They don't want to
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
I think you are under serious misconception of what we did with Mab's car. Remember - we did everything without iron. At all. That means that we had to design everything from scratch. Including stuff like engine, car batteries, chassis and such. That would have required much more time than combat vehicle design. The requirements were much higher.
Also, why are we talking about design costs at all? We aren't going to be spending money on design. We are spending AP. We don't need and can't actually spend money on the design stage. We have ourselves, Lydia and cyberdevils to apply supernatural abilities to design stage. The most one can argue that we'll need for design is to buy a server farm for cyberdevils.
Let me ask you directly - how would you be spending money to make Odin's combat vehicles? What would you be spending them on? Remember - we need to have them finished in a month.
Oh, and about costs:
That's what we did with Mab's car. We started from scratch. And made a new car. With technologies that weren't available at the time. In a hurry, in less than a day.
So, I'll ask you again - what do you expect to spend money on when making Odin's war vehicles? And how much do you expect to spend?
And I explained, and you ignored, that isotopically pure materials fail heft test, which is a basic test. Isotopically pure materials are known in real world, that's a real business. They are easily discernible from natural composition materials. So, right back at you. I can't convince you of it, but everything I know tells me this is wrong.
1) Why do we need to claim it? RVD to it, and start mining
2) We have oil drilling, and we have MHM. And I am fairlu sure we had laboratory-grade undersea probe taking at the time. That's not an issue. I specified "no farther than 10 meters below ocean floor". That's a level at which Molly should be able to do mining by hand, if needed.
3) The probability of there being no gold veins on the ocean floor is vanishingly small. Because, you know, there are gold veins and deposits on dry land, and there's much more ocean floor than dry land.
4) As to being unable to transport it - rent a boat if needed, or make several trips. We should be able to carry ~ 10 kg bars with us in a backpack.
It's much easier to take what's there than it is to do nuclear synthesis.
Indeed. Gold itself is completely impractical, actually, which is why in the process of debating this idea I and Uju had to shift to more exotic materials. Those are more possible, but I believe still completely impractical. Because we only get 5 to 10 times acceleration of natural processes, and that would still take a lot of time. And produce a lot of radioactive waste, now that I think of it, which we'll need to dispose of somehow.
To elaborate: let's say we are doing scheme:
It has, as I understand it, the following steps:
1) We buy molybdenum and separate Molybdenum 100 out. That takes time. At least hours, and that's with 10X acceleration and an available large warehouse to conjure TTC constructs in. That's still doable.
2) We need to transmute 100Mo to 101Ru. Here, we run into the first issue: we are left with a lot of radioactive waste. Nuclear reactions aren't discriminate. You need to add a proton to 100Mo. So, you bombard it with high energy protons. That's doable. The problem is, there are other reactions, like 100Mo(p,2n)99Tc, 100Mo(p,x)99Mo... In fact, IAEA nuclear reaction database straight up doesn't have 100Mo(p,gamma)101Ru reaction listed at all. So I would say it's a no go at this point.
But ok, let's assume we find a reaction that produces it. We are still left with all other reaction products - you cannot do reaction with one product only, that's not how it works, sadly, not for these heavy elements. You always have numerous reaction paths. Which are likely to be radioactive. We don't have radioactive waste containment facilities. We'll need to build them. That's investiture of money and time.
3) We need to sell 101Ru and buy natural isotopic mixture of Ru to extract 102Ru. That's where nuclear regulatory commission starts getting excited and we get way too much attention. All isotopically pure materials are nuclear-adjacent in a way. That's monitored stuff. That draws attention. Always. Because if you can make / separate stable isotopes, chances are you can make / separate radioisotopes too.
So, yeah, bad idea all around.
1) We can roll 10+ successes.
2) We have unlimited perfectly loyal cyberdevils, which allow for bypassing techbane, something that's normally not possible with mortal magic - the paradigm of urban magic and the methods to ground techbane are very, very new. In fact, it's possible that this quest's Dresden is the first wizard to discover it, and he did so with our help (and I am very excited to read where he takes that)
3) Others have other methods of generating revenue on as needed basis.
