And also fuck the rules, when we see phobophages feeding on children we will certainly not let them do their thing, just like we would kill a Fetch if we met one on the street.
I know you are in love with the status quo, but that goes a bit far.
1)I didnt say they were friendly, I said they were empowered by Law.
And Mouse recognized their claim and was unable to stop them harassing Maggie.
Good boy, Mouse.
So it took me only a couple of minutes to walk down a utility staircase into the basement of the big cat exhibit, and from there to open the door to an old, old, old staircase made of stone and slick with water that went into the building's unlit subbasement.
At the top of the stairs, I turned to Mouse and said, "Don't be afraid. I got this."
I was kind of lying. Maybe I didn't have it. Maybe the Book was wrong. Maybe I'd have an attack. Maybe the haunts would just beat me up. There were enough of them.
Mouse seemed to sense my uncertainty. His expression shifted and he whirled to face the haunts following me, baring his teeth and letting out the kind of rumble you hear only from really old cars and maybe tractors.
The haunts drew up short. Their leader, the girl with the tear-streaked face, faced him and sneered. "Guardian," she said. "You know the Law. We are within our rights."
Mouse growled lower and took slow steps forward, until he stood before the haunt, almost eye to eye. His fur did that thing where light comes from it, silvery blue sparkles that glitter across the very tips of the hairs.
If the haunt was impressed, it didn't show it. "I know the Law. As should you." It pointed a finger past him, at me. "That is my prey. Stand aside."
I really needed Mouse not to get involved. If he did, I couldn't break the haunt's empty-eyed pursuit.
"It's okay, boy," I said. "I got this."
Sudden rage filled me. My Shadow was a creature of evil the likes of which I had seldom faced. It was trying to get the haunts to violate natural Law, to physically attack a little girl. Certainly, if they did, I could intervene—but only by hurting innocent children who had committed no sin but to be unprepared to face spiritual threats they had likely never imagined.
My deepest growl rumbled from my chest and into the air with my breath, beginning the work of disrupting that dark energy and serving as a warning to the haunts at the same time.
The weight of small human bodies had begun to shift, but they settled back again at the sound of my growl. For a moment, I thought that they might break and leave Maggie in peace—but then their leader, the girl with the tear-streaked face, turned to me and sneered.
"Guardian," she said. "You know the Law. We are within our rights."
I growled lower. I needed to be closer to them to protect them from the influence of My Shadow. I took slow steps forward, growling out more of my breath, until I stood before the haunt, almost eye to eye. I was working energy in earnest now. Excess power skipped along the tips of my hairs in a glow of blue starlight, and the dark energy once more recoiled before light.
The haunt hadn't even realized what was happening. It thought I was trying to threaten it. "I know the Law. As should you," it said. It pointed the child's finger past me, at Maggie. "That is my prey. Stand aside."
I could send these creatures fleeing with a roar, but that would only scatter them. It wouldn't stop them from continuing their pursuit later.
Mouse, who has canonically challenged the second in command of Winter and the guard dog of Hades. Who has threatened to kamikaze people harassing his charges. That Mouse stood aside from spirits harassing a ~10 year old.
Consider what natural Laws are in force.
Its the same as when the Leanansidhe claimed Law empowered her with regards to Dresden in Grave Peril and Michael Carpenter had to stand aside.
2)Haunts are invisible to adults. Adults dont even remember them.
There is no current indication that Molly will see them either, or be able to touch them if she could.
We are an Exalt, not a creator entity. We'll be a big fish Soon(TM), but there's a bigass pond out there.
IIRC Bianca St. Claire was about 200. The way she got magic fast may imply that she had a solid talent for it from the beginning, but never did anything with it until she got motivated for all the wrong reasons. Thats stupid, but thats plausible.
Blacks IIRC specifically can grow in power real fast if they can eat lots of people they dont need to age much in theory. Most dont, because going on a killing spree gets a heavyweight dropped on your head your power growth wont save you from, But if theyre smart or lucky, (with Drulinda i assume lucky) they can get pretty far pretty fast.
Do you have a citation I can check? Because I checked before that post, and couldnt find any evidence of her age.
I know there's text evidence that there had been Red Court victims buried at her mansion since at least the 1920s, but there was no indication that it was Bianca who was there at the time.
As you guys may have guessed I was busy today, normally I would try to get something up this evening, but the next update is going to be really complicated since it's magical extraction team versus Greater Akuma on prepared ground so I'm going to have to regretfully leave this for tomorrow.
In the meantime though you guys might want to think of what you are going to make for Odin and company since you did promise him vehicle improvements. As a bonus you get to keep an example of whatever you make. So if anyone has an idea for a stealth main battle tank drive around in now is the time.
Depends on their needs.
I doubt they're going to be fighting Jotun or Ick demon-tier opposition on the regular, so they need shit for the day to day.
So probably a van or SUV chassis.
Einherjar squads are 5-man, so its at least three rows to seat 1 squad plus their gear, and have space for tagalongs. Think one of the big US SUVs; the US State Department traditionally uses armored Chevy Suburbans for the role.
Or, alternatively, think along the lines of a GM Savanna or a Mercedes Sprinter van if its only for urban use.
Core options
▪Electric power plant with high capacity battery.
▪4 electric motors, one to each wheel.
▪Individually steered wheels for maneuverability.
▪All terrain capacity.
▪Runflat tires
▪STANAG 4569 Level 2 vehicle armoring scheme or better, up to Level 4.
▪CBRN air filter.
▪Hardened navigation, computer and communication systems, including satcom.
▪Night vision systems.
▪Forward reinforcement for ramming, with relevant symbology in the bullbars.
▪Vehicle to power systems where the vehicle batteries can be tapped to power external items
▪Heated AND cooled seats. With massaging functions
Sorcery Options
Tier 1 alchemical ritual for paint that gives it Arcane 2 or better (benchmark is the Enchantment 1 ritual for a coat that gives Arcane 2). Tier 3 alchemy for alchemical superalloy hull metal for extra durability.
Magic wards in the vehicle structure(have Gard or one of her sisters provide this for incorporation).
Blessing of the Wood Dragon on the battery and car to make sure it never runs out of power, and that the vehicle doesnt require maintenance and is largely immune to techbane.
Anything beyond that is a bonus.
Bonus Options
▪Active camoflage systems.
▪Amphibious drive for fording deep water.
▪Level 6 STANAG 4569 protection.
▪Summoning/banishment/containment circles in the headlights or roof-mounted spotlights.
▪Roof-mounted laser or heavy railgun running off the vehicle powerplant.
▪Rechargeable EMP/microwave projector to disable enemy vehicles.
Minimum Requirements:
▪Alchemy 3
▪Ancient Sorcery: Blessing of the Wood Dragon for battery and vehicle regen, eliminating the need for refuelling and repair/maintenance, as well as conferring some additional protection against anti-tech spells.
Optional
▪Ancient Sorcery: Blessing of the Earth Dragon for extra armoring
▪Ancient Sorcery: Blessing of the Air Dragon to make the vehicle lighter.
I mentioned the possible addition of magic because I thought it would be interesting to do a group project with practitioners older than any mortal wizard, not because it's necessary or because we couldn't make something useful without it.
3. The US has very few wizards, relatively speaking. The US also has one of the largest standing armies in the world, which is enough to kill pretty much any supernatural faction. Not even counting the soft power the US can wield to destroy actual human-eating monsters; very few will fight the US and many will when it comes to dealing with actual vampires. Not to mention the US has a pretty good track record of reacting very disproportionately to anyone who attacks America.
This could become a double-edged sword, with sufficient application of mind control. What happens if the president and the joint chiefs get mindwhammied, and start spreading whatever vector the mind control is spread through throughout the military? Someone could rather quickly take over the government with just a few well-placed emails.
Do the major supernatural powers keep tabs on that sort of thing? I.E. make sure that someone's not pulling mind control shenanigans on mundane governments in order to cause chaos and destruction? Because otherwise something like, say, Nemesis could get into something like an SSBN or a missile silo, and cause catastrophic damage. IIRC Nemesis does weaken somewhat the more people are Nfected, but there wouldn't need to be that many people targeted, particularly for something like a missile silo. If they also have means to obfuscate what's going on until after they can launch…
Actually, what vectors do we know that Nemesis can spread through?
