Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

On the topic of what Molly's hell is supposed to be, it's worth considering the charm description:


The hell is patterned after Yami Wan's bullshit, but it's formed of the substance of the infernal's own soul and exaltation in concert. It's located within them in the sense that it's grown into their spiritual existence.

My read is that this is supposed to be a true self willed miracle of dark creation; a mirror of the Yama Kings, but also of the primordials drawing themselves out of chaos by their own self contained power.

It looks like a horizon realm, but that's just fancy cosplay because the exaltation likes the look.
I mean, Kingdom charm borrows strongly from The Spirit of the Living World canon E2 Infernal charm, which is a heretical charm of Triumphant Devil Tigers (from Broken Winged Crane):
Cost: —; Mins: Essence 6; Type: Permanent
Keywords: Heretical
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: The Face of the Titans
Through the power of her Exaltation, the
Infernal carves out a world from the substance of
her own soul. This Charm permits the Infernal to
create a world, piece by piece, as though with Con-
structive Convergence of Principles (including the
requisite mote cost and roll to expand and modify
that world). This does not count as a Charm use,
but the Infernal must remain in a meditative trance
while altering or expanding her inner world. She
may not create demesnes or magical things within
herself, and her creations do not unravel if they do
not interact with Creation. The Infernal's soul is
treated as Pure Chaos for this purpose.
This created world exists wholly within the
Infernal's soul, but is otherwise a real, ongoing,
self-contained place, which continues to exist
even when she is not paying attention to it. The
internal worlds of the Infernal Exalted are strange,
uncanny places—glassy citadels floating atop clouds
in a brazen sky; a massive upside-down fortress
hanging above a forest of ivory trees surrounding
a still, emerald lake; or a city of cyclopean basalt
towers beneath a jet-black sky in which a single
red eye hangs and stares. The world the Infernal
forges should be consistent with the mood and
themes of the Excellency she created through
Triumphant Howl of the Devil-Tiger, at the Sto-
ryteller's discretion.
The Infernal may mentally visit this world by
taking a miscellaneous action (Speed 5 long ticks,
DV -3) to enter an Inactive meditative state, always
appearing at the center of the first part of the world
she shaped into being. She may leave this trance at
any time with a Speed 5, DV -2 miscellaneous ac-
tion. Individuals created in her inner world do not
have souls of their own and cannot grant her Essence
through prayer, though they are otherwise real to
her while she is there (for instance, she might copy
such a person with Black Mirror Shintai, and any
damage suffered manifests on her physical body).
The Infernal cannot yet travel physically into this
world, bring anything from the outer world into it,
or bring anything from the inner world out. These
feats require additional Charms.
And one must note several things:
1) The Spirit of the Living World is an Elder charm (E6).
2) The King and the Kingdom is directly superior to The Spirit of the Living World. ExvsWoD exalts can physically enter their kingdoms, which in E2 required homebrew elder charms, and at least humans inhabiting said kingdom are real humans with real souls (devils likely have souls too), and most likely can act as Cult background.

So, in my opinion at least, the presence of King and Kingdom is indication that the Infernals are supposed to become Primordials (also, Broken Winged Crane empathizes at several points that "Characters on the Heretical transcendence path are not becoming Yozis—they are something new, something much greater. ", i.e. that our kind of Primordials would be greater than the ones that preceded us).
 
Becoming a Primordial isn't really a thing mostly because Primordial isn't a species all the "Primordials" were about as different from each other as they were from everything else. The group is defined by being the group that created creation out of the chaos.

So Infernals are likely going to become a something maybe even greater than the Primordials. But seems likely to have a new name.
 
Becoming a Primordial isn't really a thing mostly because Primordial isn't a species all the "Primordials" were about as different from each other as they were from everything else. The group is defined by being the group that created creation out of the chaos.
They do have some similarities though.

They are all beings with their own set of physical and metaphysical laws, that they superimpose over the laws of Creation, the Wyld or any other place they might be.

Also they all have a similar soul-structure, with sapient sub-souls, which in turn have more sapient sub-souls.
 
OK, looks like we are in 'no secrets' mode.

Odds of Michael breaking out the bottle of scotch he's had since before Molly was born rising
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Jun 7, 2023 at 2:17 AM, finished with 117 posts and 13 votes.

  • [X][All]: Everything
    [X]STUNT: You sink into a cushioned chair beside Lydia with a sigh of relief and kick off your shoes, before beginning to massage speak. "Okay I have good news and unsettling news. Met Mab, met her daughter, resolved our....current dispute." You make a face, then take a pull from your soda can. "Even came out ahead a little." You meet your mother's eyes " Some of this will be public gossip by morning in Faerie, the rest will still be secret. But first, I need to give some background about what Winter does. You see, they are ...."
    [X][All Three] Apparently the bitch Sandra Marling set me up to fall afoul of the Laws.
    -[X] Winter has rendered all my past transgressions void and now owes me two favors.
    [X] [LYDIA] That would include much of what your father did not wish to talk about to you. If you still want to know, I'll tell you though.
    -[X] If she wants to know: Exorcised Nemesis out of the Winter Lady, witnessed Nemesis Greatest Shame. (With NWS explanation)
    -[X] If she doesn't: Exorcised the Winter Lady of a possessing entity.
    [X] [MICHAEL] Exorcised Nemesis out of the Winter Lady, witnessed Nemesis Greatest Shame. Likely set some others possessed by it up to be killed by Mab. Since she didn't ask for two more exorcising. (With NWS explanation)
    [X] [CHARITY] Exorcised the Winter Lady of a possessing entity.
    [X][All Three] Apparently the bitch Sandra Marling set me up to fall afoul of the Laws.
    [X] [LYDIA] My meeting went fairly well. I no longer have any enmity from winter and the she is actually in my debt. Also had a great victory against the things beyond the outer gates. These two things might be related.
 
