Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

I hope there really wasn't anything following us that could evade the senses of our entire group. Even if there wasn't, I applaud Not a Rabbit's paranoia.

[X] Try to convince her to introduce you to those other spirits, you are going to do this properly... even though it might be a little obvious
 
I don't see anything talking about this being part of the backstory in the ExWoD book. Do you have a citation for it?

Blood and Silk page 14

There is no such thing I can find.

Thousand Hells pages 14-18 state that the Yama Kings stole chunks of the Yin and Yang World to make Yomi Wan as a collective effort, and its since continued growing, both inadvertently, like when a Great Dragon unintentionally displaced a bunch of spirit realms into Yomi Wan, and as the aftermath of events in the mortal world, like after the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.


However. There is no link between the growth of Yomi Wan and the Wan Kuei. The Wan Kuei curse is as far as we know a curse from the August Personage in Jade due to their abandoning/perverting their purpose. There is no machinery producing Wan Kuei in the Hells; its not how it was setup to work.

The YKs have never been powerful enough to mess with stuff on that level anyway.
Else they would have bent their efforts to controlling it and spamming agents to send into the material world.

See above.
 
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[X] Follow Bùshì Tùzǐ to where the other hidden shamans are

With luck we will interrupt a attack in progress.
 
The way she described "licking spoons" it seems more annoying to her than actually satisfactory.

So far she gets by micro-feeding and if she continues that it's as far from "eating people" as vampiric feeding can be, which is generally speaking a good thing. The more she gets used to being fed and full in her power without having to drain a suicidal cop to death or what she would be doing without us, the better.

Being able to just life and thrive without killing or even seriously harming people must be something of a relief, no matter how indoctrinated she is by now.
Last week she propably thought her only alternative to being a proper murdering vampire was to end up like our Skavis goons in Undertown (and propably also kill people on accident anyway).
She's gotten by like that so l far, but she hasn't had a lot of time yet. This sort of thing won't damn her alone, but it isn't helping.

She needs to connect with people, not play hunt them.
I don't really want to take advantage here. Morality aside, it's bad business and unlikely to even be that helpful. Meeting the spirits themselves seems more productive.

[X] Try to convince her to introduce you to those other spirits, you are going to do this properly... even though it might be a little obvious
I assume that's an expansion or something? If ExWoD contradicts it and the specific book it points to for reference to cover things beyond the scope of the rework also disagrees with it then I'm not inclined to assume it carries any weight here sight unseen.
 
I assume that's an expansion or something? If ExWoD contradicts it and the specific book it points to for reference to cover things beyond the scope of the rework also disagrees with it then I'm not inclined to assume it carries any weight here sight unseen.

ExWoD is silent on the question of how the curse on the Wan Xian manifested as far as I can tell. Blood and Silk is the Kindred of the East history book.

ExWoD derives from it, summarising and simplifying on the assumption that people will refer to those sources for the more complete details:

Finally, Tien Lu plucked the last blossom from the Tree of Immortality and three of the four remaining original Wan Xian, resigned tothe coming fire, strode into Heaven before the August Personage of Jade levied his curse upon the rest of the Ten Thousand Immortals. They became the Wan Kuei, the Ten Thousand Demons.

At first only a subtle change came: The August Personage of Jade's tests - which had previously bestowed immortality - twisted in on themselves and became part of Yomi Wan. Where once a mortal might have to travel to the land of the wisest forest spirits and gain their favor, now that mortal had to die with wickedness on his soul and escape the Hell of the Burning Forest with his sanity intact. The Ten Thousand Demons did not breathe, and they had to steal Chi or succumb to death.​
 
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[X] Try to convince her to introduce you to those other spirits, you are going to do this properly... even though it might be a little obvious
 
"The dark that rides the wind, If I knew its name I would be dead. I don't know if it was into you, but I had to make sure if I was going to talk to you."
So... Naagloshii is stalking these streets too. Damn.
I hope so too, there is evil abroad for those who follow the Excelent Archer to slay,
This phrase I didn't understand.
"Death is the act and death is the reason, more I cannot say, but..."
They might be setting up a spirit killer technique. Death is the act, and death is the reason they are killing - to be able to kill us by ritually killing a lot of people and involving some sort of death curse directed at us.

