Remember Psychic vampirism and Synergy are things that exist even for Minor talents, nevermind mages with full on rotes. If you have a pool of support (or victims) it is pretty easy to draw willpower out of them.
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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Remember Psychic vampirism and Synergy are things that exist even for Minor talents, nevermind mages with full on rotes. If you have a pool of support (or victims) it is pretty easy to draw willpower out of them.
Ok, fair. Still, it's another attack route.
Vote closed.
My brain burster would do the job pretty well:
- Divine favor for charisma and perception.
- Superior poise to take maximum social stats.
- Superior mind, but only for perception and wits since we're building an animal.
- Expertise a twice over to max out its awareness, alertness, and expression.
- A flame thrower for psychological damage.
- Super eyes since it needs to perceive targets to hit them so it should apply.
- A gift for expression to make it even nastier.
- Acute senses.
- Dog brain.
Nothing so prosaic as an eldritch truth too great for mortals to bear, this weaponized secret is the twisted kin of angelic grace. Just as some knowledge is itself divine and grants power in its revelation, so too is it possible for knowledge to itself be damnation capable only of defilement.
Taking the form of a brazen torc studded with fanged obsidian eyes, it exists as a moment and memory twisted against itself so that it can hold one such toxic thought in pieces. Something like a binary explosive for the soul.
At its master's command it will "sing" the broken parts of this song in the voice of spirit, driving a barbed spike into their souls.
Thankfully for the targets, the mind recoils from the touch of such poison, protecting itself by forgetting. Unfortunately, this also manifests as an intermittent fugue state until it is fully purged.
Mechanics:
The Arcana rolls charisma + expression to share its secret with a target in pieces they can't help but assemble, which cannot be blocked but can be avoided by staying out of range.
It then rolls damage for the attack using its arcana rating as the base pool. This is then soaked by willpower. Each damage level inflicted subjects them to a day of the fugue flaw, and immediately forces them into a particularly awful episode on the spot.
They need to pop out an active defense to block the shot, and very few defenses have the scene long immunity clauses solaroids get. The cone attack for the same willpower cost as hitting one target means a pair of these could blow their entire willpower pool on attacks and force Denarians as a whole to spend 20+ points of something each or accept debilitating mental damage.
Don't Angels have a passive perfect defense to mind-affecting attacks in WoD? I'm pretty sure I remember reading that somewhere. I suppose they might not share that with their hosts though.
They are passively immune to mind control and illusions, a psychic spike to the brain isn't either of those. I'm reasonably certain they do have an active equivalent, but almost all such abilities in WoD work on a per attack basis like physical perfect defenses.
Arc 13 Post 24: Wizard Before a Hollow Star
Wizard Before a Hollow Star
7th of February 2007 A.D.
"Would an offering be appropriate?" you wonder, all manner of spiritual dealings crowding into your mind, from the humble gift of salt and pond-loaf that a family on the edge of the Eastern Jungle Belt might offer to the harvest spirits, to the great festivals of the City of Laws, each of them synchronized to perfection that they might appeal to whole choruses of related benevolent spirits while warding off those less welcome. Granted the latter might be a bit much to manage on your own or just with Harry's help. Lydia is busy with her new friends, not that you can blame her for it.
"Offering?" the stone head shakes with a faint grinding of boulders. "No, no I am all that is there... for the longest time I was all that is here... but that is changing... my thanks."
"What about neighbors, do you have any of those on the other side?"
"Since the time... the River People came visiting this has been a crossing of stone to the south, air to the north and water to the east, fire to the west... though things change... the fire came out of the west and the air fanned it and they called it the Great Fire... and the water could not quench it. The water was elsewhere. Tricky element water is."
"My thanks for the insight." Looks like I'll be having that conversation with Harry soon after all.
***
Harry still isn't comfortable in your palace and it's not just the gleaming furniture, the sharp arches and brass cameras. Just like Porter he too can feel the elements, the world and know that these are not quite them, though that goes out the window when you explain what you had done and what you're planning.
