Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Sorry to pick on you two but why exactly are you trying to contact anyone on the outside for at this point. They can offer no guidance because they're not here and the questions he has in mind can be answered later and there's a very specific danger in attempting to reach out.
So maybe someone can explain.
That's all I can see is impatience and possibly putting himself in direct position to have a dialogue with the Labyrinth itself.
Ebenezer can confirm or deny the truth of what Harry just saw, that might be useful.
Canon Peabody had mindcontrol in the heads of the majority of the almost 300-man Warden force that existed as of Turn Coat, and most of the administrative staff as well.
We are explicitly told that he had mojo in the heads of every Warden under 50 years of age besides Dresden, and we know less than 60 Wardens survived Dead Beat, which gives a reasonable estimate for how many over-50 Wardens were left.
Thats more mind control victims than 2x the confirmed number of 80x subvertees in this quest.
Canon Peabody successfully arranged the deaths of Senior Council member LaFortier and Deputy Commander Morgan.
Canon Peabody successfully smuggled an Outsider through the wards into the middle of the Hidden Halls without anyone noticing. He had that Outsider in a bottle in front of the Senior Council, and nobody noticed.
Not the wards, not the Wardens, not the Senior Council, not even Mouse.
Canon Peabody almost killed all 6x remaining Senior Council members with that mistfiend, and he did kill ~50 out of the 500 wizards present in that scene; if he'd chosen to stand and fight and interfere with containment efforts, instead of running, he'd have had a good chance of bagging some or all of the Senior Council as well.
And on top of that, even in his death?
He managed to disrupt things such that the Senior Council had no choice but to elevate Georgios Cristos, someone they thought was either a dupe or a traitor to the Senior Council.
I think these assertions of how bad thing currently are begin to verge on histrionics.
Especially since the dust hasnt settled and we only have an incomplete picture of how things are.
Things are bad, yes. Worse than canon? Arguably not; the manner of the threat is different.
Worst ever? No. This isnt even anything near the chaos of the fall of the Roman Empire,.
My two cents.
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As for the features you keep asserting should be in play, like automated wards and the like
1) I will repeat: The enemy had high enough penetration that they had read the Council's agreed playbook, had probably helped write some of the newer parts of it, and had tailored defenses to the Council's prescribed responses.
High enough penetration to seemingly sneak vampires into the Hidden Halls undetected
The only reasonable option at this point is to throw it out and freestyle.
Activating something like an automated defense that might be compromised risks killing a lot of innocent people and making the person who turned it on a Lawbreaker.
And autoscrying can disable you, or serve as a channel for hostile supernaturals to strike at you, as Harry can attest to.
2) We do not have a complete picture of whats in play or where due to fog of war, and contingency protocols not having met their trigger conditions.
That you cannot see something does not mean it does not exist.
Like Maggie LeFay leaving a map behind for her son, or Demonreach having secret protocols that even the Warden doesnt know about until conditions make it necessary.
I believe I posted an argument - disrupting the narrative before it can build up and become distorted. Best and easiest to do this at the very beginning by communicating with Ebeneezer.
That is kind of what I thought it was but it feels like he hasn't seen anything that it would be too distracting yet and there's an imminent danger in attempting to reach out. Though this assumes that he can just keep in mind to ask the question/questions later because that's the Assumption I'm riding with.
It just seems to play directly into the paranoia and go to immediately Reach Out to discern the truth of a statement that was given to you that has three separate Riders of him thinking they might be false.
It just seems to scream of both paranoia and impatience when literally just keeping the questions in mind and focusing on the scenario at hand would serve him just as well if not better so he has no reason to discard anything "I've got people I need to ask questions when I get back. "
Though that doesn't answer the question of the imminent danger of failing to reach out which, it's not highly possible but it's not impossible by any stretch of the imagination either. Harry has no in character way of knowing if he fails until whoever or whatever speaks to him doesn't have the voice of whoever he is reaching out to and if they do that's considerably worse.
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My guess is that either a) the scene is completely true, or b) the scene is entirely fabricated, ie Ebeneezer never met Harry's father face to face. I obviously don't know what it's building towards to, but I'm guessing at least partially it'll be "Ebeneezer, the council assassin, directly decided to leave Dresden in an orphanage to be picked up by a warlock, to set him up and mold him into a weapon (*optionally: against outsiders)". This is a narrative that's easy to mold on mostly true facts and easy to twist into "join us instead, as you have been wronged by our enemies".
You know what that's fair that's that's some deep thinking about what the narratives that might be being spun here are.
I'm still kind of leery about the danger of reaching out but.
[X] Try to speak to the people outside (Arete+Mind Roll 5 Dice DC 6)
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
@DragonParadox Errors. A few of these were missed from before so it goes back a bit.
