Remove ads

Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

Reader mode
DragonParadox said:
You are not, a scene passed between last update and this one, but you are on the verge of it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
To be clear- does "on the verge" mean we cannot use motes without flaring, or that we have one last mote to spend? Also, is ATP disrupted by flaring? RaW doesn't say so, but I want to make sure.


I would also like help from other voters in workshopping a plan. My basic outline is this:
1) Contact the soldiers in helicopters and subvert them, demonstrating to them that they were sent here to die in an attempt to provoke a conflict between their government and us by a third hostile party that subverted parts of their command structure.
2) Put the subverted soldiers in contact with Fellowship of St. Giles (this ties into the gun running SGI action neatly), and use them as a contact point for Columbian government, the parts of it that are not fully and willingly subverted by Red Court (use the Crown to learn who to trust
3) Cultivate the resistance/ revolution / shadow government so when we strike Red Court down, the transition of mundane government is smooth.

That's the strategic opportunity I am seeing. What I have trouble with are tactics. We have to assume that helicopters are observed. If they don't explode, Red Court will know that we know, etc. There are two main options I see:
1) Defuse the bombs, and hope / make sure Red Court doesn't just directly attack the scouting force themselves
2) Evacuate the soldiers, and let at least one, but probably not all helicopters explode.
 
DragonParadox said:
  1. You can spend one more more without flaring
  2. ATP specifically does not care about flaring since it just makes people not notice you, it doesn't hide the caster
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Thank you! Hopefully the last questions before I start plan-crafting:
1) What, if any, excellency are we running?
2) If it's etiquette excellency, does etiquette cover military / specops etiquette for approaching a team on an op with critical intel?
 
Yog said:
Thank you! Hopefully the last questions before I start plan-crafting:
1) What, if any, excellency are we running?
2) If it's etiquette excellency, does etiquette cover military / specops etiquette for approaching a team on an op with critical intel?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
  1. Etiquette from the ATP
  2. Yes, if you wanted to approach them from a professional perspective, but you would need to justify that with a stunt. The default way would be Empathy since 'there is a bomb on your helicopter that was put there by vampires' approaches things from a more general human than a formal perspective.
 
DragonParadox said:
"I'm really not the one to ask about how not to kill," there's something just for the barest flash of an instant that sounds like regret. "I'd wish you good luck, but I don't want to summon Tyche into your business, she's a mess. Good... lying I guess, bomb defusing?"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You know I went to check why would you use Tyche instead of the Irish/Celtic God of Luck, but then I found out that it is Lugus known in Ireland as Lugh and considering the Winter Courts relationship to Cu Chulainn it would be a bad idea for Maeve to at best use the name of Irish Hercules' father casually.
 
Ok, so, let me attempt this.

[X] Plan Viva La Revolution
-[X] Attempt to subvert the mortal soldiers sent here to die
--[X] Have cyberdevils possess the helicopters
--[X] Defuse the bombs
--[X] Board the helicopters, and talk to the soldiers, starting from their commander
-[X] STUNT: You slice through the air towards the military helicopters like a futuristic interceptor, the flames of your anima coiling around you like a plasma sheath around hypersonic missile. You are, however, well within your rights to do so, as you have been assured, and so It is only proper that the pilots of your targets do not attempt to dodge, to shoot, to do anything at all.
--[X] STUNT: As you get into the leading helicopter, you quickly evaluate people inside, and address their apparent leader: "Tell your forces to land, *military rank*, your mission is FUBAR and we need to talk if you really want to see your country safe"

I will gladly accept substitute stunts. In fact, I'll go as far as tagging @BronzeTongue to ask if you are willing to help here.

The idea is to make use of the opportunity presented by Red Court. And try to save these people. Because I am betting they are to be killed even if we defuse the bombs.
 
I'm half tempted to just call the reds to threaten them. Something to the effect of "If you play games with the Masquerade I will ask Winter to inflict as much damage as they can devise, and Summer the vilest misery they can imagine, on your kind. Perhaps see if I can contrive causing you pain to become a new intramural sport for the Fey Courts to show off in. I mean, just think of the scandal if one court was less effective than the other at paying back a debt.