"So let me get this straight, you went to merry old England and the first thing you did was find some of King Arthur's knights in Arawn's dungeon from trying to un-kill him and you decided to spring them and help?"
"All of us decided, Olivia, Daniel, Tiffany and of course Lydia she was the only one who could open the door," you point out.
"Glad you kids had such a moderating influence." By the sounds of that Tiffany isn't going to have a fun homecoming. You do your best to squish the part of you that's glad of that fact.
"Well then," you cut him off brightly sliding a gold fern smoothie over the table to him. "I'm sure you'll be glad to provide the moderation this time around." After a pause you add more seriously. "It's your city too I figured you'd want to know, especially with how all kinds of things react to me coming around."
He rubs either tiredness or a headache from his eyes before accepting. "S'alright. You've done well by Chicago," he yawns for good measure.
"You know I've got something for that right?" you ask.
"Asked Bob, he said 'only' about one dose in fifty is likely to cause hallucinations..."
"And then he implied that you might want that to loosen up once in a while?" you finish making him start and smile. "Bob isn't what you'd call hard to cold read." For some reason that little addition wipes the smile off his face, makes him look almost... guilty. Why would he feel guilty of anything Bob chooses to do, especially when he had been the but of the joke?
"I could just make you some malcoffee, I've got more time now that I have more hands," you offer, but Harry's not having it, the moment of camaraderie fading into awkwardness. This is about the point where most people would give up and move on. You're not most people.
Focusing your attention down to a blazing point of essence you realize from the stiffness of his posture, the way he's trying to control his breathing he's worried about how well you could read him. Now is that because he's not quite as resistant to your charms as he'd like to pretend? Short of opening the Crown's eyes you can't tell but that feels over the line.
"Come on," you finish your drink and offer him your hand to travel back to the Last Station.
One moment of disorientation later you're back among the odd industry of your... underground lair you guess. Already familiar to some of the Jade Dogs, if not a common guest he asks if there's been any trouble with all the banging and the bright magic being drawn along the leyline to get the furnace ready for Porter's new body.
So far nothing had been bold enough, which is either a good sign... or a very bad one if some of the more unwholesome denizens of the tunnels have decided now is the time to muster.
"Call..."
"...the others if there's trouble while you're away," Miru finishes with a huff. "You know we think the same right?"
"Oh yeah. It's a good thing..."
"I have lots of siblings already so I had some practice when it comes to dealing with you lot. Or us lot I guess depending on how you're minded to mangle grammar."
"What?" Both of you turn to Harry who had been trying to keep back a smile with what could at best be described as mixed results.
"Nothing, nothing." He really needs to learn how to lie better if he's going to play White Council politics.
Maybe it's the distraction of the Station, maybe it's the way Maker of Immaculate Relics Untarnished keeps asking leading questions: 'Are you sure that strand goes there?'; 'Have you considered tying off that weave at the top instead of the bottom so it won't echo?'; 'Maybe it's worth putting less power on the down-stroke?' but it takes Harry a good while to open a passage to Porter's Sanctum.
At first glance it seems an ordinary enough cave, larger than any cave you'd ever been inside in the flesh, but not unduly so. There's light to one side and where the light strikes the cave floor jade-green moss grows. The walls are covered with pictograms and signs taken right from the graffiti above and water drips through channels straight like railway lines beckoning one to follow along eastward. As good a place as any to start exploring. Faintly at first then clearer and clearer you start seeing filaments of paler stone, crystal in the walls, jade, though it's not pure enough to extract and bring into the the world of form you know,
Then you turn a corner...
"Stars and Stones!" Harry's voice rises in distorted echoes. The chamber is vast, easily two hundred feet tall if not taller at its highest point widening rather than narrowing towards the top where the stone had been worn smooth like a vault with an enormous seam of jade like a bolt of lighting or the knotted branch of an ancient tree running through it. Or at least that is what it once had been. In the center of the formation where the jade would have been purest someone had carved out a pentagonal plug of grey jade some seven feet across. That is not a talisman of the sort the Wan Kuei bear to hold Chi, it's an Essence sink, for a truly massive structure... Towers of crystal and cities in flight wander ghostly-pale, too thin to grasp before the mind's eye.