I know objects can be used, but could something like a voicemail or a text be used to Nfect someone?
This could become a double-edged sword, with sufficient application of mind control. What happens if the president and the joint chiefs get mindwhammied, and start spreading whatever vector the mind control is spread through throughout the military? Someone could rather quickly take over the government with just a few well-placed emails.
Mind control by email? We don't see magic be used though technology in DF.
We certainly could with Golden years tainted black. The hard part would be for our cyberdevils to spam their email. But we could basically make them hate whoever or whatever we want.
But I can't think of anyone else in DF that could manage that. Mind control usually requires physical proximity or at least enchanting something that the victim touches.
Mind control by email? We don't see magic be used though technology in DF.
We certainly could with Golden years tainted black. The hard part would be for our cyberdevils to spam their email. But we could basically make them hate whoever or whatever we want.
But I can't think of anyone else in DF that could manage that.
Nemesis, presumably. They haven't to my knowledge demonstrated any issues with techbane, and I doubt that they don't understand the sheer potential for devastation that that sort of weapon has. Also, could something like a voicemail work, or even a printed out photo of a Nemesis-imbued letter or other object?
Also, would a voicemail or a recording of someone Nfected be sufficient?
Just how easily can Nemesis be spread?
Blessing of the Wood Dragon on the battery and car to make sure it never runs out of power, and that the vehicle doesnt require maintenance and is largely immune to techbane.
Anything beyond that is a bonus
That particular bit of ancient sorcery isn't exactly that high of a priority in its own right, and 10 exp is a lot of move around in the schedule just to pay off Odin.
If Nemesis could spread that easily it would already control the world. The outsiders have no investment in the status quo and so wouldn't hesitate to use large numbers of ordinary people if they could. The mere fact that Nemesis hasn't seized direct control of large populations and used military weapons to attack Winter, suggests there are some limitations in play that stop it simply cosplaying a Chaos Cult.
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1. Mab kidnaps child soldiers from humans.
Mab delenda est.
2. I'm sorry, are you actually trying to justify child soldiers? Because let me tell you, if Molly hears a whisper of this shit, she isn't gonna go "oh that's fine, we were doing the same shit 100 years ago, go right ahead with stealing pre-teens and training them to die for you Mab", Molly's gonna pull out her sword and start killing.
While we should avoid presentism, we also shouldn't try to justify any of the horrible shit that happened in the past. Not to mention Mab isn't running a recruitment drive with teenagers showing up lying about their age to fight for her cause, Mab's stealing kids, indoctrinating them, and sending them out to die for her. Both are bad, but one calls for the local Magical Girl of Nuclear Hellfire to make crystal clear that shit's unaccpetable.
1)I call bullshit on that.
Its a repeated, reiterated plot point that the Fae cannot directly fuck with people who do not have previous dealings with them.
And that they have to balance the scales. Its why they are so big on offering deals. They cant just steal kids.
Furthermore, Battlegrounds!Harry is Winter Knight. He's a Big Deal in Winter. His former apprentice is Winter Lady.
If Winter had suddenly started kidnapping children, he is one of the people who would be in a place to know.
He's who other people would ask.
The fact that the first he's hearing of this is in rumors from the Paranet suggest that its wrong.
Especially since we DO know that the Fomor have been kidnapping children.
===
2) My brother in Christ*snerk* canon Molly is the person doing the recruitment for Winter in her position as Winter Lady.
Yes, really.
Because its necessary.
Its an explicit plot point in Cold Case that Winter sacrifices their children and the children of their tribute nations to go fight at the Outer Gates so everyone else gets to live their lives without Outsiders eating their faces.
I quote:
"Time waits for no one, Lady Molly," Mab said. She had crossed the room to stand across from me over poor Carlos. "Not even the Queens of Faerie. Collect the tribute." I gave him a last kiss on the forehead and rose to leave. But I paused at the door to consider, to consult Winter Law.
I had never really considered what the tribute was. But it was there in the law. I turned slowly and stared at Mab in horror.
"Their children," I whispered. "You want me to take their children."
"Yes."
"Their children," I said. "You can't."
"I won't. You will."
I shook my head. "But …"
"Lady Molly," Mab said gently. "Consider the Outer Gates."
I did.
Winter Law showed me a vivid image. An endless war fought at the far borders of reality. A war against the pitiless alien menace known simply as the Outsiders. A war fought by millions of Fae, to prevent the Outsiders from invading and destroying reality itself. A war so long and bitter that bones of the fallen were the topography of the landscape. It was why the Winter Court existed in the first place, why we were so aggressive, so savage, so filled with lust and the need to create more of our kind.
"You're filling me with a hunger I can never feed," I whispered.
"We cannot expect our people to bear a burden that we do not," Mab replied, her tone level, implacable. "You will learn to endure it."
"You want me to take children," I hissed.
"I am fighting a war," Mab said simply. "Fighting a war requires soldiers."
"But they're children. Children like my little brothers and sisters. And you want me to carry them away."
"Of course. It is the ideal time to learn, to be trained until they come into their strength and are ready to do battle," Mab said. "It is the only way to prepare them for what is to come. The only way to give them a chance to survive the duties I require of them."
"How long?" I asked through clenched teeth. "How long will they be gone?"
"Until they are no longer needed," Mab said.
"Until they're killed, you mean," I said. "They're never going back home."
"Your outrage is irrelevant," Mab said. Her voice was flat, calm, filled with undeniable logic. "I have condemned millions of the children of Winter to a life of violence and death in battle, because it must be done. If we fail in our duty, there will be no home to which they can return. There will be no mortal world, safe and whole for your brothers and sisters."
"But …" My protest trailed off weakly.
"If you have an alternative, I would be more than willing to consider it."
Silence stretched. "I don't," I said quietly.
"Then do your duty," Mab said. I opened the door and looked back at her. "I don't yet," I said, and I said it hard. "This isn't over."
Mab gave me the slow blink again. Then she inclined her head by a fraction of an inch, her expression pensive.
I turned and left the broken form of Carlos Ramirez behind me to steal away the Miksani's children.
And I couldn't stop crying.
Winter and the rest of the fae have paid this price for thousands of years on behalf of everyone else.
If I ever seem a little impatient with people pontificating about how Winter is evil and should be destroyed, this is why.
1. What I meant was that Lord Raith is big part of why the White Council hasn't picked a hundred Whampires and killed them to make an example of what happens when you cross the line, because they're wary of his capabilities. He's the White Court's biggest deterrence.
2. We know the Red Court is a worldwide organization but also particularly strong in South America. At least 100,000 people go missing in all of SA per year, and even if only a fraction foes to the Red Court we know they've both been operating for centuries and have no qualms with killing to feed themselves. Not a big leap to estimate they've killed hundreds of thousands over the course of their existence, which is absolutely WMD-levels of deaths.
3. The US has very few wizards, relatively speaking. The US also has one of the largest standing armies in the world, which is enough to kill pretty much any supernatural faction. Not even counting the soft power the US can wield to destroy actual human-eating monsters; very few will fight the US and many will when it comes to dealing with actual vampires. Not to mention the US has a pretty good track record of reacting very disproportionately to anyone who attacks America.
So yes, the US as a whole is a major part of why the supernatural world is both terrified of humanity and isn't willing to shatter the Masquerade.
1)I honestly cant say.
We never see Papa Raith at anything near the peak of his power, only after 35 years of starvation after fucking with the wrong wizard. It would probably be unfair for me to make any conclusions based on that.
2)I'll take your word for the claim that 100k go missing every year in South America.
Now account for the dead of natural causes, those who were found after being declared missing, those who intentionally tried to vanish and start a new life elsewhere(or vanished with family trying to disappear), and those who were killed because of purely human action(as opposed to supernatural activity)
This has always been the problem with sweeping claims about death rates.
People forget that all the factors behind disappearances IRL, including humans are a factor too in this setting in addition to supernatural activity, not being replaced by it.
