Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

[DragonParadox]

Wetlands Fauna ​

The hunter whose eyes are ever on the Kite-Wing on the horizon will miss the Snuffler Burrow and the mire both
-Root Walker Proverb

Boasting some of the greatest bio-diversity of all the Forested Regions the Eastern swamplands are nonetheless some of the least explored portions of the planet, owing in part to the dark rumours of exiled sorcerers and twisted beasts and partly due to the much more mundane and no less terrifying prospect of water and airborne parasites which have adapted to exploit their hosts as much as possible before they expire and become host to the equally ferocious decomposers. It is no wonder then that many species of these lush and unique domains remain mysterious even to the zoologists of the Tri-Partite Academy, much less to the general public. The advantages of possessing a shell of bronze and iron not feeble flesh and brittle bone allow me to venture further.. Here follows a selection of beasts I encountered in my travels.

Spoiler: Krahibute/Soft Wing

The Krahibute or 'soft wings' are small frugivores which survive by their wits, their stealth of soft blunt wings and their symbiosis with the poisonous purple mould that stains their feathers. They are not born with it, instead each colony raises a batch of the mould in pools made of leaves and detritus into which they bathe their young when they are half-moon old. These actions may at times seem ritualistic, a mark of abstract thought, but as of yet no thaumic resonance has been discovered giving lie to the superstitions of the locals who claim that they 'guide one to good fortune'.

Spoiler: Sqepdalte/Chisel Beak

At first glance one might mistake the Sqepdalte for any number of molusk-eating behemoth-kin which slipped the bonds of land for the slow waterways, but this is a creature with a secret, having learned to take advantage of the varying salinity and other dissolved primal substances on waters that flow from the Border Woods to hunt Riptide Molluscs without rupturing their shells and unleashing the pressure differential that makes them so deadly and, not incidentally a preferred weapon of certain swamp tribes, though the effect is far less pronounced in air than in water. Indeed the tribe known as 'the Sqepdaltes' is famed for having defeated a larger and wealthier rival by having spiked their entire supply of Riptide Molusks in a daring raid.

Spoiler: Fletevrapues/Leaf Walker

Among the most prolific fishers of the Sliverloade Vale the Fletevrapues is almost assuredly the result of magical tampering, its kinship to pitcher plants only in evidence in its taste for blood, but where the pitcher plant is content to let the prey come for it in its own time the Fletevrapues will actively hunt down creatures smaller then themselves to drain dry with their proboscis. Though blood is poor in nutrients compared to the flesh they leave to be devoured by others in the water or on the riverbank they are adapted to only feed on it and only when it is red. It is theorized that these beasts were crafted by a mad magician to steal the blood of invading soldiers and deliver it to its master for some grand curse against them. Though their master is long dead they have found their place on the river-side where they are often followed by dozens of mid-sized scavengers many of which will attack anything which seems to pose a threat to the Leaf Walker

OOC: Here are three more examples of local fauna from the more earth-like regions

 

[DragonParadox]

Languages of the Fivefold Courts of Fate​

In this enlightened age the Scholars of the City of Scrolls recognize six true languages apart from the guild dialects, the corporate code and the ever evolving no-speak which lies atop other languages as Yirk butter atop a tower-cake: Scroll Speech, Law Tongue, Journey Cant Fountain Song and the Whispering, the tongues of the Five Cities which hold common roots in deepest blackest antiquity, but have since vastly diverged to fit the exigences of each culture, one would be hard pressed to find better legalise than the tongue which is named for it or write poetry that flows better than in Fountain Song. The Sixth tongue is Seeker Speech which is both the liturgical language of the Covenant and the primary programming language of SUTRAS throughout Sanctuary, this is because the Covenant and the High Guild [of Engineseers] share an origin in the mystery cults which spread out from the City of Journeys in the Seventh Century B.A. (Before Arrival). Seeker Speech has been described by its detractors as 'what a warrior speaks when they fail at poetry and instead takes up accounting'. In less whimsical terms is borrows from all five of the city tongues though more from Journey Cant and Law Tongue and least of all from the Whispering.

