I just think the ExWoD version of the Charm is badly written and trying to apply a 1 Dot Charm as a broad-area difficulty reducer isn't a good thing.
Being immune to starvation and resisting all environmental damage for one mote per scene is already a decent effect in itself.
The original Charm only reduced the difficulty of foraging actions, and nothing else to help others. That's a clearly defined narrow field and I don't understand why Holden used such an unclear wording in his version of the Charm.
I just think the ExWoD version of the Charm is badly written and trying to apply a 1 Dot Charm as a broad-area difficulty reducer isn't a good thing.
Being immune to starvation and resisting all environmental damage for one mote per scene is already a decent effect in itself.
The original Charm only reduced the difficulty of foraging actions, and nothing else to help others. That's a clearly defined narrow field and I don't understand why Holden used such an unclear wording in his version of the Charm.
Just thinking about this, I wonder if we get a visit from Kincaid or a Venator soon.
Because of that thing where we wrote the name of a Neverborn on the ground and later researched it more.
It's propably not technically one of the Old Gods that the Archive cares about, but it's definitly a Name that most pro-human forces would consider to be better forgotten and a 17-year-old with cosmic powers saying "I can handle it though" is not the most convincing thing.
Kincaid is Ivy's bodyguard, not her Emissary. If she wants a meet, she'll show up herself.
Im betting many in the knowhave some idea that we are meeting with Mab, and are staying back until they see how that turns out.
It would certainly explain why we havent seen Lily or Fix since Arctis Tor.
Besides, note that Brother Dev is staying with a Venator we havent met before.
And that Thomas is a True Venator, with Lara Raith as his recruiter and boss.
Ivy has had an eye on us for months now. I think.
yeah in the subject of information having power knowledge of certain beings makes it in some vague ways easier for them to enter into reality. Also in canon some outsider stuff is explicitly unkillable and feed on psychic energies especially fear and knowledge of them. The more those two are removed from the world the less they can do. Curious myself what dp will change about that though.
Edit: Sometimes I wish we were a sidereal as I know they have information manipulation bullshit. Do we? Cause we can't just remove lovecraft from the history books as that'd probably be a good thing to do in universe.
You forget that until LCDs started to dominate, all TVs were vacuum tube based technology. The period of vacuum tube widespread use (outside of laboratories and everywhere you need a particle accelerator for) was... Well, it's not over yet - they have a large use in radio and TV stations, and, again in particle accelerators. Here, have a paper about it, with a nifty diagram of solid state vs. vacuum tube.
I do remember. Im by no means saying they had, or have no utility.
However, it was clear by the time transistors went into production that vacuum tubes would be relegated to niche uses at best.
While I dislike the notion of "war makes technology advance" (because it's blatantly wrong in many ways), if we take the time period from 1900 (roughly the year radio was invented) to 1954 (the year first transistor radio was released, and even that is a very limiting timeframe), that's two mortal generations, complete overhaul of life in a number of countries, an explosion of technology in a number of countries, and an increase in human population of 70% over 1900 baseline.
That was a time of preparing for war, or rebuilding after war.
And large swathes of the world's population at the time lacked access to education.
And thats not even counting the fact that supernatural warfare didnt end until the final death of Kemmler in 1961.
I won't be able to convince you (I never am), but you are blatantly wrong here. Editing, and checking , and reviewing exist, but aren't protected against malicious action, or anywhere near as good as you think they are.
That's only if you want immediate effects. Giving tens of thousands of people untreatable cancer-like condition that will manifest 5 to 10 years from the unnoticed attack is a matter of a thousand dollars... And I'll shut up now.
Except it's not like that. It's monsters feeding on humans, literally. Ignorance when being handed a live grenade while being dropped in a war zone is never a safer option.
Handing out instructions to make your own fullup chemical kit at home in order to prevent an outbreak of diarrhea is a terrible idea
Because some fuckwits will make chemical weapons.
I know this is mostly because our little cyberdevils are extremely sus, and an Infernal Exaltation is practically designed to give off as many red flags as possible, but...
It's been a depressingly long time in this universe since someone with enough knowledge and power to make a real difference actually tried anything major to improve the Status Quo, instead of either preserving it, doing their own thing, actively trying to make things worse, or desperately trying to prevent things from all falling apart, hasn't it? Ah well, guess it's time to change that. After all, if there's one thing every Exaltation is made for, it's changing the Status Quo, one way or another.
Word of God is that the White Council itself has been involved in a multigenerational uplift project in Europe at a bare minimum, as well as trying to keep the then superpowers from killing everyone in the Cold War.
I quote:
Wizards were certainly a force of nature. One that would frighten people enough to go after them with overwhelming numbers and a vengeance.
Of course, that leaves many, many other things they could do to influence events. The most powerful such was the gathering of information and rapid communications. Their ability to travel rapidly, to gather information and send it elsewhere was something that didn't really get beat until a Mr. Ford, Mr. Marconi, and some guys named Orville and Wilbur came along. And they were basically in the information business, which is an excellent way to guarantee security.
They were also largely responsible for the Renaissance, in the Dresden universe. Not directly, but by going out and finding the best and brightest minds and seeing to it that they got the education and the chances they needed to succeed in life. Some wizards even did direct mentoring of various brilliant figures of European history (DaVinci and Gallileo were two prime examples).
