BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
It was designed to turn wizards into warlocks, or servants of the Outside, so Harry actually is it's intended target. It was made/modified with wizards in mind.
Last edited:
It was designed to turn wizards into warlocks, or servants of the Outside, so Harry actually is it's intended target. It was made/modified with wizards in mind.
There are three categories of effected wizardThey are both really the same issue. It's around 40 that were compromised. Your blowing it up a bit. There's no reason why they can't be covered in the short term if the WC were convinced. Which is why we should bring it up for this.
They were constantly trash at this very thing in canon, and frankly so far on quest they've been so fundamentally bad at their jobs that I'm not going to believe they can handle this effectively alone until I see it.
This is not accurate.What you're asking them to do if we push FSB for people in the third group is at minimum allow the bulk of their armed forces to be put in a position where they can't oppose us on pain of being subject to whatever Peabody's done to them.
@BronzeTongue Seriously reread the chapter. Carlos appears on the list of compromised people. Unless your saying that he was a willing conspirator the number of mentally compromised is only around 40 as DP said.
The number I found for every wizard alive was 800 based off a WoJ that implied one wizard talent is born for every 10 million poeple. Call it 600 for the council since they don't get everyone... Actually no, that is too low for a world wide organization. Call it 2000 total wizards, 1200 council wizards of which 50 are traitors and around 80 are subverted
You do not know, that is one of the limitations of the Crown, it tells you the answer to what you ask. Molly asked 'who' and that is what the got a list of
I don't see why that matters to the subject of whether we should try using the charm we already paid for the intended purpose of purchasing it. We wanted it for mentally compromised WC members and the number is manageable. If that number also includes willing conspirators then the number of unwilling mentally compromised wizards is even lower than 40.So my numbers were notably off for the people we have names for, but seeing as the number bounced around a bit over the course of that page and we don't know where the bar is to qualify what subverted means I wouldn't call it clear cut either.
In any case the concentration of those victims is relevant. All young wardens answering to an external power is not a viable request.
Because the White God says so. His house, his rules.Why does the Law of Reciprocity hold? Why couldn't it just be a really really nasty trap where the only reward for escaping is "you get to live"?
For that matter, why would the transformative reward be necessarily something we'd actually want as opposed to something like "appointed to high priesthood of the Old Ones" or "a Nemesis infection to free you from all your constraints"? After all, it's not like the makers of this effect would have been making it with our party in mind. They certainly didn't even want us here.
Calling it a reward is probably the wrong idea; think of it as Insight.They'd love that yes. My point is that I doubt it was designed with us in mind. It was made. Then people entered. Then we entered. Our party was not the one it was designed for. That if they were forced to include a reward it would need to be a reward that would benefit us, as opposed to say, a reward for one of their followers/agents running the labyrinth.
There are Rules.Cold Days c43 said:Cold enveloped me, and water slithered into my mouth though I tried to keep it out. Some seeped through my cracked lips. More went up my nostrils and took the long way around—and then it froze into ice, slowly forcing my jaws apart. Mab leaned in close to me, lifting the etcher, and I caught the faint scent of oxidation as the instrument began scratching at my incisors. . . .
Oxidation. The smell of rust.
Rust meant steel—something no Faerie I'd ever seen, apart from Mother Winter, could touch.
This wasn't actually happening to me. It wasn't real. The pain wasn't real. The tree wasn't real. The ice wasn't real.
But . . . I still felt them. I could feel something behind them, a will that was not my own, forcing the idea of pain upon me, the image of helplessness, the leaden fear, the bitter vitriol of despair. This was a psychic assault like nothing I'd ever seen before. The ones I'd felt before this one were feeble shadows by comparison.
No, I thought.
"Nnngh," I moaned.
And I then I drew a deep breath. This was not how my life would end. This was not reality. I was Harry Dresden, Wizard of the White Council, Knight of Winter. I had faced demons and monsters, fought off fallen angels and werewolves, slugged it out with sorcerers and cults and freakish things that had no names. I had fought upon land and sea, in the skies above my city, in ancient ruins and in realms of the spirit most of humanity did not know existed. I bore scars that I'd earned in dozens of battles, made enemies out of nightmares, and laid low a dark empire for the sake of one little girl.
And I would be damned if I was going to roll over for some punk Outsider and his psychic haymaker.
The words first. Damned near everything begins with words.
"I am," I breathed, and suddenly the ice was clear of my mouth.
"I am Harry . . ." I panted, and the pain redoubled.
And I laughed. As if some freak who had never loved enough to know loss could tell me about pain.
