Soulfire is not intelligent is the problem, when a spirit possesses something it has an intrinsic understanding of how its vessel works, just bathing it in soulfire does nothing in that regard.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Soulfire is not intelligent is the problem, when a spirit possesses something it has an intrinsic understanding of how its vessel works, just bathing it in soulfire does nothing in that regard.
- Location
- Brazil
[X] Accept Porter's sugestion, at the very least he should be able to get detective Murphy off her interogation game
We have to actually buy the god creator Charm in the future now. Just imagine the ripples in the supernatural community with the birth of a God of Chicago (a city with multiple paths in the Nevernever and leylines powered by Demonreach) or better yet a god of the entire internet. Yes, that certainly is something worthy of one of the exalted.
Don't forget the most crucial point of this understanding: that these spirits have complete loyalty to Molly.
I'm very interested in getting into the electronic banking or any internet industry right now, especially as we can buy lots of the best processors and raw materials and build a supercomputer to house a super cyberdemon. If we manage in the future to buy many shares of technology giants to join their shareholder board...
We have to actually buy the god creator Charm in the future now. Just imagine the ripples in the supernatural community with the birth of a God of Chicago (a city with multiple paths in the Nevernever and leylines powered by Demonreach) or better yet a god of the entire internet. Yes, that certainly is something worthy of one of the exalted.
I was thinking more like "put some of your soul (in the form of soulfire) into the vessel, and use the arcane connection to manipulate it".
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Doesn't help wizards can already manipulate tech like with hexus. It's the lack of understanding which is the problem.
No, it is humanities birth right and great labour. We will have our courts but we can't be those old monster that steal humanities fire from them.
We are the spark that will make ignite the Great Ritual, truly brigid's heir, for she gave humanity sorcery and we give then magical Internet.
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*Look at Molly, looks back*
If only *sigh*.
Don't you agree, CLippy?
Once soul-fire comes out of you it is not attached anymore, it is literally soul fire.
[X] Accept Porter's sugestion, at the very least he should be able to get detective Murphy off her interogation game
That doesn't change anything that we instigate being partially our responsibility.
If I get on YouTube and spoon feed people safety videos on how not to accidentally make a bomb in your kitchen that happen to give you pointers on what to do to be unsafe and a crazy guy uses it to kill people then that's on me.
You haven't demonstrated that more people benefit than would be harmed, you're just assuming it.
I wouldn't argue that ignorance protects them exactly, but pretending that knowledge is a perfect panacea with no dosage requirements or nuance is wishful thinking.
A lone talent learning off of YouTube is highly unlikely to develop the skills necessary to meaningfully resist assault unless we put enough to be dangerous up there, and even then without a spotter they're highly likely to hurt themselves even if they aren't abusing it.
People are goddamn idiots though. Not all of them all the time, but anything you put online will makes its way into the hands of the dumbest people on the planet in short order.
I'd bet folding money that on confirmation that ghosts are real but that poking them is a bad idea you'd see a massive spike in amateur ghost hunters certain it can't happen to them looking to make a quick buck, get likes on facebook, or prove a point.
I at least am not suggesting we do nothing, just that we treat this with care instead of firing from the hip and seeing what happens.
Note that in canon the paranet never does anything like this despite every opportunity to do so. They worked by growing a network of communities because this sort of information sharing is either pointless or dangerous to share without some sort of moderating feedback loop.
We know that canonically (for Dresden FIles):
1) The gift for magic manifests at around puberty
2) You can start practicing magic without a teacher or (advanced) study material, and experiment with your gift to be a danger to self and others, while keeping your gift secret from your family (if I am not completely misremembering Molly's own history)
3) You can break the Laws without realizing you are doing so for quite some time, and with good intentions (again, Molly)
4) There are talents, including wizard-grade ones with unknown ancestry, i.e. without a family history of magic (Elaine is my canon example; she's an orphan, yes, but that only reinforces my position).
5) We know that lack of knowledge of the Laws doesn't protect you from either Wardens or the negative effect Law-breaking magic has on one's mind.