[X] Try to convince her to introduce you to those other spirits, you are going to do this properly... even though it might be a little obvious
-[X] Empathy excellency to convince and console her, and Etiquette excellency for the introductions


@DragonParadox could you explain what "even though it might be a little obvious" means? Sorry, I am missing something. Do you mean that the introduction route would make it easier for forces of evil to find the shamans?
 
So... Naagloshii is stalking these streets too. Damn.

This phrase I didn't understand.

They might be setting up a spirit killer technique. Death is the act, and death is the reason they are killing - to be able to kill us by ritually killing a lot of people and involving some sort of death curse directed at us.

[X] Try to convince her to introduce you to those other spirits, you are going to do this properly... even though it might be a little obvious
-[X] Empathy excellency to convince and console her, and Etiquette excellency for the introductions


@DragonParadox could you explain what "even though it might be a little obvious" means? Sorry, I am missing something. Do you mean that the introduction route would make it easier for forces of evil to find the shamans?
  1. She said there is evil for the Shish to slay, Yu the Excellent Archer is their exemplar
  2. Well if you are dragging your very obvious infernal self with the eternally-magic devouring aura, not to mention the Knight of the Cross to that hiding place, that is going to mark it out
 
@Yog Its come up before, but while I was looking at infernal stuff I took a skin through the soul commerce rules on page 316 of the ExWoD doc. I think just using those the other way around would be the easiest way to handle it if @DragonParadox lets us get into the soul trade as a buyer once we have a hell.

Selling our own to any degree is crazy, and probably bad for balance anyway, but buying is a different matter.

ExWoD is silent on the question of how the curse on the Wan Xian manifested as far as I can tell. Blood and Silk is the Kindred of the East history book.

ExWoD derives from it, summarising and simplifying on the assumption that people will refer to those sources for the more complete details.
ExWoD is only sort of silent, if that were part of the mechanism I'd think it'd come up here:

Bastards of Heaven
Perhaps, then, a better question might be: Why do the Hungry Dead appear at all? Why should a soul that has escaped the clutches of damnation in a place like Yomi Wan, Malfeas, or any of the other various hell- realms in the Spirit World or farthest reaches of the Underworld be able to crawl back into its body and rise again, much less refine itself into a being of super- natural power and even enlightenment?
According to the legends of the Quincunx, once upon a time Heaven set its champions to oppose the horrors of the night – it's a familiar tale, yes? Heaven's divine champions conducted their wars and diploma- cy all across the face of Creation. They fought many enemies of the gods, from wicked spirits to rampaging beasts the size of mountains. In time, they fell to in- fighting. After moving from triumph to triumph, they became idle and indolent. Eventually, they succumbed to the seductions of the enemies of Heaven. The Princ- es of the Earth stole the life-force of their subjects to increase their own majesty, defiled the land to power their rituals, outraged the people, and hurled blasphe- mies and offenses at the gods. Heaven retaliated by re- voking the very breath from the lungs of these heroes, and in its anger hurled a curse upon the world so that its champions would henceforth be drawn from the ranks of the vile and the damned.
Was this the fall of the Exalted? The Dragon-Blood- ed do not know. Surely, it parallels many of their own legends, but then, both the lore of the Terrestrial Exalt- ed and that of the Wan Kuei agrees that history moves in cycles, repeating its triumphs and tragedies. Perhaps the history of the Hungry Dead is the his- tory of the Exalted. Or perhaps the sins of the Chosen
came earlier, and were even more severe.
 
I hope there really wasn't anything following us that could evade the senses of our entire group. Even if there wasn't, I applaud Not a Rabbit's paranoia.
There are a lot of ways to hide from people with no supernatural abilities to find hidden things and people.

I could think of several disciplines a Vampire or a Wan Kuei can use to stalk us and the only realistic chance of noticing it would be Michael's sword cheating.

Even mundane stalking could work, after all while our difficulty on Perception is low, our dicepool is still very small, so we loose contested rolls against someone with high Dex and Stealth even without supernatural support quite easily.

Hell, Olivia, the girl with nothing but a bit of half-controlled notice-me-not, without much in the way of actual skills, can and did sneak up on us.
 
ExWoD is only sort of silent, if that were part of the mechanism I'd think it'd come up here:

I quoted it above. Heaven cursed the Wan Xian, as it says in ExWoD, and part of that curse was the mechanism by which new Wan Xian were made becoming part of the Hells and so making Wan Kuei instead.

