- Location
- Germany
I don't think Lara needs to prove anything here.
She can call it treason and the nuclear hellfire does the rest to convince other Whampires not to question her judgement on the matter.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
She can call it treason and the nuclear hellfire does the rest to convince other Whampires not to question her judgement on the matter.
So those people are dead, now the question is how do we gain the most benefit. Attending the event has its pluses and minuses. But what about their holdings, companies, minions, property etc. How can we angle to acquire as much of their stuff as we can.
It is treason in so far as they are taking action that could be a Casus Beli for the White Council if they found out about it. Molly is not the only, or even the primary concern here. The wizards know where more wizards come from too
COMMENTARY
We learn several things here.
It appears that Skavis childrearing shares similarities across families. See the resemblance btw what happened with Bella and the ghoul kid, and what happened to Demetrius.
We know how old Demetrius was, so for him to be a playmate, Anastasius would have to be in the same fifty year age range. That makes him very young to be the heir to a Whampire House, at least compared to the Raith; Lara by comparison is several hundred years old minimum and raises questions about either his father Duke Skavis fertility, or more likely, something happened to his elder siblings. Which has implications about Skavis internal politics.
It also speaks to a wastefulness in people by the ruling Skavis family, when Whampires take time and effort to raise. Says bad things about their people mgmt.
What could the Red Court have possibly offered Anastasius to be worth starting in Chicago, under the eye of rival Houses, Dresden AND a Knight of the Cross?
That also raises the question of what possible surprise they could be cooking up to bait an Infernal with. Because if he's accepting input from the Reds into his operations, the Reds do know from the Pathfinder op that Molly has no compunctions shanking hostile mortals and posthumans. And the Reds in Cleveland saw her tank a death curse.
So either they are trying to get this guy killed, or we're looking at a major trap.
Assuming its the Reds, of course.
Demetrius thought it was the Reds, but he could very well be wrong. Its not like Molly is short of enemies: the Denarians, the Nazi necromancer society and its friends, Outsiders, Red Court, multiple Yama Kings......her rogues gallery has a deep bench and shes only been running around for 5 months.
Speaking of which, Anastasius and his co-conspirators know who Molly is by face and reputation. Which explains why Dede's getaway driver bailed instead of coming to investigate when Black Rider drove into the alleyway.
I wonder what Madrigal's role here is. Hasnt been explained yet.
I can't help but suspect that theres a link between the Skinwalker and it's coterie's sustained presence in the Chicago area and the current maneuvers by the Skavis Heir for political advantage by murdering talents.
Going to note that witchunting fanatics arent hard to create if you are halfway good at the Whampire mindwhammy. As long as you don't mind leaving traces that might be detected on close examination with the Sight or similar skills
As for Lara's rage?
Lara is loyal to family above all. It was in part love of family that got her to overthrow her father. That makes her keep an eye on Thomas.
Thats an important insight Molly just had.
Harry should probably get an invite as well.
Having a wizard onsite is useful in the event of shenanigans. Plus, it helps make the rest of the political threat clear to even the slow ones in the back: even if they somehow succeded at distracting or killing Molly and Lydia, the wizardcouncil still remain.
Point of correction:
Lydia also has Righteous Lion Defense; we just bought it.
They are working on a scheme with the help of powerful external allies which could start a war with the White Council. Pissing off Molly is just a bonus.
Treason.
Also worth considering it as a throw away spite job. If the resource investment is low compared to their budget simply causing chaos that could conceivably end in us fighting the white court in a brush fire war would be worthwhile even if they didn't have a specific tool in play to handle Molly.
Tainted goods; if we take it we have to deal with all the nastiness they've likely baked into their businesses.
Better to leave the material goods be and use our relatively clean response to extort a higher quality favor from Lara.
The people who really matter make their trades on the favor market, getting our portfolio fleshed out is worth more than solving material concerns that we can handle by other means.
Even if Lara ends up not being useful she's in a value range where trading her debt is actually not crazy.
