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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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uju32 said:
Nah.
I think we saw the Whampire versions of Potence and Celerity earlier in the scene, when Madrigal Raith was throwing knives at significant percentages of the speed of sound, and Vittorio Malvora was pulling feats of gunmanship.

I quote:
Some people are faster than others. I'm fast. Always have been, especially for a man my size, but this duel had gotten off to a fair start, and no merely mortal hand is faster than a vampire's.
Vitto Malvora's gun cleared its holster before my fingers had tightened on the blasting rod's handle. The weapon resembled a fairly standard Model 1911, but it had an extension to the usual ammunition clip sticking out of the handle, and it spat a spray of bullets in the voice of a yowling buzz saw.
Some vampires are faster than others. Vitto was fast. He'd drawn and fired more swiftly than I'd ever seen Thomas move, more swiftly than I'd seen Lara shoot. But bodies, even nigh-immortal vampire bodies, are made of flesh and blood, and have mass and inertia. No hand, not even a vampire's, is swifter than thought.
Ramirez already had his power held ready when the scarlet cloth hit the ground, and in that instant he hissed a single syllable under his breath and flipped his left hand palm up. That bizarre glove he wore flashed and let out a rattling buzz of furious sound.
A sudden, gelatinous cloud of green light interposed itself between us and the vampires before even Vitto could fire. The bullets struck against that gooey cloud, sending watery ripple patterns racing across it, plowing a widening furrow through the semisolid mass. There was a hissing sound, a sharp pain high up on my left cheek, and then I was slapped across the chest by a spray of tiny, dark particles the size of grains of sand.
Ramirez's shield was nothing like my own. I used raw force to create my own steel-hard barrier. Ramirez's spell was based on principles of entropy and water magic, and focused on disrupting, shattering, and dispersing any objects trying to pass through it, turning their own energy against them. Even magic must do business with physics, and Carlos couldn't simply make the energy the bullets carried go away. Instead, the spell reduced their force by shattering the bullets with their own momentum, breaking them into zillions of tiny pieces, spreading them out, so that their individual impact energy would be negligible.
When the dispersed cloud of leaden sand struck me, it was unpleasant and uncomfortable, but it had lost so much power that it wouldn't have gotten through an ordinary leather coat, or even a thick shirt, much less my spell-laced duster.
If I'd had time to breathe a sigh of relief, I would have. I didn't. Every bit of focus I had was bent on slamming a surge of energy and will through my blasting rod, even before I had the business end lifted all the way up.
"Fuego !" I cried.
A column of fire as thick as a telephone pole flew from the tip of the rod, struck the ground twenty feet away, and then whipped across the floor toward Vitto as I finished lifting my weapon.
He was fast. He'd barely had time to register that his bullets had missed their target before the fire came for him, but he flung himself to one side in a desperate dive. As he went, he gained enough of an angle to get him just around the edge of Rodriguez's highly visible shield, and the vampire's hand flickered to his belt to whip one of those knives at me in a side-armed throw.
It would have been a waste of time for any human. Thrown knives aren't terribly good killing weapons to begin with—I mean, in the movies and TV, every time someone throws a knife it kills somebody. Wham, it slams to the hilt in their chest, right into the heart, or glurk, it sinks into their throat and they die instantly. Real knives don't generally kill you unless the thrower gets abnormally lucky. Real knives, if they hit with the pointy part at all, generally only inflict a survivable—if very distracting—injury.
Of course, when real people throw real knives, they don't fling them at a couple of hundred miles an hour. Most of them haven't had centuries to practice, either.
That knife flickered as it came, and if I hadn't hunched up my shoulder and tucked my face down behind it, the knife might have found the flesh of my neck and killed me. Instead, its tip struck the duster's mantle at an oblique angle, and the weapon skittered off the spell-armored coat and tumbled off on a wobbly arc.
Vitto landed in a tumble, teeth clenched over a scream of pain. His left leg was on fire from the knee down, but he was smart—he didn't stop, drop, and roll. In fact, he didn't stop at all, and it was the only thing that kept my second blast from immolating him. The lance of flame missed him by a foot and momentarily smashed the curtain of falling water behind the white throne into steam. Beside me, I heard Ramirez fling out one of those green blasts.
"Harry!" Ramirez screamed.
I turned my head in time to see Madrigal coming at us from nearly straight ahead, his spear in hand. Ramirez hurled a second shaft of green light at him, but it splashed against an unseen barrier a foot away from his body. Glitters of golden light ran up and down the symbols on the cloth strips wrapped around his arms. I understood, then. Ramirez's second shot had been a demonstration.
"He's warded!" Ramirez snarled.
"Drop back!" I snapped, as Vitto came streaking toward me down the other sideline. He was reloading the gun as he came, dropping the old magazine, slapping a new one in. I lifted my shield bracelet, readying it—then hesitated for a fraction of a second to get the timing just right, gauging angles of incidence and refraction.
Vitto's hand game up and the gun snarled again.
I brought the shield up at the last second, a flat plane perpendicular to the floor, and Ramirez took a hopping step back just in time to get behind the shield as it formed. Twenty or thirty bullets ricocheted off the invisible barrier in a shower of sparks—and spalled more or less toward Madrigal Raith and his magical protection.
The nifty armbands apparently weren't made to stop physical projectiles, because one of the bouncing bullets ripped through the outside of his thigh with an ugly explosion of torn cloth and a misty burst of pale blood. He screamed and faltered, throwing out one hand to catch his balance before he could hit the floor.
"Drop it!" Ramirez shouted. His hand blurred toward his pistol, and he drew it before Madrigal could get moving again.
I pivoted the shield to clear Ramirez, taking a couple of steps forward to wall Vitto away from Carlos's flank, and transmuted the far surface of the shield into a reflective mirror.
Ramirez's gun began to roar beside me—measured shots that were actually aimed, as opposed to the rapid crack-crack-crack of panic fire.
Vitto reacted to the gunfire and the suddenly appearing mirrored wall ten feet long and eight feet high with instant violence. He flung the heavy handgun at a suddenly appearing and swift-moving target before he could realize that it was his own reflection. The gun had its slide locked open, and when it hit the shield at the speed he threw it, something in the assembly slipped, and it bounced off in several pieces.
Vitto slowed down for a step, eyes widening, and I didn't blame him one bit. It would have made me blink for a second if my opponent had suddenly changed open air into the back wall of a dance studio.
Then he accelerated again and did something I wasn't ready for. He bounded straight up into the air, a good ten or twelve feet, arching over the top of my shield in an instant and flinging knives with each hand as he came. I threw up my right arm, trying to interpose it with the oncoming knife as far out from my body as I could. The knife hit flat, which was fine, where the leather of my duster's sleeve covered my arm. The handle of the knife, though, hit my naked wrist, and my right hand abruptly went numb. I heard the other knife whisper as it tumbled through the air beside me, missing me.
"Madre de Dios!" Carlos screamed.
The blasting rod tumbled from my useless fingers.
I cursed and flung myself to one side as Vitto landed on the inside of my shield, his sword whipping from its scabbard in a horizontal slash at my throat. My tactical thinking had been limited to two dimensions, maybe reinforced by the mockery of the sports field we fought on. The second knife had missed me because Vitto hadn't been aiming for me. Its handle now protruded from Ramirez's right calf.
I couldn't move my fingers correctly, which precluded the use of the energy rings on my right hand. I dropped the shield—all it would do with him already so close was slow down my movement. I'd have to re-form it between me and him the second I got a chance, which he didn't seem inclined to give me. He sent a lightning-quick thrust at my guts, and I had to dance back a pair of steps to buy myself enough time to parry it with a sweep of the staff in my left hand.
There was no way I could fence with Vitto. Even if he didn't totally outclass me, physically, fighting one-armed with a staff against a competent fighter with a rapier is not a winning proposition. If I tried it, I'd be backing away from him in circles until I tripped, he slashed a few of my fingers off and finished me, or else forced me away from Ramirez long enough to double-team him and kill him. I couldn't sling magic at him, either. His back was to the crowd of vampires and the human victims shielding them, and he was damned fast. Anything I could throw that would have hurt him could miss—and if it missed, it'd kill anyone who got in the way.
I couldn't take my eyes off Vitto for a second—I had to hope that Ramirez was holding his own against Madrigal. I had to buy time and distance. I slammed will and Hellfire through my staff, snarled, "Forzare!" and released it in a broad wave that lashed out into absolutely everything in front of me.
The wave of force caught Vitto and flung him from his feet. He hit a brawny thrall with a neatly clipped goatee, and then the wave caught up and struck the man, too, as well as the folk on either side of him. They were flung back into the second row of kneeling thralls, and they, in turn, were all bowled back into the crowd of vampires behind them, to a general scream of surprise and dismay.
It hadn't been a lot of force by the time it got to the thralls, not all spread out like that. I could have delivered tackles that hit harder. It had been enough, though, to tangle Vitto—whose leg was still on fire, by the way—in a pile of courtiers and thralls.
"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen," I hollered, "to Bowling for Vampires!"
To my intense discomfort, a round of laughs went up from the Raith contingent, and I got a smattering of applause. I raised my shield again, into a shimmering half dome of glittering silver and blue light this time, and twisted my head around to look for Ramirez.

