Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
- Location
- Germany
Right now we can't take Isabela to relevant events because she'd die and I'm willing to bet a fresh Wizard talent would have the same issue, as it takes some considerable investment in XP to have a well-rounded combatant from the Mage-chassis (it has an extremly high ceiling, I admit, but not a strong start).
Propably the closest thing to a fitting companion I could think of from WoD would be a starter-werewolf. Those are at least pretty damn tough and can survive almost anything that doesn't instgib them with a burst of Rage.
But unfortunatly that kind of Human/Spirit hybrid with a naturally strong body and some serious growth-potential in magical gifts doesn't seem to exist in Dresden Files.
Defintly want more exalted for sure, but no need to pay for the information. Just use the crown, and a random tool to learn everything this guy knows for free.
So you want exalts because you want to be able to take scrubs into high level fights and let them coast on their inherent advantages?
Cause that's an entirely different complaint than the idea that there aren't good companion options around. Various fey types would work, as would wizards like the young warden brigade, who are within 3-5 years of Molly and managed reasonably well with the vampire war.
Hell, getting a Valkyrie advisor/fixer like Marcone has in Gard would also work. It's clearly a service that Odin provides.
Wanting a specific trope of character for our circle doesn't seem like reasonable cause to blow up the state of the game.
- Location
- Germany
No other starting-character would work.
My problem is not that there aren't Wizards or Valkyries or whatever around who could fit in our group, but there are none that fit the criterium of being relativly inexperienced people with a full development ahead of them, like Lydia.
She was a fresh character recently, with the basic starter-pack for a fresh character, and she can survive in the situations we get in anyway.
No Mage with a similar number of XP spend and a similar potential forfurther development can do that.
Edit: I love to see a party grow for starting characters to fully realised ones. And that is hard now and gets exponentially harder as Molly grows further.
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One of the Forest people would fit that niche for what it's worth. They are very tough and quite magically powerful without being loud with their magic.
Not much point in being quite, when Molly can be felt city wide when she lights up for combat.
Knowledge for service it is
I dont believe I am.
Kosmo 954 made it down in enough contiguous pieces to drop radioactive material across northern Canada in 1978 despite attempts by its Soviet controllers to ensure that they could drop it in the ocean, and it was only around 3.8 tons in size.
Still, agree to disagree.
Its certainly a medium-term project
We're going to have to raise money first though, working ourselves up to Resources 6-equivalent, and that requires a fair bit of setup yet.
COMMENTARY
November 14. Barely a day after the festivities at the White Court, and Cauldron should still be making their way home.
Assuming Molly did this after school.
Hmm. Rudolph the Reindeer was created in 1939.
This spirit being older than the Fae, AND a Creature of Darkness to boot, has interesting implications. Especially since the reindeer are canonically amplifiers of Kringle's power.
Interesting admission by the sisters about the willingness and ability of a Norse pantheon to manipulate Western mass media.
I doubt it was an accidental revelation. And I doubt its just sentiment, because the institution of Santa Claus is one of the more powerful supernatural constants of the Dresden Files, and a member of that peerage has heft.
Now Im actually suspicious about the real identities of the other eight reindeer that pull Santa Claus sleigh.
Especially since he's allegedly quite adept with time and space magic according to the short story The Good People.
Her Kabouter? Kabouter is a Dutch word for gnome. Dude is using a pseudonym, not a proper name.
I dont really buy his willingness to tell us about rumors of what Odin is looking for on our first meeting; Molly is personable, but not that personable. Not enough to outweigh centuries of an existing relationship.
Odin is a shapeshifter in mythology, isnt he? *checks* Yup. Im betting this is old One-Eye, trying to send us after a "rumor."
Hmm. Knowledge is Power. I suspect we can trade demos of Molly's Exalted crafting in the future.
The most valuable thing to us on that list frankly is a supply of simple magical materials for 10 points.
But we dont currently have Exalted Crafting Charm or Enchantment, so it has to wait.
Second most valuable being the workforce of Elves. Not hav
Going to note that the workforce of Elves also serves as a way to keep discreet tabs on Molly.
Not that Im particularly bothered about it atm, just making a note.
Cheaters. Lol.
@DragonParadox
QUESTION
Molly's Alchemical Lab is likely to be in Last Station, where Porter lives and the Jade Dogs will maintain a guard force.
How does that work with the requirement for secrecy?
Will they simply show up under pseudonyms?
Do the Elves do Alchemy only, or will they do Enchantment or Exalted Craft as well?
