BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Yeah me too. Does this scene work as a focus for the letter?
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
No, you would need something like the house in which is was written, or the grave of the person who wrote it. Right now you are in front of someone who heard about the letter from someone who knew about it but did not themselves read it
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
I'm not sure what to ask of Johns grave if anything, it'd depend on what was in the letter. It seems pretty important though, or at least it was, if she wanted John to know of its contents before her demise. We can consult Harry on this then look into it.
[X] Check with Harry, see if Father Murphy had actually been a member of the White Council
-[X] Find the graves of John and Kate Murphy and ask questions
--[X] Focus: Kate's grave- What were the contents of Kate's letter to her brother?
[X] Check with Harry, see if Father Murphy had actually been a member of the White Council
-[X] Find the graves of John and Kate Murphy and ask questions
--[X] Focus: Kate's grave- What were the contents of Kate's letter to her brother?
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So what are we actually going for here? This is an interesting bit of history, but are we just in this for the details of a long dead Denarian plot?
Not sure what we can, or should, ask. Asking about what brought him here is breaking our covenant with God. Other questions are mostly idle curiosity. I am unsure how this could affect dealing with Demonreach. Good father is in White God's hands, and I was keen on investigating him because while he isn't a saint, he is a martyr, and that should be recognized and remembered. Maybe ask (again, as idle curiosity) if any of Murphy's relatives are magical.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
I want to know the contents of Samuel's plans to make sure there are no loose ends relating to Demonreach before we go over there. Might not be relevant but it doesn't hurt to ask. On that note I came up with another question, we know what he intended for Embermane but to what end did he want Demonreach breached?
[X] Check with Harry, see if Father Murphy had actually been a member of the White Council
-[X] Find the graves of John and Kate Murphy and ask questions
--[X] Focus: Kate's grave- What were the contents of Kate's letter to her brother?
--[X] Focus: John's grave- What are the details of the plan(s) which led to John's murder?
Had another idea for the warlock thing. The council is more likely to accept cures than immunity for ideological reasons, and a centrally controlled system offers more control than a decentralized one. It's an established concept in the DF that sponsored magic can do a lot, including things a mortal can't or shouldn't do themselves. Per the DF RPG rules I posted it can even act as insulation against lawbreaking*.
The council wouldn't be happy with a ritual of not touching you with black magic, but we might be able to build a ritual specifically to suppress or potentially cure black magic corruption if the user casts it on themselves. It couldn't save everyone, but people who haven't gone over the line could start medicating with it to manage their condition.
There are a lot of examples of rituals that can effect deeply rooted supernaturally charged aspects of the user's psyche, and being an invocation it doesn't require the user to have the skill to safely influence their own mind.
VtM thaumaturgy has stuff like purge the inner demon from this list, and armor of diamond serenity from this one. The former suppresses the beast for a night and wards off frenzy, while the latter makes the user outright immune to frenzy for the same time period in addition to other benefits that we don't really need.
Those are vampire rituals, but they involve invoking other powers. Dark thaumaturgy specifically doesn't have any such rituals, but it works by making deals with demons and seems like something an infernal would be well suited to support.
So we make a patron or find a volunteer from the FCF, then work with the council to spread and enforce use of the ritual as an alternative to preemptive murder of warlocks.
* pretty sure Helen is an example of this. She straight murdered multiple people with magic, but didn't turn into a raving madwoman the council had to execute because she and her husband did it with an indirect ritual. Pretty sure they were linking in a storm's power as part of that, but that wouldn't be enough of a dodge to avoid going nuts so there must have been a patron doing the final bit for them.
The council wouldn't be happy with a ritual of not touching you with black magic, but we might be able to build a ritual specifically to suppress or potentially cure black magic corruption if the user casts it on themselves. It couldn't save everyone, but people who haven't gone over the line could start medicating with it to manage their condition.
There are a lot of examples of rituals that can effect deeply rooted supernaturally charged aspects of the user's psyche, and being an invocation it doesn't require the user to have the skill to safely influence their own mind.