But they stayed out of direct involvement in wars and politics, instead focusing on becoming involved in the intellectual progress of society. Wizards from France and Germany, for example, would treat each other much the same way as opposing lawyers in a big case. Even when their clients were tearing each other to bits, that didn't meant that the two wizards were foes. They were, in fact, professional colleagues, who were likely to go off and get a beer and roll their eyes at their clients' foolishness.
(All of this is mostly focused on the White Council, which was centered in Europe. Wizards in other areas of the world, such as the Americas, eastern Asia, and Australia have far different histories.)
But that factor–the sheer weight of numbers of mortals–dictated the role they had to assume to survive and prosper. They hoped that a more advanced, less warlike culture would provide a better place for wizards to live. In fact, it did. But it also robbed them of the extreme power they'd possessed until that time, relative to vanilla mortals.
Q: If the White Council is so oblivious to things going on in the mortal world, how is it that Morgan knew exactly when the nuclear test was going to be (for when he nuked the skinwalker)?
A: A couple of tests had happened, and those things are disruptive. They send out a giant electromagnetic pulse. So naturally, the wizards noticed it. They did some research to figure out what it was, and once they understood, they made sure to know each time it was going to happen so nobody would get freaked out. So Morgan just had to plan it, to lure the skinwalker onto the range at the right time. Then he opened up a portal to the NeverNever, and barred the door behind himself. Boom.
Senior wizards are actually fairly aware of big things going on with mortals. They knew all about what was happening in the US and Russia during the Cold War. In fact, they were the ones who realized that Russia really wasn't a major power, and that everything they were doing was in fear of the US and in preparation for defending themselves. Wizards planted the idea for the US to bug Russia. When the US found out that Russia really was just scared of them, that's when the peace discussions began.
The backstory of the DresdenFiles establishes that , from efforts like this to the ongoing efforts of the Oblivion War.
They just tend to be secret, and because they dont shout about what they are doing, lesser talents assume nothing is happening.
Its like Anna's bitterness towards the White council over their previous apparent passivity towards the Reds.
Because she wasnt alive when the White Council and other groups broke the Black Court's temporal power.
If it's publicly available idiots will use it to get into trouble.
You give a fae dealing survival guide to people and half of them are going to take it as a warranty that it's safe to do so even if you repeatedly say otherwise.
Magic lessons from my perspective are a complete nonstarter for anything public facing. It's almost guaranteed someone will build themselves a pipe bomb equivalent with it.
I mean, Word of Charity was that her cult leader wasnt really involved in black magic until after the Wardens dropped by for a routine wellness check and boundary warning. It was after that visit that dude started delving into black magic, then started sacrificing cult members to Siriothrax.
Some people heed warnings. Others consider them instruction manuals.
The teenage warlock that got executed in the beginning of Proven Guilty was IIRC specifically noted by Dresden to have probably broken the laws out of ignorance. So that's at least one canon character who could have been saved. I vaguely recall he might have also said that made up most warlocks these days due to the population explosion rendering the WC's usual methods of spreading knowledge of the laws ineffective, though I'm nowhere near as sure of that part.
And yeah, the ones that actually get books written about them are the one's who aren't acting out of ignorance, because the stories of the ones that are go "we killed the teenage necromancer before she built up to much steam because she didn't know how to hide her activities. It appears her oldest zombies were an attempt to resurrect her dead family, who'd been killed in a car accident a month prior. The End."
Point of order: Thats not true, and misses a lot of the nuance of the scene besides.
Read the passage again; Dresden didnt know the particulars of the case. He didnt even know the guy's name.
He was there as a witness and local security.
He was just lashing out in horror. Compare it to when he later talks to Murphy about the same scene.
Blood leaves no stain on a Warden's grey cloak. I didn't know that until the day I watched Morgan, second in command of the White Council's Wardens, lift his sword over the kneeling form of a young man guilty of the practice of black magic. The boy, sixteen years old at the most, screamed and ranted in Korean underneath his black hood, his mouth spilling hatred and rage, convinced by his youth and power of his own immortality. He never knew it when the blade came down.
Which I guess was a small mercy. Microscopic, really.
His blood flew in a scarlet arc. I wasn't ten feet away. I felt hot droplets strike one cheek, and more blood covered the left side of the cloak in blotches of angry red. The head fell to the ground, and I saw the cloth over it moving, as if the boy's mouth were still screaming imprecations.
The body fell onto its side. One calf muscle twitched spasmodically and then stopped. After maybe five seconds, the head did too.
Morgan stood over the still form for a moment, the bright silver sword of the White Council of Wizards' justice in his hands. Besides him and me, there were a dozen Wardens present, and two members of the Senior Council-the Merlin and my one-time mentor, Ebenezar McCoy.
The covered head stopped its feeble movements. Morgan glanced up at the Merlin and nodded once. The Merlin returned the nod. "May he find peace."
"Peace," the Wardens all replied together.
Except me. I turned my back on them, and made it two steps away before I threw up on the warehouse floor.
I stood there shaking for a moment, until I was sure I was finished, then straightened slowly. I felt a presence draw near me and looked up to see Ebenezar standing there.
He was an old man, bald but for wisps of white hair, short, stocky, his face half covered in a ferocious-looking grey beard. His nose and cheeks and bald scalp were all ruddy, except for a recent, purplish scar on his pate. Though he was centuries old he carried himself with vibrant energy, and his eyes were alert and pensive behind gold-rimmed spectacles. He wore the formal black robes of a meeting of the Council, along with the deep purple stole of a member of the Senior Council.
