- Location
- Germany
The man apperantly kept a mordite-infused mist-demon in his pocket, so I find it very believable that he had other discriminating stuff lying around.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
BoredMan
It seems there was some brain damage after all
Warlocks are indeed a crazy bunch.
OK, looks like we are going by water.
Vote closed.
Vote closed.
- Location
- Right Where I Am
Always get a chuckle with the reveal that Mouse has more credibility with the White Council than Harry.
A mix. My thoughts were something like this (I only really have Michael firmly nailed down):
MIchael: woodworking tools. Like, mystic grade, 20+ successes woodworking tools made from magical materials that are themselves a work of art. Something that Autochton and Ligier wouldn't mind having in their workshop.
Dresden: either some manner of sci-fi home appliance (food processor, TV, stuff like that), or maybe something for his roleplaying hobby (we haven't interacted with Alphas, but we might still know he plays). Maybe some fiction books? Not sure, honestly.
Charity - we are surprisingly close, I was thinking a power hammer. Or maybe a bottle of wine for all the stress we are causing her. Something from our Courts maybe. Wine probably also works for Dresden.
For Lydia - that's a very interesting idea. I was thinking a magical girl transformation item (a garderobe swap device), but this is good too.
I like your other suggestions, except maybe Daniel's (too close to "work"). Maybe gift him and Lydia a vacation somewhere? Or are they too young for that? I feel Charity would object. Some sort of hobby-related thing then. Or a weeb katana mantlepiece. Honestly, not sure. A collection of greatest martial arts movies from both worlds?
So, in our case - use his name to obtain his legal identity via cyberdevils (it should exist) and/or mundane PIs to get one more focus. Use that focus to ask "what evidence of his treachery exists", then give that information to Dresden, and he should be trivially able to handle the rest. Or just call an anonymous hotline and, after using the call as a focus to check if the person replying is not compromised (or, rather "what are the ways the person replying this call is compromised") deliver the information that way. Should be easy enough.
Well, yeah. Her and her brother both. Her brother made multiple films, so there's multiple foci there.
There's a whole bunch of stuff we havent followed up on, from the Museum murder scene to Kattrin's Boston residence to the Skavis Boston HQ to Madrigal's apartment to the arena where we exorcised Maeve to Sandra's former apartment to the place where the Darkhallow was being performed last year to Bianca's former mansion and where the dead from that fire were buried.
Every one of these would be a potent Crown focus to start unpicking any number of plots.
One, Harry is a terrible liar. He keeps secrets well, but he's not very good at lying.
Nor do we want him telling lies either. Not in a world with so many ways for wizards to check information at the high end, and a Denarian direcly linked to his noggin.
Two, the problem with Peabody, besides keeping the Crown under wraps, is that its also necessary to find out what he's actually done and how to disentangle it. In canon, he put mindcontrol shit in every Warden under 50, and wololo'd a bunch of other people. Nobody knows who he's shared that with, and what else he has put out there to hurt the White Council.
So we need to track it all down.
Like kudzu, if you dont take out the root system as well as the shoots, you're going to be dealing with the same weed as soon as it rains again.
Potential approaches include:
1)Use Vittorio Malvora.
He's magically protected by Ashraah, he had a public profile as the son and heir of the Malvoras, he does stuff like drive expensive cars and live in apartments/houses with public addresses.
2) Alternatively, Peabody is a known, canonically published author.
At least one published work, probably more; authors seldom publish only one book, and wizards in particular are fond of their own voices. Even Men of Action(TM) like McCoy have published books. Peabody might even have books in Lydia's dad's library; Die Lied der Erlking was about a major Fae figure, and Arwan had a professional interest in that sort of thing.
Get one or more, and you have a focus.
There's occult booksellers in Chicago, and if you are willing to drop a premium on it, someone's gonna look.
3)Also, Arianna is probably a significant foci in her own right, as are members of her entourage.
4) Other options to follow up on:
- Get a Red Court vampire, or the body of a Red Court vampire; Butters performed autopsies on the dead Rampires from Bianca's mansion, and so they are probably buried somewhere in the Chicago area, assuming no cremation. Then use them as Crown focus to map out the Red Court's organization and membership. And allies. And spies.
- Visit Archangel, where Simon Petrovich and his household were killed. Thats a focus for both the White Council and the Red Court, possibly multiple foci.
- Visit Casaverde, which was Arianna's husband's estate before McCoy ortilleried him. Also a focus.
- Visit the Central African city that got nerve gassed last year. Foci.
- Visit the sites of every major battle of the ongoing Vampire War. Foci for both organizations.