EDIT:
In regards to underwater gold deposits. Here, an article from 1999. They discovered a large deposits 400 km south of Tokyo. So yes, they exist.
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OK, this looks pretty definitive and I'd like to get this up now since I have to go this afternoon.
Arc 8 Post 2: Just a Whisper Away
Just a Whisper Away
3rd of November 2006 A.D.
School goes surprisingly well over the rest of the week and not because you finally gave into Usum's suggestions and and hacked into all the teacher's computers looking for test subjects. It's part luck, part being happy that you can finally focus on something where the stakes are a little lower than death and damnation, even though you wouldn't know it looking at Mr Medoza's face. Izzy keeps giving you suspicious looks, wondering perhaps if you are cheating with magic.
"I wouldn't use magic to cheat, I'd use headphones," you admit with a roll of your eyes. The joke becomes more than that as you ruminate over Spanish class, not really paying attention to the garish group project from people who apparently think that Speedy Gonzalez is a documentary about Mexican history.
Fires spark green like poisoned stars at your fingertips, copper finer than a human hair coils like serpents around a crystalline core, and last but not least a chip you salvaged out of an old phone Sarah had found somewhere in the tunnels along with all the rest of the technological leavings the Jade Dogs had started to collect for you.
There isn't much room for a transmitter in the final product to say the least, so you do what's always work and use instead a spirit to whisper across the ether. That power too comes easily, though you do have to explain why your face and collar is wet coming out of the bathroom. When it comes to naming your new friend you go with Will, named for another incarnation of the Office Assistant also, by proxy, for Shakespeare. See Mrs Cooper I am totally a connoisseur of the English language.
Gained Hidden Wireless Earbuds (Will)
Alec and Izzy are a little weirded out about the hidden permanent headphones jammed into your ear canal so you do not mention the spirit in there. Bela thinks they are wicked cool at least...
"50% Correct, this unit came to be within the confines of the Wicked City, Soul Conversion System, Subsystem #689774, present material casing registers as body temperature, estimated at 37 Degrees Celsius."
"99.45% Estimation that this is a figure of speech," comes the answer from Clippy ,which is quickly followed by the clarification that figures of speech are not geometric but conceptual and non-magical.
The confusion as to why anyone would need a conceptual but non-magical expression is a lot harder to clear up, but hey you did do it in English class so that has to count for something.
***
"So this Wilson woman, your friend's mom who you don't like, do you want me to enchant her husband or something," Bella asks later that evening, daintily slurping a McSlushy. Under other circumstances you might have asked for her secret since you did not even know those words could go in that order in a sentence, much less something a person could do..
As is you have other stuff to focus on. "No, you're underage!"
The vampire rolls her eyes at you. "I said enchant not seduce, though now that you mention it... it is kind of funny." She sighs. "You know I eat despair right? If I didn't have a uncommon sense of humor I'd probably have gone 'round the bend by now, worse than the guys in the sewers I mean, there's always worse."
There's nothing you can say to that which you hadn't said in the past. Bela is not about to go against your orders, but your can't police her thoughts, nor do you want to really.
"So are you just going to throw a few thousand grand on the table and be done with it?" she asks, getting back to her seasonally inappropriate drink to go with the seasonably inappropriate outfit of miniskirt and silk blouse, not that you have room to talk, but at leas you don't feel the winter chill that Mab's thundersnow had left behind, you are pretty sure she does at least a little.
What are you planning to say to Mrs Wilson?
[] Explain that you and Rosie have a plan to move in together once you are of age, you can help her deal with the baby
[] Rosie has a job lined up at Chicago Synthetics doing... secretarial work you guess
[] You are just going to pay Rosie's expenses and here's a bank statement to prove you can
[] Write in
OOC: Molly rolled very well for dealing with school so she got bored and did something else
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So, thoughts:
1) What Rosie needs is an education and prospects not dependent on us - she needs a sense of independence, and not being a charity case. That's bound to be important to her psychological health. And if her parents contextualize her as being our charity case, they won't take her seriously. We need to empathize the value she has as herself.
