- Location
- Germany
We do potentially have a charm that makes it impossible for someone to talk about a specific secret or event though.
Even a cheap one, from our favored Hell.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Even a cheap one, from our favored Hell.
Totally agree with you. Willingness of the thread to take a bribe from Lara (which she will totally allude to Molly being her enforcer) and unite forces with the White Court to protect it has really surprised me, considering her plans in canon. If we compare it to canonical events, Harry has shown that Chicago has a "night sheriff" with a big gun that can defend or exact vengeance for minor talents and mortals of the city. Molly, on the other hand, has shown that she has a Gatling gun, but she is open for mercenary work.
It seems to me, that rather than send a warning message for supernatural predators, we demonstrated that Lara could defend against coup d'état in her faction.
COMMENTARY
Answers the question of whether Nemesis knows what happened to the portion of it that was in Maeve.
Its probably going to make an active effort to avoid Molly's scrutiny.
Wonder how long Nemesis-in-Justine will be able to keep out of Molly's way while dating Thomas.
Noting that House Sylgia is not just Isabella's father? Its also Leinth.
I doubt that Papa Bella is the head of his branch , but he's probably fairly senior I think.
It does suggest that Lara's consultations were probably more broad than I first assumed.
Leinth gets his revenge on Madrigal at secondhand.
I havent forgotten that he "accidentally" pointed Molly at Madrigal back at Greene's house. Speaking of Greene, I get the feeling she'll listen to reports of Madrigal's death with some satisfaction. Not as much as if/when we kill Broken Seeker, but quite a bit.
The vision of the Empyreal Chaos was about as informative as I expected; thats a peril of scrying entities with a permissive attitude towards linear time.
More interesting was the Princes of the Earth question, both in what it said, and what it didnt say.
Homewards bound.
Eleanor, getting the Cauldron members home, briefing Harry and Thomas and Murphy, talking to Charity and Michael.....
All the dreary cleanup. And we still have school in the morning, and Isabella will have questions.
Good thing malspresso exists.
Hmm.
@DragonParadox
Didnt we vote to tell Lara about Vittorio Malvora?
Or are we doing that at secondhand via Thomas?
1) That's true, and helpful, but Mab does business with everyone. What we did there was also sort of opaque and transactional from the outside, while the thing we just did has more relational implications. More importantly, the white court/Lara has an investment in that aspect being present in the story.
2) Lydia is a public figure in the sense that she's not actively in hiding, but she isn't exactly a player. Micheal is a big deal, but the knights aren't political movers.
These things help, but we're not plugged into any rumor mills/diplomatic channels on the active supernatural political side of things. That means whoever is talking there right now gets to sell an unopposed story about us while we tool around in the background doing whatever's caught our attention today.
I don't want to recycle an example too frequently, but this literally happened to Dresden with Marcone.
After all the big stuff he did; saving the city multiple times, rolling with the Knights of the Cross, cutting direct deals with Mab, becoming a Warden Commander, and half of Chicago's in the know crowd ended up thinking he was a Mob hitman for a living because he acted like a basement dwelling recluse for most of it.
Right now our Marcone is Lara.
Limited material leverage, transactional relationship that could potentially go hostile, and she might still reap significant benefits at our long term expense because we're playing with our lab equipment while she's dropping Molly's name.
I wouldn't say it's a drop everything situation right now, but if we're trying to be an independent faction this is a factor that needs to be brought under control. The longer we wait the more of a headache it will become.
I think you voted not to tell her at all, though you can of course phone her now
- Location
- Germany
No, pretty sure telling her won.
Though hard-fought.
Edit: Here: Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files) Crossover - Fantasy
Ah right, that text has been sent then.
But we sent her a message?
UPD.: Sidereal'd, even in this new Age.
Last edited:
VERY difficult. Not impossible.
DC9 checks can be passed.
Its not quite so bad as that.