- Find where Lucius Glau was buried. Madrigal Raith's righthand man and personal lawyer, assassinated by a Fetch during Proven Guilty, would have known where all the bodies were buried. Possibly literally, hence one of the fetches specifically taking time to kill him.
- Find where Leonid Kravos is buried, and use his grave as a focus
- Find where Grevane's dead body was buried after Dead Beat, since he died in Chicago, and use his body as a focus
- Find where ex-Denarian Quintus Cassius body was buried after Dead Beat, and use it as a focus
- Track down where the FBI werewolves were buried after Fool Moon, and use their graves as a focus
- Victor Sells' grave from Storm Front, and the house that used to be his HQ, and use it as a focus for who taught him
- Where the former Summer Knight lived and was killed
- Justin DuMorne's former home
EDIT
Apropos of nothing:
Note that Susan Rodriguez is great-great-grand childe of the Red King in direct lineage. It goes Red King >>> Arianna Ortega >>> Paolo Ortega >> Bianca St Claire > Susan. That, I suspect, is a shorter lineage than a lot of living Rampires.
No such thing exists in the Dresdenverse that Im aware of.
Its not trivial.
He is at least a hundred years old, so a legal identity may not exist. Especially if he spends a lot of his time in the Hidden Halls.
And techbane would limit any technological data trail. Thats the problem with the really old who predate computers.
Hotline? No. Not unless you dont care about the potential for collateral damage.
As has been pointed out before, trying to apprehend him in canon still resulted in the deaths of forty or fifty wizards, probable injury to more of unknown numbers, and the election of either a Black Council mole or a useful idiot to the Senior Council.
This has to be managed a lot more carefully than just tossing a name into the Council and watching the fireworks.
Not to mention that since we dont know what the Council's wards are like, or their information gathering, "anonymous"calls might end up being less anonymous than you might assume.
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Winning Vote
Arc 9 Post 19: Of Passage Swift Flowing
Of Passage Swift Flowing
20th of November 2006 A.D.
It is weird to the the one saying goodbye like dad usually does, going off on an adventure you can't talk about, even Harry can tell shifting around in his seat and banging his little fist into the table for attention so the grown-ups will stop being weird, Hope wants to know how come you get to skip school ' 'cause you sure don't look sick', a question for mom to field while Amanda is more aware that this is serious, the kind of serious you don't talk to strangers about. Everyone else just knows, thanks to Wraith Leach and Mathew know a lot more than the bare bones mom and dad had told them, demonic alliances of convenience, potential treachery and all.
"If you get hurt trying to be Sailor Dark Moon I'll never forgive you," Mathew whispers as he hugs you.
"Have you been talking to Lydia?" you ask suspiciously, getting a laugh from Leech even though she's wearing headphones. Oh, she is using Wraith as a relay to hear though, clever.
"Clippy, send to Wraith: Beats listening in at doors doesn't it?" you sub-vocalize.
"Message received: Yeah, cool isn't it?"
Through all this Daniel is frowning down at his shoes. It does not take preternatural insight to tell he's angry as much as worried, at the things you have to fight, at the fact that he can't help. The plans he's been making with Lydia... well you are pretty sure Mom and Dad would have more to say about that than Leech using her personal assistant as a hearing enhancement, but now is not the time to deal with that. After you come back, have a breather...
After hugging your parents last and unsurprisingly getting the breath squeezed out of you by mom for a bit you kit up and head out.
***
Doing this with actual prep work sure beats your frantic rush back from 'Santa's Workshop'. If there had been someone looking out to a particular spot the banks of the Chicago River at twelve past five they might have been surprised to see a girl wearing a full dark green hiking backpack take a step into the water and vanish. Though that surprise would surely have been eclipsed by the fish in the Des Plaine River at the sight of their home suddenly playing host to a girl in a Grateful Dead t-shirt and a camo vest reading a water-proof map by what rays of evening sunlight make it though the muddy waters. When you get to the Mississippi a local carp decides to test if you are edible or perhaps he simply does not like your intrusion into his domain, either way he does not find the taste of tactical boot much to his liking slinking grumpily back into the silt. From there it's a straight shot to the Gulf of Mexico, though name aside your journey is far from over.
Not how you had expected to see the Florida Keys for the first time, fish are pretty though, ones with big eyes and delicate yellow fins, ones stripped black and white like zebras, big puffy... er pufferfish shoals and shoals of blue edged in gold that flow all around you. Whatever darkness your aura might hold sealife does not seem bothered by it.
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As smile on your lips you swim a few dozen feet and will yourself a part of the Atlantic, from there down into Argentina, scoot a little to the left until you are in the Pacific then up the Rio Grande that isn't the one you know, you guess that just means 'big river'. How many waters across the globe are called that if one digs though the layers of linguistics. The question carries you up the swift waters where no boats may sail, all the way up to Lake Chapala...
