Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

[DragonParadox]

Hunting the Damned ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

"Fine!" You try to keep the anger out of your voice, you really do. From the looks in Tiffany's eyes she at least knows what's up. How could the council have allowed themselves to be broken so utterly? Two senior wizards missing, the Captain of the Wardens enchanted and hunting the Merlin... "Lydia, can you make your way to Paris?"

"I've been to France before but not Paris," your friend starts

"Ain't missing much," McCoy answers raising his staff, his not-Black-staff. For the first time you wonder if Harry knows that about his mentor, it might not be polite to ask. "Good luck Hoss. I'd say give'm hell, but he's too used to that, give'm wizard's fire right and proper?"

"So Tiffany, looks like we're meeting an old acquaintance. Any advice?"

"Shoot him the moment you see him and keep shooting," she tells a grim-faced Olivia. "It won't kill him, but it will at least force him to choose between spending time warding against bullets or letting his passive defenses wear down."

Truth be told you're not sure where to start looking for the Fallen. Another question? Then you'd have to explain that as well...

"Follow," Ancient Mai motioned. Is it just you or is she moving a little more spryly, leaning on her staff less. As you get to the steps up to the next level it becomes clear it's definitely not you. Magic gathers in the air, so thick it smells of cherry blossoms even to unenhanced senses senses until far from ancient the woman leading the way seems to be in the prime of her years and practically glowing with it.

Sneaking a look over your shoulder... yup Harry definitely noticed. If you all make it out of this fine there's no way he's not getting teased, if not by you than by Tiffany.

By now you had come to what are obviously her quarters. Behind ornate doors to match the rest of the wing cranes and leaping fish sketched in black and white onto paper screens are the only relief from stern minimalism. Perhaps it's to the best that this place doesn't have much in the way of distractions since she's looking for something, something small.

The answer as it turns out is silvery mirror that unfolds like a fan in defiance of mantel's nature and a whistle that obviously came from the same forging, flowing ideograms set among feathered spirals.

"You have seen the one we hunt, yes?" The old witch's voice too had grown less harsh, though her words are no less urgent. "Blow on this and look in the mirror, it will wake the spirits of air in the Halls and and lead you right to them."

"Unless he kills them all," Morgan grumbles. "As soon trust larks with letters from the front."

"A void is as easy to track as a target of flesh and blood.," she shrugs.

As it turns out she is right. When Tiffany blows the whistle causing no audible sound, at least any with ears off flesh, the mirror shows a dizzying array of corridors and steps that ends in a kind of grey void midway up an articulated mental ladder of the sort that looks rather odd given the rest of the decor, until you realize it is cold iron marked with runes against fey incursion.

"What could be possibly want to..." Wizard Mai, no longer quite ancient, at least in the moment frowns at the sight. "The Finger..."

"And here I thought he wasn't going to give us anything," Harry jokes, causing Olivia to muffle her laughter poorly while you do not bother controlling a smile.

"The Finger of St. Roch was last active in November during what we later learned was the opening of Sanctuary's Gates. It is a very potent artifact, though one that that moves in its time and not ours, some say in the time of Him in Heaven."

A shiver runs through you from the tip of your head to the soles of your feet as though in truth a finger of bone was running down your spine. If it can track you what else can it see... who else?

Thankfully the path from the Senior Council's quarters to what's officially called the Chamber of the Unwritten, the place where lie in stately silence instruments of divination from all corners of the earth and eras going back millennia is short, likely because leadership past like leadership present wanted access to those tools for their judgements. Just past this door and...

Your senses scream as jets of super-headed water blast down the corridor which might at one time have been set with oil paintings, now just splintered wood and residue.

Behind the water you can see a pair of figures, both human, wielding staffs, thrall wizards not Namshiel.

What do you do?

[] Try to take them alive
-[] Write in

[] Leave them to Morgan, you have a Fallen to deal with

[] Write in

OOC: Sorry for the delay in answering guys. I wanted to get the update up.

 

[DragonParadox]

Tearing Tainted Threads​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

As Dark Sun parries both water lances, light, revealing and blinding at once, erupts from Tiffany's pointing finger, blossoming soundlessly in the face of your enthralled attackers. Halfway up the wall to the left before the term wall-running passes through your mind you lunge at them. Both young, maybe young enough to have the same thought in that split second before they both flinch, aerosolized water settling on you arm as you drive your sword hilt into the solar plexus of one of your attackers. You make an involuntary face of disgust as your victim abruptly pukes missing you by inches before you shield check them into into the other driving both of them into the wall as a single carefully aimed shot strikes her—a woman braided hair tied off with silver clips— in the chest right above the heart.