"I AM HARRY BLACKSTONE COPPERFIELD DRESDEN!" I roared.
Ice and wood shattered. Frozen stone cracked with a sound like a cannon's blast, a spiderweb of tiny crevices spreading out from me. The image of Mab flew away from me and blew into thousands of crystalline shards, like a shattering stained-glass window. The cold and the pain and the terror reeled away from me, like some vast and hungry beast suddenly struck on the nose.
The Outsiders loved their psychic assaults, and given that this one happened about two seconds after Sharkface came up out of the water, it was pretty clear who was behind it. But that was fine. Sharkface had chosen a battle of the mind. So be it. My head, my rules.
I lifted my right arm to the frozen sky and shouted, wordless and furious, and a bolt of scarlet lightning flashed from the seething skies. It smashed into my hand and then down into the earth. Frozen dirt sprayed everywhere, and when it had cleared, I stood holding an oaken quarterstaff carved with runes and sigils, as tall as my temple and as big around as my joined thumb and forefinger.
Then I stretched my left arm down to the earth and cried out again, sweeping it up in a single, beckoning gesture. I tore metals from the ground beneath me, and they swirled like mist up around my body, forming into a suit of armor covered in spikes and protruding blades.
"Okay, big guy," I snarled out at the dark will that even now gathered itself to attack again. "Now we know who I am. Let's see who you are." I took the staff and smote its end down on the ground. "Who are you!" I demanded. "You play in my head, you play by my rules! Identify yourself!"
In answer, there was only a vast roaring sound, like an angry arctic wind gathering into a gale.
"Oh, no, you don't," I muttered. "You started this, creep! You want to get up close and personal, let's play! Who are you?"
A vast sound, like something you'd hear in the deep ocean, moaned through the sky.
"Thrice I command thee!" I shouted, focusing my will, sending it coursing into my voice, which boomed out over the landscape. "Thrice I bid thee! By my name I command thee: Tell me who you are!"
And then an enormous swirling form emerged from the clouds overhead—a face, but only in the broadest, roughest terms, like something a child would make from clay. Lightning burned far back in its eyes, and it spoke in the voice of gale winds.
I AM GATEBREAKER, HARBINGER!
I AM FEARGIVER, HOPESLAYER!
I AM HE-WHO-WALKS-BEFORE!
For a second, I just stood there, staring up at the sky, shocked.
Hell's bells.
It worked.
The thing spoke, and as it did, I knew, I knew what it was, as if I'd been given a snapshot of its core identity, its quintessential self.
For one second, no more than that, I understood it, what it was doing, what it wanted, what it planned and . . .
And then that moment was past, the knowledge vanished the way it had come—except for one thing. Somehow, I'd held on to a few crumbling fragments of insight.
I knew the thing trying to tear my head apart was a Walker. I didn't know much about them except that nobody else knew much about them either, and that they were extremely bad news.
And one of them had tried to kill me when I was sixteen years old. He-Who-Walks-Behind had nearly done it. Except . . . from where I stood now, I wasn't sure he'd really been trying to kill me. He'd been shaping me. I don't know for what, but he'd been trying to provoke me.
And this thing in my head, the thing I'd named Sharkface, was like him, a Walker, a peer. It was huge, powerful, and in a way utterly different from the kinds of power I had seen before. This thing wasn't bigger than Mab. But it was horribly, unbearably deeper than her, like a photograph of a sculpture compared to the sculpture itself. It had power at its command that was beyond anything I had seen, beyond measure, beyond comprehension—just plain beyond.
This thing was power from the Outside, and I was a grain of sand to its oncoming tide.
But you know what?
That grain of sand might be the last remnant of what had once been a mountain, but that which it is, it is. The tide comes and the tide goes. Let it hammer the grain of sand as it may. Let lofty mountains fear the slow, constant assault of the waters. Let the valleys shudder at the pitiless advance of ice. Let continents drown beneath the dark and rising tide.
But that grain of sand?
It isn't impressed.
Let the tide roll in. The sand will still be there after it rolls out again.
So I looked up at that face and I laughed. I laughed scorn and defiance at that vast, swirling power, and it didn't just feel good. It felt right.
"Go ahead!" I shouted. "Go ahead and eat me! And then we'll see if you've got the stomach to keep me down!" I lifted my staff and golden white fire began to pour from the carved runes as I gathered power into it. The air grew chill with Winter, and frost formed on the razor-edged blades in my armor. I ground my feet into place, setting them firmly, and the glow of soulfire began to emanate from the cracks in the earth around me. I bared my teeth at the hungry sky, flew the bird at it with my free hand, and screamed, "Bring it on!"
