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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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Talking about magic and discoveries, did Iku-Turso just melt into ectoplasm?

Because the giant tentacle-monster in the basement full of arcanotech would have made a fun find for the police later.
 
Artemis1992 said:
Talking about magic and discoveries, did Iku-Turso just melt into ectoplasm?

Because the giant tentacle-monster in the basement full of arcanotech would have made a fun find for the police later.
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It crawled back into its prison cell after we stabbed it a couple times and the door swung shut.
And we vacuumed up the blood as gossamer.

No tentacle monsters.
Just some wrecked arcanotech. And by the time emergency services are through with the place, it's probably not going to be recognizable as other than random medical equipment
 
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It seems reasonable that they're trying to learn more about us, but I don't think they'd be hyper competent enough to do things like retroactively connect us to the Golden Memories thing.

Unless they were already monitoring Micheal and therefore knew about us all along it's not a trivial task to even know to try looking for a connection to a particular incident. Getting solid data is also hard.

I mean, what are they going to do, interview the Rakasha? This isn't just an investigation dice roll; there needs to be a feasible way for them to get information out of whatever they're doing.

I also don't think they'd be stupid or arrogant in the classic image of nat sec guys found in pop culture simply because they're well aware they aren't the big guns and don't want to ruin a potentially good thing.

If I was in charge of the Molly Carpenter case file I'd start with every passive form of information gathering I could to gain context before even thinking about poking things.

Pump the vampires dry of information, dig into any information sources I had on things related to Molly's demonstrated powers, maybe pay a few divinatory spirits to talk about whatever I've found. That sort of stuff.

Then there's records requests for things already in the system. The risk on getting Molly's criminal record and GPA is pretty low.

Then you pull records on the people around her if they have one and try to build a profile. Then you try to build responses around that. Maybe try a small favor trade that would incidentally expose more information if you're feeling ambitious.

The key bit here is the positive contact. Only a complete idiot turns a resource into an antagonist by thoughtlessly tweaking their nose. If we'd been more hostile I'd expect them to take riskier plays in accordance with our apparent threat profile at the time in order to get an idea of how dangerous Molly is.

Since there's a possibility of very useful cooperation the best play for them is to be careful and keep things closer to the soft sell until and unless they become convinced they can't pull it off or we actively demonstrate unacceptable behaviors.

Edit: autocorrect error
 
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On Golden Memories: there were prisoners taken by the police, victims rescued, and a bodycount. We left behind evidence of large scale destruction (we used TTC tunneling equipment), mutilated and then killed at least one person, and caused a reliegious epiphany / instilled the fear of exalted in at least one other person. Here, quotes:
DragonParadox said:
As the faux-nurse takes your hand, frost spreads on the woman's skin as you clamp down your fingers painfully and in a voice filled to the brim with frozen rage you half-whisper. "How badly would you like to live through this...?"

What she sees in your eyes you will never know, her once pretty face contorting into a mask of terror. You can feel her heart pounding through her wrist. She shakes her head, or at least you think it was a shake of the head, she could have just been spamming to get out of your grip, then just as suddenly the look of horror falls into slack incomprehension and the woman collapses forward leaving you to catch her so she does not smash her head on the off white tile.
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DragonParadox said:
"You don't know who the fuck you're dealing with!" the man snarls as he bounds upwards in a jerky too quick motion, limbs controverting unnaturally. He actually sticks to the ceiling like a giant bug, you realize as you charge, but if he thinks that is going to keep him out of reach of your sword he is sorely mistaken.

You slice the gun from his hand sending a pair of fingers flying and then you continue the slash diagonally across his chest until you hit bone, a rib you think. He falls with a heavy thump spilling blood all over the corridor.
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DragonParadox said:
The... device whirs to life with the sound of a thousand dentist's drills, tearing through tile tile concrete wiring stone and everything else in its way with horrific speed, ejecting the material upwards through pressurized vents that that throw jets of rubble and ruin behind it like some demented carnival ride.