A heart attack you can fix, but you need them down.

Something's wrong. As Tiffany's silver light fills the air you watch in horror as the energies reverse, balefire transmuted into a strand of green thinner than a hair brighter than the sun, a curse of ever-changing painful symphonies laid by a master's hand.... infectious... familiar.

Lost 2 Essence (Occult and Melee Excelency) -> Now at 12/18

"Not yours!" The words hiss between your teeth as you slam your will into the thread of power with all the strength and all the skill of a smith's hammer.

The curse tries to worm its way into your mind as it would have the mind of any wizard trying to counter or intercept it incinerating minds from within.

Against you it does as much good as a match thrown into the Pacific.

Lost 1 Willpower (IPP) -> Now at 6/9

But then it wasn't meant for me was it, you think furiously. The curse was meant to contaminate and set alight the minds of anyone using magic to fight the thralls, crucially including magical weapons. That curse was meant for wardens.

"Careful, they've been booby-trapped," you go on to explain the thread of arcane fire changing and adapting like a virus in as few words as you can manage.

Carlos looks sick and even the more experienced wardens seems shaken. The sound of guns being drawn fills the air, plain bullets won't carry contagion.

"You got one extra?" Olivia asks. A moment later she is thrown a gun, but before she can thank Morgan for the throw an unwelcome presence makes itself known.

"Oh my that was unreasonably quick of you," the voice, smooth and cultured, though not with the accent of any recognizable tongue does not come though the air, it does not sound inside your face. Instead it simply emerges from a belt-pouch one of the thralls has been wearing.

"Probability of speaker-technology used meets the parameters for in battle-certainty," you hear Clippy in your headphones.

There was a hole cut in the fabric of the pouch and through that hole a phone's camera. Looks like you aren't the only one who can ward tech around wizards. As part of your mind, mostly the part that's a demon, wonders if there's something in there you can suborn.

"It would have been much more sporting of you to let the wizards try their hand. How do they say it these days, 'don't hog the fun'?" The voice can only be the Knight of the Blackened Denarius from the skill and horror of the curse carries on chidding you.

What do you do?

[] Never interrupt a villain monologuing when they should be running, try to get information out of the Fallen
-[] Write in Stunt (Optional)

[] Stab the phone and keep going until you can stab the one on the other end as well

[] Write in

OOC: The horrifying monster is not kidding over here, Molly rolled that dispel at DC 9 from all the multiple action and the only reason she could do it at all was BSM. The curse was meant to hit someone like Carlos or one of the wardens either when they hit the thralls directly with magical weapons or when they attempted to dispel it.

 

[DragonParadox]

Of Church and Council​

By Bob the Skull​

Despite the official doctrine of the Catholic Church on magic and the occult ranging from disbelief at best to hostility at worst, the latter of which claimed many lives through the ages, some with the spark of talent many without, the White Council has always maintained a line of communication, some might even say influence in the highest circles of Church power. It goes back to Rome, most things so. When the last Emperor fell and the Goths and later the Franks raised their realm in the shadow of the Colosseum and the Forum they had little interest in southern sorcerers nor in truth did the fledgling White Council have an interest in playing that part. The Merlin had learned well the lessons of the old Hermetic Circle, but Rome remained a trove of ancient lore which fell, like many things in those days, into the keeping of the Church.

Most likely the transfer was amiable and may have included whatever keepers had been set to guard the tomes and artifacts in the wake of the chaos taking their vows. While many older wizards were still pagan at this time, the younger generation had converted in large numbers, as large as one can speak of with regard to the pre-modern White Council. If you are imagining two people in white robes handing those books off at this point you may not be far wrong. In either case no one wanted a repeat of the destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria.

Dark powers swelled though the chaotic final years of the Empire in the West, demons, hauntings and hunters of men rode through the night and only those powers that had been bound to the now much withered cities like the White Court suffered for the scattering of the population, the strife and ill speaking between Germanic rulers and Vulgate speaking locals. You would be surprised just how much mischief can be done by targeting people who can't or won't ask for help and no, that's not just my biases speaking. Especially following the Plague of Justinian a strain of extreme practicality marked the actions of those bishops assigned to deal with matters occult, nothing else would serve in the spirit of the times. Even later though as the Council not only mentained its presence in Spain after the Muslim Conquest but expanted it to the rest of the Arab world, reaching as far as India and Southeast Asia long before any merchants had sailed that way, the position of the Holy See remainted that it was better for wizards to dwell apart rather than offer advantage and temptation to kings and princes of all stripes. The White Council of the time encouraged this view of itself as quasi-monastic with Neo-Platonic accents, a relic of another time slow to change but harmless.

