] Using one the Merlin's rings as a focus, ask our Crown to sort the previously established list of White Council traitors by how often they are in his presence. Also take the opportunity to use the Naked Wicked Souls Charm on him.

What's the point of asking for a sorted version of the list again?

That's not really a super helpful piece of information, especially compared to the risks being taken with the crown.

The vote as it stands doesn't even offer up an alternative explanation for what we're doing, despite the fact that he gave one to us and we'd be arguing for the right to do this based on his actions.

We also didn't set this as a term before letting him take action, which could easily be taken as an underhanded and poorly executed attempt at entrapment.

The timing and nature of this approach seems to be taking a material risk while making us look manipulative and worse, stupid, for little actual gain.

If you want to do something other than let in diplomats that's fair; I think it's a pointless delay and waste of a valuable opportunity, but it's fair to disagree. Please don't vote to act like a bench warmer from the Winter Fey JV team though.

Arranging a meeting place on earth for both parties would be a reasonably functional compromise just to name an example.

So would naming Gorfel and an ambiguous ability that makes us certain he wasn't lying - which gives us space to mask the crown with our urge if necessary- and asking him to propose some security assurances. It'd burn political capital, but it's better than the competing alternative to doing this the smooth way.

[X] Just the Exchange of Research Delegations for now

We are in fact getting something out of it.

It is quite late for me but so far the vote seems to be quite definitive. I will probably close it in the morning.

Goldfish said:

It's no secret that we have potent divination powers, so spreading information about false limits for those abilities is in our best interest.

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It is a secret actually.
The list of people(not counting cyberdevils) who know about that is less than 10.

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BronzeTongue said:

They get passives only, and I don't think they're valid targets for IDU because they're still part of Molly. She can't template stack, which she'd be doing if she got partial exalted benefits and fomori benefits.
Even if she could, fomori suck here. They're supposed to suck even.

Hypothetically if you got to build them and used every ill advised splat as a source they can get better, but they're intended to be disposable goons and ExWoD explicitly says we're not supposed to be able to design them in part to stop min-maxing.
It's not nearly enough protection for our secrets even if I'm wrong.

Take Broken Seeker for example. He was tracking us for months and managed to narrow down when we were specifically leaving town to do business with Odin. If we'd had this setup running it's fairly likely he could have snatched our clone regardless of any fomori powers and had hours to work her over.

I'd rather make arcana shapeshifters to use as proxies than do the equivalent of including some of the juiciest lore as the toy in a happy meal.

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1)If they can learn Path Sorcery or Shih Arts, I dont see any reason why they wouldnt be able to harness their own(or rather, their copy of mortal!Molly's) inner darkness.
And the calculus for fomor is very different when their personal survival is not a priority.


2)Fomor are supposed to suck in terms of their personal agency, not necessarily combat power or utility.
Pentex wouldnt bother investing in them if they didnt make sense to make; they're evil, but they do keep an eye on the bottomline.

The issue is not that you cant make Gorehounds, or Normalites or Ferectoi or Hollow Ones that wouldnt be credible combat threats.
Its that generally fomor give up a lot of personal agency when they become fomor, with the Bane getting a major say in everything from their physique to their mind. The Wyrm usually isnt solicitous of their wellbeing, and neither is Pentex.

Unless they are Ferectoi.
Thats not an issue with Molly.


3)*checks*Yeah thats some vintage "you're playing it wrong" bullshit there.

Not to mention that its thematically incoherent with his training charms: Chirality Prohibition Index turns subjects into CoDs with tailored specifications that the PC gets to pick, from languages to clothes.
Or the Latter-Day Implants charm which turns you into a fomor.

The solution to min-maxing has always been the magic words "subject to Storyteller approval". Rule Zero, if you prefer.
Not "you dont get to decide because you might minmax; dump it on the Storyteller's workload to make up a new set of shit."
I dont speak for the QM, but its probably safe to ignore that declaration.



4)As for Acceptable Target X attempting to snatch a clone, we know within seconds, because cellphones with cyberdevils are a thing in this setting. And Willpower 9 victims dont make good torture targets when you are in a hurry.

The Denarians couldnt break either Marcone or Ivy during the several days they held them captive during Small Favor, and they had preptime, a defended base to apply torture and deprivation to their victims, and Lucifer's aid.
Corpsetaker held Morty for over a day unsuccessfully in Ghost Story.

Im not worried about that being a threat for a Willpower 9/Willpower 10 Molly Carpenter clone, as long as IPM is a thing.
Thats the sort of thing that gets resolved in hours, maybe minutes.

Not to mention there's @Earth-Destroyer 's suggestion of spending anywhere from 2xp(Fortune 1, full training discount) to 7xp(Fortune 1+2+3, full training discount) to learn Fortune Path as a mortal and getting access to Death Curse(Ritual 1) as a combination fuck you and peace out for any SGI clones.