Mortals havent gotten any less bloodthirsty or murderous than IRL, and there's a lot more of them.
This isnt to say that the Reds dont kill a ton of people.
They've been around since before the Spanish, even though their current level of power took time. But there would have been a lot fewer of them because there wasnt enough human population to support large numbers of bloodsuckers.
The Americas(all of them combined) were estimated at 60 million people in 1500.
They are around 15-20x that now.
When you are making claims of kilodeaths and megadeaths, it is wise to check your numbers.
3)Yeah, no. Just no.
In a world where Human governments lack access to the NeverNever, or any sort of reliable way of screening for supernatural humanoids, and where magic mind control is a thing, the idea that waving your big army is supposed to be a silver bullet is demonstrably untrue, when you dont know who to point it at.
What are you going to do? Invade Mexico? Or Brazil?
How do you tell Reds in fleshmasks from Mexicans? What makes you think the Mexicans want you here after the multiple invasions by the US in their history?
What if the Reds had laid a data trail incriminating the White Council instead?
Or a cult like Aum Shin Ri Kyo? Or a cartel?
This sort of doing shit for the sake of doing shit is precisely why noone wants human goverments involved.
1. Ethniu had the power to beat every bigwig immortal simultaneously. It's best, as you say, to not assume the other people in the setting are idiots and only we, the readers, see stuff clearly and know that Ethniu choices were suboptimal in achieving her goals. I'm not saying she isn't stupid in how she went about her goals, but I am saying that expecting her to be insane to the point of forgetting that she'll weaken to the point of being killable is very much a massive stretch of my SOD.
2. Ethniu, for all her personal power, could walk into the Winter Court and execute Mab and everybody on her side. She already did the same to Titania at the height of her power, after losing the Eye, getting drenched, and teamed up on by everybody of worth on Mab's side. Mab is the setting superpower only because Ethniu was somehow forgotten and had both the strength of will to not go rambo until Dresden and co. were ready for a Big Bad to show up to unify everybody. Poorly written as she is, it's just another example of how badly she fits into the DF universe that Ethniu is clearly the unmentioned and forgotten hyperpower of the supernatural world.
3. Gonna need a BIG citation for all that fanon you've got there. God's set the rules, but Ethniu clearly isn't playing by them, and nothing's shown God's gonna directly debuff her instead of just sending the Swords.
4. Not sure how this is in anyway relevant. Yes, Ethniu is virtually indestructible, because of the armor only she has or knows how to make. Why would Odin choose to attack her anyways if he knows she'll get debuffed later? It's not as if being indestructible/undying helps much if you can only stand as a punching bag, see Titania/Mab/Odin/Erlking. Only thing that makes sense is that Ethniu is not going to get debuffed by God and that this showdown was the best chance they had to stop her from killing all the meaningful opposition she could face.
1)Ethniu had the power to beat three bigwig immortals: Titania, Odin and Herne.
She didnt fight all of them at once; she disabled Mab and the Archive previously, and never even saw Molly.
A situation where she had to trade blows with all of them would have been a spectacle.
2)No she couldnt.
Arctis Tor is the heart of Winter. The seat of Mab's power, of Winter's power. Like Chitchen Itza for the Reds, her power is strongest there. Not to mention that if she stepped into Faerie, there's a nonzero chance that she runs into one or both of the Mothers.
And Baba Yaga dont play no games.
3)Citation for what, please? Please be specific if you're asking me to go look for citations.
4)Because the plan was to distract/weaken her for imprisonment.
I mean, read the battleplan. It was always the point to smack her around enough that Dresden could set her up for Alfred to drag her down and in the darkness bind her.
A wiser or more rational Titan would have chosen another city to attack instead of the one with Occult SuperMax right off the shoreline and its warden as Mab's current Knight.
But not Big E.
Seems pretty clear to me. Most Knights don't do so hot against demons.
2. Exactly. Nicodemus doesn't have too much trouble dealing with his greatest foes, the Knights of the Cross, and their support structure. He's been around for 2000 years and no Knight has been able to redeem/kill him. The Knights, for all that their Swords help them do good, aren't exactly the end all be all because of their unparalleled blades. Even the strongest example of conceptual weaponry in DF doesn't seem to do so good (the Knights failed so hard at stopping the Crusades that, well, there were 8 of them, just as an example)
3. My point is not that there are a lot of conceptual weapons, it's that said conceptual weapons in-universe are treated in a bafflingly manner given what we've seen them be capable of. Mostly the Eye, because it sucks.
3. Some knights are terrifying. Michael is a good example. Remember what happened to Michael? Yeah. Knights are still human, still beatable, and can be dealt with. Sometimes they go apeshit, sometimes they job and die. Deus vult I guess.
2)The Knights of the Cross, at the beginning of Small Favor, had around ten to fifteen Coins in custody.
Nicodemus is a survivor, but to say that he has no trouble with the Knights is just not true. His fear of Shiro is explicitly why he was willing to trade Dresden's life for Shiro's in Death Masks.
3)My point is that there arent.
Conceptual weapons are rare; I counted ten, and I doubt I missed all that many. You are entitled to your own opinion about the effectiveness of the Eye, but the narrative thinks its a big deal.
And given that Dresden has been accumulating a hoard of superweapons from mythology, Butcher has been assembling a Chekhov's Gun he intends to fire at someone.
Just like Amoracchius sitting on his mantelpiece is another.
4) Michael retired with combat injuries after over twenty years of service as a Knight, and the only living Dragonkiller in the last century. He then proceeded to help train one of his replacements, and came off the bench once as a pinch hitter'
Dude has done pretty well.
You kinda can't take away the armor. She's wearing it. So it brings up again the question of why she never walked into the Winter Court and made Mab her bitch, because she can't get mobbed with the Armor and she can smack immortals with her bare fucking hands as she did to Titania. Does she even need the Eye to kill everybody in any particular faction? If she wanted to, she could've gone after everybody when they weren't all mobbed up and killed them off in weaker groups. I guess she didn't need to given we saw what happened when the Winter and Summer Court teamed up, but I'm just saying Ethniu had the ability and the motivation to kill off the Courts way before Battle Ground, so it's confusing why she never took action.
1)Thats the problem. If she didnt have the armor, she'd not have gotten this far in the first place.
2) Because she cant? Being able to disable someone is not the same thing as making them yield, and she demonstrably couldnt kill Mab, or make her yield. Not to mention that going into Faerie risks running into people above her weight class, in places where they are free to cut loose without breaking Reality.
Mother Winter, for example. Or Mother Summer. The Faerie Courts are more than just Mab and Titania.
Furthermore, its worth remembering that people who cant kill you can still trap you.
Maeve did this to a chunk of Winter in Proven Guilty by literally bending time and space around Arctis Tor.
And all Ethniu's power seems concentrated in personal fighty capabilities, and none we could see in broaderscale stats.
Basically, Ethniu seemed to be all Brute/Blaster, no Shaker/Master/Tinker.
At leasr, that was my impression.
Walking into Faerie would have been a horrible idea for her. IMO.
But ultimately, whoever persuaded her to target Chicago in particular wanted Chicago as the target, not Arctis Tor.
So Chicago it was.
You say we presume other people in the setting to be idiots, right after claiming all "people using black magic, or influenced by Nemesis, or just who have been able to behave with impunity for decades, exhibit poor decisionmaking skills." Sending some mixed messages here.
Wizards let vamps run around because they can't deal with them. Also, because they have a status quo that they're fine with and don't want the risk of breaking the Masquerade to end up in something worse. There's a degree of paternalistic contempt as well, that humans don't need to know about the monsters in the night hunting them and that the current numbers of people dying to the supernatural can be tolerated.
We can deal with the vampires, we are not fine with the status quo, and above all we are Exalted (which does tend towards breaking the status quo and dealing with consequences pretty well). Nobody said it would be easy or simple, but nothing we know of IC or OC justifies maintaining the Status Quo even as it currently is. Once we hit the right power level, it's time to start cleaning shop.
1)I dont see your point?