The following is, yes, a supposition, but my position is as follows: If there's a pool of people who can and do become dangers to self and others out of ignorance, then informing them of the dangers existing and steering them to avoid said dangers is a net benefit, even if some of them might take and misuse the knowledge they are given. Given our dice pools and difficulty adjusters, we absolutely can make a compelling lesson that would motivate people to avoid breaking the Laws - appeal to their self-preservation, if nothing else, while painting the Law Breaking as literal SAN loss of the Lovecraftian kind, with gross details and imagery.
Basic "default" human in a functioning non war-ridden society is not a bad (in the sense of being actively malicious towards self and others) person. That's my main assumption.
You are also comparing this to bomb making. This is a vivid, but flawed analogy. Why not compare it to driving lessons? You can absolutely use cars to kill people. Many people at once, even. Cars are dangerous. Are you arguing that the knowledge of how to drive a car, and traffic rules should be kept out of general circulation? I doubt it. Or I could compare this to self-defense classes. Should the knowledge of martial arts (and stuff like correct falling, escaping from holds, etc) be regulated and prevented from being taught? Finally, I could compare this to sex. ed. Can knowledge of sex be misused? Yes, it can. Does ignorance help? No, it doesn't.
If you are attempting strictly to make young magic users safer the easiest thing for you to do is, ironically, teaching people how to suppress their magic entirely, meditation on how to let the magic 'muscle' atrophy, how to fall back 'asleep'. Though it should be said if the same series also includes insights on how dangerous ghosts and vampires are a lot of people are not going to want to release their magic on the grounds that it might help them against the monsters out there
Yeah, ok, while this is an individual solution, even if a very bad one, it would be a strategic loss to the whole of humanity. No, if we are doing this, we aren't telling teens how to chemically castrate themselves to avoid raping anyone in the future. No, lessons on how to safely become all they can be are the way to go. They Can Be More.
That if of course up to you guys and the vote, I am just offering options Molly know are available.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
We actually can do a moderating feedback loop on mass. Forget the Youtube idea. Or at the very least the YouTube videos should only be a gateway to more personally instruction. It would not be hard for us to make a few hundred cyberdevils (more if we improve the dicepool, but even devils that only last a week are good for that week) who could provide more personal instruction. They can't give nearly as good instruction as Molly, but we are going for fairly basic things at first.
Finding minor talents will be quite easy as we take over the internet. In a 2-3 years we can have cyber devils, motioning for signs of a minor talents, and have agents approach them.
Replies later. Commentary now.
I dont doubt that Molly's construction work has drawn the attention of the neighbors; the construction noise alone guarantees it.
I wonder how often the malks have watched from the borders without Molly noticing.
I suspect its going to come up during our meeting with Mab.
Thats phone, cable TV and broadband Internet service. Neat.
The Jade Dogs can get themselves a widescreen or two and DVD player(s) if they find it necessary, and even a couple consoles.
Gonna be hilarious for people to come underground and suddenly detect WiFi.
===
Copper veins and eyes the blue of Windows.
I get the impression that Porter is gaining both breadth and depth as the Dragons Nest is renovated and equipment installed; as Above, so Below. I suspect when we build him a train, its going to become a part of his/her/its panoply.
Hmm. +2 AP requirements.
Gonna need more cash next turn. Especially if we have to building a train.
And Blessing of the Wood Dragon would save us a lot of maintenance time on some of these things, as well as allowing us to set up
Might wanna try the transmutation option as well, and see if we can fab platinum-group metals.
===
This is not the first murderer that Lt Murphy has let walk free or covered up for due to expedience, and she knows it.
She explicitly knew about Bianca's Red Court branch in Storm Front, and stayed the fuck away from it. The rogue FBI team in Fool Moon who were murdering people in wolf form, she let a cover story obscure the depths of their misdeeds and helped Dresden destroy the hexenwulf belts.
In Blood Rites, she first helped Dresden assault a Black Court nest in the company of Kinkaid and McCoy, then was witness to Papa Raith murdering Trixie Vixen and tossing the body into the Raith Deeps, and she let that go.