I turned in time to see Madrigal, bleeding from several gunshot wounds, rush forward, spear held high. Ramirez had fallen to one knee, his wounded leg unable to support his weight, and as I watched he dropped the Desert Eagle and gathered another bolt of disintegrating emerald force in his right hand.
Madrigal laughed at him, the sound silvery and scornful, and now that he was in motion I could see the chromium glitter of the demonic Hunger in his eyes. His protective armbands flickered brightly as he rushed forward.
"Ramirez!" I screamed.
Madrigal raised the spear.
Ramirez flung the gathered energy in a last useless strike… that missed Madrigal entirety and splashed on the stone at his feet.
A section of stone the size of a big bathtub glowed green for a split second, then shattered into dust so fine that its individual grains would be almost invisible to the naked eye.
Just as my average preparation session for a fight does not involve considering twelve-foot kung fu leaps from knife-throwing masters, I guess Madrigal's practices didn't take into account floors that might suddenly become pools of nearly frictionless dust. He let out a shriek and plunged into it, flailing wildly. I could see the wheels spinning in his head, trying to work out what had happened and how the hell he would get out of it.
Ramirez shot a look over his shoulder and snarled, "Harry!"
The fingers of my right hand were tingling. I raised it, clenching it into a weak fist. It was good enough to align the rings with my thoughts. "Go!"
Madrigal had worked it out. He thrashed to one side of the trough Ramirez's spell had eaten in the floor, thrust the handle of his spear down into the ultrafine dust, and shoved himself roughly up and out of the sand trap.
But not before Ramirez drew the silver Warden's blade from his hip, the sword designed to let the Wardens of the White Council slice into any enchantment, unraveling it with a single stroke. Carlos drew it, lunged out onto his wounded leg with a cry of pain and challenge, and sliced the willow blade left and right at Madrigal while the spear was grounded and locked into place, supporting him.
The sword cut through the wooden haft of the spear, snicker-snack, which was itself an indicator of just how unbelievably sharp an edge it had to have carried. Luccio did good work. That was just collateral damage, though.
The Warden blade also licked lightly across each of Madrigal's arms.
The black cloth armbands erupted into sudden flame, the embroidered symbols on them flaring into painfully brilliant light, as if the scarlet thread had been made of magnesium. Any construct that held enough energy to counteract the magic of a major-league wizard, especially a combat specialist like Ramirez, had to have been holding all kinds of energy. Ramirez had just cut it loose.
Madrigal stared down in sudden panic at the fire writhing up his arms and let out a horrified scream.
I crouched, clenched my fist a little tighter, narrowed my eyes, and with a single thought released every bit of energy in the rings—what had been left over after the ghoul attack and what I had added later, all at the same time.
The power hit Madrigal low in the belly, at a slightly upward angle. It slammed him from his feet as the fire blazed over his arms, lifted him up over the heads of the gathered Raith contingent like a living, sizzling comet, and slammed him into the cavern wall behind them with literally bone-shattering power.
Broken, bleeding wreckage tumbled limply down.
"And the wizards," I snarled, "pick up the spare."
I turned back to face Vitto, who was only then clawing his way out of a pile of confused and unhappy Skavis and Malvora vampires and meekly passive thralls. He came to his feet with his sword in hand.
I faced him through the glowing dome. I heard a grunt, and then Ramirez stepped up beside me, silver sword in hand, still stained with Madrigal's pinkish blood, his staff in the other, taking some of the weight from his injured foot. I kept the dome up, recovered my blasting rod, and raised it, calling up my will, letting fire illuminate the runes carved down its length one sigil at a time. The new shield was more taxing than the old, and I was getting tired—but there was nothing to do about that but keep going.
There were rustling sounds all around us. Vampires came to their feet. They edged closer to the thralls, shifted position so that they would be able to see. There were murmurs and whispers all around us as the White Court sensed that the end was near. Vitto's aunt was not far from him, and she stood with one hand to her delicate throat—but she stood fast, watching, anxiety and calculation warring for space in her eyes. Just over one shoulder, I could just barely make out Lara's profile as she leaned forward over the thrall kneeling between her and the fight—Justine—to watch the end, her lips parted and glistening wet, her eyes glowing.
The spectacle of it sickened me, but I thought I understood something of what triggered it in them.
Death did not come swiftly to vampires—but the old Reaper was in the house, and when he struck, he would take lives that should have lasted for centuries more. That realization let me understand something else about the White Court—that for all of their allure, that forbidden attraction, the unnatural magnetism of a creature so beautiful outside and so twisted within, with their ability to give you the greatest pleasure of your life, even as they snuffed it out—they, the vampires themselves, were not immune to that dark attraction.
They were regular, near-eternal voyeurs to death's handiwork, after all. They saw the mingled ecstasy and terror on the faces of those they took. They fed upon the surrender of life and passion to the endless silence—knowing, all the while, that in the end, they were no different. One day, one night, it would be their turn to face the scythe and the dark cowl, and that they would fall, fall just as helplessly as their own prey had, over and over and over.
Death had already taken Madrigal Raith. And it would soon take Vitto Malvora. And the White Court, one and all, longed to see it happen, to feel Death brush close by, to be tantalized by its nearness, to revel in its presence and passing.
Words could not express how badly they needed therapy.
Dysfunctional sickos.
I put it out of my head. I still had work to do.
"All right," I growled to Ramirez. "You ready?"
He bared his teeth in a ferocious smile. "Let's get it on."
Vitto Malvora, the last of Anna's killers, faced me steadily, his eyes gone white. I thought that for a man about to face two fairly deadly wizards determined to kill him, he did not look terribly frightened.
In fact, he looked… pleased.
Oh, crap.
Vitto threw back his head and spread his arms.
I dropped the shield and shouted, "Kill him!"
Vitto lifted his voice in a sudden, thunderous roar, and I could sense the will and the power that underlay his call. "MASTER!"
Ramirez was a beat slow in transferring his sword to his other hand so that he could fling green fire at Vitto, and the vampire lowered his arms and crossed them in front of him, hissing words in some strange tongue as he did. Ramirez's strike shattered upon that defense, though bits of greenish fire dribbled onto Vitto's arms, each of them chewing out a scoop of flesh as far across as a nickel.