The ones who arent dumb or irrational or overconfident dont do shit like this. They keep critical parts of their schemes faraway from disruptive forces. See Mavra and Marcone and Peabody. Or whoever else was behind the events of Turn Coat.
2)Wizards are born of mortals or with mortal kin; there's very seldom something like a family of pure wizards
Possibly by design.
Paternalistic contempt is just not true of any of the wizards we see onscreen.
3)We cant currently deal with the vampires, and we know very little about the status quo.
Or what second and third order effects might result
There's a lot of things that need fixing or at least changing, but we need a lot more resources and knowledge.
And to be aware that if we break it, we have bought it. We dont get to throw up our hands and walk away two decades later.
Why was this surprising?
The fey depend on stuff like this as a species to exist. That specific program is its own can of worms, but changlings are in large part are essentially the same when their parents give a shit in the first place.
You're also sort of disregarding the nasty stuff both of them do when it suits them to. Winter out of ruthless predation and Summer out irrational passion. I'm not going to say that Mab's recruitment drive is particularly defensible, but you're kind of complaining about the last car in a parade blocking traffic here.
Its a repeated plot point that the Fae cant fuck with mortals who dont have a preexisting relationship with them, which is a major reason why the office of the Winter/Summer Knight exists. The fae can get someone to, say, promise their firstborn/next child for some reason or the other, but they cant just take them.
Its also canon that the Fomor have been kidnapping talents, including children, since the end of Changes.
Methinks someone got his wires crossed.
I'm singling this out because Dresden, immediately after this observation, proceeds to think to himself that this isn't such a bad thing:
Dresden then doesn't do jack shit about this or even thinks about it after the battle, which fair given what he's gone through, but still it was very much a smack in the face I wasn't expecting to see this kind of thought from the supposed "hero" of the story.
I'm not disregarding the fact that both Courts are monstrous as they stand, but I'm just surprised that Dresden is so cavalier about what must be teens at most (younger than the new Wardens!) having been kidnapped, indoctrinated, and trained for slaughter by Mab's command.
1. Kids. Fucking kids. (Fuck 'em kids is what you're saying, right?)
2. If the Gates were to fall, you bet your ass a bunch of kids'll do all of jack shit against an Outsider. Mab could've gone to the White Council, could've asked Mother Winter, could've asked
1)The White Council uses child soldiers my dude.
The Trailman Twins were Warden trainees when they got murdered by ghouls at Camp Kaboom; both were 16ish or less, as were all their other camp mates.
Dont moralize at the Winter Court for following community standards.
2)Harry Dresden was literally 16 when he first fought off an Outsider.
The US military enlists 17 year olds with parental consent, and other countries will enlist people ar the same age or younger in the event of actual total war. Winter has been at total war for over a thousand years.
Furthermore, we know nothing about what Mab's training program for the defenders of reality entails.
Mab is explicit about recruiting kids for training until they are strong enough and knowledgeable enough to survive on the Gates.
We dont know what criteria is used.
So Im reasonably certain you dont have the data to make that determination.
Do you have a citation I can check? Because I checked before that post, and couldnt find any evidence of her age.
I know there's text evidence that there had been Red Court victims buried at her mansion since at least the 1920s, but there was no indication that it was Bianca who was there at the time.
Huh, i could have sworn there was something in the RPG book, but apparently theres not, at least under her entry. Could be i was wrong, or maybe it was some throwaway line somewhere not obvious. Cannot find anything at the moment in any case, sorry.
Mind control by email? We don't see magic be used though technology in DF.
We certainly could with Golden years tainted black. The hard part would be for our cyberdevils to spam their email. But we could basically make them hate whoever or whatever we want.
But I can't think of anyone else in DF that could manage that. Mind control usually requires physical proximity or at least enchanting something that the victim touches.
Remember that the Nightmare/Kravos, workimg with Bianca, was able to walk into the dreams and home of a family man, behind the threshold of his home and just stick a fucking mental torture charm in his head.
This happened in Grave Peril. And the Nightmare was just a very powerful ghost.
Nemesis, presumably. They haven't to my knowledge demonstrated any issues with techbane, and I doubt that they don't understand the sheer potential for devastation that that sort of weapon has. Also, could something like a voicemail work, or even a printed out photo of a Nemesis-imbued letter or other object?
Also, would a voicemail or a recording of someone Nfected be sufficient?
Just how easily can Nemesis be spread?
We know physical contact work because thats how Lea and Maeve got hit.
We dont know how Justine got Nfected; as far as we know she never touched anything physical, which suggests that Nemesis might well have distance-propagation capabilities.
That particular bit of ancient sorcery isn't exactly that high of a priority in its own right, and 10 exp is a lot of move around in the schedule just to pay off Odin.
Its the second most important spell on our list after Sapphire Circle Banishment.
And not just to pay off Odin; it allows us to set up a secondary power supply for the Dragons Nest by assembling several notTesla powerbanks/powerwalls, charging them with Tool Constructs, then using Blessing of the Wood Dragon to ensure that the battery doesnt run out. Which results in independent power even if people fuck with the leylines.
And critically: anti-techbane.
Which is important for, among other things, combat communications, of which we currently have none because Harry is a wizard who fucks up technology. Also, giving Harry a phone and computer that techbane wont kill.
If Nemesis could spread that easily it would already control the world. The outsiders have no investment in the status quo and so wouldn't hesitate to use large numbers of ordinary people if they could. The mere fact that Nemesis hasn't seized direct control of large populations and used military weapons to attack Winter, suggests there are some limitations in play that stop it simply cosplaying a Chaos Cult.
Huh, i could have sworn there was something in the RPG book, but apparently theres not, at least under her entry. Could be i was wrong, or maybe it was some throwaway line somewhere not obvious. Cannot find anything at the moment in any case, sorry.
@uju32 I think you need to step back and consider what you are supporting. I know you really like the Winter Court, but you have been advocating in this thread that human trafficking, slavery, child abuse and child soldiers are all perfectly OK things.
Mouse, who has canonically challenged the second in command of Winter and the guard dog of Hades. Who has threatened to kamikaze people harassing his charges. That Mouse stood aside from spirits harassing a ~10 year old.
Consider what natural Laws are in force.
Its the same as when the Leanansidhe claimed Law empowered her with regards to Dresden in Grave Peril and Michael Carpenter had to stand aside.
And we are Exalted. We don't have to give a damn about the laws, just as we don't have to give a damn about thresholds.
Some person wielding our Exaltation an immesurably long time ago saw that the LAW was that Theion was King above all, ruler and master of Creation and well capable of ending any though of dissent with a glance.
They didn't give a fuck, and though that wielder propably died shortly afterwards, as did the next dozens or hundreds of Chosen, today the Exaltation is still there and Theion is not even a memory.
2)Haunts are invisible to adults. Adults dont even remember them.
There is no current indication that Molly will see them either, or be able to touch them if she could.
We are an Exalt, not a creator entity. We'll be a big fish Soon(TM), but there's a bigass pond out there.
We have a perfect defence against things messing with our mind.
That perfection will not certainly end because we are looking at a Haunt.
Besides, even Mouse can see them and he is certainly no creator deity either.
I'm assuming that while it is difficult for adults to look at them all we need is Hellscry to notice their immaterial presence and Impervious Primacy to deflect any mental effect they might have to make people forget or ignore them.
Its a repeated, reiterated plot point that the Fae cannot directly fuck with people who do not have previous dealings with them.
And that they have to balance the scales. Its why they are so big on offering deals. They cant just steal kids.
Furthermore, Battlegrounds!Harry is Winter Knight. He's a Big Deal in Winter. His former apprentice is Winter Lady.
If Winter had suddenly started kidnapping children, he is one of the people who would be in a place to know.
He's who other people would ask.
The fact that the first he's hearing of this is in rumors from the Paranet suggest that its wrong.
Especially since we DO know that the Fomor have been kidnapping children.
You can't tell me that all the people at Splattercon had dealings with the Fetches.
Yes, Fey usually need some kind of reason to act.
But that might very well be that some chief hundreds of years ago made a deal with Mab and now she is still taking his people's children.