Oh. Oh! Idea! Subdue them non-lethally, Sapphire exorcism them, turning them human, then give them to Murphy, after obtaining enough proof for a life sentence conviction. This sends a very strong message, and at last somewhat satisfies Murphy too. And it is a fate worse than death for them.
That is only true if you already have tons of money. We are still only have resources 4, which is upperclass but not 1% of the 1% which is where the real money, and the power that comes from money is.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
That sounds like a huge investment in time and resources for not only a suboptimal result, but one that is probably actively detrimental.
Trials are never 100% predictable, they can take years to finish, often allowing defendants to be released on bond, and worst of all, it leaves enemies alive who we've stripped of everything they have ever valued. This is how you get eternal vengeance sworn against you and all you hold dear, with people willing to do anything to hurt you.
Not when the victims confess. And they will, because the alternative will be certain death, and likely a painful one. Remember, they'll have no resources at all, will be cut off from family and retainers, and will be monitored by white court.
Killing them is easy. Stripping them of their Hunger, then putting them in prison for the rest of their lives sends a far greater message.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
It also creates fanatical enemies who would stop at nothing to hurt us. People escape from prison all the time, people in prison arrange attacks on people outside all the time.
There is nothing about this that is a good idea, dude.
- Location
- Earth
This is a reason to involve Harry.
He'd love to know about this.
[X] Agree, you will be there for the Feast of Jupiter
-[X] Try to get other people invited (ex: Harry, Lydia)
-[X][Stunt] So even the dumbest of them understands what they just dodged.
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Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING AT THE APOCALYPSE
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
This isn't particularly damning. There is altruism in this world but it is vanishingly rare and even then it is usually tied to personal satisfaction or collecting points on the great scoreboard of life. The rest of the time there is some sort of quid pro quo even when both parties have nothing but good feelings for one another. But, yeah... being used, being useful, gives us power.
I'm happy to see Lara in a position of power, so long as something... which may be us or may be something else... can act as a counterbalance. I want her to have nothing but good days.
I wonder how Thomas whould feel being back in the belly of the beast for the duration of a dinner. He's one of the few we can trust who knows how to handle this sort of thing.
And, you know, won't have his brain melt if multiple vamps start vomiting mental contamination all over the room.
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Yeah. To be clear here I am absolutely praising Lara with faint damnation here. We just shouldn't get it in our head that Lara is doing things for us. Lara does things for Lara. It is up to us to check in with ourself and make sure that doing things for Lara is still in our benefit.
- Location
- Germany
If this is an official WC function this will be the first time we see the White King IC.
We already know in general terms that Lara is the true White Queen, but we have little idea why or how.
We already know in general terms that Lara is the true White Queen, but we have little idea why or how.
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING AT THE APOCALYPSE
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
Lara probably would do things for us without it immediately benefitting her because its useful on a meta level. Vague feelings of indebtedness, of owing her, would make us more inclined to go along with future plays on her part or else act like a guardian angel when things go poorly. Our having fun, getting what we want in the way we want it, coming away with more than we were expecting, not seeing the horrible shit White Court are capable of as much as we might, all of that makes us more likely to be present and available.
She's a diplomat and a seductress. Her goal should be to find a way to make her wants our wants. Where it costs her little I expect her to be generous.
Its when you really need it when there will be a true cost you can't afford to say no to.
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Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Yep. We are not allied with Lara or the White Court.
At best, our current interests align sufficiently that we can cooperate towards common goals and occasionally do favors for one another, all while scrutinizing every interaction for duplicity or double dealing.
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING AT THE APOCALYPSE
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
Honestly, I think what you just described pretty much is the closest thing the White Court has to being allied to somebody. Anybody. The only thing closer is the lingering feelings of family. Everything else is pragmatism and realpolitik regardless of who you are, even if you are one of them.
It doesn't get better than where we are.
Them being turned into mortals wouldn't stop the actual investigation necessary to convict them from getting so far into the supernatural that it doesn't make a difference.
Better to just kill them.