Unlike Reds, and definitely unlike Blacks, Whites can generally feed without killing, or even crippling their victims, as long as they maintain sufficient intervals in between encounters with the same person.

A Raith can sustain multiple sex partners and spread out their feeding over multiple people without issue besides the fact that feeding on one person makes it easier to call that person back to you.
It really isnt anywhere as obvious an issue for them as it is for the other Courts.

Think of it this way:
You're a Raith, and you pick up singles, or hire an escort service with professionals. Two to three partners at a time.
Expensive, but you're a Raith; you're rich AND attractive.
Malvora can basically camp out in horror movie theaters at will. Or roller coasters. Any activity that terrifies its participants.

Skavis are the ones with the most feeding issues.
Despair is not exactly a renewable resource the way the others are.
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just open up a portal to any of the hells in the nevernever in this cross over plenty of renewable despair. :p
 
DragonParadox said:
White Court Virgins (yes that is what they are canonically called) are indeed not required to feed, but they also grow up surrounded by immortals knowing that if they do not kill they will not only be effectively powerless but also live a 'mere' human span. Does this entirely excuse their behavior? No of course not, but arguably they are still not as bad as the likes of Marcone, who decide to kill as adults because they want money and power.
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I'm gonna note raiths canonically aren't told what they are until they've fed cause they could potentially find true love. This has been how its been for at least centuries.
 
DragonParadox said:
I know, but you cannot really do that with the despair vampires since teenagers to not arrange in recreational despair unlike lust.
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Oh I know might be doable with fear not despair though just making sure you knew that about lust. Kinda curious what would kill a despair hunger in its infancy maybe a moment of true hope so true faith maybe? Fear would be true courage as in pants shitting fear and still pushing through I imagine.
 
firefrog600 said:
Oh I know might be doable with fear not despair though just making sure you knew that about lust. Kinda curious what would kill a despair hunger in its infancy maybe a moment of true hope so true faith maybe? Fear would be true courage as in pants shitting fear and still pushing through I imagine.
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Hope, it is mentioned in the RPG books. It goes Love, Hope, Courage for the Whites we know.
 