Throw upwards of 16 dice(Willpower 9/Willpower 10 + Manipulation 3 + Occult 5) of magical spite in an enemy's face as a from Hell's Heart I stab at thee move.
As Maggie LeFay demonstrated, you can make them remember you even without killing them.

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BronzeTongue said:

At minimum it'd be deeply unwise to step into someone else's territory and then break the rules when no one actually knows any Ways out of the place.

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Point of order:
The wisdom or otherwise of an action doesnt matter if you are being mindcontrolled. Or possessed.
Both of which are things we know have happened to wizards in this setting.

I generally agree with the thrust of your argument.
But I think this detail is something to keep in mind. Someone with programmed instructions from a puppetmaster does not necessarily work with the same cost/benefit calculations that other people do.

Hell, creating friction/conflict might be the point of any transgression.
After all, Turn Coat was all about starting a war between the White Coucil and the White Court.

uju32 said:

The wisdom or otherwise of an action doesnt matter if you are being mindcontrolled. Or possessed.
Both of which are things we know have happened to wizards in this setting.

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uju32 said:

Hell, creating friction/conflict might be the point of any transgression.
After all, Turn Coat was all about starting a war between the White Coucil and the White Court.

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With this in mind...
I know it won't win but this vote right here is what I would have prefered doing.

[X] Apologize but state that until you are sure that any information divulged to the white council would stay with the white council, you cannot in good conscience agree to any such agreement at this time.
-[X] Hint that you could help ferret out such trouble makers if desired, then gauge Arthur's reaction.
-[X] If he is agreeable, say that you can have the information soon.

@Goldfish your plan is also risky. If the Merlin or one of the Wardens decides to open the Sight after we warn them we are about to use divination who knows what they may see about the crown. On top of that your acting like our divination capabilities are an open secret.

They arent. Your probably making that assumption due to reader bias.

Sort of an aside, but I bet electrolaser weapons will be one of the technosorceries the council will be most interested in that we can produce at scale.

There isn't any reason they can't be cranked up to lethal levels of damage at need since they're basically lightning guns with smaller batteries. For wizards who aren't evokers it provides a nonlethal anti-thrall weapon that can also fry vamps pretty good without substantial training.

Being able to hand them out as weapons of last resort and as a spammable primary to allow combat specialists to focus their energy on a smaller number of more substantial tasks would be helpful.

uju32 said:

1)If they can learn Path Sorcery or Shih Arts, I dont see any reason why they wouldnt be able to harness their own(or rather, their copy of mortal!Molly's) inner darkness.
And the calculus for fomor is very different when their personal survival is not a priority.

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Learning paths isn't the same thing, exalts don't have explicit limits on those. Also worth noting that our clones have to relearn those skills because they can't use our essence based versions of them.

uju32 said:

2)Fomor are supposed to suck in terms of their personal agency, not necessarily combat power or utility.
Pentex wouldnt bother investing in them if they didnt make sense to make; they're evil, but they do keep an eye on the bottomline.

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Pentex isn't in this game, infernal exalts are. The design goal of fomor here is to be freakish mutants who we go through like popcorn. There's a reason they always qualify as lesser creatures of darkness no matter their power level or who precisely made them.

If you find yourself with a fomor that can legitimately trouble a named antagonist all on their own with their native powers you've gone too far.

uju32 said:

3)*checks*Yeah thats some vintage "you're playing it wrong" bullshit there

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You're the one trying to make a charm for making fodder and use it to make something equivalent to demon summoning and mist fiends.

Training charms aren't fomori charms, thematic consistency across them doesn't mean anything.

uju32 said:

The solution to min-maxing has always been the magic words "subject to Storyteller approval". Rule Zero, if you prefer.
Not "you dont get to decide because you might minmax; dump it on the Storyteller's workload to make up a new set of shit."
I dont speak for the QM, but its probably safe to ignore that declaration.

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Avoiding stacking endless work on the storyteller is important, but you're clearly doing this for the exact reason that restriction was written in the first place.

uju32 said:

As for Acceptable Target X attempting to snatch a clone, we know within seconds, because cellphones with cyberdevils are a thing in this setting. And Willpower 9 victims dont make good torture targets when you are in a hurry.

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We wouldn't have known for a considerable period of time of it happened last arc while we were traveling through the nevernever. Similar circumstances will come up again. Even if they don't waiting for us to be involved in something we can't drop would work.

Willpower is good against mind magic, but it isn't perfect and we only get the IPM effect that protects us from betraying our intimacies. Someone pumping a clone for information on our plans for Ortega would have no problems from the charm at all.

uju32 said:

Not to mention there's @Earth-Destroyer 's suggestion of spending anywhere from 2xp(Fortune 1, full training discount) to 7xp(Fortune 1+2+3, full training discount) to learn Fortune Path as a mortal and getting access to Death Curse(Ritual 1) as a combination fuck you and peace out for any SGI clones.