Harry explicitly told her in Proven Guilty about the White Council executing warlocks in Chicago.
And that doesnt count the trip to Arctis Tor.
Im thinking she should know better but Im getting the feeling she's having trouble taking some things on faith from 17-year old Molly Carpenter that she would take from Harry Dresden; unlike Harry, she hasnt stared the USS Godkiller in the soul, doesnt have any idea of what it was.
Nor does she really have a frame of reference for how people in the know treat Molly or Lydia, though if she reflects on it she'll probably have questions about the willingness of a mercenary company to hire out a short platoon to a teenager at literally minutes notice. Maybe she thinks its because of Michael being Molly's dad?
Time to get stranger.
-To be fair, there currently are.
Conveyance Path explicitly talks about 500km/hr flying Ferraris as focuses for the Path. Enchantment Path makes enchanted guns and gunsights. Some Diviners use technological focuses.And so on.
-Making a new Sorcerer's Path dedicated to Technomancy should be well within Molly's capabilities, if she should so choose I think.
Tech 3, Occult 5, Ancient Sorcery or Summoning, and maybe the Crafting charm.
-I am reasonably sure there's at least one technomancer mentioned in the Paranet by the time Dresden comes back from the dead.
Not sure what his name was again.
-Worth noting that Ancient Mai makes wardhounds.
They arent quite sapient, but they come close enough to be used as part of Council security to sniff out black magic.
Different tech tree than a drone, but same effect.
Some of Butcher's supernatural characters refer to mortal technology as ferromancy, referencing the heavy use of iron and its products. Subtle but hard difference.
For the second, the first third of the twentieth century was a pretty harrowing time demographically. WW1 happened and killed maybe 20 million people. The Spanish flu infected roughly a third of the world's population at the end of WW1, and killed an estimated 50 million people globally. Then WW2 killed another 70 or 90 million in the 1940s.
Add the death toll and social disruption of the early Soviet Union's civil war and famine, and the Spanish Civil War.
And the Chinese civil war.
Not a great time to be a researcher trying to cross-apply mundane discoveries to magical principles.
Thirdly, in the supernatural world WW1 never ended.
The first half of the 20th century was one long extended series of magical wars against Kemmler and his allies.
Didnt end until they killed him for the final time in 1961.
Also worth noting that the human population in 1900 was ~1.5 billion.
Global education levels were abysmal, as was the penetration of electronics.
By 1960 it was 3 billion, and 4 billion by 1975.
COMMENTARY
I dont doubt that Molly's construction work has drawn the attention of the neighbors; the construction noise alone guarantees it.
I wonder how often the malks have watched from the borders without Molly noticing.
I suspect its going to come up during our meeting with Mab.
Thats phone, cable TV and broadband Internet service. Neat.
The Jade Dogs can get themselves a widescreen or two and DVD player(s) if they find it necessary, and even a couple consoles.
Gonna be hilarious for people to come underground and suddenly detect WiFi.
===
Copper veins and eyes the blue of Windows.
I get the impression that Porter is gaining both breadth and depth as the Dragons Nest is renovated and equipment installed; as Above, so Below. I suspect when we build him a train, its going to become a part of his/her/its panoply.
Hmm. +2 AP requirements.
Gonna need more cash next turn. Especially if we have to building a train.
And Blessing of the Wood Dragon would save us a lot of maintenance time on some of these things, as well as allowing us to set up
Might wanna try the transmutation option as well, and see if we can fab platinum-group metals.
===
This is not the first murderer that Lt Murphy has let walk free or covered up for due to expedience, and she knows it.
She explicitly knew about Bianca's Red Court branch in Storm Front, and stayed the fuck away from it. The rogue FBI team in Fool Moon who were murdering people in wolf form, she let a cover story obscure the depths of their misdeeds and helped Dresden destroy the hexenwulf belts.
In Blood Rites, she first helped Dresden assault a Black Court nest in the company of Kinkaid and McCoy, then was witness to Papa Raith murdering Trixie Vixen and tossing the body into the Raith Deeps, and she let that go.
Harry explicitly told her in Proven Guilty about the White Council executing warlocks in Chicago.
