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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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Nyarky said:
No it doesn't? I am looking at what the tally gives me:

Given there was one more vote since then, the numbers lines up with what I said.
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I don't know what you did but as I said "slow and steady" includes both base votes so any vote for that plan goes towards both base votes. The Vote Counter isn't factoring that in.

I manually counted the votes earlier taking this into account along with the fact that approval voting does not mean your approval for a specific base vote counts more than once. Both of those numbers are inaccurate.
 
BoredMan said:
I don't know what you did but as I said "slow and steady" includes both base votes so any vote for that plan goes towards both base votes. The Vote Counter isn't factoring that in.

I counted the votes earlier taking this into account along with the fact that approval voting does not mean your approval for a specific base vote counts more than once. Both of those numbers are inaccurate.
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Oh, wait, I hadn't looked at slow and steady close enough to see what you mean.

Still would count it towards only the base option of not asking for a price though. It definitely isn't made in the spirit of also being the one where we do at base so really shouldn't be counting with it. The option to pay is clearly a supplement to the base option of it being free, not equal to it.

That is how I arranged it, and those numbers are accurate for this idea.
 
Vote closed.
Adhoc vote count started by Yzarc on Nov 13, 2024 at 12:57 PM, finished with 111 posts and 32 votes.
  • [X] Plan first one is free
    -[X] The Fellowship has skills, knowledge, you could do with the help while setting up your operations on Earth
    --[X] Pending other more mass-producible options, of which there might be several, but which either require testing, or expensive and hard to get reagents to setup.
    --[X] As one of the options... Fetch me some napkins, please.
    -[x][Stunt]"An hour of my time is becoming a more valuable commodity constantly. I have many other things that I want and need to do and many people that I am responsible for."
    [X] Still free, it will just take a while
    [X] Plan Slow and Steady, or Not
    -[X] Still free, it will just take a while
    -[X] Those who don't want to take a number, can purchase your free time.
    --[X] The Fellowship has skills, knowledge, you could do with the help while setting up your operations on Earth
    [X] The Fellowship has skills, knowledge, you could do with the help while setting up your operations on Earth
    [X] The Fellowship has skills, knowledge, you could do with the help while setting up your operations on Earth
    -[x][Stunt]"An hour of my time is becoming a more valuable commodity constantly. I have many other things that I want and need to do and many people that I am responsible for."
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Arc 14 Post 70: A Stillness in the Blood
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    • A Stillness in the Blood ​

    21st of February 2007 A.D.

    Truth be told you're torn. If you didn't have other options, if it was all or nothing then you'd do it for all the hours seem to be getting scarcer every day, but as Thomas shows and Isabela and Olivia too there's short term fixes and long and the short term ones demand service. "Screw me, you could write a fable with this stuff and never run out of musings."

    "Come again?" Susan looks a little worried.

    "I am a ruler, I command a realm deep in the Nevernever, one that is my soul. This power I have is made to rule, among others it is made to rule spirits incandescent, caustic to the material reality. Some of my people bind these spirits to their bodies with machines, they developed way to render safe a path which was once painful, dangerous to body and mind so now I too can grant it to those who willingly serve. When I speak demons listen and the lesser ones at least," you throw Tiffany a look too brief for anyone else to catch, "cower and obey."

    "This is a different thing?" Martin asks, choosing his words with the care of one walking barefoot on a path vipers slither on.

    You nod. "As long as you serve me the Hunger will not trouble you and since I was going to ask for some help setting up in South America it has a certain elegance to it. I'm not entirely sure I like myself being elegant with people's souls on the line." Or knowing this is just the right thing to say the better to set you at ease, you add in your head.

    He narrows his eyes. "Ask me something."

    "Could you fetch me another drink?"

    "What the fuck are you doing... you can't just..." Susan starts.

    "Don't." Martin's words are heavy with emotion you hadn't heard from him before. "Don't tell me what I can't do. You've been in this life what? a decade? You think you've given up your innocence, your humanity because you put a bullet in some poor bastard drug mule's skull in Rio? You have no idea how much you've yet to give, how much you've yet to give."

    He gets up from the table gets the drink, a Sprite of all things, turns around almost mechanically. As he comes back he feigns dropping something on the ground... and picks up the bench you and Tiffany are sitting on one handed, an inhuman feat if an inconspicuous one.

    "Your face..." Susan chokes out.

    She means the tattoos of St Giles, you realize.

    "Nothing to see? Good, that would have been mildly awkward to explain." With that he sits down, seemingly having regained his composure at some point between table and vending machine.