We will have a clean fight, or it will not be one at all"

Probably too complicated politically speaking though. If we start talking we'll probably have to stop shooting, and I want to keep shooting. Also if they call our bluff we'd actually have to initiate supernatural WW3: Faerie Tale Atrocities Edition. Otherwise we'd lose all credibility.
 
BronzeTongue said:
I'm half tempted to just call the reds to threaten them. Something to the effect of "If you play games with the Masquerade I will ask Winter to inflict as much damage as they can devise, and Summer the vilest misery they can imagine, on your kind. Perhaps see if I can contrive causing you pain to become a new intramural sport for the Fey Courts to show off in. I mean, just think of the scandal if one court was less effective than the other at paying back a debt.

We will have a clean fight, or it will not be one at all"

Probably too complicated politically speaking though. If we start talking we'll probably have to stop shooting, and I want to keep shooting. Also if they call our bluff we'd actually have to initiate supernatural WW3: Faerie Tale Atrocities Edition. Otherwise we'd lose all credibility.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
My worry is that "WW3: Faerie Tale Atrocities Edition" is an acceptable outcome to Red Court. They are way too connected to Outsiders already, and Nemesis is planning to breach Masquerade.
 
Yog said:
Ok, so, let me attempt this.

[X] Plan Viva La Revolution
-[X] Attempt to subvert the mortal soldiers sent here to die
--[X] Have cyberdevils possess the helicopters
--[X] Defuse the bombs
--[X] Board the helicopters, and talk to the soldiers, starting from their commander
-[X] STUNT: You slice through the air towards the military helicopters like a futuristic interceptor, the flames of your anima coiling around you like a plasma sheath around hypersonic missile. You are, however, well within your rights to do so, as you have been assured, and so It is only proper that the pilots of your targets do not attempt to dodge, to shoot, to do anything at all.
--[X] STUNT: As you get into the leading helicopter, you quickly evaluate people inside, and address their apparent leader: "Tell your forces to land, *military rank*, your mission is FUBAR and we need to talk if you really want to see your country safe"

I will gladly accept substitute stunts. In fact, I'll go as far as tagging @BronzeTongue to ask if you are willing to help here.

The idea is to make use of the opportunity presented by Red Court. And try to save these people. Because I am betting they are to be killed even if we defuse the bombs.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I've thought about this some more and I don't think this is the answer. It doesn't actually solve the long term problem and exposure to the soliders is unnecessary. We don't know how much they know and while we probably could talk them around eventually I don't think either of us would benefit much from it.

For one thing, those people all have mortal lives and have to be able to explain what they do later without referencing the supernatural.

We have a sub soul with weather control, so we don't even need to argue about FCF resources to make it impossible for them to fly over here. Which is perfect for giving both of us cover once we handle the bombs.

So we could instead deflect the probe and send these people safely back to their lives. Then set up some retaliatory measures to help play politics with the reds.

It's not to our advantage to overcomplicate the immediate probe issue.

Yog said:
My worry is that "WW3: Faerie Tale Atrocities Edition" is an acceptable outcome to Red Court. They are way too connected to Outsiders already, and Nemesis is planning to breach Masquerade.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
They specifically do not want that heat at this stage. The reds spend a lot of effort avoiding that kind of attention even when acting as pawns of the Outside because they aren't fully subverted.

That particular threat is too extreme, but letting them know we aren't a rube they can push around is sufficient here.

Maybe a cyber attack?
 
BronzeTongue said:
I've thought about this some more and I don't think this is the answer. It doesn't actually solve the long term problem and exposure to the soliders is unnecessary. We don't know how much they know and while we probably could talk them around eventually I don't think either of us would benefit much from it.

For one thing, those people all have mortal lives and have to be able to explain what they do later without referencing the supernatural.

We have a sub soul with weather control, so we don't even need to argue about FCF resources to make it impossible for them to fly over here. Which is perfect for giving both of us cover once we handle the bombs.

