I dispute that. We might not be full exalted crafting specialist yet, but craft is one of our strengths and in many situations a go-to solution to our problems.
Odin should be one of, if not the best possible divination, and possibly enchantment tutors in the setting, as well as a good political ally, and most likely a way to obtain ancient artifacts, crafting materials and lore.
Even if we go full-out (CCC, shenaniganing TLF, BSM, WHWH, excellencies galore, with cyberdevil dice adding to the total pool, etc), it'd still be obsolete quickly. We are at craft 3. At craft 5 that's +4 dice effectively. With alchemy dots we have now we can buy ability enhancer for 2 xp, which is +2 dice more. That's +6 more dice. When going all-out we should be rolling against difficulty 5 at most, and likely 3. So, that's +3-4 successes. That's almost surely one degree of "legendarity" more than what we are capable of now.
Knight Rider cars are entirely possible right now.
And that's still stupid. Solutions to this do exist that don't require child trafficking. Especially in the modern world. Mab is operating a conscription based army in the
Russian Empire's model, where you essentially take a number of recruits from a settlement and they are in for life. From the looks of it the soldiers, as part of winter, are also subjected to brainwashing by Winter's Law to make them more aggressive. Historically this system has proven itself efficient at a certain point of technological and social development - there's a reason why Russian Empire was called
gendarme of Europe at a certain point of history. However, it has since been obsoleted by professional armies and other more modern ways to organize your combat forces.
Winter's military paradigm is an artifact of the past, operated by and shackled by its millenia-old rulers who are in turn thoroughly altered by their millenia-old Law screwing with their minds. They are also very much in the "hard men making hard decisions while hard" trap, where they have a role and consider it is their duty to carry it out without involving others. Especially without involving humanity.
A broken masquerade and a full involvement of modern humanity in defending itself from outsiders would be a net benefit to basically everyone. And that's before you consider aliens in the setting.
Yes, you have the tendency to severely downplay our potential power levels while strongly overestimating Mab's.
