No, theft actually requires that something is taken, not just copied.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
No, theft actually requires that something is taken, not just copied.
Yes, which is why it might work on secrets (because by learning a secret we are stealing its secrecy. The previous owner is left with the information, but is bereft of secrecy).
Hmm... maybe I am going to have to think about that.
I have to go now, I'll be back this afternoon.
Yeah, non-material things can get tricky fast. Fun, though. For secrecy you could argue that "secrecy" is a property of the object (information in someone's possession) and is not itself an object in this case, which means that it's not subject to Theft as Release, because learning the secret would be like repainting someone's red car blue and using Theft as Release on the color property of the car by arguing that we destroyed the red car by making it blue. The car is still there, still possessed by its owner, its just that its properties have changed. This gets silly very quickly.
It's very much a situation of "lots of edge cases".
No we couldn't.
The whole point is that it codifies and extends some basic elements of international relations in a way that makes it easier for very alien groups to interact.
This goes beyond deals and into things like neutral spaces, treatment of messengers/ambassadors, third party observers, community enforcement of agreements, certain basic rights of citizens of Accorded powers in terms of formal engagement, and things like that.
Being able to make oaths stick isn't an uncommon ability, the machinery of getting to the point where it applies is itself useful.
There's also the matter of it being known and trusted where we aren't. The various powers know and understand the Accorded rules, they'll interact and make deals under them they wouldn't consider otherwise because of that fact.
Molly is and will be powerful, but anyone who thinks they can dip into diplomacy and simply ignore how everyone prefers to do business because they're the hottest shit in town is in for an unfortunate surprise. That attitude is entirely counterproductive for any kind of negotiation or formal relationship.
JayTar
Idea briefcase
If theft of non physical things works, then using Theft as Release for identity theft would be kind of horrifying. Forget your bank account, forget your citizenship, forget your name.
I guess if we ever want to really ruin someone. Stealing their name sounds like it could really mess up some powerful supernatural entities.
I guess if we ever want to really ruin someone. Stealing their name sounds like it could really mess up some powerful supernatural entities.
I don't think it would work on memories, because what we would be stealing would be legal identity rather than self-identity (not unless we do a lot of magically enforced psychosurgery / gaslighting).
But yes, stuff like hostile takeovers, identity theft, and enforcing mental manipulations all would be affected.
Also, soul trade. If we can do soul trade from the perspective of the buyer and apply Theft as Release there... Well, it would be quite terrifying.
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JayTar
Idea briefcase
Well, there is the possibility of combining it with A Cold and Lonely World. But honestly that is rather overkill.
It might require some shenanigans, but I was considering if we could use it for stealing mantles. Maybe as a two part scheme. First steal their fame/reputation by pulling of a successful imposer gambit, and then use that to transfer/steal the mantle.
Stealing souls does sound like a good use for it though.
Seems like that shouldn't work if the thing is taken by destroying it. We couldn't activate that charm burning down a house or something after all.
Supposing secrecy is something that could be stolen the closest I think we could get would be using this:
To erase the scene where they learned whatever we're after once we've learned it.
The hypothetical benefit being that the target not only forgets the information, they also forget that we weren't supposed to have whatever we're after. Which is a little redundant, but technically covers a different axis of the situation because forgetting data isn't the same as forgetting you once knew something or some of the context.
If we stole industrial secrets from an engineer and made them forget how to make X super widget or whatever they could still feasibly remember the category of thing they forgot and that we shouldn't know it.
Barely related, but seeing the surprisingly useful signature on this reminds me we haven't chosen that yet.
Is the plan to wait till the end of the arc?
You have to be able to take the thing to activate the charm. If we can't deprive them of the mantle personally then the charm wouldn't help.
- Location
- washington
hmm so it can get a bit abstract but not too conceptual. Unless does us having other charms that let us take things from people allow us to use that charm to take things a normal person never could? Like a secret anyone can deprive someone of, their limbs, their memory with enough brain damage, theoretically their love or certain other emotions if you say the right words and put work into it over a long period of time, accounts, legal identity, personal belongings, life force, probably a bunch of other stuff?
JayTar
Idea briefcase
Do that via normal Occult means. Like with Arwan. The idea would be just that by stealing their fame/reputation beforehand they would be significantly less able to resist it.
Effectively pull a con on reality over who the proper mantle holder is. First normal identity theft then leveraged for metaphysical identity theft.
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What's the point of that though? The mental effect only applies to the target, not the world as a whole. Most mantle holders also die a final death if you take their mantle, and the ones that have to be vulnerable enough that you could do so to take even one of their's.
There isn't much of a benefit to going out of our way to leave them alive.
Vote closed, lets see how this goes.
JayTar
Idea briefcase
To make them vulnerable enough to take the mantle in the first place. "Can't remember having their own fame/reputation/legend" sounds like a pretty big weakness for this sort of thing.
First we steal their public reputation via one of a number of means (making them forget they ever had it) then we steal the mantle.