Or do we have to negotiate for that separately?
This makes no sense.
We have Bob as among other things, an Alchemy tutor. He's a spirit of knowledge that's anywhere between six hundred and a thousand plus years old, with more than six hundred years experience working with and learning from wizards. I can see no justification for spending extra points to get elves to duplicate this.
Its not like we have excess AP to plie them with.
Objection: Speculation.
And unfounded speculation at that. You are making assertions about motivations of a character who we havent met IC and whose canon motivations are literally the opposite of what you are saying.
None of this is plausible.
1)Odin is not Mab.
He does not have the metaphysical grunt of the Queen of Air and Darkness, CEO of Winter; he gave up a lot of power in order to retain the free agency to interfere with Humanity, freedom that Mab doesnt necessarily have.
2)Odin fathered gods and men in mythology. He taught the first Merlin in Dresden Files.
He picked and invested his own Valkyries from women who used to be mortal. He still actively makes Einherjar. If he's willing to invest the power or resources to make mortal or once-mortal champions, he can do so.
3)See 1.
There's an assumption that the holder of the mantle of Kris Kringle, Santa Claus, didnt actually get a good hard look at Molly's shard up close in the centuries when it was in the custody of Winter in Arctis Tor.
4)No offense, but this is in stark contradiction to why he's canonically involved with Humanity.
And someone who allegedly canonically has regular meetings with Uriel knows better than to attempt to fuck with a power source bigger than his head. The Primordials couldnt just repurpose an Exaltation.
Odin is neither Nicodemus Archleone nor a Yama King, and he didnt survive this long by carelessly grabbing at every power source that crawled past his nose. Especially since he did see what happened with Lanka, who first held the Infernal shard before it fell into the hands of Kakuri.
=An allied NPC does not have to be a peer combatant to be a party member as long as they bring sufficient value with other skills and backgrounds. Nobody is expecting Harry to go hand to hand against a Skinwalker or a Denarian, and while Michael is hell on wheels in melee, his primary value to Molly isnt for his ability to stab people.
Even Lydia, who is an Exigent of Death, was given a mechanically suboptimal loadout in chargen, and isnt really relevant in high level Molly-tier combat, and we havent exactly been in a hurry so far to patch the holes in her skillset.
Doesnt make her useless.
=Besides, Molly was specced as an Exalted crafter and ancient sorcerer for a reason.
If we want to up someone's survivability or threat level, its entirely within the capability of an Infernal Exalt who has demonstrated the ability to make house gods with Exalted Craft.
And its entirely canon-compliant; Ethniu came to war wearing celestial bronze armor and wielding Balor's Eye, Mab has a unicorn power amplifier, Odin bears Gungnir, his alter-ego Kringle has the reindeer, and McCoy wields the Blackstaff.
=I cant speak for other people, of course, but Im not in all that much of a hurry to add other Exalted-tier characters to this quest.
Thats my two cents, for what its worth.
Its not like the setting is short of other characters, from part-naagloshii to Forest People scions.
Or even Lash, if we manage to yank her out of Dresden's skull without killing her or her kid.
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- They will show up under a glamor and set up shop, they are good at hiding, though they cannot work on the station itself since... they are not that good, the elemental would notice
- They can help with Enchanting and with mundane smithing and crafts relating to mental working but not with Exalted Crafts that is beyond them
Arc 8 Post 40: A Bargain Fey and Fair
A Bargain Fey and Fair
14th of November 2006 A.D.
Eyes bright with searching fire stare into the light of your soul as it unfolds into a smith's tools, prying clamps and shifting jaw, pneumatic hammers thumping deep, then a weaver's, looking like nothing so much as a many jointed spider with a heart of twisting wheels into which your fingers fit perfectly and finally a cobbler's, spigots of hot oil and wax for softening leather, steam baths that can scorch flesh from bone and other 'clever artifice' as your entranced audience of one calls them.
Afterwards you jot down all the alchemical formulae the red-suited elf wants, in a perfectly normal notebook yet. You had been expecting rolls of parchment or something and are even more nonplussed when he rips out one of the paces writes down the contract for what you are owed with his fingers. Neat built in fountain pens aside you see no problem with the terms, basically you will be allowed to access Workshop's supply of rare and precious metals at market price, no questions asked. There are some volume limitations in there for sanity's sake, no plating the roads with gold so it's clear that fey or no they are not spinning straw into gold here, probably accessing some... less than legal markets.