Consider how some people, naming no names because she scares me, bury their magic in part or in whole from their understanding of what faith requires of them? Well that isn't accidental, at least according to what wizards though. Factions within the Church, especially the inquisition hoped to strangle the Council of new members under the guise of doing the same to much more harmful groups. But for all Rome's reach was vast in those days it never lived up to its boast, never universal. In any case there are always going to be people who do not want to pass up on phenomenal cosmic power and for all its ups and downs in leadership, and there were some very deep downs there, the Church always at least saw an apprenticeship in the White Council as the lesser of two evils.

The Reformation was the moment when things almost broke down, amid accusations that magic had been used to drive common and royal folk alike from the arms of the Church. It certainly did not help when England threw its lot in with the heretics, nor the rumors that Anne Boleyn was in truth a witch. She might have had a minor talent for glamor-craft and not even have been aware of it by accounts later collected.

Cooler heads prevailed when a team of Wardens helped prevent an eruption of Mount Etna in 1555 precipitated by a striga cult that would have killed thousands quickly and most likely millions slowly by illness and starvation. The fact that the Protestants were even more likely to burn witches calmed fears about a political power play.

OOC: Since we do not have an update today, here's some historical background that occurred to me when we were speaking about magic and religion.

 

[DragonParadox]

Beyond Temptation ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

You snatch up the phone pouch and break the camera in the same motion, taking a moment to rifle through the pockets of the unconscious before making way to Tiffany. "Booby traps are hardly sporting though, Namshiel,"you reply, deliberately pitching your voice in the same urbane cadences that the monster on the line has adopted. "Cool trick with the phone, by the way. "

"So it is with all small workings," one can practically hear the airy dismissal in his words, but behind them and between them a hiss like a gas escaping through a pinprick. What's he breaking into?

As Tiffany finishes, motioning to your other companions to follow, then continue talking as you pick up the pace."Though you'd think a twenty hundred year old wizard with your advantages would have passed the need to use...trinkets for divination."

"Ah my dear that is where you are wrong, age breeds thrift in word and deed. Ah but I do not need to offer this lesson when you have near as the beat of your heart a companion more ancient and seeped in power than mine own. "Hail Lillake, spirit of the waters, ever changing in form, hail Lilû who wanders the plains like wind, hail Kilili, Queen of the Windows, hail Weaver of Flesh and Midwife of the tyrant two thirds god and one third mortal. You have come again then? This time with fire, this time with sword, this time by the stealth of your Father Who Was Murder?"

"I am not he, I am not they, and yet the words... the words are familiar to me oh Queen Who Knows not rival, like a story I one had told to me in upon a dream most dire. I would listen, listen close."

No power reaches into your mind grasping or twisting, no flame to douse in the endless ocean. Indeed the fire of your essence burns brighter, a secret revealed and you know in that moment that it's not the only one the Fallen had whispered into the ears of its host. The wizards can't hear, the phone's not on speaker. It would cost you nothing but some old bones made into a prophetic alarm clock, not even that reliable to slow down and to listen.

Regained 2 Essence -> Now at 14/18 (Urge of the Forbidden)

Then you would know things about Usum, about your deepest self, that you did not know before. I could lay them down on paper and set my brown to them, pull on the threads of ancient secrets until they reveal what you'd been seeking since that day in summer in the coldest realm. After all hadn't you dealt with the Fallen before and come out ahead? A kind of fallen at least... Like absinthe laced with strychnine.

He speaks not of you, not of Usum for he had been long bound, but of one akin.

Ahead a glass door looms, not artful like the ones in Ancient Mai's chambers, this one looks like it belongs in an airport or a bank secured with all the technology of the twentieth century to add to wards far more ancient, yet past that there is a figure of robed in grey weaving his hands though the air like the limbs of some alien spider, casting from each a tangling line of green.

His back is to you and incogrously a phone is floating next to his head.

"Molly step out of the way," Tiffany says urgently. "On my mark put as much fire as you can conjure down, he can't tap the ley lines here!" And be the Fallen ever so skilled he would be limited to the ability of his host to channel magic, you finish inwardly. Maybe Harry's been rubbing off on her as well, but depending on the nature of the wards behind him it might cause some property damage.