Yeah, but we have more opportunities to get cash than we do to get political considerations.
We also want to be taken seriously as a player, which means playing the part to an extent.
If we want to steal money from criminals it's make more sense to use the crown to swipe unrelated bank credentials for various groups shell companies and drain them that way.
With the crown the more elaborate the financial scheme used to hide the money is the more focuses we have to ask about it, so with a little prep we can drain liquidity that's otherwise almost impossible to touch.
Otherwise we can work out how to manage the lottery safely, or start a variety of cyber devil based companies.
Something like cyber security would fit well, but the regulatory bits around the alleged workers would be complicated to fake.
A much better, and completely legal, option would be to launch our own hedge fund masked behind a few cut out companies and some minions with a good background or the acting ability to fill a suitable fake identity's shoes.
The reason this would work is that automated trading systems/algorithmic trading, including highly secretive proprietary ones, are absolutely normal in the industry. By 2006 nearly a third of all trades in the US and EU were conducted by such systems (cite).
Ours would just be ridiculously better than any other option because we can cheat*. Cyber devils know everything on their host systems and seem to develop immediate skills around using their capabilities, such as driving a car despite having been bodiless internet peons right up to that moment. Plus basically being strong AI in the sense that they're as intelligent and intuitive as a human but operate at computer speeds**.
Buy a big server cluster, set up a facility near an exchange, purchase analytic software and textbooks on various aspects of mathematics/economics to load onto the system, and stuff it to the brim with the best minions / idea the thousand hells ever had.
At first it'd just be our money in the fund, but once it shows consistently good results others would buy in. Even once we have lots of money such a tool would still have value, so it has staying power as project that stealing assets doesn't.
Farming favors is a lot harder though. We should try collecting lower grade favors from medium fish at quantity sometime, since we need 'cash' flow to keep up healthy influence growth, but a backfill project for after we're more of a medium fish organizationally.
In my eyes all of this doesn't invalidate what you're saying, but it does demonstrate that our optimal gain in situations like is only rarely going to be financial, primarily due to way our opportunity costs and barriers to entry line up.
* Not just the cyber devil stuff either. Divining the future is hard, but the present is much simpler. With enchanting we could feasibly skip the internet connection and get zero lag data from all over the world just watching the public data feeds. Which isn't cheating; the exchanges outright sell faster access as a service and we can claim "advanced machine learning based predictive algorithms" if anyone asks.
Or alchemy things; if we can research recipes from the other properties listed in ExWoD then stuff like this from Mummy the Resurrection would be useful:
Not sure what the bonus would be for a demon computer, but any reasonable symbolic association should enhance something useful to the inherently data processing heavy task of stock nonsense.
** It wouldn't surprise me if they were capable of picking up on the 2008 financial crisis and housing issues related to that before humans can. Which we could turn into ethical profit - just hear me out on this.
We buy up those mortgages and use them as normal until the bubble bursts. Then instead of foreclosing we keep buying while everyone else sells for pennies on the dollar. We only answer to ourselves in a corporate sense, so going negative isn't necessarily an issue.
Then we end up as landlord for who knows how large a portion of the country. If we target the buys correctly we could even "coincidentally" focus our money on politically significant areas of the country.
Then all we have to do is not be a gaping asshole about it and we're heroes to huge groups of people. From there we can refinance to something reasonable to trade money for influence, forgive debt outright as part of pushing some political agenda, or talk our way into getting Uncle Sam to effectively pay the tab at near sticker price by dressing it up as a bailout followed by forgiveness on all the debts we own.
People get to keep their homes, we get lots of money, and the people who created the situation get screwed financially while being held to whatever standard we set. Win-win-win.
There'd be complications in all of this, but by that point we should be scaled up enough to manage it.
It's also a modern-ish issue we can interact with in the mortal world that doesn't necessarily take us into politically charged waters OOC, which isn't exactly a common opportunity.