DragonParadox said:
Hope, it is mentioned in the RPG books. It goes Love, Hope, Courage for the Whites we know.
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though makes me wonder how that would come out practically? Makes you realize the carpenter family embodies at least two of those I know true love can only count from two equal partners though so only mom and dad are poison to raiths for now at least.

Edit: Michaels a man equipped with fairly good swordmanship and thats basically it and yet he goes out all the time to face down evils for the sake of others and is obviously someone with true faith so he might always count as personifying courage and hope. Also goes out hoping to save even evil people.
 
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DragonParadox said:
I know, but you cannot really do that with the despair vampires since teenagers to not arrange in recreational despair unlike lust.
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College admission / exams? The despair ones are burned by Hope, apparently... In general, I think White Court outside of Raiths was designed badly. Consider what they feed on and what they are burned by. Raiths feed on carnal lust (they can't, I think, feed on bloodlust or anything like that), and are burned by True Love. Both lust and true love can be expressed similarly and be generated in the same situation. It is also a "paired" emotion. You feel lust towards someone, and True Love apparently can only exist between two equals (Butcher was speicifc that parental loves doesn't work). Raiths can be, and often are, targets of their preferred emotion. A Raith that had their first intercourse with their true love would burn out their hunger and become fully human. That's... not really possible with any other kind of vampire. Because despair can easily be "singular" emotion. You don't need a partner to feel despair. And consider further - hope is antithesis to despair, but they aren't produced by the same stimulus, or in the same situations. They are opposites, not a "pure" and "tainted" versions of the same(ish) thing leading to the same actions. It's very hard to imagine how a skavis could conceivably become a human during their "reaping".

Raiths are built very differently from other emotional vampires. They are much closer to humanity, and have many more ways "out" than other whamps.

EDIT: To the point that I would suspect Raiths were an attempt to turn whamps into humans. Because whamps, if I recall correctly, can learn to switch emotions they feed on.
 
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firefrog600 said:
though makes me wonder how that would come out practically? Makes you realize the carpenter family embodies at least two of those I know true love can only count from two equal partners though so only mom and dad are poison to raiths for now at least.

Edit: Michaels a man equipped with fairly good swordmanship and thats basically it and yet he goes out all the time to face down evils for the sake of others and is obviously someone with true faith so he might always count as personifying courage and hope. Also goes out hoping to save even evil people.
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It is theoretically possible for a Malvora to feed on Michael, I would roll the dice for it, but give the advantages of his willpower, his intimacies and his faith the average Malvora Whamp would be about as likely to actually manage to feed on him as a man with a particularly well built slingshot would be to hurt Molly

Yog said:
College admission / exams? The despair ones are burned by Hope, apparently... In general, I think White Court outside of Raiths was designed badly. Consider what they feed on and what they are burned by. Raiths feed on carnal lust (they can't, I think, feed on bloodlust or anything like that), and are burned by True Love. Both lust and true love can be expressed similarly and be generated in the same situation. It is also a "paired" emotion. You feel lust towards someone, and True Love apparently can only exist between two equals (Butcher was speicifc that parental loves doesn't work). Raiths can be, and often are, targets of their preferred emotion. A Raith that had their first intercourse with their true love would burn out their hunger and become fully human. That's... not really possible with any other kind of vampire. Because despair can easily be "singular" emotion. You don't need a partner to feel despair. And consider further - hope is antithesis to despair, but they aren't produced by the same stimulus, or in the same situations. They are opposites, not a "pure" and "tainted" versions of the same(ish) thing leading to the same actions. It's very hard to imagine how a skavis could conceivably become a human during their "reaping".

Raiths are built very differently from other emotional vampires. They are much closer to humanity, and have many more ways "out" than other whamps.

EDIT: To the point that I would suspect Raiths were an attempt to turn whamps into humans. Because whamps, if I recall correctly, can learn to switch emotions they feed on.
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On the one hand yes they are not equal in their ways of getting out, but on the other that does make for some interesting stories, particularly about how it is that the most human of them got on top in the White Court.
 
DragonParadox said:
She could write such a thing, but there is a reason why in this universe magic is generally passed from master to apprentice, just learning it from a book lacks the personal touch that is necessary to map the transcendent reality of magic to their own experiences
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Point of order:

Given the profusion of magic textbooks and how to guides in this setting, from Kemmler's primers to Kemmlerian Necromancy(The Word of Heinrich Kemmler, The Blood of Kemmler, The Mind of Kemmler and The Heart of Kemmler.) to Ebenezar McCoy's Elementary Magic , all mentioned in Dead Beat, to the Stygian Sisterhood's grimoire in Backup, I am reasonably sure that you can learn magic and magic rituals from a book just fine if you have the talent.

The White Council certainly believed so, else they wouldnt have spent so much effort reenacting Fahrenheit 451 with everything ever written by Kemmler after WW2.
Easier to learn if you have a tutor of course.
Prospalz said:
I felt that way. Then we had a major spook encounter and then learned that there is a Naagloshi around. I no longer really feel that way.
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:V
In fighting a naagloshii, the first major hurdle is being able to find and target them.
Hence Hellscry Chakra to be able to look at people's auras, and then Windborn Stride to close the range, and then Divination/Scrying/Ancient Sorcery/Charm for tracking even if they flee.

We do have Transcendent Anathema, and Tool Constructs will allow us design and build a smart railgun/coilgin.
Then add Alchemy or Enchantment for specialty rounds.
It alters the scenario from fuckfuckfuck to this is gonna suck.