What do you do?

[] Plan 'Fire in the Hole' sounds good

[] Go in first
-[] Write in plan

[] Write in

OOC: How do you slow down an Exalt? Play to their Urge.

 

[DragonParadox]

Peeling Away Lies ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

Lost 2 Essnece -> Now at 12/18 (Hellscry Chakra+ATB)

A crippling curse comes to your lips, a fraction of a second away from diving for cover Lash would know how to deal with the Fallen, but something's not right, the sound from before, the phone in plain view, like signposting his own death. "Negative ID, Tiffany. Olivia, disable!"

Like the whistling blade of a guillotine your power arcs to but the threads, and meets no resistance. As you rush forward you are gripped by vertigo:
...
Just beyond the closed glass doors turned away you stands is a thin figure garbed in grey
....
Before you is a being of poisoned geometries that lie upon the canvas of space and time as once they spoke truth
...
Ringing all around cacophony, like the the storms of other minds, too many, too close like when you were a child

Auras clash in the glass as you break it, like a film of oil over murky waters, just as you'd imagine one of the Fallen would look wrapping around the soul of one long tainted, just as you imagined. In that moment you realize your gut or maybe just your fears hadn't been lying to you, the threads were backwards, not spinning from his fingers, but by his fingers making a puppet of the man, the wizard.

There's no time to say anything else as in the same moment you shatter the glass Olivia's shot shatters his tibia utterly.

"Son of a fatherless whore!" Tiffany curses viciously, in plain English this time. "That's LaFortier"

The phone still turning slowly in the air rings out with the mocking voice of the Denarian: "Ah, poor deluded Samuel, isn't it enough you had him tossed in the dungeon? Must you shatter his leg as well? We didn't have anything to do with that by the way. We are just good at finding things other people try to hide and you know what they say, a wizard is a terrible thing to waste."

The battery sparks, about to explode before Morgan barks out a command and it's wrapped in a sphere of water, the simple levitation enchantment grounded into uselessness. Good thing to know he has some limits.

"That was... perfect, it wasn't just the look and the sound of it. I could feel Namshiel in there," Tiffany pushes her heir angrily out of of her eyes as the wardens gather around the collapsed wizard.

"An illusion that complete leaves its marks," Tzola props up LaFortier and manually opens an eye, whispering something in Latin too fast for you to follow. "Do not be alarmed."

From blood and labored breath he draws out a tripartite image: one a sorcerer wrapped in glowing mists, his face obscured, another grey gaunt figure covered in spines all too literal and the last a man in an ugly brown sweatshirt and faced black pants marked with chemical stains. "Behold the faces of our enemy that we might not mistake him again." Turning his head he speaks a little more loudly than he strictly has to. "No one open their Sight! He will be anticipating that."

Morgan nods once sharply, Lady M sniffs.

"Can you heal this even with the spell on him?" you motion to the elder wizard, at least in shock if not in some worse state.

"It will be twice as hard since I'm healing two wounds but..." your friend stops. "The wound would have woken Peabody in his cell. He might try to make something of that. It's not as though he has anything to loose."

What does Tiffany do?

[] Heal LaFortier and Peabody, between the latter and Tiffany your money's on her (Opposed Faith vs Arete Rolls; Peabody takes -2 from being distracted)

[] Leave some of the wardens with LaFortier while the rest of you continue hunting Thorned Namshiel
-[] Write in who

[] Write in

OOC: Well you did not dispell the illusion, but you did see through it in time not to add more blunt force trauma to LaFortier. Tiffany also got a bit of a nasty shock there. She is used to Supernatural Awareness being reliable but when one is talking about a millennia old sorcerer who also has the same ability to play around with that is less true.

 

[DragonParadox]

Where Fate is Seen and Fate is Made ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

"One moment" you say, as you fumble in your pocket, pulling out an empty Tic-Tac box with some hair. As you notice wizard's eyes following your hands, you explain "Peabody's hair. Sophia kept some to track him, in case his boss managed to break him out." Something tells me you would not react as well if I used your boss for an anchor, you add inwardly before weighing the contents in your hand, you visualize the person on the other end, and focus all your not inconsiderable spite on them. "Alright Tiffany, your show."

Tiffany McNeil, she who had been Lasciel does not crouch, it's the plié of a ballerina, the grace somehow enhanced rather than ruined by reaching out for the bloody stump of a shattered leg.