A bare six seconds later you feel the air outside, through sensors on the outside of the capsule, but you also feel something else wrongdangerousforbidden. The door opens with the soft ding of an elevator finding its floor, because of course it does, though you to not have more than a moment to contemplate that as it reveals a scene out of some Frankensteinesque nightmare.
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DragonParadox said:
The two guards had fallen already, one slumped against a wall trailing blood upon it, the other clutching a wound in his leg, but the sorcerer has the worst of it. As he steps forth so sure of his power that he does not even run Lydia kicks him in the chest so hard she shatters his rib-cage like an overripe fruit, his broken body falling among the rubble.
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Though we do use an incinerator to remove the sorcerer's corpse:
DragonParadox said:
First an incinerator of brass and black stone though before you make use of it you ask of the corpose what are the identities of the Pathfinder members. A mental list of eighty seven names is not what you had expected, nor the addendum 'those who open the way..'The way to what?
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We did avoid EMTs on the way out
DragonParadox said:
A hurried departure through empty passageways gets you out of there just ahead of a throng of firemen and EMTs, and you only have a brief meeting with Ruth Koskinen before slipping out the foyer and down the sidewalk.

That had been a bit more than luck back there, you think back on how unlikely it was that even doing little to try to be stealthy you made it out of the building without meeting any emergency personnel and got to talk to Ruth. With a quick, slightly self-conscious prayer of thanks for somewhat more obvious than usual help you slip into the hotel and up the stairs. Some king of glamor or illusion magic would be great for some like this
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So, on the balance: we left at least one corpse behind, and several people who should have been left in police custody (guards, the fake nurse) who saw our face, and have little to no reason to protect us. We also left a lot of unexplained stuff behind, like the evidence of TTC use. This should have attracted LoC's attention, and would have been comparable to Red Room Murders in scale.
 
[X] Just the attack and the names, you could have picked all this up through very skilled but still 'normal' divination

[X] Call Lydia first to interrogate the whampire's soul.

I expect that DP wants more votes.
 
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[X] Just the attack and the names, you could have picked all this up through very skilled but still 'normal' divination
 
[X] Include what the Crown revealed about their purpose, it might be vital to catching all the traitors and maybe tracing this back to the source even if it is revealing an uncomfortable amount about your powers
 
Yog said:
On Golden Memories: there were prisoners taken by the police, victims rescued, and a bodycount. We left behind evidence of large scale destruction (we used TTC tunneling equipment), mutilated and then killed at least one person, and caused a reliegious epiphany / instilled the fear of exalted in at least one other person. Here, quotes:




Though we do use an incinerator to remove the sorcerer's corpse:

We did avoid EMTs on the way out


So, on the balance: we left at least one corpse behind, and several people who should have been left in police custody (guards, the fake nurse) who saw our face, and have little to no reason to protect us. We also left a lot of unexplained stuff behind, like the evidence of TTC use. This should have attracted LoC's attention, and would have been comparable to Red Room Murders in scale.
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None of that matters because it was a mission from the white god.

The whole reason we didn't stay to clean up instead of hunting the survivors was that we had assurances it would be fine.
 
[X] Just the attack and the names, you could have picked all this up through very skilled but still 'normal' divination
 
It feels like Mikelle hasn't gotten a mission in awhile. You would think that he would be more busy with only one sword active.
 
[X] Call Lydia first to interrogate the whampire's soul.

Having a friend on that can interrogate the souls of the dead, is pretty good cover for getting information from the Crown.
 
fictionfan said:
It feels like Mikelle hasn't gotten a mission in awhile. You would think that he would be more busy with only one sword active.
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Maybe this is saying something IC?

The Denarians have been laying low, planning something perhaps?
After all most of the Knight's job is concerned with them.

Or, a bit more far-fetched, God or Uriel doesn't want us to get in direct conflict with the Nickleheads yet and so they'd rather let them cause a bit of unopposed mischief rather than call Micheal and force an early confrontation?
His plans are rather hard to see through after all.
 
They say no rest of the wicked, but Denarians are likely just as or more inclined to sloth as anyone else. They might be taking a vacation as they enjoy some of their ill gotten gains.
 
fictionfan said:
They say no rest of the wicked, but Denarians are likely just as or more inclined to sloth as anyone else. They might be taking a vacation as they enjoy some of their ill gotten gains.
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Now I have the picture of Nick asking Anduriel to use his vast cosmic powers to give him some shade on the beach in my head.
While sipping a cocktail and wearing nothing but shorts and his noose.
 
fictionfan said:
It feels like Mikelle hasn't gotten a mission in awhile. You would think that he would be more busy with only one sword active.
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On the balance "making 110% sure nascent Primordial has a happy and well-adjusted family life, and doesn't go on a roaring rampage of revenge" trumps a lot of priorities. And Amoracchius also wanted a vacation, which we sensed when sparring with Michael. And Wan Kuei attack probably counted as an official mission.

