Networking with the freshmen wouldn't be the point. It'd be the professors, the companies and institutions that work with the school, the introductions to alumni who wouldn't give us the time of day without the nod from the old boy's club, connections to the broader academic community and their R&D programs, all that stuff.
University is a waste of time for Molly. How many graduates of even the Ivy leagues go on to great success almost none, at best they wind up working for the actually important people.
The upper levels of power do not care about some trivial degree, they care about proven results. The way to get into the real ranks of the powerful, is to have proven your worth of being their, by becoming that rich, and powerful already. Making the most powerful cooperation in the world is an easy to do that. As we can out tech, out preform, and out price nearly everybody trivially.
Want to push thou laws that favor us buy out all the lobbyists, while starting up our own lobbyist organizations with high level dice pool mortals with hidden cyber buffs making then better then any ordinary mortal.
[X] Cut the connection and leave well enough lone. Any information their IT department may be able to get about the infiltration is likely to be too weird to make heads or tails of
University is a waste of time for Molly. How many graduates of even the Ivy leagues go on to great success almost none, at best they wind up working for the actually important people.
The upper levels of power do not care about some trivial degree, they care about proven results. The way to get into the real ranks of the powerful, is to have proven your worth of being their, by becoming that rich, and powerful already. Making the most powerful cooperation in the world is an easy to do that. As we can out tech, out preform, and out price nearly everybody trivially.
Want to push thou laws that favor us buy out all the lobbyists, while starting up our own lobbyist organizations with high level dice pool mortals with hidden cyber buffs making then better then any ordinary mortal.
The minimum course load of 12 credit hours per semester to be considered a full time student in the US is easily manageable without significant time investment, especially for someone who isn't trying to excel academically or taking the more difficult math and science heavy classes.
And many professors couldn't care less if students show up for lectures so long as assignments are completed on time and exams taken. This is especially true for entry level general education courses where there are hundreds of students in the lecture hall, the professor probably doesn't even show up because they can just send TAs to handle the fresh meat, and everyone has a number because no one cares to learn their name. We could fill our freshman semesters with these types of courses if we want to and no one would raise an eyebrow in surprise.
We can basically attend Harvard on easy mode for at least a couple semesters while focusing the vast majority of our time and efforts on the Boston supernatural scene. It gives us a good excuse to be in the city and an even better cover, not to mention the opportunity for networking with muggles and lesser talents in the city. If things don't work out and we decide to leave, we would hardly be the first college dropout to go on to found a billion dollar multinational corporation.
University is a waste of time for Molly. How many graduates of even the Ivy leagues go on to great success almost none, at best they wind up working for the actually important people.
The upper levels of power do not care about some trivial degree, they care about proven results. The way to get into the real ranks of the powerful, is to have proven your worth of being their, by becoming that rich, and powerful already. Making the most powerful cooperation in the world is an easy to do that. As we can out tech, out preform, and out price nearly everybody trivially.
Want to push thou laws that favor us buy out all the lobbyists, while starting up our own lobbyist organizations with high level dice pool mortals with hidden cyber buffs making then better then any ordinary mortal.
The minimum course load of 12 credit hours per semester to be considered a full time student in the US is easily manageable without significant time investment, especially for someone who isn't trying to excel academically or taking the more difficult math and science heavy classes.
And many professors couldn't care less if students show up for lectures so long as assignments are completed on time and exams taken. This is especially true for entry level general education courses where there are hundreds of students in the lecture hall, the professor probably doesn't even show up because they can just send TAs to handle the fresh meat, and everyone has a number because no one cares to learn their name. We could fill our freshman semesters with these types of courses if we want to and no one would raise an eyebrow in surprise.
We can basically attend Harvard on easy mode for at least a couple semesters while focusing the vast majority of our time and efforts on the Boston supernatural scene. It gives us a good excuse to be in the city and an even better cover, not to mention the opportunity for networking with muggles and lesser talents in the city. If things don't work out and we decide to leave, we would hardly be the first college dropout to go on to found a billion dollar multinational corporation.
And, again, I am fairly sure that any PoliSci professor worth their office read into "yeah, I am actually a god queen of the whole world, and am here to do some learning and networking, and, oh, quite possibly net you a nobel prize equivalent in the future, but I also fight lovecraftian monsters out to eat reality, and my legitimacy comes from, among other things, literal divine right, so I might miss some classes" will cover for us.
