Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

Degorium · Jun 16, 2024

BoredMan said:
We haven't been 'puting it off' we've been waiting so he can build his skill and power with the training he's been getting. The responsible thing to do before bringing him into possible combat scenarios.

We don't know if it's going to involve combat or not and since literally every time we've left Chicago that's what happened I don't have my hopes up. The notion that your squad can only move as fast as your weakest link is very much true. I wouldn't be against bringing him along low stakes missions (not Vegas not the Hell nuking I wouldn't want Olivia there either with her low long lasting will build) when he has more than a handful of months training as long as he doesn't ruin his relationship with his mother over it.

I am not suggesting that. See above.

I expect his perspective on power and his original intent to run off to fairy land to shift and mature somewhat as he trains under the tutelage of a very experienced magic man surrounded by magictech culture. Knowing intellectually how bad that could've went and actually seeing more of the supernatural first hand with everything that implies are two different things.

I'm not even going to try to address the rest of your post. Your stawmaning the fuck out of me to make a point and I can't say I care for it. That sort of thing heavily discourages interaction from me.

If he wants to grow to be equal to Lydia or us at any point there is no amount of training we can offer him. He's already willing to go on a vision quest to the never-never it was something he was actively contemplating despite the consequences coming from the very mouth of someone who he was very intently listening to.

Why would training in our hell affect that outcome when the girl that he's thinking about being equal to and his sister that he's thinking about being equal to or getting in more and more Danger why would not having Supernatural Powers be considered a good thing in any sense.

I say put off because no amount of training actually gets him closer to that goal. The instant he realizes no amount of training will actually close that Gap is the second he talks to Lydia and she helps him facilitate that journey and then he goes.

It is the nature of people to rebel against things they feel a restraining you cannot come because you lack power and the training I'm giving you will not give you that power. This thing that you can do though it may endanger your life though the reward may taste like Ash upon your tongue this journey can change that fact.

There is no Insight on power that can be gained when you have none. It's like trying to gain Insight on dark matter without a sensory array or trying to explain color to a blind person this training may help him survive most average encounters but it has gotten him no closer to his goal and it has made him no more powerful than any other person could be. A magic sword if he ever realizes it is never going to change that.

Nothing in my mind screams weakness more than you cannot come with us while we perform an errand.

Azais · Jun 16, 2024

BoredMan said:
Mikaboshi was experimenting with making people like Molly, attacked the U.S. economy and wanted the Proving Grounds. We had a bit more motive than that to do what we did.

We only found out about the attempt to wake up the essence after breaking into his hell, Basilisk's CEO only pressed the detonation button on the economy because we attacked them, if we didn't we will not know they had this weapon. The proving ground, yes.

Of your three motives we could only know one of them and if we had managed to scare Mikaboshi's servants we would not have known the rest and therefore they cannot be used as motives.

We could have stopped at defeating the attack teams, we could have stopped after the attack on the economy and helped with it, but no, we decided to stop after invading hell and only because we no longer had much energy and no troops.

I repeat: We continue to bend the situation willingly.

Yog · Jun 16, 2024

Yzarc said:
I do not mind it at all if it works but, that also releases the Abyssal.

The odds of it working are also slim to none, if the Primordials in the dawn of time could not pull it off, or the Solars in the First age could not.

I mean both groups also "knew" the selection criteria but failed to do so.

Third, is that we potentially do not know the selection criteris. I mean 3E has a very different take on it as opposed to 1/2E and we do not know which edition rules are being used.

Finally, Molly does not know the exact rules OOC we know but not IC.

OFC: Maybe I am mistaking something here so feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Abyssal shard is an additional complication, yes, I am working on it.

Exaltations, including Solar ones, have been Fated (written into Fate and accessible for magical predictions) before. In canon of this quest, Uriel arranged our exaltation, while staying entirely within the Rules. Barring that, and talking more direct intervention, we know that exaltations can be barred from looking for hosts in certain areas (Seal of Eight Divinities). Now, that's a reach, yes, but perfect effects for closed realms are possible.