A furious voice filled the air, a sound that shook the earth and sky alike, that made the ground buckle and the swirling clouds recoil.
* * *
I went back and reread the page and yeah, the number was changed to around 80 afterward.So my numbers were notably off for the people we have names for, but seeing as the number bounced around a bit over the course of that page and we don't know where the bar is to qualify what subverted means I wouldn't call it clear cut either.
The intended reason for purchasing it at the time of the vote was the one Carlos raised it for; people tricked or forced into black magic. This is not the same as someone who was subject to it in the form of say Peabody's programming juice which has been used on every warden under 50 other than Dresden per canon.I don't see why that matters to the subject of whether we should try using the charm we already paid for the intended purpose of purchasing it. We wanted it for mentally compromised WC members and the number is manageable. If that number also includes willing conspirators then the number of unwilling mentally compromised wizards is even lower than 40.
It's not all young wardens. Not unless the WC only has around 40 or less young wardens in training. It wouldn't actually make them subservient to Molly. They could literally go about their business, it'd just depend on how we advertise it.
Edit: Some of the wardens in training from the start of the Arc weren't compromised either. It's not everyone.
Renfields.You cant just impose shit on a mortal that they do not accept in the Dresdenverse
Your prerogative of course. I can only quote to you what happened in canon.They were constantly trash at this very thing in canon, and frankly so far on quest they've been so fundamentally bad at their jobs that I'm not going to believe they can handle this effectively alone until I see it.
These are the people who had one living source for the iconic silver swords of the Wardens, built a magic fortress without any internal defenses, and appears to have the unit level coordination of a pub crawl.
The one comment worth making there is that I dont think those numbers for wizard populations work.So my numbers were notably off for the people we have names for, but seeing as the number bounced around a bit over the course of that page and we don't know where the bar is to qualify what subverted means I wouldn't call it clear cut either.
In any case the concentration of those victims is relevant. All young wardens answering to an external power is not a viable request.
As I understand it, Renfields are essentially walking corpses.Renfields.
You're right here, but that's an overly broad statement.
1) The Council HAS suffered significant casualties.These are the people who had one living source for the iconic silver swords of the Wardens, built a magic fortress without any internal defenses, and appears to have the unit level coordination of a pub crawl.
Good guess.
I personally doubt it, but its still a question worth asking because it costs us nothing to find out.
@DragonParadox
Creating Chimerical Companions
Like chimerical items, chimerical creatures are represented by the Chimera Background (see p. 169). Chimerical companions are designed using chimera points, as outlined in the Background. Chimerical creatures run the gamut of forms, from cute and fuzzy animals to clockwork robots to intelligent clouds of color that roil in abstract shapes. All chimera have six basic types of Traits: Attributes, Abilities, Glamour, Willpower, Health Levels, and Redes.
Which does seem to suggest objects can also possess redes unless they're making brooms or magic carpets or Zeppelins out of dream creature meat. Which they might be but I'm hoping isn't the case.Flight — The chimera can fly at a rate of 25 feet per turn per point of Dexterity. Changelings seek out chimera with this Rede as mounts and for crafting components for brooms, magic carpets, zeppelins, and other forms of aerial transportation.
I am fairly sure that this particular question is a no-go due to being value judgement and having to predict Harry's reactions, which are Free WIll. @DragonParadox ? Also, immediately, as an alternative "what are the practices best used to resist the temptations of this maze?" or something like that? Like how we helped Harry with the sight.-[X] Crown Question, focus: this scene. "What are the right words to help Harry succeed in solving the Maze?"
Me to DP:I am fairly sure that this particular question is a no-go due to being value judgement and having to predict Harry's reactions, which are Free WIll. @DragonParadox ? Also, immediately, as an alternative "what are the practices best used to resist the temptations of this maze?" or something like that? Like how we helped Harry with the sight.
Because while Harry has fumbled a number of rolls recently, I am willing to take a risk. As a starborn he should have some resistances.
Is it possible to use the crown to find the right words to help here, like when Harry soulgazed Molly way back at the start?
Help yes, but it would not be a guarantee, just an eventual bonus to his rolls.
I am fairly sure that this particular question is a no-go due to being value judgement and having to predict Harry's reactions, which are Free WIll. @DragonParadox ? Also, immediately, as an alternative "what are the practices best used to resist the temptations of this maze?" or something like that? Like how we helped Harry with the sight.
Because while Harry has fumbled a number of rolls recently, I am willing to take a risk. As a starborn he should have some resistances.