MIM turns mooks into free essence recovery.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
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- Crossover Fantasy
You could ask it who else knows Soulfire and could teach it to you, but not 'how do I learn the path of Soulfire'. There is just too much information and actual teaching involved in the process. As for Soulfire being able to destroy that comes further up the chain, the more skill you have with it the more 'creative destruction' you can do with it among other things. Molly saw that its basic nature was to create, as that is the basic function of souls in this universe, to add to the marvel and beauty of creation.
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- Germany
Not mortal mooks.
Only spirits count for Essence recovery.
Yup, it has to be deathless in some way, you cannot just kill random mortals, or for that matter slap away a fly and get essence, funny as that would be. The Charm is a spirit killer. Hypothetically a charm might exist that can do that to humans, but Molly would have to go through some... character changes before she would be the kind of person who would possess that charm (remember charms are not something you know, they are not spells like ancient sorcery, they are something you are).
- Location
- Germany
Killing humans still gives you a full meal, so it's not like we get nothing from MiM, it's just not enough "food" to fill the Essence-tank.
So, I'm guessing the Path of Soulfire is discrete from a Wizard using Soulfire to enhance his spells?
Because that seems pretty neutral, in that Dresden could apply it as additional power with little constraint for destructive or creative causes.
- Does it...? Hmm, that is weird with the world-building I have up. Would you guys mind if we got rid of that? I can work around it but I'd have to change some things in the background
- Wizards have an easier time of it because they are wizards, they have spheres and a holistic view of magic that Molly cannot now grasp, she would have to learn magic like a minor talent the same way she has to learn most spells. Her Exaltation needs things spelled out to it as to when not to eat her own spells and the more free-style magic of wizardry does not cut it
- Location
- Germany
I'm not invested in that, but Yog and uju32 just had a long debate over MiM that references the point several times?
Yeah, I'm just interested in how the mechanics work for a Wizard, not saying Molly should have any access to that.
- I'll make those changes then, I don't want to reopen the conversation
- Mechanically it works like Quintessence for them
- Location
- Right Where I Am
I'd actually prefer getting rid of it. So, please do.
Not if we have to defend something. Part of why cutting the witchhunters off before they got started was so important.
- Pronouns
- ImBuda
What we need more now is more essence recovery or find a way to reduce what we need to pay, we have many options right now but not so many essence points to use them and the soulfire path of sorcery is very expensive unless we pay with life points, but it is aggravated damage so we need that healing charm to use It right.
We're very good at essence recovery as we can just chill in a bottle of bleach to rapidly recover.
The exalted grade actors are top shelf people, and they don't exist in high numbers.
Moreover, that doesn't do anything to stop the exalted from consuming our attention and making doing anything else dicey at best.
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On the soulfire stuff, it'd worth considering how we might abuse the crown here.
Exposing that it exists would be a suicidally bad idea, but Odin loves secrets and has a lot more conventional limits than Molly.
A question targeted at the scene to the effect of "What secret would be valuable enough to purchase training in what I just saw?" Could get us something shiny enough to get the first dot without getting caught on the hook he's probably got planted in whatever deal he'll propose.
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That's requiring value judgement from the Crown. We could ask "what is the secret the man who produced this effect wants to know most?" with maybe some qualifiers like "that he won't be obligated to kill the messenger for revealing" and "that he will be willing to trade for" etc.
On soulfire crown questions I think "what are the sources of knowledge on the subject currently unclaimed by anyone" or something like this. I.e. get a look for manuals (I will be honest, I want to go tomb raiding, be it for the Dragon's body and treasure, Fomor resources, imprisoned exaltations and Age of Legends stuff deep in the NeverNever or something else, I just find the idea of going out into the wilderness and exploring ancient deadly ruins to be compelling, and a good divergence from PvP dynamics to PvE dynamics, if I am allowed such comparisons).
A fair point, but I still think finding payment for Odin is a better bet.
Pretty much any source of lore like this is going to have a catch somewhere, I doubt there's just a book hanging out free to claim in some extradimensional basement-o-lore.
Odin has an agenda, which we shouldn't forget, but he's also a better trading partner than most we have access to as long as we remember that he's playing for team Odin first and foremost.
The crown gets fuzzy about predicting the future, but I figure we have more wiggle room asking an infernal crown of insight to find a secret worthy of tempting a god than we do asking for detailed prophecies for the same reason that it struggles with guessing lottery numbers.
If we need to be more specific, maybe restrict it to the topic at hand?
We gave Harry very useful information on how to do something with soul gazes despite not having the ability or even knowing it existed until that scene.
So maybe we could ask for a secret of higher order soul fire manipulation that Odin would dearly like to have. Then we trade him knowledge that will probably mean nothing to us but translates into a key bit of a high dot ritual or whatever to him for the first dot of the same path.
How precisely we have that to trade would probably drive him crazy, but we don't have to satisfy his curiosity. For all he knows we have intellectus for temptation and just learned whatever we needed to in order to make a deal or something.
The truth is more bullshit than anything he's liable to guess.
Humans not counting for MIM does not really make since, in exalted you could it definitely use it on a human. And in Dresden the soul does exist, and is a super big deal.