That is not right, that is not fair and that deserves to be ended.
Mab does not live in medival ages anymore and the only reason she can get away with that shit is that there are too few people in this world willing and able to oppose her.
Soon that won't be the case anymore.
In few years Winter will either have a Queen who is willing to keep her Fetches and Malks and Trolls and other gribblies from hunting people and who will recruit Changeling of adult or near-adult age who willingly decide to follow their Fey-nature over the other path, or Winter will have a new Queen until the conditions are met.
===
2) My brother in Christ*snerk* canon Molly is the person doing the recruitment for Winter in her position as Winter Lady.
Yes, really.
Because its necessary.
Its an explicit plot point in Cold Case that Winter sacrifices their children and the children of their tribute nations to go fight at the Outer Gates so everyone else gets to live their lives without Outsiders eating their faces.
I quote:
@uju32 I think you need to step back and consider what you are supporting. I know you really like the Winter Court, but you have been advocating in this thread that human trafficking, slavery, child abuse and child soldiers are all perfectly OK things.
no hes really not the alternative is literal cthulhu level body horror and super slavery. Not to mention repeatedly hes contesting others claims about what they do. Also we can't just ignore parts of the setting like they don't exist.
@uju32 I think you need to step back and consider what you are supporting. I know you really like the Winter Court, but you have been advocating in this thread that human trafficking, slavery, child abuse and child soldiers are all perfectly OK things.
And we are Exalted. We don't have to give a damn about the laws, just as we don't have to give a damn about thresholds.
Some person wielding our Exaltation an immesurably long time ago saw that the LAW was that Theion was King above all, ruler and master of Creation and well capable of ending any though of dissent with a glance.
They didn't give a fuck, and though that wielder propably died shortly afterwards, as did the next dozens or hundreds of Chosen, today the Exaltation is still there and Theion is not even a memory.
We have a perfect defence against things messing with our mind.
That perfection will not certainly end because we are looking at a Haunt.
Besides, even Mouse can see them and he is certainly no creator deity either.
I'm assuming that while it is difficult for adults to look at them all we need is Hellscry to notice their immaterial presence and Impervious Primacy to deflect any mental effect they might have to make people forget or ignore them.
You can't tell me that all the people at Splattercon had dealings with the Fetches.
Yes, Fey usually need some kind of reason to act.
But that might very well be that some chief hundreds of years ago made a deal with Mab and now she is still taking his people's children.
That is not right, that is not fair and that deserves to be ended.
Mab does not live in medival ages anymore and the only reason she can get away with that shit is that there are too few people in this world willing and able to oppose her.
Soon that won't be the case anymore.
In few years Winter will either have a Queen who is willing to keep her Fetches and Malks and Trolls and other gribblies from hunting people and who will recruit Changeling of adult or near-adult age who willingly decide to follow their Fey-nature over the path, or Winter will have a new Queen until the conditions are met.
We are not able to beat the winter court anytime soon at 5 essence we aren't fixing the court easily. If we can solve the issue of outsiders it does not fucking matter how Mab will keel over and let herself die if we can. She doesn't make needlessly cruel risks she simply doesn't care enough to do these things plenty of other fae sure. Mab herself not so much and people need to realize anyone who ends up in Mabs position will end up like Mab just more inept.
Edit: Should also note fetches aren't fae their winter affiliated so basically one of the courts work arounds I assume.
You are falling into the Hard Men Making Hard Decisions trap. There is absolutely no reason why Winter actually needs to do horrible things for their own benefit. That sort of approach works poorly compared to actually reasonable methods of achieving things, because being an asshole is actively detrimental to large scale organisation and projects.
For instance they could just ask the other powerful groups who don't want the Old Gods back to help with the Outer Gates, like used to happen before the Courts claimed total responsibility.
It is also highly questionable if what they do even helps all that much as Winter is already either overstretched or derelict in their supposed duty. The Red Court has been using numerous outsiders in their battles with the White Council and winter hasn't hit them with a hammer. You know literally the job that supposedly justifies all their atrocities.
1)I call bullshit on that.
Its a repeated, reiterated plot point that the Fae cannot directly fuck with people who do not have previous dealings with them.
And that they have to balance the scales. Its why they are so big on offering deals. They cant just steal kids.
Furthermore, Battlegrounds!Harry is Winter Knight. He's a Big Deal in Winter. His former apprentice is Winter Lady.
If Winter had suddenly started kidnapping children, he is one of the people who would be in a place to know.
He's who other people would ask.
The fact that the first he's hearing of this is in rumors from the Paranet suggest that its wrong.
Especially since we DO know that the Fomor have been kidnapping children.
===
2) My brother in Christ*snerk* canon Molly is the person doing the recruitment for Winter in her position as Winter Lady.
Yes, really.
Because its necessary.
Its an explicit plot point in Cold Case that Winter sacrifices their children and the children of their tribute nations to go fight at the Outer Gates so everyone else gets to live their lives without Outsiders eating their faces.
I quote:
"Time waits for no one, Lady Molly," Mab said. She had crossed the room to stand across from me over poor Carlos. "Not even the Queens of Faerie. Collect the tribute." I gave him a last kiss on the forehead and rose to leave. But I paused at the door to consider, to consult Winter Law.
I had never really considered what the tribute was. But it was there in the law. I turned slowly and stared at Mab in horror.
"Their children," I whispered. "You want me to take their children."
"Yes."
"Their children," I said. "You can't."
"I won't. You will."
I shook my head. "But …"
"Lady Molly," Mab said gently. "Consider the Outer Gates."
I did.
Winter Law showed me a vivid image. An endless war fought at the far borders of reality. A war against the pitiless alien menace known simply as the Outsiders. A war fought by millions of Fae, to prevent the Outsiders from invading and destroying reality itself. A war so long and bitter that bones of the fallen were the topography of the landscape. It was why the Winter Court existed in the first place, why we were so aggressive, so savage, so filled with lust and the need to create more of our kind.
"You're filling me with a hunger I can never feed," I whispered.
"We cannot expect our people to bear a burden that we do not," Mab replied, her tone level, implacable. "You will learn to endure it."
"You want me to take children," I hissed.
"I am fighting a war," Mab said simply. "Fighting a war requires soldiers."
"But they're children. Children like my little brothers and sisters. And you want me to carry them away."
"Of course. It is the ideal time to learn, to be trained until they come into their strength and are ready to do battle," Mab said. "It is the only way to prepare them for what is to come. The only way to give them a chance to survive the duties I require of them."
"How long?" I asked through clenched teeth. "How long will they be gone?"
"Until they are no longer needed," Mab said.
"Until they're killed, you mean," I said. "They're never going back home."
"Your outrage is irrelevant," Mab said. Her voice was flat, calm, filled with undeniable logic. "I have condemned millions of the children of Winter to a life of violence and death in battle, because it must be done. If we fail in our duty, there will be no home to which they can return. There will be no mortal world, safe and whole for your brothers and sisters."
"But …" My protest trailed off weakly.
"If you have an alternative, I would be more than willing to consider it."
Silence stretched. "I don't," I said quietly.
"Then do your duty," Mab said. I opened the door and looked back at her. "I don't yet," I said, and I said it hard. "This isn't over."
Mab gave me the slow blink again. Then she inclined her head by a fraction of an inch, her expression pensive.
I turned and left the broken form of Carlos Ramirez behind me to steal away the Miksani's children.
And I couldn't stop crying.
Winter and the rest of the fae have paid this price for thousands of years on behalf of everyone else.
If I ever seem a little impatient with people pontificating about how Winter is evil and should be destroyed, this is why.
1. There are human children on the battlefield. Dresden, from his connections with the Paranet, has heart of faeries kidnapping human children. 1 + 1 = 2, in this case. And really, we know full well that Dresden knows very little about anything, ever. He needed Bob to tell him how the Faerie Courts worked, how the Vampire Courts worked, and has generally been clueless despite supposedly being a full-blown wizard. And I doubt Mab would just tell him straight to his face what she's been doing with human children.