Arc 7 Post 28: Of Secrets Shared
Of Secrets Shared

31th of October 2006 A.D.

You sink into a cushioned chair beside Lydia with a sigh of relief and kick off your shoes, before beginning to massage speak. "Okay I have good news and unsettling news. Met Mab, met her daughter, resolved our....current dispute." You make a face, then take a pull from your soda can. "Even came out ahead a little." You meet your mother's eyes " Some of this will be public gossip by morning in Faerie, the rest will still be secret. But first, I need to give some background about what Winter does. You see, they are ...."

Much to your relief your parents take the revelation that reality is being guarded from eldritch abominations by the kind of beings for which the word 'eldritch' entered the English language well, maybe even better than you have. But as you recount the meeting with Lara, the information she had handed you and the skinwalker attack Mom looks like she'd really like to have her hammer about now and the chance to use it on Broken Seeker's little cult

"I winged one of them, literally, withered one of their wings," Lydia interjects cheerfully, probably not helping the scene in your parent's mind of a fifteen year old shooting magic lasers through the window of a speeding car.

"Anyway," you rush past the battle as fast as you can. "Got three names of people who were compromised by the Outside and went to Mac's for the meeting, did some introductory word sparring because that is just the fae language you know: peacocks flash their tails, grasshoppers chirp, whales sing, fey word-spar."

Dad smiles at your tone while mom valiantly tries to pretend to not be amused before giving in with a muffled snort. Lydia just giggles into her mug.

"Then I gave her the names, convinced her that I could exorcise the..." You hesitate a moment. This isn't Accorded Neutral territory in the presence of the Queen of Air and Darkness. The protections on the house w will keep you safe of that you have no doubt. But would they keep the attention of dark things away if you invoke them before revealing their weakness?

After a bit of thought you settle on: "You know what Sauron was called in the Lord of the Rings when they did not want to call him by name, a Greek Mythology inspired synonym for that."

"Starts with an N?" Lydia half-asks.

In the silence that follows the only sound is dad sighing as he looks between you and just kind of shakes his head, not like he's upset at either of you really, more like he's sad that it came to this, teenagers turning verbal circles 'round monsters from beyond the edge of being. Unfortunately this ain't the worst of it...

You talk about Mab flash-freezing Maeve then just kind of throw out: "I have the power to see the greatest shame of any being I can discern, It was not easy but I could discern Wanna-Be-Sauron."

"Molly!" You wince inwardly at the mixture of disbelief, anger and sheer terror for you in that one word.

"I get it I get it, just... please." You raise your hands in what might be a forlorn hope she'll let you explain.

Surprisingly your mother does stop, enough at least for you to point out what if you were going to distrust your sense of your own abilities you should never have been in the same room a Maeve trying to perform an exorcism, the source was no different one from the other. "The only harm it can cause me is normal human harm from seeing something sad or upsetting..."

"And did you?" Lydia asks quietly.

Now isn't that a question loaded for bear. Do I feel sorry for the mind-twisting horror who wants to defile and destroy everything I hold dear? No, all the noes in the universe. But I still sorry for what it used to be, the same way you would for the person made into a vampire of the Black Court. "Kind of, it was used... transformed. I'll just tell you what I saw and you all can judge." So saying you recount the seeming of the cards, the way you had seen them interact with the garden in the vision and with each other ending on an explanation of Nemesis' flaw: "It daydreams that it is the being it has infected and in the sweetness of the lies it tells itself the liar is lulled into missing the appointed hour when it might do the most harm."

Glancing briefly upwards past the white of the ceiling to the blue beyond you add. "If someone had say an account of when the thing acted and can build counterfactuals for when it might have acted sooner for more harm that should yield a picture of where it likes to linger." As your mother looks at you funny you shrug. Presumably angels do not need hints, but it can't hurt to say something just in case.

"So yeah then a kicked the thing out and now I'm in the clear with Mab, she owes me a pair of favors."

"Ooh!" Lydia literally claps her hands impressed. "You should use one of those the way wizards use a death curse. Ask Mab to bend as much of the power of Winter as the favor's worth to hunting down anyone that kills you, their leaders, their underlings, their allies, scorched earth... or I guess frozen. Just the threat of that is going to get a lot of people to back off."

That does not sound like a bad plan but... "What if I get shot by the feds or something, seems unlikely but could happen."

Lydia's frowning 'Yes and?' looks reminds you that she might be fifteen, she might be friendly and a friend, but she is still the daughter of the would be God of Death.

Before she can expand on her point dad clears his throat. "All's well that ends well, there's better things to do than dwell on the the worst things that might happen."

So it had. You bid farewell to Lydia talk to the jawas about seeing real magic for the first time in their lives and then at last flick off the nightlight next to your bed. That might at the strike of midnight, at the turn of the seasons the spark within grows brighter and more purposeful.

Dark days await, the world itself is broken, old enemies linger, let the flame be woken

Essence Rating Increased to 3



Arc Seven Complete

Triumphs
  1. Caught your own Urge in action 1 XP
  2. Made the super-car for Mab 1 Xp
  3. Made a good impression on Lara Raith and forged a non-aggression pact with the White Court 2 XP
  4. Captured the mortal skinwalker alive 1 XP
  5. Outran the pursuit and wounded a watcher 1 XP
  6. Impressive Social Combat showing against Mab 2 XP (Would have been 3 but you had a pretty bad loss with had to be mitigated in the first update of the conversation)
  7. Avoided notice from Nemesis until it was too late 1 XP
  8. Scared the daylights out of Maeve's entourage 1 XP
  9. Bore witness to the shame of He Who Walks Beside and unraveled its plans for Maeve 3 XP
  10. Lydia persuading Charity of that the guided tour of the Nevernever was a good idea 1 XP
  11. Full disclosure without anyone panicking 1 XP
Total XP: 1 (Unspent) + 15 (Earned this Arc) = 16

How do you spent your Essence?