VtM thaumaturgy has stuff like purge the inner demon from this list, and armor of diamond serenity from this one. The former suppresses the beast for a night and wards off frenzy, while the latter makes the user outright immune to frenzy for the same time period in addition to other benefits that we don't really need.
Those are vampire rituals, but they involve invoking other powers. Dark thaumaturgy specifically doesn't have any such rituals, but it works by making deals with demons and seems like something an infernal would be well suited to support.
So we make a patron or find a volunteer from the FCF, then work with the council to spread and enforce use of the ritual as an alternative to preemptive murder of warlocks.
* pretty sure Helen is an example of this. She straight murdered multiple people with magic, but didn't turn into a raving madwoman the council had to execute because she and her husband did it with an indirect ritual. Pretty sure they were linking in a storm's power as part of that, but that wouldn't be enough of a dodge to avoid going nuts so there must have been a patron doing the final bit for them.
This might work, but do keep in mind that you are basically trying to make Mercy in Servitude for Warlocks, even if you can make it all the issues that come with that charm apply. The entity sponsoring it, which would ultimately be Molly, can just threaten to turn off the tap if it wants the person benefiting from the ritual to serve them
Good night guys.
Still better than being stabbed to death. There are alternatives less dependent on us, but in a way I think that's a positive here because the council has an immediately available person to deal with on this.
- Location
- Right Where I Am
[X] Check with Harry, see if Father Murphy had actually been a member of the White Council
We're not on the most rapidly ticking clock. Best to use all our other information resources first, and then have any question that we do ask be as useful as possible.
Not to harp on this, but I wanted to mess with the mechanics of some rituals for hypothetical warlock management.
Waffling on parts of this, but I really like the idea of distinguishing and binding black magic corruption behind a hidden name.
Edit:
The birds might still be useful for deployment too. Instead of trying to teach it to everyone you give the birds just enough synergy to do group casting where the target can be whoever in the group and then build the ritual into them like you would path magic. Then they can bond to budding warlocks and lead a casting for them if they can't do it themselves.
Invoking the spirits of distant Sanctuary, the sorcerer draws shelter from the fivefold image of its empress. Presented with an honest vision of their sin, the ritualist names it and thereby gains some control of what it means to her.
So long as this name remains known to her alone it may be used to suppress and ignore the taint black magic has left on her soul.
System:
On the first invocation of this ritual the caster must make an extended roll at a one hour interval until she accumulated 5 successes. In doing she finds and names the part of her nature, casting off its influence until the next dawn.
Thereafter she may use this name in an 10 minute abbreviated ritual requiring 1 success to assert control over it for the same period.
If this name is ever spoken aloud to the caster by another person the bond breaks, and cannot be reestablished for a lunar month.
So long as this name remains known to her alone it may be used to suppress and ignore the taint black magic has left on her soul.
System:
On the first invocation of this ritual the caster must make an extended roll at a one hour interval until she accumulated 5 successes. In doing she finds and names the part of her nature, casting off its influence until the next dawn.
Thereafter she may use this name in an 10 minute abbreviated ritual requiring 1 success to assert control over it for the same period.
If this name is ever spoken aloud to the caster by another person the bond breaks, and cannot be reestablished for a lunar month.
Waffling on parts of this, but I really like the idea of distinguishing and binding black magic corruption behind a hidden name.
Edit:
The birds might still be useful for deployment too. Instead of trying to teach it to everyone you give the birds just enough synergy to do group casting where the target can be whoever in the group and then build the ritual into them like you would path magic. Then they can bond to budding warlocks and lead a casting for them if they can't do it themselves.
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[X] Check with Harry, see if Father Murphy had actually been a member of the White Council
-[X] Find the graves of John and Kate Murphy and ask questions
--[X] Focus: Kate's grave- What were the contents of Kate's letter to her brother?
--[X] Focus: John's grave- What are the details of the plan(s) which led to John's murder?
-[X] Find the graves of John and Kate Murphy and ask questions
--[X] Focus: Kate's grave- What were the contents of Kate's letter to her brother?
--[X] Focus: John's grave- What are the details of the plan(s) which led to John's murder?
