Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
- Location
- Germany
Hmm.
Wow.
I don't think I would have given anything in this universe 10 Arete, unless it turned out the WG himself is an ascended Mage.
That's a bit too much treating reality like a mild suggestion for my taste.
[X] By the power and authority vested in you (Use Impervious Primacy Mantle to utterly shrug it off)
-[X] Using Willpower
Fair point... I'm not that familiar with mage, but the more I think about it the more 10 seems too much given her other mechanics, make that Arette 7, still firmly into archmage, but not 'break reality over your knee strong'.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
If we're going by Exalted vs WOD's existential weight comparisons, Arete 10 is equivalent to an Essence 5 Exalted, Arete 9 would be essence 4.5, Arete 8 would be Essence 4, Arete 7 is like Essence 3.5, Arete 6 is Essence 3.
- Location
- USA
[X] By the power and authority vested in you (Use Impervious Primacy Mantle to utterly shrug it off)
-[X] Using Willpower
As a someone who knows both. It really shouldn't be like that given what Mages can already do. It honestly should of been more of a 1 to 1 give the powers. As mages can match even proper exalted back in Creation.
-[X] Using Willpower
As a someone who knows both. It really shouldn't be like that given what Mages can already do. It honestly should of been more of a 1 to 1 give the powers. As mages can match even proper exalted back in Creation.
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Yeah, but at the same time I removed paradox, that makes magic much more powerful especially at the high end.
- Location
- USA
Even with Dox mages are powerful enough. Mages have in built ways around Dox. On top of the fact, Arate past 5 only adds more dice. And not new sphere levels.
[X] By the power and authority vested in you (Use Impervious Primacy Mantle to utterly shrug it off)
-[X] Using Willpower
-[X] Using Willpower
- Location
- Germany
Story-wise Arete 10 is an extremely big deal in Mage.
Mechanically, a big difference is not mainly in those 3 extra dice for a quick casting, but also in the matter of rituals.
If a Mage does extended casting he has maximally Arete+Willpower rolls to gather the necessary successes.
So the difference between rolling 17 times 7 dice (For an Archive with 7 Arete and 10 WP) or 20 times 10 becomes very, very noticable.
One option to limit the impact of extremely high Arete though, is the fact that your effective, magically usable Arete is capped by your Willpower. So if Ivy had for example only 7 WP, due to still being kinda a young girl with a powerful mantle, instead of an actual ancient monster, she'd be capped to 7 Arete even if you did give her 10 to represent her theoretic capability.
Does not work in this case, she is willpower 10 from being bombarded with the memories of her predecessors and all human writings since she was a baby. Being willpower 10 is he only reason she is still sane and also the reason why she managed to hold out against the Denarians as long as she did in canon with no magic.
- Location
- Germany
Okay.
Then a slightly lower Arete is probably the best solution.
For the ritual matter, I can't actually do the math on how many successes are the average if you roll 200 dice at DC 8 (high Spheres used) for a Ritual, but by trying it out on Rollz I get somewhere around 40 in most cases.
Mage only needs 20 successes for god-like feats.
So someone with 10-10 in Arete and WP could actually reliably level cities, enthrall masses and otherwise alter reality with a ritual that would require no secondary casters or extra modifiers like sacrifices and such.
- Location
- USA
You can make that DC of 8 lower via a lot of means. Even if your using the max sphere. Making it really a DC of 5 which is well. DC of 5 on d10s.
[X] By the power and authority vested in you (Use Impervious Primacy Mantle to utterly shrug it off)
-[X] Using Willpower
Assassinating Ortega derailed a significant bit of the vampire war plot, and by being reasonable we've managed to get the white council to the point where they're likely to make use of arms shipments from the FCF.
We stole the paranet's basis, keeping the white court from being able to trace it through the financials and giving them formal cover of a patron once the Ordo grows into it. Being able to say "if you kill or abuse a local talent who happens to have a brass shield insurance card you go on the kill immediately list of a powerful immortal" is more than they ever had before or really would have gotten in canon because Dresden couldn't and the council wouldn't go to bat for them like we will.
Our deal with Lara specifically means that she has to stop her people, the dominant vampires in this area of the world, from touching ours before our direct action even comes into it. The feeder mice trapped in the snake exhibit now have god damned diplomatic immunity.
Exorcising Maeve and our efforts with Lily/Summer have or will shortly blow up centuries or more of Nemesis' work.
That's not even a complete list.
We haven't exactly solved the setting's systemic problems, but those issues aren't simple things. As we gain more leverage we can make real lasting change more effectively.