Ours would just be ridiculously better than any other option because we can cheat*. Cyber devils know everything on their host systems and seem to develop immediate skills around using their capabilities, such as driving a car despite having been bodiless internet peons right up to that moment. Plus basically being strong AI in the sense that they're as intelligent and intuitive as a human but operate at computer speeds**.
Buy a big server cluster, set up a facility near an exchange, purchase analytic software and textbooks on various aspects of mathematics/economics to load onto the system, and stuff it to the brim with the best minions / idea the thousand hells ever had.
At first it'd just be our money in the fund, but once it shows consistently good results others would buy in. Even once we have lots of money such a tool would still have value, so it has staying power as project that stealing assets doesn't.
Farming favors is a lot harder though. We should try collecting lower grade favors from medium fish at quantity sometime, since we need 'cash' flow to keep up healthy influence growth, but a backfill project for after we're more of a medium fish organizationally.
In my eyes all of this doesn't invalidate what you're saying, but it does demonstrate that our optimal gain in situations like is only rarely going to be financial, primarily due to way our opportunity costs and barriers to entry line up.
* Not just the cyber devil stuff either. Divining the future is hard, but the present is much simpler. With enchanting we could feasibly skip the internet connection and get zero lag data from all over the world just watching the public data feeds. Which isn't cheating; the exchanges outright sell faster access as a service and we can claim "advanced machine learning based predictive algorithms" if anyone asks.
Or alchemy things; if we can research recipes from the other properties listed in ExWoD then stuff like this from Mummy the Resurrection would be useful:
cite
Not sure what the bonus would be for a demon computer, but any reasonable symbolic association should enhance something useful to the inherently data processing heavy task of stock nonsense.
** It wouldn't surprise me if they were capable of picking up on the 2008 financial crisis and housing issues related to that before humans can. Which we could turn into ethical profit - just hear me out on this.
We buy up those mortgages and use them as normal until the bubble bursts. Then instead of foreclosing we keep buying while everyone else sells for pennies on the dollar. We only answer to ourselves in a corporate sense, so going negative isn't necessarily an issue.
Then we end up as landlord for who knows how large a portion of the country. If we target the buys correctly we could even "coincidentally" focus our money on politically significant areas of the country.
Then all we have to do is not be a gaping asshole about it and we're heroes to huge groups of people. From there we can refinance to something reasonable to trade money for influence, forgive debt outright as part of pushing some political agenda, or talk our way into getting Uncle Sam to effectively pay the tab at near sticker price by dressing it up as a bailout followed by forgiveness on all the debts we own.
People get to keep their homes, we get lots of money, and the people who created the situation get screwed financially while being held to whatever standard we set. Win-win-win.
There'd be complications in all of this, but by that point we should be scaled up enough to manage it.
It's also a modern-ish issue we can interact with in the mortal world that doesn't necessarily take us into politically charged waters OOC, which isn't exactly a common opportunity.
I mean if you really wanted them in jail for something you could frame them for something, plant just enough evidence to make an approximation of their deeds visible to the mortal justice system, that would be a lot of time and effort.
Good night guys, see you tomorrow with.. a vampire party.
Quite well actually.
He was canonically feted as a hero, the black sheep made good, after the events of White Night, and Lara was then able to openly rehabilitate him and use him as an agent/representative, instead of only covertly keeping an eye on his welfare.
The White Court are great liars. Even to themselves.
As the most human of the vampire courts?
The rationalizations and accommodations they make to live with a lifestyle and ideology of human death and predation aren't all that different from various human societies through history, from the Romans to the Aztecs to the Nazis to all those European notables who built their fortunes on the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the colonization of the New World.
A lot of modern human elites, from politicians to captains of industry, may not literally eat chunks out of people's lives, but do worse with less reason.
Even Lara Raith, who claims to be a rational, efficient monster, and does a bunch of objectively monstrous things,- does shit like attempt to pressure Mab's Winter Knight in order to save her brother's life after he almost assassinated the head of state of a supernatural nationstate. Or dive into Lake Michigan after a kraken that had grabbed Dresden. Or run a True Venator cell in the Oblivion War. And I doubt Lara and the Raith kids are exceptional snowflakes in that regard. Theres a reason that so many parental figures apparently try to condition their offspring with experience and ideology.