But yeah, fighting a Naagloshii is always going to be serious business.
Yog said:
We can probably guesstimate the power level of a naagloshi based on Bane's power. Molly thought that Bane would be able to at least fend off Broken Seeker. If that's a good guess, then their "power levels" should be comparable.
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Some genius loci have outsize power in their areas of responsibility, or against particular opposition.
Demonreach imprisoned the Titan Ethniu, and allegedly might have been able to imprison Mab. It canonically had six naagloshii in the minimum security section of the prison, because they barely even count as anything significant.

The ability of Bane to act in its area of specialty as a deterrent cant be used as a power level benchmark.
Any more than the ability of a knowledgeable Native American shaman to banish a naagloshii says anything about their power level. There's a lot of rock paper scissors going on.
firefrog600 said:
just open up a portal to any of the hells in the nevernever in this cross over plenty of renewable despair. :p
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If you open a portal to hell, either you suddenly instill the hope of escape in the denizens?
Or despair in the vampire
:V
firefrog600 said:
I'm gonna note raiths canonically aren't told what they are until they've fed cause they could potentially find true love. This has been how its been for at least centuries.
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Actually, we know thats true in the Raith household.
We dont know about if its true for otner sex vampires, of which there were a fair number.
 
Current Tally:
Adhoc vote count started by uju32 on Jan 29, 2023 at 4:08 AM, finished with 99 posts and 12 votes.
  • [X] Move on to another action
    -[X] Qiao training
    [X] Ask more questions from the list
    --[X] [Thule Society investigation] Question: "What was the full chain of events that led the people who shot these bullets to know where and when to be to shoot them?" Focus: The bullets shot at us during initial meeting with Brother Divsimar.
    --[X] [Thule Society investigation] Question: "Who attempted to shoot Gorfiel / us from this place?". Focus: The roof from which the shot was made
    --[X] [Thule Society investigation] Question: "what was the chain of command involved in the shooting of this bullet at us/Gorfel outside Harry's apartment". Focus: Bullet souvenir
    [X] Ask Bob about Astrology. Does it work? What are the general principles?
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uju32 said:
Point of order:

Given the profusion of magic textbooks and how to guides in this setting, from Kemmler's primers to Kemmlerian Necromancy(The Word of Heinrich Kemmler, The Blood of Kemmler, The Mind of Kemmler and The Heart of Kemmler.) to Ebenezar McCoy's Elementary Magic , all mentioned in Dead Beat, to the Stygian Sisterhood's grimoire in Backup, I am reasonably sure that you can learn magic and magic rituals from a book just fine if you have the talent.

The White Council certainly believed so, else they wouldnt have spent so much effort reenacting Fahrenheit 451 with everything ever written by Kemmler after WW2.
Easier to learn if you have a tutor of course.
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The way I see it is you can learn magic one of three ways:
  1. School of Hard Knocks: this is your trial and error approach and most people who stick to this for a long period of time either run afoul of the Laws because they do not know them, various supernatural gribbles who do not like their bumbling or just plan kill themselves with dangerous experimentation . The ones who manage to run the gauntlet come out with some really off the wall solutions
  2. Learning from Books: like the above only you now have to take in the ethos of the writter of the book into consideration and integrate it on your own. Less chance of blowing up and if you find the right book less chance to turning warlock, but also less likely to... manage to work magic because you are trying to adapt a paradigm that is foreign to your experience without a teacher to bridge the gap
  3. Learning with a master: The best way to both nurture individual talents and take advantage of the wisdom of those who have come before
This does not apply of course to people who already know magic getting into a related field, which is mostly the case for people who would want to take up Kemlerite necromancy. The thing is a lot more advanced than 'here is how you get a dot in alchemy'.
 
Yog said:
College admission / exams? The despair ones are burned by Hope, apparently... In general, I think White Court outside of Raiths was designed badly. Consider what they feed on and what they are burned by. Raiths feed on carnal lust (they can't, I think, feed on bloodlust or anything like that), and are burned by True Love. Both lust and true love can be expressed similarly and be generated in the same situation. It is also a "paired" emotion. You feel lust towards someone, and True Love apparently can only exist between two equals (Butcher was speicifc that parental loves doesn't work). Raiths can be, and often are, targets of their preferred emotion. A Raith that had their first intercourse with their true love would burn out their hunger and become fully human. That's... not really possible with any other kind of vampire. Because despair can easily be "singular" emotion. You don't need a partner to feel despair. And consider further - hope is antithesis to despair, but they aren't produced by the same stimulus, or in the same situations. They are opposites, not a "pure" and "tainted" versions of the same(ish) thing leading to the same actions. It's very hard to imagine how a skavis could conceivably become a human during their "reaping".

Raiths are built very differently from other emotional vampires. They are much closer to humanity, and have many more ways "out" than other whamps.

EDIT: To the point that I would suspect Raiths were an attempt to turn whamps into humans. Because whamps, if I recall correctly, can learn to switch emotions they feed on.
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Are they?

In canon? Whamps can change their modality of feeding just fine. Madrigal Raith did. Butcher describes it as being as more a matter of political allegiance and preference than actual hardcoding. As I understand it, the Raiths claim jurisdiction over lust and everyone who feeds on it, associated businesses etc. The Malvora do the same for fear, etc.

How that interacts with particular emotions being able to burn out a nascent Hunger isnt explained.
Maybe its a matter of Whampire virgins coming with factory settings from their parents, which cant be changed until the Whampire awakens/fledges. So if you're a Whamp virgin preset with lust, True Love burns you out.

We dont know enough about the others to hazard any guesses.
 
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uju32 said:
In canon? Whamps can change their modality of feeding just fine. Madrigal Raith did.
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Doesn't it requires a lot of efforts though?