2) She also needs security. To know that whatever happens, she and her child are safe monetarily and in the sense of personal security.
3) This is a practice run for talking with Charity about stuff like Daniel learning magic, us moving out, her and Michael eventually accepting anti-aging magic (because why age when you don't need to?)
The contentious choice is - do we tell Rosie's parents about magic and her gift? There are both positive sand downsides to that. I am slightly on the side of telling them, but not strongly. I'd really like to have a discussion before we start voting. The preliminary plan would be
[] Plan "full care"
-[] Rosie has a job lined up at Chicago Synthetics doing... secretarial work to start with, and then whatever best uses her gifts
-[] We are paying for Rosie's higher education whenever and wherever she wants to have it
-[] When we move out of our family's house, Rosie is free to move in with us, or we are ready to buy her an apartment
1) What Rosie needs is an education and prospects not dependent on us - she needs a sense of independence, and not being a charity case. That's bound to be important to her psychological health. And if her parents contextualize her as being our charity case, they won't take her seriously. We need to empathize the value she has as herself.
2) She also needs security. To know that whatever happens, she and her child are safe monetarily and in the sense of personal security.
3) This is a practice run for talking with Charity about stuff like Daniel learning magic, us moving out, her and Michael eventually accepting anti-aging magic (because why age when you don't need to?)
The contentious choice is - do we tell Rosie's parents about magic and her gift? There are both positive sand downsides to that. I am slightly on the side of telling them, but not strongly. I'd really like to have a discussion before we start voting. The preliminary plan would be
[] Plan "full care"
-[] Rosie has a job lined up at Chicago Synthetics doing... secretarial work to start with, and then whatever best uses her gifts
-[] We are paying for Rosie's higher education whenever and wherever she wants to have it
-[] When we move out of our family's house, Rosie is free to move in with us, or we are ready to buy her an apartment
- Location
- washington
I think your exaggerating needs what a person needs and what society thinks are the correct things to do can be vastly different. She needs to eat and she needs to breathe. Its arguable the some of the things you've even listed are preferable much less needed discuss this stuff with her she has options beyond the mundane.
I'mma note michael and charity are gonna want to go to heaven I'm not sure we even should convince them otherwise. Seems sorta cruel? I dunno just not sure we really should try convincing them otherwise.
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I'd say we shouldn't mention the magic parts. Once we do that we'll almost have to explain the situation that caused their family so much pain, and that explanation doesn't paint us in a trustworthy light.
I also think we could use some different set dressing around functionally the same ideas you're going with here.
Our spiel doesn't just need to sound like it'll work, it needs to sound plausible to their sensibilities. We don't need to make it sound easy, and what we promise here is more a floor than a ceiling. We can present something like a mundane best case to them and actually do all the additional bullshit we like out of their view.
That in mind, I think our pitch should frame things as a lot more down to earth.
Something like:
Molly and Rosie are planning to move in together to save money, and so that Molly can help with childcare. Rosie has a job lined up as a secretary at a local place called Chicago Synthetics, and Molly has actually been working as a mechanic through friends of her father for a few years now which she plans to turn into immediate income by going full time.
To avoid the poverty trap they're both going to start pursuing further education asap. For the purpose of this argument I'd set it as Rosie going becoming a paralegal because the pay is good, you can do it with an associate's or bachelor's degree, and because it doesn't appear to play against any of their likely biases about their daughter.
Molly can claim to be aiming for an apprenticeship through the machinist's union, with the goal of shifting from repairing cars to being a skilled tradesman in automotive manufacturing.
That plan sounds a lot more plausible to mundane ears. It wouldn't be easy, but it's something the person they think we are/that we can readily demonstrate ourselves to be could pull off.
It's not like we actually need to do any of that shit specifically, at best we just need to have a garage to claim to work at if they want an address.
If we actually pay for Rosie to attend an expensive university to get a degree in aerospace engineering or whatever she feels like then we technically lied, but not in a way anyone cares about in terms of end result. Justifying weird after is less annoying than getting buy in beforehand.
