You would have to convince the two wizards present who already know the truth to go along with it (I know Harry's a wizard, but realistically he is not going to lose sleep over an incomplete report to the Merlin)
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
You would have to convince the two wizards present who already know the truth to go along with it (I know Harry's a wizard, but realistically he is not going to lose sleep over an incomplete report to the Merlin)
We are running empathy excellency, right? That's the applicable one? My argument, which I should have realized earlier, and which Molly wouldn't be saying outright, but should be implied in the vote, is that the council cannot actually stop the birds from being made or deployed. Every other measure is one that requires council's cooperation. If the council protests, it cannot be used effectively. This one can be made to avoid the council, and those who are part of the council, completely. Make the birds target the minor talents, and avoid wizards. Forge them out of sight, and release them in secret. The council could commit to exterminating the pigeon species anew, but that would put them in direct conflict with us, and many of their wardens would balk at that. So, a compromise: the Books for White Council Wizards, the Birds for minor talents, out of sight of the council, and Healing for all who still stumble.
Am I conveying the thought clearly enough, or should I rephrase my write-in?
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your telling me the council could find a self repopulating species of birds which can constantly repopulate and would already have hundreds of members? Like how? Not all wizards would even have ranged options for fighting and a bird is much too fast for fuck even dresden to hit with magic most of the time. Spread across the planet I'd give better odds of the white council somehow managing to kill all the alligators on the planet.
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yes 3 people who need repeated essence use a niche use for a niche probably for limited exp to maybe be used again 3 times in this quest. Bruh its wasted exp we even have alternatives for it right now. Like I'm not really complaining I was making a joke players fuck up buying shit they never use all the time in pen and paper games.
Birds don't get the protection of the laws, so curses based on sympathy probably work.
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bruh no wizard magic is not that good their random ass fucking birds your not cursing them across the planet on the sympathetic connection that their birds sharing a common trait. If they could do shit like this they could just exterminate minor supernatural creatures too in their history or fixed shit like locusts swarms.
You can make that argument, but it comes off as rather hostile.
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Honestly politically their coming off a bit dumb considering we're queen of a nation many thousands of times larger than the council. Like they don't take this kind of attitude on telling supernatural creatures what to do I wouldn't think.
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sympathetic connections don't work easily across the planet they don't work on disparate individuals more than one generation away and for that one generation its for at best tracking things not fucking murdering them. Like no if they could of done this throughout history plenty of dangerous species that fucked over communities would be dead.
They are not telling you what to do, you asked them for advice for how to present something to the council and this is their advice.
You were being wildly optimistic expecting anything other than this as a best case scenario.
The birds are a good idea, but engineering solutions have to operate within societal realities. We just did the equivalent of offering monks coupons for free sin that we looted from Judas' grave; of course they weren't enthusiastic about handing them out to people. On an emotional level anyway, even if the physical reality is different.
We also definitely hit the information overload problem too. When you flood people with too much information too quickly they lock up and default to what feels right to them. The more wild stuff we presented at once the higher the likelihood we'd make them flinch back from all of it.
I also think you're letting perfect be the enemy of good here. The book of law is an amazing step forward, protecting people from being forced to break the law and potentially making it safer to hold warlocks while we work on other solutions. With zero risk of recidivism allowing ignorant lawbreakers to live is much more viable, and the council doesn't like killing those people in the first place.
This is a more haste, less speed issue. Pushing harder doesn't mean more positive change happens; past a certain point we'll actively sabotage our own efforts by triggering backlash.
Progress happens one step at a time; we should take the solid victory available to us and prepare for the next step once this one has settled.
Except it doesn't work like that for DF wizards; they're not WoD willworkers. There are actual rules to magic they have to abide by, though how they approach making use of those rules can be very different.
Telling them to cast narrative magic is like telling an electrical engineer to build a narrative circuit.
So we just never going to pick up anymore beings cuz we still have our entire gang of ghouls who have a bloodline curse and Rosie who unless we're just going to ditch her at some point and a friend we need to go fix and possibly Isabella and Fitzgerald as well as any hungry dead(Jades) that we might get in the intervening time as well.
It's not three people just by virtue of the fact that we have way more people than three that would be capable of benefiting from it it's also not three times this quest because it lasts for a number of weeks equal to our Essence which is an entire month never mind the fact they can suppress the problems of having cancer and having a wound penalties in combat for one Essence.