Then as pale light spreads from the touch she frowns, teeth clenched, eyes fixed with deadly focus. "Your master has taught you many things Samuel, a pity he did not also teach you courtosy." That final sound hangs in the aid unsupported a moment longer than it should, a chord not of silver but steel as bone grows out like a macabre echo of of a plant growing at a hundred times speed, then it's wrapped in muscle and fat, in blooming veins and wrapped in skin.

You pretend you did not notice Carlos gag a little at the sight.

"That should be the seer seen to," Tiffany grumbles as she gets to her feet, reflexively offering LaFortier a hand he's weary of taking.

"Peabody's not..." Morgan begins.

"His master is here, was here I suspect, lurking in empty spaces like a maggot behind the sockets of a skull," she cuts him off. "The one the Shaw encountered after a fashion beneath Paris."

"The orrery... he's after the orrery!" LaFortier looks around, confussion, doubts and questions far too numerous to ask giving way to cold determination. "Come."

You do not shive the wizard behind you, of course you don't, but you do walk a lot faster than he does.

A moment later the wall he had been puppeted though swings open at his touch to reveal what might once have been a cozy tea room, small round tables with races ringed with astrological symbols set with varrying bric-a-brac. Now all is hurled aside: cauldrons and bones, ivory tablets and waxed cards... everything that is except the handful of items wrapped floating in a sphere of stormwinds two meters across fixed to the ceeling... under which the Fallen stands, still in human shape, trying to grasp and pull a thread of winds.

He turns around in the blink of an eye, rasing a boney hand as though asking for a pause in a game of cards while he goes to find more money to throw into the pot. "Ah, it seems you've caught me. I regret to inform you I shan't be going quietly. My look at all these wizards old and.... new alike."

Whether Carlos caught the threat or not you couldn't say, but one thing you're sure of, he wouldn't back down regardless

How do you fight?

[] Protect the wizards while they try to do damage (Parry and Counterspell)

[] The best deffense is a good offense, attack the Fallen and let the Wardens see to themselves (Melee Excelency)

[] Write in

OOC: If Peabody had made the roll, which he almost did, it was a tie, he would have used the point of stolen Fate to heal himself and then tried to break out of his cell.

 

[DragonParadox]

Skin of Iron, Mind of Gears ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

Ever since you first learned of your father's calling, of the Fallen he battles you wondered what you would feel laying eyes upon them: terror, righteous anger, some sick temptation? What you feel instead searing from the depths of your soul is contempt. Broken winged rebels spreading suffering for its own sake, playing by the rules that mean they can't win, that mean this is all they will ever be.

"An old monster that deals in traitors coin thinks themselves entitled to the lives, the minds, the possessions of those that came after, what a surprise." An echo grows as you grasp for deeper power . It is harder so soon after the last time, an unseen muscle aching from the strain, but you are no stranger to pushing. "Wizards peel away his magic as much as you are able, Olivia go nuts. "

Distantly you hear the sound of the stone floor cracking under the weight of stone and brass and arms of storied legacy.

The man, the magus shakes his head, like a mildly disappointment teacher.

Between his brows a hellfire brand flares, its light contesting yours, the Coin. Like a leviathan adrift in a liminal sea, the Fallen reveals itself to your sight, a shattered, mutilated thing grand not in spite of it, but because of it. It is broken and the promise of the world's breaking, the dark void in the web of magic, the soft voice of temptation behind in every sorcerer's ear.

And in those ears nearest to him now he screams.

Like perfectly balanced fighters, waiting for a blow only to have the gravity suddenly reversed most of the wizards behind you stumble their will sputtering in smoke and light against the walls of the Halls, except that is Nzola and Aleron LaFortier. The two illusionists had instead of taking your advice called forth shades of dreams and nightmares, knights in armor and lions with manes of fire, birds of steel with mirrored wing and roaring chimeras that shift with every moment, illusions given the weight and power of their will.

A look of annoyance passes over the Denarian's twisting features. Be he ever so mighty he can't curse what he can't see in the glare of magic. You catch the very moment when the he opens his Sight and looks upon the whole of yourself bearing down on him. Threads of unraveling magics flow from clawed hands, slicing the phantasms like smoke and dust, though one still manages to reach him before you moving at the speed of a dream, raking with molten gold claws... though they leave no mark.