Apart from the main tongues Sanctuary also plays host to a vast number of tribal dialects among both Forest communities and the gurvel of the Wastes, with the latter showing by far the greatest raw linguistic diversity of any related group, giving more credence to the theory that they are the original or at least the oldest inhabitants of the world. All of these are grouped in some older tests as High Honorific Tongues for the way the naming conventions for day to day naming differ from the city tongues, though deeper study of selected jungle and gurvel dialects has shown that rather than the infusion of 'uncivilized tongues' into the jungle tribes most of them have expanded their lexicon to include terms required to their new environs even while the grammar and base vocabulary remained 'of the cities'. It is simply that the cities themselves have changed so dramatically in the last three thousand moon-turns and with them the languages they speak that the similarities were not noticed.

Last though certainly not least in the eye of the curious scholar are the Labyrinth tongues which as is often the case with that maddening place raise more questions than answers. No language, no dialect, not a whisper there is of any tongue ancestral to the City Languages. Opponents of the Labyrinth Cradle Theory are quick to use this as proof that the origin of human. Tocatl and Seta life was not within those damnable shifting halls but elsewhere, while proponents of it are quick to point at the fragmentary accounts of internecine warfare within the Labyrinth itself. Tribes are forced to migrate, absorbed by rivals or hegemons, splinter and are lost in the deep halls regularly. It would be absurd, these scholars claim to expect to find linguistic fingerprints after all this time... though that does not seem to stop them from looking for it as far as their courage and heir research funds will allow.

OOC: Who needs sleep when world-building just pops into my head? BTW B.A. refers to everything before now. One of the things the Triarchs are going to suggest is a change of calendar to denote Molly's arrival.

 

[DragonParadox]

On the Nature of Sorcery ​

By Margaret Katherine Amanda Carpenter​

No, not that Sorcery... not that one either. Look just let me explain, You know how spies sometimes make ciphers out of books, find the specific word on the specific page and you will be able to read the letter? Imagine that but the book is a library's worth of history fantastical and wondrous, dreadful and strange, lurking just out of sight. Imagine that but the letter is power that cast He Who Walks... No, I won't write that, even here, that cast out the Enemy of All. Imagine that, the cipher's Sorcery.

It feels enough like prayer to things that are definitely nod God that I would feel deeply uncomfortable practicing it if it weren't for the remaining 90% feeling like data entry, like someone forgot to log this Exaltation out of the system. It does not feel like any of the other things I do, not like summoning tools, sharpening sight or even being one with the water. It does not even feel like calling spirits, even though you would think that is close, pay the Essence earn the favor.

Sidenote I think I'm going to keep summoning the tinny spiteful things of the Wicked City and make them more than they were when I can, it may be trying to empty up the ocean with Styrofoam cup, but hey it's better then not doing anything and at least Styrofoam resistant to salt water.

Anyway it's not like that and it's not like how my magic felt before I Exalted. For one thing there is no give, no flex, it does not flow and change according to my will, for another the words matter, they have a heft and weight to them, a history and purpose beyond the simple memotics of wizardry as Bob explained them to me.

Sidenote the second: What do you call a language with no name? After itself it would be called just Language, or something like All Encompassing Reality Descriptor. This strange baroque thing is both more compact than it has any right to be and so complex it makes my head spin to contemplate it. Am I the only one who knows about it? Are all the other 'moments and mechanisms' locked away? And if that so so why does it looks so familiar, not just from dreams and gut feelings, but from the shape of ancient writings? Maybe it's like Plato's ideal forms, casting shadows into the world? Maybe I'm just the one who can throw rocks in the direction of the cave mouth, moving the thing and thus its shadow on the wall behind me.

Doesn't matter now, too much to do too little time. Too much to make. That is the other things sorcery does, make things like the man in the dream... oh who am I kidding, like the demon in the dream. But that is different from the weight of Exorcism, less calling and more shaping, less like data entry and more like building a circuit board.

So who built the computer and where is it?

OOC: So I was just thinking about some of the questions you guys asked in various posts about Ancient Sorcery and I realized that for a lot of them an in character informational post would be helpful. At least I hope it will be.

