I would keep in mind that anything we tell Murphy, especially if we don't treat it as a secret, is going to get back to the Library at some point and I am not sure I want them poking about Demonreach.
I would keep in mind that anything we tell Murphy, especially if we don't treat it as a secret, is going to get back to the Library at some point and I am not sure I want them poking about Demonreach.
[x] Write in - Tell the relevant bits without detail she doesn't need. A volcano sized bomb was left with a nasty tripwire that needs to be disarmed. They tore a powerful spirit in half to put it in endless torture as part of some scheme and then just left it there when it didn't give them what they wanted.
If she wants the fiddly details she can ask again later, but seeing as she hasn't called Molly about anything for…. A while, I don't see why she should feed a cop bound up with people we don't trust very much her life's story?
[x] Write in - Tell the relevant bits without detail she doesn't need. A volcano sized bomb was left with a nasty tripwire that needs to be disarmed. They tore a powerful spirit in half to put it in endless torture as part of some scheme and then just left it there when it didn't give them what they wanted.
[x] Write in - Tell the relevant bits without detail she doesn't need. A volcano sized bomb was left with a nasty tripwire that needs to be disarmed. They tore a powerful spirit in half to put it in endless torture as part of some scheme and then just left it there when it didn't give them what they wanted.
[x] Write in - Tell the relevant bits without detail she doesn't need. A volcano sized bomb was left with a nasty tripwire that needs to be disarmed. They tore a powerful spirit in half to put it in endless torture as part of some scheme and then just left it there when it didn't give them what they wanted.
As a general rule, need to know is good to maintain.
[x] Write in - Tell the relevant bits without detail she doesn't need. A volcano sized bomb was left with a nasty tripwire that needs to be disarmed. They tore a powerful spirit in half to put it in endless torture as part of some scheme and then just left it there when it didn't give them what they wanted.
It has an notice me not field around it for mortals though. The LoC may legitimately not be aware of it, though it's hard to say. That said how far reaching are Daedalus's connections? If we tell Murphy about a magic island prison with monsters out of time on it and she informs superiors will Daedalus hear of it?
I'm not taking any chances after Boston. We still don't know how they knew.
[x] Write in - Tell the relevant bits without detail she doesn't need. A volcano sized bomb was left with a nasty tripwire that needs to be disarmed. They tore a powerful spirit in half to put it in endless torture as part of some scheme and then just left it there when it didn't give them what they wanted.
sense: Power A seat at the table is s a foot in the door. For now you do not share that thought, though Lydia at least might have guessed it from the look she throws you on the way back.
We have records of a Father John Murphy being invited to finish his seminary studies in the United states as many were in those days, even the Bishop of Chicago in those days James Duggan followed that path. But then something odd happens in 1867 he receives an invitation to come to Chicago he refuses outright and goes instead to Saint Luis where he establish a parish for two years after which there was a short note sent to the Vatican claiming a avisitation of the kind that should not be made public.
Either way John Murphy came to Chicago that year and was made priest of the Parish Priest of Saint Patrick's, old Saint Patrick's we call it now, which is unusual in and of itself
he refuses outright and goes instead to Saint Luis where he establish a parish for two years after which there was a short note sent to the Vatican claiming a a visitation of the kind that should not be made public.
[x] Write in - Tell the relevant bits without detail she doesn't need. A volcano sized bomb was left with a nasty tripwire that needs to be disarmed. They tore a powerful spirit in half to put it in endless torture as part of some scheme and then just left it there when it didn't give them what they wanted.
Actually working in the first place.
Not starting a rift/major war with the White Council and its allies.
Not providing easy fodder for our enemies to use against us.
Not serving as an additional vulnerability/attack surface for people to attack a wizard through. Wizards already have to police their own hair/blood/family members for fear of ritual magic attack, and having to do so for an animal thats mystically bonded to their souls seems like an unsurmountable issue, which is presumably why you dont see many animal familiars in the series.