    "Unlike the White Council the Fellowship has no centralized base, we function on a cell based system. We stand in the devil's own mouth with an understanding that in time we will be swallowed. Passing this information on and having it be believed will take some time though given the investment appears to work remotely...?"

    "It does."

    "Simply name a favor, there will be plenty who wish to render service to Duchess Ariana's slayer, once they realize what has occurred I can explain the rest. The sudden quiet is impossible to mistake for anything else."

    "Well too bad cause I'm not doing it," Susan proclaims loudly.

    "Weren't you listening, you don't have to," Tiffany gives a slow, deliberate blink, pulling double duty showing off her very nice eyelashes and expressing disbelief that someone could be this silly.

    "Damn it Harry," she rounds on him. "I'm good at this, investigation, profiling, following the money. This is doing good, more than I ever did chasing fucking Bigfoot for the Arcane. I can't just give it up to... to... take care of a kid whose happy where she is, who already has a mother."

    What do you do?

    [] Let Harry handle this

    [] Point out she does not need vampiric powers to

    [] Offer better powers (Inner Darkness Unleashed)

    [] Write in

    OOC: The drama, it swells. Also Susan has only been doing this for five and a half years, it's just from where Martin is standing he rounds to the decade.
     
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    • [X] Offer better powers (Inner Darkness Unleashed)
    -[X] Stunt: You lean forward, fingers steepled in a classic Gendo Ikari pose, silently lamenting the fact that no one at the table is likely to appreciate your efforts. "And you believe you need the...gifts of your cursed form to accomplish these things? If it's strength you want, I can give you far greater power to fight the Reds than you could ever hope to wield as a half-blood."
     
    [x] Let Harry handle this.
    -[x] but: if that is truly what you want to do with your life, I can offer greater strength than what fragments of might you can snatch from the parasite of Red Thirst worming its way into your soul.

    Edit: it appears I've been semi ninja'd
     
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    Let's point out that we are here because Harry got told about his daughter by the bad guys and it's no longer safe for her to stay here no matter if Susan accepts her powers being removed or not?
     
    I'm… honestly not very impressed with Susan, for some reason. I'm not sure why; some bias of mine, or some bit of her presentation… isn't really inspiring confidence in me. I'm going to read her tv tropes blurb, but she's at the very least somewhat tunnel-visioned; do we really want to recruit her, of all people?
     
    boo600 said:
    I'm… honestly not very impressed with Susan, for some reason. I'm not sure why; some bias of mine, or some bit of her presentation… isn't really inspiring confidence in me. I'm going to read her tv tropes blurb, but she's at the very least somewhat tunnel-visioned; do we really want to recruit her, of all people?
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    She wants, above most other things, to have relevance. The idea of no longer being important is soul crushing at the best of times.

    Zoolimar said:
    Martin - fuck this double agent sit, I'm jumping ship, Sayonara.
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    His loyalty is not to the order, it is to the mission. This is the best way to achieve the mission. If that means he has to flip the board he flips the board.

    After all, they hang in the mouth devil's own mouth knowing it is a matter of when not if they are eaten. Victory would be worth it.
     
    Judging by her tropes, she's competent and driven, but unfortunately handicapped by being human and not SV-competent. So… a person. I'm not sure why I'm judging her so harshly, but I really don't want to deal with her for some reason. Maybe Molly's irritation got in my head?
     
    I think Martin will be even more motivated to switch sides when he finds out that Molly isn't joking and she's the leader of a nuclear power that has decided to open a front by opening a portal to her world in the Reds' backyard and then we seem to be heading towards Molly personally destroying the Reds instead of the Bloodline Curse.

    As for Susan, I can understand why she might irritate people. She may seem selfish for example, given her last words. But frankly here she wants to fight partly for herself and partly for good purposes, like many things. She did not sell her soul to monsters for these desires. And maybe she really thinks that she will not be a good mother, given that she already gave up her daughter for safety. I honestly understand her.
     