The supernatural world does have a history of shifting alliances being taken for granted, and Molly does have distinct casus belli here. Dresden's relationship with the Fae is an example to point at.
Worth noting that Molly's public acts in sequence are
- Solving the akuma problem in Chinatown and recovering two kidnap victims, in cooperation with the Chinatown shen
- Meeting with Mab, then Maeve, and working a major magical ritual
- The Skavis Purge
Plus, she and Lydia both made a public appearance at Maria Castelli's wedding, which associates them with Cauldron.
She has a preexisting history in town to fall back on.
I see the point you are trying to make.
Still, Dresden was rather constrained about his willingness to talk about shit in ways that Molly was not.
Dude barely had a social life, or a social circle. Just by being affiliated with Lydia and Cauldron, and being willing to talk to talk to them, Molly starts out a long way ahead of the rumors.
Dresden didnt even realize they were a thing until around the events of either Small Favor or Changes., by which time literally around a decade had passed.
Different situations.
EDIT
Plus, again, that Mentor 5 rating coming in clutch.
We definitely voted to tell her.
The argument was whether to tell her immediately, or to wait till tomorrow morning.
I certainly voted to tell her tomorrow morning, but the winning vote was to tell her that night.
Last edited:
- Location
- washington
I thought you were referencing cleaning up without murder. Cause I don't see us fixing things in any purely ethical way.
- Location
- Germany
Right, but for most mortals the difference is academic.
First you actually need to want to push through the compulsion and spend WP to try, then you have to succede a very hard roll.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Those are just the success stories we know about, with the success being fairly debatable, IMO.
For every curious teen or neophyte that pokes around and gets good information, how many do you think get just enough wrong information to end up in a Ghoul's larder or walking into a Rampire den? Or trapped in terrible Fey bargains, lost in the NeverNever, etc? I bet there are more bad endings than good ones for those who stumble into the supernatural.
Are the Order members really safe yet? The White Court side of the plot might have been dismantled, but the Ants are still active, right? I can't remember if we learned just how autonomous they were without Whampire guidance.
Last edited:
Citation:
Chance of rolling 9 or higher on a D10 is 10%
Chance of rolling 9 or higher on 4D10 is around 60%, I think.
Damn few I suspect.
If for no other reason than that they have a leg up on having some supernatural power or sense to begin with, enough to give them a leg up in sketchy situations. As opposed to people with no power or ability, just curiosity/fascination.
No magicals would exist if the simple fact of looking around translated to even a one in ten risk of death or disability every month.
They literally had Whampire handlers on site.
I expect Lara is competent about things like this; if she sent a sister to Boston to clean up the Skavis manse , she definitely made sure to defuse the Ant situation in Chicago.
Last edited:
Technically ancient sorcery has a "shaping defense only" tier single target version:
No save/resist after applied, any attempt at communication is replaced by worm vomit and bashing damage.
The problem isn't what's being done exactly, it's what's being said and who's doing the talking.
Lydia is a kid, she has no contacts. Micheal's associations are all known by inference and observation because he isn't exactly swapping stories with the local spirits or building benches for elves.
The Ordo is enough to be a sort of name, but they don't have the weight shape things with the broader community beyond the superficial.
My point here is that we haven't crossed a point of no return, which is why we should take steps now before someone well positioned to exploit our current passivity on this front does.
Look at the whamp raves we see in canon, the krill seem to serve themselves in the supernatural world.
I don't think TV would really help, because this tier of victim isn't listening anyway.
Whamp lead cult whose handler wasn't present but was on the wrong side of the purge.
If Lara doesn't have that shit cleaned up ASAP I'd be surprised. Finding another sniper after this would be squarely her fault after all, and we just demonstrated our opinion on how to respond to that.
She could set up better day-to-day defenses, but the level of force needed to make a pissed off infernal balk from going full Naagloshii and barging into her office to repaint the walls with the contents of her skull is expensive.
Lara probably knows us well enough to say we wouldn't start there, but she can't discount the idea now that it's a credible possibility.
