BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Rather than assume she escapes and plan for that eventuality I'd vastly prefer to poor more assets into the tunnels now and increase the chances of stopping her here.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Like I said, contingency teleport is a Conveyance Path 3 ritual effect, which can be duplicated by someone with skill in Conveyance or Alchemy or Enchantment. And we know, from the slot machine business and the nerve gas thing, that Sandra has access to both Enchantment and Alchemy.
So I expect she has a single-use eject button of some sort, modelled along those lines.
And the fact that we still dont know what the details of her plan is tells me that narratively, she's not gonna be caught here.
Remember that her goal is not the capture of the Dragon, but destruction of the seal and opening of the Vegas Hellgate.
Control of/access to the Dragon only matters for her insofar as it is necessary to that goal.
She doesnt have a need to hold the tunnels for their own sake.
If she can continue her deal by cutting off one of his fingers, or taking a pint of blood, she'll just stay long enough to have her thralls bleed us, then leave.
We cant force her to defend this place.
Last edited:
I'm going to have to go in reverse order that is not teleportation in fact it is actually considerably slower than us using Windborn stride if she uses that ritual we will find her in air and murder her because that is what it's going to happen that only goes to a location that is known to you and cannot go through walls it follows the shortest route, At about 80 miles per hour.
Second the summoning of He Who Walks Behind at the white Kings cave is a prepared location with someone who already has a contract with that particular Walker. Assumably there isn't perfect summoning conditions in the dragons room.
Okay going to have to keep going here. The level of investment into Sandra that you're saying is too much. I do mean that in a literal sense. Assuming that she had wizard grade talent to begin with she would be a Nephandus with the level of investment you're talking about with no will of her own anymore.
We know from interludes talking about her that she does have a will still so we have to assume that she has to gain abilities and things like that herself so she can't be an omni-disciplinary wizard it's just not possible.
Her mind control abilities are spectacularly more than we see of any wizard in the series already. If she has abilities outside of that that is absolutely insane and how is she passing for human at all at this point with that level of investment.
Also The Outsiders are like summoning from a system standpoint at least vampires and werewolves which means every single one is a 4 dot ritual and you have to bind all the minor ones otherwise they will attempt to kill you because they're mostly mindless which means it's a difficulty 8 just for one that follows directions nevermind the duration of the summon.
1) That is explicitly teleportation. I quote:
Bolding is mine.
2)Madge Shelly had a pre-existing relationship with HWWB; she and her cohorts had previously used his power to murder multiple women in the book previously.
However.
She had no contract, no previously binding relationship with him, as witnessed by the fact that He Who Walks Behind promptly killed her painfully when she muffed the ritual.
3)Dresden literally calls Madge's circle amateur shit:
There's a reason I repeatedly make note of the fact that she's a strega, a black witch.
Even by the standards of Victor Sells, she doesnt have all that much power.
I will repeat: After Dresden got his back broken in Changes, he summoned Mab inside his own head by visualizing his own summoning grid.
Because he realized that all you need is knowledge and will.
Last edited:
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Your making more than a few assumptions and speaking as if they are fact. She may need the Dragon not just blood or some other focus but the actual vampire to open the gate at all. Maybe she needs him to release the seal of his own will. In which case not pooring more assets into this would be an oversight.
I was talking about both her and the white king the location mattered. I knew the circle was amateur The Walker kills her when it shows up but that is what you get when you use a circle with no bindings on it and are using someone else's connection to summon things to begin with a Walker's essentially a six dot summon with no bindings summoned for one scene.
I did see that the instantaneous remark but I really don't know how to take it because that immediately Breaks the Rules of path Magic hardcore. Conveyance has teleportation listed as a master power at five dots and then a three dot ritual allows you to do it so I really don't know how to go any further with that so I went with an interpretation that didn't break all of the rules of how this particular kind of magic is supposed to work. That's like allowing a four dot Alchemist to make a philosopher's stone. It's completely out of scale for what it's supposed to be possible using that level of ritual but maybe that's fine.
Edit: it's even worse than I thought it allows you to break Master Level range and Master Level speed while using a three dot ritual. Fucken why?
Edit 2: it's even worse somehow it doesn't just break the master level range and Master Level speed it also breaks the ritual rules all together because the rituals only allow you to use an effect one greater than the ritual rating which means it's in violation two times over fuck me.
Last edited:
I dont think I am.
We dont know the details of her plan yet,
The vision of the apocalypse we saw had what appeared to be the Dragon outside witnessing the released entity,
Thoughts of pacing and resource management fly from your mind like leaves on the wings of a hurricane. Vegas festooned in neon lights unfolds below as though from a low flying plane, or the wings of a hawk flying into the setting sun. For a moment it looks like a cloud bank is rising to bring rare, precious rain over the city of sin, but there is something wrong with the edge of the shadow, too regular, the passage of light and dark too abrupt. Rain begins to fall and at first it seems black, but where the light reaches it you see that it is red, frothing blood swirling down the city, washing away saints and sinners both. The earth shakes with the travails of Its birth as first a few eyes turn upwards, widened in dread: Arlene and Mayeda among them, but also others you do not recognize, a a dark eyed woman under a glittering dome, a nimble dancer with bleached hair, an ebony skinned man who had not been a man more than a hundred years, then more and more, unwillingly raising cries of horror to the Thing Above, sweet praise to its ears. Only in one quarter are there on cries of anguish, a glass pyramid filled with green and gold, inside something moves, of marble and jet, of gold and lapis lazuli, larger than a man yet somehow smaller than it should be.
