Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
There's probably a reason that Odin took a hand in making the council, and it's worth considering all the counterplay involved in situations like this. Sure focus down the wizards. What happens when they decide to hit back? Or when those resources you diverted give the other factions fighting you space to push their respective fronts?
The wizards aren't pushovers and their style of fighting is a real pain in the ass to deal with if you haven't forced them out of their hidey holes yet.
If this suddenly became a common problem then wizards would carry around tools or otherwise devise spells to deal with it. There's no need to give them new secondary powers that never show up in the series.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Besides Outsiders are supposed to have a limited reach and force projection on Earth. They can't exactly exercise their forces as they would want to. They've got to get past the Gates first and after that they're on the clock because pretty much nobody will tolerate them (the Red Court are idiots) and getting rid of Outsiders isn't a Starborn only thing.
[X]Yog
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Against something like the Outsiders, where attrition doesnt really appear to be something they worry about, and plans can span decades or centuries? Thats just the cost of business, and they're at a favorable exchange rate anyway compared to events at the Outer Gates.
Furthermore, they wouldnt be going after wizards in their hidey-holes, they're going after the next generation, who have neither the skill nor the resources to have hidey-holes. Remember Book 1 Dresden, who had the minor demon Kalshazakk brute-force his wards?
This is exacerbated by the fact that you cant actually track Outsiders when they dont show their hand.
The Fae Courts cant do it, let alone the White Council.
So the wizards have to have some quiet resistance/immunity to that sort of fuckery, or they'd never have made it that far.
Just like Dresden(and all wizards) have a quietly improved capability to recover from damage that isnt maiming or fatal, else the levels of damage Dresden routinely sustains would have crippled him.
Limited is relative. That still allows for significant numbers to sneak across.
In Cold Days there were several hundred Outsiders and one Great Walker at Demonreach, in addition to their mortal/semi-mortal acolytes
Plenty of people tolerate Outsiders, or have no power to force the issue.Cold Days c42 said:
And the Outsiders themselves are no slouches at dispersal and concealment on this side of the Fates.
Its just that noone other than the Reds will publicly cop to tolerating Outsiders.
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BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
My read on that is that the Outsiders snuck in quite a bit more than they would typically be able too for an all out high reward high risk (in terms of loosing limited assets) attack.
The fact that they had hundreds for a prepared assault doesn't tell us much. It's not as if we saw what went on in the background to make that happen. I wouldn't make any assumptions about their typical ability to bring forces to bear on desirable targets from just that.
We have a very limited amount of information on the subject without extrapolating. To say that they could consistently hit would be wizards across the globe to keep their numbers down feels like a hasty generalization fallacy to me. If that is what your saying.
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Molly (doing her best to be flirty) Wow, these powers let me do anything Harry.
Usum (doing his best to be a good servant) Would you like me to pull up some charms for those purposes my queen?
Molly (Horrified by the revelation) No, I'm good, ok maybe just a little peak. Wait, why are there so many of these? Oh no, they handed out superpowers to hormonal teenagers in the last age!
Usum (doing his best to be a good servant) Would you like me to pull up some charms for those purposes my queen?
Molly (Horrified by the revelation) No, I'm good, ok maybe just a little peak. Wait, why are there so many of these? Oh no, they handed out superpowers to hormonal teenagers in the last age!
- Location
- Estonia
[X] Try to find and bargain with a spirit-kin dog with Mouse's help, though scions will have their own purposes
-[X] Investigate, by Crown and Lydia's background, the whereabouts of Cŵn Annwn or their descendants
It's either that or get Lydia a Grim likeSirius Black Ruth from Ancient Magus Bride.
-[X] Investigate, by Crown and Lydia's background, the whereabouts of Cŵn Annwn or their descendants
It's either that or get Lydia a Grim like
Not really, human wizards have been increasing in number constantly, like thats a huge issue.
No way outsiders can out attrition human population growth.
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Number of humans with magical talents is increasing constantly. Number of wizards right now gone down the drain what with the war against the Red Court and the fact that they were being incredibly conservative with their recruitment for centuries. It's a point in the books where Harry tries to make White Council work with minor talents and sometimes even points out that they probably should reorganize their recruitment practices. Because their numbers are nowhere even close to enough.
There are something like a thousand wizards for the whole world.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Does the White Council really have that great a monopoly on wizards? That's honestly super impressive.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Well they do kill people who unknowingly violate their laws of magic.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
It's still maintaining worldwide enforcement when most people don't even believe that they exist*. Have they ever just considered leaving a note on all the dead bodies detailing the laws of magic? Even if most people don't believe in magic I don't think that ignorance of the laws would last.
*I don't think any public country or organization can manage that. Let alone an secret organization.
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Thats just an organisational issue. If they were being constantly attritioned down they would stop doing apprenticeship and then just start mass training wizards.