Michael will probably get missions outside of Chicago when we are free to get missions. Because Uriel and WG aren't stupid, and know that we'll want to go with him, and also know that we are very busy as is.

On the subject of the current vote - we don't want Lara to know about the Crown at all. Because she's very vulnerable to it. As in "we have effectively unlimited foci of her" vulnerable thanks to her adult film career (we should task Clippy with downloading it). She's also, I think, much less likely to tolerate us having such an ability than Mab is.

On the other hand, we want to tell her as much as possible, so the purge is as effective as possible. She will be getting her own information from catching some of conspirators. But we could increase her efficiency. This requires either a false backstory (which is what Lydia is for, in addition to actual interrogation), or involving ourselves in the investigation / purge.
 
VOTE
[X]Plan Parallel Construction
-[X]Call Lydia first, bring her up to date, then ask her to interrogate the whampire's soul/ghost
-[X]Work with Lydia to mask some of the Crowns findings as ghostwhispering/whampire ghost interrogation results
-[X]Bring Lydia to the meeting with Lara
-[X]Include what the Crown revealed about their purpose, it might be vital to catching all the traitors and maybe tracing this back to the source even if it is revealing an uncomfortable amount about your powers

RATIONALE
Lara knows, or believes that Lydia can interrogate ghosts. We can make use of this.

The plan is to get Lydia to get some Intel from the dead guys ghost that we can package up with the rest of the intel we have. She gets a -2DC buff to social with ghosts, so if she can call it up, we might get that

Then we tell Lara that our information is a combination of Molly's Divination and Lydia's ghostwhispering. The more sources of information in the report, the more difficult it is to tease out who a given piece of information is from.

Ultimately? It boils down to this:
Do we think Molly would prioritize her secrets over the lives of potentially thousands of civilians?
I dont think so.
 
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fictionfan said:
It feels like Mikelle hasn't gotten a mission in awhile. You would think that he would be more busy with only one sword active.
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In the last five or six months:
June: He did a mission in Oregon, saved a bunch of White Council trainees on his way back, then helped interrupt an assassination attempt on McCoy

July: Helped prevent Nazis getting hold of necromancy foci, helped apprehend Gorfels, helped save Cindy, did the Golden Memories thing.

September: Helped repel a greater servant of Yomi Wan, and helped save a bunch of people. Preventing Kakuri from establishing a foothold in Chicago or a powerup

October: Helped arrange a peaceful meeting between the Infernal and the Queen of Winter, leading to a major setback for Nemesis infiltration plans.


All in all, Michael has been very busy.
Productively busy.
Yog said:
Please add something like "work together with Lydia to mask some of the Crown info as the soul's interrogation results" and I'll be more than happy with this. Lydia already knows about the crown, and she can provide good cover here.
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Done.
 
uju32 said:
VOTE
[X]Plan Parallel Construction
-[X]Call Lydia first, bring her up to date, then ask her to interrogate the whampire's soul/ghost
-[X]Work with Lydia to mask some of the Crowns findings as ghostwhispering/whampire ghost interrogation results
-[X]Bring Lydia to the meeting with Lara
-[X]Include what the Crown revealed about their purpose, it might be vital to catching all the traitors and maybe tracing this back to the source even if it is revealing an uncomfortable amount about your powers

RATIONALE
Lara knows, or believes that Lydia can interrogate ghosts. We can make use of this.

The plan is to get Lydia to get some Intel from the dead guys ghost that we can package up with the rest of the intel we have. She gets a -2DC buff to social with ghosts, so if she can call it up, we might get that

Then we tell Lara that our information is a combination of Molly's Divination and Lydia's ghostwhispering. The more sources of information in the report, the more difficult it is to tease out who a given piece of information is from.

Ultimately? It boils down to this:
Do we think Molly would prioritize her secrets over the lives of potentially thousands of civilians?
I dont think so.
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Why say anything definitively? Volunteering the conclusion you want other people to draw is amateur hour deception.

We know. How? Magic. Not like she's went into real detail about how she knew who the nemesis puppets were.
 
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