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[X] Acceptance, you always knew you were going to be a target and you are working on getting allies in your own way
-[X] Besides, if the world is going to change, then you have some ideas on how.
I have a question: Why is everyone so excited about learning soulfire? Unless I'm missing something, it's basically a lesser version of essence. Using energy from our soul to supercharge abilities is what we already do everytime we use a charm.
Soulfire may be a game changer to a mortal like Dresden, but for us it feels like a parlor trick.
Odin's ploy is pretty transparent, dangling something shiny in front of us to tempt us into more debt. I don't think we should entangle ourselves further for something we don't really need. If we want more power, I would prefer leaning into making our private (hell)court. We're an Infernal after all. Angel powers don't fit our creature of darkness aesthetic.
-[X] Besides, if the world is going to change, then you have some ideas on how.
I have a question: Why is everyone so excited about learning soulfire? Unless I'm missing something, it's basically a lesser version of essence. Using energy from our soul to supercharge abilities is what we already do everytime we use a charm.
Soulfire may be a game changer to a mortal like Dresden, but for us it feels like a parlor trick.
Odin's ploy is pretty transparent, dangling something shiny in front of us to tempt us into more debt. I don't think we should entangle ourselves further for something we don't really need. If we want more power, I would prefer leaning into making our private (hell)court. We're an Infernal after all. Angel powers don't fit our creature of darkness aesthetic.
MiM regenerates essence in ExWOD because spirits 'bodies' are built out of essence. It's their equivalent of flesh and blood. What MiM in the source eats isn't the actual spirit, it's their soul equivalent, which can otherwise go off and rebuild themself a new spiritual body from essence. Souls or spirits in living bodies aren't clothed in essence, they have flesh and blood instead.
In Dresdenverse terms they'd be made of ectoplasm.
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By that logic MiM should only work on humans, and maybe angels and demons. Exalted where designed to kill the souls of primordials. Everything in exalted had a soul, or souls. A bit of ectoplasm, <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< a soul that barring being killed by a Exalted will exist for eternity.
As a compromise, maybe make it work, but not eat the souls? As others have mentioned, the act of violence itself might be the source of energy / nourishment. The soul of a mortal being released from their mortal coil (the mortal being killed) works as a catalyst initiating the processes by which exalt either generates sustenance ex-nihilo (because exalts and Primordials kinda laugh at conservation of energy), or obtains it from reality itself?
It's Murder is Meat, not Murdered Victim is Meat, after all. Tying the functionality sorta kinda to ritual sacrifice maybe?
Or discard that part, up to you.
MiM in ExWoD does work on humans.
Think of it this way. In EzWoD both humans and spirits have things that function as both bodies and as souls. MiM has two effects, one affecting the body of the target; shredding it and giving you the benefit of having eaten it, and one the soul, sending it to hell.
For humans and other corporal entities, those bodies are made of physical fleeh, so murdering them fills up your stomach as if you'd eaten the flesh from their body. For spirits, that body is made of essenxe, so murdering them fills up your essence pool as if you'd eaten the essence from their body. That later is like how a Wan Kuei can eat a spirit's physical body to recover chi.
In both cases their soul (or equivalent) is then grabbed by the MiM charm and then thrown into a Hell.
If we'd used the ExWoD MiM on the Will of Kakuri, we'd have vaporised their body and been physically nourished as if we'd chowed down on their body while their soul was banished to a Hell.
Here though, DP has changed what MiM does.
How that affects the results is unpredictable based on the ExWoD charm, as this is an almost completely different effect.
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System: Whenever the Infernal murders a sentient being, the act nourishes her as though she had just eaten a four-course meal. If she slays a ghost or spirit, then she can reflexively roll Dexterity + Occult against a difficulty of its Willpower. Success conjures a vor-tex of crimson flaying winds which slice its dissipating substance into stray motes of Essence. The Infernal re-gains 2 Essence, and the ghost or spirit is entrapped in the Hell of Being Skinned Alive. Condemning a jag-gling-level or greater spirit that is not a creature of dark-ness in this fashion "rolls back" the number of times the Infernal is considered to have attempted to don her Shintai form during the current story by one, re-ducing its cost or difficulty accordingly (to a minimum of Essence 2, Willpower 2, and no roll requirement).
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Not in the canon charm you quote. Essence is what the spirit's 'body' is made of. It has a separate soul equivalent that when that body it's built from essence is destroyed can reappear back home and build themself a new body from essence.
The Infernal eats the remains of that 'body' while the 'soul' is cast down to a hell.
DP has changed that; but the original charm does not harm souls or soul equivalents. It just relocates them. This is the same whether it's the soul of a human, vampire, werewolf, ghost, or nature spirit.
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Because of how this parlor trick in particular works.
We rolled 21 dice for our magic crafting stuff here. If we'd had a single soulfire dot we'd have hit the third break point on 2 more of our magic crafting rolls. Which is where we start hitting "impressive for an exalt".
It's not impossible that in our personal lab this could let us relativity reliably hit 20 successes, which is showing off even by exalt standards.
You're conflating terms; essence the spirit substance and essence the exalted fundamental element aren't identical things.
WoD just recycles stuff, see how Malfean Neverborn have nothing to do with Malfeas or the Neverborn for a particularly egregious example of the same thing.