Special
[] Alchemy: The Art of transmutation, not merely of matter, but mind and spirit. To all you have learned from Bob, all you have read in Harry's books the insights of an elder age are added, as steel is alloyed from charcoal and iron (Cost 3XP/Dot)

Constructive Convergence of Principles costs -2XP due to the feat of God-crafting

[] New Ability 3xp

[] Ancient sorcery spell 10xp

[] Attribute current rating *4xp

[] Ability current rating *2xp

[] Caste Ability current rating *1xp

[] Caste or Favored Charm Charm rating *3xp

[] Other Charm Charm rating *4xp

[] Willpower current rating

[] First dot of a Sorcerer Path 4xp

[] Follow-up dots in a Sorcerer Path current rating *3xp

[]Merit current rating *4xp

[] Buy down Touch of Frost
-[] 2 XP to remove

[] Buy down Nightmares (4 XP)

[] Write in


OOC: Not as much XP to get the King and the Kingdom right away unfortunately, but this was literally an arc that took a few days and it does make sense to have a bit of time between getting to Essence 3 and taking what is arguably the most powerful charm that needs an minimum of Essence 3.
 
Last edited:
[X] Save xp for next turn

We are not guaranteed to get more xp next turn so let's save it, especially since we are going to have shorter arcs.
 
[X] Save xp for next turn

We are not guaranteed to get more xp next turn so let's save it, especially since we are going to have shorter arcs.
No.

We do have needs that need spending.

Some awareness for once.
We do keep failing those rolls. Most often we don't even get to see them fail, because they are hidden if we fail them.

But just this day we failed to notice the hurt biker actually being a shapeshifter. Only noticed afterwards due to an inapplicable crown question.

Edit:
Options:
Awareness 0 -> 2: 5 XP

Ox-Body: 3/6 XP
4 more health levels per buy, can be bought once per essence level. We only have one atm. It's not fancy, but being more tanky is useful. Especially with a Nagloshi hunting us. We did have that interception roll.
3-6 XP for 4-8 more health levels.

Craft: 3 -> 4/5: 3/7 XP.
There is a lot of crafting in our future, both for Last Station and Odin.

Sandstrike Blast: 8 XP

a ranged attack. We had a use for one this last arc. We let Lydia take the shot instead and it wasn't quite enough.

Endless Torment Emanation: 12 XP
Curse a project or an office with inefficiency or misery.
raises DC by 2 for all enemies involved in that project for all actions.
Very useful, but quite expensive.
 
Last edited:
Last edited:
This is explicitely wrong. Here, on Malfeas (2E, Compass of Celestial Direcations, volume 5: Malfeas)
I'll concede.
I might revisit this when my computer is back up.

? Lucifer can be a department head, no problem. Doesn't mean he's the head honcho of the whole enterprise
But he isnt. There arent two archangels in Hell; he's the only one.
And its explicitly stated by Word of Jim that the Denarians are in Coins because they are the elite of Hell, and the ones most likely to stab him in the back, so he shunted them into the Coins when the opportunity arose:
Quote from: Bob on November 30, 2006, 09:31:59 PM
It seems to me that as long as the Church has some of the coins, those paerticular Denarians are neutralized. Doing a Mt Doom with the coins might free up the spirits housed within to act freely in the world.
Well. Not quite freely, but MORE freely, certainly. The Fallen bound in the coins are the freaking elite of Hell–everyone the big D didn't want trying to stab him in the back, basically. If they were suddenly freed it would do all kinds of horrible things to about a million balances of power, with repercussions that would last for centuries.

Which assumes that they /can/ be destroyed. I mean, don't think that in 2,000 years, no one has ever TRIED it. And there are still thirty of them kicking around.
Which isn't necessarily to say that it's impossible. But it sure as Hell wouldn't be easy. And given that, while in the coins, they ARE effectively frozen in carbonite without a human agent to assist them, containment certainly seems to be a prudent course.
Funny you should mention that whole notion about redeeming Lasciel . . . >:)
Jim

See above.
Also running hell just isn't as big a deal when there are at least 10 thousand hells. It like "Lucifer runs hell"
"Which one?"
"You know that fire and brimstone hell."
"Which one?"
"The one in opposition to the white god"
"Not exactly narrowing things down."
Yomi Wan is not really equivalent to the Christian Hell.
For one thing, Hell has an Archangel, and Archangels are benchmarked with people like Uriel who can explicitly shatter galaxies in DF canon, while Yama Kings rate below Mab.

not sure why your referencing me for the world stuff I don't know enough to comment. Unless you meant the previous stuff.
As for me misreading stuff I mean I'm not it quite literally says he is not the ruler of hell how can that be more clear.
See my reply to Yog.

Mind magic seems like a red herring here for Charity.
I don't think telling Charity everything here is a problem.
It might make her a little bit more of a target for Nemesis, but that one will attack us through our family anyway if it can.
And other people learning about Nemesis is not such a problem, since even people who would generally be willing to summon Outsiders would propably hesitate to invite a mind-controling virus into themselves.

This is an entirely different case from when we didn't tell her about the situation with Eiko, because in that case another person's life depended on Charity's ability to keep secrets from Wan Kuei and Devils, while in this case we are the main-party involved.
Essentially this.
Keeping information from Charity about Eiko's plot is justified because if it leaks, it causes deaths and geopolitical destabilization.