In fact, I am very curious what political science would say about Molly's whole situation, and the supernatural world in general.
Carefully you take the papers and for the first time you look at the pictures, a faded family photo of what's clearly your mother, maybe fourteen or fifteen sitting on a sunlit bench the faint shadows of the leaves above falling on her face, but mostly on the giant straw hat she was wearing at the time. The man to her right looks... about how you would imagine a 80s high power investor to look, slicked black hair, suspenders and all. There is something about the jaw and the eyebrows that remind you of Matthew, but it's the eyes that are the most arresting, exactly the same blue as your own. Blood will leave its mark. The woman, your grandmother you guess, looks very little like mom and it's not just the 80s perm and fancy earrings that wouldn't look out of place on the Titanic, a aristocratic almost hawkish face and eyebrows that to match like wings about to take flight in outrage. Her posture though, straight-backed without being deliberate or self-conscious about it, ankles that does remind you of Mom.
Over the next two days you learn what you can about Mom's side of the family. For one both James and Regina are still alive and apparently doing just as she had expected: sweeping up unprofitable start ups and either turning them around or selling them for parts and being a leading voice 'in charities promoting education in the developing world' particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Of far more interest to you is that they have another child: Brian Hamilton, age twenty-three, adopted. Looking though the dates they must have started the process months, at most a year after their daughter ran away. What, did they replace her for a new model, one that went to MIT yet? Being fair they did adopt an orphan, you can't fault them for the deed itself.
This is not proper English syntax. It's with a new model not for a new model and I have no idea what that yet is doing there. Try to phrase it better if you can.
This is not proper English syntax. It's with a new model not for a new model and I have no idea what that yet is doing there. Try to phrase it better if you can.
If nothing else Winters position of constantly fighting a war encourages a monsterous mindset and war driven society. Then we have Summer who are hardwired to value emotions above logic and who are expected to be able to at least counter the former war driven society.
It seems incorrect to judge them by human standards if their brains are wired differently to begin with. What your proposing here is like throwing a 40k tyranid or daemon into prison. There's no point, they aren't going to be rehabilitated or something.
I agree with that but anyone or anything that has to fight a war indefinitely probably isn't going to be nice. It would have to be some kind of automated force maybe that doesn't get involved with anything non Outsider related.
Unless you can suggest a better alternative to the essential role people are gonna do that lol.
Constantly fighting a war being an encouragement towards a monstrous mindset is fascist gobbledygook that conceals how the cold equations of war are actually seldom used by people who want to fight eternal wars because the cold equations of war are about winning not simply enduring.
For all that Winter claims that they are nothing but logic it is made very clear both in canon Dresden Files and here in this quest that Winter's actions are very much driven more by their emotions and the instinctual shortcuts those represent than by actual cold logic.
As for Summer simply being the counter to Winter? That is not the case. It is repeatedly stated in Dresden Files at various points that Summer is supposed to be this counter-weight to Winter yet we don't see that. In all cases shown of Summer acting against Winter to counter them it is either Nemesis pulling strings or some other enemy faction using the enmity between Summer and Winter to get them to fight and distract one another.
Can someone point me to a case of Summer and Winter actually balancing each other out in the Dresden Files? Or in this quest?
You're confusing niceness with pleasantness. Anyone fighting an indefinite war is not going to be pleasant to be around for people not fighting such a war, but they don't have to be mean about it.
One of our long term goals is to find/create such an alternative. The thread has had this conversation before and while the specifics vary from post to post and poster to poster the gist of it is that just because someone is doing an essential service that doesn't give them the right to abuse the people they are doing that service for. Human or inhuman mindsets involved in doing so doesn't change that.
@BronzeTongue suggests that we just take over the job ourselves slowly, I'm more on the side of let's lead by example, but not be the only ones holding up the sky by the time we are done with reforms.
No the AP spent on a degree is wasted AP, it does nothing for Molly save cost AP for nothing. Degree's means nothing in all fields compared to proven results, a self made billionaire is instantly invited into the the higher levels of powers because they have proven themselves.
If colleges could train people to be really successful and powerful, every single graduates would be. Same principle as a gold rush the person that gets really rich does not mine for gold, they sell shovels to the masses. Molly will get more from a 5 minutes phone conversations to seal a major company deal then all of university would ever do.