As the hot coca arrives, still steaming from the pot alongside gingerbread cookies you get on to the most tricky part of the deal, the service. You would benefit from the service of 'five times five' of Her Kabouter's kin, five for each element, for each point of the pentagram.
"You know," you dunk a cookie in the coca, it's Jormungand eating its own tail what you can only assume is a form of culinary irony. "I am aware what you are doing here, get me some assistants now and when their contract is out they will have learned all to which I set their hands to for a century."
"And yet you are still gutt wit the bargain?" the fey smith gives you a cautious look.
"My mom's a blacksmith you know you know, traditional works. She told me once that in the old days it was quite normal to work at the forge of another smith to learn from them. Why should I mind something that worked for centuries between right-dealing folk." A warning without insult and pledge without an oath before one of the fey. You are actually pretty proud of that one.
Gained
Black Market Access (Metals) There are metals more precious than gold and silver and far more carefully watched, but with this bargain struck they are just a phone call away for you
More Than Shoe Elves ● ● Twenty Five Kabouter of the Winter Court Sworn to serve you by their sharp wit and untiring labor
The bargain struck and sealed, even if you are still curious what 'Donar Vadderung' knows of treasures such as your crown, you step through the workshop in search of your new... servants? no that one sounds weird. Employees? No, not that either, you are not paying them in anything besides experience to bring to their kin a century from now. Subjects? That one sounds best, even if it is Usum who suggested it
"Hi it's nice to meet you all," you wave at the red-suited square of fey craftsmen standing at attention on the workshop floor. "Do you have any preference for food and lodging."
"Work be our succor, it be our joy," the one who makes up the corner closest to you.
"Do you have any preference for work? I am something of an alchemist, but I also made this armor..." you give a quick twirl. "And Queen Mab's new car."
Now that gets them going, they have lots of opinions about which is the most interesting work and how best to go about it, though in the dim of grinding gears and ringing hammers you can only just hear them. So of course you step back into the material world, into a darkened room beneath Bare Mountain Massachusetts in the company of a pair of valkyries and a whole parcel of elves, roll up your sleeves and get to work...
Which of the Projects do you focus on the most?
[] The 'Heavy' If Monoc needs this kind of firepower things have really gone south
-[] Write in suggestions for the vehicles (Optional)
[]The 'Slick' given the kinds of enemies they are fighting the ability to slip unseen and still pack a punch is likely to be the most valuable
-[] Write in suggestions for the vehicles (Optional)
[] Divide your attention equally between both
-[] Write in suggestions for the vehicles (Optional)
OOC: I thought about just rolling though, you guys had some cool ideas for the car, I wanted to give you a chance to do that here as well. And also in how you fuffil your commission send a bit of a message to Odin. What kind of wondersmith are you?
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fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
By my thinking vehicle design should answer a few questions.
First power sources we can likely make a car run on anything from solar panels, diesel to a nuclear reactor with all power sources having their own trade offs.
Armor given infinite time and willpower we could make the whole thing out of unbreakable mirrors, but I am not sure that we want to invest months. So what kind of armor do we want?
Lastly locomotion we can do wheel, treads or even spider type legs.
Flight seems impractical given the mission profiles and using only 'mundane' crafting. Rocket, helicopter and the like are too loud for the stealthy vehicles and can't carry enough armor for the heavy.
Edit: @DragonParadox : Actually can we just make the frame then have the Shoe Elves Craft unbreaking mirrors for a few months to fit into it? Might not actually take mouths if they can craft 25 mirrors a day.
Would make a armored helicopter that bounces anti air missiles practical.
First power sources we can likely make a car run on anything from solar panels, diesel to a nuclear reactor with all power sources having their own trade offs.
Armor given infinite time and willpower we could make the whole thing out of unbreakable mirrors, but I am not sure that we want to invest months. So what kind of armor do we want?
Lastly locomotion we can do wheel, treads or even spider type legs.
Flight seems impractical given the mission profiles and using only 'mundane' crafting. Rocket, helicopter and the like are too loud for the stealthy vehicles and can't carry enough armor for the heavy.
Edit: @DragonParadox : Actually can we just make the frame then have the Shoe Elves Craft unbreaking mirrors for a few months to fit into it? Might not actually take mouths if they can craft 25 mirrors a day.
Would make a armored helicopter that bounces anti air missiles practical.
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- Location
- Germany
I'm aware that other people matter, but to take the examples of Harry and Michael, those are pretty matured characters, who won't actually grow in the relevant timeframes. It's nice to have them around, both for fluff and occasionally in a challenge (be it combat, social or investigative), but they can't be partymembers in the sense of growing in character and mechanics alongside Molly, which is important to me to have.