2. I won't debate on whether or not it's necessary to kidnap children, even if they're not human, from their parents to fight a defensive war against Outsiders. I'll just make the observation that it's still an atrocity. Maybe a better way exists, maybe it doesn't, but that makes no difference on the truth that it is an atrocity.
1)I honestly cant say.
We never see Papa Raith at anything near the peak of his power, only after 35 years of starvation after fucking with the wrong wizard. It would probably be unfair for me to make any conclusions based on that.
2)I'll take your word for the claim that 100k go missing every year in South America.
Now account for the dead of natural causes, those who were found after being declared missing, those who intentionally tried to vanish and start a new life elsewhere(or vanished with family trying to disappear), and those who were killed because of purely human action(as opposed to supernatural activity)
This has always been the problem with sweeping claims about death rates.
People forget that all the factors behind disappearances IRL, including humans are a factor too in this setting in addition to supernatural activity, not being replaced by it.
Mortals havent gotten any less bloodthirsty or murderous than IRL, and there's a lot more of them.
This isnt to say that the Reds dont kill a ton of people.
They've been around since before the Spanish, even though their current level of power took time. But there would have been a lot fewer of them because there wasnt enough human population to support large numbers of bloodsuckers.
The Americas(all of them combined) were estimated at 60 million people in 1500.
They are around 15-20x that now.
When you are making claims of kilodeaths and megadeaths, it is wise to check your numbers.
3)Yeah, no. Just no.
In a world where Human governments lack access to the NeverNever, or any sort of reliable way of screening for supernatural humanoids, and where magic mind control is a thing, the idea that waving your big army is supposed to be a silver bullet is demonstrably untrue, when you dont know who to point it at.
What are you going to do? Invade Mexico? Or Brazil?
How do you tell Reds in fleshmasks from Mexicans? What makes you think the Mexicans want you here after the multiple invasions by the US in their history?
What if the Reds had laid a data trail incriminating the White Council instead?
Or a cult like Aum Shin Ri Kyo? Or a cartel?
This sort of doing shit for the sake of doing shit is precisely why noone wants human goverments involved.
2. Let's estimate shall we? Lowball numbers, 1000 Red Vampires in Central and South America. If each only drains to death 10 humans a year, that adds up pretty fucking quickly in a couple decades.
3. If the Masquerade breaks, you bet your ass the Merlin's gonna walk out of the Nevernever straight into every head of state's presence and slap down a thick dossier detailing the characteristics and weaknesses of every supernatural beast the White Council's got records of. Least you forget, Mexico, Brazil, and everybody else also have armies with guns. They can handle their own shit, but it's not as if they're gonna cry if the US offers to help with killing the vamps releasing sarin gas in city centers. An outside enemy that's so visibly monstrous will make for an excellent demonizing and unifying figure for everyone to target (remember, Rhampires are batshit ugly and horrific when they get going)
1)Ethniu had the power to beat three bigwig immortals: Titania, Odin and Herne.
She didnt fight all of them at once; she disabled Mab and the Archive previously, and never even saw Molly.
A situation where she had to trade blows with all of them would have been a spectacle.
2)No she couldnt.
Arctis Tor is the heart of Winter. The seat of Mab's power, of Winter's power. Like Chitchen Itza for the Reds, her power is strongest there. Not to mention that if she stepped into Faerie, there's a nonzero chance that she runs into one or both of the Mothers.
And Baba Yaga dont play no games.
3)Citation for what, please? Please be specific if you're asking me to go look for citations.
4)Because the plan was to distract/weaken her for imprisonment.
I mean, read the battleplan. It was always the point to smack her around enough that Dresden could set her up for Alfred to drag her down and in the darkness bind her.
A wiser or more rational Titan would have chosen another city to attack instead of the one with Occult SuperMax right off the shoreline and its warden as Mab's current Knight.
But not Big E.
1. I mean, considering Mab was at her weakest, I doubt her still being able to stand would've made much of a difference to Ethniu.
2. To be fair, we haven't exactly seen much out of Mother Winter and Summer either; maybe they're like Mab and Titania with good worldwide influence and still suck ass in a straight up fight. Considering Ethniu bitchslapped Titania at the height of her power along with Odin and the Erlking, after being drenched and deprived of the Eye, it's kinda hard to tell if she couldn't walk into the Winter Court for a stroll. That's how good a showing she put on, and how bad a showing everybody else displayed, in Battle Ground.
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.
Where, IC or from WoJ, does it say that Ethniu will be playing in the White God's sandbox and be debuffed once she starts acting in the world? Where does it say she would've weakened after Battle Ground because of the White God? Citation please.
4. My point stands, that Ethniu couldn't exactly be beat except by virtue of everyone hitting her at the same time, everything going right, and Demonreach itself acting. In other words, Ethniu in any other circumstance could've steamrolled, and it's kinda confusing why she didn't. We've been provided no IC reason why she didn't act before Battle Ground, and her showing in BG proves it wasn't because she couldn't throw hands.
2)The Knights of the Cross, at the beginning of Small Favor, had around ten to fifteen Coins in custody.
Nicodemus is a survivor, but to say that he has no trouble with the Knights is just not true. His fear of Shiro is explicitly why he was willing to trade Dresden's life for Shiro's in Death Masks.
3)My point is that there arent.
Conceptual weapons are rare; I counted ten, and I doubt I missed all that many. You are entitled to your own opinion about the effectiveness of the Eye, but the narrative thinks its a big deal.
And given that Dresden has been accumulating a hoard of superweapons from mythology, Butcher has been assembling a Chekhov's Gun he intends to fire at someone.
Just like Amoracchius sitting on his mantelpiece is another.
4) Michael retired with combat injuries after over twenty years of service as a Knight, and the only living Dragonkiller in the last century. He then proceeded to help train one of his replacements, and came off the bench once as a pinch hitter'
Dude has done pretty well.
1. I read my own quote again. Not sure why you wanted me to, but my point still stands.
2. My point is that the Swords do not give an overwhelming guarantee of success and are far from as big a factor in every fight than a conceptual weapon would suggest. They might be made by the White God, but they ain't the end all be all.
3. The narrative thinks its a big deal. The narrative shows it very much isn't, at least in a straight fight. Who knows, maybe this archangel-killing superbeam can blow a hole straight through the Winter Court. But you can still dodge it or block it, and it's not a game-winning piece by itself.
4. Michael has done very well, and he's great! You know who isn't great? Everybody who didn't make it to retirement status. Everybody who used a Sword and got ganked. Trust me, the Sword does not guarantee a happy ending for the Knights. WoJ has most who pick them up, as I provided in my quote, dying because human with sharp pointy stick =/= can take on big bad monsters/lots of guns/Fallen Angels very easily or even commonly.
1)Thats the problem. If she didnt have the armor, she'd not have gotten this far in the first place.
2) Because she cant? Being able to disable someone is not the same thing as making them yield, and she demonstrably couldnt kill Mab, or make her yield. Not to mention that going into Faerie risks running into people above her weight class, in places where they are free to cut loose without breaking Reality.
Mother Winter, for example. Or Mother Summer. The Faerie Courts are more than just Mab and Titania.
Furthermore, its worth remembering that people who cant kill you can still trap you.
Maeve did this to a chunk of Winter in Proven Guilty by literally bending time and space around Arctis Tor.
And all Ethniu's power seems concentrated in personal fighty capabilities, and none we could see in broaderscale stats.
Basically, Ethniu seemed to be all Brute/Blaster, no Shaker/Master/Tinker.
At leasr, that was my impression.
Walking into Faerie would have been a horrible idea for her. IMO.
But ultimately, whoever persuaded her to target Chicago in particular wanted Chicago as the target, not Arctis Tor.
So Chicago it was.
1. Not sure your point here. She has the armor and that makes her immune to mooks. Why didn't she take advantage of this before BG?
2. Mab wasn't able to even lift her head after tanking one shot, and Ethniu was ready for a second shot in 60 seconds. The only reason Mab wasn't a smear on the ground was because, again, Titania and Odin and the Erlking and a bunch of Wizards and a Knight delayed her immediately after, but they could still only delay her. If Demonreach wasn't there, if one person from that group wasn't there, Mab would've been a smear.