He's fast, faster than any mortal man, but even with time seeming to congeal around him far from the fastest thing you've ever fought. Soul-forged brass screeches on iron-hard kin with thorns like nails. It leaves a mark but no blood shed. Looking in the eyes inside the blackened mask close enough to smell his breath you see the moment's indecision fracture.

It had cost him more than he expected to break the phantasms, he had barely turned the blows enough to keep from shedding blood. Behind you are wizards, mortal, frail, ripe for the killing, but they are six and he is one, a nephilim be side them them, a sniper raising her rifle almost as fast as him. Any of them might be his next victim, but not all.

He turns a ring of tarnished silver upon his left hand and the air in front of you implodes. By the arts of the Fallen this place and some distant other become briefly one without having to skim though the spirit world at all.

Lost 5 Essence and 2 Willpower -> Now at 7/18 and 4/9

"Oh come on!" you shout as a bolt of balefire sizzles though the space the Denarian had occupied until a moment ago. "We almost had him!"

"And he almost had whatever he came for," Aleron LaFortier points out. He has a kind of lilting accent you can't place, almost musical. "Pardon the presumption, but one assumes the hell-sworn has planned this for considerably longer. Given the ills of the day I will count us lucky. You have my thanks Miss Carpenter."

He has a point. Doesn't stop you from kicking a crack in the nearest wall.

What do you do?

[] Go to Paris as you are the others need the help, your present form might cause some exposure, but it is night there as well. There can't be that many poeple out

[] Wait until the transofrmation wears out

[] Write in

OOC: That could have gone better, it could also have gone a lot worse. Namshiel is monstrously skilled, but between dripping up the wizards preparing a counter, dispelling twice and having the dodge the 28 dice worth of sword heading his way he was on his last action and then it was Olivia's turn. He did not live this long by running himself out of actions when faced with his kind of opposition.

 

[DragonParadox]

In the City of Lights ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

"Why is it that every city has to have some kind of spooky tunnel system under it? Is there a rule book I didn't read?" That was what most people called a rhetorical question. I had found that as I got on in age I asked those aloud more often, though I still had a ways to go until I got to judging by Ebenezer. Sadly no one had told the kid.

"The dead outnumber the living Warden Dresden and nowhere does that matter weigh more heavily than in a place where men have been pressed together so tightly for so long."

Thanks, I kept the sarcasm to myself. Kid could make the a ice cream stand that handed out puppies creepy, but it wasn't her fault. At first glance Paris wasn't like Chicago, but it wasn't like New York or Vegas or any of the other cities I had visited. The even golden lights broken up only by the white of headlights racing by almost seemed to build a mirror city of light in the depths of the Seine, but I knew if I looked down there what I'd find would be the cast offs of that long deep history in iron and bone. Well that and E. coli, probably. It's a good thing I came down here with a warlock hunting team not with a date.

It was an even better thing that the tracking spell had found the Merlin alive even if it had taken an uncomfortably long time after the rush though the Nevernever like the hounds of the Wild hunt were on them.

Spoiler: Paris by Night

"Ah... Wizard McCoy, we need to get out of sight quick. Molly's arriving soon and she is not fit for mortal visitation," Lydia said just as they were planning the descent.

"When you say not fit fer..."

"Overdressed." A trickle of cold sweat ran down Harry's spine.

As it turns out you're never too old to learn new swear swear words. Having a large collection to choose from just came with being born back when saying 'gyat' to your horse would've gotten you in trouble for blaspheming: "Always ten pounds of manure in a five pound bag.... if 'subtle' was leather that girl couldn't saddle up a junebug...." He was already running down a side alley fast enough to get the side eye from some only mildly inebriated tourists, leaning on each other. "There's two ways we can go down to where the spell said Arthur was fast, one's a church and one's a fancy restaurant. The first one's likely to have fewer people at this hour, but it't trespassing on holy ground with the intent to break and enter some more. If anything down in the catacombes breaks out and up the way we came, it will have a ripe place to make a bloody mess. Restaurant's got a lot of people in it..."

"And a lot of cameras," I pointed out. Sometimes older wizards forgot that part. Maybe we'd blow all of them up just being around but it has only taken me being on one tape with a loup Garou to be more careful of that stuff. As Tiffany would say that's progress.

"But they'll run right enough leaving nothing but an empty building behind us. We can deal with the fallout once we have all our geese in a row."

Which way does the party descent into the catacombs?