The senior council is basically comprised of DF's archmage equivalent, and while they can do things like pull satellites out of the sky or make stupidly good wards they aren't able to pull nonsense like push umbral realms around in the spirit world with forces or bend space to be present in multiple places simultaneously with correspondence.
Edit: errors.
-[X] Using Willpower
You disagreeing doesn't necessarily make the premise of an argument false, and just because we didn't immediately set everything in reach on fire doesn't mean we've failed to change things.
Assassinating Ortega derailed a significant bit of the vampire war plot, and by being reasonable we've managed to get the white council to the point where they're likely to make use of arms shipments from the FCF.
We stole the paranet's basis, keeping the white court from being able to trace it through the financials and giving them formal cover of a patron once the Ordo grows into it. Being able to say "if you kill or abuse a local talent who happens to have a brass shield insurance card you go on the kill immediately list of a powerful immortal" is more than they ever had before or really would have gotten in canon because Dresden couldn't and the council wouldn't go to bat for them like we will.
Our deal with Lara specifically means that she has to stop her people, the dominant vampires in this area of the world, from touching ours before our direct action even comes into it. The feeder mice trapped in the snake exhibit now have god damned diplomatic immunity.
Exorcising Maeve and our efforts with Lily/Summer have or will shortly blow up centuries or more of Nemesis' work.
That's not even a complete list.
We haven't exactly solved the setting's systemic problems, but those issues aren't simple things. As we gain more leverage we can make real lasting change more effectively.
Announced by literal trumpet fanfare before walking into an active court session. I hope they don't bill us for breaking the rumor mill after this.
Really this probably needs further modification for our purposes anyway, because DF wizards aren't baby demiurges like WoD mages.
The senior council is basically comprised of DF's archmage equivalent, and while they can do things like pull satellites out of the sky or make stupidly good wards they aren't able to pull nonsense like push umbral realms around in the spirit world with forces or bend space to be present in multiple places simultaneously with correspondence.
Edit: errors.
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COMMENTARY
Lydia's dicepools on Open The Way are terrible.
Thankfully, her Navigation is better, but I think she's burning an Excellency on that.
Harry is certainly getting his horizons expanded every time he has to interact with the ladies in his life.
According to Wikipedia, Lydia's wrong about Illinois:
Article: The name Illinois derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa 'he speaks the regular way'. This was taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ilinwe· (pluralized as ilinwe·k). The French borrowed these forms, spelling the /we/ ending as -ois, a transliteration of that sound in the French of that time. The current spelling form, Illinois, began to appear in the early 1670s, when French colonists had settled in the western area. The Illinois's name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms.[19][20]
Still loling at Molly's lowkey envy of Lash's looks.
Its so very teenage girl its hilarious.
Especially in an Exalt.
Theaters and Polyhymnia.
I wonder if Summer apparently has subsumed her portfolio, or if its just something all Fae have an affinity for.
Id bet on the second, but Im not sure.
A lot of people missed this, I think. The Archive says the Fey know Molly as the "golden haired daughter of the line of Carolo". Thats a reference to the fact that Molly is descended, through Michael, from Carolus, otherwise known as Charlemagne, founder of the the Carolingian dynasty and first emperor of the Carolingian Empire.
Essentially, someone has invested the effort to do an ancestry investigation of the Carpenters all the way back to the 8th century AD. Which more or less confirms that people have been doing deep dives on Molly's publicly available information
If they went that deep on Michael's end, I think its safe to assume that they know who Charity's parents and relatives(if any) are. As well as her recent history. Its an illustration of some of the resources of the supernatural community.
Something to keep in mind.
COMMENTARY
Oof.
Seems like Ivy's birthday present is going to be Brass Courts fiction.
Something she hasnt actually seen before. At least we have years worth of the stuff.
Hmm. So Ivy chose to approach openly instead of covertly.
And if she chose to approach openly, Titania has had ample warning of our coming.
So I find it interesting that she chooses to receive Ivy openly at the lake shore.
Well, at least both Molly and Ivy match in their mundane clothes.
Going to point out that Ivy apparently just deliberately helped Molly activate Boiling Sea Mastery by keeping the water liquid.
The girl knows more than she says.
And Avalon is a lake underneath the pond. Neat trick.
Heir of Kassandra eh?
Why that name in particular? Kassandra, assuming she's a real figure, would have dated to around 1300BC which is when the Trojan War is dated. The Archive is at least two thousand years older than that.
We could deny that Voice of Power with Willpower alone.
But Molly isnt really hiding, any more than Ivy is. No reason not to use a Charm, even if its the same cost.
So IPM.
I wonder how Clippy is taking all this.
Six or seven months ago she was , and now we're basically A Whole New World-ing her every couple weeks.