Just telling them we'll buy her an apartment and pay for her education is going to generate lots of questions we don't really want to answer. Odds are they'd think we were planning to pay for everything with drug money or something.
- Location
- Germany
Would increased Fortititude reduce mundane effects of outside temperatures?
A question WoD never answered, since Vampires are supposed to be dead anyway.
[X] Plan Queen of all we behold
-[X] Come clear about the magic, you can do a lot of stuff, from crafting impossible tech to creating diamonds or gold.
--[X] Demonstrate if necessary, by literally making something in their shed with a box of scraps.
-[X] We do have a job lined up for her at Chicago Synthetics and can also personally help her and finance higher education later.
No reason not to tell them everything relevant here.
Exept Rosie's magic of course, that's for her to tell.
Should we actually hide that we are the mind behind Chicago Synthetics? What for? We regularly use Black Rider, which is a very expensive car, so we aren't exactly hiding our wealth. We can be seen in the company of the wealthy and important people - from Lydia, to Thomas Raith, to Lara Raith recently (the last one is arguable). Our work in the underground might be known or become known in time.
This seems to be needlessly complicated, adding fabrications atop fabrications. What are we aiming for - repairing Rosie's realtionship with her family (while also possibly opening their eyes to the abuse she suffered), or cutting them out of her future as painlessly as possible?
Maybe.
So, I had to hunt down Roman Cathloc Church's position on medical treatment and the right to refuse it. The closest I was able to find was the Declaration on Euthanasia.
Catholics are required to care for their health, and participating in testing of experimental medical treatments is considered a virtuous act in service to the whole of humanity. Alchemical life prolongation treatment that removes effects of old age (and doesn't require baby sacrifices or stuff like that) certainly fails under "caring for your health". Adding to that the fact that we are (going to be) immortal in terms of age, so is Lydia, and at least some people Carpenters know can and are expected to live for centuries, if not millenia, I don't think it would be a hard sell.
We aren't barring them from entering heaven - in a couple of billion years this Turn of the Wheel is going to end anyway, probably. We are extending their healthy livespans to be more in line with what others around them are enjoying.
Thanks for encouragement, though you'll not I haven't actually voted in that post I made. I'll do so now, and add a stunt and excellency use.
[X] Plan "full care"
-[X] Rosie has a job lined up at Chicago Synthetics doing... secretarial work to start with, and then whatever best uses her gifts
-[X] We are paying for Rosie's higher education whenever and wherever she wants to have it
-[X] When we move out of our family's house, Rosie is free to move in with us, or we are ready to buy her an apartment
-[X] Empathy and Etiquette excellencies, All Things Betray with willpower
--[X] STUNT: The you that steps out of Black Rider and onto Wilson's porch is not the girl who used to sneak out with Rosie and be caught by her parents. Your looks are much closer to those of Margaret Carver, and were you to enter a boardroom and start a salespitch, no one would find it strange. Everything, from the heels of your shoes to the subtle yet undeniable wealth of your synthetic diamond jewelry is designed to make you look respectable, in a non-threatening way. You are still you, and Rosie's parents will recognize you as such, but you are still someone they will have to take seriously.
Something like this.
"why not?" is a horrible reason to share information with people, especially ones we don't really have cause to trust or any true leverage over.Would increased Fortititude reduce mundane effects of outside temperatures?
A question WoD never answered, since Vampires are supposed to be dead anyway.
[X] Plan Queen of all we behold
-[X] Come clear about the magic, you can do a lot of stuff, from crafting impossible tech to creating diamonds or gold.
--[X] Demonstrate if necessary, by literally making something in their shed with a box of scraps.
-[X] We do have a job lined up for her at Chicago Synthetics and can also personally help her and finance higher education later.
No reason not to tell them everything relevant here.
Exept Rosie's magic of course, that's for her to tell.
It needlessly complicates the situation and opens us to unnecessary risk.
Yes we should hide it.
There is no reasonable explanation for how any of this is actually happening that doesn't involve sharing information with two random mortals we can't trust.
Their immediate response is going to be asking lots of questions, and unless we're going to tell them everything we're going to be lying to them at some level anyway.
