Also holy shit, I just noticed that Winter was kidnapping and training child soldiers in preparation for the Ultimate Showdown of Final Destiny in Battle Ground, which okay, Mab your fucking days are numbered. Hooooolllleeeey shit. That's up there with Lara murdering a bunch of Practitioners and getting away with it in terms of karma houdinis, given how Harry in Battle Ground sees the child soldiers and "isn't sure that's a bad thing".
???
1)Mab does not kidnap child soldiers.
She levies them, from tribes and groups with affiliation to Winter.
Military tribute is their contribution to the war at the Outer Gates, as detailed in the Cold Case short story.
2)Literally recent human custom by immortal standards.
Medieval Ages military training started at 7 for male children in the military class, and they would deploy with their knights.
The Royal Navy enlisted cabin boys as young as 8 into the early 19th century; some of them even got as far as becoming admirals.
The youngest Medal of Honor recipient in the US was a drummer boy in the American Civil War who was put on the list at 11, and actually received the medal at 13.The second youngest was 16 and got it in 1897, less than a hundred and ten years away from 2006. The youngest in WW2 was a 17 year old Marine.
The whole idea of child soldiers being a bad thing to be avoided is a fairly recent occurrence in human society, even in the rich West.
And its something thats regularly ignored whenever shit comes to the crunch.
See China in WW2, or many conflicts in Africa and Latin America in the 20th century.
They still rely on Elder Vampires to survive as a faction.
A new-made bloodpack will be both weak in personal combat and need some serious education on the supernatural world.
A pack like that can be killed by the local Warden, hunted down by a group of Fey or even killed by Whampires and a few of their pawns.
Without the personal power of the Red King and the Lords of Outer Night backing them up most individual Reds just aren't that threatening to the supernatural community and if they try extremly dangerous and visible stuff like mass-transforming humans into fresh vamps with minimal self-control, they will get the boot from other local powers.
Replacing a dictator or a drug-boss with another one doesn't make things better.
Replacing a Methusela with a bunch of quarreling Ancilla will definitly make them far less capable of surviving.
I think you overestimate the requirements. Reds are not kueijin; they dont take years and decades to mature.
Bianca St Claire was apparently young as fuck for a Red Court vampire when Dresden lit a fire under her ass and she started seriously accumulating power.
It was just a year and half between Storm Front, when she was basically running a high end brothel, and Grave Peril, where she had become a sorceress and margrave of the Red Court, as well as a pivotal part of their expansion plans. At least its not the Blacks. Constance Bushnell/"Drulinda" became a master Black Court vampire in no more than a year after running away from home.
The Reds use team-based mass-centric combat strategies, not individual champions, and can replace their losses fast.
The battles we see mentioned in canon dont appear to hinge on Elder Vampire powers.
Elders are important, but there's a reason it took the bloodline curse doing a simultaneous TPK to break the Red Court.
Strongly disagree. Thats literally the problem with the drug cartels in Mexico; the US took out the old capos, and they were replaced with hungry young turks. The net violence rate has actually increased. Breaking them up is great if your aim is just to stop them waging expansionist war, not so much if you want to reduce human suffering.
This is a problem that requires a lot more than just shoot them and the problem will resolve itself.
Especially since the Reds have been around for centuries, if not millenia. We know fuckall about what other measures they have in reserve or are sitting on; the RPG and Changes implies they had some gods imprisoned, but that has not been addressed in detail.
I concede the point about the Red King not being a central figure like Mab. I appear to have mistaken his power to be equivalent to Lord Raith's anti-magic bullshit.
However, given the number of people already dying daily to the Red Court's predation, I'll say they've already opened the can of worms by matching multiple WMDs worth of kilodeath. Them trying to escalate further by taking sarin gas to Chicago is just asking for them to be wiped out with escalation that they cannot match. They wipe out a large American city, America and everybody else wipes out every last Rhampire. Humanity can take a lot more punishment than any mortal world-based supernatural faction and they know it and act accordingly. This isn't a MAD situation and everybody in the know knows it.
1)Lord Raith's antimagic field is allegedly something he got by making a deal with someone or something; Old God or Outsider.
It is not, to the best knowledge of the White Council's premiere hitman, an organic ability he developed.
2)Literally no evidence for the numbers you are claiming.
Yes, supernatural violence claims lives every day. Significant numbers? Probably. How
many, we dont know.
We have no reliable numbers.
3)The US as a whole is nowhere as important in the supernatural world as it is IRL; the US and Canada combined have the population base to support fewer wizards than West Africa. Never mind India or China.
Keep that in mind.
1. I don't think it takes all that much rationality to run the numbers and realize you're gonna die if you step into the mortal world and get debuffed by God and dogpiled by all your many many enemies. We're never given a single hint of IC proof, explicit or implicit, that Ethniu's gonna get the villain-turned-friend power downgrade treatment as soon as she's done beating everyone's asses. The very idea that she'll get the same treatment Odin got is fanon, and contradicted by her actions and deeds.