"Harry," he said quietly. "You all right?"
"After that?" I snarled, loudly enough to make sure everyone there heard me. "No one in this damned building should be all right."
I felt a sudden tension in the air behind me.
"No they shouldn't," Ebenezar said. I saw him look back at the other wizards there, his jaw setting stubbornly.
The Merlin came over to us, also in his formal robes and stole. He looked like a wizard should look-tall, long white hair, long white beard, piercing blue eyes, his face seamed with age and wisdom.
Well. With age, anyway.
"Warden Dresden," he said. He had the sonorous voice of a trained speaker, and spoke English with a high-class British accent. "If you had some evidence that you felt would prove the boy's innocence, you should have presented it during the trial."
"I didn't have anything like that, and you know it," I replied.
"He was proven guilty," the Merlin said. "I soulgazed him myself. I examined more than two dozen mortals whose minds he had altered. Three of them might eventually recover their sanity. He forced four others to commit suicide, and had hidden nine corpses from the local authorities, as well. And every one of them was a blood relation." The Merlin stepped toward me, and the air in the room suddenly felt hot. His eyes flashed with azure anger and his voice rumbled with deep, unyielding power. "The powers he had used had already broken his mind. We did what was necessary."
I turned and faced the Merlin. I didn't push out my jaw and try to stare him down. I didn't put anything belligerent or challenging into my posture. I didn't show any anger on my face, or slur any disrespect into my tone when I spoke. The past several months had taught me that the Merlin hadn't gotten his job through an ad on a matchbook. He was, quite simply, the strongest wizard on the planet. And he had talent, skill, and experience to go along with that strength. If I ever came to magical blows with him, there wouldn't be enough left of me to fill a lunch sack. I did not want a fight.
But I didn't back down, either.
"He was a kid," I said. "We all have been. He made a mistake. We've all done that too."
The Merlin regarded me with an expression somewhere between irritation and contempt. "You know what the use of black magic can do to a person," he said. Marvelously subtle shading and emphasis over his words added in a perfectly clear, unspoken thought: You know it because you've done it. Sooner or later, you'll slip up, and then it will be your turn. "One use leads to another. And another."
"That's what I keep hearing, Merlin," I answered. "Just say no to black magic. But that boy had no one to tell him the rules, to teach him. If someone had known about his gift and done something in time-"
He lifted a hand, and the simple gesture had such absolute authority to it that I stopped to let him speak. "The point you are missing, Warden Dresden," he said, "is that the boy who made that foolish mistake died long before we discovered the damage he'd done. What was left of him was nothing more nor less than a monster who would have spent his life inflicting horror and death on anyone near him."
"I know that," I said, and I couldn't keep the anger and frustration out of my voice. "And I know what had to be done. I know it was the only measure that could stop him." I thought I was going to throw up again, and I closed my eyes and leaned on the solid oak length of my carved staff. I got my stomach under control and opened my eyes to face the Merlin. "But it doesn't change the fact that we've just murdered a boy who probably never knew enough to understand what was happening to him."
"Accusing someone else of murder is hardly a stone you are in a position to cast, Warden Dresden." The Merlin arched a silver brow at me. "Did you not discharge a firearm into the back of the head of a woman you merely believed to be the Corpsetaker from a distance of a few feet away, fatally wounding her?"
I swallowed. I sure as hell had, last year. It had been one of the bigger coin tosses of my life. Had I incorrectly judged that a body-transferring wizard known as the Corpsetaker had jumped into the original body of Warden Luccio, I would have murdered an innocent woman and a law-enforcing member of the White Council.
I hadn't been wrong-but I'd never… never just killed anyone before. I've killed things in the heat of battle, yes. I've killed people by less direct means. But Corpsetaker's death had been intimate and coldly calculated and not at all indirect. Just me, the gun, and the limp corpse. I could still vividly remember the decision to shoot, the feel of the cold metal in my hands, the stiff pull of my revolver's trigger, the thunder of the gun's report, and the way the body had settled into a limp bundle of limbs on the ground, the motion somehow too simple for the horrible significance of the event.
I'd killed. Deliberately, rationally ended another's life.
And it still haunted my dreams at night.
I'd had little choice. Given the smallest amount of time, the Corpse-taker could have called up lethal magic, and the best I could have hoped for was a death curse that killed me as I struck down the necromancer. It had been a bad day or two, and I was pretty strung out. Even if I hadn't been, I had a feeling that Corpsetaker could have taken me in a fair fight. So I hadn't given Corpsetaker anything like a fair fight. I shot the necromancer in the back of the head because the Corpsetaker had to be stopped, and I'd had no other option.
I had executed her on suspicion.
No trial. No soulgaze. No judgment from a dispassionate arbiter. Hell, I hadn't even taken the chance to get in a good insult. Bang. Thump. One live wizard, one dead bad guy.
I'd done it to prevent future harm to myself and others. It hadn't been the best solution-but it had been the only solution. I hadn't hesitated for a heartbeat. I'd done it, no questions, and gone on to face the further perils of that night.
Just like a Warden is supposed to do. Sorta took the wind out of my holier-than-thou sails.
Bottomless blue eyes watched my face and he nodded slowly. "You executed her," the Merlin said quietly. "Because it was necessary."