That was definitely supposed to be growling.
Need an "is" in between here.
Became.
"Until the last" what? Breath?
Question mark. Tiffany is asking a question.
Openly.
Investigation on the Clock
Need a space after the quotation mark before you.
Need a period on "Ms".
Sorcerer's Snare
Can't tell if this is an error or not.
Question mark.
It seems to autocorrect to "Lucio" though her name is Luccio.
Quite a day?
Question mark.
Extra word.
It's a name of course but I've never seen it spelled with one c.
That autocorrupt no doubt.
Looks like this was meant to be a period instead of a comma or sacrifice needs to be lowercase.
The Trouble With Diplomats
Also maybe a comma after "Carpenter"?
Hunting the Damned
Missing a period.
For the best?
An "a" between here would sound less awkward though I don't think this is incorrect technically.
Heated.
Tearing Tainted Threads
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Will cover in a bit, thanks.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Trying to ignore everything it shows you doesn't guarantee what your saying will happen. What's to stop him from thinking about it and not moving on even as he physically moves on?? Clarifying things avoids him getting twisted up.
Canon Peabody couldn't make people use magic or he would have done so. Canon Peabody couldn't have jumped two senior council members and played them like fools or he would have done so. He couldn't have punked the Wardens into completely going AWOL or he would have done so.
Barring our involvement he'd have been able to do everything he did in canon and more. Certainly if we'd kicked off this event and then magically disappeared he would have killed Morgan, LeFortier, and probably Mai. Arthur would be turned or dead, McCoy completely out of the loop and his ambushers given more time to prepare, and Lucio likely turned or dead with most of the Wardens.
The Hidden Halls would be busted open, and that civil war started in the midst of the red court advancing on their now completely uncoordinated forces.
1) You keep missing my point. I think it's crazy for them to be able to turn everything off, but even if they did there should still have been signs they existed in the first place and steps taken to fill the same roles. Automated turrets or whatever aren't the only thing here. We didn't see anyone trying to acquire more information using the tools they should have had. In fact, we see Mai remember she had something to do this halfway through talking with us instead of having been in the middle of using it to do her job.
What I mean by this is that she or her subordinates should have been doing check ins on deployed groups. The NCO equivalents of the Wardens shouldn't have been running around the Halls with their thumbs up their asses, they should have been prioritizing linking up and communicating. If they were being blocked on that front entirely then her gizmo shouldn't have worked, if nothing else they could have done the same thing that we just did and marked danger zones by level of obstruction.
There's only so far tailored responses should go for an operation organized and executed by surprise. Especially if you want me to buy that the council wasn't wholly at the mercy of the traitors at all times in all ways. I mean, just knowing about a good tactic doesn't necessarily mean it's easy or cheap to beat. Each level of practical additional defense is another level of bullshit the traitors had to find.
2) Fog of war sure, but the way they're failing isn't consistent with the idea that they actually have something for these organizational roles in a way that matters. It certainly wasn't mentioned in any of the reports we were there for when it would have been very relevant.
To be direct about things; it's absolutely irrelevant if they have the best logistics the Roman legion can provide. Everyone else is past that point. If you don't have a robust NCO core, a practical means of monitoring and communicating with your troops in the field, and some ability to protect those things from interference, then you only exist for other people to dunk on. No other property matters unless you have that, because people can just run circles around you however they please.
We didn't so much see those systems fail for the council as the consequences of their gaping absence. Mai had the exact thing necessary to start on this sitting in a drawer, not out trying to work around interference. When syncing with McCoy nothing was said about the comms going down or diviners getting blinded beyond the Sight.
The people we encountered in the Halls did not seem to have a plan, reinforcements, or a way to call for help if they got in trouble. If we'd been hostile we could have walked right in any nobody would have known till we started doing stuff.
Daedalus of all people has done a better job of this on screen.
Vote closed.
- Location
- washington
In fairness while im totally on your side on canonicity and Peabody pulling shitbhere was whack. But even in canon there's a wog that all the senior council are hiding tricks up their sleeves from each other. Whether this is pacts made, ancestral magics, enhancements, or specific kinds of magic they have is unknown but they have more than they show.
My point is more organizational than individual. Power matters, but coordination is the difference between bringing it to bear on the right targets and wasting it.
The Merlin, LaFortier, and Ancient Mai are all senior council members but their aces in the hole didn't matter here. They didn't have effective communication so they didn't even know when to be worried about each other, and their opponents led them around by the nose from start to finish.
[X] Follow the flow of the Labyrinth where it leads him
I frankly, as above, buy the idea that lingering is playing into the Labyrinth's trap because it is prizing past regrets and mistakes that can't be changed over the reality of the present. I view it as the worst choice in that context.