Nevermind what happens when any of several opposing factions get their hands on these things and tweak them to their own specifications.
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Sorry, but this sounds like paranoia. Extreme paralyzing paranoia at that. Not only is there no basis for this, there's no real way to test this, and nothing can be done about this. If they can do this, it's futile to do anything online.
Akuma Batman figured out we had enough of an electronic presence that he avoided Last Station in favor of penetrating Isabella's home computer; its not secret any longer, if it ever was, not in the supernatural.
As is, you have to account that there is a healthy interest in our digital minions.
If they suddenly start doing a pretty broad trawl for information on a particular person, people will notice. Like when the Wardens were searching for Morgan in Turn Coat and started showing up in major cities.
And at the moment, secrecy is more important.
But, ok, let's see how we can sweeten the deal. I think I have an idea. While exalted craft surprisingly doesn't have a way to treat derangements, we can, in fact, give the council something:
Obvious point of failure/subversion, in a setting with god-tier infiltrators and subversion specialists.
This is self-evidently something that can be used to bespell everybody who ever puts blood/life to sign their names in that book. Its like the exhaust port on the Death Star. Only bigger.
The problem with fixing the damage to Lawbreakers is that people are fragile and derangement are very unpleasant, these ones being soul deep. The closest thing you have encountered to fixing the damage is Silk being high on vampire venom. False Spring Beacon which you guys still do not have would also work since that is basically a lie told to the universe with such confidence that it can undo any curse... for Essence days at least.
Doesnt seem any more drastic than a Yama King dropping Investments on you.
Or a Splendor changing your Nature.
This appears to be Splendors territory.
There are Splendor features that perform significantly more radical changes; there's one that turns you into Kindred, and another Awakens you to Magery, both of which are soul-deep changes.
Basically this:
Black Chalice (••••)
This Fascination takes the form of a jeweled chalice that slowly fills with a cold, clear liquid
which smells and tastes like tears. The liquid is poisonous; anyone who drinks it must make a
Stamina roll against difficulty 8 each turn or suffer a level of unsoakable lethal damage. This
continues until they succeed three times in a row.
If the Black Chalice is formally presented to someone, they may swear an oath of fealty to the
owner of the chalice. Doing so grants them an Intimacy of loyalty toward the Splendor's owner
for one year and changes the liquid in the chalice from clear to blood-red. The blood is no longer
poisonous, and drinking it transforms the oath-taker into a vampire. This transformation can be
performed up to four times per story before the chalice's power must rest.
Form Elements: Form of Ash and Dust
Root Elements: Damnation in Scarlet
Mystic Elements: Deadly Poison, Overriding Vision
Is one of the example Splendors, and it turns people into vampires.
All I'd do is take the basic design and swap some of the Elements around; for example
Dream Chalice (•••)
This Fascination takes the form of a bronze chalice that slowly fills with a cold, clear liquid which smells and tastes like wine. The liquid is reflective; anyone who looks into it gets a clear picture of the current state of their soul/self.
If the Chalice is formally presented to someone, they may swear an oath of intent to forswear the behaviors that brought them to the Council's attention. Doing so grants them an Intimacy of loyalty/respect toward the Seven Laws for one year and changes the liquid in the chalice from clear to blood-red.
Drinking it heals the oath-taker of the Derangements and Flaws from breaking the Laws, at a rate of 1 per success on a (crafter's Intelligence + Occult/Medicine) roll, where DC is (10-Splendor rating).
This blessing can be performed once per person per story.
Form Elements: Form of Dreams and Nightmares(1)
Root Elements: Blessing of Health(3)
Mystic Elements: Mystic Fortification(1), Overriding Vision(1), Elongation of the Curse(1), Sorcerous Imbuing(0)
Not the only potential design, but the first that came to mind.
This is a 3-dot version.
A 4-dot version might not need the drinker's active cooperation.
