COMMENTARY
-Amazing how many people know better than to pick a fight with a skinwalker.
Not amazing, the other word. Predictable.
On the one hand, people knowing that one of these things is avout will put people on their guard,
That said, word getting around about a naagloshii in Chicago is going to get back to the naagloshii sooner or later.
Possibly sooner.
-Warden regional commander for the eastern US, with four or five subordinates. Possibly Canada as well.
They're sure you'll be fine. The Council has your back, yeah?
-Recluse Poisonings.
Victims are exclusively single adults living alone, with elementary-school age relatives.
Given the lack of an overt magic signature, and the consistent manner of death, its probably not an entropy curse.
Either alchemy, or a magic creature.
Wonder if Harry or Murphy will get desperate enough to ask help.
I get the impression that if we take the Ordo Lebes action next turn, this will come to our attention.
-The common element in the Recluce poisonings is John C Haines Elementary, which is a minority school.
According to USNews, the student body is around 600, with a composition of like 80-something percent Asian and Asian-Pacific, 16% Black, 2% Hispanic and less than 1% mixed race.
That means the Recluce Poisonings are probably Asian victims. Which means, given the lack of a magic signature to indicate magic use, and the way everything on them died? We are looking at either shen, or possibly a Jade Court vampire feeding on chi.
Which makes it Molly's business.
Nice deep cut
@DragonParadox
-Harry has known since at least Dead Beat that Mouse was sapient, when he executed Cassius on his orders. And explicitly relied on Mouse as a legally admissible witness in Turn Coat to identify Peabody.
Its just not been rubbed in his face quite so abruptly.
-Speaking of Samuel Peabody, behold the laws of unintended consequences.
This is something to keep in mind when next people propose significant, farsweeping projects.
-I dont get the Frederick the Second reference.
What does the Stupor Mundi have to do with being a Warden?
I do have to say that points at significantly better education levels than I assumed for the older ghouls.
-2, 5. 2^2 × 5^5. Prime numbers. Interesting.
-The city god is certainly something to investigate. Carefully.
Instantiating a city god for the third biggest city in the United States, that sits on both the Great Lakes and a major tributary of the Mississipi river system, would be a very big deal on multiple levels, political and mystical, and would have all sorts of ramifications and unintended consequences.
Not something to be done lightly.
Dresden study rolls 4 sux at DC7 on 7d10 .Great.
Molly Implications rolls 8 sux at DC8 on 18d10 Int + Occult. Legendary.
Nightmare rolls passed
@DragonParadox
Going to note that Transcendent Lord of Flies' -3DC applies here, because this was part of an attempt to protect and provide for people in an urban blight or wilderness. Molly Implications should have been rolled at DC5 (8 - TLF 3), which would mean that she should have
14 successes.
Double Legendary, and only 1 sux short of a triple Legendary.
This took Dresden what... 4 hours? I say we pay him a cool 4000 and call it a day. 1000 dollars an hour for help on a personal project seems fair. High compared to his PI rate, but tiny compared to the cost to hire literally any other Warden.
$1000/hr?
Thats BigLaw associate money. Dresden wont take it.
Not at this stage of our relationship; not for a consultation.
...I will point out that our Essence comes from the Yozi, that for cannon ExWoD, corrupted the Yomi Wan.
Yeah. So making a God of Chicago may, just may, not end as we expect it to.
Yeah.
Its worth recalling that Chicago has a lot of aspects for good and ill. Industry and art and trade and people, but also organized crime and political corruption. A god that faithfully reflected everything about Chicago equally would be....yeah.
And of course, there's also the fact that a city god of a major city would be a key target for a lot of people to attempt to subvert.
What precisely prevents someone else trying to eat a god for a powerup like they tried with Arwan? Or Nicodemus from attempting to do to a city god what he tried to do to the Archive? Or worse, Nemesis having a go?
If your god doesnt have defenses against that sort of thing, you're just handing enemies a weapon.
Demonreach evidently has defenses against that sort of subversion, but Demonreach is not a god.
Its a lot more limited than that.
Building something with the incorruptibility of Demonreach and the freedom of action of a city god will take some doing.
So while a City God is definitely something to investigate, the key word is investigate. Carefully.
Going by current rates, Harry probably charges $100-$150 per hour. Paying him an order of magnitude over his current rates would probably make him very uncomfortable. $200-$400 an hour for magical consulting is probably something we could convince him to accept without too much argument.
Also, completely agree that forging the god of Chicago is a great project.
Yeah, thats reasonable.
We either attempt to get him to accept something not too far off what his current fees are?
Or we pay him in kind, in something that he cant refuse.
Didn't we at some point reveal to white council that they are infiltrated?
I think its been obvious since at least the events of Proven Guilty, if not since the that they have a major leak.
If Dresden noticed, you can be damn sure that older, wiser people have drawn the correct conclusions from a bunch of events.
Ebenezer certainly did. So did the Gatekeeper.
Discounting how many practitioners would piss themselves seeing it go down, I'd be concerned about the security issues of making it easy to get in and out of our hell in a city linked to so many places and with powerful reps from so many supernatural powers in it.
To be safe I think we'd need to pick up the transit control perk for the hell or put some serious thought into how to manage the border from our side. Definitely worth looking into though, since it'd make our hell more relevant without taking us out of the mortal world.
I think its safe to assume that our Hell will have a Way connecting here.
Chicago is a magical crossroads after all.
Managing the border from the inside of our Hell/Kingdom is just a matter of taking Panopticon/Hellish Security and Lord of the Land as mandatory features.
Yes, you could create greater wonders that make lesser works of mortal arts quicker to create or circumstantially more powerful. More rarely it could go the other way with some hard won insight of alchemy or enchanting applying to say creating a golem or raising an emanation.
Making difficulty-reducing focuses for psychic numina is an Enchantment 1 thing.
We could outfit the entire Ordo Lebes at will with Enchantment Path alone.
It would certainly help Olivia Dancer-girl with controlling her invisibility.