As for Lydia, I'm aware that she's far from mechanically optimal (I did most of her chassis and charmset, if you remember), but she is capable of surviving and contributing in our fights and she is only going to get better, if slowly compared to Molly due to her being closer to Terrestrial than Celestial.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
[X] The 'Heavy' If Monoc needs this kind of firepower things have really gone south
-[x] Powered by a nuclear reactor this helicopter can fly all the way around the world if it needs to, of course given the price of the radioactive materials needed for fuel it is unlikely to be used that often. It's hexagonal honey comb paneling of one way mirrors mean that the passengers have no blind spots even without the high tech sensor system. Of course the armor isn't just for looking through, but is capable of bouncing just about all anti air weapons.
This vehicle is optimized for extractions when things go wrong it can fly anywhere though or around any opposition. To that end the Lazer turrets on board are mostly geared towards applying suppressing fire, but it can carry two large missiles in it undercarriage. Also once the missiles are fired that leaves more room for passengers.
Notes for possible after building enchantments the lazers can be enchanted to instill the fear of the sun enhancing their suppress fire effect against creatures vulnerable to the sun. And of course the missiles load out can be customized to the mission.
-[x] Powered by a nuclear reactor this helicopter can fly all the way around the world if it needs to, of course given the price of the radioactive materials needed for fuel it is unlikely to be used that often. It's hexagonal honey comb paneling of one way mirrors mean that the passengers have no blind spots even without the high tech sensor system. Of course the armor isn't just for looking through, but is capable of bouncing just about all anti air weapons.
This vehicle is optimized for extractions when things go wrong it can fly anywhere though or around any opposition. To that end the Lazer turrets on board are mostly geared towards applying suppressing fire, but it can carry two large missiles in it undercarriage. Also once the missiles are fired that leaves more room for passengers.
Notes for possible after building enchantments the lazers can be enchanted to instill the fear of the sun enhancing their suppress fire effect against creatures vulnerable to the sun. And of course the missiles load out can be customized to the mission.
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They are not as good as you, all they can do crafting wise is halve your time, even if there are 15 of them.
I would rather avoid literally nuclear vehicles. Regular fuel is good enough. What we should do is build the thing out of graphene doped kevlar and ceramics for armor.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Also once we get Prince of Ruin Attitude we can use nuclear vehicles without having to worry about how expensive the fuel is.
ClawClawBite
Mad Engineering!
- Location
- Seattle, WA
[X] The 'Heavy' If Monoc needs this kind of firepower things have really gone south
-[x] You remember an old TV show about an Airwolf, a helicopter with lots of hidden weapons. You can do better, bumping it up to squad size and incorporating modern stealth technology and noise cancelation.
-[x] You remember an old TV show about an Airwolf, a helicopter with lots of hidden weapons. You can do better, bumping it up to squad size and incorporating modern stealth technology and noise cancelation.
There is also the issue of maintenance and repair. Those things go into battle and will get shot up. They are gonna be useless if only an Exalt can repair them.
- Location
- Germany
I'd go work KISS again.
Find a good, functional vehicle from a real military, copy what's good about it, make it better as the artisanal project of an Exalt, instead of being mass-produced, and add the details the old soldier wanted, like the heavier gun.
No need to reinvent the wheel.
Find a good, functional vehicle from a real military, copy what's good about it, make it better as the artisanal project of an Exalt, instead of being mass-produced, and add the details the old soldier wanted, like the heavier gun.
No need to reinvent the wheel.
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1) I asked because there's a nonzero chance that a functional Last Station is going to have a LOT of people around day to day.
And someone is going to have to need to be able to speak for them in the event that someone with the Sight, or other perception-boosted ability or precog, stumbles across them.
Note that both Clippy and Will were present at this negotiation, so our cyberdevils know.
2) I will point out that Exalted Craft can and will include stuff that might be considered the provenance of Alchemy.
I mean, Im totally looking at the Exalted Crafting charm as potential solutions to both Rosie's derangement issues and to fixing Ms Beckitt's daughter's coma if and when it becomes relevant.
QUESTION
1) How obvious does the Slick version's design have to be?
Does it have to be able to pass as a civilian vehicle from the outside?
Or is it acceptable if its also an overtly military vehicle at rest?
2)Can we build an aircraft design?
A Mi-24-class assault helicopter, for example?