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Slightly off-topic, but I've never understood how Listens-to-Wind could have done his schtick of going back through medical school every few decades, given the existence of techbane. Either he already knew a way around it like the one we taught to Harry, or a whole lot of people died in teaching hospitals his last couple times through.
Elder wizard doing elder wizard things.
Just like elder wizards routinely dont see a need to carry anything other than their staff when going to war, while Dresden carries a staff and blasting rod and shield bracelet as minimum.
When Corpsetaker was impersonating a grad student/professor's assistant, she wasnt killing computers either.
And its not like its a uniform effect for everyone all the time.
If you go back and look at the beginning of Death Masks, even Harry was in a TV studio and actively suppressing his techbane effect. Only when he lost control/composure did equipment start dying.
Harry himself was admitted to hospital for at least 4 days at the end of Grave Peril. The White Council moved all its wizard casualties during Dead Beat to a major hospital in Central Africa, which was where they, and the surrounding city blocks, all got nerve gassed. Both Elaine and Ramirez have been admitted to hospital in White Night.
And this is Harry, who appears to have a particularly bad techbane; Molly lived in the Carpenter household while he was training her, and besides Michael having to do a lot more preventive maintenance, she seemed to manage.
Harry is not a representative sample of most wizards, is what Im saying.
Basically the butt of a Spiders Georg meme.
I suspect Listens to Wind manages just fine, the same way we see Ebenezar driving a truck in Blood Rites.
POSTSCRIPT
Also note that while Harry was using Molly's apartment in the svartalfar building, he had access to modern amentities without blowing them up. Just like he does in the Castle now post-Battle Grounds.
Either there are enchantments to control that sort of thing, or his personal control is improving.
Timing matters, I think. If he does this every, say, four decades or so (one generation), and it's 2006 in-story, then the last time he did it could have been in ~ 1967-1970. Perhaps a bit earlier if his plans to go back to school were delayed by the brewing war with Red Court. At that time, there would be little to no digital equipment in the hospitals, and if he refrained from magic use while near relatively sensitive equipment, I believe he could have managed.
One: the techbane doesnt affect digital equipment specifically, just equipment of a particular age relative to the wizard.
Two: Listens to Wind is older than the US.
By that measure, X-rays, ultrasounds and anything to do with electricity would not have worked around him then.
He would be radically out of date medically, which is something that isnt suggested.
Similarly, Ebenezar McCoy was born early enough to fight in the French and Indian War of 1756-1763, back when the most complicated common machinery might have been a musket. Yet he has no trouble owning and operating a Depression-era Ford truck and old shotgun; we see him drive into Chicago in Blood Rites.
Yet Harry drives a VW Beetle designed before his father was born, and even that has frequent mechanical issues in addition to the fairly regular combat damage.
Harry is just the Spiders Georg of wizardkind; the statistical outlier who fucks up a lot of numbers.
A Splendor can change your nature, the thing is it's a pretty blunt instrument just like investments, if it makes you say 'compassionate' it is going to make you whatever the maker's version of compassion was. You will still be a lot better off than when you were mad off Black Magic but noticeably changed.
RATIONALE
Harry trusted her with this secret in canon, I dont see any reason not to here.
Especially since the major Bad Guy factions, from the Yama Kings to the Denarians to the Outsiders, already have the details about Demonreach.
And telling her might improve her ability to look for information in her family history.
A Splendor can change your nature, the thing is it's a pretty blunt instrument just like investments, if it makes you say 'compassionate' it is going to make you whatever the maker's version of compassion was. You will still be a lot better off than when you were mad off Black Magic but noticeably changed.
Depends on what you mean by changed.
If you are using a Splendor thats targeted towards healing, you'd expect it to Heal. If you're using one that does mind control you'd expect different results.
The end result would all be someone not using Lawbreaking magic anymore, but how they got there, and the sequelae, are gonna be different.
A Splendor that heals a person of that damage is not going to stop them going back to repeat the same thing if they had made those decisions wilfully. A Splendor that mind controls a person to not use Lawbreaking magic would prevent them from being able to do it again in the first place, but depending, it might not fix the person's damage.