There is a possiblity that the Solar shard is under "Should the Sun Not Rise" charm effect, where the spirit of the dead Solar Pharaoh is actively choosing the next host of the shard. In this case, we might be able to negotiate with them - Daniel is a very good option, as far as candidates go.

If it's not, and if we, after investigating, determine that the odds are too low to leave entirely up to arrangements, and Uriel's covert approval / help, there's an option of "learning more Ancient Sorcery". We have direct confirmation that Ancient Sorcery is capable of directing of directing the Exaltation.

Yog said:
Do we have a way to direct the exaltation to anyone? Because I have half a mind to just immediately go grab Murphy. Or Charity, actually - she might be up to it by now.

DragonParadox said:
Not in any magical sense, that is something that can be done with Ancient Sorcery, but not by a Sorceress with two spells to her name. You do know what the conditions for Exaltation are, so if you could arrange those in close proximity to letting one of those loose you might get somewhere.

I am perfectly willing to secure the shard, then spend the time needed to learn enough Ancient Sorcery to be able to do this. It would probably take at most a year, I think.

If we are not willing to wait (I am), using up two favors, one from Winter, and one from Summer, for their help in getting the shards to go where we want them to, is well worth it.

I am not going at this half-cocked, I have done my research. All evidence points to this being possible.

Exmorri · Jun 16, 2024

Degorium said:
Why not both?

Because if it's both then she's a matchmaker, not a wingwoman.

BoredMan · Jun 16, 2024

Yog said:
The way I am reading this is that you expect him to get scared off and settle for not mattering / not being able to be a peer for his girlfriend and sister. What if he doesn't?

I didn't want him give up his angelic protection way back when we were voting on it and questioned if giving him an arbitrary amount of power would actually improve his judgement to begin with. However that's what was voted for, and he's been getting training now with someone who probably has better judgement than him. There has also been talk to make him more capable after he gets experience in unrelated to the Exaltion.

Why would he have to settle for "not mattering" and why would that be his mindest now? That doesn't seem to be anyone's intent and I don't see how he'd get that impression either considering what he's been doing in the Five Courts and what we promised him.

Yzarc said:
So what are we supposed to think?

That Daniel needs more than a few months of training before being brought into combat with who knows what to not be the weakest link on our team by a significant degree? We haven't invested anything into him crafting wise yet either. I'm not sure how I'm sending mixed messages here.

Degorium said:
I say put off because no amount of training actually gets him closer to that goal.

Degorium said:
If he wants to grow to be equal to Lydia or us at any point there is no amount of training we can offer him.

I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion of wether or not we should take him. Are you saying that he's liable to jump into the NN anyway and go back on our deal just because Charity told him no?

Azais said:
I repeat: We continue to bend the situation willingly.

Do you seriously think that we could have closed that Arc out without escalating? We couldn't let him have a PG or fuck with the people in Boston and I can confidently he wasn't going to take no for an answer. He needs to worry about saving face.

The most we could've hoped for was a duel and that came with its own problems.

Yzarc · Jun 16, 2024

Yog said:
Abyssal shard is an additional complication, yes, I am working on it.

Yeah, that is why I do not mind if we pull it off, but at this point, it is very much a Hail Mary unless we put in the work.

But that is the problem. Even if you can consistently convince people in multiple turns to vote for it, that is months or potentially years of real time. Even otherwise, the plan, if we do come up with it, may fail anyway.

It is possible certainly, but actually doing it is the question. Too many things that need to happen and too many moving parts for me to consider it as anything but a long shot. I mean if you propose a good plan, I will consider it certainly. But right now? It is a huge no.

BoredMan said:
That Daniel needs more than a few months of training before being brought into combat with who knows what to not be the weakest link on our team by a significant degree? We haven't invested anything into him crafting wise yet either. I'm not sure how I'm sending mixed messages here.

Lets agree to disagree. I do want to argue this more but as I said, how I am reading your posts are probably not how you are intending them so any argument will not be useful. Lets just vote for what we think is right.

That said, I am genuinely sorry if I offended you, I was trying to say how you were coming across to me.