Degrees only prove you can take a test. Hell today a lot of companies are rejecting people because the have degrees, the companies can get better more capable workers by just training fresh out of high-school students then colleges could ever do.
As for Summer simply being the counter to Winter? That is not the case. It is repeatedly stated in Dresden Files at various points that Summer is supposed to be this counter-weight to Winter yet we don't see that. In all cases shown of Summer acting against Winter to counter them it is either Nemesis pulling strings or some other enemy faction using the enmity between Summer and Winter to get them to fight and distract one another.
Can someone point me to a case of Summer and Winter actually balancing each other out in the Dresden Files? Or in this quest?
You're confusing niceness with pleasantness. Anyone fighting an indefinite war is not going to be pleasant to be around for people not fighting such a war, but they don't have to be mean about it.
One of our long term goals is to find/create such an alternative. The thread has had this conversation before and while the specifics vary from post to post and poster to poster the gist of it is that just because someone is doing an essential service that doesn't give them the right to abuse the people they are doing that service for. Human or inhuman mindsets involved in doing so doesn't change that.
@BronzeTongue suggests that we just take over the job ourselves slowly, I'm more on the side of let's lead by example, but not be the only ones holding up the sky by the time we are done with reforms.
It should be noted that part of the reason we do not see Summer to anything but be Nemesis Pawn is that Harry would have no reason to be involved in business as usual and to a great extent that is true of Molly as well. A good base example in the mortal world would be something like this:
The old mining town is overwhelmed by kobolds of the Winter Court who use the mine to lure in children and seal them in so that their torment and the resulting frantic searches can be harvested to empower the Winter Court. A munch of Summer Sidhe show up, disguised as a search and rescue company that not only finds the children, but uses the publicity to turn the mines into a new tourist attraction. Some of the old hands swear the old shafts didn't look quite so pretty, but that is just them forgetting right?
Realistically most of the countering is done in the Nevernever though and that matters since it is the Spirit World, it is the place of unquiet dead and of all mortal dreams, if Winter were not contested there the dreams of all men would turn cold indeed.
...Didn't we just get an example recently? Lily giving Harry summer fire so that he can save Molly from Eldest Fetch?
For more archetypical examples, check out Sleeping Beauty and the good fairy that moderates the curse of the wicked one. Likewise, all the other various examples of a 'small and powerless fairy' giving a human some minor help that lets them defeat a big bad evil.
I think the idea is that Summer is not supposed to equal the full might of Winter, but rather keep it in check and pointed in the right direction, with the rules of engagement dictating a clear modus operandi. Summer is the Military Police combined with a medic corps... And you can't expect military police to keep the whole military in check all the time. That doesn't mean they don't do their job, it means shit happens.
I absolutely don't want to badmouth serving military or imply that all soldiers in modern armies behave badly, but the reality is that the role of military police in even fairly modern times in very organized armies has not prevented all kinds of awful stuff from happening. And the war against the Outsiders is definitely a massive, existential war when all kinds of nasty stuff is going to be more prevalent... With of course soldiers from Winter who are not and were never human. Summer not preventing everything all the time doesn't make them any more weak or useless than normal police not preventing every crime makes them weak or useless.
If anything, Harry's realization that Winter is absurdly vaster and more powerful than he imagined confirms that Summer actually does it's job pretty damn well because that means 99.9% of various redcaps and cait sith and so forth probably never bother humans. Whether that's because they're kept away from them, because they're scared of retribution, or diverted into fighting each other for entertainment or whatever... It apparently works pretty well for most. It's just the exceptions that Harry gets to see are very hard to ignore.
There's no actual evidence this guy has anything that's both unique and valuable enough to be worth a favor. Spending strategic resources on curiosity is a waste.
Let him rot, we have better things to do.
1) The Knight Mantle is, according to Summer Lady Aurora, a significant part of the power of the Court in question, and without it one Court can destroy the other; thats why the missing Mantle started a war in Summer Knight
Aurora nodded and folded her hands in her lap. "Summer readies to go to war against Winter."
I frowned. "You mean it's not just a theoretical possibility anymore. It's real." "I know no other kind of war. The loss of the Summer Knight has forced Summer's hand." "I'm not sure I follow." Her pale brow knit into a soft frown. "The power of our Knights is considerable. It carries a sort of weight that only a free mortal will can possess. That power, that influence, is a critical element of the balance between our Courts."
"Except now yours is gone."