"That was different," I said.
"Indeed. Your action required far deeper commitment. It was dark, cold, and you were alone. The suspect was a great deal stronger than you. Had you struck and missed, you would have died. Yet you did what had to be done."
"Necessary isn't the same as right" I said.
"Perhaps not," he said. "But the Laws of Magic are all that prevent wizards from abusing their power over mortals. There is no room for compromise. You are a Warden now, Dresden. You must focus on your duty to both mortals and the Council."
"Which sometimes means killing children?" This time I didn't hide the contempt, but there wasn't much life to it.
"Which means always enforcing the Laws," the Merlin said, and his eyes bored into mine, flickering with sparks of rigid anger. "It is your duty. Now more than ever."
I broke the stare first, looking away before anything bad could happen. Ebenezar stood a couple of steps from me, studying my expression.
"Granted that you've seen much for a man your age," the Merlin said, and there was a slight softening in his tone. "But you haven't seen how horrible such things can become. Not nearly. The Laws exist for a reason. They must stand as written."
I turned my head and stared at the small pool of scarlet on the warehouse floor beside the kid's corpse. I hadn't been told his name before they'd ended his life.
"Right," I said tiredly, and wiped a clean corner of the grey cloak over my blood-sprinkled face. "I can see what they're written in."
"Sure," she said. She brought out a plastic sack she'd carried in and tossed it on the floor. It held my robe, stole, and cloak, all of them spattered with blood. She walked over to the kitchen sink and started filling it with cold water. "So let's talk."
I nodded and told her about the Korean kid. While I did that, she put my stole in the sink, then started washing it briskly in the cold water.
"That kid is what wizards mean when they talk about warlocks," I said. "Someone who has betrayed the purpose of magic. Gone bad, right from the start."
She waited a moment and then said, in a quiet, dangerous voice, "They killed him here? In Chicago?"
"Yes," I said. I felt even more tired. "This is one of our safer meeting places, apparently."
"You saw it?"
"Yes."
"You didn't stop it?"
"I couldn't have," I said. "There were heavyweights there, Murphy. And…" I took a deep breath. "I'm not sure they were completely in the wrong."
"Like hell they weren't," she snarled. "I don't give a good God damn what the White Council does over in England or South America or wherever they want to hang around flapping their beards. But they came here."
"Had nothing to do with you," I said. "Nothing to do with the law, that is. It was internal stuff. They would have done the same to that kid, no matter where they were."
Her movements became jerky for a moment, and water splashed over the rim of the sink. Then she visibly forced herself to relax, put the stole aside, and went to work on the robe. "Why do you think that?" she asked.
"The kid had gone in for black magic in a big way," I said. "Mind-control stuff. Robbing people of their free will."
She regarded me with cool eyes. "I'm not sure I understand."
"It's the Fourth Law of Magic," I said. "You aren't allowed to control the mind of another human. But… hell, it's one of the first things a lot of these stupid kids try-the old Jedi mind trick. Sometimes they start with maybe getting homework overlooked by a teacher or convincing their parents to buy them a car. They come into their magic when they're maybe fifteen or so, and by the time they're seventeen or eighteen they've got a full -grown talent."
"And that's bad?"
"A lot of times," I said. "Think about how men that age are. Can't go ten seconds without thinking about sex. Sooner or later, if someone doesn't teach them otherwise, they'll put the psychic armlock on the head cheerleader to get a date. And more than a date. And then more girls, or I guess other guys if I'm going to be PC about it. Someone else gets upset about losing a girlfriend or a daughter getting pregnant and the kid tries to fix his mistakes with more magic."
But why does that mandate execution?" Murphy asked.
"It…" I frowned. "Getting into someone's mind like that is difficult and dangerous. And sooner or later, while you're changing them, you start changing yourself, too. You remember Micky Malone?"
Murphy didn't exactly shudder, but her hands stopped moving for a minute. Micky Malone was a retired police officer. A few months after he'd gotten out of the game, an angry and vicious spiritual entity had unleashed a psychic assault on him, and bound him in spells of torment to boot. The attack had transformed a grandfatherly old retired cop into a screaming maniac, totally out of control. I'd done what I could for the poor guy, but it had been really bad.
"I remember," Murphy said quietly.
"When a person gets into someone's head, it inflicts all kinds of damage-sort of like what happened to Micky Malone. But it damages the one doing it, too. It gets easier to bend others as you get more bent. Vicious cycle. And it's dangerous for the victim. Not just because of what might happen as a direct result of suddenly being forced to believe that the warlock is the god-king of the universe. It strains their psyche, and the more uncharacteristically they're made to feel and act, the more it hurts them. Most of the time, it devolves into a total breakdown."
Murphy shivered. "Like those office workers Mavra did it to? And the Renfields?"
A flash of phantom pain went through my maimed hand at the memory. "Exactly like that," I said.
"What can that kind of magic do?" she asked, her voice more subdued.
"Too much. This kid had forced a bunch of people to commit suicide. A bunch more to commit murder. He'd turned a whole gang of people, most of them his family, into his personal slaves."
"My God," Murphy said quietly. "That's hideous."
I nodded. "That's black magic. You get enough of it in you and it changes you. Stains you."
"Isn't there anything else the Council can do?"
"Not when the kid is that far gone. They've tried it all," I said. "Sometimes the warlock seemed to get better, but they all turned back in the end.