[X] Check with Harry, see if Father Murphy had actually been a member of the White Council
-[X] Using the current scene, ask the question "how are the members of Murphy family connected to the supernatural?"
-[X] Find the graves of John and Kate Murphy and ask questions
--[X] Focus: Kate's grave- What were the contents of Kate's letter to her brother?
--[X] Focus: John's grave- What are the details of the plan(s) which led to John's murder?
I get a feeling that Murphy family might have some sort of bloodline in them which the denarian was interested in.
-[X] Using the current scene, ask the question "how are the members of Murphy family connected to the supernatural?"
-[X] Find the graves of John and Kate Murphy and ask questions
--[X] Focus: Kate's grave- What were the contents of Kate's letter to her brother?
--[X] Focus: John's grave- What are the details of the plan(s) which led to John's murder?
I get a feeling that Murphy family might have some sort of bloodline in them which the denarian was interested in.
[X] Yog
- Location
- Japan, The Big Town
[X] Yog
- Location
- portugal
[X] Check with Harry, see if Father Murphy had actually been a member of the White Council
-[X] Using the current scene, ask the question "how are the members of Murphy family connected to the supernatural?"
-[X] Find the graves of John and Kate Murphy and ask questions
--[X] Focus: Kate's grave- What were the contents of Kate's letter to her brother?
--[X] Focus: John's grave- What are the details of the plan(s) which led to John's murder?
-[X] Using the current scene, ask the question "how are the members of Murphy family connected to the supernatural?"
-[X] Find the graves of John and Kate Murphy and ask questions
--[X] Focus: Kate's grave- What were the contents of Kate's letter to her brother?
--[X] Focus: John's grave- What are the details of the plan(s) which led to John's murder?
Vote closed
Arc 13 Post 44: An Eyeful of Sins
An Eyeful of Sins
13th of February 2007 A.D.
Before departing the company of Mary Murphy you ask a question perhaps a bit too suspicious, but you've been caught off guard one too many times. How are the Murphy family currently connected to the unseen world?
All you get is Murphy's story like a lonely silver bell, a relief all on its own.
Lost 1 Essence -> Now at 14/18
Before visiting the graves of Kate and John you decide to call and ask Harry if he knows anything about a Catholic priest being a member of the White Council. Their records are probably not as good as the Church, but they have less to record at least. I'll probably have to wait for that one though... The three of you are still a fifteen minutes drive from Rosehill Cemetery when the answer comes back, a text. Harry knows how to text now? The smile slides off your face in the blink of an eye as you read it:
Bob recognized the name, there are pieces missing because there are pieces of who he used to be missing, because of Kemmler. There wasn't just a member of the Council, he was a senior Warden. Kemmler looked for his soul for months, thought he'd become a ghost before concluding he'd moved on. Be careful.
Always am, you send back, though you cannot quite keep yourself from ending on a winking emoticon.
"Did anything we saw back there indicate that Father Murphy might have been the kind of man to linger on this Earth?" you ask the others.
"No," Father Forthil answers, startled.
"Yeah, me neither, good relationship with his siblings, had some warning to put his affairs in order, but apparently yes he was a member of the council and an evil necromancer... that's a bit redundant, but this one was particularly bad tried to look for his ghost for some reason. He could have just been barking up the wrong tree, but..."
"It's a bad habit to fall back on 'perp was stupid'," the detective offers in the tone of one who had given that advice before. "It's true a lot of the time, but that should never be your go-to or you'll miss evidence when you least want to. You're sure he's not around anymore?"
"Positive, the spirit claimed he moved on and he would have had no reason to lie, I'm not entirely sure he would have had the capacity to... there's the entrance."
Even at night, and it is getting properly dark by now there is something quiet, soothing about Rosehill, its neat and ordered stones, its plaques shining in the moonlight peeking between wispy clouds. It's less the kind of place one would set a Red Star movie, more like the ending scene of a sappy rom-com with photogenic headstones... at least at first. The deeper you go the older the headstones get and while none of the graves are missing the hand of time will not be denied, cracks run through the two graves set side by side, green growing through them.