So we could instead deflect the probe and send these people safely back to their lives. Then set up some retaliatory measures to help play politics with the reds.

It's not to our advantage to overcomplicate the immediate probe issue.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We know that they are mortals, military, and not Rec Court cultists or at least not magical. This likely means that they don't know about the bombs installed on their helicopters. Having them leave unmolested is not an answer because nothing stops Red Court from firing an RPG at them from a distance and blaming it on us. Rec Court wants an incident and us in conflict with mundane authorities. That's what we should be aiming to prevent, and I'm not sure we can do this without exposing these people to the supernatural.
 
BronzeTongue said:
I've thought about this some more and I don't think this is the answer. It doesn't actually solve the long term problem and exposure to the soliders is unnecessary. We don't know how much they know and while we probably could talk them around eventually I don't think either of us would benefit much from it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is a vote for the first step in solving the problem in my opinion. As for the soldiers, I think they are dead if they return or if they return without protection. They were sent here to die as bargaining chips. It is quite possible that they will be killed anyway to cover reds tracks.
 
Ivar said:
This is a vote for the first step in solving the problem in my opinion. As for the soldiers, I think they are dead if they return or if they return without protection. They were sent here to die as bargaining chips. It is quite possible that they will be killed anyway to cover reds tracks.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Basically this. The helicopters have bombs in them. This implies a significant level of penetration of this particular military outfit. The people in them will likely be disposed of one way or another in order to frame us and to cover the tracks.
 
[X] Plan A Fine Point
—[X] Call in a subsoul to make the weather too rough to fly into for the helicopters
—[X] Stealthy defuse the bombs
—[X] Use another crown question to determine who the closest red court links to this operation are
—[X] Call on Sutra cyber crimes experts to establish a beachhead on earth and collect or fabricate evidence of serious crimes committed by those people then leak them.

The goal here is to make clear to them that this isn't a profitable way to fight us. The red court is the sort of organization which is only really deterred by things being ineffective, show them this is a waste of time.
 
Ivar said:
This is a vote for the first step in solving the problem in my opinion. As for the soldiers, I think they are dead if they return or if they return without protection. They were sent here to die as bargaining chips. It is quite possible that they will be killed anyway to cover reds tracks.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yog said:
Basically this. The helicopters have bombs in them. This implies a significant level of penetration of this particular military outfit. The people in them will likely be disposed of one way or another in order to frame us and to cover the tracks.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
They're regular troops, I don't see why they'd bother preparing anything special. A vamp with moderate hypnosis could avoid local notice and the military/governments of this entire region are already subverted almost entirely. Getting orders for this type of routine patrol slightly altered and putting a bomb on board would be trivial.

Which is also why it'd be a good choice of jab here. This would be a waste of a special unit they'd taken the trouble to penetrate further than the rest of the system.

Similarly, there's no point in hunting them down after the fact or insisting on pinning their particular deaths on us. They're just a tool.

In fact, trying some other non-local disposal if these specific guys that somehow effects us would be a substantial headache given the current state of the board.

Edit:

They need it to happen local to us to pin things on the FCF because we aren't known to be here by the mortal powers. They cannot expose us without making the incident happen somewhere that will expose us.

Otherwise they'd just do that and never offer us the opportunity to reply or interrupt.
 
Last edited:
BronzeTongue said:
They're regular troops, I don't see why they'd bother preparing anything special. A vamp with moderate hypnosis could avoid local notice and the military/governments of this entire region are already subverted almost entirely. Getting orders for this type of routine patrol slightly altered and putting a bomb on board would be trivial.

Which is also why it'd be a good choice of jab here. This would be a waste of a special unit they'd taken the trouble to penetrate further than the rest of the system.

Similarly, there's no point in hunting them down after the fact or insisting on pinning their particular deaths on us. They're just a tool.

In fact, trying some other non-local disposal if these specific guys that somehow effects us would be a substantial headache given the current state of the board.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Are they just regular troops on a routine patrol or some elite recon force told to scout this area specifically? If I was Red Court, I would try and get the latter as sacrificial pawns - that would generate more of an impact. And the point of disposing of them is to cause a scandal. Simply letting them walk away requires at the very least for Red Court to exfiltrate the bombs and/or risk them being discovered by non-compromised helicopter mechanics.
 