I don't think that trying to talk to people outside the Labyrinth is as big a problem, but I do think it may compromise the test and either lead to bigger challenges in the future or a lesser reward. Especially if it fails and Harry is deceived, which is very possible.
The whole thing we've been told on the Labyrinth is that it's based on an equivalent exchange, a risk of death in return for a chance to rise above your current self. In that context, reducing the risk on a simple challenge is a bad idea, it's something we should save as an option for a choice that is truly crippling. I know having the cheat makes it very tempting to use it immediately if only to exert control, but we've been flat out told a bad roll WILL lead to Harry being deceived by some voice beyond Molly and the others and it doesn't take a genius to see that ends very poorly.
This is a marathon not a sprint.
I frankly, as above, buy the idea that lingering is playing into the Labyrinth's trap because it is prizing past regrets and mistakes that can't be changed over the reality of the present. I view it as the worst choice in that context.
I don't think that trying to talk to people outside the Labyrinth is as big a problem, but I do think it may compromise the test and either lead to bigger challenges in the future or a lesser reward. Especially if it fails and Harry is deceived, which is very possible.
The whole thing we've been told on the Labyrinth is that it's based on an equivalent exchange, a risk of death in return for a chance to rise above your current self. In that context, reducing the risk on a simple challenge is a bad idea, it's something we should save as an option for a choice that is truly crippling. I know having the cheat makes it very tempting to use it immediately if only to exert control, but we've been flat out told a bad roll WILL lead to Harry being deceived by some voice beyond Molly and the others and it doesn't take a genius to see that ends very poorly.
This is a marathon not a sprint.
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Arc 14 Interlude 12: A Symmetry Sinister
A Symmetry Sinister
18th of February 2007 A.D.
I'm not good at mind magic at the best of times, it gets you looked at funny, for much the same reason a a high school chemistry teacher who can make crack cocaine would get looked at funny. These were not the best of times, in fact they might be the worst of times in the worst of places. Questioning the nature of space time asides...
"Molly!" the shout had the subtlety of a bull horn, for all the good it seemed to do. The quiet of the night seemed bigger somehow, more lonely, like it was waiting for something that I wouldn't enjoy.
I remembered the heat of the desert, the shifting green fire reflecting in brass that filled the horizon impossibly tall, imperishable ruin of impossible things.
"Harry... wha's... ning? Do y... out?"
It was like trying to listen to one of those old radios with the dial that creeks almost more loudly than the sound coming through, except when I concentrated on the static I could hear voices in it, chanting, cavorting and pleading.... Nope, static it was, I decided then and there.
"Ask Ebenezer if he's my grandfather." It felt strange to pass that though Molly... no, looking the thing in the eyes it felt more than strange, awkward and embarrassing and I didn't want to talk about it with a pair of kids listening, no matter how many metaphysical screwdrivers they hand to pull apart the walls of reality.
"Yes... was... ngerous, then didn't know... how to..."
He could've just said it, that was my first thought, but the thing about spending so long around Lash outside my own head is that these days I didn't need her inside my head to imagine what she'd say.
Remind you of anyone?
Why make things more complicated, why change what 'works'? It wasn't the same kind of lie as being the Blackstaff, it didn't feel like a betrayal of everything he taught me... My fingers hurt as they dug into the wood of the park bench. The memory of my dad had long since moved on.
There was still a part of me that wasn't over the empty feeling of being passed from foster home to foster home, tolerated at best like an old piece of luggage, of knowing I didn't have any other family. Why had DuMorne been the one to find me? Another time and in another place I might not have asked, but this was the worst place and I needed all the help I could get..
The answers came slowly, haltingly as the colors of the night grew hazy in the tarnished yellow light of street lights, like they all wanted to run together, but come they did: "I didn't know if you'd be a wizard... I didn't have the heart to bury you."
At first I thought he meant that I'd have been eaten by a vampire, scared for me the way I had been for Murphy in the old days, the way I tried not to be, but then I realized it was something a lot more basic, time. Wizards lived a long time, Ebenezer had lived centuries already. Did he have other children, other grandchildren he he had seen grow old and die while he changed hardly at all? I couldn't ask that, it was too personal, too painful. I didn't need to ask it.
"I understand."
The moment I let go of the connection the sun was in my face. The sky was blue and the awnings colorful, traffic lights flashed cars wound down narrow roads already filled with an abundance of people, all of them blind to me. A woman talking animatedly with her friend pushed a baby stroller right through me. Didn't feel a thing.
Somewhere in Latin America, though I couldn't tell you where. I knew just enough Spanish to say I didn't speak Spanish, if they couldn't read it on my face. What do you want me to see here? I wondered at at the dark looming presence behind the sunlit facade. I didn't doubt that this was a living breathing city, but I couldn't forget whose canvas it was.