 

[DragonParadox]

Integrated Entertainment​

Among the most widespread of the Syndic-Coprs of Sanctuary, certainly the most powerful of the City of Fountains Integrated Entertainment is also one of the youngest corps, a child of the holo-glyph age, it brings together what had once been unaligned peoples, singers, light sculptors, painters, editors, artists and art critics. Absent the old guild rivalries that stand at the basis of most of its peers it has a refreshingly straightforward, not to say uncommonly sane voting policy, artists hold common voting rights, analysts hold a strong veto power but serve a limited term of a fifty moonturns after which they cannot put their name forward for ten times that span.

Marketing was originally another layer of veto requiring a larger majority to function, but that inefficiency was scrapped early in I. E.'s history with the conclusion that marketing, being a form of persuasion was no less art than any thespian's works. After initial snarls it was found that both fiction and nonfiction works benefited from the merging with individual works being divided and repackaged dozens of different ways to serve distinct audiences.

Like any major corp, even one so young Integrated is not free of scandals from the use of subliminal messaging in advertising to the use of fan mobs as cover for attacks and corporate espionage to uncommonly long auditions for SUTRAs. These were later discovered to be a ploy aimed at harvesting processing power for their own analytics

Still given strong profit margins and a over 90% employee retention margin at last posting the company's future looks bright, especially given the prospect of new stories to be told set in the Beyond as well as the recently announced docu-vid on the life of the Empress, sure to make audiences jack in. Present in all five cities and as the saying goes never more than three clicks away from being in every home at once the company has less in the way of fall-back positions than all of its peers Such company readouts as do exist under the watchful green shadows of the jungle are less designed to endure a serious attack and more at seeing off the bold and the foolish as the corp does brisk trade with those locals willing and able to provide protection. To date no such fortress has fallen. Only time will tell if this remains the case now that they have waded into the murky waters of theology or if this is the start of a negative earnings spiral.

OOC: A very short segment on some of the major players in Sanctuary, not the largest nor the most militarily powerful, but a goos howcase of what the local example of say a wiki page would look like. Of course behind the scenes things can get ugly fast, but this is the company with the most marketing experts among its members.

 

[DragonParadox]

Magic and the Mundane Part II​

As you guys have been getting more into the details of how people would interact with magic on an institutional level questions have popped up, everything from meteorology not being as reliable as it should be to mass casualty events when some power slips up, or just does not care about holding up the veil. Well the answer to that is that this is not actually our world if faeries were suddenly real, this is a world in which faeries have always been real and yet most people do not want to look at the truth in the face, because the truth is terrifying. This is to some extent the world in which a lot of conspiracy theorists think they live. People in government and in academia, doctors and scientists etc... really are hiding the truth, but so are the people at the local Denny's when a vampire throws someone through a wall. It takes more proof to get someone to believe, to admit to the truth and people rationalize a lot more than they do in our world. The average person in Molly's world has seen something they can't explain, which means that so has the average government employee and the average politician.

Most will be content to let sleeping dogs lie and only some, only rarely will pick up a file and thing 'I should look into this' or conversely 'I can use this'. So what follows logically from this? The world is less democratic and less populist, those things are not the same, but they are related when it comes to keeping the secrets of the Masquerade. Does that mean that every conspiracy is true? Was Kennedy assassinated because he was about the spill the beans about wizards? Not necessarily. Most of the people who would be a serious threat to the conspiracy of silence here are killed long before they are one televised address, one radio interview from blowing the whole thing wide open because the monsters and the magicians have ways of finding out for which there are no mundane counters and most of the times they do not even kill the Waldo Butters of the world, they discredit them, they push them towards a life of conspiratorial gloom.

Are you a meteorologist who spotted one too many things and have this theory about how some outside force is affecting the weather and messing with models? Well you are about to get a slick partner with silver eyes who will either discredit you or convince you to write about how it's aliens. Are you a reporter who happened to find some communiques that claims werewolves are real and the British government did some unethical tests on them in WWII? Congratulations on your new life touring trashy daytime talk shows. It's not because the talk-show hosts are all in on it either, this is just how their particular ecosystem developed. The Midwestern Arcane, Susan's old paper is not special, it is part of a whole protective layer that keeps the masquerade in place. The people in that layer often knows there is something deeper down without knowing what, the editors, the CEOs etc... just know that if you dig into the wrong thing you might end up like Tommy, the cops found him in sixteen pieces with no blood on the floor.