4 successes on talking to Ivy. Great but not Legendary
2 successes on that Survival roll. Normally TLF would apply here, but I dont think it would have made a difference.
The Archive is rolling Arete 10.
Using the optional equivalency chart in ExWoD for mechanical interactions, thats equivalent to an E5 Celestial Exalt or a Dharma 10 kuejin bodhisattva. Be very, very polite to the scary little girl.
Benchmark scenes:
She let out a playful little laugh and reached down to tweak my broken nose.
Okay.
Ow.
"They say to give a man three chances to say no," she said.
"Save us both time and breath," I said. "No, twice. That's three."
"Suit yourself," Tessa said.
She reached into the pocket of my duster, withdrew my revolver, pointed it at my head, and pulled the trigger.
I had just enough time to gawk and think, Wait, wait, this isn't right.
The muzzle flashed.
There was a loud noise.
I reached for power, tried to shield, but there was simply nothing there, nothing to use. The magic was gone.
So it had to be someone else's spell that neatly intersected the bullet's course and bounced it into the shaggy-feathered thing holding my arms.
My stomach sank as I realized what was happening.
Ivy must have been there all along, quietly sitting on the bleachers, hidden by her veil from everything that was going on. Now she stood perhaps ten feet away, just a young girl, her expression solemn-but her eyes and cheeks were bright with tears.
"Get away from him," she said quietly. "All of you. I will not permit you to hurt him."
I hadn't really extended my line of thinking beyond Kincaid. But of all the people who had dealt with the Archive, I'd been one of the only ones to take any interest in her as anything but a font of knowledge. I'd been the one to inquire after her personally. I'd been the one to give her a name. Sad but true, I was the closest thing that little girl had to a friend.
She couldn't have let anything happen to me, either.
I'd just handed her to the Denarians.
Tessa threw back her head and loosed a long, triumphant cry.
Okay.
Ow.
"They say to give a man three chances to say no," she said.
"Save us both time and breath," I said. "No, twice. That's three."
"Suit yourself," Tessa said.
She reached into the pocket of my duster, withdrew my revolver, pointed it at my head, and pulled the trigger.
I had just enough time to gawk and think, Wait, wait, this isn't right.
The muzzle flashed.
There was a loud noise.
I reached for power, tried to shield, but there was simply nothing there, nothing to use. The magic was gone.
So it had to be someone else's spell that neatly intersected the bullet's course and bounced it into the shaggy-feathered thing holding my arms.
My stomach sank as I realized what was happening.
Ivy must have been there all along, quietly sitting on the bleachers, hidden by her veil from everything that was going on. Now she stood perhaps ten feet away, just a young girl, her expression solemn-but her eyes and cheeks were bright with tears.
"Get away from him," she said quietly. "All of you. I will not permit you to hurt him."
I hadn't really extended my line of thinking beyond Kincaid. But of all the people who had dealt with the Archive, I'd been one of the only ones to take any interest in her as anything but a font of knowledge. I'd been the one to inquire after her personally. I'd been the one to give her a name. Sad but true, I was the closest thing that little girl had to a friend.
She couldn't have let anything happen to me, either.
I'd just handed her to the Denarians.
Tessa threw back her head and loosed a long, triumphant cry.
The little girl didn't see the Denarian that came creeping through the ferns behind her and flung itself at her back, several hundred pounds of scales and fangs.
"Ivy!" I choked out.
She had it covered. There was a flash of light, an overwhelming scent of ozone and fresh laundry, and a silver denarius rolled away from a mound of ash that fell to the ground without ever getting within three feet of the small form of the Archive. The coin rolled past her, on a straight line toward Tessa-but Ivy stomped on it with one small shoe, flattening it to the floor and preventing it from returning to Tessa's grasp.
"Ivy!" I choked out.
She had it covered. There was a flash of light, an overwhelming scent of ozone and fresh laundry, and a silver denarius rolled away from a mound of ash that fell to the ground without ever getting within three feet of the small form of the Archive. The coin rolled past her, on a straight line toward Tessa-but Ivy stomped on it with one small shoe, flattening it to the floor and preventing it from returning to Tessa's grasp.
I jammed the cursed relic in my pocket, hoped to God my 501s didn't have a hole in them, and spun toward Ivy.
I know I'm a wizard, a card-carrying member of the White Council and all. I know I'm a Warden, a certified combat expert of wizardkind, a cop, a soldier-have staff, will kick ass, if you will. I thought I'd seen some real professionals in action, the top of the wizarding game.
I was wrong.