    DragonParadox said:
    A Stillness in the Blood​
    21st of February 2007 A.D.
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    This is a significant deviation from canon.
    Canon Susan was explicitly regretful about her having to give up her kid; I quote:
    Her dark eyes regarded me obliquely for a moment before her lips thinned slightly. "This is going to be painful for both of us. Let's just have it done. We don't have time to dance around it."
    "Okay. Our child?" I asked. "Yours and mine?"
    "Yes."
    "How do you know?"
    She smoothed her face into a nonexpression. "There hasn't been anyone else, Harry. Not since that night with you. Not for more than two years before that."
    If she was lying, it didn't show. I took that in for a moment and sipped some Coke. "It seems like something you should have told me."
    I said it in a voice far calmer than I would have thought possible. I don't know what my face looked like when I said it. But Susan's darkly tanned skin became several shades lighter. "Harry," she said quietly, "I know you must be angry."
    "I burn things to ash and smash holes in buildings when I'm angry," I said. "I'm a couple of steps past that point right now."
    "You have every right to be," she said. "But I did what I thought was best for her. And for you."
    The storm surged higher into my chest. But I made myself sit there without moving, breathing slowly and steadily. "I'm listening."
    She nodded and took a moment to gather her thoughts. Then she said, "You don't know what it's like down there. Central America, all the way down to Brazil. There's a reason so many of those nations limp along in a state of near-anarchy."
    "The Red Court," I said. "I know."
    "You know in the abstract. But no one in the White Council has spent time there. Lived there. Seen what happens to the people the Reds rule." She shivered and folded her arms over her stomach. "It's a nightmare. And there's no one but the Fellowship and a few underfunded operatives of the Church to stand up to them."
    The Fellowship of St. Giles was a collection of the supernatural world's outcasts and strays, many of them half vampires like Susan. They hated the Red Court with a holy passion, and did everything in their power to confound the vampires at every opportunity. They operated in cells, choosing targets, training recruits, planting bombs, and funding their operations through a hundred shady business activities. Terrorists, basically—smart, quick, and tough because they had to be.
    "It hasn't been Disneyland in the rest of the world, either," I said quietly. "I saw my fair share of nightmares during the war. And then some."
    "I'm not trying to belittle anything that the Council has done," she said. "I'm just trying to explain to you what I was facing at the time. Teams from the Fellowship rarely sleep in the same bed twice. We're always on the move. Always planning something or running from something. There's no place for a child in that."
    "If only there had been someone with his own home and a regular income where she could have stayed," I said.
    Susan's eyes hardened. "How many people have gotten killed around you, Harry? How many hurt?" She raked her fingers through her hair. "For God's sake. You said yourself that your apartment has been under attack. Would that have gone any better if you'd had a toddler to watch over?"
    "Guess we'll never know," I said.
    "I know," she said, her voice suddenly seething with intensity. "God, do you think I didn't want to be a part of her life? I cry myself to sleep at night—when I can sleep. But in the end, I couldn't offer her anything but a life on the run. And you couldn't offer her anything but a life under siege."

    I stared at her.
    But I didn't say anything.
    "So I did the only thing I could do," she said. "I found a place for her. Far away from the fighting. Where she could have a stable life. A loving home."
    "And never told me," I said.
    "If the Red Court had ever learned about my child, they would have used her against me. Period. As a means of leverage, or simple revenge. The fewer people who knew about her, the safer she was going to be. I didn't tell you, even though I knew it was wrong. Even though I knew that it would make you furious because of your own childhood." She leaned forward, her eyes almost feverish from the heat in her words. "And I would do a thousand times worse than that, if it meant that she'd be better protected."
    I sipped some more Coke. "So," I said. "You kept her from me so that she would be safer. And you sent her away to be raised by strangers so that she would be safer." The storm in me pushed up higher, tingeing my voice with the echo of its furious howl. "How's that working out?"
    Susan's eyes blazed. Red, swirling tribal marks began to appear on her skin, like tattoos done in disappearing ink, only backward—the Fellowship's version of a mood ring. They covered the side of her face, and her throat.
    "The Fellowship has been compromised," she said, her words crisp. "Duchess Arianna of the Red Court found out about her, somehow, and had her taken. Do you know who she is?"
    "Yeah," I said. I tried to ignore the way my blood had run cold at the mention of the name. "Duke Ortega's widow. She's sworn revenge upon me—and she once tried to buy me on eBay."
    Susan blinked. "How did . . . No, never mind. Our sources in the Red Court say that she's planning something special for Maggie. We have to get her back."
    I took another slow breath and closed my eyes for a moment.
    Canon Susan gave up Maggie because she couldnt keep her safe, not because she thought being a Fellowship agent was more important or more exciting.

    Also, canon Susan would have jumped at any way to get rid of the infection.
    She spent a lot of effort looking before joining the Fellowship.

    Are we sure this is Susan? Just saying, because this does not sound like her.
    In fact, it doesnt sound like any Fellowship halfblood, let alone one who has lived with the curse for four years and has almost killed people she cared about because of it.
     
    Someone needs to explain to Susan what Tiffany said about her kid being a target for the Blackstaff and Dresden. This is not a good idea long-term. Harry only knows about Maggie because of the HollowMan in the first place.
     
