Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Not a lot of votes which is fair given the day, I think I'll leave this one for the morning if you guys don't mind. It also has the advantage that I'll be more well rested. Today was fun but hectic.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Okay that sounds fine. Though I do want to snitch to Mab about this Masquerade breach play.
[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.
I'll just vote and leave for now. Worst Christmas to date.
You're making guesses that have no basis in evidence, that don't align to the motives of our opposition, and assume abilities would change how they're operating where we can see them.
There's nearly as much support for the idea that the reds are independently sending a whole army after us right now.
- Location
- India
- Pronouns
- He/His
Thanks. I know what perfect defenses and shaping defenses are, but still thank you for putting it in simple words that I can then use to explain to anyone I try to introduce to the system.
My question was specifically regarding BHU, and if it could help us facetank and no-sell Balor's eye.
Reds might have an army prepared to send us, but I disagree on other points:
1) We know these people are not magical. We can assu e with a high degree of certainty, I think, that they are not OK with being killed for political benefit of vampires they don't know exist. These people are not assets of Red Court, their only value is the impact their deaths will have on the parts of the government and the military Red Court cannot directly command
2) Red Court was able to plant explosive devices on military helicopters. This means that the mechanics servicing the copters, and doing preflight checks, are compromised - either so they don't notice / ignore the explosives, or so they plant them themselves. It also means that Red Court is monitoring the helicopters remotely. They will know if we disable the explosives.
3) The motive of our opponents is to create a clash between mundane parts of the local government and military and us. This means that they don't fully control said government and can't simply command them to attack.
If there are no explosions, I expect Red Court to fall onto some sort of plan B, but still follow the general line of "clash government against Molly". The simplest way to do this would be to kill everyone involved in this operation, I think - Red Court already has assets in place to arrange a covert murder at least.
Vote is tied, if anyone has an opinion now would be the time to vote
- Location
- Germany
[X] Plan A Fine Point
Vote closed.
If they could make their murder our problem without sending these guys our way first they'd have just done that.
Depends. I expect it's easier to make the explosions over our portal our problem than it is to make murders our problem. But that doesn't mean explosions over our portal is the only way to make it our problem.
So, strategic thought: if Red Court wants to break Masquerade, it's functionally impossible to stop them long term, assuming they are wiling to accept the consequences of the Masquerade being broken. Same with Nemesis. We have to succeed in stopping them each time, they only need to succeed once. Masquerade is, and always has been, predicated on supernatural powers cooperating to maintain it, or at least to not actively try to bring it down.
Based on this, I posit that:
1) We need to use the Crown on the current scene or some other appropriate focus to learn "what are all currently active plans to globally bring down Masquerade"
2) We need to develop our own plan to bring down Masquerade in a way that we find least bad. This plan has to be in collaboration with Fae Courts and White Council. Possibly White Court too, but I can live without them.
3) We need to enact our plan faster than hostile forces can enact theirs.
Based on this, I posit that:
1) We need to use the Crown on the current scene or some other appropriate focus to learn "what are all currently active plans to globally bring down Masquerade"
2) We need to develop our own plan to bring down Masquerade in a way that we find least bad. This plan has to be in collaboration with Fae Courts and White Council. Possibly White Court too, but I can live without them.
3) We need to enact our plan faster than hostile forces can enact theirs.
Arc 15 Post 29: The Storm and the Stillness
New
The Storm and the Stillness
3rd of March 2006 A.D.
Rain in a rainforest shouldn't be too suspicious, you reason, darting back to the Gate, from there to Sanctuary and back to the Station and from there where you find Sophia engaged in getting a... moderately hyper Maggie Dresden into grade K next year, partly just from the excitement of starting a new school in a new place with a new language and partly because Harry had come along 'to help' bearing a chocolate bar sized more for him than a four year old which said four year old proceeded to devour.
"Are you twins? Where are you going? Are you doing spy stuff again?"
"Why do you think I'm doing... spy stuff?" you ask, a little perturbed at how close to the mark she is.
"Well duh, we left the whole country in a hurry and no one's telling me why and now there's all sort of new people and new stuff that probably costs a whole lot. The little girl jabs a finger in the direction of a bemused Harry. " He looks like a spy too."
You open your mouth, consider how long it would take to come up with a convincing lie versus how close those helicopters are, grab Sophia and go.
***
Thankfully there's no need to summon a hurricane, just enough of a storm to ground the helicopters, thirty knots should do it according to a quick search from Clippy, which is about thirty four miles per hour.
"Make it forty just in case," you tell your other self as she turns her gaze to the sky weaving her will though the air like an unseen current, a sound without words that draws the ear of every tapir shuffling, every jaguar stalking. Up in the trees monkeys turn their head to listen in a gesture startlingly human, or maybe humans are like them.
Then just as the calling reaches its crescendo, sending waves of silent pressure though standing water and drawing clouds closer together Sophia flinches like something had struck her and rubs her chest above her heart. "What the...?"
A few of the workers who had not stopped their construction efforts all the while eye her nervously, unused to any of you failing at something.
"The locals didn't like that. I think they might be a bit twitchy from the last time."