Thats not what the charm does though; you have to remove the thing from their possession to trigger it. Stealing their identity by impersonating them doesn't deprive them of it.
JayTar
Idea briefcase
I would argue that a sufficiently successful impersonation, enough that the impostor's ability to leverage their reputation is enough to countermand the originals attempts to leverage it, would count as depriving them of it. (The fact that it doesn't have to hold up long term should make it plausible.)
Say, show up with the impostor, then use Mocking Murmurs Retort whenever the original tries to assert their own identity. Everyone believes they are the impostor, therefore they have been deprived of it.
But there are other means too. Something like A Cold and Lonely World would surely count as depriving them of it.
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- Location
- washington
Technically there are plenty of mantles out there no idea how much of what gods are depends on mantles as the god book will either be the one after the next book or two books after the next book likely swapping with the dragon book in whichever order. We know for a fact the eldest of EVERY fae species has a mantle. So eldest goblin, eldest centaur, etc etc. Odin has at least a few mantles.
For avenues of research on them well mab they did stuff to become what they did, kemmler as their goal was similar and the stuff they did with ankou here, uhhm oh white council definitely has stuff on it, uh white court definitely would since word of Jim that technically with very low odds the white court could kill mab. Also if they actually succeeded whoever did her in could take her power so they obviously have at least some knowledge about mantle stuff. Given it might be hodgepodge information they've scraped together.
For avenues of research on them well mab they did stuff to become what they did, kemmler as their goal was similar and the stuff they did with ankou here, uhhm oh white council definitely has stuff on it, uh white court definitely would since word of Jim that technically with very low odds the white court could kill mab. Also if they actually succeeded whoever did her in could take her power so they obviously have at least some knowledge about mantle stuff. Given it might be hodgepodge information they've scraped together.
We could, actually, "theft by destruction" is explicitly an option:
So, yes, we could burn someone's house down. More relevantly, we could kill someone's slaves (like akuma of various stripes, fomori servitors, or even lesser Walkers) or perhaps even subordinates, and make sure that their masters don't even remember having them.
I think so? Not sure.
Oh, that would be brutal. We wouldn't even necesarily be targeting the victim of A Cold And Lonely World, but those around them. Essentially making it almost impossible for the bonds to reform. And Theft as Release doesn't have a range specified. No line of sight, no "in the presence of an exalt". So, aCaLW someone, then TaR the people that they got severed from. Won't work on those with perfect defenses, but otherwise, very powerful.
Eh contested mantle are not worth much, compared to the bother, unless we where already going to kill the owner. But those mantles that don't have an owner, or that the current owner actively want to be rid, will make for great components for crafting.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Our perfect disguise charms would combine well with theft as release. Identity theft made easy. Steal everything in someone's life. It's like a horror story.
A Cold and lonely world (6XP) to make everyone unable to recognize the target and get them out of the way.
Incarnate Shadow Insinuation (•••••) (15 XP) to make everyone recognize us as the target and take over their life stealing everything from the their bank accounts to the wife to their house to their job.
Theft as release 4 Xp. Now even the target can't remember his house, job, family or money. He has always been a homeless man.
25 XP total.
A Cold and lonely world (6XP) to make everyone unable to recognize the target and get them out of the way.
Incarnate Shadow Insinuation (•••••) (15 XP) to make everyone recognize us as the target and take over their life stealing everything from the their bank accounts to the wife to their house to their job.
Theft as release 4 Xp. Now even the target can't remember his house, job, family or money. He has always been a homeless man.
25 XP total.
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Winning Vote
Arc 8 Post 58: In Subtle Sight
In Subtle Sight
18th of November 2006 A.D.
Pausing for a moment between heartbeats, you catch your visage reflected, refracted in the many camera-eyes upon you. To be recombined on screens uncounted, in the low jacks of everyday urb-laborers who suddenly had their latest Akashic Symphony album or episode of the Jade Wire interrupted by religious revelation, to the high jacks of the engine-seers and Ascended Monks of the City of Swords. Aboard the wyrm-trains so named for they follow the dragon lines been under the frozen surface of the world millions now know that this moment is more important than their departure or their destination. Revellers set down multi-coloured psychedelic drinks in the Court of Crashing Song, their surge implants rendering them sober in an instant so that they may hear you. Those who patronize less refined and expensive venues will have to make due with the recordings you know.
A being of terrible awe and glory stared back at you, perched imperiously upon her throne, clad in basalt and brass, her face hidden by the a war helmet. The next words you say are the most important words of your life so far, you realize. Who do I want to be? You shift your posture ever so slightly, making yourself look more approachable, less of a threat. Feeling the ever present ferocious storms of your realm sway in tach with your words, you speak:
"Hello to all of you. I am Margret Carpenter, the one you have been waiting for, and from the throne at the centre of this Creation I welcome you all to the first moon-split of the rest of our lives. Our, because we are in this together. As you will learn in the formal releases to come, I am not perfect, and I am not omniscient, and I am not even fully mature yet."