The sound of the engine churning the waters above if the only warning you get as you meet the eyes of a startled fisherman though the muddy waters.
Whoosh
After what may have been the start of a local mermaid legend you sink deeper into the waters of the lake to consider your options.
Mexico City is the seat of the Red Court's power as it has been since it was the Altepetl of Tenochtitlan whence the Aztec Emperors ruled by day as the Kukulcan ruled the night. There are going to be a lot of eyes peered for strange magics there and while you do not think the vampires will be on the lookout for someone messing with air traffic control specifically it is an important bit of infrastructure. So is it best to go there first when they have no warning or head to León first where watchers would be less for your first infiltration and risk the shadow of your coming putting them on guard in the capital.
Where do you do your infiltration first?
[] Mexico City
-[] Write in infiltration plan (Optional)
[] León
-[] Write in infiltration plan (Optional)
OOC: I hope you guys enjoyed the trip, I did not want to just skim over it because this time Molly was not in a tearing hurry and it's a pretty amazing thing to be able to do, I figured she would spend at least a bit of time looking around and marveling.
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Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Now that I think about it, RVD would let us take a really nice vacation. There are so many seaside and underwater places we could visit at a moment's notice. Never mind the sunken treasure, remnants of lost civilizations, etc., just being able to zoom from one cool location to the other, to appreciate the local wildlife, coral reefs, etc., would be a great way to relax for a couple days.
Swim past Submarines and add some graffiti to the hull while they are underwater.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
"MOLLY WAS HERE!"Swim past Submarines and add some graffiti to the hull while they are underwater.
That would cause some consternation among the world's navies.
The only lie we'd need him to tell is that he was the one who found all this, which is believable because he is actually pretty good at this stuff.
We do need to find all the stuff Peabody's been doing, but that doesn't necessarily need to happen before we stop him. The council isn't stupid, once exposed they'll be able to find a lot of it themselves.
We also don't need one anymore because we have a hell. Dump things there and then take a dip to get them when needed. It's not super fast, but neither are large bags of holding unless they have additional retrieval enchantments.
We could probably make them for other people though, if we're willing to burn tokens taken from vampire corpses for it. Prodigies can turn back time at a high enough level, so I don't see why they couldn't make a bag bigger on the inside.
[X] Plan Boogerman
-[X] Mexico City
--[X] Get into airport in a normal and mundane way
---[X] Wear a non-descript disrguise to prevent being recognized via camera recordings
--[X] Get into controlled areas of the airport by going to the bathroom and then using RVD to move from a toilet in a public area to a toilet in an employee-only area
---[X] Only re-emerge when no one is the bathroom
---[X] Once inside activate ATB with willpower and Hellscry chakra to avoid detection
--[X] Pose as a janitorial employee to get into the line of sight of flight controls, and use HMP if there are no supernatural observers
---[X] Use the janitorial disguise as an excuse for why your clothes are wet in order to trigger BSM
---[X] Use Subterfuge excellency
-[X] Stunt: Standing in front of a toilet bowl in a Mexico City airport, preparing for the most disgusting part of your plan - disguising yourself as toilet water and waiting for someone to flush, you are absurdly reminded of a game you used to play as a kid. When receiving vast cosmic powers you certainly didn't expect yourself to imitate Boogerman of all things. Well, no other way now. For great justice!
Reasoning: while being caught infiltrating a smaller target is less likely, if we do get caught, Mexico City will be on alert. While the reverse isn't necessarily true - infiltration of Leon isn't a necessary step after infiltrating Mexico city.
@DragonParadox does Molly speak Spanish at all?
-[X] Mexico City
--[X] Get into airport in a normal and mundane way
---[X] Wear a non-descript disrguise to prevent being recognized via camera recordings
--[X] Get into controlled areas of the airport by going to the bathroom and then using RVD to move from a toilet in a public area to a toilet in an employee-only area
---[X] Only re-emerge when no one is the bathroom
---[X] Once inside activate ATB with willpower and Hellscry chakra to avoid detection
--[X] Pose as a janitorial employee to get into the line of sight of flight controls, and use HMP if there are no supernatural observers
---[X] Use the janitorial disguise as an excuse for why your clothes are wet in order to trigger BSM
---[X] Use Subterfuge excellency
-[X] Stunt: Standing in front of a toilet bowl in a Mexico City airport, preparing for the most disgusting part of your plan - disguising yourself as toilet water and waiting for someone to flush, you are absurdly reminded of a game you used to play as a kid. When receiving vast cosmic powers you certainly didn't expect yourself to imitate Boogerman of all things. Well, no other way now. For great justice!