It wasn't that Ivy was slinging around a ton of power. She wasn't. But think about this one for a moment: What's really more impressive? A giant truck rumbling around on a great big old smoking engine? Or a little car just barely big enough to get the job done that's powered by a couple of AA batteries?
Seven of them were going after Ivy with magic, and she was countering them. All of them.
Magog had charged her as he had me, but she hadn't slammed him to a stop with a brick wall. She'd trapped him inside some kind of frictionless bubble, and he was spinning uselessly in circles half an inch off the floor, every motion making him spin faster. Whatever additional metaphysical mass he'd brought to the fight hadn't cramped her style much. Her arms, bobbing and weaving continuously between all the workings she had up, flicked by the field containing him every few seconds and, I swear, struck his whirling snare for no reason other than to impart an additional, nausea-inducing vector to his spin.
Deirdre's tangle of living locks danced with purple Saint Elmo's fire, lashing out in a deadly webwork, but Ivy constantly cast out a spinning cat's cradle of light, tiny, tiny threads of power that did not so much stop any of Deirdre's attacks as they fouled any one of her locks with others near it, tangling them together into useless clumps-sort of an enforced bad-hair day. On the opposite side of Ivy, Rosanna launched more traditional lances of flame from her open palms, much like the ones I-
- a savage pain went through my skull for a second-son of a bitch-
- but Ivy dispersed them with delicately applied wedges of air, intercepting each burst of fire far enough short of her body to prevent the bloom of heat as they died from scorching her-though the two more physical Denarians who strained to force their way past the barrier of snapping sparks that formed whenever they tried to get close had far less luck. The Hellmaid's flames scorched them badly.
The sixth, a wizened little thing that looked like a caricature of a woman carved from a dried tree root, seemed to be holding the end of a rope of liquid shadow that curled like a hungry serpent, darting now and then toward Ivy's head. Ivy faced it down steadily, moving her head calmly in a dodge once, swatting it aside with a little burst of silver energy a second later.
But mostly she faced an amused-looking Tessa, who, apparently just for the fun of it, threw another thunderbolt at her now and again. That told me something right there. It told me Tessa was no punk sorceress. She was White Council material herself, if she could make that much flash and bang while expending that little energy. Either that or she'd been able to hold back one whale of a lot more power than I had when she took her deep breath before the battle. Either way she was a big-leaguer, and Ivy's response to the attack confirmed it. Each time the Archive turned to fully face Tessa, and each time she dedicated one of her hands entirely to the defensive measure used to stop the incoming spell.
Gulp.
Holy moly. It was one thing to have an academic appreciation that I still had a lot to learn about magic. It was another to see a demonstration of exactly how much I still couldn't do. In another circumstance it would be humbling. In this one it was freaking terrifying. For maybe ten seconds I stood there, trying to figure out how the hell to help without getting myself incinerated, skewered, or otherwise obliterated without accomplishing anything.
I know I'm a wizard, a card-carrying member of the White Council and all. I know I'm a Warden, a certified combat expert of wizardkind, a cop, a soldier-have staff, will kick ass, if you will. I thought I'd seen some real professionals in action, the top of the wizarding game.
I was wrong.
It wasn't that Ivy was slinging around a ton of power. She wasn't. But think about this one for a moment: What's really more impressive? A giant truck rumbling around on a great big old smoking engine? Or a little car just barely big enough to get the job done that's powered by a couple of AA batteries?
Seven of them were going after Ivy with magic, and she was countering them. All of them.
Magog had charged her as he had me, but she hadn't slammed him to a stop with a brick wall. She'd trapped him inside some kind of frictionless bubble, and he was spinning uselessly in circles half an inch off the floor, every motion making him spin faster. Whatever additional metaphysical mass he'd brought to the fight hadn't cramped her style much. Her arms, bobbing and weaving continuously between all the workings she had up, flicked by the field containing him every few seconds and, I swear, struck his whirling snare for no reason other than to impart an additional, nausea-inducing vector to his spin.
Deirdre's tangle of living locks danced with purple Saint Elmo's fire, lashing out in a deadly webwork, but Ivy constantly cast out a spinning cat's cradle of light, tiny, tiny threads of power that did not so much stop any of Deirdre's attacks as they fouled any one of her locks with others near it, tangling them together into useless clumps-sort of an enforced bad-hair day. On the opposite side of Ivy, Rosanna launched more traditional lances of flame from her open palms, much like the ones I-
- a savage pain went through my skull for a second-son of a bitch-
- but Ivy dispersed them with delicately applied wedges of air, intercepting each burst of fire far enough short of her body to prevent the bloom of heat as they died from scorching her-though the two more physical Denarians who strained to force their way past the barrier of snapping sparks that formed whenever they tried to get close had far less luck. The Hellmaid's flames scorched them badly.