Degorium · Jun 16, 2024

BoredMan said:
I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion of wether or not we should take him. Are you saying that he's liable to jump into the NN anyway and go back on our deal just because Charity told him no?

I'm saying a kind word cost nothing Lord knows Charity's willpower rules are good enough to beat us anyway but to not even speak up is to kind of silently agree that he cannot come with us because we are listening to what he just said and what charity was saying beforehand that she is worried about the danger even though this is supposed to be a completely benign trip to say nothing is to at minimum not disagree but in that moment I don't know if you have siblings or not but if my sister did that I would take that is silent agreeance.

Which really puts everything we've done beforehand with the training and the talking about Relic seem like talk rather than something actionable. You can only have that trust once if he loses it and he can lose it because he's a thinking human being it's gone if he thinks we are just leading him by the nose he's liable to do what he's going to do whatever that may be.

For short read no I don't think he's in danger going straight to the never-never immediately but if he begins to believe that the training and the talks that we had are exactly that just talk rather than anything actionable well he'll do what people do.

Yog · Jun 16, 2024

Nyarky said:
Because the very mechanics of obtaining a solar exaltation is a hail mary in and on itself.

Solar exaltations are almost always a reward, not a hail Mary. You succeed in a heroic deed, and then, or at most at the very moment of success, you get the solar shard, so you can go on to do more great deeds.

Yzarc · Jun 16, 2024

Yog said:
Solar exaltations are almost always a reward, not a hail Mary. You succeed in a heroic deed, and then, or at most at the very moment of success, you get the solar shard, so you can go on to do more great deeds.

Errrrrr...., Yog what he means is that ensuring Daniel gets it, as opposed to Fred thd firefighter, is the Hail Mary.

I mean, it is a Dawn, so you need to put Daniel in danger of the Physical kind, set up wards that only Auto-kun was able to and pray that it selects him.

This is at the absolute minimum and we'll against what Molly would do. The putting Daniel in danger part, which is sgainst her intimacies.

Azais · Jun 16, 2024

BoredMan said:
Do you seriously think that we could have closed that Arc out without escalating? We couldn't let him have a PG or fuck with the people in Boston and I can confidently he wasn't going to take no for an answer. He needs to worry about saving face.

The most we could've hoped for was a duel and that came with its own problems.

No, you cited three reasons why the escalation was reasonable.

BoredMan said:
Mikaboshi was experimenting with making people like Molly, attacked the U.S. economy and wanted the Proving Grounds. We had a bit more motive than that to do what we did.

And I respond by showing that no, because we only knew of one reason (testing grounds) first of all, which had a climax in the battle against the attack stration in the arctic. We could have stopped there and posted spies and lookouts on the Basilisks, which had no signs of being anything more than just a front for his ordinary operations and not something that could cause harm.

But we couldn't stand Mikaboshi's presence in the city we wanted to control even for a few days and we decided to attack them, making them activate their scorched earth contingency (which we had no idea existed before) and causing the 2008 crisis a year earlier. We could have stopped there and summoned several spirits to try to reduce the damage in cyberspace or something.

But then we wanted to cause even more damage to Mikaboshi that we knew we would have to face when we started eating the other Yomi Wan for the Demon Empress throne, Lash was right in saying he is our competitor even though Molly didn't internalize it IC, and using Nora and Joe's arrest as excuse, and they were an excuse, we spent priceless favors to create a very specific superweapon and did very risky actions for a single soul we don't know or even have any relationship with. We only stopped because we were running out of energy and the troops were almost on top of us, otherwise I believe there would have been people voting to stay there.

So yes, we couldn't get out of the situation without having increased, but we continued to increase beyond the initial increase, without control, on purpose and without any influence other than the majority vote.

BoredMan · Jun 16, 2024

Degorium said:
For short read no I don't think he's in danger going straight to the never-never immediately but if he begins to believe that the training and the talks that we had are exactly that just talk rather than anything actionable well he'll do what people do.

I disagree. I think you need to have more faith him. Not that he has the best track record on this matter but he's been getting training from some with centuries of age and staying in the FC that sort of things rubs off on you and we made an agreement.