And more people died. So unless someone on the Council takes personal responsibility for the warlock, they just kill them."
She thought about that for a moment. Then she asked, "Could you have done that? Taken responsibility for him?"
I shifted uncomfortably. "Theoretically, I guess. If I really believed he could be salvaged."
She pressed her lips together and stared at the sink.
"Murph," I said, as gently as I knew how. "The law couldn't handle someone like that. You couldn't arrest them, contain them, without some serious magic to neutralize their powers. If you tried to bring an angry warlock into holding down at SI, it would get ugly. Worse than the loup-garou."
"There's got to be another way," Murphy said.
"Once a dog goes rabid, you can't bring him back," I said. "All you can do is keep him from hurting others. The best solution is prevention. Find the kids displaying serious talent and teach them better from the get-go. But the world population has grown so much in the past century that the White Council can't possibly identify and reach them all. Especially with this war on. There just aren't enough of us."
She tilted her head, staring at me. "Us? That's the first time I've heard you reference the White Council with yourself included in it."
I wasn't sure what to say to that, so I drank the rest of my Coke. Murphy went on washing for a minute, set the robe aside, and reached for the grey cloak. She dropped it into the sink, frowned, and then held it up. "Look at this," she said. "The blood came out when it hit the water All by itself."
"It's like that kid never died. Cool," I said quietly.
Murphy watched me for a moment. "Maybe this is what it feels like for civilians when they see cops doing some of the dirty work. A lot of times they don't understand what's happening. They see something they don't like and it upsets them-because they don't have the full story, aren't personally facing the problem, and don't know how much worse the alternative could be."
"Maybe," I agreed.
"It sucks."
"Sorry."
She cast me a fleeting smile, but her expression grew serious again when she crossed the room to sit down near me. "Do you really think what they did was necessary?"
God help me, I nodded.
"Is this why the Council was so hard on you for so long? Because they thought you were a warlock about to relapse?"
"Yeah. Except for the part where you're using the past tense." I leaned forward, chewing on my lip for a second. "Murph, this is one of those things the cops can't get involved in. I told you there would be things like this. I don't like what happened anymore than you do. But please, don't push this. It won't help anyone."
"I can't ignore a dead body."
"There won't be one."
She shook her head and stared at the Coke for a while more. "All right," she said. "But if the body shows up or someone reports it, I won't have any choice."
"I understand." I looked around for a change of subject. "So. There's black magic afoot in Chicago, according to an annoyingly vague letter from the Gatekeeper."
"Who is he?"
"Wizard. Way mysterious."
"You believe him?"
"Yeah," I said. "So we should be on the lookout for killings and strange incidents and so on. The usual."
"Right," Murphy said. "I'll keep an eye out for corpses, weirdos, and monsters."
Remember: Molly didnt just end up in people's heads by accident.
And according to Dresden, she's one of the most powerful, most subtle mind mages he has ever met.
Idiots will do stupid things with magic, just like they do with everything else, but that doesn't mean informing people of things is a bad idea.
Elitist gatekeeping all knowledge for the worthy is invariably doing more harm than the normal run of morons ever could. Magical talents can use magic already without instruction and they are more likely to hurt themselves or others from ignorance than if they do get it.
Its a matter of scale and consequences. When the consequences can be grave and societal in scale, you limit the distribution pool.
Humans are literally the ones who can destroy Reality by summoning Outsiders past the defenses of the Outer Gates. Via magic.
They are also the ones who are often most vulnerable to hostile occult attention, or ovcult blandishments.
There are pretty good reasons why even the wizards restrict information, even among themselves.
Canon Molly didnt get briefed about the Sleeper because thats the sort of thing apprentices get told about at the end of the apprenticeship. And Harry didnt even know that wizards develop precog as they get older because its explocit policy not to tell newbies until they figure it out for themselves.
This isnt real life. A lot of the rules of RL do not apply in the setting.
And even IRL you are not automatically entitled to information even in the West, and will often be treated harshly for trying to disseminate it without permission.
It's not, yes. But: 1) I think you are strongly underestimating the impact a 15+ successes quality education and indoctrination material can have on someone. It should be well beyond "having a religious experience that completely changes one's life" level.
2) It's not going to be effective if they don't see another way forward. Correct education would expand the audience's range of possible solutions to situations they find themselves in, and prevent them from using the Lawbreaking (or other bad
My friend. You are overestimating the effect.
Teamwork is a thing available to organizations or people with clout. A project to write a primer is something easily undertaken by a group of authors, or even a single author with a group of helpers.
A single Intelligence 3 + Occult 3 lead author, say with 24x Occult 1 assistants/helpers providing 1 dice each and a reference library for a -1DC bonus is a 30 dice pool project, average 15 successes.
Or a group of 5x Int 3 + Occult 3 authors collaborating together, like you see in a lot of college level textbooks.
And that doesnt even bring in the extended rolls mechanic.
15 successes for writing is spectacular for a single person working alone, especially given how fast a Celestial can work.
Not for a team carrying out a writing project.
I mean, the Big Book of Yomi Wan was a teamwork thing with Bob, wasnt it?
Technology is designing something, if I understand correctly, so if we want to design something from the ground up, and include something new, like exotic types of combustion engines, we'd need technology.