Looking at the headstone above an empty grave, still mourned by his kin you ask: What are the details of the plot that lead to your death?
Lost 1 Essence -Now at 13/18
Like a flash of thunder in your mind you see an all too familiar Enochian symbol, the mark of Lasciel.
A thin pale girl sits up in bed wearing no adornment but a crucifix speaking quietly with a smiling man, hair just turning grey at the temples.
"What has God ever done for you? You did not ask to be born broken, gasping for breath when other children were laughing, stumbling when others were climbing trees, a burden to all those you love. You could be great, beyond the censure of a jealous Father who would chain his children away from all that they desire and all that they could be."
Slowly, almost gingerly she takes off her crucifix and sets it aside.
A piece of silver flashes between them and something... green?
....
You see two people, a man and a woman sitting together on a pier by the lake, through not any shoreline in Chicago. The man is wearing a priest's cassock, the woman almost unrecognizable for the life that had been poured into her, all the more striking for wearing a maize colored dress like the sun at midsummer. An emerald pendant, you see it clearly now swings like a green star on a chain where once the crucifix had been. The color is too bright, unreal... a thing of elder days, the Grace of Embers stolen.
She leans to whisper something to him, some secret amusement. Isn't she a little too close. What's she doing with...?
There is no turning aside from the scene, your Crown, your Exaltation can no more understand why you would not want to watch this than the burning heart of a sun would understand why mortals shiver in the cold. All you can do is sit there, a cosmic voyeur pinned to the pattern of ages as Kate Murphy tries to seduce her brother with the no doubt helpful counsel of the Fallen Angel Lasciel. It goes farther than you ever wanted to see, though not as far as you had come to fear. But then the chain snaps the emerald rolls away. As you... and only you watch the earth beyond the pier first shivers then roils and cracks like living flesh. A root, if roots were stone yet moved like tentacles grabs it and pulls it into the earth.
The look of horror in John Murphy's eyes when the glamor that had been clouding his sight lifts is not one you'll soon forget.
You snap back to the sight of a gravestone above an empty grave. At least now you think you understand why Kemmler would have thought he'd have left a ghost.
Sending Embermane to break open the island was never plan A for the Denarians, you realize, it was an improvised plan B when corrupting the priest by... trying to reenact the greatest hits of the Borgias —OK, that works, mental distance, that's the key Molly— had failed. Presumably Kate had not taken very well to her mentor in all things demonic killing her brother as part of the same summoning that also killed him. So she abandoned the Coin and died of the same illness, merely arrested and not cured, by the bargain she made.
You turn to her grave and ask what was in the letter, already knowing what you'll hear.
The letter contained a confession, an apology that could not be spoken in this world.
Lost 1 Essence -> Now at 12/18
"Molly," Father Forthil's gentle voice summons you back into the present. "What's wrong?"
I believe the precise metric is a shit-ton is wrong, your brain provides a regular old intrusive thought, not the demonic kind. How do I explain what I just saw? Should you, does it help anyone if I do?
Regain 2 Essence -> Now at 14/18
How much of the tragedy she saw does Molly explain?
[] All of it, they've been with you so far, you trust Father Forthil and Murphy deserves to know if anyone does
[] 'Just' that Kate was a Denarian and she brought the Grace you are after to the Island you are looking for only to be discovered
[] Write in
OOC: This has been your schedualed reminder that the Fallen are just awful, some of the Worst Things in the setting, but in a much more visceral and insidious way than Outsiders.
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- Location
- Who knows?
Ah. The good ol' Morgoth special I see. Okay so Father Murphy was actually pretty high up, maybe even the warden if Kemmler wanted to grab him? Well uh does this help us with a way to grab the Grace? And wait they pre summoned and spiritually mutilated Embermane before the fire itself? Huh
Molly's best guess is that Maskelyne ripped the Grace out of Embermane in the deep Neevernever to use as a glamor focus since fire is passion and that is the empathy Grace. Summoning the rest of him to use as a battering ram was plan B since the Grace was on the island having been grabbed by the tendrils