And that doesnt count the trip to Arctis Tor.
Im thinking she should know better but Im getting the feeling she's having trouble taking some things on faith from 17-year old Molly Carpenter that she would take from Harry Dresden; unlike Harry, she hasnt stared the USS Godkiller in the soul, doesnt have any idea of what it was.
Nor does she really have a frame of reference for how people in the know treat Molly or Lydia, though if she reflects on it she'll probably have questions about the willingness of a mercenary company to hire out a short platoon to a teenager at literally minutes notice. Maybe she thinks its because of Michael being Molly's dad?
Time to get stranger.
Nice rolls.
COMMENTARY
-To be fair, there currently are.
Conveyance Path explicitly talks about 500km/hr flying Ferraris as focuses for the Path. Enchantment Path makes enchanted guns and gunsights. Some Diviners use technological focuses.And so on.
-Making a new Sorcerer's Path dedicated to Technomancy should be well within Molly's capabilities, if she should so choose I think.
Tech 3, Occult 5, Ancient Sorcery or Summoning, and maybe the Crafting charm.
-I am reasonably sure there's at least one technomancer mentioned in the Paranet by the time Dresden comes back from the dead.
Not sure what his name was again.
-Worth noting that Ancient Mai makes wardhounds.
They arent quite sapient, but they come close enough to be used as part of Council security to sniff out black magic.
Different tech tree than a drone, but same effect.
Butcher doesnt call it ferromancy.
Some of Butcher's supernatural characters refer to mortal technology as ferromancy, referencing the heavy use of iron and its products. Subtle but hard difference.
Firstly, the period of ascendancy of vacuum tubes was pretty short; three or four decades.
For the second, the first third of the twentieth century was a pretty harrowing time demographically. WW1 happened and killed maybe 20 million people. The Spanish flu infected roughly a third of the world's population at the end of WW1, and killed an estimated 50 million people globally. Then WW2 killed another 70 or 90 million in the 1940s.
Add the death toll and social disruption of the early Soviet Union's civil war and famine, and the Spanish Civil War.
And the Chinese civil war.
Not a great time to be a researcher trying to cross-apply mundane discoveries to magical principles.
Thirdly, in the supernatural world WW1 never ended.
The first half of the 20th century was one long extended series of magical wars against Kemmler and his allies.
Didnt end until they killed him for the final time in 1961.
Also worth noting that the human population in 1900 was ~1.5 billion.
Global education levels were abysmal, as was the penetration of electronics.
By 1960 it was 3 billion, and 4 billion by 1975.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Less then a year if we have the cyberdevils be the agents.
Worth noting that Molly didn't even think to try mind magic till someone deliberately planted the idea. A safety label warning you that shorting out your new laptop battery will make it explode is also an instruction manual for making DIY grenades.
That's fair, but there are other factors here.
One is that spontaneous strong, or even noteworthy, magic is pretty rare. It can pop up on its own, but largely it runs in families. This is the basis of Madrigal's genocide scheme.
Molly was without guidance because her mother forswore her power but still had it while pregnant, and didn't see the signs in her daughter because of their relationship.
People like her exist, but from a pure laws perspective most have access to some sort of community. Sometimes it's a bad community, which is where the trouble comes in.
15+ successes is nice, but we can't brainwash the world via YouTube. If they're in the room and we aren't there are limits to what we can do.
There are people who need help, but the number that will significantly benefit from something like this is minimal.
You're also being way too casual about the risk of bad actors here. We're talking about people's lives here, a gut feeling that more people will be helped than harmed with no actual idea of what the demographics of the situation even look like isn't an argument.
For all you know an actually useful amount of information would help 1 person for every 10 it screws over. It probably wouldn't be that bad, but you should be able to make solid claims about that sort of thing before you start letting genies out of bottles.
This comes down to the utility line.
Giving people a tiktoc with the laws in it is basically DARE for magic. It's not going to help much. It's also basically what the council already does.
Going into more detail is inherently more risky.
The car metaphor is broken here because any safety manual for this stuff is inherently focused on the easily weaponized aspects of black magic.