Vehicle armoring schemes are hardly classified; private shops have been armoring law enforcement, commercial and private vehicles for decades now.Toyota had been selling the Prius hybrid and the RAV4 EV variant since 1997, and GM sold Tahoe and Yukon hybrids starting in 2007, so we're not dealing with new power plant types.
This is a situation where we take the basic chassis plan of a big SUV along the lines of a Suburban ESV or a Mercedes Sprinter van and rework the internals.
By most definitions any part of a city is hostile to human life. If you can't farm enough to feed the population locally, then by definition it is hostile to human's.
Point of correction:
In the first roll, you had Molly rolling social Attribute + social Attribute: Cha 3 + Man 3.
She should have been rolling social Attribute + Ability: Cha3 /Man 3 + Empathy 4 or Etiquette 5
Wouldnt have made a huge difference(8 dice instead of 6 dice), but I thought you might appreciate a heads up.
Understand science, sure? Listens to the Wind keeps up to date on medicine. Can interact with a computer? Not so much, they use pen and paper or typing machines. And without a computer there is no reason to learn about the internet, they are not stupid, they are limited by metaphysics.
The White Council is explicitly characterized as a major economic power, and that one of their major modalities for waging the ongoing war has been economic. There's no way they do that in the 2000s without an intimate understanding of the digital economy. They may not use it personally, but I bet they understand it just fine.
Nevermind what Ebenezer using a decomissioned Soviet satellite as a kinetic impactor against Casaverde says about his understanding of electronics and orbital physics.
And yeah, the ones that actually get books written about them are the one's who aren't acting out of ignorance, because the stories of the ones that are go "we killed the teenage necromancer before she built up to much steam because she didn't know how to hide her activities. It appears her oldest zombies were an attempt to resurrect her dead family, who'd been killed in a car accident a month prior. The End."
A kid who can see their family's ghosts has a lot of incentive to push the envelope, and "just say no to necromancy" however persuasively put is a bandaid holding back continuous pressure.
Ignorance didn't help, but an informational drive by itself doesn't do much either. Especially since any legitimate accounting of the laws is going to have to acknowledge that they aren't necessarily simple absolutes.
Take killing for example, there's a specific self defense clause because that doesn't corrupt the same way straight murder does. This is foundational to why Dresden is even still alive.
People need more than a list of do nots to actually avoid screwing up.
Everyone has a reason they slip, if you don't have someone there to pick up on it the odds that they don't give in to temptation simply because they were told it's a bad idea are low.
The fourth law, mind control is something that could easily be triggered in a non serious way. Some kid thinks they are Obi Wan Kenobi and makes his teacher forget about the homework they did not turn in. Then we have invade the mind of another also sounds very grave when you put it that way, but then some kid thinks he is the star in What Women Want. Popular culture is filled with examples of fictional people breaking the hell out of the Laws of Magic. Other than the Law against murder and necromancy none of these have strong cultural taboos for someone who has never engaged with the supernatural.
1. No murder
2. No transforming others
3. No invading minds
4. No enthralling minds
5. No Necromancy
6. No time travel
7. No Outsiders
Jedi mind trick style stuff is an obvious example of pop culture supporting law breaking, but the meat and potatoes of mind editing aren't something a stable person is going to seriously blame on TV.
Most of the others don't exactly have much of a soft sell either. Time travel is the one with the lowest potential baseline reaction, but it's also most commonly shown as being dangerous. I'd bet on a good number of would be time travelers going "but what if I accidentally erase myself?" Before even trying unless they have a serious motive.
The White Council is explicitly characterized as a major economic power, and that one of their major modalities for waging the ongoing war has been economic. There's no way they do that in the 2000s without an intimate understanding of the digital economy. They may not use it personally, but I bet they understand it just fine.
Nevermind what Ebenezer using a decomissioned Soviet satellite as a kinetic impactor against Casaverde says about his understanding of electronics and orbital physics.
That says absolutly nothing about his understanding of electronics.
He uses the satellite like he would use a meteor, it's insides do not matter at all.
It's just a fact that man-made orbital debris is far more common than passing meteors by now.
He has been causing natural disasters for about two centuries by now and while he does certainly have a great understanding of physics, as it connects to Forces at least, it says nothing about his knowledge of modern tech.
Edit: since the Tunguska Event might have been a meteor IRL, I wouldn't rule out that he already grabbed a meteor once as a weapon in the DF timeline, as that one was his fault in it.
VOTE [X]The game room/lounge of the Last Station
[X]Introduce Porter as longtime local resident/ally/landlord, and as someone who encountered the Will
[X]Brief synopsis/overview of the Thousand Hells and their Yama Kings in relationship to the rest of the setting, as supernatural nationstates with nationstate resources
[X]Explain things in terms of geopolitical model, and why graduated response to provocations
[X]Point at the benefits of sending credible survivors back to report failure and deter repeat attempts. For a while anyway.
[X]Be clear about the consequences of escalation, especially for civilian bystanders. Point at the ongoing Vampire War.
[X]If necessary, have Clippy show the hotel surveillance video of Lady Eiko checking into the Jaslin Hotel and Obligation-ing the staff as evidence they could not have held her anyway, and a demonstration of why mortals(and some supernaturals) without specific high-end mental defenses are at a disadvantage for keeping secrets from high-end supernaturals.
[X]Add footage of Eiko in Demon Shintai form if it will help establish the physical as well as social threat she would have posed.