Supposedly White Council used Romans as their battering ram to wreck or subsume most other traditions and organizations around. And then did the same with European colonization riding on the wave of it. It worked until it didn't. Like with many successful organizations and empires. With the war against Red Court they will now either adapt or die.
And in canon even if they have won, which was unlikely, they most likely would have collapsed anyway due to lack of manpower. Harry saved their asses when he wiped out the Red Court.
No, you're mistaken.
Human magic users have been increasing in number constantly. Human wizards, not so much.
All wizards are magic users, but not all magic users are wizards.
Word of Butcher is that wizard-level magic users are literally one in a million.
Pre-modern wizards might have been literally 1 in a country.
If you use his Word of Jim numbers, given that modern birth rates appear to average around 140 million new births each year, that means that the maximum potential number of new wizards globally is 140. BEFORE losses from everything from childhood mortality to "was eaten by a grue."
And that the Council would be around 6000 or 7000 wizards.
Even if you assume his numbers are off by around an order of magnitude, thats only 60,000 potential wizards in the world
The Red Court alone probably outnumbers that. By close to an order of magnitude.
And they replace those numbers a lot faster.
Yes. Its self-protection.
There's few enough wizards in the world that balkanization makes everyone less safe. The might of the Senior Council acts as a deterrent to allow baby wizards grow up to be old wizards, and for old wizards to be relatively safe at home. And there's advantages like access to Council archives of magical theory and records, for your own development.
Those who think they can manage on their own are either exceedingly personally powerful, or exceedingly deluded, acting as object lessons for everyone else when they get
And thats not counting that the White Council has the benefit of centuries of mundane financial investment backing it as well.
Butcher called it Wizard BlackRock, and RL BlackRock has around $10 trillion dollars under investment, with a yearly income of around $17 billion.
They kill people who break the Laws of Magic.
Not joining the Council isnt one of the Laws. There's pressure, but its not mandatory.
Carlos Ramirez is literally the Warden commander for the western United States, and was made this after Dead Beat
He is responsible for the magical oversight of over a hundred million people.
He's 20. He isnt old enough to drink.
20-year olds dont get that sort of responsibility unless shit is very thoroughly fucked.
Especially in a gerontocracy like the White Council.
Hell, Dresden was maybe 30ish when HE was conscripted as Warden commander for the eastern US.
He has NO training, and was provided none.
Nobody had the free resources.
Camp Kaboom that we see in White Night had literal teenagers being trained as Wardens; the Trailman twins were maybe 15 years old when they got gutted by ghouls.
The total pre-war Warden force was 200-300 people; they lost 144 of them during Dead Beat. Not counting losses else
Three years later, during Turn Coat, the total Warden force was only back up to around 300ish according to Dresden.
Just counting the known casualties we see on-screen as of the end of Turn Coat: Simon Petrovich and the brute squad in Summer Knight, 144 during Dead Beat, LaFortier, Morgan, one Warden and fifty others during Turn Coat.
That would translate to losses of at least 250 combatants, not counting those guys who got killed offscreen.
Assuming the Council is 10,000 wizards, you're looking at losses of 2.5%.
That would be like the US losing 7.5 million people over a decade of war. Or the US Army losing 70% of its active service members over less than a week in Dead Beat, and having to rebuild while in a state of war.
The Senior Council, the seven baddest, most accomplished wizards in the world, lost 2 members in 8 years.
Shits fucked yo. Dont let the lack of public wailing and screaming make you think different; every White Council member personally knows someone who has died in this war.
And even if the war ends tomorrow, those losses cant be replaced for a century, because it takes decades for a baby wizard to get the experience and expertise that time brings.
Dresden is a prodigy on his own, in addition to being extraordinarily powerful even as a kid.
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The training time on a Senior Warden used to be about 50 years, lead time to be on the Senior council is at least 150 years
World Population in 2007: 6.7 Billion
World Population in 1957: 2.8 Billion
World Population in 1857: 1.2 Billion
The lead time to competent wizardry is just long by the standards of the population explosion that industrialization has caused
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Vote closed.
The outsiders are a threat, but they aren't infinite inside reality and if they could do this casually then they could also use other things to accomplish the same goal.
I'm not saying wizards should have no answer, but DF wizards don't have a pile of immunities to things. They learn spells and make tools to solve their problems.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Never said it was but running around with swords and killing people over supposed laws that a lot of magic users never heard of until a Warden came knocking on their door may have the side-effect of discouraging other Wizard organizations from forming.
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Thats just every year, that shit adds up massively because they don't age. 100 billion people have died in history.
About a 100,000 potential wizards have existed, and i doubt child hood mortality due their healing factor.
Thats just a skill issue, pedagogy and teaching has advanced massively in that time period as well.
The wizard still do apprenticeship as a major component.