"Exactly."
"Which makes Summer weaker."
"Yes."
I nodded. "Then why the hell are you planning an attack?"
"The seasons are changing," Aurora said. "In two days' time, Midsummer will be upon us. The height of Summer's strength."
She said nothing more, letting me do the math. "You think Winter has taken away your Knight," I said. "And if you wait, you're only going to grow more and more weak, while Winter gets stronger. Right?" "Correct. If we are to have any chance of victory, we must strike while at the peak of our strength. It will be the only time when our Court might be near equal to Winter's strength. Otherwise, the seasons will change, and at Midwinter Mab and her creatures will come for us. And they will destroy us, and with us the balances of the mortal world." She lifted her green eyes from her hands to my face. "Winter, Mister Dresden. Endless Winter. Unending and vicious cycles of predator and prey. Such a world would not be kind to mortals."
I shook my head. "Why would Winter pull this now? I mean, if they had waited another couple of days, they could have held all the cards. Why leave you enough space to wriggle out?"
"I cannot even pretend to know the mind of Winter," Aurora said. "But I know that they must not be allowed to destroy us. For your sake as well as ours."
"Boy, everybody's looking out for my best interests."
"Wizard, please. Promise me that you will do what you can to stop them."
"I'm finished making promises." I stood up and started for the path that led back to the elevator and out, but part of me wanted to do nothing but return to the comfort Aurora had offered. I paused and squeezed my eyes shut, focusing my resolve. "But I will say this. I'm going to find the killer and straighten this out, and I'm going to do it before Midsummer."
I didn't bother to add, "Because I'm as good as dead if I don't."
No need to belabor the obvious.
Now, she could be lying, because Nemesis infection, but the fact that the war did happen at the book's climax says otherwise.
You dont give that sort of power into the hands of walk-ins off the street.
Just by virtue of existing, Lloyd Slate is exceptional in some way.
This goes for every other Knight we have seen mentioned, by the way.
Ronald Reuel was formidable enough that no one in Winter wanted to cross him over a couple of changelings even though the principle of the matter favored Winter. Slate was good enough to assassinate Reuel, betray the Winter Queens under their nose and almost get away with it if not for protagonist intervention.
Fix ambushed an armed and armored, though injured, Winter Knight Slate with a steel wrench and won. As a mortal.
And Dresden was...Dresden.
2)There are no other Knights up for examination.
There are no other former Mantle-bearers up for examination either.
Reuel has been dead for four or five years now, and the body is either cremated or been rotting for that time.
I mean thats interesting and all but I don't see how its neccesary or even matters really. We can use Crown questions to find Nemesis possesed and probably make things to grant immunity to it as well as remove Nemesis shards with a ritual.
I don't want to use a favor we got from Mab just to help out the Fae Courts anyway.
Because acquiring more detail about how the Fae Court power works is straight up essential if we are to have any reasonable chance of altering the way they work in the future. Because the more firsthand knowledge we have, the more foci we can pin down for Crown use and the fewer things we need to use the Crown for.
Because Curiosity is Molly's Urge.
There's no guarantee Mab will agree to trade him for curing Lea.
But there's a reason we have been very careful about limiting the pool of people who know just how comprehensive Molly's information-gathering capability is.
Having slept on it, using a generic vampiric elder as a sacrifice to power Lily's splendor is better than using her tears for the reason of advertisement. If we are using this as an opportunity to advertise the product we make to the fae nobility / queens, and especially if we are going to be using my proposed "twice the materials needed to make (one going into production, one going as profit) plus a favor proportional to the effect" payment scheme, then using stuff that can be sourced by the prospective clients, i.e. sacrifices, is a good idea.
-There's a significant question about the capability of a non-Exalt to acquire whatever it is that Exalts use to make Splendors.
-There's also the point that its entirely possible that hostiles who cant make Splendors can mod them if they get their hands on them. Think how the Primordials and Neverborn couldnt make Exaltations of their own, but were entirely capable of altering existing Exaltations
-Last but not least, have you heard the story about what happened when the British put out a bounty on venomous cobras in India, and people started farming them?
I think they call it the Cobra Effect.
Extrapolate that to what happens when you create a market for vampire elders among people who dont exactly work on human morality.
COMMENTARY
-Id first like to say this is a vindication of our decision six months ago to take the slow route with Charity.
Pat yourselves on the back, everyone.
