[X] Yes, Michael takes up his task of mentoring you among his other formal duties with the knights
Just a note, Michael's name is misspelled in the vote in post (and everyone who's voted for it so far).
The archangel Uriel asks us politely not to pry too much into divine affairs? I'm inclined to respect that request. We don't want to find out what happens when he stops being polite.
Also, what @UberJJK said. There is no way Molly IC would not do as asked by God or her father.
This clause may be quite problematic because we uhh...don't know what it would entail.
Not looking into Heaven and Angels, sure, seems reasonable to keep themselves safe.
But this is very open ended.
If we look at the ground and ask "How was the Universe made", is that prying into the mind of God? Or asking questions about the nature or origin of Outsiders?
This clause may be quite problematic because we uhh...don't know what it would entail.
Not looking into Heaven and Angels, sure, seems reasonable to keep themselves safe.
But this is very open ended.
If we look at the ground and ask "How was the Universe made", is that prying into the mind of God? Or asking questions about the nature or origin of Outsiders?
You cannot ask 'how was the universe made' because you cannot see the whole universe with your fleshy eyes or other senses. Outsiders are clearly not of God from what Molly has seen of them so you are fine on that respect. You would be expected to use your best judgement on what not to ask and if you stumble on an edge-case you will be given a sign not to mess with it because this is not an Asshole Genie pact.
Oh, that makes it better. Guess the whole providence and omniscience of God is coming in handy if we do make the deal.
Though I wonder if getting an anti-scrying Charm or something would screw with that.
Well, I stated my preference but I can see the wisdom in not angering what may be one of the few beings close to or equal of the Primordials of old (until we can rise up high enough, not implying that we should go against the White God unless we find a reason to do so, but the ability), so I am mostly fine with either vote winning.
This clause may be quite problematic because we uhh...don't know what it would entail.
Not looking into Heaven and Angels, sure, seems reasonable to keep themselves safe.
But this is very open ended.
If we look at the ground and ask "How was the Universe made", is that prying into the mind of God? Or asking questions about the nature or origin of Outsiders?
Intellectus is a known quality, barring looking at Angels or actual Acts of God, any information that's a realistic extension of things you can see shouldn't threaten heavenly secrets.
And like, Molly's right next to a divinely empowered champion who could, amongst other Mentoring parts of the job, teach how to recognize when Heaven is telling you not to look further via signs.
Also Molly's not a fey being and neither is the White God, the only consequences of breaking the agreement is that the other party takes it badly.
The agreement is adhered to in the spirit of good faith and fair dealing, rather than literal words. Molly would just not deliberately dig into the matters of Heaven.
"Thank you Harry, for being here for my family again," your dad says to Harry. "You're a good man."
Of course Harry is a good man, you think automatically. That did not really need saying. There is something strange about the tone as well, all the more so as it's dad and he does not do the whole hidden meanings thing very often. Does he secretly think that magic makes you less likely to be good? No, that's not it, he did mean it. It's just he added it because he must have felt Harry needed to hear it.
Harry: "Whew, good thing Micheal doesn't know about Lasciel corrupting me."
Micheal(having literally seen him pick up the Coin the first time): "I have complete faith in you. Have some faith in yourself."
Molly: "Why is the obvious being stated?"
{X} Goldfish
-{X} Stall for time. Activate Subtle Flowery Name Buffing Prana while asking who this is and whether it can provide proof.
-{X} If it's friendly, angel or not, use Diplomacy-Related Excellency to ask for introductions or names of someone who'd be amenable to long-term summoning on a diplomatic basis.
-{X} If attacked physically, use Blatant Overpowered Armor Charm and start running away. Even if we could probably beat it, this isn't a fight we need to have.
-{X} If the being does anything else malicious, use Running Fast But Verbosely So and start running away, while covering our ears to not hear anything it says.
"Who am I talking to?" Molly asked nervously. (Spent 1 Essence on Subtle Flowery Name Buffing Prana)
"The acting angel of Lake Michigan." answered the merman. His voice was confident, clear, well-spoken, easy on the ear. Like many supernatural creatures.
"Acting? What, did the regular one go on vacation?" Molly said, holding back a chuckle.
"No, there just isn't one. Angels aren't assigned to lakes." The alleged angel gestured at the wet streaks on the floor where the circle had been. "And we can't be summoned. I volunteered to show up for this since you're a bit of a special case. This whole situation is very irregular."
"Can't be summoned? Why?" This conversation was not going as planned. But at least nothing was on fire, which according to Harry frequently happened when his encounters with a powerful being didn't go as planned. And sometimes even when they did.