The compromise here from my perspective is to use large number of cyber devils to automate case management for known talents.
All of this is long term for us anyway, because even trying takes a rusty shiv to the masquerade. The council may have tech issues, but the rest of the supernatural world very much doesn't.
Remember that a video of Dresden killing a werewolf with magical silver while some cops shot it in the ass made it onto the internet, and it was almost immediately drowned out by shitty copies made on the spot to make it look like one in a large set of variable quality hoaxes.
@Uju32's various ideas on this don't seem reasonable to me, but there are people pay close attention who would take immediate action of some kind.
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING AT THE APOCALYPSE
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
[X] Accept Porter's sugestion, at the very least he should be able to get detective Murphy off her interogation game
I don't think its necessary, it might even be detrimental... but it isn't our place to naysay it. Porter is his own soul even if he is our friend and he should do as he wills so long as it is in the right spirit. We hope he will come to embrace the world rather than hiding from it because it is alien to him and that means permitting him agency.
It won't be what we hinge our own arguments on. Those come after.
I don't think its necessary, it might even be detrimental... but it isn't our place to naysay it. Porter is his own soul even if he is our friend and he should do as he wills so long as it is in the right spirit. We hope he will come to embrace the world rather than hiding from it because it is alien to him and that means permitting him agency.
It won't be what we hinge our own arguments on. Those come after.
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Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
Wouldnt Talents with technomancy pop up before full blown Wizards given Talents are both more common and have a tendency to more delicate, specialised workings.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I'm now waiting for Porter to develop a 'Blue Screen of Death' attack.
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING AT THE APOCALYPSE
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
And for his roar to be a traditional dialup modem?
As I understand it the maim problem with talents in the modern age is that the White Council don't have the manpower to keep up with modern population growths.
They're stretched too thin finding and teaching new Wizard talents early enough that they don't break a Law.
That's on top of keeping an eye on minor talents and trying to keep on top of supernatural shenanigans.
Then they end up in a war not too long after a decades long war against Kemmler that presumably sapped casualties.
Empowering an order of covens that could educate and manage minor talents at least to some extent in a manner the White Council could trust would take a lot of strain off them, especially if said covens could act like local militia when some gribbly things cause trouble.
Although again, that's well in the future, it takes time, resources and competent people to build useful institutions and Molly is only one Solaroid.
Honestly it'd be really helpful if she could make little gods or spirits of magical education.
Where's a Celestial Bureaucracy when you need one!?
They're stretched too thin finding and teaching new Wizard talents early enough that they don't break a Law.
That's on top of keeping an eye on minor talents and trying to keep on top of supernatural shenanigans.
Then they end up in a war not too long after a decades long war against Kemmler that presumably sapped casualties.
Empowering an order of covens that could educate and manage minor talents at least to some extent in a manner the White Council could trust would take a lot of strain off them, especially if said covens could act like local militia when some gribbly things cause trouble.
Although again, that's well in the future, it takes time, resources and competent people to build useful institutions and Molly is only one Solaroid.
Honestly it'd be really helpful if she could make little gods or spirits of magical education.
Where's a Celestial Bureaucracy when you need one!?
It's worth noting here that one of Murphy's first on screen supernatural encounters* is a side story where she gets into it with Harry and literal troll under a bridge that had been eating children.
That particular troll was a chump, but as a species they're basically Winter's space marines. Attacking one with a pistol and baton went about as well as you'd expect.
She is very familiar with the idea that you can't prosecute the spooky easily. I don't think that showing her more spooky will necessarily help us here, especially since it's an obvious distraction.
I think we need something that actually get into it with her concerns and ours like she's an adult instead of a hapless idiot we need to lead around by the nose.
* In universe timeline wise, not publication order.
It's specifically the fey who call it this, I don't think anyone else ever uses the term.
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING AT THE APOCALYPSE
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
The better answer is "Alright. Seriously, what is your answer? I'm trying to figure all of this out and, if you've figured out how to mesh all or any of... this... into the system I am one hundred percent on board. I'm making this up as I go and hoping for the best."