-Charity being 40 in 2006 means she was born in 1966, making her a Gen Xer. Born during the sexual revolution, a year before the Summer of Love. That means she fled home before 1984, which is when she would have turned 18.
That makes her parents either very late Silents, or more likely Baby Boomers, who would have come of age around
-Winthrops and Hamiltons. Proper WASP blue bloods here.
Add to this that its canon that Michael's ancestry reaches back to Charlemagne.
I can see
-Grandparents almost certainly have family.
Its unlikely that neither James or Regina had no siblings growing up as Baby Boomers.
So Charity might have cousins out there on either her mother or father's side.
-French and Italian.
That makes three languages that Charity speaks
Not bad for an American.
-A little surprised she stole money from her parents.
Upper class blue blood family, investor father and socialite mother, only child? She would have had an allowance.
How she could spend it might have been limited though.
-Going to note that the Library quite probably know who Charity's family are.
They have the connections to check US govt records and shit like Social Security numbers.
And I would bet anything that the Church does as well.
If they didnt do a deep dive at some point during Michael's two-decade plus career, they almost certainly have since Molly started glowing Green. Just to check if it was hereditary.
Similarly, I expect the White Court have done their due dilligence to that regard. Lara Raith is competent, after all.
-Penciling down this Alexandra lady as someone to look into if she sticks in Charity's memory so vividly; she mentions no school friends or relatives or even favored household staff, but does mention this lady.
Charity would have been 13 in 1979, so that kinda narrows things down a lot.I suspect that Russian-Americans in Boston in the upper classes of Boston society in the late 1970s werent particularly thick on the ground.
Especially Russian-Americans with no Jewish ancestry.
Charity might be interested in finding out what happened to her, or a contact address.
-The initial incident would have happened when she was 16-ish.
So probably 1981/1982-ish. Tail end of the disco era, rise of the Religious Right as a political force, Reagan's first term and the Greed is Good types on Wall Street, crack cocaine as an epidemic, the introduction of ecstasy as a party drug.
I have to wonder if they thought she was doing drugs.
-Note this:
She nods, unsurprised."Since that night I started seeing more things, I didn't know what it was, my parents didn't know what it was. My mother finally cared about something I did, she was horrified, terrified of it. Father was angry, though I am not sure if it was at me for seemingly going insane or at the humiliation I had caused.
Regina was terrified. That suggests some sort of prior trauma here.
Worth exploring, given that magic in the Dresden Files appears to be mostly maternally inherited.
Then again, it might just be a prior experience with psychiatric disorders. Or it could be both.
-I have my doubts about the "Hell's Angels" attack being a coincidence.
That said, the only supernatural bikers I recall in the Dresden Files are lycanthropes. So if it isnt a coincidence, they are probably working for someone else.
-We might want to look up whoever it was who owned the place where Charity worked.
It might have been more than two decades ago, but one good deed....
Yeah, this is shaping to be "can live as a mortal" splendor that would be very, very liked by the fae, especially those that have only recently became fae. Like, old man Matthews is probably going to bring us some necromancers to make him one at least. And probably a lot of others too.
I dont think so.
Most fae do not appear to have much trouble when they transition, and have no trouble managing to live just fine. Those who do, dont generally have access to the kind of resources required to build a Splendor anyway.
Matthews is not Fae.
Even bearing the Mantle, he's no more Fae than Dresden was when he led the Wild Hunt.
It doesnt have to?
Scrying magic, divination magic is not shaping.
If it was, Exalted Sorcery spells like Infallible Messenger and Dragon of Smoke and Fire would never have worked on Exalts.
Outside of perfect defenses absolute protection doesn't exist and I feel like you are being unreasonable. Your argument to me sounds like "Fort Knocks is not perfectly secure and therefor we should take time and effort right now to try and secure it more" even though by your standards it can never be secure enough.
Nah we can just use mortal sorcery dispels if we need to, those work against all magics and with our pool we would be ungodly good. Might need to buy them tho.
Mortal counterspelling is designed for dealing with tactical problems. Unweaving appears to be designed to undo standing effects. I dont really think its designed to deal with ritual effects that might have been cast by a coven of spellcasters who accumulated successes over an unknown period of time.
Picture is of her at 14-15. So she fled home in this AU between 15 and 18.
And Roxbury is in New Jersey, so she moved two or three states down the East Coast and lived off the books, before joining Gregor's cult.