Lost 1 Essence -> Now at 17/18 (Occult Excellency)
"Any idea what you would use that for?" you turn to Harry in place of chasing phantasms.
"A keystone, a very, very big keystone for something the builder wants to last forever," comes the reply that grows more confident as he says it.
"Forever's a very long time," you shake your head. "Isn't it weird that nothing lives in here? We aren't in Porter's place anymore, but there's nothing here but echoes. You'd think some lesser power would have staked a claim."
"I could have a look," he offers after a moment. "If no one's been around here since they carved the wall it should give me a pretty good idea of what it was for."
"Or I could just ask," you point out.
"Your way might get a deeper answer, mine would be a wider one," Harry says. Truth be told he has a point. Another reason to sharpen your own Sight if you can. You would feel a lot better about imprinting the history of this room on your memory that Harry's.
What do you do?
[] Use a Crown Question
[] Harry uses the Sight
[] Leave it be for later
[] Write in
OOC: Since I know it is going to be asked you only get one question since the carved place is part of the literal wall and thus the scene. It's been too long since it was carved for it to count as its own object.
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Rolls
Perception Empathy: Without Excellency to cold read Bob, With Excellency to read Harry
Maker of Immaculate Relics Untarnished Wits Empathy to read her other self
Opening the Way
Insights into Jade:
Molly... that thing is to the scale of First Age Manses ,
Harry... It's a keystone meant to ground a lot of magic fast
Perception Empathy: Without Excellency to cold read Bob, With Excellency to read Harry
Maker of Immaculate Relics Untarnished Wits Empathy to read her other self
Opening the Way
Insights into Jade:
Molly... that thing is to the scale of First Age Manses ,
Harry... It's a keystone meant to ground a lot of magic fast
Just to be clear, the concern with using the Sight is that it is generally dangerous for wizards to poke around things they do not understand with the Sight. Many consider it a last resort, Harry thinks of it as just another investigation tool as long as he isn't pointing it at something like your friend Broken Seeker which is when he starts to remember all the warnings.
How much does the soulgaze safety technique we taught him apply to the Sight?
I mean, I see the potential danger, yes.
Why not just use the crown first and only apply the sight if it doesn't seem like whatever he's likely to see will fry his brain?
Entirety, the Sight and Soulgazes are manifestations of the same power, only it has to be reciprocal when you are looking at human souls for some reason
Generally you would want a broad shallow analysis first, to establish the wider context, and a deep narrow dive afterwards, using the data from the wider analysis to better direct / contextualize your second inquiry. The danger of doing the sight first is not insignificant, but at this point, Harry has soulgazed an infernal exaltation and the manifestation of the Primordial's World Body. I am fairly sure he's going to be ok. Still, if this is a deal breaker, I can switch the two options, I guess.
Do we need to remind Harry to take all the possible security measures when using the Sight on the large scale ancient magitech device that might well be a remnant from the First Age? Or is he smart enough to do so on his own?
He'll do it on his own.
I am feeling fairly confident in Harry's ability to either block, dodge or tank whatever SAN loss he might catch from this. He should be significantly better with the Sight than he was in canon by this point due to his two experiences with Molly (soul gazing her when we just got the exaltation, and being present when we manifested our kingdom - he might not have gotten everything, but he got some impressions at least), the knowledge Molly imparted to him about making the Sight safer, and most likely his own research.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Oh right so we couldn't have come here without a Gate anyway. Forgot about that. Hopefully our people are getting something out of studying that intereimensional-chainsaw we took from Daedalus. We could also buy the Hellwalker technique or whatever it was called.
Something for the next XP vote if possible. Having the Sight would make the Crown much more useful in certain situations.
Edit: Also this right here is why I didn't want to give Dresden a list of White Council traitors.
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