Fabricating simple lies to them on things isn't that hard, and should involve less complications over time than dealing with them being in the know.
- Location
- Germany
Everyone who could possibly be a danger already knows about magic, so this adds literally nothing in that direction.
At most people might learn the detail that we own Chicago Synthetics from them, but that happens anyway by offering the job to Rosie.
- Location
- washington
this seems like a bizarre work around and some mental hoops were went through to get here. Some people we know are gonna want to die in a human lifetime.
[X] Plan Mushrooms
-[X] Explain that you and Rosie have a plan to move in together once you are of age, you can help her deal with the baby.
-[X] Rosie has a job lined up at Chicago Synthetics doing... secretarial work you guess.
-[X] Have clippy fabricate a benefits package for a secretarial position that includes generous but not implausible compensation that happens to be good for family issues.
-[X] Outline a plan for them that describes how we're planning to make this work in practice
—[X] Molly is moving out when she turns 18, and plans to support herself via her existing experience as a mechanic. Long term seeking education like an apprenticeship as a machinist.
-—[X] If Rosie moves in with her then she'll be able to assist with childcare stuff, financial and otherwise.
—[X] Rosie had a good interview with a local company, Chicago Synthetics, which offers education assistance as a job benefit. If she takes that it'd cover a lot of the medical and long term financial issues.
This is an exceedingly simple plan, and it doesn't require significant upkeep as a front to Rosie's parents.
It satisfies all of our actual desires from this without requiring us to completely flip the table on Rosie's parents in a way that exposes us to risk and doesn't actually benefit them or her.
There isn't a good reason to overshare here. The only thing doing so accomplishes is make this conversation more direct, and it does it at the expense of every other parameter.
This situation doesn't need that bomb detonated in it. Cause it's immediately going to delve into the role magic had in all of this, which includes the part where we spiritually mutilated their daughter. Then it's going to get into all the secrets we don't want to share with random mortals as they try to figure out what our deal is. Neither of these things are helpful to conversation.
Planning to bring the supernatural into this and not address those things involves even more significant lying than using a mundane cover.
Why would we ever tell them we own CS? We don't owe them shit. We got a lucky break on an interview and Rosie knocked it out of the park. End story.
-[X] Explain that you and Rosie have a plan to move in together once you are of age, you can help her deal with the baby.
-[X] Rosie has a job lined up at Chicago Synthetics doing... secretarial work you guess.
-[X] Have clippy fabricate a benefits package for a secretarial position that includes generous but not implausible compensation that happens to be good for family issues.
-[X] Outline a plan for them that describes how we're planning to make this work in practice
—[X] Molly is moving out when she turns 18, and plans to support herself via her existing experience as a mechanic. Long term seeking education like an apprenticeship as a machinist.
-—[X] If Rosie moves in with her then she'll be able to assist with childcare stuff, financial and otherwise.
—[X] Rosie had a good interview with a local company, Chicago Synthetics, which offers education assistance as a job benefit. If she takes that it'd cover a lot of the medical and long term financial issues.
This is an exceedingly simple plan, and it doesn't require significant upkeep as a front to Rosie's parents.
It satisfies all of our actual desires from this without requiring us to completely flip the table on Rosie's parents in a way that exposes us to risk and doesn't actually benefit them or her.
There isn't a good reason to overshare here. The only thing doing so accomplishes is make this conversation more direct, and it does it at the expense of every other parameter.
The danger in them knowing things is in how they might react, and simply being additional vectors to get useful stuff from.
This situation doesn't need that bomb detonated in it. Cause it's immediately going to delve into the role magic had in all of this, which includes the part where we spiritually mutilated their daughter. Then it's going to get into all the secrets we don't want to share with random mortals as they try to figure out what our deal is. Neither of these things are helpful to conversation.
Planning to bring the supernatural into this and not address those things involves even more significant lying than using a mundane cover.
Why would we ever tell them we own CS? We don't owe them shit. We got a lucky break on an interview and Rosie knocked it out of the park. End story.