[] The Church, probably fewer people but will blaze a patht right though some wards from a holy place to one made unholy

[] The Restaurant, more people, but they will clear out quick for better or for worse

[] Write in

OOC: It took Ebenezer two tries to actually find the Merlin so they are not down in the catacombs yet for better or for worse.

 

[DragonParadox]

That Petty Evil Might Open the Way ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

You would think that any right-thinking soul who heard of a place called 'La Barrière d'Enfer', the Gates of Hell would stay away from them, you would think that if you'd never met a Frenchman. Ebeneezer McCoy, Blackstaff of the White Council loved and hated, as only a country boy come late to the great cities of the world could. Dorian Grey that literary demon conjured from Wilde's imagination once said: 'When Good Americans die they go to Paris'. Of course Wilde had been buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside the old walls of Paris of which now there scarce lay brick on brick, maybe he knew a little more of demons that weren't literary than Ebenezar gave him credit for. He hadn't been back here in fifty seven years.

The trendy little restaurant was new, the building that housed it was not, decorated with friezes of dancers caught eternally in the dance. They almost seemed to come alive from the light from the window spilling had once been the gate though which the tolls were taken, bribes were given and all manner of devilry done. Woe betide the traveler who did not keep their wits about them past the gate, the guards were more likely to whistle and turn their heads than come look if they heard screams.

These days the screams were felt not heard.

"This being force majeure and all, do you mind lending a few drops of blood to be used on the spot," he asked the girl with silver running though her voice and eyes like life's last sunset.

She stopped dead, heh, looked between him and the doors adjar with some kind of canned music flowing out of 'em. "Are you sure... if there's trouble below they might be violent."

"If you weren't here to talk 'em down I wouldn't try it, but then I wouldn't have the blood to try. That's how wizardry goes more often than you'd think."

"Alright," she snapped a switchblade out of somewhere and cut her palm. Red blood, Ebeneezer noticed. A lot of scions had stranger colors.

To be a wizard was to be prepared, that is what he said if anyone asked why he carried around little packets of milk and honey. Usually the thing they prepared him for was a quick coffee but at times like this...

White and gold and red mixed in a cup he'd snatched off an empty table, its last drinker just lucky enough to miss the show. Milk and honey and blood, that's how the old greeks had called the dead and not just them. A twist of power, a handful of words, half a prayer half a summoning at least as old as the Trojan War, ittle taught these days. It called the dead, pale and cold fractured reflections that cut living flesh like glass, but it didn't bind them. The light flickered and died, the darkness poppled like ink inside, pale figures moving in the gloom. He saw or thought he saw beggers without eyes and lepers peeling flesh from bone, soldiers with limbs lost to careless, cruel canonades, screetching screeming, wanting hungering. It was the living whose voices could hardly be heard even as they ran, men and women, young and old from the suddenly cursed building. The old man winced when he saw a kin who couldn't have been older than thirteen run out the end of her braid dipped in fresh blood. The ectoplasm would melt in a few minutes, the memories would stick. He'd done worse for less reason in his day, but not in front of Harry.

"Stop!" Said death's daughter in a voice like a bell tolling in the halls of Hades and the darkness stopped at the threashold and the pale figures drew back like flotsam on a frozen wave.

As the potential witnesses were getting as far away down the street as they could and other passers by were trying and failing to get answers out of them the girl Lydia fiddled with her phone and some of that 'rock-an'-roll' stuff. Of all the Keys to all the places.

Reality ripped in two along a seam ethereal amd Molly Carpenter stepped though among colapsed tables and broken chairs, the smell of spilled alchool and the cavoring of ghosts.

He pulled on the thread leading to Arthur down below. but as they were making their way into the passage that lead to the old quarries turned ossuaries Ebeneezar heard the least welcome voice at this place and time, amplified by magic, young it was but half familiar: "Attention warlcoks. Surrender yourself for judgement and you will have a fair trial."

Lucio and the others were already in the tunnel and they had left a readguard.

What do you do?

[] Try to get information from the controlled wardens

[] Just knock them out and continue down, you have your lead

[] Write in

OOC: The Barrière d'Enfer is a real place in our world, the structures just remained gouvernment property.

 

[DragonParadox]

A Maze Mailcious ​

18th of February 2007 A.D.

After the old wizard finishes talking you unfold the Dark Sun as you exchange a silent mental conference with Sophia and Lydia, relying on Sophia to relay on to the rest of the party even as she spills some more water on herself. 'Now?' you catch his eye, needing neither telepathy nor sign language, some things are universal... like that grin. You move.