Depends on what you mean by changed.
If you are using a Splendor thats targeted towards healing, you'd expect it to Heal. If you're using one that does mind control you'd expect different results.
The end result would all be someone not using Lawbreaking magic anymore, but how they got there, and the sequelae, are gonna be different.
A Splendor that heals a person of that damage is not going to stop them going back to repeat the same thing if they had made those decisions wilfully. A Splendor that mind controls a person to not use Lawbreaking magic would prevent them from being able to do it again in the first place, but depending, it might not fix the person's damage.
The issue with Lawbreaking and the reason why it's so hard to deal is that it gets internalized, eventually the Lawbreaker gets a pseudo-intimacy of 'Breaking X law is necessary/fun/useful'. For the magic to remove that it has to tell that this part of the human is undesirable and cut it off, so far so good, but it cannot tell where the roots of the person's preexisting intimacy entwined with the impulse to use magic. You would need an actual healer with the right tools and the ability to make value judgements to get the person to precisely how they were before they broke the laws.
So as an example, for Harry killing people, his lawbreaking impulse is connected to his sense of justice, so healing him of the thing entirely would make him less inclined to throw himself into danger out of said sense of justice.
For pre-Exalt Molly it was her compassion that drove her so tearing the whole thing out would make her notably colder to those close to her, family and friends.
It comes back to that 'evil is too much of a good thing' sentiment and the Exalted Sorcery being keyed to a rather subtly different cosmic system.
The one relevant comment here is that the extended Clan Murphy as of Blood Rites numbered anywhere from forty-ish to several hundred people.
Several of whom are law enforcement.
What looked like a small army had invaded a portion of Wolf Lake Park and claimed it in the name of God and Clan Murphy. Cars filled the little parking lot nearby, and lined the nearest lane for a hundred yards in either direction. Summer had been generous with the rain for once, and all the trees in the park had put on glorious autumn colors so bright that if I scrunched up my eyes until my lashes blurred my vision they almost seemed to be afire. In the park, a couple of gazebos had been stockpiled with tables and lots of food, and a pair of portable pavilions flanked them, giving shade to maybe a dozen people who had fired up their grills and were singeing meat. Music was playing from several different locations, the beats of the various songs stumbling into one another, and evidently someone had brought a generator, because there was an enormous TV set up out in the grass while a dozen men crowded around it, talking loudly, laughing, and arguing about what looked to be a college football game.
There were also a pair of volleyball nets and a badminton net, and enough Frisbees flying around to foul up radar at the local airports. A giant, inflatable castle wobbled dramatically as a dozen children bounced around on the inside of it, caroming off the walls and one another with equal amounts of enthusiasm. More kids ran in packs all over the place, and there must have been a dozen dogs gleefully racing one another and begging food from anyone who seemed to have some. The air smelled like charcoal, mesquite, and insect repellent, and buzzed with happy chatter.
I stood there for a minute, watching the festivities. Spotting Murphy in a crowd of a couple of hundred people wasn't easy. I tried to be methodical, sweeping the area with my gaze from left to right. I didn't spot Murphy, but as I stood there it occurred to me that a bruised and battered man better than six and a half feet tall in a black leather duster didn't exactly blend in with the crowd at the Murphy picnic. A couple of the men around the television had spotted me with the kind of attention that made me think that they were with the law.
Another man walking by with a white Styrofoam cooler on one shoulder noticed the men at the television and followed their gaze to me. He was in his mid-thirties and about an inch or two over average height. His brown hair was cut short, as was a neatly cropped goatee. He had the kind of build that dangerous men seem to develop-not enormous, pretty muscle, but the kind of lean sinew that indicated speed and endurance as well as strength. And he was a cop. Don't ask me how I could tell-it was just something about the way he held himself, the way he kept track of his surroundings.
He promptly changed course, walked up to me, and said, "Hey, there."
"Hey," I said.