Keeping information from her about Nemesis? Not so much.
Nemesis is targeting her family anyway, and Nemesis is known to pretty much all the major players in this setting, from the Archangels, Dragons and Mothers of the Fae Courts all the way down to hundred and twenty year old wizards like Donald Morgan.

If relatively young wizards like Morgan and Maggie LeFay knew about them, then its not really a forbidden topic.
Just a dicuss with care.
This is what I have for the vampires and wizards, the fey I'll have to think about how to break it up
COMMENTS
-Whampires can suffer whats essentially autoimmune damage from their Hunger if damaged enough.
Happened to Thomas in Peace Talks after the svartalfar tortured him.

-Red Court vampires take either soak lethal damage as bashing, or take reduced damage after soak.

In the Love Hurts short story, Murphy shot one, a Baron, in the head and it kept moving.
She ended up shooting it half a dozen times in the head before it went down, and had to empty her pistol magazine in its head to be sure.

In Death Masks, Martin blows out chunks of Paolo Ortega's chest and breaks his femur with bullets from a high caliber sniper rifle and he keeps taking shots at Dresden, throws Susan so hard she smashes into a wall and loses consciousness, then makes it home even with Kincaid and the Archive throwing hands.

Chapter Thirty​

"You can't," I said. I shot a glance toward home plate, but the Archive apparently hadn't noticed anything amiss. My will wavered, and the mordite sphere bobbed back and forth. "They'll hear the shot. They'll kill you."
"Quite possibly," he agreed. "As I said, I am prepared to accept that."
His words chilled me, and the mordite sphere darted at my head. I caught it a couple of feet from me and held it, but just barely.
"I told you, Dresden. There's only one way this can end. I would have preferred an honorable demise for you, but any death will do."
I stared at the hidden gun.
A dot of bright scarlet light appeared on Ortega's chest, and tracked slowly up.
My expression must have changed, because Ortega glanced down too. The bright pinpoint of the laser sight settled over his heart and became still.
Ortega's eyes widened and his expression twisted into fury.
A lot of things happened at once.
There was a hissing sound, a thump, and a big section of Ortega's chest dented in. Scarlet sprayed out behind him. An instant later, a booming sound much deeper than the crack of a rifle echoed around the stadium.

Ortega let out a screech that went off the high end of the scale. Fire erupted from the hidden gun, burning through Ortega's flesh mask and shirt to reveal the muzzle of a small-caliber revolver clenched in an inhuman black hand. The bullet Ortega had taken had half twisted him, and he missed. I thought hanging around to let him try again was a bad idea, so I threw myself to one side and gave the mordite sphere another shove.

Ortega dodged the mordite, and even wounded, he was fast. A bright red dot appeared on his thigh for half a second, and with another hiss-thump-boom, the unseen gunman hit him again. I heard the bones of Ortega's leg break.
Susan threw my staff and rod to me and leapt for Ortega, grabbing his free arm and twisting as if to throw him. Instead, the vampire writhed weirdly, and she wound up tearing the flesh mask from him, peeling it away like a banana skin to reveal the slime-slick, flabby-bodied creature beneath it-the true Ortega. He still held the gun though, and he turned to shoot at me again.
I screamed, "Ventas servitas!" at the top of my lungs, throwing my will at dirt of the pitcher's mound. It whirled up into a miniature cyclone of fine brown soil, forcing the vampire to turn its head and shield its eyes. The second shot went wild as well, and I scrambled to get my blasting rod.
The flying dirt slowed her down, but Susan still went for Ortega's gun hand. It was a mistake. Even with only one leg to support him, Ortega screeched again, twisted, and flung Susan from the pitcher's mound into the third row of seats behind first base. She hit with bone-breaking force and dropped out of sight.
Sudden screeches filled the air, and I looked up to see as many as a dozen of the Red Court, revealed in their true forms, coming into the stadium. Some climbed over the walls, some jumped in from the upper levels, and some came bursting out of private boxes in showers of exploding glass.
Then in Changes, we see a Reds suffering bisection from Dresden fire damage and still being alive and screaming for sustained periods of time.


-Blampires take bashing damage and/or reduced damage from gunfire.
See the fight scene in Blood Rites, where Lara literally shot one of them in the eye, and it told her it wouldnt stop him, and she replied that she knew, but that it would slow it down.
Lara Raith wasn't doing badly for herself. The wind was blowing the short little black silk robe back off of her, so it was all black lace and pale flesh that somehow did not present a contrast to the gun. One-ear had fallen on his side. Shards of brittle bone protruded from both thighs and both knees, where Lara Raith had exercised her marksmanship. One-ear pushed himself up, and Lara put a shot in the arm supporting the vampire's weight, One-ear's elbow exploded in a cloud of ruined cloth, moldy flesh, and bone splinters, and the creature fell back to the ground.
Lara put a bullet through One-ear's left eye. The smell was indescribably nauseating. Lara aimed at the vampire's other eye.

"This won't kill me," the creature snarled.
"I don't need to," Lara responded. "Just to slow you down."
"I'll be after you in hours," One-ear-one-eye said.