[X] Plan A Fine Point
—[X] Call in a subsoul to make the weather too rough to fly into for the helicopters
—[X] Stealthy defuse the bombs
—[X] Use another crown question to determine who the closest red court links to this operation are
—[X] Call on Sutra cyber crimes experts to establish a beachhead on earth and collect or fabricate evidence of serious crimes committed by those people then leak them.
—[X][Stunt]: Taking a breath, Molly nodded to herself, signaling a start to their operation.
—-[X] A shiver seemed to spread through the air, the attention of something vast strumming across the surface of the world and brushing against its spirits. For miles around a storm started to brew, fat drops of rain mixing with howling wind.
——[X] If that rain at times seemed colder than it should be, or the wind carried what was less a hint and more a question of iron it was surely just a trick of the imagination. Just like the flickers of green heralding distant thunder.
—-[X] Flying up to the helicopters, Molly prepared to fully defang the trap.


Yog said:
Are they just regular troops on a routine patrol or some elite recon force told to scout this area specifically? If I was Red Court, I would try and get the latter as sacrificial pawns - that would generate more of an impact. And the point of disposing of them is to cause a scandal. Simply letting them walk away requires at the very least for Red Court to exfiltrate the bombs and/or risk them being discovered by non-compromised helicopter mechanics.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
They haven't had a lot of time, and shooting down helicopters is shooting down helicopters.

The answer we got didn't indicate they were anything special, in fact it stated the opposite:
DragonParadox said:
As it happens the answer is neither. These are helicopters of the Colombian Air Force, the same kind that sometimes payroll these skies looking for the clandestine runways of drug dealers, but they are also not in this corner of the jungle by accident. 'Who sent you?' you ask the second question and are struck again by that same sickening scent of rancid blood that you had first felt in Marin's presence, the Red King. This is a canary in a coal mine, you are being poked and prodded to see how you will react.... and not simply from the flyby. There aren't any vampires aboard, nor any loyal halfbloods, just mortals whose blood won't be missed from the vampires' feast even though there's just a bomb on each of them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Getting the bombs off quietly is way less trouble than arranging an accident like the one they want to pin on us in their own space.

Could they have made this significantly more elaborate on short notice? Potentially. Would it be worth the effort? I don't see how. The story is cleaner for their purposes if it's simple and costs them less to implement to boot. Brave troops out hunting cartels get murdered by one.
 
Hi, new reader here, saw this quest around a month ago and have been slowly reading through it page by page and am at pg 970 now. I must say @DragonParadox , other than some grammatical mistakes and word omissions and weird sentence constructions almost every update, the quality of the narrative is as good as ASWaH.
Just a few comments and questions:
I read the charm Bitter Hearts Unbleeding that someone posted, and I noticed that it was a perfect defense without any limits or saves or rolls. So it could protect us from anything starting from a bullet to even Balor's eye, that thing that could kill Uriel if he tried to facetank it, and drained Mab to zero when she tried to block it. We can stand in front of Ethniu, dare her to use the eye and then laugh in her face, and turn around to say 'Git Gud scrub" to Mab for falling unconscious, all for the price of 1 essence. Please correct me if I am overestimating the charm.


Also, questions:
I took a sneak peek at the char sheet, and saw that we still only have 1 dot of Ox Body and 2 dots of Rage Recast. Wasnt there plans to take more dots of those 2 charms? What happened to that?
And there are some charms that everybody was clamouring for like Running to Forever, Murder is Meat and more of the Qiao charms that seem to not have been taken. Any reason for that?
 
You're making a very specific claim here on these guys.

Troops they're highly invested in, but are disposable enough to kill outright. Whose deaths are a scandal but who are more convenient to kill at home than keep alive. Moreover, ones who they could murder in a way that causes us problems far out of our reach but that somehow make sense to put where we can get them.

These seems somewhat contradictory internally and not particularly aligned to the evidence at hand.