They adopted someone who is 23 now?
A 23 year old would have been born in 1983. Since Charity had not yet reached 18 in this AU suggests that there was at least a year between Charity going missing and their adopting a new baby.
And its not like it was easy to look for people in the 1980s, unlike in the 2020s.
Especially if, like Charity, they moved multiple states away; Roxbury NJ is three states and 260 miles from Boston.
Botch?
Nuke everything. They're a hedge fund, they'll have backups.
I'd rather not leave them with fingerprints of cyberdevil activity that can be compared to other activity in the future.
@uju32 Charity did not have an allowance for the same reason her schedule was jam-packed full of activities. What would she need money for? Her parents were not just median representatives of their social class and age. When she said her father was obsessed with efficiency she meant it. From what Molly caught they eased up (or gave up) as she grew up, but by then she had in her own words 'worse friends'.
-There's also the point that its entirely possible that hostiles who cant make Splendors can mod them if they get their hands on them. Think how the Primordials and Neverborn couldnt make Exaltations of their own, but were entirely capable of altering existing Exaltations
-Last but not least, have you heard the story about what happened when the British put out a bounty on venomous cobras in India, and people started farming them?
I think they call it the Cobra Effect.
Extrapolate that to what happens when you create a market for vampire elders among people who dont exactly work on human morality.
Which is why, as one of the options for payment in materials, we use "vampire elder, alive but bound; I retain the right to refuse the specific elder in case I object on moral grounds/ I like them". Not the only option, we'd accept other stuff too, like gossamer. This is a seller's market entirely, and powerful fae would give a lot for what we have to offer.
-There's also the point that its entirely possible that hostiles who cant make Splendors can mod them if they get their hands on them. Think how the Primordials and Neverborn couldnt make Exaltations of their own, but were entirely capable of altering existing Exaltations
So? I don't see how this matters. The things we sell can be destroyed, traded, modified, etc. We accept no responsibility for that, and their value isn't decreased by that.
This is disputable. Certain mantles make the person suffer from normal fae weaknesses - see Molly the Winter Lady; as far as I remember she wasn't immune to iron. Depending on what Arawn's mantle as passed to Matthews did to him, he might also suffer from the same restrictions.
I dont think so.
Most fae do not appear to have much trouble when they transition, and have no trouble managing to live just fine. Those who do, dont generally have access to the kind of resources required to build a Splendor anyway
Botch?
Nuke everything. They're a hedge fund, they'll have backups.
I'd rather not leave them with fingerprints of cyberdevil activity that can be compared to other activity in the future.
Unless they have connections (tm), which we should check (in before they are a front of whatever ancient forces lurk in Africa, the cradle of humanity), I don't think this is going to go any further.
Because acquiring more detail about how the Fae Court power works is straight up essential if we are to have any reasonable chance of altering the way they work in the future. Because the more firsthand knowledge we have, the more foci we can pin down for Crown use and the fewer things we need to use the Crown for.
Because Curiosity is Molly's Urge.
There's no guarantee Mab will agree to trade him for curing Lea.
But there's a reason we have been very careful about limiting the pool of people who know just how comprehensive Molly's information-gathering capability is.
He is a straight up waste of space and not worth using any resources on to acquire. Certainly not the amount of resources you seem to want to spend. If you want to learn how fae courts work, spend the favor on acquiring comprehensive education on how fae courts work.
Mortal counterspelling is designed for dealing with tactical problems. Unweaving appears to be designed to undo standing effects. I dont really think its designed to deal with ritual effects that might have been cast by a coven of spellcasters who accumulated successes over an unknown period of time.
She flinched at the question. "Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't know what you meant." She raked at her hair again. "I'm a changeling. We all are."
"A what?" Billy asked.
I nodded, getting it. "Changeling," I said to Billy. "She's half mortal and half fae."
"Aha," Billy said. "Which means what?"
I shrugged. "It means that she has to choose whether to remain a mortal or become wholly fae."
"Yes," she said. "And until then I'm under the rule of the Court of my fae father. Winter. The others too. That's why the four of us stuck together. It was safer."
Billy nodded. "Oh."
"Meryl," I said, "what makes you think your friend is in trouble?"
"She's not very independent, Mister Dresden. We share an apartment. She doesn't have a very good idea of how to take care of herself, and she gets nervous if she's out of the apartment for too long." "And what do you think happened to her?"