This is not our world, but with wizards, this is our world with multiple interlocking conspiracies over a spiritual and arcane reality that most of people do not want to face.

OOC: So there have been a lot of posts about this recently and rather than reply to them independently I thought it might be worth addressing in an informational post

 

[DragonParadox]

Demons in the Details ​

Demon summoning is a fraught subject among the wizards of the White Council. On the one hand if one does it right, if one is careful then it is a path to get what you want none the worse for wear and many wizards over the centuries have done so. One can argue if this is because wizards are just that clever, just that wise or because the powers Down Below had other more nefarious plans? None can truly say. But the fact of the matter is it is a tradition of the White Council going back to the days before there was a White Council, old Hermetic texts are filled with demonology for the purpose of interrogating or making use of the demonic.

However when demon summoning goes wrong it tends to go very wrong since most demons are usually clever enough to let the summoner get a lot over their head before they spring the trap. That is how you get some very nasty warlocks so generally speaking the common wisdom of the White Council is 'do not play with the hell beasts until you are at least in your first century, or you have someone who is with you to help'. It is not considered against the Laws, there are only Seven Laws and by word of the Original Merlin they are very clear and not prone to creep since he did not want to see another Wizard War first and foremost.

That said if for the sake of argument one would consider someone working in enforcement, a Warden, and they see a person of interest they are already suspicious of, not of being some kind of mastermind, but reckless to the point of Lawbreaking, summoning demons. That is not a good sign. Now a sensible warden, or someone not suffering from terminal burn-out, would then go to the wizard and explain why it is not a good idea to consort with the infernal unless you are very sure of your work. Conversely if you think they are just a warlock waiting to happen why not get in their face and be aggressive? If they take the first shot with magic you can get this over with no one the worst for wear but the perpetrator.

Incidentally the other reason why you will not see many novices binding demons is that the information on how to do so is not readily available to them. Proper books on demonology that have not been sabotaged by the sort of people who want demons loose on Earth are rare and most of them are held by wizards of the White Council, the older generation thereof, or other established supernatural powers. When said elder wizards feel one of their juniors, usually but not always their apprentice, is worthy of it they will share insights into the perilous art of binding and compelling something that really truly wants to kill you and ruin all you hold dear.

Now let's put ourselves back into the shoes of that Warden again, the one who is suspicious of a junior wizard. What if said target suddenly develops a knack for demonology? What kind of sources does one believe he used?

OOC: In conclusion, Morgan was a pretty bad cop in Storm Front, though in his defense he had all the PTSD and he could not retire because there was no one to replace him in a world that needed more Wardens not fewer.

 

[DragonParadox]

Would you say that Alch 1 products are basically soda-level cheap, Alc 2 pharmaceuticals, Alch 3 very expensive pharmaceuticals, Alch 4 really only possible to get in small doses with great connections, and Alch 5 basically 'You know one of the handful of Alch 5 Alchemists personally'

Click to shrink...

1. Alchemy 1 is not quite as common as soda, but everyone can be expected to have some kind of product that uses it inside their home and most industrial processes use it at some point
2. Alchemy 2 is prescription pharmaceuticals yeah, reasonably specialized and most people do not have it on hand everyday, but it is not going to raise any eyebrows. It is also more common in processes that need more exotic but still widely available effects. Stuff like enriching the lights that power the greenhouses that feed the Cities
3. Alchemy 3 is where things get restricted in addition to being expensive, it is more common in military and strategic industrial use, though of course it is also used in medicine and niche industrial application.
4. Alchemy 4 is rare and propriety as well as dangerous enough to make that only a very limited number of people are even allowed to make it
5. Alchemy 5 is where things start getting conceptual, it is not just a matter of knowing the right person, but also having the right stuff to make the thing. Generally speaking if someone is making alchemical products to this level they probably made a deal with some kind of potent spirit, have access to rare Labyrinth-sourced tech or magic etc...