That's the beauty of being good at fighting. You can go beat up everybody else and they can't do shit to you, because you think Mab could've trapped Ethniu if she wanted her head? Even if as you say Ethniu couldn't take the Winter Court on home grounds, she absolutely could've planted her ass in the mortal world and dared any faerie to come make her day. Saying Winter's the supernatural superpower because they can hide away in the Nevernever and go crying to beings who can't leave the Nevernever for help, doesn't really paint them as much of a superpower compared to Ethniu, who could just stay in the mortal world and kill everything that tried to set up in her territory.
IMO, walking into the moral world should've been a horrible idea for anyone from the Winter Court, given Ethniu's hate for Mab. So I'm not sure why that's not the case, but I'll chalk it up to more worldbuilding inconsistencies that BG introduced.
1)I dont see your point?
The ones who arent dumb or irrational or overconfident dont do shit like this. They keep critical parts of their schemes faraway from disruptive forces. See Mavra and Marcone and Peabody. Or whoever else was behind the events of Turn Coat.
2)Wizards are born of mortals or with mortal kin; there's very seldom something like a family of pure wizards
Possibly by design.
Paternalistic contempt is just not true of any of the wizards we see onscreen.
3)We cant currently deal with the vampires, and we know very little about the status quo.
Or what second and third order effects might result
There's a lot of things that need fixing or at least changing, but we need a lot more resources and knowledge.
And to be aware that if we break it, we have bought it. We dont get to throw up our hands and walk away two decades later.
1. My point is, why are you presuming Ethniu isn't as logical or rational as any of these characters? Its not as if she was overconfident, given she by herself damn near killed everybody of note in Chicago and would've if not for everything going right (what if she targeted Harry? What if Butters had been killed in the fight? What if her army had been able to break through and help her rather than have her fight everybody alone?)
2. Humans are dying to supernatural foes, and we've never heard of the wizards reaching out to any human authority on an institutional level to let them in on the Masquerade. The Library of Congress, Daedulus, you'd figure a wizard who wanted to do some good would drop by with a dossier explaining even just the basics to avoid them stepping into shit. But the fact the mortals have to figure everything out by themselves from first principles (and bumble into who knows what unknowingly) shows the amount of thought the White Council gives to human authorities: very little.
3. I agree. We aren't at the point in resources or knowledge or capability yet. But we will get there eventually, and quickly given our rate of growth and the OOC knowledge we have of just what amount of power is needed to pimpslap someone like Mab or Titania (not much in the mortal world at all)
Its a repeated plot point that the Fae cant fuck with mortals who dont have a preexisting relationship with them, which is a major reason why the office of the Winter/Summer Knight exists. The fae can get someone to, say, promise their firstborn/next child for some reason or the other, but they cant just take them.
Its also canon that the Fomor have been kidnapping talents, including children, since the end of Changes.
Methinks someone got his wires crossed.
1)The White Council uses child soldiers my dude.
The Trailman Twins were Warden trainees when they got murdered by ghouls at Camp Kaboom; both were 16ish or less, as were all their other camp mates.
Dont moralize at the Winter Court for following community standards.
2)Harry Dresden was literally 16 when he first fought off an Outsider.
The US military enlists 17 year olds with parental consent, and other countries will enlist people ar the same age or younger in the event of actual total war. Winter has been at total war for over a thousand years.
Furthermore, we know nothing about what Mab's training program for the defenders of reality entails.
Mab is explicit about recruiting kids for training until they are strong enough and knowledgeable enough to survive on the Gates.
We dont know what criteria is used.
So Im reasonably certain you dont have the data to make that determination.
1. Oh trust me, I'm not moralizing at the Winter Court "for following community standards." I'm moralizing at them for, once again, kidnapping and using child soldiers.
The White Council having teens fight is horrible. A symptom of them being overstretched in battle against a single supernatural faction, but I sure as hell don't see the Merlin kidnapping potential wizards and throwing them into Warden boot camp.
2. That Harry had to fight off an Outsider was a tragedy. That people younger than 17 can fight in total war is a tragedy.
That Winter is kidnapping children and using them is a tragedy. Most importantly, it's an atrocity given these children sure as hell didn't sign up for this.
And I am all for Molly rectifying this atrocity as soon as she can.
Edit: The point I'm trying to make is that Molly will shortly become one of the biggest fish in this small-ass pond because DF has shown us just how strong the relevant figures in its universe are (Mother Winter/Summer/Archangels can't do shit to us in the mortal world): very very weak in a cage match. We've seen that people like Mab and Titania are dogshit for their power levels in an actual bare-knuckle scrap given Ethniu, who demolished everybody, wasn't exactly all that impressive in absolute terms either.
I'm not saying it'll be easy or that Molly could pull an Ethniu and singlehandedly take on a conga line of bigwigs simultaneously or even sequentially. I'm not even saying she can mow through mooks like Ethniu did when she treated the White Council as fucking mooks. All I'm saying is that if Mab ever runs into Molly one dark stormy night by herself, that horror story is gonna end with a new holder for the Mantle of Winter Queen.
We are not able to beat the winter court anytime soon at 5 essence we aren't fixing the court easily. If we can solve the issue of outsiders it does not fucking matter how Mab will keel over and let herself die if we can. She doesn't make needlessly cruel risks she simply doesn't care enough to do these things plenty of other fae sure. Mab herself not so much and people need to realize anyone who ends up in Mabs position will end up like Mab just more inept.
At 3 Essence we will be a power in our own right, at 5 there will be very little in this world that could stop us.
If things came down to it an Infernal with the full combat-suite can carve through endless Fey (our Outsiders for the matter) being nearly untouchable with Eye of the Hurricane and countering every single attack with Splattered Grease Reprisal, while regenerating Essence faster than we are loosing it with Murder is Meat.
Edit: That is just the bare-bones, we also need the SHaping-Defence, the combat-regeneration Charm and some other effects to work at full efficiency, and also higher base-stats in Athletics, which is why I don't think we'l get the full combat-suite together before Essence 5. There are people in this thread who are better at building a combat-optimized Exalt.
And that's just personal, we do have the Charm to have a Hell filled with a decent army.
At 3 Essence we will be a power in our own right, at 5 there will be very little in this world that could stop us.
If things came down to it an Infernal with the full combat-suite can carve through endless Fey (our Outsiders for the matter) being nearly untouchable with Eye of the Hurricane and countering every single attack with Splattered Grease Reprisal, while regenerating Essence faster than we are loosing it with Murder is Meat.
Edit: That is just the bare-bones, we also need the SHaping-Defence, the combat-regeneration Charm and some other effects to work at full efficiency, and also higher base-stats in Athletics, which is why I don't think we'l get the full combat-suite together before Essence 5. There are people in this thread who are better at building a combat-optimized Exalt.
And that's just personal, we do have the Charm to have a Hell filled with a decent army.
hey if we can beat the outsiders mab wont debate us killing her she believes everyone is expendable for the war including herself. Get to that point then we can discuss about getting rid of her.
hey if we can beat the outsiders mab wont debate us killing her she believes everyone is expendable for the war including herself. Get to that point then we can discuss about getting rid of her.
I don't really want to spend our whole time holding the breach so to say.
Ideally the Outer Gates would be manned by a mix of people from all pro-reality factions (including our own Hell), so that no single one gets Winter's current superpower-status and no single one failing or retreating or betraying the project can realistically destroy reality.
Leaving it up to Winter alone is just begging them to abuse the situation.
We are not able to beat the winter court anytime soon at 5 essence we aren't fixing the court easily. If we can solve the issue of outsiders it does not fucking matter how Mab will keel over and let herself die if we can. She doesn't make needlessly cruel risks she simply doesn't care enough to do these things plenty of other fae sure. Mab herself not so much and people need to realize anyone who ends up in Mabs position will end up like Mab just more inept.