Lost 1 Essence -> Now at 8/15
Lost 1 Willpower -> now at 7/9
Even as you speak the words, warmth and confidence in every syllable you cannot help but wonder at some of the knowledge even now flowing into your thoughts like waves onto the shore. Do they have vid-screens in the Amethyst Chapel, in the city of Endings, that place which alone of all the world allows one to willingly and knowingly let go to the Wheel when the weight of years grows too heavy for even renewal. Are some of those weary even now reconsidering their choice?
Yes, you realize, fewer will choose an ending, not just among those who are perched on the final step, but those in counselling and meditation, those just now considering the options. Some will go to the City of Fountains, seeking instead a new beginning, some to the City of Journeys to venture into the unknown you are only now revealing. Fewer children are going to be conceived over the next who knows how many turnings of the moon. Such a strange thought and yet it feels right, not just true, but right. Why should friends be parted from friends, parents from children, lovers torn from each other's arms by cruel and fickle fate? Why should the span of one's days in the world be limited by barely a century at most? Why should be be limited at all save by the will of each and every soul? This world is yours, it is you and deep down the truths of its beings reflect things you have always believed, things you have always wanted... impossible things made real
But beyond the scaffolding of natural law,, built atop the frozen bones of the world, carved into the steel of its cities are five billion lives, each and every one of them as complex as important important as your own. I did not make the synth-symphonies and the data-loop games, I did not write the Adventures of Gruhm Sigh, I did not invent grav-ball... Aloud you say: "I cannot say that I fully grasp the enormity and the depth of our world yet." For all the skill you speak them with the words are not a mask, they are not messaging or PR speak, they are a very earnest plea to learn about a living world, from its living people and not just flashes of distant insight. "I cannot promise that I won't make mistakes in the future. What I can state and vow is that I want to learn about all of you, and that I will do my best by you, and to the benefit of us all. It is with this in mind that I declare my first decree - for as long as I live, balefire cancer will no longer torment those under my aegis."
As you speak more people start crowding into the throne room, mostly security personnel marked by their exo-suits, but also palace functionaries in many-colored robes, the buzzing drones of sessile seta and for now scattered pilgrims that had been closest to the throne room when the disturbance had happened.
The elevators are going to get overwhelmed, you realize suddenly. The throne room is situated at the very top of the palace the twin elevator shafts that serve its antechamber are rated for a maximum of fifty people at once, that is one of the reason why it's not actually open to pilgrims normally.
After the feed is cut you rise from your throne and address the crowd gently: "Everyone we are going to be in Unity Plaza in... half an hour." How and why hours are earth-standard you do not know and intuition alone cannot answer it, but you are glad it is since it makes working out time a lot easier.
The tocatli woman claps her hands, the humanoid ones and calls for the security SUTRA to clear the chamber of unauthorized personnel, though that is more for show. She obviously has a high-jack, capable of multi-threat processing and she has been arranging things for a while. "Gracious Majesty Without Peer this one is called Auspicious Moon of Energetic Labours Initiated or Ameli in noo-speak, if you prefer to dispense with formality who is above all rank and etiquette," Short for noosphere speak, an odd way to handle multiple part names but you like it.
"I have the honour of being the Warden of the Inner Halls," she offers a slightly shaky smile and it is not hard to tell she is terrified of saying the wrong thing, or not saying the right thing. She is support staff, you realize, an high ranking engine-seer, though one who deals more with paperwork than technological systems directly these days. She must have practically sprinted after the first responders to get there at the same time as them. "May I know the name of your honoured companions."
"You know I don't speak Klingon," Harry interjects in English.
"Seeker Speech does not sound like Klingon," you shoot back offended, only realizing you had translated the language's name for itself reflexively. "Klingon sounds like you are about to hack up a hairball." You might be a trekie, but that does not mean you don't have working ears. "What do you want to be called here? Wizard? Just Harry Dresden? Detective?"
Your dad clears his throat. "Molly, what is this place? Your... friend said something but it sounded a bit far-fetched." It is easy to forget your father has a gift for understatement.
What do you reply?
[] No time for complicated explanations now, we need to get your guys some security passes, Izzy and Alec into a medical bay. We will talk later OK
[] Try to explain that Usum was factually correct, as fantastical as that sounds
[] Write in
OOC: I hope you guys like the world-building... now onto explaining the literal world building,
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- Location
- Germany
We created life.
People do that all the time, if on a slightly smaller scale.
It's not like Molly is the Prime Mover here, everything that happened was the consequence of her and other people's actions and decisions.
People do that all the time, if on a slightly smaller scale.
It's not like Molly is the Prime Mover here, everything that happened was the consequence of her and other people's actions and decisions.
ThatGazzer
Minds Eye Bind
- Location
- PNW
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] Try to explain that Usum was factually correct, as fantastical as that sounds
Best they work to internalize it now
Best they work to internalize it now