"He lies." opined Usum. "Well, the way he broke the circle felt like a mortal scuffing it, not like a supernatural overpowering it." Molly answered internally.
"Not being summonable is the normal state of creatures. Demons can be summoned because they lost, fae can be summoned because they have oaths in place of souls, some other creatures can be summoned for their individual reasons, but no such bond lies on you nor me." exposited the alleged angel. "Kindly forgive any imprecisions of brevity."
"I'd like to see proof of that. Um, not that I mean to accuse you of lying, sorry, but I don't know if you actually are an angel, and something that isn't an angel might able to lie and pretend it was one."
"I can leave, and then you can try to summon me again and get nothing." answered the merman, turning as though to leave.
"Wait! Please!" said Molly quickly. "Before you go, can you recommend someone friendly I can summon?"
The merman turned towards Molly again. "I won't actually leave yet, I have more to say. To answer your question: Wyldfae. Dresden has experience with them."
"You're an angel and you're suggesting I deal with the fae?"
"No. I am answering your question as a freebie, out of kindness. There are friendly wyldfae you can summon. I do not recommend doing this. If you feel unsafe alone, I recommend speaking to your father, both for his company and for his advice."
A hundred questions buzzed in Molly's head: about wyldfae, about angels, about summoning, about things Usum wanted her to ask. But as often happens, the most recent grabbed her attention first. "Did you just say 'freebie'?"
"Yes. You struck me as doubtful of what I was saying, so I decided to highlight the fact I was giving you free information to emphasise that I am not bound by the like-for-like obligations and exchanges you have come to expect from experience with Harry Dresden and the fae. Fae don't do charity. Is this perhaps the proof you wanted?"
"That only proves he's dangerous and unbound, not that he's an angel." said Usum. "Well what proof should I ask for? That he grow wings and fly me home?" retorted Molly. "I do not think asking this creature to fly you anywhere is a good idea."
"You didn't answer my question."
"I'm afraid I don't have any proofs he could perform in mind, O Dread Princess. Perhaps you should ask your father to check on him."
Molly weighed her options and took a deep breath. It had seemed like such a clever plan at the time to summon an angel who would negotiate honestly and reasonably. Now it was being undermined by the fact she didn't know if it actually was an angel she was dealing with. But that it was offering freebies and not trying to rush her into a decision was two points in its favor. "Suppose I say yes." she said carefully. "What then?"
"Then I deliver the warning that is part of why I was allowed to volunteer."
"Tell me."
"You bear the image of God, Molly Carpenter, and that is not lost because you have taken up an immortal power never before seen on Earth. Good and evil are not one thing for the weak and another for the mighty. Be faithful unto death, and you will receive the crown of life."
"Heard that part. What's new?" quipped Molly, immediately regretting she was so blasé to an angel. If it was an angel.
"Your own crown is greater-" Usum began. "Shut up! Not now!" Molly commanded angrily.
"But the power you wield holds within it a seed of some who do not bear the image of God. If allowed to flower freely, it will efface you to recreate them. Do not let that happen. This is the word of the Lord."
"Keep my power under control, got it. Thanks. Can I ask one more question before you go?"
"Yes. Like Gareth said, I negotiate in good faith, so I'm not counting that one."
"You know Gareth??" Molly blurted out.
"Not counting that one either." said the angel, and while his expression remained majestically calm as it had been through the entire conversation, with not even a hint of a smirk, Molly nonetheless had the feeling she was being smugged at.
Once this was done, she resolved, she'd see Harry about not-asking-questions training so that she stopped blurting out questions like that.
What topic do you ask the acting angel of Lake Michigan about?
{ } Fae
{ } Angels
{ } Summoning
{ } Your power
{ } The problem of evil
-{ } Optionally: write in specific direction to one of the above
{ } Write in other topic IC Note: The five suggested options will gain you 1 essence for discovering secret lore. Write-ins will probably get the same benefit but I don't know in advance what the players will choose to ask about. For all I know you might ask the angel for the answer sheet to Molly's next history quiz.
OOC Note: Not a real vote, not actually giving lore nor essence, and not canon. Also I wrote much of it before the most recent update (A1 P4) went in a different direction from what I expected.
[X] Yes, Michael takes up his task of mentoring you among his other formal duties with the knights
Yeah, this is Uriel politely going "Look, I know you can take a look, please don't, because there are like, a billion moving parts going on here and all it takes is one bit of critical knowledge breaking infosec to cause the next Flood. Please don't look, for the sake of the universe, we really don't want to risk the apocalypse."