After the talk we had with him and what he told us during that discussion, I think he's much more likely to go to us first and bring up his concerns before putting himself at that kind of risk. If he has an easier and less risky avenue for power that he has been seeing improvement on off-screen I'd like to believe he wouldn't suddenly fall back on what he knew to be a bad plan without talking to us first.

Azais · Jun 16, 2024

BoredMan said:
I disagree. I think you need to have more faith him. Not that he has the best track record on this matter but he's been getting training from some with centuries of age and staying in the FC that sort of things rubs off on you and we made an agreement.

After the talk we had with him and what he told us during that discussion, I think he's much more likely to go to us first and bring up his concerns before putting himself at that kind of risk. If he has an easier and less risky avenue for power that he has been seeing improvement on off-screen I'd like to believe he wouldn't suddenly fall back on what he knew to be a bad plan without talking to us first.

The point Degurium is talking about, I think, is that in this situation Daniel would only seek this out after believing that we are just making empty promises and that we want the same thing as Charity, not caring about his wishes. He's not saying that this is going to happen because of this conversation, but Molly isn't saying anything, which doesn't cost us anything and that's how we managed to get Charity to be a little softer with our desires, giving the impression that we agree with her against him, It is another step, completely unnecessary, towards this path.

BoredMan · Jun 16, 2024

Azais said:
And I respond by showing that no, because we only knew of one reason (testing grounds) first of all, which had a climax in the battle against the attack stration in the arctic.

Yeah your right. Initially the escalation was solely on our part after the Arctic Ambush we had no particular reason to think he'd be a problem for the foreseeable future.

Azais said:
for a single soul we don't know or even have any relationship with

After Basilisk we had more motives to attack other than Nora and Joe though. He could've continued his attacks on the U.S. economy since he'd have no particular reason not to draw more aggro from us or even realize that doing that would. We didn't give him a proper enough deterant which is why he tried to begin with. Then there was the essence user creation project he had going on. Attacking him has probably resulted in him not being able to support new and probably expensive projects like that.

BronzeTongue · Jun 16, 2024

Degorium said:
You mean all of that insane risk in all of those situations with near minimum reward with a ton of necessity those decisions that I just mentioned and a lot of others in this Quest. But we can't take a decision with very low risk some reward in the form of gratitude from both our sister and his girlfriend who is also our Circle mate and of I will say little necessity but still a nice thing to do anyway. There is little to no risk and a good enough reward for at least a word in his favor.

There are a lot of different things bound up in this. We generally had better reasons to engage than wanting a weekend getaway and had more tools to work with than he does.

This and that aren't really comparable decisions and shouldn't be used to justify each other.

On a more general note, the nevernever quest thing is a crazy idea. It earned that name by being inhospitable and there's a reason it's a rare and lauded feat to pull off a successful quest. More likely than not he gets hurt very badly if he doesn't die outright.

It's a better idea to give him a support item that doesn't trigger the social mess of IDU but does give him the leverage needed to make an impact. If he's going to run around with us it should happen after that, not before.

Yog said:
Solar exaltations are almost always a reward, not a hail Mary. You succeed in a heroic deed, and then, or at most at the very moment of success, you get the solar shard, so you can go on to do more great deeds.

I think you brush off how nobody really made this work. Any immediately obvious clever idea for making the Solaroid you want happen should be assumed to have been tried and failed across the span of ages so vast the mortal mind can't contain them.

I don't see a way for the plans you've suggested to work without raising the question on why it wasn't done by any of the better equipped and informed people who tried before us without an OOC hand wave specifically changing the rules to allow it.

This is a pretty explicit and specific restriction, and I don't think opening the door to this is a good addition to the game. It should remain a fluke at best for this sort of thing to appear to work, with the vast majority of cases backfiring on the people trying.

slenderman1942 · Jun 16, 2024

[X] Daniel tried and he struck out, that's on him now

BoredMan · Jun 16, 2024

Azais said:
The point Degurium is talking about, I think, is that in this situation Daniel would only seek this out after believing that we are just making empty promises and that we want the same thing as Charity, not caring about his wishes. He's not saying that this is going to happen because of this conversation, but Molly isn't saying anything, which doesn't cost us anything and that's how we managed to get Charity to be a little softer with our desires, giving the impression that we agree with her against him, It is another step, completely unnecessary, towards this path.