My brother in the White God, I've spent several pages trying to show how Molly, at Essence 3 (with a PD and a couple big bombs), could dumpster truck Mab in a fight. Ethniu could do whatever the hell she wanted because anyone with an objection could talk to her hands, and her hands were strong enough to take on basically everybody in the setting who could fight her, minus a few standouts like the Merlin. Molly at Essence 5, might not be able to do the same thing solo, but she sure as hell could kill anybody she wants at that point.
And really, we've seen IC that Mab is a cruel, spiteful person. (Slate's fate, Harry's marriage to Lara right after Murhpy, what she had in mind for Lydia, etc) She's very much not just an emotionless robot full of only ruthless pragmatism looking to defend the world.
hey if we can beat the outsiders mab wont debate us killing her she believes everyone is expendable for the war including herself. Get to that point then we can discuss about getting rid of her.
Oh, Mab very much would debate us if it came to that (she'd lose the debate of course, and following that her life).
The Winter Court is a crucial part of reality's defense against Outsiders. (Not an irreplaceable part; there were defenders before them, and you sure didn't see the Merlin warping in to save Mab against Ethniu for fear of the world ending and the Gates falling with her death)
The Winter Court is a horrific hellscape full of the gribblies that have haunted humanity for a long, long time, and should be destroyed for all their crimes.
My brother in the White God, I've spent several pages trying to show how Molly, at Essence 3, could dumpster truck Mab in a fight. Ethniu could do whatever the hell she wanted because anyone with an objection could talk to her hands, and her hands were strong enough to take on basically everybody in the setting who could fight her, minus a few standouts like the Merlin. Molly at Essence 5, might not be able to do the same thing solo, but she sure as hell could kill anybody she wants at that point.
And really, we've seen IC that Mab is a cruel, spiteful person. (Slate's fate, Harry's marriage to Lara right after Murhpy, what she had in mind for Lydia, etc) She's very much not just an emotionless robot full of only ruthless pragmatism looking to defend the world.
Oh, Mab very much would debate us if it came to that (she'd lose of course). The Winter Court is a crucial part of reality's defense against Outsiders. (not an irreplaceable part; there were defenders before them, and you sure didn't see the Merlin warping in to save Mab against Ethniu 'cause if she dies the Outer Gates fall) The Winter Court is a horrific hellscape full of the gribblies that have haunted humanity for a long, long time, and should be destroyed for all their crimes. These two facts are not exclusive.
My one argument about how we could beat mab at essence 3 is that dp gave a god damn white court vampire who isn't even the head of their respective branch a 7 dot ability. A WHITE COURT VAMPIRE the generally on average weakest vampires. can you even fucking imagine what heads of respective branches have or god forbid gods and beings of said power?
uh no she really wouldn't mab thinks of herself as expendable word of jim she literally wouldn't debate it if the outsiders can be beaten. Also all those things she did that look like spite are more sending a message or political value. Don't get me wrong shes a bitch she very rarely actually does things out of malice though she does them for a message or for gain.
@uju32 I think you need to step back and consider what you are supporting. I know you really like the Winter Court, but you have been advocating in this thread that human trafficking, slavery, child abuse and child soldiers are all perfectly OK things.
I dont LIKE the Winter Court.
I do understand their function, and some of the constraints that the boss dude is operating under.
And I feel its necessary to take the effort to contextualize them in their setting here.
And we are Exalted. We don't have to give a damn about the laws, just as we don't have to give a damn about thresholds.
Some person wielding our Exaltation an immesurably long time ago saw that the LAW was that Theion was King above all, ruler and master of Creation and well capable of ending any though of dissent with a glance.
They didn't give a fuck, and though that wielder propably died shortly afterwards, as did the next dozens or hundreds of Chosen, today the Exaltation is still there and Theion is not even a memory.
We're Exalted, not Almighty. For everytime someone talks about how the Exalted beat Theion, it bears remembering it was the Solar Deliberative that did it, with 700 Celestials, millions of Deebs, DKs and Jadeborn, even more mortals and the support of two Primordials.
The backstory of ExWoD was that the Infernals got beat down at the height of their power by a coalition, thrashed and their shards buried in Yomi Wan.
We're powerful. A Celestial Exalt, a mover and shaker. Or soon will be.
We arent the ultimate arbiter of how things will be.
Beware of hubris.
We have a perfect defence against things messing with our mind.
That perfection will not certainly end because we are looking at a Haunt.
Besides, even Mouse can see them and he is certainly no creator deity either.
I'm assuming that while it is difficult for adults to look at them all we need is Hellscry to notice their immaterial presence and Impervious Primacy to deflect any mental effect they might have to make people forget or ignore them.
I dont think haunts operate on messing with your mind.
As described in the short story, its your mind and perceptions that age out of seeing or remembering them, not them clouding your mind to make themselves invisible. Think how some teens can hear high pitched sounds and stop hearing them as they get older.
You can't tell me that all the people at Splattercon had dealings with the Fetches.
Yes, Fey usually need some kind of reason to act.
But that might very well be that some chief hundreds of years ago made a deal with Mab and now she is still taking his people's children.
That is not right, that is not fair and that deserves to be ended.
Mab does not live in medival ages anymore and the only reason she can get away with that shit is that there are too few people in this world willing and able to oppose her.
Soon that won't be the case anymore.
In few years Winter will either have a Queen who is willing to keep her Fetches and Malks and Trolls and other gribblies from hunting people and who will recruit Changeling of adult or near-adult age who willingly decide to follow their Fey-nature over the path, or Winter will have a new Queen until the conditions are met.
No, but they didnt attack everyone at Splattercon, did they?
And if they were acting on behalf of a mortal or someone else, they would be weapons being wielded by someone else.
Lots of stuff during Proven Guilty remain a mystery. Deliberately, apparently.
Maybe. I dont think so, because Fae still live by some sort of balance in their deals, as evidenced by the Miksani being subjects of Winter entitled to Winter protection from supernatural predation in return for tribute, but it is at least theoretically possible.
However, there is no evidence they are doing any such thing with random kids.
I rather doubt that. Real talk.
This is significantly overestimating our projected maximum power levels.
No it doesnt. Its not meant to
But that entire passage does put everything into further context, and directly rebuts the assertion that Molly would go on a killing spree on finding out this is a thing.
We're Exalted, not Almighty. For everytime someone talks about how the Exalted beat Theion, it bears remembering it was the Solar Deliberative that did it, with 700 Celestials, millions of Deebs, DKs and Jadeborn, even more mortals and the support of two Primordials.
The backstory of ExWoD was that the Infernals got beat down at the height of their power by a coalition, thrashed and their shards buried in Yomi Wan.
We're powerful. A Celestial Exalt, a mover and shaker. Or soon will be.
We arent the ultimate arbiter of how things will be.
Beware of hubris.
I meant that more as an example that we don't generally have to follow metaphysical laws.
From Theion's supremacy down to minor things, like the fact that we can ignor thresholds and our magic doesn't get any weaker in fire or water or any other of the minor issues much of Dresden Files has to deal with.
Haunts are not exactly powerful and if some obscure law allows them to prey on children, we can certainly ignore that and go for MiM against them.
dont think haunts operate on messing with your mind.
As described in the short story, its your mind and perceptions that age out of seeing or remembering them, not them clouding your mind to make themselves invisible. Think how some teens can hear high pitched sounds and stop hearing them as they get older.
So with a mix of magical perception (either Sight or Hellscry Chakra) and mental defence I don't see any reason why we couldn't.
We could hear that annoying sound by enhancing our Perception after all, so the magical equivalent should work too.
No it doesnt. Its not meant to
But that entire passage does put everything into further context, and directly rebuts the assertion that Molly would go on a killing spree on finding out this is a thing.
I'm not really in favor of immediate killing sprees in most cases, we took the Crown of Eyes, not the Crown of Wrath.
But I definitly don't like the status quo of reality and I can't imagine Molly likes it much more once she knows enough.
Changing it should definitly be our goal.
And I think you are somewhat underestimating our projected powerlevels.
Even aside from personal combat, we can definitly start taking over more Yama-Hells once we have established our own.
Using our already large powerbase in the Nevernever to conquer a huge one is the basic function of Infernals after all, no matter if the Infernal wants to make things better or just rule over the ashes of creation.