That's why it was also a curse using the world, as the tests were part of the world (with world including the spirit realms that are part of the world).

It's just not detailing the precise mechanism by which the curse operated.
 
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[X] Try to convince her to introduce you to those other spirits, you are going to do this properly... even though it might be a little obvious
-[X] Empathy excellency to convince and console her, and Etiquette excellency for the introductions


I wanna see what he'll borne consolation and empathy look like :V
 
I don't think that's how it works.
When you roll a knowledge-ability you roll for how much about that specific creature, spell or other thing you know.
Since Brother D rolled higher, I assume he knows more about that cat.Of course we still have more occult lore in general, and a higher chance to know more than him about any given subject, but in this case we don't.
Im not inclined to argue the matter here. So I'll concede
Or we've encountered a cat version of Isabella, and the Senri is banking on the idea that the novelty will protect them better than groveling. :V
Given SV's everything they might even be right. Sass can alarmingly high on the recruitment priority list around here.

For DF there were exactly five proper Dragons. I'm pretty sure that Ferrovax and Pyrovax are the only two that are still alive.
Lol.

I remember a quote of six Dragons, but I cant find the cite.
The Word of Jim compilation has a quote circa 2011 that there were 3-4 Dragons alive at that time, of which only Ferrovax and Pyrovax have been named. This was post-Siriothrax and post-Tunguska.

Thats 5-6. We have no idea how many there originally in this setting.
Or what happened to the unnamed Great ones who arent confirmed kills.
Maybe they are just asleep. Or withdrawn from the world.

Barely younger than her. She is not an old monster yet, unlike most vampires of any color we have met so far.

She is a girl from a weird environment and with a strange education and she is not as innatly superior to these stupid kids as she thinks she is. And even if she were, she would still have to take her time and understand the people involved to avoid causing more harm than allowed.

This is an opportunity for her to learn something about her almost-peers, as much as hanging our with our friends is, maybe more so snce she has a task here and seems ambitious enough not to want to fuck it up on principle.
Thats precisely the problem.
Go back and read her Interlude. She's a girl who's been deliberately raised to consider humans as beneath her, as resources to be exploited and food to be eaten. It was Leinth her mentor who was trying to instill respect in her.

I'd honestly trust an old monster in that situation better, because most of those who live long enough and remain sane know better.

@BronzeTongue talked about my concerns pretty comprehensively.
I guess it might be realistic for Molly to make mistakes along the line, but that doesnt change that it was a bad set of decisions that reinforce exactly the attitudes we're trying to break her of.

And then there's the moral aspect: Siccing a vampire on a bunch of 14-15 year olds is Morally Wrong.
Especially since you're doing the collective punishment thing.
For an accident.
Eh. A senior Shih helping an Exalted and a Knight is a danger.

A senior Shih being hunted alone by an Akuma and some Wan Kuei minions is dead meat.
This is not his homeground, he was not aware of the threat before we mentioned it and in a straight fight even a good Shih is no match for either an Elder or several decent trained fledgelings, nevermind both.
I dont agree.
This isnt vanilla WoD, this is the Dresdenverse. This threat IS what the Shih are minmaxed against; I expect they are particularly effective against it. Especially since Akuma and Wan Kuei share most of the same vulnerabilities that Blampires do.

A senior Shih is always going to be a present danger to a Wan Kuei posse, and even success in killing him does not preclude suffering crippling damage, in the middle of a city thats not their own.

Do remember that Brother Devshimar is only offering to teach us what he's comfortable with a 17 year old Infernal knowing.
Not everything he knows or can teach. And we dont know what his full repertoire is.
If he has access to Voice of the Yama Kings, say, shit can get real very quickly for a posse.

In this city, even if he doesnt have True Faith, he knows where to get holy water.
And I am reasonably certain that a senior monk who has dedicated decades of his life to this endeavor probably has at least as much True Faith as Dresden does. Possibly more.

Not to mention he lives with a member of the Venatori.

===
We dont actually know that he didnt know.
Dude could read the papers as well as we do, has a lot more experience with this sort of thing, and I suspect he has been cultivating the Asian American community since he got here. But being aware something is wrong isnt the same as pinpointing what is wrong.

EDIT
ExWoD is silent on the question of how the curse on the Wan Xian manifested as far as I can tell. Blood and Silk is the Kindred of the East history book.