[X]If she pressess, admit there's a final set of considerations you cant discuss precisely because of mortal vulnerability to mindfuckery as shown on the screen, and the potential consequences.
[X]Charms: All Things Betray + Empathy or Etiquette Excellency as necessary
[X]STUNT 1: You pause in your talking, an idea occurring to you. "Do you play chess, Lieutenant?" At her cautious nod you get up, reaching around Porter to grab a board from where it was stored. "Great." You say, as you begin to rapidly assemble the pieces. "The comparisons will be imperfect, but it gives some idea of the balance I was trying to strike." You pick up a black piece, weighing it on your palm before you continue. "Eiko? Eiko was a rook. Powerful, valuable, flexible, but routinely replaceable. The Daimyo of the Dark numbers many such in his retinue." You set down that piece and pick up another. "The Will was a queen. Each Yama King has very few such, and they represent significant investments of resources and prestige."
[X]STUNT 2: The video of the arriving entourage finishes playing on one monitor, and Clippy stops the video.To any ear but your own, Lt Murphy's voice is remarkably steady. "Explain to me what I just saw." Your estimation of her nerve goes up a point or two as you continue. "The reason why I had doubts about JC's culpability. That is called....the closest translation is Authority. Jedi mind trick on turbos. Give the target orders they obey without question. Get them to ignore discrepancies like...that."You wave at the screen. "Spill their secrets, and the secrets of others, without even remembering they did it. Any five year old kueijin....Jade Court vampire could learn to do this, not just the devil-eaten." You pause for a moment to let that sink in, then continue."Much more difficult to apply it against supernaturals" you nod to Porter "but none of the caveats Im aware of apply to normal humans.But thats not the only thing I wanted you to see. Clippy, play the combat video." And on the monitors, footage of your fight with Eiko begins to play, beginning with Eiko's transformation sequence.
That says absolutly nothing about his understanding of electronics.
He uses the satellite like he would use a meteor, it's insides do not matter at all.
It's just a fact that man-made orbital debris is far more common than passing meteors by now.
He has been causing natural disasters for about two centuries by now and while he does certainly have a great understanding of physics, as it connects to Forces at least, it says nothing about his knowledge of modern tech.
Edit: since the Tunguska Event might have been a meteor IRL, I wouldn't rule out that he already grabbed a meteor once as a weapon in the DF timeline, as that one was his fault in it.
He picked a decommissioned Soviet satellite as his impactor of choice instead of an asteroid, or a working satellite or other piece of space junk.
I woke up to a ringing telephone the next day. "Hoss," Ebenezar said. "You should watch the news today." He hung up on me.
I went down to a nearby diner for breakfast, and asked the waitress to turn on the news. She did.
"- extraordinary event reminiscent of the science-fiction horror stories around the turn of the millennium, what appeared to be an asteroid fell from space and impacted just outside the village of Casaverde in Honduras." The screen flickered to an aerial shot of an enormous, smoking hole in the ground, and a half-mile-wide circle of trees that had been blasted flat. Just past the circle of destruction stood a poor-looking village. "However, information coming in from agencies around the world indicates that the so-called meteor was in actuality a deactivated Soviet communications satellite which decayed in orbit and fell to earth. No estimates of the number of deaths or injuries in this tragic freak accident have yet reached authorities, but it seems unlikely that anyone in the manor house could possibly have survived the impact."
I sat slowly back, pursing my lips. I decided that maybe I wasn't sorry Asteroid Dresden turned out to be an old Soviet satellite after all. And I made a mental note to myself never to get on Ebenezar's bad side.
That required both an understanding of the Cold War space programs, and up to date knowledge of what satellites are where and when, in addition to when it would
Do remember that I posted WoG upthread about stuff like EMP being noticeable magically, and the Senior Council keeping track of Cold War nuclear testing. Which is how Morgan knew to lure the naagloshii into line with a nuke test.
Dude's old, not senile. And he needs to keep track of stuff like that to do his job.
===
EDIT
We actually have hard numbers for some of the White Council's losses.
Proven Guilty chapter 2
I paused and took a second to get some of my emotions under control. Those and my stomach. I didn't want the embarrassment of a repeat performance.
"What is it?" He stopped a few feet behind me. "The war isn't going well."
By which he meant the war of the White Council against the Red Court of vampires. The war had been a whole lot of pussyfooting and fights in back alleys for several years, but last year the vampires had upped the ante. Their assault had been timed to coincide with vicious activity from a traitor within the Council and with the attack of a number of necromancers, outlaw wizards who raised the dead into angry specters and zombies-among a number of other, less savory things.
The vampires had hit the Council. Hard. Before the battle was over, they'd killed nearly two hundred wizards, most of them Wardens. That's why the Wardens had given me a grey cloak. They needed the help.
Before they'd finished, the vampires killed nearly forty-five thousand men, women, and children who happened to be nearby.
That's why I'd taken the cloak. That wasn't the sort of thing I could ignore.
"I've read the reports," I said. "They say that the Venatori Umbrorum and the Fellowship of St. Giles have really pitched in."
"It's more than that. If they hadn't started up an offensive to slow the vamps down, the Red Court would have destroyed the Council months ago."
I blinked. "They're doing that much?"