The sheer scale Uriel alone operates on is mind boggling--it might very well be that he's asking for our safety as much as anything else, even an Exalt probably can't survive Literal Omniscience for very long before their brain explodes. And that's just asking about an Angel--if one of the Big Ones.
Great job @Exmorri I like how Usum is channeling utter cynicism as befits one who has been dealing with demons for years beyond knowing and Molly is just stumbling around. I can well imagine that the local spirits had to do something when the great fount of tainted essence that is an Infernal exalted started calling out blindly into the ether. Mister merman must have drawn the short straw.
In the long run I believe there will come a point when divine secrets are more valuable to us than 5 Dot mentor, but for now I'm okay with not looking.
Luckily we are not bound to our word.
[X] Yes, Michael takes up his task of mentoring you among his other formal duties with the knights
In the long run I believe there will come a point when divine secrets are more valuable to us than 5 Dot mentor, but for now I'm okay with not looking.
Do note, this wasn't a general "Don't use your power"
It was "Don't use it on things that literally operate on a universal scale every second of every moment of every day, at a minimum." Even if Molly's head doesn't explode from information overload, the very fact of Observing that kind of thing is going to change the universe.
And the biggest limitation on Angels and the like is that they have strict limitations in how they can act, and there are tremendous risks just pushing those limits, because they Know so much and have such power that even the slightest mote of it moving in an unintended fashion can blow up in catastrophic fashion.
At the end of the day, we don't need to crib off of those Secrets, when there's plenty of others we can work on first. At the end of the day, for all their power, Exaltations were built to operate on a scale that humans can wrap their head around, they're Power, for good or ill, but it's power that exists 'Within the context of the world that Is', not something from outside who could pop the universe like a bubble just by interacting with it.
[X] Yes, Michael takes up his task of mentoring you among his other formal duties with the knights
Yeah, this is Uriel politely going "Look, I know you can take a look, please don't, because there are like, a billion moving parts going on here and all it takes is one bit of critical knowledge breaking infosec to cause the next Flood. Please don't look, for the sake of the universe, we really don't want to risk the apocalypse."
The sheer scale Uriel alone operates on is mind boggling--it might very well be that he's asking for our safety as much as anything else, even an Exalt probably can't survive Literal Omniscience for very long before their brain explodes. And that's just asking about an Angel--if one of the Big Ones.
Your Crown can never deliver information that will hurt you just from the act of knowing, like if you asked 'what is going through the mind of that Outsider' it would translate it as best you can understand it with a human mind even if it loses some nuance. Not breaking your mind is higher on the list of priorities for your Exaltation than fidelity of data. That said you can totally find out things you would rather not know.
Your Crown can never deliver information that will hurt you just from the act of knowing, like if you asked 'what is going through the mind of that Outsider' it would translate it as best you can understand it with a human mind even if it loses some nuance. Not breaking your mind is higher on the list of priorities for your Exaltation than fidelity of data. That said you can totally find out things you would rather not know.
Yeah, makes sense, the whole Free Will thing, part of why Angels are so limited in how they can Act is that their Knowledge is so great that they can trivially make you do anything they want, so they have strict limitations in what they can do to prevent that very thing from happening, except to directly counterbalance similar levels of Knowledge abuse. (Uriel getting Exactly Seven Words to counterbalance Lasciel's similar use of Omniscience to rebuild Harry at the end of Ghost Story)
Even if Molly would make sense of it, it'd be bypassing the whole "Respect Free Will" maxim that Angels work with, causing a Fall-By-Proxy for letting what they Know be released outside of the normal channels. And Any Angel falling is a horrific tragedy.
We'd need to wait for the equivalent of E6 transcendence stuff for Infernals before really beginning to interact at that scale, probably.
Triumphant Howl of the Devil-Tiger or turning into a clone of an actual Primordial.
But that's not happening here unless we unfuck whatever happened to Essence and let it saturate reality again so we're not depowered, and make sure that either it doesn't explode the universe or we survive it.
At a guess from Usum, you could ask such questions as 'How can this angel be most swayed to Fall?' and 'How would one go about destroying the Swords?' Knowledge is in a very real sense power and the more it is hidden the more power you get from unveiling it.
Michael as a mentor seems like the way to go. Knights of the Cross aren't outright powerhouses in the same way a skilled wizard can be, but they literally have Plot Armor through divine mandate, and when something is part of their assigned task they receive supernatural assistance, sometimes subtle and sometimes what appears to be crazy levels of probability/reality manipulation. Agreeing to Uriel's request gets us in on that, which is worth a lot, IMO.
[X] Yes, Michael takes up his task of mentoring you among his other formal duties with the knights