"Look somewhere sunny," she responded. "Au revoir, darling."
The gun's hammer clicked down and silence ensued.
Lara had time to blink in disbelief at the gun. Then the vampire Thomas had stunned rushed at Lara's back. The creature wasn't quite a blur, but it was fast as hell. I tried to shout a warning at her, but it came out more of a croak than anything.
Lara shot a glance over her shoulder and started to move, but my warning had come too late. The vampire seized her by her dark hair and spun her around. Then it hit her with a broad swing of its arm and literally knocked her out of her high-heeled shoes. She flew at the nearest wall, half spinning in the air, and hit hard. The gun tumbled from her fingers and she fell, her eyes wide and frightened, her expression stunned. Her face had been cut on the cheek, at the corner of her mouth, and on her forehead. She was bleeding odd, pale blood in thick, trickling lines.
The vampire shuddered and leapt after her, landing on all fours. It was graceful, but alien, far more arachnid than feline. The corpse prowled over to her, seized her throat, and shoved her shoulders against the wall. Then it thrust out a long, leathery tongue and started licking her blood, hissing in mounting pleasure.
One- ear slithered over to her as well, using his unwounded arm and a serpentine writhing of the rest of his body. "Raith's second in command," the vampire rasped. "As well as the White who betrayed us. Now you're both mine."
Lara tried to push the vampire licking her blood away, but she wasn't strong enough, and she still looked dazed. "Get away from me."
"Mine," One-ear repeated. It drew Lara's hair back away from her throat. The other vampire took her hands and pinned them against the wall above her head.
One- ear touched its tongue to Lara's mouth and shivered. "I'll show you what real vampires are like. You'll see things differently soon. And you'll be lovely, still. For a little while. I'll enjoy that."
Lara struggled, but the haze of confusion over her eyes did not clear, and her motions had a dreamlike lack of coordination. Her face took on an expression of horror as both vampires leaned into her, their withered teeth settling onto her flesh. They bit her, and she bucked in terror and agony. There were ugly, slurping sounds beneath Lara Raith's screams.
Which was what I'd been waiting for. Once they had bitten down, I gathered up momentum as quietly as I could, closed the last few yards in the springing strides I would have used on a fencing strip, and drove the six-inch heel of one of Lara's black pumps as hard as I could into the space between the unwounded vampire's shoulder blades. I had the heel of my hand and the full weight of my body behind the blow, and I hit square and hard, so that the heel drove into its back, just left of its spine, directly at the vampire's withered heart.
I didn't get the response I would have liked best. The vampire didn't disintegrate or explode into dust. But it did convulse with a sudden scream, its body going into almost the same kind of spastic seizure the other one had displayed on having a turkey rammed through its chest. It staggered and fell to the ground, its dead face locked into a grimace of surprise and helpless pain.
One- ear was slow to react. By the time it tore its mouth from the gnawed and bleeding slope of Lara Raith's left breast, I had my mother's pentacle out and had focused all of my attention on it.
Now I've heard that the power of faith is simply another aspect of the magic I used all the time. I've also heard that it is a completely different kind of energy, totally unrelated to the living power I felt all around me. Certainly it garnered a very different reaction from various supernatural entities than my everyday wizardry did, so maybe they weren't related at all.
But that didn't matter. I wasn't holding a crucifix in the thing's face. I was holding the symbol of what I believed in. The five-pointed star of the pentacle represented the five forces of the universe, those of air, fire, water, earth, and of spiritual energy, laid into patterns of order and life and bound within a circle of human thought, human will. I believed that magic was fundamentally a force of life, of good, something meant to protect and preserve. I believed that those who wielded it therefore had a responsibility to use that power in the way it was meant to be used-and that was belief enough to tap into the vast power of faith, and to direct it against One-ear.
The pentacle burst into silver and blue light, a blaze as bright as an airborne flare. One-ear's stretched facial skin began to peel away, and the thick fluids oozing from its ruined eye socket burst into silver flame. The vampire screamed and threw itself away from that silver fire. If he'd had a crony left, they could have come at me from opposite directions, so that the blazing light from the pentacle could sear only one. But he didn't, and I followed after One-ear, keeping the pentacle held before me, my concentration locked upon it.
One- ear scrambled over the writhing vampire with the turkey-crushed chest, and the creature, maybe younger or more vulnerable than its leader, simply burst into flame as the pentacle glared down upon it. I had to skip back a step from that sudden heat, and the fallen vampire was consumed by blinding fire until nothing was left of it.
By the time my eyes had adjusted to the comparative darkness of the parking lot again, One-ear was nowhere to be seen. I checked over my shoulder and saw the transformed Lara Raith straddle the staked vampire, her eyes blazing silver and bright, her skin shining as Thomas's had. She drove blows down at its face, crushing it with the first few, then driving into its skull with sickening squelching sounds during subsequent blows. She continued, screaming at the top of her lungs the whole while, until she'd crushed its face and moved onto its neck, beating it into shapeless pulp.
And then she tore the vampire's head off its shoulders, killing it.

She rose slowly, pale eyes distant and inhuman. Her white skin was streaked with ichor of black, brown, and dark green, mingling with the pale, pinkish blood around her cuts and the bite wounds. Her dark hair had fallen from its mostly up style, and hung around her in a wild tangle. She looked terrified and furious and sexy as hell.
The Blampires in that scene were killed by entropy curse, impalement, True Faith, and in the case of the last, Lara Raith physically bashing its skull in with her bare hands before tearing its head off its shoulders.


-Blampires are also weak to garlic.
In the short story Its My Birthday Too, Dresden maims a master Blampire with pizza store garlic powder.
And holy water is also an issue, I think.
 
Technology Excellency. Still want it just as much as before. Just saying.
Why? Our tech score is trash and we won't ignore 1s even if we buy the excellency. It's wasteful for the direction we chose in Molly's build at this point.
a ranged attack. We had a use for one this last arc. We let Lydia take the shot instead and it wasn't quite enough.
8 exp is painful when we can make ourselves a gun and use TA to make it scary for basically free.

We're a bad shot, but guns can have stuff added to them to help with that which fall under the purview of craft.