"The Winter Knight."
Billy frowned. "Why would he hurt people in his own Court?"
Meryl let out a brief, hard laugh. "Because he can. He had a thing for Lily. He would hurt her, frighten her. He got off on it. He was furious when Maeve told him to back off. And once Ron was gone …" Her voice trailed off and she turned her head to one side. "How does Reuel fit into this?" I asked.
"He was protecting us. Maeve had been torturing us for fun, and we didn't know where to turn. Ron took us in. He put us under his protection, and no one in Winter was willing to cross him."
"What about your fae dad?" Billy asked. "Didn't he do anything to look out for you?"
Meryl gave Billy a flat look. "My mother was raped by a troll. Even if he'd been strong enough to do anything about Maeve hurting us, he wouldn't have. He thinks he's already done enough by not devouring my mom on the spot."
"Oh," Billy said. "Sorry."
You dont see most of them onscreen because Summer-Winter is not the focus of the story.
This doesnt make Summer the good guys, mind.
Summer is entirely capable of as much devastation, and as much cruelty as Winter. Titania made no pretense of her attempts to get Dresden killed after Summer Knight when she got the opportunity.
There's a reason why, when Dresden goes to see the Mothers in their cottage, Mother Summer has plagues brewed up in jars on her shelf.
1)Being an elder is not entirely about time spent, depending on the type of vampire.
2)The NeverNever has plenty of regions where time flows oddly.
We literally see Maeve timewarp the heart of Winter in canon after Winter's forces come rushing back to Arctis Tor. And Dresden et al went to Arctis Tor, came back an hour or two later and found out several days had passed.
Because a serious magic ritual might include double or even triple digit participants and stack up to three digit successes before the effect is released to fly at the target.
And a single optimized Exalt isnt going to roll more than 20-ish successes on an instacast counterspell, even with an Excellency.
1)Being an elder is not entirely about time spent, depending on the type of vampire.
2)The NeverNever has plenty of regions where time flows oddly.
We literally see Maeve timewarp the heart of Winter in canon after Winter's forces come rushing back to Arctis Tor. And Dresden et al went to Arctis Tor, came back an hour or two later and found out several days had passed.
Because a serious magic ritual might include double or even triple digit participants and stack up to three digit successes before the effect is released to fly at the target.
And a single optimized Exalt isnt going to roll more than 20-ish successes on an instacast counterspell, even with an Excellency.
Which is why, as one of the options for payment in materials, we use "vampire elder, alive but bound; I retain the right to refuse the specific elder in case I object on moral grounds/ I like them". Not the only option, we'd accept other stuff too, like gossamer. This is a seller's market entirely, and powerful fae would give a lot for what we have to offer.
So? I don't see how this matters. The things we sell can be destroyed, traded, modified, etc. We accept no responsibility for that, and their value isn't decreased by that.
Thats not how it works. We live on this planet.
How they are used matters to us. Especially since Splendors can explicitly be reforged/modified after manufacture in order to upgrade them or turn them into other things.
Someone acquires a couple 2-dot Splendors to reforge into a single 4-dot or 5-dot could have unfortunate consequences.
This is disputable. Certain mantles make the person suffer from normal fae weaknesses - see Molly the Winter Lady; as far as I remember she wasn't immune to iron. Depending on what Arawn's mantle as passed to Matthews did to him, he might also suffer from the same restrictions.
No it isnt.
Winter Knight Dresden was vulnerable to iron, but only if it was pushed into his body. He could handle it just fine.
Didnt make him Fae either.
Besides, Eldest Ankou was not ethnically Fae.
They are sworn to Winter, but they did not originate as Fae, and dont have the vulnerabilities that Fae do. They are hardly the only people in that situation; the Miksani - native American shapeshifters from the short story Cold Case - are as well.
Iron wasnt as much
Like Ive pointed out before, Chicago is at least part-time home to at least a quarter of a million Little Folk alone.
Not counting the other
Unless they have connections (tm), which we should check (in before they are a front of whatever ancient forces lurk in Africa, the cradle of humanity), I don't think this is going to go any further.
They'll call in an outside cybersecurity contractor to document the intrusion and find and plug the hole.
Something like Mandiant or FireEye. That will document the intrusion, the signatures of the intruders, and every little detail they can find. Then they'll share it with other cybersecurity firms and people to keep an eye out for activity that fits the profile.