The sixth, a wizened little thing that looked like a caricature of a woman carved from a dried tree root, seemed to be holding the end of a rope of liquid shadow that curled like a hungry serpent, darting now and then toward Ivy's head. Ivy faced it down steadily, moving her head calmly in a dodge once, swatting it aside with a little burst of silver energy a second later.
But mostly she faced an amused-looking Tessa, who, apparently just for the fun of it, threw another thunderbolt at her now and again. That told me something right there. It told me Tessa was no punk sorceress. She was White Council material herself, if she could make that much flash and bang while expending that little energy. Either that or she'd been able to hold back one whale of a lot more power than I had when she took her deep breath before the battle. Either way she was a big-leaguer, and Ivy's response to the attack confirmed it. Each time the Archive turned to fully face Tessa, and each time she dedicated one of her hands entirely to the defensive measure used to stop the incoming spell.
Gulp.
Holy moly. It was one thing to have an academic appreciation that I still had a lot to learn about magic. It was another to see a demonstration of exactly how much I still couldn't do. In another circumstance it would be humbling. In this one it was freaking terrifying. For maybe ten seconds I stood there, trying to figure out how the hell to help without getting myself incinerated, skewered, or otherwise obliterated without accomplishing anything.
"Is she really that dangerous?" Michael asked.
"Yes," Luccio said calmly. "The Council regards her as a significant power in her own right, on par with the youngest Queens of the Sidhe Courts."
"If anything, I think that profile in the Wardens' files underestimates her," I said quietly. "She had barely anything to work with, and she was making Tessa and her crew look like pygmies trying to capture an elephant. If she hadn't been cut off so entirely, I think she'd have eaten them alive."
Luccio frowned, disturbed. "Truly?"
"You had to have seen it," I said. "I've never seen anyone…You had to have seen it."
"If she's that powerful," Michael said quietly, "can she be contained?"
"Oh, yes," I said. "Absolutely. But it would take a greater circle-heavy-duty ritual stuff in a prepared location. And it would have to be freaking flawless, or she could break it."
"Yes," Luccio said calmly. "The Council regards her as a significant power in her own right, on par with the youngest Queens of the Sidhe Courts."
"If anything, I think that profile in the Wardens' files underestimates her," I said quietly. "She had barely anything to work with, and she was making Tessa and her crew look like pygmies trying to capture an elephant. If she hadn't been cut off so entirely, I think she'd have eaten them alive."
Luccio frowned, disturbed. "Truly?"
"You had to have seen it," I said. "I've never seen anyone…You had to have seen it."
"If she's that powerful," Michael said quietly, "can she be contained?"
"Oh, yes," I said. "Absolutely. But it would take a greater circle-heavy-duty ritual stuff in a prepared location. And it would have to be freaking flawless, or she could break it."
However much Arete + Spheres you think she needs to be able to do that with zero preptime and no equipment, in a hostile bounded field where she couldnt draw on any of the usual magic sources besides the small amount a child of her age could carry internally.
The Small Favor plot involved around 20x Denarians,if I can recall correctly.
That was what they thought they needed, in addition to preptime and the aid of Lucifer.
And it was barely enough.
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MIchael is the knight of the Cross, and I think it's fairly well known among the upper tier fae that knights are of royal blood. And it's likely that fae and other immortals just keep track of all royal lines in the world.
Probably won't work - it would automatically add to Archive the moment we took it out of the courts.
We could probably organize a play of some sort, using FCF scripts, and have it be reprised on Earth with no record ever existing. Yes, I think that'll work.
The Archive has been called many things by many peoples so one can very well choose a title to make a point. Molly thinks this could be a way to call the Archive a herald of ill omen, which might imply that Titania has had word that this is not going to be a happy-fun-talk, you know if the presence of an infernal darkening the air with her aura isn't enough...
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They've probably done some research since we've been relevant lately, but this information isn't as obscure as you might assume.
Knights of the cross are always the descendants of a king's bloodline and Micheal has been around for a while. While they don't matter to most people details like which specific line he comes from are the sort of thing the Summer fey would find interesting.
We should do this, but I think it will be more involved than just bringing it over.
If Uriel is any indication (which to be fair might be assuming a bit much since he's an archangel) if something qualifies for her power and we bring it out of the FCF she'll learn it immediately. If we could stream stuff somehow that might work though.
Ivy also canonically sees the whole of the internet. It does not matter what form written information is encoded in, if it counts as writing and it's not in a living brain she can access it
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
So the performers would have to rehearse the performance entirely in Mollys Inner World and bring no record of the script outside their memories to the outside.