It doesn't really matter if they can change what they eat if the default is overwhelmingly easier and you need to feed on the new source to change, meaning that your first time is absolutely going to be with the default because you have no way of learning to feed in another way before it.
 
Nyarky said:
Doesn't it requires a lot of efforts though?

It doesn't really matter if they can change what they eat if the default is overwhelmingly easier and you need to feed on the new source to change, meaning that your first time is absolutely going to be with the default because you have no way of learning to feed in another way before it.
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We dont know. Its never addressed.
When Thomas talks to Madrigal in Proven Guilty, its implied to not be all that difficult, but only in passing.
And it never comes up again.
Citation:
Madrigal Raith watched the exchange through narrowed eyes. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but he looked paler now, his features almost eerily fine. Or maybe now that Thomas had identified him as a White Court vampire, I could correctly interpret the warnings my instincts had shrieked at me during our first talk. There was little but contempt in Madrigal's eyes as he stared at my brother. "You have no idea what you're getting yourself involved in, coz. I'll not surrender this prize to you."
"Oh, but you will," Thomas said in his best Snidely Whiplash villain voice.
Crane's eyes flickered with something hot and furious. "Don't push me, little coz. I'll make you regret it."
Thomas's laugh rang out, full of scorn and confidence. "You couldn't make water run downhill. Walk away while you still can."
"Don't be stupid," Madrigal replied. "Do you know what kind of money he's worth?"
"Is it the kind that spends in hell?" Thomas asked. "Because if you keep this up, you'll need it."
Madrigal sneered. "You'd kill family in cold blood, Thomas? You?"
There are statues that don't have a poker face as good as Thomas's. "Maybe you haven't put it together yet, Madrigal. I'm banished, remember? You aren't family."
Madrigal regarded Thomas for a long minute before he said, "You're bluffing."
Thomas looked at me, a quality of inquiry to his expression, and said, "He thinks I'm bluffing."
"Make sure he can talk," I said.
"Cool," Thomas said, and shot Madrigal in the feet.
The light and thunder of the shotgun's blast rolled away, leaving Madrigal on the ground, hissing out a thready shriek of agony. He curled up to clutch at the gory ruins of his ankles and feet. Blood a few shades too pale to be human spattered the gravel.
"Touche," grunted Rawlins, a certain satisfaction in his tone.
It took Madrigal a while to control himself and find his voice. "You're dead," he whispered, pain making the words quiver and shake. "You gutless little swine. You're dead. Uncle will kill you for this."
My half brother smiled and worked the action of the shotgun again. "I doubt my father cares," he replied. "He wouldn't mind losing a nephew. Particularly not one who has been consorting with scum like House Malvora."
"Aha," I said quietly, putting two and two together. "Now I get it. He's like them."
"Like what?" Thomas asked.
"A phobophage," I said quietly. "He feeds on fear the way you feed on lust."
Thomas's expression turned a bit nauseated. "Yes. A lot of the Malvora do."
Madrigal's pale, strained face twisted into a vicious smile. "You should try it some night, coz."
"It's sick, Mad," Thomas said. There was an almost ghostly sense of sadness or pity in his tone, so subtle that I would not have seen it before living with him. Hell, I doubt he realized it was there himself. "It's sick. And it's made you sick."
"You feed on mortal desires for the little death," Madrigal said, his eyes half closing. "I feed on their desire for the real thing. We both feed. In the end, we both kill. There's no difference."
"The difference is that once you've started, you can't let them go running off to report you to the authorities," Thomas said. "You keep them until they're dead."
Madrigal let out a laugh, unsettling for how genuine it sounded given his situation. I got the sneaking suspicion that the vampire was a couple of Peeps short of an Easter basket.
"Thomas, Thomas," Madrigal murmured. "Always the self-righteous little bleeding heart. So concerned for the bucks and does-as though you never tasted them yourself. Never killed them yourself."
Thomas's expression went opaque again, but his eyes were flat with sudden anger.