 

[DragonParadox]

Kings Upon a Thousand Accursed Thrones ​

In many ways the tale of the Yama Kings is a familiar one to Molly Carpenter, daughter of Michael and devout Catholic. Herein we have beings which were in ages long past given a charge from the August Personage of Jade, a being of absolute power and goodness, only to then though pride and the lust for power abandon that charge and become twisted into horrors that plague mankind. From Yomi the dark lords can extend that hand only when a mortal is foolish as to call out to them, they cannot take that which is not freely given and manifestations of faith will ward them off or even burn them like fire. In all but service to the Morning Star they seem to her akin to the Fallen her father had dedicated his life to stop and that is not as much of a theological hurdle. Lasciel was called a rebel angel among rebel angels and one could certainly imagine some among the hosts of Hell being even more consumed by pride and the lust for their own dominions than her. There is room enough in Hell for all manner of sins.

The problem arises though when one considers the Kings in detail, the Empress of Pearls, ruler of the Seven Burning Saas moves now with wrath and with spite upon those who abuse fire and water, yet she keeps to her old charge in spirit, agreed to be among the least Fallen of her peers by the Ancestors of the Jade Court and indeed by those peers themselves who see her isolationism as weakness, flotsam of a dead world floating upon the rising tides of the age.

Can an Angelic being be partly fallen? Well Catholic theology would certainly say no, but it seems clear to Molly that the Bible is a book of parables and lessons first and a manual of occult metaphysics last. The Powers and Principalities there glimpsed are real, but they are not in their full glory and terror revealed. How could they be?

The Masters of Yomi are, corrupt jailers from from ages past, elders of the Wan Kuei who lost their way and became demons in truth and even once mortal magicians who achieved dark apotheoses upon the corpses of their predecessors. There is a kind of twisted fecundity to Yomi that claims and reshapes those who would claim it, swallowing the realms of fallen gods and the dream realms of warlocks embracing depravities without limit, yet through it all two things remain constant: Firstly the need to gather sinners and to test and try them, these trials have become foulest torments which fuel the corrupting influence of the Kings, but still they must do it. Secondly urge to ascend to the throne of God and become the Demon Emperor. Even those Yama Kings who descend with no intention but to satisfy their own lust for power, to take vengeance upon their enemies, or a a thousand other causes for damnation eventually come to covet that. The general form of that belief, keeping in mind that the Kings to not speak their innermost thoughts often and most of them lie like they breathe, goes something like this: When One Throne shall reach out over all of Yomi, when the Demon Emperor will lay claim to the souls of nations then the August Personage of Jade will finally understand that the place of all mankind is Hell, He shall turn his face from the world and lift his hand from the scales of fate. Then shall ascend the Demon Emperor to the Empty Throne of Heaven and the Sixth Age shall be Born. One cannot help but recall that in the Christian tradition Judgemet Day comes when God's patience with the evils of man finally ends.

The fact that Usum who is Molly's source on Yomi and its denizens thinks that she is the rightful Demon Empress leads to her trying quite hard not to dwell on such matters.

OOC: Hope this helps clear some things up.

 

[DragonParadox]

Six True Lies of the Wicked City ​

All is Poison: The Chi of the Wicked City is tainted as no place in the world of form can be. All save the chosen servants of Mikaboshi suffer misfortune from buried streets to twisted sky-paths., from the machines of screams to the psycho-electric foundations of Father, the twisted mainframe that was once in truth the City Father of some now glittering metropolis These curses range from minor, simply adding to the torments of the bond workers, to the perilous that even experienced hell-walkers take care not to tread upon, to the truly hideous (+1-+3 DC to all actions within the Wicked City; This is a Feng Shui effect similar to the power Hand of Darkness)

Eyes Everywhere: A mad tangle of cables, weave though synthetic and biological denizens of the Wicked City, be they mobile or sesile. It is just as hard to tell if the bent-backed bond workers you pass in the street is a drone reporting back to one of the demons of Iron and Violence as it is to tell of the camera atop that telephone pole is in fact still operational or just a hollow shell meant to lull one into a false sense of security (Perception+Empathy DC 8 or Perception+Medicine DC 6 rolls are required to tell if one of the bond workers is still nominally in control of their body and eyes or if they have been seconded as a drone)

Light Burns: Raids from Sikhome fuel ever more pervasive, inventive paranoia, though one thing that has not changed over the long bitter conflict has been the use of light to pin down and and slay the infiltrators. All 'official' lights are so bright as to be painful and some carry more arcane dangers (+1 to all Perception rolls while in light)