The reds will do whatever is most convenient, pleasing, and profitable for them in that order of priority. If we don't make hurting these guys valuable they'll just be put away for later use.
 
Solar Saiyan said:
Hi, new reader here, saw this quest around a month ago and have been slowly reading through it page by page and am at pg 970 now. I must say @DragonParadox , other than some grammatical mistakes and word omissions and weird sentence constructions almost every update, the quality of the narrative is as good as ASWaH.
Just a few comments and questions:
I read the charm Bitter Hearts Unbleeding that someone posted, and I noticed that it was a perfect defense without any limits or saves or rolls. So it could protect us from anything starting from a bullet to even Balor's eye, that thing that could kill Uriel if he tried to facetank it, and drained Mab to zero when she tried to block it. We can stand in front of Ethniu, dare her to use the eye and then laugh in her face, and turn around to say 'Git Gud scrub" to Mab for falling unconscious, all for the price of 1 essence. Please correct me if I am overestimating the charm.


Also, questions:
I took a sneak peek at the char sheet, and saw that we still only have 1 dot of Ox Body and 2 dots of Rage Recast. Wasnt there plans to take more dots of those 2 charms? What happened to that?
And there are some charms that everybody was clamouring for like Running to Forever, Murder is Meat and more of the Qiao charms that seem to not have been taken. Any reason for that?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Thanks, the issue with grammar errors is the lack of a beta. I do try to catch as many as I can, but especially when I'm in a hurry to get something out they slip though. :oops:

The character sheet isn't up to date at the moment, will be fixed soon.
 
Solar Saiyan said:
Hi, new reader here, saw this quest around a month ago and have been slowly reading through it page by page and am at pg 970 now. I must say @DragonParadox , other than some grammatical mistakes and word omissions and weird sentence constructions almost every update, the quality of the narrative is as good as ASWaH.
Just a few comments and questions:
I read the charm Bitter Hearts Unbleeding that someone posted, and I noticed that it was a perfect defense without any limits or saves or rolls. So it could protect us from anything starting from a bullet to even Balor's eye, that thing that could kill Uriel if he tried to facetank it, and drained Mab to zero when she tried to block it. We can stand in front of Ethniu, dare her to use the eye and then laugh in her face, and turn around to say 'Git Gud scrub" to Mab for falling unconscious, all for the price of 1 essence. Please correct me if I am overestimating the charm.


Also, questions:
I took a sneak peek at the char sheet, and saw that we still only have 1 dot of Ox Body and 2 dots of Rage Recast. Wasnt there plans to take more dots of those 2 charms? What happened to that?
And there are some charms that everybody was clamouring for like Running to Forever, Murder is Meat and more of the Qiao charms that seem to not have been taken. Any reason for that?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nice to see a new reader. There's a link in informational on this too, but you can find the charms we're referring to here.

Perfect defenses are an entire category of protection that work roughly as you describe. For our purposes they essentially have a condition you fill that then allows you to bounce whatever you like off your chin.

ExWoD adds some additional nuance to that, but generally they just work.

On the charms, mostly EXP hell. Other needs came up beyond more health. Stuff like building a primordial soul hierarchy, perfect disguise illusions, and perfect shaping defenses. Which work like damage related perfects, but apply to people playing exotic games. You know, hostile teleportation, forced shape shifts, soul attacks, curses, etc.

We did get MiM though.

Edit: error
 
Last edited:
BronzeTongue said:
You're making a very specific claim here on these guys.

Troops they're highly invested in, but are disposable enough to kill outright. Whose deaths are a scandal but who are more convenient to kill at home than keep alive. Moreover, ones who they could murder in a way that causes us problems far out of our reach but that somehow make sense to put where we can get them.

These seems somewhat contradictory internally and not particularly aligned to the evidence at hand.

The reds will do whatever is most convenient, pleasing, and profitable for them in that order of priority. If we don't make hurting these guys valuable they'll just be put away for later use.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I am making guesses. They might be just average soldiers on an average patrol. But I think it would make a bit more sense for Red Court to send someone whose loss is more of an issue / scandal.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top