Man I need to know what those alternatives are because every alternative I've seen so far uses our very small stockpile of near Divine corpses that can make magic items that can literally change the courses of civilization to make essentially geriatric medicine.
Fair enough.
Technically, stuff like self-propagating curses and biological warfare and stuff like Chichen Itza only for birds might be possible. It would be a tremendous overreaction and misuse of resources, and the council is likely to face open rebellion from its enforces on the issue. But it's possible. So, anyway, I think this works as a compromise - Books and Healing to offer to the council, the birds for minor talents.
Actually... @DragonParadox would a bonded familiar pigeon be protected under the Laws due to sympathetic connection to the human? Or would it be a very gray area?
Anyway, ok, streamlining my vote, trying to make it less hostile, before going to sleep
[X] Plan To Each Their Own
-[X] Thank them both for their sage advice and honest opinion
-[X] Agree not to use False Springs Beckons on council affiliates
-[X] Offer a compromise - The Books and the Tools of Healing for those with the full wizard's gift, and the birds for minor talents, for those the council cannot reach due to sheer numbers, who are most likely to spurn the absolute certainty of the Books based on their perceived association with oppression, and who the council still has to punish if they break the laws.
So, changes:
1) Not saying "I can release them anyway, and there's nothing you can do about it". Both of them are smart enough to understand that
2) Not asking them to lie to their friend
3) Thanking them for their input.
4) Reframing the argument to focus more on minor talents, who the Books of Laws cannot realistically help.
Maybe. But the issue, now that I think of it, is that none of the other options can help minor talents, the most populous warlock demographic, at all due to sheer logistics.
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I'm just doubting the logistical ability of anyone less than a godlike force being able to find hundreds of birds, being able to personally hunt hundreds of flying mostly indistinguishable birds and actually being able to hit or capture said birds. You know while their also breeding out in the world as well. Anymore than I think the white council could kill off all the pidgeons in new york. Like sympathetic connections across a species is absurd irrelevant of them sharing a magical trait their not a hivemind and if they were you'd likely need a mass sacrifice like chitchen itza or something to get them killed all at once like a bloodline death curse.
Some people give way too much credence to the ability to solve shit with sympathetic connections that if they were possible would of killed many supernatural species and normal species in the dresden files world. We're talking about giant ritual magic through sympathetic connections.
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Why hundreds? We are talking hundreds of thousands within the next decade or two. And that's how many you'll need to cover minor talents. Quick Napkin time calculation:
If we take Order of Cauldron to represent ~ 50% of minor talents of Chicago (since they don't really take men in), which is an upper boundary estimation, we'll get ~ 40 minor talents in Chicago. Let's say 50. Population of Chicago was ~ 2.8 million in 2006. So, roughly 1 in 56 thousand people. This means ~ 5.4 thousand minor talents in USA. And ~ 120 thousand minor talents worldwide. That's the target demographic. And I could easily inflate the number by an order of magnitude, I think.
And I don't think the White Council is really comprehending the scale here.
It would be protected from things that also killed the human though the bond, but just killing the familiar would be OK with the First Law.
The minor talents in regions hostile to wizards may already have been culled as the White Court started trying to do in North America when they throught they could get away with doing it after the Council's grasp was weakened there.
In places like South America the Red Court may already have done this, similarly in other places that monsters rule the night.
We can't solve every problem in the world all at once, or necessarily any given problem at any given point. We've got to meet people where they are.
Perhaps a better metaphor is surgery. No matter how skilled the physician the body can only take so much at once, which is why many treatments are staged with healing time even if they know what the ultimate end goal is.
We just performed a lifesaving operation on them in the ER and are adding one more major surgery to the total. That is quite enough pushing for our patient here.
That doesn't mean we can't help minor talents, just that we need less invasive tools so we don't hurt more than we help.
A good example of an alternative would be expanding our ad hoc paranet. We can support a lot of outreach, which needs to happen in any case even if it doesn't fully fix the problem right now.
To extend the metaphor, giving them chemo to shrink the tumors before going in for another major procedure.
Though we do also need to consider the consequences of our other actions too. We do not have infinite resources to spend on this or any individual issue. There's the red war, the outside, our soul portal, various debts, and so on. Pushing for permission to do something right now that we'll have to put off for practical reasons anyway is pointless.