The Venatori Umbrorum and the Fellowship of St. Giles were the White Council's primary allies in the war with the Red Court. The Venatori were an ancient, secret brotherhood, joined together to fight supernatural darkness wherever they could. Sort of like the Masons, only with more flamethrowers. By and large, they were academic sorts, and though several of the Venatori had various forms of military experience, their true strength lay in utilizing human legal systems and analyzing information brought together from widely dispersed sources.
The Fellowship, though, was a somewhat different story. Not as many of them as there were of the Venatori, but not many of them were merely human. Most of them, so I took it, were those who had been half turned by the vampires. They'd been infested with the dark powers that made the Red Court such a threat, but until they willingly drank another's lifeblood, they never quite stopped being human. It could make them stronger and faster and better able to withstand injury than regular folks, and it granted them a drastically increased life span. Assuming they didn't fall prey to their constant, base desire for blood, or weren't slain in operations against their enemies in the Red Court.
That required both an understanding of the Cold War space programs, and up to date knowledge of what satellites are where and when, in addition to when it would
1. No murder
2. No transforming others
3. No invading minds
4. No enthralling minds
5. No Necromancy
6. No time travel
7. No Outsiders
Jedi mind trick style stuff is an obvious example of pop culture supporting law breaking, but the meat and potatoes of mind editing aren't something a stable person is going to seriously blame on TV.
Most of the others don't exactly have much of a soft sell either. Time travel is the one with the lowest potential baseline reaction, but it's also most commonly shown as being dangerous. I'd bet on a good number of would be time travelers going "but what if I accidentally erase myself?" Before even trying unless they have a serious motive.
Jedi mind trick is something Harry explicitly brings up when it comes to the first warlock we see having his head cut off as a entrance drug. Reading an unwilling mind is invasion Harry brings it up when he trains with Molly, if one of them were not willing no matter how trivial the thing the other person wanted to read it would be a breach of the fifth. It is very easy to fall afoul of those two laws if all you have is pop culture to go on.
That required both an understanding of the Cold War space programs, and up to date knowledge of what satellites are where and when, in addition to when it would
Do remember that I posted WoG upthread about stuff like EMP being noticeable magically, and the Senior Council keeping track of Cold War nuclear testing. Which is how Morgan knew to lure the naagloshii into line with a nuke test.
Dude's old, not senile. And he needs to keep track of stuff like that to do his job.
I never denied that he's keeping track of the modern world, just like finding meteor to pull down would take some knowledge of astronomy, finding a satellite and choosing a decomissioned one for the task is not trivial either.
What I am contesting is that he had to know anything about the electronics of the satellite to do so.
All he had to do was ask someone who knows a bit about the topic to get a general idea what the "nearest" (in terms of orbit) pieces of space junk are and then pick his target with a telescope.
And if he has access to the internet without frying PCs he could even pick it out himself pretty easily.
My friend. You are overestimating the effect.
Teamwork is a thing available to organizations or people with clout. A project to write a primer is something easily undertaken by a group of authors, or even a single author with a group of helpers.
A single Intelligence 3 + Occult 3 lead author, say with 24x Occult 1 assistants/helpers providing 1 dice each and a reference library for a -1DC bonus is a 30 dice pool project, average 15 successes.
Or a group of 5x Int 3 + Occult 3 authors collaborating together, like you see in a lot of college level textbooks.
And that doesnt even bring in the extended rolls mechanic.
15 successes for writing is spectacular for a single person working alone, especially given how fast a Celestial can work.
Not for a team carrying out a writing project.
I mean, the Big Book of Yomi Wan was a teamwork thing with Bob, wasnt it?
I am fairly sure that this doesn't work like that. Or shouldn't. Multiple people stacking successes obviously works, but, for mortals at least, it likely works only on large scale projects where you need to accumulate X successes, instead on single endeavors where even one success is a success, at least past certain point (likely 5 successes). Like, I am fairly sure that even a hundred members of the Order of Cauldron working together would have raised a god with their ritual without us.
15 successes is explicitely the point where other celestial exalts start thinking you are showing off. It's not something mortals, or even a large group of mortals should be able to achieve. Not, like, without a hundred years of effort and factually unlimited budget and personnel.
That required both an understanding of the Cold War space programs, and up to date knowledge of what satellites are where and when, in addition to when it would
It requires 1) To know that satellites are a thing, and b) being able to detect one to grab. There's an account of a Lykov family in Russia, who fled civilization completely in 1936. From unaided observations of the sky their patriarch was able to figure out satellites existing. Meaning that a mortal can see a satellite in the sky, and logic out what it is. Mccoy is not just a mere mortal, and likely has srcying abilities.
It requires 1) To know that satellites are a thing, and b) being able to detect one to grab. There's an account of a Lykov family in Russia, who fled civilization completely in 1936. From unaided observations of the sky their patriarch was able to figure out satellites existing. Meaning that a mortal can see a satellite in the sky, and logic out what it is. Mccoy is not just a mere mortal, and likely has srcying abilities.
He was propably a bit more informed than that, since he pulled down a decommissioned satellite with no country to answer for it, rather than an active one belonging to someone who would check why it left orbit.
So he needed to do either long research with books and telescope, or short research by using the internet or calling someone who can do so.
He was propably a bit more informed than that, since he pulled down a decommissioned satellite with no country to answer for it, rather than an active one belonging to someone who would check why it left orbit.
So he needed to do either long research with books and telescope, or short research by using the internet or calling someone who can do so.