Machine Masks: Due to their wide scale cybernetic augmentations and enhancement with tainted chi mechanisms Akuma of the Wicked City might be mistaken for lesser enforcers until they demonstrate their disciplines. Some have taken advantage of that fact to create arcane-mechanical doubles that maintain the appropriate level of terror in their area of responsibility (Perception+Occult or Perception+Technology DC 7 required to identify an Akuma of the Wicked city within the bounds of Hell)

Screems of Steel: Elementals of Stone Metal and more recently Plastic can be both bond workers and employees depending on if they have been swayed to Mikaboshi's service. Among the most potent and arcane of implants forged in the Wicked city are those powered by the agony of the very substance from which they are made while at the same time a raiding party might find itself holding its own against Akuma for a time only for the very wall against which they have backed up to grow teeth or the ground under their feet to coils like a serpent entrapping them. The latter sort of elementals are still quite vain and inclined to heed rites that would propitiate them in the world of the living even if they are very unlikely to offer any service without high cost (Wits+Streetwise or for any willing to risk networking Wits+Computers may be used to identify the places where tainted elementals dwell )

Wreckers Reign: On the rare instances when some part of the City must be torn down rather than built over the administrating Akuma will rather than use their own skills and resources simply summon spirits of destruction and sabotage. These beings have been trained to react to any wide scale alterations of the strata of the City in the same way that vultures might react to the smell of rotten meat, adding a further layer of protection at the cost of an... acceptable number of false positives (Large Scale Alterations, ex destroying the entire wall of a building risk summoning wrecker spirits)

OOC: There we are, something for you guys to consider while planning in the future, ain't it just a swell place to be? The vote on the ritual will close in the morning

 

[DragonParadox]

Wherefore Plague Upon a Wizard's Head ​

By Bob the Skull ​

The hypothetical average wizard tends to be more resistant to infectious disease than most people because they lack some of the aggravating factors thanks to their natural resilience. In and of itself that is not going to save one from large scale or especially novel infections. Rare is the wizard who can simply by magic alone cure infectious illness, power over life requires a deft hand and a humble temperament before the many tricks that nature has in store. That said for as long as there have been wizards there have been magical work-arounds for that limitation. It was said by some of the Wise that when Pope Clement the Sixth had a ring of flame built around himself to protect from the plague he was imitating the works of wizards who used wards of flame for like protections.

A less brute force protection used by practitioners of the secret arts, not just those fortunate enough to name themselves wizards was and to a degree still alchemy, though most brewers required an understanding of what they would be guarding against, indeed by the principle of sympathy a sample of the disease in question would most often have to be used... with all the risks that come with harvesting it. It was not only necromancers who took by stealth the dead from graveyards through the long ages.

Yet for all of this one of the greatest fears of the ordinary wizard, to the extent that such a thing could be said to exist in the days when men were yet much fewer, was a plague they did not see coming, from far off lands unknown. It is said in the Apollonian Scrolls which one of my masters read many centuries after they have been penned that without the specter of the Red Pox, what history recalls as the Plague of Justinian, the White Council might never have grown as large as it eventually did, a dominant force first around the Mediterranean then up into Germania and Scandinavia, winding down the trade routes into Central Asia and the Middle East. Organized wizards could pass from hand to hand a cure to the plague ahead of its advance making use of pacts with spirits or the fey who knew the ways of the Nevernever.

And that brings us to the elephant in the room... You know that saying is really odd, most elephants do not fit in most rooms, sponsorship. Many spirits can heal or ward off ilness, including but not limited to spirits of nature, summer fey, the patrons of healing springs and serpent spitits. But such bargains are never without cost, even if the cost is simply opening yourself to the meddling on the spirit and so not lightly used now as then.

Finally there are those arts that pass from light to grey almost to black. Yes Harry said I could talk about them... well OK he didn't say I couldn't talk about them. See what I mean about spirits? Anyway it isn't technically a breach of any of the laws to drain another's vitality in order to fortify one's own health, at least as long as the act does not go so far as to kill in an of itself. Still the Wardens have ever taken a dim view of such spells and those who practiced them.

OOC: Here we go my thoughts on wizards and plague and some more Bob, we have not heard from him in a while