Frankly I think we're going to need to spend more time fortifying the vulnerability in our soul than anything else next turn. Arbitrary levels of mundane force are entry level for our purposes. We'll probably need at least two splendors and something to choke the red court's influence on our new doorstep.
That may be true. Long term it doesn't matter, because while magical gift may be hereditary through maternal lines, it also occurs spontaneously and based on environmental factors. With all the stuff happening in Chicago, and if we end up making a god and building a man'se, for example, I expect the percentage of talents among population to skyrocketing the next two decades.
We have been over this. I remain wholly unconvinced, especially with the god now acting as the portal's guardian. 1 AP withdraws 2 bonus AP should be more than good enough for thr next month.
The pigeons are essentially an outstanding debt. They are the stuff we can deploy the quickest.
boo600
Ego sum egredietur tempestas.
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- Texas
- Pronouns
- He/Him/Hungry
Agreed. I wonder FSB would work to aid creatures like the Loup-Garou, or let Fae lie? After all, in addition to 'susceptibility to frenzy,' it also explicitly says it can help with a vampire clan's weakness, so…
I mean, it could at least let a group of Fae ignore Iron. If we ever need to call down Fae warriors on someone, being able to remove that Bane is useful as hell.
And it helps with actual curses! If Harry catches a non-lethal death curse that, say, stops him form using magic, we can turn that shit off long enough for him to fix it! That's something that Mercy In Servitude won't help with, since that charm focuses on disadvantages from the creature's new natural state.
I mean, we have a huge amount of power, but we aren't Mab. If the Council somehow killed Mab, because she tripped and fell into a field of iron and spontaneously forgot how to do magic, and then looted her corpse, Winter would still exist and be connected to the mortal world, and they'd probably be pissed off.
Molly is much easier to kill, and worse, she's the only known link - or was, before the Beachhead was forged for that god. If the Council thinks that it's a Hell, they could delude themselves into thinking the FCOF would be fine with Molly dying - at least, if they didn't read Morgan's report.
But it's containable. There are spirits and powerful mages and even behemoths, but it's currently as nothing to the reality-churning/guarding power of Winter, and it lacks the history and alliances of such. Therefore, we're making inroads with the White Council and the Nevernever as the start of our diplomatic history - and building our national reputation, so to speak.
Yeah, this sums it up.
We still rolled well, but Kemmler's rep is a thing. Still, we can help even more, and we don't need to go through the Council to do so - or be hostile to them.
They might complain in the future about us going behind their back, but they're clearly not interested in any but the top tier of Practicioners, and we can say that later, after we've rehabilitated their warlocks, given them a book that stops lawbreaking, and they're still trying to pay us back for saving their asses - while we give them computers and cars and airplanes, and all of modernity.
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[X] Agree, it's frustrating to limit the help you can give like this, but it's to get advice on the politics of the Council that you went to them to begin with
Your comment gave the impression that a small country, a nation recognized in the sobrenatural world, cannot disagree with what someone stronger says or does, which should be obvious has its problems.
They are not telling us what to do, only what the expected reaction will be if we try to force it on them. Furthermore, they are not doing this to free people; they are deciding what to allow us, the leader of another power, to do to the members of the Council, to the members of their own nation, as their job as leaders demands.
Your comment gave the impression that a small country, a nation recognized in the sobrenatural world, cannot disagree with what someone stronger says or does, which should be obvious has its problems.
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[X] Agree, it's frustrating to limit the help you can give like this, but it's to get advice on the politics of the Council that you went to them to begin with
They actually bent further than I expected.
They actually bent further than I expected.
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@Yog, can you clear my on the subject of pigeons? Would they allow impunity for breaking laws in all directions? Because I'm honestly thinking about this right now and I don't want thousands of people being able to do whatever they want to others bodies/minds/souls etc.
How are we going to stop this from happening, since the pigeons should just avoid the metaphysical consequences of doing this and not prohibit them? Or are you going to say than that this isn't a problem.
I'm asking because I've always thought that the idiot pigeons were an excessive solution and the "Local Exalted does impressive things just for the sake of it been empressive and doesn't think about the later consequences" energy spike.
How are we going to stop this from happening, since the pigeons should just avoid the metaphysical consequences of doing this and not prohibit them? Or are you going to say than that this isn't a problem.
I'm asking because I've always thought that the idiot pigeons were an excessive solution and the "Local Exalted does impressive things just for the sake of it been empressive and doesn't think about the later consequences" energy spike.