If we're getting an attack charm we should go straight for our perfect instead. It's more expensive, but will always be relevant and we're starting to hit the point where perfect combat effects become important.
 
I'll concede.
I might revisit this when my computer is back up.


But he isnt. There arent two archangels in Hell; he's the only one.
And its explicitly stated by Word of Jim that the Denarians are in Coins because they are the elite of Hell, and the ones most likely to stab him in the back, so he shunted them into the Coins when the opportunity arose:
Quote from: Bob on November 30, 2006, 09:31:59 PM

Well. Not quite freely, but MORE freely, certainly. The Fallen bound in the coins are the freaking elite of Hell–everyone the big D didn't want trying to stab him in the back, basically. If they were suddenly freed it would do all kinds of horrible things to about a million balances of power, with repercussions that would last for centuries.

Which assumes that they /can/ be destroyed. I mean, don't think that in 2,000 years, no one has ever TRIED it. And there are still thirty of them kicking around.
Which isn't necessarily to say that it's impossible. But it sure as Hell wouldn't be easy. And given that, while in the coins, they ARE effectively frozen in carbonite without a human agent to assist them, containment certainly seems to be a prudent course.
Funny you should mention that whole notion about redeeming Lasciel . . . >:)
Jim


See above.

Yomi Wan is not really equivalent to the Christian Hell.
For one thing, Hell has an Archangel, and Archangels are benchmarked with people like Uriel who can explicitly shatter galaxies in DF canon, while Yama Kings rate below Mab.


See my reply to Yog.



Essentially this.
Keeping information from Charity about Eiko's plot is justified because if it leaks, it causes deaths and geopolitical destabilization.

Keeping information from her about Nemesis? Not so much.
Nemesis is targeting her family anyway, and Nemesis is known to pretty much all the major players in this setting, from the Archangels, Dragons and Mothers of the Fae Courts all the way down to hundred and twenty year old wizards like Donald Morgan.

If relatively young wizards like Morgan and Maggie LeFay knew about them, then its not really a forbidden topic.
Just a dicuss with care.

COMMENTS
-Whampires can suffer whats essentially autoimmune damage from their Hunger if damaged enough.
Happened to Thomas in Peace Talks after the svartalfar tortured him.

-Red Court vampires take either soak lethal damage as bashing, or take reduced damage after soak.

In the Love Hurts short story, Murphy shot one, a Baron, in the head and it kept moving.
She ended up shooting it half a dozen times in the head before it went down, and had to empty her pistol magazine in its head to be sure.

In Death Masks, Martin blows out chunks of Paolo Ortega's chest and breaks his femur with bullets from a high caliber sniper rifle and he keeps taking shots at Dresden, throws Susan so hard she smashes into a wall and loses consciousness, then makes it home even with Kincaid and the Archive throwing hands.


Chapter Thirty​

"You can't," I said. I shot a glance toward home plate, but the Archive apparently hadn't noticed anything amiss. My will wavered, and the mordite sphere bobbed back and forth. "They'll hear the shot. They'll kill you."
"Quite possibly," he agreed. "As I said, I am prepared to accept that."
His words chilled me, and the mordite sphere darted at my head. I caught it a couple of feet from me and held it, but just barely.
"I told you, Dresden. There's only one way this can end. I would have preferred an honorable demise for you, but any death will do."
I stared at the hidden gun.
A dot of bright scarlet light appeared on Ortega's chest, and tracked slowly up.
My expression must have changed, because Ortega glanced down too. The bright pinpoint of the laser sight settled over his heart and became still.
Ortega's eyes widened and his expression twisted into fury.
A lot of things happened at once.
There was a hissing sound, a thump, and a big section of Ortega's chest dented in. Scarlet sprayed out behind him. An instant later, a booming sound much deeper than the crack of a rifle echoed around the stadium.

Ortega let out a screech that went off the high end of the scale. Fire erupted from the hidden gun, burning through Ortega's flesh mask and shirt to reveal the muzzle of a small-caliber revolver clenched in an inhuman black hand. The bullet Ortega had taken had half twisted him, and he missed. I thought hanging around to let him try again was a bad idea, so I threw myself to one side and gave the mordite sphere another shove.

Ortega dodged the mordite, and even wounded, he was fast. A bright red dot appeared on his thigh for half a second, and with another hiss-thump-boom, the unseen gunman hit him again. I heard the bones of Ortega's leg break.
Susan threw my staff and rod to me and leapt for Ortega, grabbing his free arm and twisting as if to throw him. Instead, the vampire writhed weirdly, and she wound up tearing the flesh mask from him, peeling it away like a banana skin to reveal the slime-slick, flabby-bodied creature beneath it-the true Ortega. He still held the gun though, and he turned to shoot at me again.
I screamed, "Ventas servitas!" at the top of my lungs, throwing my will at dirt of the pitcher's mound. It whirled up into a miniature cyclone of fine brown soil, forcing the vampire to turn its head and shield its eyes. The second shot went wild as well, and I scrambled to get my blasting rod.
The flying dirt slowed her down, but Susan still went for Ortega's gun hand. It was a mistake. Even with only one leg to support him, Ortega screeched again, twisted, and flung Susan from the pitcher's mound into the third row of seats behind first base. She hit with bone-breaking force and dropped out of sight.
Sudden screeches filled the air, and I looked up to see as many as a dozen of the Red Court, revealed in their true forms, coming into the stadium. Some climbed over the walls, some jumped in from the upper levels, and some came bursting out of private boxes in showers of exploding glass.
Then in Changes, we see a Reds suffering bisection from Dresden fire damage and still being alive and screaming for sustained periods of time.