Again I'm rather sure he'd come to us first if he started to think that way. See if his fears are justified before running off. Completely unnecessary is debatable but I've already made repeated statements on why I think we shouldn't bring him into combat of unknown yield yet.

Hmm.. It doesn't look like there's anything that hasn't already been said on this matter at this point.

Degorium · Jun 16, 2024

BoredMan said:
I disagree. I think you need to have more faith him. Not that he has the best track record on this matter but he's been getting training from some with centuries of age and staying in the FC that sort of things rubs off on you and we made an agreement.

After the talk we had with him and what he told us during that discussion, I think he's much more likely to go to us first and bring up his concerns before putting himself at that kind of risk. If he has an easier and less risky avenue for power that he has been seeing improvement on off-screen I'd like to believe he wouldn't suddenly fall back on what he knew to be a bad plan without talking to us first.

I think silently agreeing with Mom that a grocery trip is too dangerous is essentially him realizing that we fed him a line of bullshit. That's what I mean by the trust if and we don't know that it would be but I know my siblings and if I just saw them just silently let Ma just lay into me for something that they know is horse shit I know they just let me down the river because it was A) convenient to do so Or B) they agreed. Considering we didn't buy the tickets and we didn't plan on flying until Lydia told us it's not going be A.

It's again the words cost nothing but saying nothing immediately puts us in her Corner in his mind. For lack of a better way to put it if I get put into a corner and someone is just beating the ever living shit out of me and there are people around watching silently I'm not going to think they're fucking innocent. Even if it's just why didn't you call the authorities or fucking try to help me at all. The fact that Lydia is involved at all and he's kind of there knowing that he's not particularly helpful but he wants to enjoy a nice weekend with his girlfriend which is already just weird masculine issues on top of that it's just a bad situation to not even put in a word.

It's one of those things in my mind about relationships it's not just what you do it's what you don't do it's not just what you say it's what you don't say and watching silently while he gets essentially browbeat is not going to endear us at all to him at best.

Degorium · Jun 16, 2024

BoredMan said:
Again I'm rather sure he'd come to us first if he started to think that way. See if his fears are justified before running off. Completely unnecessary is debatable but I've already made repeated statements on why I think we shouldn't bring him into combat of unknown yield yet.

Hmm.. It doesn't look like there's anything that hasn't already been said on this matter at this point.

Why would he come to us again. He didn't trust us the first time he went to Lydia. We came to him if he thinks we're feeding them bullshit he's going to go with Lydia again because obviously she's telling him the truth as far as she knows it at least.

Acolyte · Jun 16, 2024

Degorium said:
We should have just let them go on his trip if this is how we're going to treat him. I thought it was catalyzed into something but if this is how people are just going to be talking about them as a muggle not someone who can come along on a trip with his girlfriend we should have just let him go on his fucking trip to the never never because obviously he was never going to be respected as a mortal.

He is a teenager bro.

Azais · Jun 16, 2024

BoredMan said:
After Basilisk we had more motives to attack other than Nora and Joe though. He could've continued his attacks on the U.S. economy since he'd have no particular reason not to draw more aggro from us or even realize that doing that would.

This justification could easily be made but throughout the voting where we decided whether to stop there or continue to hit Mikaboshi harder the reasons given were all to weaken him or save Joe for some nebulous benefit. Yog even said something similar to this to inform the other powes but it was also explicitly something done for others not to think that we were without a sense of proportion, I even informed him that this statement is hilarious because during the entire preparation period we did not give this reason to anyone Niguier, Titania or our own circle are informed the above.

BoredMan said:
We didn't give him a proper enough deterant which is why he tried to begin with.