ExWoD derives from it, summarising and simplifying on the assumption that people will refer to those sources for the more complete details:

Finally, Tien Lu plucked the last blossom from the Tree of Immortality and three of the four remaining original Wan Xian, resigned tothe coming fire, strode into Heaven before the August Personage of Jade levied his curse upon the rest of the Ten Thousand Immortals. They became the Wan Kuei, the Ten Thousand Demons.

At first only a subtle change came: The August Personage of Jade's tests - which had previously bestowed immortality - twisted in on themselves and became part of Yomi Wan. Where once a mortal might have to travel to the land of the wisest forest spirits and gain their favor, now that mortal had to die with wickedness on his soul and escape the Hell of the Burning Forest with his sanity intact. The Ten Thousand Demons did not breathe, and they had to steal Chi or succumb to death.
I'll look up Blood and Silk later in the evening.

But that passage you just quoted? That describes a curse, my friend.
No machinery involved.
 
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Ok. Ok. So, proper vs. stealthy. IF we do proper, we'll have to evacuate the shamans and probably their families. Thankfully, we do have a safehouse ready for pretty much this exact situation.
Hell, Olivia, the girl with nothing but a bit of half-controlled notice-me-not, without much in the way of actual skills, can and did sneak up on us.
I still say that she's destined to be a sidereal, and this is White God (or Maidens from beyond the veil of death via Samsara) playing silly shenanigans with mysterious ways to arrange us a proper circle. You know, so we actually save instead of unintentionally break Creation.

[X] Try to convince her to introduce you to those other spirits, you are going to do this properly... even though it might be a little obvious
-[X] Empathy excellency to convince and console her, and Etiquette excellency for the introductions
-[X] Text Helen. See if she can shelter the shamans for a couple of days; hers is pretty much the most protected dwelling in town right now, as far as wards go.
--[X] STUNT: The spirit before you is most likely old. It is definitely not human. It is still someone who lost a loved one to predation of the forces of evil. In a swift movement, you cross the distance between you, and put your hand on her shoulder. "I am sorry for your loss; I wasn't here then. I am now. I cannot bring him back for you. I will avenge him. Now, please, help me make sure that others don't have to go through what you experienced. And then we'll get you and them into safety" you say in a consoling tone. Moments later, as you leave the alley to go meet the hiding shamans, you fish out your phone out of your pocket, and text Helen. These might not be Ordos' members, but the principle of the point stands - humans have to stick together.


Going without an introduction is risking blue on blue incident. Better go in the open, then get shamans into protective custody.
 
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I prefer stealthy. Feels like a jerk move to put people in danger so we can save them from it when we don't have to.
 
I'll look up Blood and Silk later in the evening.

But that passage you just quoted? That describes a curse, my friend.
No machinery involved.

It does involve machinery. The tests are that machinery. They tested living mortals and turned them into Wan Xian in the 3rd Age; and in the 4th have been absorbed by Yomi Wan and now turn dead mortals who pass the test of escaping into Wan Kuei.

The curse is what changed that machinery's location and outcome.
 
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I prefer stealthy. Feels like a jerk move to put people in danger so we can save them from it when we don't have to.
They are in danger already. They are hiding, yes, but it's not a given that they'll be able to hide long enough. Better to move them to safety. We made Bane for exactly this reason, and it can hold of a naagloshii.
 
If he has access to Voice of the Yama Kings, say, shit can get real very quickly for a posse.
That works on one target, and that target must be a Spirit, which Wan Kuei are not. Also roll Willpower to resist.

I'm not saying Divsimar couldn't successfully hunt a Wan Kuei, even an experienced one, but he would need to be well-prepared or very lucky.
This is not his city either and he is not on a hunt here.

I would say that generally the Shih should be either in a numerically superior party to fight Wan Kuei, or they need overwhelming advantages, such as fighting during the day in an area where they can destroy the cover or something similar.

In a fair fight he just is too mortal. The Wan Kuei can heal wounds, he can use his Chi much easier, he can soak lethal, etc.
Even the best Shih can only use a very little Chi and they hurt themselves for every 2 Chi spend per scene. Even if Divsimar had all the Qiao at high levels, he couldn't use much at once.


An enemy just needs a single shot with any common pistol and Divsimar is as good as out of a fight.
 
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