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    uju32 said:
    This is a significant deviation from canon.
    Canon Susan was explicitly regretful about her having to give up her kid; I quote:
    Her dark eyes regarded me obliquely for a moment before her lips thinned slightly. "This is going to be painful for both of us. Let's just have it done. We don't have time to dance around it."
    "Okay. Our child?" I asked. "Yours and mine?"
    "Yes."
    "How do you know?"
    She smoothed her face into a nonexpression. "There hasn't been anyone else, Harry. Not since that night with you. Not for more than two years before that."
    If she was lying, it didn't show. I took that in for a moment and sipped some Coke. "It seems like something you should have told me."
    I said it in a voice far calmer than I would have thought possible. I don't know what my face looked like when I said it. But Susan's darkly tanned skin became several shades lighter. "Harry," she said quietly, "I know you must be angry."
    "I burn things to ash and smash holes in buildings when I'm angry," I said. "I'm a couple of steps past that point right now."
    "You have every right to be," she said. "But I did what I thought was best for her. And for you."
    The storm surged higher into my chest. But I made myself sit there without moving, breathing slowly and steadily. "I'm listening."
    She nodded and took a moment to gather her thoughts. Then she said, "You don't know what it's like down there. Central America, all the way down to Brazil. There's a reason so many of those nations limp along in a state of near-anarchy."
    "The Red Court," I said. "I know."
    "You know in the abstract. But no one in the White Council has spent time there. Lived there. Seen what happens to the people the Reds rule." She shivered and folded her arms over her stomach. "It's a nightmare. And there's no one but the Fellowship and a few underfunded operatives of the Church to stand up to them."
    The Fellowship of St. Giles was a collection of the supernatural world's outcasts and strays, many of them half vampires like Susan. They hated the Red Court with a holy passion, and did everything in their power to confound the vampires at every opportunity. They operated in cells, choosing targets, training recruits, planting bombs, and funding their operations through a hundred shady business activities. Terrorists, basically—smart, quick, and tough because they had to be.
    "It hasn't been Disneyland in the rest of the world, either," I said quietly. "I saw my fair share of nightmares during the war. And then some."
    "I'm not trying to belittle anything that the Council has done," she said. "I'm just trying to explain to you what I was facing at the time. Teams from the Fellowship rarely sleep in the same bed twice. We're always on the move. Always planning something or running from something. There's no place for a child in that."
    "If only there had been someone with his own home and a regular income where she could have stayed," I said.
    Susan's eyes hardened. "How many people have gotten killed around you, Harry? How many hurt?" She raked her fingers through her hair. "For God's sake. You said yourself that your apartment has been under attack. Would that have gone any better if you'd had a toddler to watch over?"
    "Guess we'll never know," I said.
    "I know," she said, her voice suddenly seething with intensity. "God, do you think I didn't want to be a part of her life? I cry myself to sleep at night—when I can sleep. But in the end, I couldn't offer her anything but a life on the run. And you couldn't offer her anything but a life under siege."

    I stared at her.
    But I didn't say anything.
    "So I did the only thing I could do," she said. "I found a place for her. Far away from the fighting. Where she could have a stable life. A loving home."
    "And never told me," I said.
    "If the Red Court had ever learned about my child, they would have used her against me. Period. As a means of leverage, or simple revenge. The fewer people who knew about her, the safer she was going to be. I didn't tell you, even though I knew it was wrong. Even though I knew that it would make you furious because of your own childhood." She leaned forward, her eyes almost feverish from the heat in her words. "And I would do a thousand times worse than that, if it meant that she'd be better protected."
    I sipped some more Coke. "So," I said. "You kept her from me so that she would be safer. And you sent her away to be raised by strangers so that she would be safer." The storm in me pushed up higher, tingeing my voice with the echo of its furious howl. "How's that working out?"
    Susan's eyes blazed. Red, swirling tribal marks began to appear on her skin, like tattoos done in disappearing ink, only backward—the Fellowship's version of a mood ring. They covered the side of her face, and her throat.
    "The Fellowship has been compromised," she said, her words crisp. "Duchess Arianna of the Red Court found out about her, somehow, and had her taken. Do you know who she is?"
    "Yeah," I said. I tried to ignore the way my blood had run cold at the mention of the name. "Duke Ortega's widow. She's sworn revenge upon me—and she once tried to buy me on eBay."
    Susan blinked. "How did . . . No, never mind. Our sources in the Red Court say that she's planning something special for Maggie. We have to get her back."
    I took another slow breath and closed my eyes for a moment.
    Canon Susan gave up Maggie because she couldnt keep her safe, not because she thought being a Fellowship agent was more important or more exciting.

    Also, canon Susan would have jumped at any way to get rid of the infection.
    She spent a lot of effort looking before joining the Fellowship.