It just happens that, like with a lot of humans, a lifetime of privilege and impunity does things to your thinking, and immortality does not allow for the sort of natural turnover mortals and wizards have. Add to this a Hunger that may or may not be under perfect control, which incentivizes the ascent of people into positions of power who can deal psychologically with the aftermath of accidents with their self-control. And the leadership of most of the White Court appears to be populated by assholes.
We dont see most of the rank and file onscreen after all.
A lottery win in January puts us in the 9-figure assets class, and that's without actually exploring other options like platinum-group metal transmutation. Or a private financial investment firm with a few front people, Molly and Lydia spending 1 AP every six months and a bunch of Cyberdevils in a custom built computing cluster.
Like BronzeTongue said, the real currency of the supernatural world is in favors. Dresden lived in a tiny basement even when he held favors from Summer and could credibly threaten major powers.
McCoy drives a 30s-era truck and is a strategic power. Money is a superpower, but its not an at all costs acquisition, and where you get it from matters.
Hot money? Embezzled money?
Illicit, illegal money? Assets illegally stolen or drained from others? Is not easily fungible. There's a trail to be followed by anyone determined or persistent enough to investigate, and the more the cash, the more determined the investigation.
Theres a reason the drug trade goes to so much trouble and accepts substantial losses to launder its proceeds, and unlike the cartels, we dont have thousands of real world people to use to launder funds. Leave the money of these guys alone.
I broadly agree, but I think it's been sufficiently demonstrated that this would be a pain even if it's technically possible. Lengthy even with TTC's boosts, generates lots of byproducts, and produces a final result we may need to screw with to make people accept it/mask the fact that it's a sketchy pure isotope.
On a more medium to long term level if you want to get silly rich producing things is largely suboptimal compared to owning things at the levels between middle class and "owning a megacorp". Even then broad stock based capital ownership is still a critical component of maintaining and expanding that wealth.
From a game perspective there are also limits to how much tolerance the thread as a whole has for money schemes. I enjoy it, but we've already had some frustration crop up.
Starting a stock market trading company would be the ideal justification for buying additional resource dots periodically* because the whole point is for a well established system to generate and grow passive income once it's up.
We can still do neat financial things to fill specific goals and the like, but relegate the bread and butter "how are we getting the cash to do X cool thing/major project?" to something we can stop worrying about or at least pin to a rough schedule we can plan against.
* At a time interval and on reasonable events like after a lottery win.
That only puts Molly up to resources 5 in all honestly. Resources 6 is where money is no longer a concern that matters on the small scale, 6 is where you can buy a private security, private jets. high level mortals as personal assistance in any field you want, and such starts. Resources 7 is top 100 companies in the world. 8 is the major financial institutions like Blackrock and such that handle trillions of dollars.
Dresden is kind of explicitly poor for his ablity and connections as magic is basically his religion, using it for simple money is basically unthinkable to him.
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I'd say it only does it temporarily at that. To have the resources stick around they need to be working for us. The simplest way to do that is via the stock market; either in house with our cyber devils, which would also boost the interest in others buying in as well, or on other people's funds.
Also because he's young for a wizard. Most of them get wealthy off of being able to feasibly benefit from 200-500 year financial plans.
He's making bad decisions with his money so he isn't going to get rich that way, but it's worth noting most wizards need centuries to get the levels of wealth that are associated with them.
I wouldn't say it's unthinkable for Harry to make money on his magic either. He literally hires himself out as a wizard performing magic on behalf of a client.
Part of his issue is that he's very stubborn about his lifestyle staying the same and resists things that change it, and part of it is that his talents don't run in a way that he's comfortable taking the biggest cash prizes for.
A skilled evoker and Thaumaturge with Harry's muscle can do a lot, but the most in demand stuff is pretty hair raising.