Throw upwards of 16 dice(Willpower 9/Willpower 10 + Manipulation 3 + Occult 5) of magical spite in an enemy's face as a from Hell's Heart I stab at thee move.
As Maggie LeFay demonstrated, you can make them remember you even without killing them.

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Maggie LeFay was a real wizard, Molly's clones would need to do a lot of development to get there.

Death curses aren't foolproof either. Naagoloshi literally eat better mages than we will be for decades without exalted bullshit.

uju32 said:

The wisdom or otherwise of an action doesnt matter if you are being mindcontrolled. Or possessed.
Both of which are things we know have happened to wizards in this setting.

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I find this funny in context of this exchange. Proper wizards are under threat of mind control and possession but our clone, which would be a wizardling with a few narrow passive charm benefits, is perfectly safe.

More directly, I was discounting stuff like that for this state of negotiations because we can rigorously screen anyone they send. At minimum they can't hide from the crown.

If we don't know well in advance about someone being subverted, especially when we know to be on the lookout, it's our fault.

BoredMan said:

[X] Apologize but state that until you are sure that any information divulged to the white council would stay with the white council, you cannot in good conscience agree to any such agreement at this time.
-[X] Hint that you could help ferret out such trouble makers if desired, then gauge Arthur's reaction.
-[X] If he is agreeable, say that you can have the information soon.

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The problem is that they won't trust us till they know us better. If we don't engage getting them to work with us on sensitive stuff will be hard. Arthur knows we're powerful after all, but he doesn't know any of the things that make us perfect for this task or that make our mysterious information reliable.

Some level of information is going to become "public" about our hell soon, and be accessible to our enemies. I think the best we can do in these early talks (outside of vetting everyone throughly) is to set a level of information access we can live with falling in that category and make sure they stick to it.

DragonParadox said:

An exchange already implies that you are getting something in return, the diplomatic skill of the White Council in first contact situations with large Nevernever Domains. If you want something material it would probably be best to trade it for something like rare reagents.

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"Quick to the city of Journey's gift shop mall! It has the finest and rarest tourist swag on the planet! Get the first edition Empress coronation collection personally signed by the Empress herself..."

firefrog600 said:

hypothetically if we tore off his beard would it work?

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DragonParadox said:

Yep that would work. A very Infernal solution

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Hypothetically speaking, how much of his beard would we need to get a meaningful answer of comparable quality? Would a single strand of hair, or even a hair cell (or alternatively a flaking skin cell) be sufficient?

For the Clones I prefer the e2 version I think.

You can at any time withdraw the invested Essence, dissolving the clone.
Also at Essence 4 you get a free mental connection to the clones.

At least under those circumstances they'd be useful minions for an Adorjani psycho who has no trouble killing versions of himself.

That still doesn't solve the issue with creating more Mollys to take your risks and such of course.
We only absorb them when we unravel them, which we can only do in our presence. So if they die, they die.
I really don't like the Charm.

It's a good Charm for someone who leans hard into Adorjani themes and is willing to cut out any emotional or magical connection to his clones with the Freedom Lets Go line of Charms at the drop of a hat, but I think it's terrible for someone with still vaguely human psychology.

uju32 said:

The wisdom or otherwise of an action doesnt matter if you are being mindcontrolled. Or possessed.
Both of which are things we know have happened to wizards in this setting.

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That presume we would let any of the wizard go in without checking for that, which is nonsensical, we know there are things to check for, this would be on the list, Molly is well placed to know mind magic exists.

I think Latter Day Implants should now count as a favored charm just because how much it reflects our Hell. If Molly learns the charm at this point I don't think it is going to reflect her knowledge gained from the wicked city but the fivefold court.

Of course I also don't expect us to spend the XP to get it for the same reason because in most cases if we can just bring someone into the court in order to get fitted for implants.

Actually many of the The Hell off Being Skinned Alive charms should also count as favored at least all the ones who's flavor text references the flaying sand because our hell has it's own skin pealing storms.

Negentropy said:

Hypothetically speaking, how much of his beard would we need to get a meaningful answer of comparable quality?

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Enough to hurt

We have constant winds.
We have constant flaying winds in our hell and we can even add a reference to the enduring and tireless turning of the wheel.
Ours would be iron fillings, but same general principle.

Really I could do this for the entire The Hell of Being Skinned Alive because they reference wind in almost every single charm and everything the The Hell of Being Skinned Alive does our hell could do better.

I do not think I can justify giving you guys another favored charm mechanically, Molly is already growing very fast.

Question for the thread. Assuming that getting 10 humans that we don't mind sacrificing wasn't a problem would Barren Waste Infliction be worth the 16 Xp cost?

DragonParadox said:

Enough to hurt

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Actually this leads me to an even better idea - just do one Brazilian wax of part of his leg or arm hair - all the pain and sufficient focus material, and all while leaving the beard untouched!

Trying to think of charms for the fivefold court.
I also want to do something about mass media made for the purpose of enjoyment because that is something our hell has the Wicked City does not.