Madrigal's smile widened at the response. His teeth shone white in the evening's gloom. "I've been feeding well. Whereas you… well. Without your little dark-eyed whore to take-"
Without warning, without a flicker of expression on Thomas's face, the shotgun roared again, and the blast took Madrigal across the knees. More too-pale blood spattered the gravel.
Holy crap.
Madrigal went prone again, body arching in agony, the pain choking his scream down to an anemic little echo of a real shriek.
Thomas planted his boot on Madrigal's neck, his expression cold and calm but for the glittering rage in his eyes. He pumped the next shell in, and held the shotgun in one hand, shoving the barrel against Madrigal's cheekbone.
Madrigal froze, quivering in agony, eyes wide and desperate.
"Never," Thomas murmured, very quietly. "Ever. Speak of Justine."
Madrigal said nothing, but my instincts screamed again. Something in the way he held himself, something in his eyes, told me that he was acting. He'd maneuvered the conversation to Justine deliberately. He was playing on Thomas's feelings for Justine, distracting us.
I spun to see Glau on his feet just as though he hadn't been given a lethal dose of buckshot in the chest from ten feet away. He shot across the parking lot at a full sprint, running for the van parked about fifty feet away. He ran in utter silence, without the crunch of gravel or the creak of shoes, and for a second I thought I saw maybe an inch and a half of space between where he planted his running feet and the ground.
"Thomas," I said. "Glau's running."
"Relax," Thomas said, and his eyes never left Madrigal.
I heard the scrabble of claws on gravel and then Mouse shot out of the shadows that had hidden Thomas. He flashed by me in what was for him a relaxed lope, but as Glau approached the van, Mouse accelerated to a full sprint. In the last couple of steps before Glau reached the van, I thought I saw something forming around the great dog's forequarters, tiny flickers of pale colors, almost like Saint Elmo's fire. Then Mouse threw himself into a leap. I saw Glau's expression reflected in the van's windshield, his too-wide eyes goggling in total surprise. Then Mouse slammed his chest and shoulder into Glau's back like a living battering ram.
The force of the impact took Glau's balance completely, and sent the man into a vicious impact with the van's dented front bumper. Glau hit hard, hard enough that I heard bones breaking from fifty feet away, and his head whiplashed down onto the hood and rebounded with neck-breaking force. Glau bounced off the van's front bumper and hood, and landed in a limp, boneless pile on the ground.
Mouse landed, skidded on the gravel, and spun to face Glau. He watched the downed man for a few seconds, legs stiff. His back legs dug twice at the gravel, throwing up dust and rocks in challenge.
Glau never stirred.
Mouse sniffed and then let out a sneeze that might almost have been actual words: So there.
Then the dog turned and trotted right over to me, favoring one leg slightly, grinning a proud canine grin. He shoved his broad head under my hand in his customary demand for an ear scratching. I did it, while something released in my chest with a painful little snapping sensation. My dog was all right. Maybe my eyes misted up a little. I dropped to one knee and slid an arm around the mutt's neck. "Good dog," I told him.
Mouse's tail wagged proudly at the praise, and he leaned against me.
I made sure my eyes were clear, then looked up to find Madrigal staring at the dog in shock and fear. "That isn't a dog," the vampire whispered.
"But he'll do anything for a Scooby Snack," I said. "Spill it, Madrigal. What are you doing in town? How are you involved with the attacks?"
He licked his lips and shook his head. "I don't have to talk to you," he said. "And you don't have time to make me. The gunshots. Even in this neighborhood, the police will be here soon."
"True," I said. "So here's how it's going to work. Thomas, when you hear a siren, pull the trigger."
Madrigal made a choking sound.
I smiled. "I want answers. That's all. Give them to me, and we go away. Otherwise…" I shrugged, and made a vague gesture at Thomas.
Mouse stared at him and a steady growl bubbled from his throat.
Madrigal shot a look over at the fallen Glau, who, by God, was moving his arms and legs in an aimless, stunned fashion. Mouse's growl grew louder, and Madrigal tried to squirm a little farther from my dog. "Even if I did talk, what's to keep you from killing me once I've told you?"
"Madrigal," Thomas said quietly. "You're a vicious little bitch, but you're still family. I'd rather not kill you. We left your jann alive. Play ball and both of you walk."
"You would side with this mortal buck against your own kind, Thomas?"
"My own kind booted me out," Thomas replied. "I take work where I can get it."
"Pariah vampire and pariah wizard," Madrigal murmured. "I suppose I can see the advantages, regardless of how the war turns out." He watched Thomas steadily for a moment and then looked at me. "I want your oath on it."
"You have it," I said. "Answer me honestly and I let you leave Chicago unharmed."
He swallowed, and his eyes flicked to the shotgun still pressed to his cheek. "My oath as well," he said. "I'll speak true."
And that settled that. Pretty much everything on the supernatural side of the street abided by a rigid code of traditional conduct that respected things like one's duties as a host, one's responsibility as a guest, and the integrity of a sworn oath. I could trust Madrigal's oath, once he'd openly made it.
Probably.
Thomas looked at me. I nodded. He eased his boot off of Madrigal's neck and took a step back, holding the shotgun at his side, though his stance became no less wary.
Madrigal sat up, wincing at his legs. There was a low, crackling kind of noise coming from them. The bleeding had already stopped. I could see portions of his calf, where the pants had been ripped away. The skin there actually bubbled and moved, and as I watched a round lump the size of a pea formed in the skin and burst, expelling a round buckshot that fell to the parking lot.
Thats all we have.
Many of the Malvora feed on fear, but not all. Madrigal used to feed on lust, but switched.

Oh, and evidence of the supernatural durability of a bunch of supernaturals.
Thats literally Wolverine-tier regeneration we see in that scene from a Whampire who took separate shotgun blasts to the ankles and knees. And the other Whamp in the scene doesnt treat it as out of the ordinary.

DragonParadox said:
The way I see it is you can learn magic one of three ways:
  1. School of Hard Knocks: this is your trial and error approach and most people who stick to this for a long period of time either run afoul of the Laws because they do not know them, various supernatural gribbles who do not like their bumbling or just plan kill themselves with dangerous experimentation . The ones who manage to run the gauntlet come out with some really off the wall solutions
  2. Learning from Books: like the above only you now have to take in the ethos of the writter of the book into consideration and integrate it on your own. Less chance of blowing up and if you find the right book less chance to turning warlock, but also less likely to... manage to work magic because you are trying to adapt a paradigm that is foreign to your experience without a teacher to bridge the gap
  3. Learning with a master: The best way to both nurture individual talents and take advantage of the wisdom of those who have come before
This does not apply of course to people who already know magic getting into a related field, which is mostly the case for people who would want to take up Kemlerite necromancy. The thing is a lot more advanced than 'here is how you get a dot in alchemy'.
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I suspect you find very little of 1 in the modern day.
People start that way, but they start looking for reference material. Bock's Books was doing a respectable trade in magic books in Dead Beat iirc.

And 3 canonically involves a lot of 2.
Like I said, McCoy wrote Elementary Magic for learning magic; a lot of people own a copy.
To quote:
Dead Beat c7 said:
I went to the door set in the iron grille and unlocked it, then rolled open the cage door. Bock kept all of his valuable texts in the cage. He had an original first printing of Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, autographed, on the highest shelf, carefully sealed in plastic, and several dozen other rare books, some of them even more valuable.