"When we got rid of Bat Boy and his backup dancers you mean?" you scoff. "Funny how they weren't upset about that."
"The Red Court may be unnatural, but it's much more disruptive to mankind than to the land. Their usurping of the gods was long ago even as spirits count time, they had grown used to it I think, but us..." She gives a sheepish smile you see often in the mirror. "We're not really quiet are we? I think what they can sense of the essence of Sanctuary beyond the Gate perturbs them as well..."
"Is this the Hell thing again?" You sigh, knowing the answer. "It's the Hell thing again. Are they willing to ground those helicopters themselves. I don't really want to fight any kin of Mallko if we can help it. This isn't an invasion..." And I'm going to do my best to make sure it stays that way. It was one thing to rule over those who accepted that distant stewardship willingly, who asked for it, quite another to be a tyrant over beings material or ethereal.
"Nature spirits mostly just want nature to be left alone..."
"Well that's fine, we were planning to acquire some of the land," you breathe a sigh of relief.
Her lips tighten. "They want four hundred square miles that's a lot more land than we were planning to acquire and assurances that we won't kill by 'claw or by poison', I think that last one means pollution anything that lives in the area and that we will keep others away. That is a lot to patrol given our assets don't really look local and we'd still have to explain them to the authorities, the same ones that have been infiltrated by the Red Court."
Do you take the deal?
[] Yes, it's fair enough
[] Try to negociate them down
-[] Write in
[] Ask Sophia to try again, if any of the local spirts push scare them fof
-[] Write in
[] Write in
OOC: Edits done.
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- Location
- Germany
Man, doing this ourselves with Shintai and Lord of the Land might have been less perilous.
Yeah, but on the other hand Shintai isn't free, once you use it the DC goes up and that is a roll of essence, just 4 dice.
- Location
- Germany
Maybe double down and really take over the area with spirits from sanctuary?
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Molly <broadcasting worldwide via hacked communication satellites>: "Greeting, Earthlings, I am Molly, Queen of the Planet of Sanctuary. On behalf of my people, I welcome you to the greater multiverse."
Might be easier and more palatable to play it all off as aliens and extradimensional invaders rather than supernatural and mythological shit creeping out of the shadows they've been tucked away in for centuries or millennium.
Rhampires? Parasitic aliens from Planet X. They've come for your blood!
Whampires? Spiritual parasites from Planet Y. They've come for your women! Or men! Possibly both!
Blampires? We don't know where the fuck they came from, but they wear Human corpses as meatsuits and are bad news so everyone should keep killing them.
Faeries? Cousins from the "5th dimension". Long history of interaction with Earth, hence the extensive, if heavily garbled and inaccurate "Faerie" tales, and intermingled bloodlines. Possible angle for a new business; DNA testing for Fey gene markers?
Five Fold Court of Fate? Benevolent explorers here to uplift their fellow sentients with the secrets of the universe, medicines to cure what ails you and fantastical technology seemingly plucked from science fiction. We come in peace!
And so on.
The reason for the sudden rise of invaders and visitors? Might as well blame the Americans, and everyone else who detonated nuclear weapons in the past 60 years. They "thinned the walls between dimensions" and made "<insert Star Trek-style techno babble> noise" which attracted them. What was once a relative handful of criminals and raiders, explorers and refugees who wandered to Earth throughout history is now a flood, and they cannot be hidden or ignored any longer. Think of the children!
It's all BS, of course, and plenty of people would know that from the outset or disbelieve for one reason or another, but the vast, overwhelming majority? They would eat this crap up and ask for more. A century of media in every possible format has been prepping modern civilization for contact with extraterrestrial life, for good or ill, whereas centuries of concerted effort have been invested in convincing everyone that the supernatural is merely superstitious nonsense.
The lie doesn't need to last forever, or even a decade, but just a few years would be enough to reach a new normal.
Doesn't that storm power just work on earth spirits like the other gifts we've used in the mortal world? We even used it during the wizard arc didn't we?
I didn't realize we'd need to do a bunch of additional rolls to be allowed to try using that ability, the reason I went for a sub soul instead of a FCF sorcerer was to avoid this sort of conflict.
I didn't realize we'd need to do a bunch of additional rolls to be allowed to try using that ability, the reason I went for a sub soul instead of a FCF sorcerer was to avoid this sort of conflict.
This is what the vote said:
—[] Call in a subsoul to make the weather too rough to fly into for the helicopter.
With a poor roll that was going to look like an invasion
This is relevant because the DC adjustment came from alien spirits, if this was just a storm calling roll on the locals like I intended that vote to be by using the gift instead of saying something like "call in storm spirits from sanctuary" then we'd just fail instead of triple botch.
A subsoul, as in our clones. One of which we gave a storm calling gift.
Ah... that is where the confusion comes from. Regina which is the clone helping you here doesn't have that power. I just thought you wanted to rustle up some elementals which she is good at thanks to Voice of the Muse.
I should have been clearer, I just meant going to get one that could, on the assumption that if we had time to get Carlos we also had time for that. We never really referred to spirits as subsouls before, just the clones, so it didn't occur to me that there was another way to read it.
Should have actually named Sophia.