2. Exactly. Ethniu rules the Fomor, they do as she says, and the one person she loathes beyond all others is Mab. Why would she, in all her anger and pride, lower herself to deal with someone much weaker than her, who she also hates? More proof of the slapdash way Ethniu and the Fomor were inserted into the story.
3. I don't disagree that much of what's in the story isn't measured in biggatons, and that only confuses me more. People in Dresden Files are extremely limited in very perplexing ways, throwing around all sorts of impressive words and showing very very little to back them up. Probably a symptom of the genre being Urban Fantasy and not Epic Fantasy, but that just means people walking out of Epic Fantasy (like the Exalted) have all that more of an advantage. A super eye that makes unimportant people die and local real estate prices crash is cool but very much not comparable to a nuke that makes everyone die and local real estate disappear (I wonder, if Molly sets off a nuke, does her power make it Agg damage?)
4. Problem is, Ethniu's banter is the only IC word we have explaining her power level. Nobody bothers to explain, and maybe because they can't, why she's somehow the 900-pound gorilla in the room. Even if we can't take her word as absolute truth, it's the best we've got, and given how relevant her power is to the entire battle you'd figure Odin would've just told everyone that she'll run out of power soon if that were true. He'd definitely be one to know given his own circumstances, so him charging Ethniu while yelling Leeroy Jenkins! seems pretty, uh, odd if that were true.
1)Victor Sells could have mailed those kaiju scorpions of his to his victims, and have them poisoned discreetly. Instead he had to explode their chests with a death magic ritual. The Denarians went out of their way to tempt fate by hiring Dresden to find the missing Shroud of Turin, instead of literally any other investigators in Chicago.
Papa Raith went to a complicated scheme to murder Maggie's kids instead of simply hiring hitmen to have him and Thomas shot.
Ethniu came to a peace conference to boast and lay down an ultimatum.
Instead of simply opening with a Pearl Harbor-style attack, she gave everyone warning and time to go home and prepare.
Its been a near constant feature of the series that people using black magic, or influenced by Nemesis, or just who have been able to behave with impunity for decades, exhibit poor decisionmaking skills.
Ethniu was not sane.
2)Because Mab rules Winter, and Winter is the setting superpower. Ethniu for all her personal power, could not touch the corporate and institutional influence that Mab wielded. And there's probably also behind the scenes stuff that hasnt been explained. Just like we dont know key stuff behind some of the events of Proven Guilty and Dead Beat.
I mean, its not a coincidence that they chose to stage this attack in midsummer, when Mab was at her weakest.
Titania and Mab are of equivalent power, but Mab is the one who has been commanding the war at the Outer Gates.
3)They are all playing in the White God's sandbox. His Rules.
A super eye that can kill almost anything is a pretty OP superweapon under those rules. The setting already has enough in the way of mass death modalities for killing mortals and mooks, from Titania and Mab being able to work major weather phenomena to Ebenezar setting off volcanos and earthquakes to the Denarians spreading plagues.
4)Ethniu was wearing literally Legendary armor made of legendary materials.
As in, noone knew how to replicate it, not even the svartalfar, who are the premiere magical artisans of the setting. It allowed her to tank blows that would cripple or kill others.
Exactly! You'd notice when Michael shows up with Amoracchius in hand, standard procedure isn't for his enemies to throw in the towel and head home 'cause a Knight of the Cross popped up. Remember, most wielders of the Swords don't even survive a single night, with Jim saying 'that being a good person didn't necessarily mean you were up to the task of fighting demons.' Nicodemus killed over a hundred and fifty himself in traditional combat. Knights of the Cross are brave, are strong, and are almost all dead by very unnatural causes.
Many items in this setting have conceptual weight. This does not actually matter as much as it sounds, because being conceptually deadly to someone just means that you can actually hurt them. The Swords give the Knights a chance, but that's not a certainty of surviving against deadly, experienced, stronger, and faster enemies. The Eye let Ethniu take Mab off the field with a one-hit KO, but still had to recharge and ended up short-circuited by rain and knocked outta her head by Lara. The Noose gives Nicodemus the best defense we've ever seen, asides from the minor fact of being a weak point bigger than Achilles' heel; one question asking about his vulnerabilities and Molly could spread his weak point worldwide.
Once again, everyone's losing their minds over these legendary items of incredible power! Ignoring the fact that everyone knows how to deal with most of these things already (shoot the Knights from range, literally just dodge the Eye or wait for the cooldown to tag the boss, just grab the noose and fucking yank it, etc.)
1)Correction:
Most Knights only need a Sword for a night or a few days, then the crisis passes and the Sword moves on. Thats not the same thing as most Knights dont survive wielding it for a night.
And most enemies dont turn and go home because they are stupid.
2)Nicodemus has been around for two thousand years. Thats a lot of time to kill people.
How many he actually killed, we dont know.
Dude regularly tracks down and destroys Church records every couple decades, after all.
3)This is inaccurate.