The remaining shelves were filled with serious texts on magic theory. A lot of them were almost as occluded with opinion and philosophy as their more modern counterparts on the shelves in the front of the store. The difference was that most of them were written by members of the Council at one time or another. There were very few volumes that addressed magic in its most elemental sense, as a pure source of energy, the way I'd been taught about it. One of the notable exceptions was Elementary Magic by Ebenezar McCoy. It was the first book most wizards ever handed an apprentice. It dealt with the nuts and bolts of moving energy around, and stressed the need for control and responsibility on behalf of the wizard.

Though now that I thought about it, Ebenezar hadn't handed me a copy of the book when he'd been teaching me. He hadn't even lectured me more than a couple of times. He told me what he expected, and then he lived it in front of me. Damned effective teaching method, to my way of thinking.

I drew out a copy of his book and stared at it for a moment. My stomach fluttered a little. Of course, he'd been lying to me, too. Or at least not telling me the whole truth. And the whole time he'd been teaching me, he'd been under orders from the Council to execute me if I wasn't perfectly behaved. I hadn't been perfect. The old man didn't kill me, but he didn't trust me enough to come clean, either. He didn't tell me that he was in charge of dirty jobs for the Council. That he was their wetworks man, the one who broke the Laws of Magic with their blessing, who betrayed the same responsibility he wrote about, talked about, and had apparently lived.
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Vote closed, let's see what your teacher thinks of the... adaptation of steel skin
Adhoc vote count started by uju32 on Jan 29, 2023 at 4:08 AM, finished with 99 posts and 12 votes.
  • [X] Move on to another action
    -[X] Qiao training
    [X] Ask more questions from the list
    --[X] [Thule Society investigation] Question: "What was the full chain of events that led the people who shot these bullets to know where and when to be to shoot them?" Focus: The bullets shot at us during initial meeting with Brother Divsimar.
    --[X] [Thule Society investigation] Question: "Who attempted to shoot Gorfiel / us from this place?". Focus: The roof from which the shot was made
    --[X] [Thule Society investigation] Question: "what was the chain of command involved in the shooting of this bullet at us/Gorfel outside Harry's apartment". Focus: Bullet souvenir
    [X] Ask Bob about Astrology. Does it work? What are the general principles?
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uju32 said:
I suspect you find very little of 1 in the modern day.
People start that way, but they start looking for reference material. Bock's Books was doing a respectable trade in magic books in Dead Beat iirc.
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Canonically it's the opposite, actually, the prevalence of "I have no idea what I am doing, and what the magic even is, and am learning from first principles" type of talents is exploding in modern days. I mean, hell, Molly was under that category. White Council missed and wasn't able to adapt to the population explosion brought on by industrialization, we know that. Magical talent actually manifests spontaneously, and is noticeable, especially a strong one. My guess would be that both in absolute and relative numbers, more people are "wild sprouts" now, than there were in olden times.
 
uju32 said:
Oh, and evidence of the supernatural durability of a bunch of supernaturals.
Thats literally Wolverine-tier regeneration we see in that scene from a Whampire who took separate shotgun blasts to the ankles and knees. And the other Whamp in the scene doesnt treat it as out of the ordinary.
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Vamps can heal non-Aggravated damage very fast, as long as they have blood to do so.
Spening one or two point of blood or Chi per round can get you from crippled to healthy in less than a minute, if you have the reserves.
 
uju32 said:
Sandstrike Blast does 8 damage in its single person mode at DC5, with a range of 60.

For comparison:
Assault Shotgun is 8L. Range 50.
Rifle is 8L. Range 200.
The axe is STR+3
Greatsword does STR+4L at DC7
Chainsaw does STR+5L at DC8

By comparison, Sandstrike Blast does pretty damn good baseline damage, and you dont need to carry a weapon. Its always available. And its alt-mode does 10L damage to everything in Essence*5 yards radius of the impact point.
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If we can buy or build something better without even really putting our backs into it I consider it a waste of exp. We'd basically be paying for the ability to stealthily carry around a long arm and some explosives, which isn't nothing but also isn't exactly an amazing benefit.

The AoE is theoretically the best part, but how often do we actually want to do that? Only one fight we've gotten in has had a place for a 10 yard radius explosion and that's only if you consider accidentally killing some of the red vampires while fighting with the fomor acceptable.*

In most cases it's just a gun we have to pay essence to draw.

* I don't particularly care about offing some of them, but doing so when we agreed to fight together is different.
DragonParadox said:
Vote closed, let's see what your teacher thinks of the... adaptation of steel skin
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Just out of curiosity: since the style is based on imitating some of the properties of demons itself does he get any insights at his level from seeing Molly play with the same techniques using diabolic essence?
 
BronzeTongue said:
If we can buy or build something better without even really putting our backs into it I consider it a waste of exp. We'd basically be paying for the ability to stealthily carry around a long arm and some explosives, which isn't nothing but also isn't exactly an amazing benefit.
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We are also carrying a weapon that mortals won't understand.

If the police thinks the corpse there was produced by a guy with an industrial sandblaster, the chance of them suspecting Molly is significantly lower than when they find a corpse with bullet-holes or even sword-wounds.

BronzeTongue said:
The AoE is theoretically the best part, but how often do we actually want to do that? Only one fight we've gotten in has had a place for a 10 yard radius explosion and that's only if you consider accidentally killing some of the red vampires while fighting with the fomor acceptable.*
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We could have shot out one of Evil Bob's submarine-cannons while Harry did the other one for example.
We could have hit right in the middle of that Red Court killteam that went after Ebenezer (before jumping into melee of course).
Depending on the distances involved we might have been able to disable Gorfel and his ranged-attacking minions without hitting bystanders?

Edit: Also we can use either version of the Charm to hit a fleeing enemy in the back, something that is very useful at least until we get more movement-speed.
 
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Constructive Convergent of Principles is our, "If we can imagine it, we can build it" charm and we have a 2xp discount. It still costs 18xp though.
 
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