It wasn't his plan to blow up the economy that night nor was it on his orders, maybe he wanted to activate it on another date or just use it as a blackmail, the CEO himself saw that we were invaded and pressed the red button. Our actions caused this to happen that night. And even if we had stopped there, Mikaboshi would still have suffered retaliation after we informed who was responsible for this attack or do you think that the LoC nota e his own favors of f links with other powers or their own magic weapons? What about the rest of the factions that own properties on mortal world and would be negatively affected by this, like Disney which Mab largely owns?

BoredMan said:
Then there was the essence user creation project he had going on. Attacking him has probably resulted in him not being able to support new and probably expensive projects like that.

And I will repeat for the third time, we only found out about this project after leaving hell, you cannot use it as one of the justifications for our choices when it was not part of the decision-making process, as a post facto justification yes, not before.

Yog · Jun 16, 2024

BronzeTongue said:
I think you brush off how nobody really made this work. Any immediately obvious clever idea for making the Solaroid you want happen should be assumed to have been tried and failed across the span of ages so vast the mortal mind can't contain them.

I don't see a way for the plans you've suggested to work without raising the question on why it wasn't done by any of the better equipped and informed people who tried before us without an OOC hand wave specifically changing the rules to allow it.

This is a pretty explicit and specific restriction, and I don't think opening the door to this is a good addition to the game. It should remain a fluke at best for this sort of thing to appear to work, with the vast majority of cases backfiring on the people trying.

You are ignoring Uriel making it work in this very quest. It has been done. In the first Age sidereals successfully prophesied solar exaltations. If you can predict who will get the exaltation, you can select who does.

BoredMan · Jun 16, 2024

Degorium said:
It's one of those things in my mind about relationships it's not just what you do it's what you don't do it's not just what you say it's what you don't say and watching silently while he gets essentially browbeat is not going to endear us at all to him at best.

It's not a "grocery trip" we have little idea of what to expect. I think you've been projecting more than a bit onto Daniel here and your using your experiences to speak for him and draw conclusions about what he will do that aren't necessarily accurate. It's possible but unless he comes to us and ask and we start telling him no I'm not seeing it.

Fyi I have 3 sisters and maybe it's because I'm the eldest but if my mother told them something was too dangerous I'd trust her judgement enough knowing her backround to leave it be unless I had reason to think otherwise. In this case I don't since I've no clue how this outing is going to go and he hasn't much training or power invested into him yet.

Degorium said:
Why would he come to us again. He didn't trust us the first time he went to Lydia. We came to him if he thinks we're feeding them bullshit he's going to go with Lydia again because obviously she's telling him the truth as far as she knows it at least.

We acknowledged his concerns had a good talk and then started executing a plan of action with promises of more down the line. If he's not seeing it or starts having second thoughts I'm expecting him to use his brain and ask us if we lied to him or whatever have you. Not fall back on what he admitted was a poorly thought out plan.

DragonParadox · Jun 16, 2024

BoredMan said:
We acknowledged his concerns had a good talk and then started executing a plan of action with promises of more down the line. If he's not seeing it or starts having second thoughts I'm expecting him to use his brain and ask us if we lied to him or whatever have you. Not fall back on what he admitted was a poorly thought out plan.

Also he would need Lydia for that plan and Lydia is not that inclined to fall back on it if there's an alternative. Her risk assessment may be more... generous than most people's, but that does not mean she cannot sort risks into lesser and greater.

BoredMan · Jun 16, 2024

Yog said:
You are ignoring Uriel making it work in this very quest. It has been done. In the first Age sidereals successfully prophesied solar exaltations. If you can predict who will get the exaltation, you can select who does.

All Uriel predicted was that it would probably go to someone favorable to his plans not to a specific person. DragonParadox said that much. We don't know what Uriel has at his disposal either but considering how high he is on the totem pole along with his much more convenient precog I don't think we should be comparing Molly's capabilities to him.

The most we could reasonably expect is that I'd go to someone favorable then since that's all even Uriel could get out of it.

SCO · Jun 16, 2024

[X] Try to rescue your brother's hopes of a weekend with his girlfriend in Wales

Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority

The Spark of Madness

The Spark of Madness

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Jungle Tyrant

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