Very few items shown on screen in the Dresdenverse have conceptual weight; I suspect I could count them all on my hands and feet and have digits left over. Off the top of my head, the three Swords, the Athame, the five Grail items, the Blackstaff.
3) See Murphy at Chitchen Itza.Nobody knows how to deal with a Sword that thinks the situation warrants it, because suddenly the Sword bearer starts doing stuff like aim-dodging, cutting psychic mental attacks at range with a swing of their blade, and decapitating Lords of Outer Night. The whole freaking Red Court tried and failed at Chitchen Itza.
And Anduriel, Nicodemus' Fallen cringed back and shut the fuck up when Dresden was carrying one on his back while strangling Nicodemus with one hand.
Furthermore, even without the Sword, some Knights are certified Terrifying(TM).
Harry calls Michael the Fist of God for a reason, including the time in Grave Peril when he took on most of a hall full of Reds barehanded and was literally ragdolling them.
Do not blob up when we know for fact that poison-clouds were a part of the plan to attack us and our friends.
Spread out a bit.
You still gotta take out the vampires though.
Sure, something worse might come through, but then you gotta take that on.
When the status quo is not acceptable, then you change it until it becomes such.
Lower, but it might get boosted by Sword-shenenigans.
We've seen him roll True Faith before, it wasn't 5.
You do not even think of removing the vampires unless you have a plan for the aftermath and can implement it.
Molly and Usum have a headful of memories about what happens in those sorts of situations.
Molly will be strongly disincentivized to repeat those mistakes.
Essentially Dresden Files is full of glass cannons, where everyone who is anyone is capable of putting out vastly more damage than they can tank, and the survival strategy almost always boils down to "perfect or die" in direct confrontation.
Nonmortals can be quite damage resistant.
I believe I've done things like cite the ghoul that fled with one arm and one leg, instead of being catatonic with the pain of a pair of traumatic amputations. Or Lara Raith walking out of an explosion to eat the Whampire who tried to kill her.
Also? Like I said upthread, Ethniu had Legendary gear.
What would in Exalted terms be Artifact NA armor. She could tank arbitrarily huge amounts of damage while her confidence was high. Self-reinforcing loop. Take away the armor, and she'd be a lot more vulnerable to a death of a thousand cuts.
There are large numbers of agressively predatory supernaturals (vampires, various fae, phobophagic spirits ect.) all over the place, quite a few of whom regard humans as ambulatory snacks and chew toys, the idea that the death toll isn't rather large blatantly contradicts what we see in the books.
The conviction that regular people will mess everything up is born from most groups being elitists who won't actually share important information because it may reduce their power. The White Council for instance claims total authority over all human magic users and runs around murdering anyone who breaks their laws, but doesn't actually put much effort into informing people of the laws and why they exist in the first place.
Literally in this quest we have Daedelus doing dumb shit because the Library of Congress refused to give them even basic knowledge about the supernatural world.
Regular people aren't equipped to deal with the supernatural because those who might give them the needed tools to do so adamantly refuse to share. With access to information on the supernatural they can probably make decision which aren't any dumber than a lot of the pre-existing humanish factions.
The fact that material based monster factions are so concerned about the masquerade indicates what they think is the likely result of mortals actually getting organised. Further as demonstrated by the fate of the Black Court the nastier supernatural factions can in fact be fucked over without the world suddenly ending for mysterious reasons.
The presumption that humans will fuck shit up comes from observed human behavior.The term witch hunt became a perjorative for good reasons. We literally had educated human clergy making shit up, writing it down, forging support documents, and having it be used as justification for centuries of torture-murder. Like this:
en.m.wikipedia.org
Daedalus is a case in point.
They started out by attempting to blackmail a wizard into working for them with criminal charges they knew to be false, when they could easily have hired him by picking up the phone book and paying consultancy rates.
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Strongly disagree.
There is often a presumption by players that other people in the setting are idiots, and we are the only ones seeing stuff clearly. That usually isnt true. If the fucking wizards are letting vamps run around instead of genociding them with a curse or something similar, there's usually nonstupid reasons for it.
We're Exalted. Impossible tasks are supposed to be doable for us.
But that doesnt make them easy, or something to be approached cavalierly. Because Consequences are a thing.
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No, I dont agree.
Belief in magic and the supernatural was widespread until relatively recently; it still is pretty common outside the West, where most of the world's population lives. Every area had its own stories and traditions. Mab literally did deals with the Brothers Grimm to spread faerie stories, complete with fae customs and weaknesses.Did nothing against organized supernaturals.
Like I said, the Black Court literally grew in strength all through the supposed persecution of the unholy by the Inquisition.
And humans being what they are, you're going to see massive abuses and atrocities aimed at other people.
Nevermind the significant portion of Humanity that will promptly attempt to cut deals for personal benefit.
I mean, do you think the Kims in North Korea will not start investigating an ascension ritual?
Hell, forget the Kims; there's plenty of politicians and business people in the West that would seek personal advantage.
Literally canon for this quest that the US natsec community tried to weaponize magic in the 1960s and it required the Knights of the Cross to clean up the disaster.