    Are we sure this is Susan? Just saying, because this does not sound like her.
    In fact, it doesnt sound like any Fellowship halfblood, let alone one who has lived with the curse for four years and has almost killed people she cared about because of it.
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    Changes is several years and some very unpleasant experiences in the future. Martin's reaction of 'you ain't seen nothing yet' hints to that. Also circumstances are very different. She has just seen the kid be happy with her adoptive family rather than just found out she was kidnapped.
     
    uju32 said:
    Canon Susan gave up Maggie because she couldnt keep her safe, not because she thought being a Fellowship agent was more important or more exciting.

    Also, canon Susan would have jumped at any way to get rid of the infection.
    She spent a lot of effort looking before joining the Fellowship.

    Are we sure this is Susan? Just saying, because this does not sound like her.
    In fact, it doesnt sound like any Fellowship halfblood, let alone one who has lived with the curse for four years and has almost killed people she cared about because of it.
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    This is a good point. As a devil's advocate - Molly is a very literal devil, and Susan sans her half red powers still cannot offer Maggie anything approaching safety because she's Harry's daughter. Maggie is safe, and this is very sudden and unexpected and decidedly devil-like.

    Or alternatively she was Nfected, which is why she's resisting the offer of an exorcism.
     
    POSTSCRIPT
    IDU costs 3m per use.
    Ergo SCE + IDU costs 8m per person. Its not a solution for mass-deployment.

    That changes if the Gift Exorcism is capable of exorcising the Red Court vampire demon/bane thing like the book says it can.
    In which case, Sophia would be able to exorcise people all day, and Molly would be able to empower 6x of them with IDU every 4.5 hours. Which would be 24 people in an 18-hour day.

    Assuming you do it four days a week, thats 196 a week, rounded up to 200.
    800 a month. 2000 people in 2.5 months.
    That is a mass-deployment solution, but they would require MiS to retain control.

    Lash could probably do it as well, with fewer strings.
    Flesh 5 to hook a person up with fomor power knockoffs would be Faith point neutral, assuming anyone she upgraded Believes. Or she could make contracts for thralls.

    DragonParadox said:
    Changes is several years and some very unpleasant experiences in the future. Martin's reaction of 'you ain't seen nothing yet' hints to that. Also circumstances are very different. She has just seen the kid be happy with her adoptive family rather than just found out she was kidnapped.
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    She literally almost killed Harry because he was bleeding around her; if he hadnt had restraints, someone would have died.
    And its been four years since then, so she's definitely had similar or worse incidents since then.

    Worse, its not just her at stake; if she loses control, she not only dies and is replaced by a Rampire with her memories, someone else dies in the process of her Turning.
    And by this point in her career, she'll have seen it happen.

    I dont think its plausible that someone who has lived with those realities since 2001(Grave Peril was in October 2001) would be talking like this. This doesnt feel like her canon self, or a reasonable extrapolation of her life experiences since then.
    Its like having a stage 4 cancer patient refuse a cure because they'd stop receiving disability payments.

    Thats my two cents at least.

    EDIT
    If thats the characterization you are going for, no harm no foul.
    If it isnt, then you might have a problem.
    Because Susan is coming off as both stupid and selfish.
     
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    uju32 said:
    She literally almost killed Harry because he was bleeding around her; if he hadnt had restraints, someone would have died.
    And its been four years since then, so she's definitely had similar or worse incidents since then.

    Worse, its not just her at stake; if she loses control, she not only dies and is replaced by a Rampire with her memories, someone else dies in the process of her Turning.
    And by this point in her career, she'll have seen it happen.

    I dont think its plausible that someone who has lived with those realities since 2001(Grave Peril was in October 2001) would be talking like this. This doesnt feel like her canon self, or a reasonable extrapolation of her life experiences since then.
    Its like having a stage 4 cancer patient refuse a cure because they'd stop receiving disability payments.

    Thats my two cents at least.

    EDIT
    If thats the characterization you are going for, no harm no foul.
    If it isnt, then you might have a problem.
    Because Susan is coming off as both stupid and selfish.
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    Ah, I see what the confusion is now. It's not that Susan wants to be infected. It's that she wants to work for the Fellowship, but she feels that as a human she has no 'excuse' to be so. She just got dealt a miracle for the specific purpose of going back and taking care of a kid instead of fighting the good fight. She is still going to take you up on that exorcism, she just dislikes what she sees as the implication that she should 'be a better mother'... which may be originating from a feeling that she has not done enough for Maggie herself. Her reaction in Changes and her reaction here come from the same place just under vastly different circumstances.
     
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