Thats how teams like Fancy Bear, Wizard Spider and PLA Unit 61398 get identified and localized by cybersecurity.
They are a well-heeled hedge fund.
They have computer backups.They can afford the loss and disruption.
Burn everything. Literally if necessary.
He is a straight up waste of space and not worth using any resources on to acquire. Certainly not the amount of resources you seem to want to spend. If you want to learn how fae courts work, spend the favor on acquiring comprehensive education on how fae courts work.
I dont agree.
We literally dont know how much is what he is, and how much is Mantle fuckery; Mab's other daughter Sarissa tells us that he wasnt an asshole when he started the job. I provided the quote.
Thats part of why we want him.
Or should want him, at least.
Thats in addition to what he knows of other factions in the setting.
And given that Mab explicitly exempts national security/warmaking information from among the things that a favor can buy?
I would frankly expect that trying to use a favor to buy internal Fae Court information on how their Mantles work would be off-limits, the same way using a Molly favor to get information on how the Exaltation works is off-limits.
Explicit WoG that the surviving free-roaming Blacks that survived the breaking of the Black Court are the toughest, baddest of the bad still walking around. The Reds and the Jades are all parts of existing Courts and power structures that will have Opinions about that kind of thing towards their members.
We're not dealing with most people. Unfortunately.
Those rituals are detectable AFTER the fact. Not before the fact. Ebenezar didnt know he was being targeted after all, and Dresden didnt know Shadowman Sells was murdering gangsters in the same city.
Thats an espionage thing. Not a primarily magic thing.
VOTE [X] Cover your tracks, even if it means bricking any machines that might reveal details about the hack
Cover your tracks. Thats how you have a successful career at this sort of thing.
Dont leave behind information that can be used to build a dossier to help identify our activity in the future.
Because that will significantly limit our future options.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
EDIT
To expand, this sort of breach will have them call in external experts. Dedicated investigators.
There's multi-billion dollar companies that specialize in investigating and protecting this sort of thing; Mandiant is worth $5 billion, for example
If its funky enough, you'll even see Feds. The FBI and the NSA.
Dont treat this as some shit that noone will notice; we didnt hack a high school computer here, but a hedge fund with around 9-digit dollars worth of assets or more.
This is gonna draw attention.
1) The Knight Mantle is, according to Summer Lady Aurora, a significant part of the power of the Court in question, and without it one Court can destroy the other; thats why the missing Mantle started a war in Summer Knight
Her opinion of her court officer's power and importance isn't exactly objective.
It's also worth noting that power and biggatons aren't the same. The average senator for example has a decent amount of power, but they're also probably not going to win a fist fight.
The point of the knights is to loophole some of the fey's restrictions using mortal free will. That's the primary reason they exist, and why a wizard's ability to turn the mantle into something more was worth so much of Mab's time.
-Last but not least, have you heard the story about what happened when the British put out a bounty on venomous cobras in India, and people started farming them?
I think they call it the Cobra Effect.
Extrapolate that to what happens when you create a market for vampire elders among people who dont exactly work on human morality.
I don't think there's anything that can farm Elder Vampires.
Even if you are stronger than any Elder to the point of beating them in any combat or mindgame 99 out of a hundred times, you can't afford deliberately creating them, because that one time is enough to see you dead or locked up wherever the Red Court is keeping the Aztec gods.
Thats not how it works. We live on this planet.
How they are used matters to us. Especially since Splendors can explicitly be reforged/modified after manufacture in order to upgrade them or turn them into other things.
Someone acquires a couple 2-dot Splendors to reforge into a single 4-dot or 5-dot could have unfortunate consequences.
No it isnt.
Winter Knight Dresden was vulnerable to iron, but only if it was pushed into his body. He could handle it just fine.
Didnt make him Fae either.
Besides, Eldest Ankou was not ethnically Fae.
They are sworn to Winter, but they did not originate as Fae, and dont have the vulnerabilities that Fae do. They are hardly the only people in that situation; the Miksani - native American shapeshifters from the short story Cold Case - are as well.
How are you defining fae and fae restrictions? And knights are special cases, we know that. If I recall correctly, Dresden still suffers from techbane. Molly the Winter Lady can use a cellphone.
You keep using this word. No, we don't want him. You want him. Most everyone else is against this, as far as I can see, and you are not convincing at all.