I wasn't expecting it to answer:
"Why the same thing I showed you before, a truth which had been hidden from you. Lies from 'love' spoken."
The way it said love sent a chill down my spine, it wasn't hateful, scornful or angry, it was said with barely restrained laughter, like the the biggest joke the speaker had ever heard.
"Ah... there she is." A cold wind tugged me until I turned around and saw Susan for the first time in four years now, sitting at a cafe, watching the people go by. Stars and stones had it really been four years? She looked like he was trying to blend in without being too obviously herself, large sunglasses changed the shape of her face, her hair was braided and I had never seen her in a sundress and sandals, though to be fair Chicago weather didn't give much of an opportunity for the latter.
"If you are about to show me Susan's seeing someone you can skip the tape and hand me the prize already, I figured out she isn't living in perpetual chastity."
Despite the bravado I knew it would hurt, but not as much as it would have last year. I had moved on too after all...
"No Mr Dresden, I would like to show you the consequences of the last time you saw Ms Rodriguez..."
That was when I saw a family of six getting out of a car. Two boys, two girls, the oldest about seven the youngest... dark hair and skin, but her face reminded me of the boy in the motel room, if I hadn't just been there I could have missed it, or dismissed it out of hand. I didn't have to look back up at Susan to know she'd be watching the girl, to know she was our daughter.
It all comes right together doesn't it?
It was too pat, too easy a connection. It had to be a lie... it had to be, because otherwise this warlock, this voice in the dark knew where my daughter was and she had no more protection than my father could provide me, nothing and I never knew.
Some detective you are Dresden, some wizard?
"What do you want?" I asked the monster.
"To devour God as the tapeworm devours a starving man, but I'll settle for a shucos for now..." This time the voice did not come out of the ether. A man of middling height and middling weight, his eyes a middling shade of brown tapped me on the shoulder.
"A what...?" Not my most intelligent answer to meeting an ancient evil, but to be fair they generally have me tied to a chair at this point, not offering lunch.
"Traditional Guatemalan hot dog, it translates to something like 'dirties' . Don't worry you don't have to eat if you don't want, just listen." When I didn't say anything he just motioned to table. "Come now Dresden have a heart, do you have any idea how uncommon it is for these vision quests to have decent food? Cannibal feats and fuckable chocolate, sure. Food that is not just the culinary equivalent strumming the A major chord on a guitar until it snaps not so much."
"Fuckable cho...?"
"Most people are simple, predictable and that includes most wizards, much as they hate to admit it, but not you Dresden."
"I'm special am I? Born under the right stars?" You could cut the sarcasm in my words with a knife. He didn't seem to care.
I watched wearily as a thin almost pained smile showed on that unremarkable face as if the one behind it did not quite recall how those muscles were meant to work. "Same as I yes, but that is not what I meant. Most people see their desires in the Labyrinth Dresden, not their fears."
"What's the difference?" despite myself I found myself following along as he tossed a coin to one of the waiters, gold and ancient looking and grabbed a sausage wrapped in a toasted bun and topped with guacamole, cabbage, chorizo and some other things I didn't know the names of.
"Of all our animal drives fear if the only useful one... only one that's worth a dog's ass. Still something to purge yourself of, but leave it for last, it can be useful. Tell me Dresden do you wish she she had the Gift?"
What does Harry do?
[] Try to piss him off, they always slip up when they are angry
[] Let him keep talking
[] Write in
OOC: This was a lot longer than I thought it would be. Sorry for being so late guys.
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fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
[X] Try to piss him off, they always slip up when they are angry
Why mess with what works?
Why mess with what works?
Rolls
Arete to speak...1 success is enough to talk to Molly
Harry Wits+Empathy to see himself in McCoy's actions
Holding the connection together, Willpower: Harry; Molly
*some rolls hidden*
Arete to speak...1 success is enough to talk to Molly
Harry Wits+Empathy to see himself in McCoy's actions
Holding the connection together, Willpower: Harry; Molly
*some rolls hidden*
It's Harry. This is the inevitable end result no matter what we vote.
[X] Try to piss him off, they always slip up when they are angry
The warning we got is that this thing wants to convince Dresden to change, to be allowed to pick what he leaves behind. Will Dresden's usual tactics work against something specifically choosing to engage in a way that would provoke them?
The last test seemed like the goal was to make him reject a close relationship and refuse to empathize with someone he cares about. Harry (probably?) beat it by accepting his grandfather and how they're similar people.
So what does this trial want to make him feel?
The last test seemed like the goal was to make him reject a close relationship and refuse to empathize with someone he cares about. Harry (probably?) beat it by accepting his grandfather and how they're similar people.
So what does this trial want to make him feel?
[X] Try to piss him off, they always slip up when they are angry