Things Odin doesn't know about:
1) Rendered Villain Dispersal. It's not OCP, high level people can travel quickly, even mortals can cross atlantic in less than a day. So he can actually expect us to commute
2) Splintered Gale Incarnation - that's a near OCP. No one in Dresden Files has demonstrated the ability to be in the several places at once. Mab can't do this. Certain Indian deities might be able to, if we take the avatar concept as real. But it's still a near OCP. It changes the equation strongly, allowing us to completely maintain presence in Chicago, if not combat presence (that can be handled with RVD)
3) Our Kingdom. That's a complete OCP and a game changer in terms of power and worth. The fact that our Kingdom is not located in the NeverNever and is a material realm is not something he'd expect. Not to mention everything else
4) We almost certainly can learn / cobble together an Ancient Sorcery spell that functions equivalently to Right of Opened Bridge from W20 and allows for teleportation between claimed Dragon Nests.
Now, what does he want out of this?
1) An area secured for a nominally allied force. I have no issues with that
2) Us removed from Chicago. I am guessing Chicago is too important, too dangerous, and has too many people in it to afford us in it. Remember, we are Outside Fate. Seers can't predict our future. Depending on how many balls Odin has up in the air, our simple presence is likely to destroy a lot of his operations. it definitely messes with his plans to set Marcone up as a freeholding lord, and there's absolutely a plan to do this. He probably wants us far from Demonreach and possibly far from Harry too.
Overall, he seems to really, really want us on his side, and gone from Chicago at the same time.
Or put that clone in Chicago and swap across Boston.
That's probably the best move, if we are to break Boston over our knee and establish ourselves as the God Queen there.
2)High school graduates in May/June, and the freshman year of college starts in August/September.
Thats seven months before Molly graduates high school, and nine or ten months before university starts.
There's time before she has to make a binding decision.
Actually that's interesting. If there's power vacuum there right now, Odin is implicitely offering to hold the fort there for this period so no one else moves in. Because power vacuums fill fast in Dresdenverse (see fomor after Red Court was destroyed, and in the quest Red Court itself has demonstrated the ability to move quickly). Or is he expecting us to drop school and move there right now? We might want to get something explicit out of him if we are to consider this. Like "yes, I'll prevent anyone from moving in for the next nine months".
In terms of characters, we almost certainly can get Isabela with us, but probably not Lydia, allowing her and Daniel (if they are still an item by that time) more of their own adventures. I am vehemently against breaking the circle up. We might also be able to get Olivia with us. Rosie is also a firm maybe, if she can handle the load.
This is one of the reasons why I was reluctant to make binding moves like officially joining Cauldron, because you cant accept shit like this cavalierly. But having joined them, we kinda have a responsibility TO them which is hard to fulfill if we spend most of the year a thousand miles away in Boston.
And thats not counting Rosie's wellbeing, who we also have to take into account. Or Alec and Izzy.
Or Last Station and Porter.
Or Isabella. Or Murphy.
That's a question of building them up. If we are expanding Order of Cauldron, it actually makes sense to go to Harvard, and probably to send their members to other universities too, if possible, in order to spread the order's influence. The question is building them up enough that they won't crumble without our direct constant presence. We'd still be available as a nuclear response, though.
Jade Dogs are going to need a goal / task soon, I feel, beyond "live better", if they are to develop. We probably want to consider formally and strongly taking over Underground. Expand Last station into a central node of a subway system, buff Porter up maybe.
Also, in regards to Porter and Last Station - we don't actually have a commitment to him. He never swore loyalty to us, in fact, after we finish restoring the station, it's not a given we won't be kicked out. We are almost sure we won't be, but technically right now we are just fulfilling a promise, with no formal expectation that we will be allowed to stay after we finish renovations.
Even mundane mortal college applicants take time to research their school and talk to their family about their choices.
Indeed. At the very least we know that Harvard is not the most magically active university in USA. That's Brown University. Which makes me want to look into it.
Almost as an afterthought you move on to big the list of US universities Clippy had complied for you and ask: "Which of the organizations in this list are the most mired in the supernatural?"
This time the answer is just a blazing green line under one of the names:
Brown University Wait a second, Providence Rhode Island? Isn't that...? It only takes a few more clicks to confirm, it is the university Lovecraft would have liked to attend, if he weren't sickly and scared of... almost everything really. It is easier to make a list of the things Lovecraft was not afraid of. Fun.
She needs at least a year of growth at average XP gain rates to be capable of holding her own reliably, and even then she'd not be in Molly's tier of sheer naked threat.
That's an interesting estimation. A year of her current power growth is roughly 70 xp. Lydia with access to a Dragon Nest can have an army of wood soldiers (zombies) ready to go basically now. Buffing her willpower to 10 takes 35 points, and makes her excellency as good, if not better, than ours. 18 more XP gives her omni-excellency (i.e. lets her buy excellencies for everything). Put
Call the Restless on top of that, and she gets to summon armies of ghosts from across the state. And there are still XP left over. It's not an optimal build, but my point is that a year later Lydia is more than capable of steamrolling a lot of things. She can do that even now. If we give her more meatshields, she'll be even better.
Point is, I believe you are underestimating her.