Once down the stairs you catch your first glimpse of the pair of wardens, they have to be related by the similarity in build and cast, though it's hard guess given both of them are wrapped up more than the Parisian winter requires. Past the black scarf and hood the freckled skin seems particularly pale, the eyes so bright as to be feverish. All this you see at a run, all in the flash of an instant down corridor not twenty feet long, for all you know it might be an extended coat rack. Tonight it's a box of screams that beat against your ears and near enough a tomb.

Two pairs of hands clap together, faster than even you can close the distance as the stones bulge inwards, stone made to recall the elasticity of its birth.

Where they use magic you are magic, your soul spilling out into the ancient stones and making them in part a part of you. Why then would they crush you?

"What the...?"

To their credit both wizards have kinetic shields, enough to entirely deflect Lydia's blows and even to hold off Sophia, more than halfway into her draconic form. But shields at least at their level of skill can only cover a a limited area. Two tranquilizing darts fabricated of esoteric polymers not quite of this earth slam one into a shoulder, the other into the stomach of an enchanted wizard and that's their night.

"Luccio would have felt that," McCoy says as he comes down the steps. "No idea if she'll come back or send someone to check. Knowing her she would do that last bit, but it's not just her behind the reigns tonight." For the first time since he had showed up in Chicago with grim news he sounds old, or maybe just tired. There are some things no amount of wizardry can wipe away.

The path ahead is straight and at least to begin with plenty of overhead space, and ventilation from above, though the electric lights had long since failed it is child's play to project as much light as you want ahead and behind the party. You may be wandering though the milestones of old Lutetia, but you are in Sanctuary too.

It's only when you realize the pale stone turns inky black that swallows all light save yours that you realize quite what part of Sanctuary you are projecting: the Labyrinth.

"Why'd you stop?" Harry asks, looking around for some danger.

"Just capitalized something in my head," you say the first thing that pops into your head. It is a credit who how used wizards are to dealing with weird, or maybe how used these wizards are to dealing with your weird in particular that no one presses while you're distracted.

"Why would I be projecting that part of myself in here Usum?"

"An affinity, mystery and revelation..." the demon hesitates. "Hell also. Someone has worked hard to embed those concepts into the very stone."

"And the monster at it's heart?" you ask. Maybe the Hollow Man's getting tired of losing and feels like a gamble? One can hope at least.

Usum guesses your thoughts. How could he not, he's in them? "I do not think this is recent or an attempt to emerge into this layer of being do to battle. This place was carefully constructed to wear away the mind of mortal wizards, to bend them to certain conclusions favorable to its architect. The only reason they do not feel any pressure on their minds is your magnanimous presence."

"That's why he wanted the Merlin here," you spit between clenched teeth. After you explain what you had figured out to a horrified audiance McCoy looks even grimmer than ever. He might end up having to kill a friend.

"A Labyrinth has to have a solution though," Harry speaks up. "That's what makes it a maze and not just a prison. If getting lost is listening to the monster the way getting eaten was back un Ye Olde Crete, what's winning?"

If things were less grave you'd be rolling your eyes at the 'Ye Olde' As is... "Coming out stronger than you were?" Even as you say the words you realize they are too vague and too small for what's likely on offer here. The Law of Reciprocity holds. If the price of failure is damnation than the reward for success has to be equally transformative... and you just walked into this with a Starborn wizard. If anyone could win a challenge set by a servant of the Old Ones it would be him.

"We are shutting this down after tonight," Lydia says, one hand on the long bones set into an alcove, uncounted dead, their names at most half-remembered if not entirely lost.

Harry looks at his old master, the question in his eyes clear as day.

"I think it's a damn stupid idea even with a safety line, I also think you're a man grown and can take your own risks Hoss."

For once Harry Dresden is quiet, no quip or smartass saying.

"I would try it, but I have been repeatedly informed I am more risk prone than most," Lydia pipes up.

What does Molly think?

[] Harry should take the risk, listen to the whispers of the Hollow Man's maze in the hopes of solving it. If things look dicey you can extend your influence over him again

[] Harry should not take te risk, he's had enough trouble tonight with assholes targeting his mind

[] Write in

OOC: When I designed this place I was not expecting you to walk into it already in Shintai with King and Kingdom, one of the few things that can drown it out, but here we are... and Harry is considering putting his soul on the line by stepping out of said protection. Partly this is because of all the good he might be able to do with insights into the Old Ones that their servants do not want him to have and partly because Harry Dresden is not above the lure of power.