- Location
- Germany
Rosie didn't even go to an interview, and they know that because she's been staying in their house for months.
We don't even have to talk about anything vaguely in that direction.
We are some kind of weird technomancer getting rich of that skill, which has literally no connection with their daughter's breakdown.
Then we can arrange for one, it's not like we're in their living room right now. We have AP in this, which can cover a decent amount of time. We could also just claim it was a phone interview, and Rosie has the second round the same week we have our conversation with them in.
So your justification for telling them anything is that we might as well tell them everything relevant, but then not to tell them all the actually relevant information?
Ultimately the deception you're pulling is just as significant as what I'm suggesting, it just feels them out and points them to start asking questions we don't want to answer for no real gain.
You're trading all the complications of cluing them in and managing that process for the ability to point to a pile of money. Simpler in the moment isn't always the best thing to optimize for.
The issue here is that we aren't hiding it already. Haven't been for a long time. Black Rider by itself is way too questionable. Not to mention the jewelry we wore to school.
Chicago Synthetics is easily explainable: "I developed a new process in my garage. Got someone who I knew through my father to invest. We are making a lot of money. The older investor is handling the day to day business and accounting, and I am the technology girl". It has the benefit of basically being true. It's a simple lie that covers everything, explains Black Rider, explains the jewelry, explains changes in our behavior.
I don't see how? And yes, some would. All I am saying is that this should be a position to which they can be persuaded.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
[X] You are just going to pay Rosie's expenses and here's a bank statement to prove you can
[X] Plan Mushrooms
[X] Plan Mushrooms
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Rosie's parents aren't PIs, they aren't really capable or particularly likely to try disassembling our life.
You're also describing something inherently crazy and unbelievable to explain the oddities when we don't have to. A teenager with a fancy car got it from her parents as a present, and maybe there's a funny story about how we got it on the cheap from a police auction or maybe we just don't go into details.
Unless they have a jeweler's report on our shiny objects it's doubtful they could tell they're really that expensive if they even know about them.
Don't tell implausible lies that overshare trying to explain all the details. Play to what your audience expects to be true and cover the details relevant to their interests.
They'll cut their own wrists on Occam's razor before digging into conspiracy theory level details to find a hole as long as we keep the narrative plausible to their sensibilities.
Black Rider is well outside of Carpenters' means and lifestyle, and these people know Carpenters at least a bit.
EDIT: And we do want to shake them, at least a bit. They have a narrative built about both who Rosie and Molly are. We need to break that narrative if we are to get anywhere.
EDIT2: The more lies we tell, the more constrained we are, and the more estranged Rosie will be from her parents in the future. I want to leave her options.
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Are they car experts? Do they want to find something strange? Is there any simple explanation they'd prefer to believe? Things go for cheap at auction, if they really truly call us out on it then we can step right up to the line of saying we got it for a steal because the cops had to hose hooker blood out of the trunk and they'll almost certainly buy it.
My approach works to change the narrative, but it transmutes it from one they don't like to one they'd appreciate without leaving the bounds of what they can believe. This sort of approach is ideal for manipulating people into believing things. It appeals to their sense of how the world works and tells them something they want to hear.
As to constraints, you're sort of addressing this at the aphorism level. The classic issue of building a web of lies that stick you to details is a thing, but it isn't a universal rule. What you're doing is important context.
The lie we'd be using under my approach pins very few details down in a way that we have to maintain for them.
They aren't the IRS or our parents. We don't need to show them our finances or give them extensive details of our life. We'd also be giving them expectations in a mundane range that they have little reason to directly poke at. That's freedom of action in many ways, especially since it's flexible enough to "change with circumstances" in any number of ways if we want to tweak things.
Telling them big things, like that we're genius who worked out a fancy new industrial process and own a company. When they start asking questions based on our premise we need to advance further lies to cover it. In the mundane case they have little reason to try and the deflections are simple.
It's the difference between them asking why we aren't licensing our discovery and them asking about how we're doing at the garage this month, just to pick out an example.
Your approach has the illusion of simplicity at best, it doesn't actually seem to solve more problems than it introduces.