Arc 13 Post 7: Seeing Down Sundered Paths
Seeing Down Sundered Paths
2th of February 2007 A.D.
"What about your father's dogs?" you ask after a moment. Maybe some of them had been like Mouse's family and left their own mortal lineage for Lydia to reconnect to.
But your friend's expression darkens as she slows. "The Cŵn Annwn great-hearted loud speaking, soft-nearing are not now as they were. Some passed into the Winterlands and when my father left the service of Mab they could not come with him, alone they were to perish or to find new masters. The Erlking, lord of the Wyld Hunt calls some of them still by name now to his liking changed. If they would still know me... if they would know me at all." She shakes her head. "What use to them the daughter of the one who abandoned them?"
"Sorry, didn't meant to bring up painful memories," you apologize. I should have thought there was a reason why Arwan did not have his dogs with him.
"It's quite alright, you didn't do anything Molly," Lydia runs a hand to untangle hair that doesn't need it, more tangling than untangling. "Father made his choices, for which I cannot but be glad since had he chosen differently I wouldn't be here at all. Now it's my turn to make my own, the road to walk, the company to keep."
"Some passed," Tiffany repeats after a moment. "What about the ones who didn't come with him into the service of Faerie?"
"Others there were who loved the moors and the marshlands, the green rolling hills and mountains tall, too much to pass from the world..." Still speaking slowly Lydia looks off into the middle distance, or maybe better to say the far distance, trying to work out words in English for something that had never before been put in this tongue. "So came they spoke to the doves which they had long spared their bite for they made a poor meal and thus they begged in turn: "Go now to David son of Non who was daughter of Ceredig King son of Cunedda King and tell him that if he gives us leave to stay in these lands we will give him warning of the place and hour of his death that he may know when to make haste in his work of which he has been so diligent. The hounds went to the doves and the doves to David, but he only laughed and said 'I have done but little things and others have seen me do then and they will do them when I am gone down the path by fathers walked before me'. I need not know the hour of my death. But the hounds were wise, for they knew that like them men ran in packs. Said they to the doves and the doves to David: 'what of those who come after you, would they not wish warning to hear from hearth into graveyard that time now is near?' David thought on this and he found it wise, went he and prayed to his god. Ever after the corpse candles shone the moors and the marshlands, the green rolling hills and mountains tall."
Lydia Loses 1 Essence -> Now at 6/7 (Intelligence Excellency)
Wait, David, Wales... "Saint David!" You and Tiffany exclaim at the same time.
"So he's now counted, the friend to the doves," Lydia agrees, still speaking softly, but no longer lost in recollections of centuries past and places far off the grey Chicago winter. "Just what kind of bargains the hounds that remained made with him Father never knew, though I guess we could go and ask them."
"We could do more than ask," Tiffany sniffs.
At your answering not-quite-glare she proffers a expansive shrug that old movies taught you is French. "What, you don't think any of them has grown bored of being a roster for when mortals are about to croak? Why shouldn't they get to change their minds after fifteen hundred odd years?"
You open your mouth resolved to inform her that none of you could not undo the work of a saint even should you wish it... and then you remember Amoracchius clanking to the ground, ripped from your father's hand by a twist of brass and Essence, truth like a bundle of thorns pricking the tips of your fingers.
"Stop that!" Lydia scolds. "I just wanted to get a dog not make Molly feel bad."
"I don't feel bad," you hurry to answer. "Just... powerful in a way I hadn't considered before, at least not for very long."
"A way we all are powerful," the once-Fallen Angel points out. "That line you are drawing in your head right now it is as arbitrary as one a child might etch on the sand with a stick. One thing I know for certain, spirit hounds aren't angels of any kind. Whatever deal David cut it was not by..." She stops blinking violently then forces the word out almost in a gasp "God's Will." She smiles then, like she'd been skydiving and just pulled the rip-chord on her parachute. "At most it was done with His approval, which isn't what you'd call unusual."
Lydia looks not a little impressed that Tiff had taken the plunge, but she still crosses her arms. "I don't want to make Molly uncomfortable. If she says to steer clear of the Canwyll Corph then so we shall. We'll speak to the Earlking and see if any of his goblin dogs are minded to come back to the world of the living, or if they brought forth scions in their lineage."
Which hounds does Molly think they should seek?
[] The Goblin Hounds of the Earlking, you do not fear the Master of the Wild Hunt
[] The Canwyll Corph of Wales, Tiffany's right, they deserve to change their mind if you can uncover a way for it
[] Both, all the more likely that Lydia will find some way to bring one back home
[] Write in
OOC: I did not use a Crown question since Lydia rolled well enough to know at least the general answer so if you go after one, the other or both you still have the Crown on call.
The problem is young wizards are volatile and get considerably more so in groups, at least according to the conventional wisdom of the Council, how much you trust that is up to you.