And the Dragon wields no control over the Gate. Only the Sin-Eater does by guarding the seal.
The Dragon is the Sin-Eater's designated rep in the material world, but the Sin-Eater definitely wears the pants in that particular relationship, as evidenced in their last major disagreement.
Bringing in external forces makes it easier to recruit disorganized loyalists. And in a situation of 60:40 split, where 60 party has no leadership or good communication, and 40 party has been preparing and coordinating to take them out? 40 party will win overwhelmingly almost every time.
- Location
- Germany
- Location
- Germany
That is true. I hesitated a lot there, but loyalists would be useful, and pulling off "I am taking over" afterwards should not be impossible, with MiS effect they would have experienced and DPoE running.
Loyalists are too useful potentially to just discard right now. And our fire teams should make it easier to recruit them.
Depending on how this goes, I am still thinking that taking over might be on the table.
- Location
- Germany
Taking over only works if we remove the Dragon.
Killing the Dragon after rallying the loyalists to his defense is a very clear betrayal.
That won't work.
Taking over only works if Sin Eater perishes. I am not interested in being a cup bearer to it. Dragon might not survive the coming conflict anyway. I am not planning on stabbing him in the back, to be clear. Taking over is a plan only in case we are the last one standing.
No it doesnt.
It makes us look like an invading force here to stage a takeover or extermination, and makes it much easier for Sandra and Sandra's enthralled agents to paint us as such.
Especially since, aside from whatever rep Molly herself has, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden is in our war party.
And then we're facing a united force of Reds plus, critically, the loyalist half-Red dhampirs that come back.
Do remember that the Red Court dont normally live in tunnels. They like all the pleasures of life.
They dont live in rough tunnels by choice; they moved underground for a reason fairly recently, and we still dont know WHY.
Just like we dont know why Sandra is just hanging out in their general vicinity, or what her ultimate plan is.
Not to mention that we did promise Arlene Ghorbani we werent here for a vampire barbecue.
Rolling in heavy guarantees one.
- Location
- Germany
If they want to burn...
No, thats treachery. Or at least perfidy.
Either way, not a good look for someone who wants their supernatural credit rating to be worth anything.
That would almost pretty clearly be bad faith activity in contravention of our previous statements to multiple parties in this city from Arlene to Big Corey to the Jerome fellow who we got to tell us about the inner Red Court on the understanding that we were there to stop a coup attempt.
And that kinda shit does shape our reputation in the supernatural world, and how people will treat us in the next city we parachute into to fix a problem.
Rolling in with a fire teams while proclaiming "we are reinforcements" gives the vampires a simple choice - accept us as reinforcements, or fight us. And at that point, TLF + BSM + DPoE + leadership excellency ensure beyond legendary success.
you are ignoring the "if we are the last one standing" clause.
- Location
- Germany
You could not believe how little I'd care about Molly getting a reputation for roasting Red's when the chance presents itself.
We certainly didn't tell Arlene or Corey we wouldn't kill Reds, at most we implied it with Jerome, but who cares he's another one of them.
Rolling in with a bunch of fireteams and a known enemy of the Red Court is simply going to trigger Roll Combat instead of a diplomacy phase.
We told Arlene straight up that we were going for a meet and to talk, not to roll an army into their tunnels.
We all will care when the next time shit is up people wont tell us shit because they worry about our reactions and biases.
A reputation for probity is in our own longterm interests, as well as everyone else.
That is not true.
We told Corey we had no interests in this city; we were after Sandra Marling and wanted to go home.
We explicitly assured Arlene that we werent there to kill Reds, just to arrange a meeting; I quote:
And we told Jerome
We made promises. We gave assurances.
Let me reiterate my position:
You dont have to like, or trust the Red Court. I dont. The White Council doesnt either, and they have actually lost hundreds of members and thousands of civilians to them in the last five years.
But that does not make bad faith maneuvers in our best interests, no matter how satisfying you might think they are in the short term. Because other people in the setting will refer to how you treat other people, even (or especially)those you dont like, for how trustworthy you are.
Thats why the White Council are scrupulous in their dealings with them.
And in this case, its a bad idea to do the Outsiders work for them.
There's a reason Sandra weakened the Red Court in this city along with everyone else.
To be clear Arlene does want to kill all the Red Court, they run the human trafficking in the city. The 'making clear' in that instance is not a promise not to harm them, it is a way to be up front to her about not getting the outcome she would want.
Last edited:
- Location
- Germany
I continue to be of the opinion that dead vampires are a net-good, in almost any circumstances.
Noted.
Arlene also doesnt know how much of the city's survival, or history, appears to be bound up in What Lies Beneath.
And she sure as fuck wouldnt want the mantle of the Dragon either.
There arent many halfway good people lining up to handle that responsibility.
I dont agree.
This sort of reasoning was how we ended up with the Iraqi Civil War, and the Syrian Civil War, and ISIS; people deciding that just because Saddam was an evil asshole, that you could remove him and shit would automatically be better.
I distinctly remember how the fall of the Red Court in canon led to a spike in the supernatural-caused death toll and kicked off another, even broader world war, involving even more factions than just the Red Court and White Council.
The only pretenders to the Red Court's throne are worse than they are.
I am no fan of the Red Court and how it works, but destabilizing supernatural power structures is something to be done deliberately, after careful study and with a plan for the aftermath.
Not reflexively or on a whim.
Measure twice, cut once.
[x] Yog