Reasoning: while being caught infiltrating a smaller target is less likely, if we do get caught, Mexico City will be on alert. While the reverse isn't necessarily true - infiltration of Leon isn't a necessary step after infiltrating Mexico city.
@DragonParadox does Molly speak Spanish at all?
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She does, just not very competently, she speaks it like a high school kid who learns the language for tests and does not think she will use it. At least she did not think she would use it until it dawned on her that she is growing into a major political power, but that is not something one fixes in a matter of days or weeks.
So, should probably be able to pass for a dimwitted janitor? At least she should be able to understand people talking to her a bit.
I would roll INT+Academics DC dependent on the complexity of the interaction whenever someone interacted with her. Might work, might not depending on what you roll.
When used like this, mom and dad should be capitalized.
If used as 'her mom/dad' it's lower case.
What would we roll to just repeat something we've heard without flubbing the pronunciation/accent too badly?
It Clippy can translate English into Spanish better than us then we don't necessarily need to speak it, just to give her text prompts on what we should generally be saying* and echo whatever she whispers into our headphones.
Hopefully that loyalty clause is enough to keep her from adding any color commentary, but if not we probably won't need to visit these cities again.
* for a lot of casual interactions we probably wouldn't even need that. She could autopilot us through pleasantries as long as Molly could pick appropriate body language based on the tone Clippy uses in her lines.
Manipulation+Academics, -2 DC compared to the Int+Academics of getting it right yourself since you are just focusing on getting the accent right.
Hmm, ok. Let me include this into my plan:
[X] Plan Boogerman
-[X] Mexico City
--[X] Get into airport in a normal and mundane way
---[X] Wear a non-descript disrguise to prevent being recognized via camera recordings
--[X] Get into controlled areas of the airport by going to the bathroom and then using RVD to move from a toilet in a public area to a toilet in an employee-only area
---[X] Only re-emerge when no one is the bathroom
---[X] Once inside activate ATB with willpower and Hellscry chakra to avoid detection
--[X] Pose as a janitorial employee to get into the line of sight of flight controls, and use HMP if there are no supernatural observers
---[X] Use the janitorial disguise as an excuse for why your clothes are wet in order to trigger BSM
---[X] Have Clippy translate for you and give you prompts via obvious headphones in your ears.
---[X] Use Subterfuge excellency
-[X] Stunt: Standing in front of a toilet bowl in a Mexico City airport, a recently bought janitorial robe on your body, and earbuds with Clippy's helpful synchronous translation in your ears, you mentally prepare for the most disgusting part of your plan - disguising yourself as toilet water and waiting for someone to flush. You are absurdly reminded of a game you used to play as a kid. When receiving vast cosmic powers you certainly didn't expect yourself to imitate Boogerman of all things. Well, no other way now. For great justice!
We don't actually have to wait for someone to use the toilet. Pop open the back a bit and get the refill tube to open by fiddling with the float.
The benefit being that could enter without waiting on someone to use this specific toilet, and potentially exit from a leaky faucet or other plumbing issue instead of floating around looking for a flush where we need it.
Ok, sure. The downside is that we leave behind a toilet in a state of disrepair, which is a bit of evidence, but that's minor enough to allow. Let me correct the plan:
[X] Plan Boogerman
-[X] Mexico City
--[X] Get into airport in a normal and mundane way
---[X] Wear a non-descript disrguise to prevent being recognized via camera recordings
--[X] Get into controlled areas of the airport by going to the bathroom and then using RVD to move from a toilet in a public area to a toilet in an employee-only area
---[X] Only re-emerge when no one is the bathroom
---[X] Once inside activate ATB with willpower and Hellscry chakra to avoid detection
--[X] Pose as a janitorial employee to get into the line of sight of flight controls, and use HMP if there are no supernatural observers
---[X] Use the janitorial disguise as an excuse for why your clothes are wet in order to trigger BSM
---[X] Have Clippy translate for you and give you prompts via headphones in your ears.
---[X] Use Subterfuge excellency
-[X] Stunt: Standing in front of a toilet in a Mexico City airport, a recently bought janitorial robe on your body, and earbuds with Clippy's helpful synchronous translation in your ears, you mentally prepare for the strangest part of your plan - imitating Boogerman, from a game you played in your childhood, of all things. You are just thankful you don't need to wait for anyone to flush you down - a bit of janitorial know-how with a fully mundane screwdriver to pop a back a bbit, and you are ready to go. Well, no other way now. For great justice!
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[X] Yog