-Blampires take bashing damage and/or reduced damage from gunfire.
See the fight scene in Blood Rites, where Lara literally shot one of them in the eye, and it told her it wouldnt stop him, and she replied that she knew, but that it would slow it down.
Lara Raith wasn't doing badly for herself. The wind was blowing the short little black silk robe back off of her, so it was all black lace and pale flesh that somehow did not present a contrast to the gun. One-ear had fallen on his side. Shards of brittle bone protruded from both thighs and both knees, where Lara Raith had exercised her marksmanship. One-ear pushed himself up, and Lara put a shot in the arm supporting the vampire's weight, One-ear's elbow exploded in a cloud of ruined cloth, moldy flesh, and bone splinters, and the creature fell back to the ground.
Lara put a bullet through One-ear's left eye. The smell was indescribably nauseating. Lara aimed at the vampire's other eye.

"This won't kill me," the creature snarled.
"I don't need to," Lara responded. "Just to slow you down."
"I'll be after you in hours," One-ear-one-eye said.

"Look somewhere sunny," she responded. "Au revoir, darling."
The gun's hammer clicked down and silence ensued.
Lara had time to blink in disbelief at the gun. Then the vampire Thomas had stunned rushed at Lara's back. The creature wasn't quite a blur, but it was fast as hell. I tried to shout a warning at her, but it came out more of a croak than anything.
Lara shot a glance over her shoulder and started to move, but my warning had come too late. The vampire seized her by her dark hair and spun her around. Then it hit her with a broad swing of its arm and literally knocked her out of her high-heeled shoes. She flew at the nearest wall, half spinning in the air, and hit hard. The gun tumbled from her fingers and she fell, her eyes wide and frightened, her expression stunned. Her face had been cut on the cheek, at the corner of her mouth, and on her forehead. She was bleeding odd, pale blood in thick, trickling lines.
The vampire shuddered and leapt after her, landing on all fours. It was graceful, but alien, far more arachnid than feline. The corpse prowled over to her, seized her throat, and shoved her shoulders against the wall. Then it thrust out a long, leathery tongue and started licking her blood, hissing in mounting pleasure.
One- ear slithered over to her as well, using his unwounded arm and a serpentine writhing of the rest of his body. "Raith's second in command," the vampire rasped. "As well as the White who betrayed us. Now you're both mine."
Lara tried to push the vampire licking her blood away, but she wasn't strong enough, and she still looked dazed. "Get away from me."
"Mine," One-ear repeated. It drew Lara's hair back away from her throat. The other vampire took her hands and pinned them against the wall above her head.
One- ear touched its tongue to Lara's mouth and shivered. "I'll show you what real vampires are like. You'll see things differently soon. And you'll be lovely, still. For a little while. I'll enjoy that."
Lara struggled, but the haze of confusion over her eyes did not clear, and her motions had a dreamlike lack of coordination. Her face took on an expression of horror as both vampires leaned into her, their withered teeth settling onto her flesh. They bit her, and she bucked in terror and agony. There were ugly, slurping sounds beneath Lara Raith's screams.
Which was what I'd been waiting for. Once they had bitten down, I gathered up momentum as quietly as I could, closed the last few yards in the springing strides I would have used on a fencing strip, and drove the six-inch heel of one of Lara's black pumps as hard as I could into the space between the unwounded vampire's shoulder blades. I had the heel of my hand and the full weight of my body behind the blow, and I hit square and hard, so that the heel drove into its back, just left of its spine, directly at the vampire's withered heart.
I didn't get the response I would have liked best. The vampire didn't disintegrate or explode into dust. But it did convulse with a sudden scream, its body going into almost the same kind of spastic seizure the other one had displayed on having a turkey rammed through its chest. It staggered and fell to the ground, its dead face locked into a grimace of surprise and helpless pain.
One- ear was slow to react. By the time it tore its mouth from the gnawed and bleeding slope of Lara Raith's left breast, I had my mother's pentacle out and had focused all of my attention on it.
Now I've heard that the power of faith is simply another aspect of the magic I used all the time. I've also heard that it is a completely different kind of energy, totally unrelated to the living power I felt all around me. Certainly it garnered a very different reaction from various supernatural entities than my everyday wizardry did, so maybe they weren't related at all.
But that didn't matter. I wasn't holding a crucifix in the thing's face. I was holding the symbol of what I believed in. The five-pointed star of the pentacle represented the five forces of the universe, those of air, fire, water, earth, and of spiritual energy, laid into patterns of order and life and bound within a circle of human thought, human will. I believed that magic was fundamentally a force of life, of good, something meant to protect and preserve. I believed that those who wielded it therefore had a responsibility to use that power in the way it was meant to be used-and that was belief enough to tap into the vast power of faith, and to direct it against One-ear.
The pentacle burst into silver and blue light, a blaze as bright as an airborne flare. One-ear's stretched facial skin began to peel away, and the thick fluids oozing from its ruined eye socket burst into silver flame. The vampire screamed and threw itself away from that silver fire. If he'd had a crony left, they could have come at me from opposite directions, so that the blazing light from the pentacle could sear only one. But he didn't, and I followed after One-ear, keeping the pentacle held before me, my concentration locked upon it.
One- ear scrambled over the writhing vampire with the turkey-crushed chest, and the creature, maybe younger or more vulnerable than its leader, simply burst into flame as the pentacle glared down upon it. I had to skip back a step from that sudden heat, and the fallen vampire was consumed by blinding fire until nothing was left of it.
By the time my eyes had adjusted to the comparative darkness of the parking lot again, One-ear was nowhere to be seen. I checked over my shoulder and saw the transformed Lara Raith straddle the staked vampire, her eyes blazing silver and bright, her skin shining as Thomas's had. She drove blows down at its face, crushing it with the first few, then driving into its skull with sickening squelching sounds during subsequent blows. She continued, screaming at the top of her lungs the whole while, until she'd crushed its face and moved onto its neck, beating it into shapeless pulp.
And then she tore the vampire's head off its shoulders, killing it.