That's wrong. A chance of rolling 9 or higher on a D10 is 20%, because both 9 and 10 are successes. The chance of obtaining 1 success at a DC9 challenge with ND10 is 1-0.8^N. However, the math is more complicated, because you need to get more successes than 1s. Do willpower rolls use 2 successes for rolling 10?
Exploit how? They have no leverage over us, nothing to threaten us with, and they can only use "she's totally our agent" lie on others until we learn about it.
They don't have to lie, just present events in a way that lets others draw their own conclusions and not correct them.
Forgot about that spell.
So yeah, if necessary we can shut a single target up about a topic if we can get a face to face and are willing to spend a quarter of our current Essence pool.
Lydia is a child, but she's still Background: Mentor 1 Arawn
It doesnt have the same weight as our own Mentor 5, but it does carry associations in the supernatural world where Arawn was first a death god, then a very senior Winter affiliate, with a more than a thousand years worth of contacts and relationships.
I dont really think its likely to be an issue in the short to mediumterm.
Given the organic thrust of our goals in the next year or so.
I wouldnt worry about it too much.
^^^
No magic bait necessary. Just a club with beautiful people, sex and drugs will reel in meat
I was counting the 1s as botches, and assuming that double tens werent a thing for Willpower rolls
If either assumption is wrong, the numbers will be.
Forgot to vote.
===========
VOTE
[X] All of the above.
Easily, and as part of a balanced breakfast of influence games. Lara's even doing it right now.
We were the ace card she played to win the consolation purge, continued to us is part of how she's proceeding with that. Which gives us power over her but is also a tie itself for Lara to play with.
Marcone did a lot of different things to get where he ended up in canon, but one of his first big breaks was convincing people Harry worked for him in some capacity. It got people to hesitate, to think he was more involved than he was, and to give him space to find his bearings.
The consequences of Dresden not opposing this were that even in the face of firm denial and significantly more relevant connections people still thought he at least was a hired killer for some muggle asshole in the past if he wasn't still on the take right now.
Lara doesn't need the same things, but she explicitly is pulling the same trick right now. Why would she stop?
The more she does that the more people will self select their interactions with us based on what she's saying instead of what we're actually like before we even get a chance to do anything.
That's just one game too, there will be more because that's how they do business.
You're making a similar mistake to those who underestimate social combat because it doesn't involve explosions. This is social combat over time and large groups, we just can't see the proverbial dice pools because we're basically sleeping through the fight.
Not that we're in critical danger right now, but this sort of issue sneaks up on you. If you wait until things are obviously a problem fixing them is much harder where it's possible at all.
He's dead right now, is she speaking to anyone on his behalf?
Again, this is all about who is talking and what they're saying.
A silent death god isn't worth a dozen whamp barons flapping their gums even if he could shut them down with a word.
We need to be talking in addition to doing if we want this to work out.
=He isnt dead though, and he communicates with her. And among immortals, a six month absence is barely worth talking about.
Not to mention that relationships and debts(and enmities) are often carried over, and a timespan of over a thousand years is a long time to rack them up. It doesnt cancel out everything else, but it does matter.
I doubt he'd have stayed ahead of Mab without them.
For example, I have my suspicions about her lawyer/law firm.
Especially since when we were given the option to snoop magically, it was implied that we risked pissing them off.
=A sleeping death god might not outweigh the White King/White Queen.
But he sure as fuck outweighs a dozen whamp barons.
Especially given the timescales that immortals operate on.
Last edited:
Vote closed
- Location
- washington
I think we've been acting too open with our family. We are an urban fantasy protagonist we're supposed to be distant and closed off from our family. We aren't supposed to be open until they die tragically and we regret the way we treated them thinking we could of changed things!
- Location
- Earth
I tried to move out when Charity put her foot down, but alas I was outvoted.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
They had us in the first half ngl.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
I thought it was weird that we didn't kill him with everyone else.
Winning Vote