She rose slowly, pale eyes distant and inhuman. Her white skin was streaked with ichor of black, brown, and dark green, mingling with the pale, pinkish blood around her cuts and the bite wounds. Her dark hair had fallen from its mostly up style, and hung around her in a wild tangle. She looked terrified and furious and sexy as hell.
The Blampires in that scene were killed by entropy curse, impalement, True Faith, and in the case of the last, Lara Raith physically bashing its skull in with her bare hands before tearing its head off its shoulders.


-Blampires are also weak to garlic.
In the short story Its My Birthday Too, Dresden maims a master Blampire with pizza store garlic powder.
And holy water is also an issue, I think.

Changed some stuff to make Blacks and Reds more resistant. Not sure how to do the Whites consuming themselves. Allow them to take wounds to get more lifeforce maybe?
 
Why? Our tech score is trash and we won't ignore 1s even if we buy the excellency. It's wasteful for the direction we chose in Molly's build at this point.
We still roll 6 dice for Intelligence + Technology, same as our pool for Craft (Metalworking) and other Craft specialties one degree of separation away from our Mechanics specialty. That's still enough to go superhuman with an Excellency. And we can still use our dice adders and difficulty reducers like WHWH, BSM, and CCC just as well as we can with Craft. And TTC applies to Technology rolls as well, and pretty much always at the improved 10x rate instead of the 5x rate of most Craft projects.

But mostly, it's a hole in our ability to build anything at superhuman levels, and I want to be able to use it to help up-tech the Last Station and other future projects. Let's not stick to just the old-fashioned stuff from Craft that other superhuman crafters are mostly stuck with. Let's get an upgraded home for Clippy worthy of a crafting Exalted's personal secretary.
 
TA?

We also don't have a single dot in firearms.
Transcendent Anathema, it's what allows us to deal universal agg. The ability isn't native to the sword, any weapon we wield can be made to do the same.

I'm aware we're a bad shot, but exalts roll without penalty when untrained so the dice pool isn't penalized more than it appears to be and guns can get flat attack pool boosting items added on.

Molly is heavily built around melee, unless we take an expensive U-turn in that aspect of her build ranged attacks outside of our perfect will primarily exist to facilitate getting into stabbing range. The gun doesn't have to end fights, it just needs to let us send encouragement to people out of arm's reach.

Remember when we had that whole conversation on how circles optimize through specialization? This is an extension of that. At this point we should get a minion or a party member to range for us instead of being shit at everything trying to break into every field.
 
COMMENTARY
Interesting that Charity didnt freak at the mention of Sandra Marlin and what she'd been up to.
I suspect that this may not have been the first time in her marriage that someone has tried this against her.
Or it might be that as a former cult member, betrayal by a human is more....familiar.

Lol at Lydia saying "So?" about the Feds. Little orphan girl is still more than a little feral.

Essence 3.
That means our Essence pool goes up to 15/15m, we can now spend 3m/turn, our Excellency lasts longer, and we can now designate Signature charms.
Oh, and we can now buy a new copy of Rage Recast; I suggest Swift Stride, to take Molly's base speed up to x6.
Michael rolls like a paladin. Just saying.
And Lydia is being a social good luck charm for us against Charity.

8 exp is painful when we can make ourselves a gun and use TA to make it scary for basically free.
We're a bad shot, but guns can have stuff added to them to help with that which fall under the purview of craft.

If we're getting an attack charm we should go straight for our perfect instead. It's more expensive, but will always be relevant and we're starting to hit the point where perfect combat effects become important.
Counter-argument:
The naagloshii is out there with a coven of 13+ cannibalistic lesser skinwalkers as backup in the greater Chicago area, and skinwalkers can generally fly. That directly impacts our choices this spending period.

I'd probably buy Mind Hand Manipulation over Sandstrike Blast right now, though.
Range is just line of sight, you roll Brawl or Occult, and it has utility uses for moving other people, manipulating heavy objects at a distance and for construction.

And its stunt worthy for doing stuff like lifting objects too heavy for Molly to physically carry, which is handy for when someone throws a car at us.
Or when we throw a car through someone's front porch.
Speciality is useless. It gives us double 10s but as exalted we already get that.
In this quest, it gives +2 dice in a given specialty IIRC.
The QM said something along that line recently; search for specialty.

Changed some stuff to make Blacks and Reds more resistant. Not sure how to do the Whites consuming themselves. Allow them to take wounds to get more lifeforce maybe?
Probably, I think.
Pay wounds to get lifeforce/energy pool, with Willpower checks for when you do this, and the risk of failure resulting in wounds without lifeforce gain.
 
Counter-argument:
The naagloshii is out there with a coven of 13+ cannibalistic lesser skinwalkers as backup in the greater Chicago area, and skinwalkers can generally fly. That directly impacts our choices this spending period.

I'd probably buy Mind Hand Manipulation over Sandstrike Blast right now, though.
Range is just line of sight, you roll Brawl or Occult, and it has utility uses for moving other people, manipulating heavy objects at a distance and for construction.

And its stunt worthy for doing stuff like lifting objects too heavy for Molly to physically carry, which is handy for when someone throws a car at us.
Or when we throw a car through someone's front porch.
Then we should just get SBS and use that. We aren't going to be taking out a flight of sorcerers with thrown cars or something.
 
Back
Top