Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

[uju32]

If Lash is worried about the security of last Station then there are many things that she can do to beef it up.

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Such as what?

What exactly do you think a newborn Incarnate is supposed to do to reinforce Last Station's defences against multiple Fallen with centuries of experience and power(in Nicodemus case, literally two thousand years of it)
What is she supposed to contribute that six months of work by an Infernal Exalt hasnt already done?

Go look at her Lores: Light, Longing and Flesh. Which is applicable?

 

[fictionfan]

Such as what?

What exactly do you think a newborn Incarnate is supposed to do to reinforce Last Station's defences against multiple Fallen with centuries of experience and power(in Nicodemus case, literally two thousand years of it)
What is she supposed to contribute that six months of work by an Infernal Exalt hasnt already done?

Go look at her Lores: Light, Longing and Flesh. Which is applicable?

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Flesh she can make every resident of the station peak human. Maybe take the ghouls even further. Soon have better protection then Harry's regularly snipered and attacked apartment if it doesn't already.

 

[Goldfish]

Can someone remind me how the Denarians are going to find out about Lash's new chassis? I get that that Nicodemus can spy on people via shadows, if he's specifically paying attention to them, but otherwise I don't think they have anyway to discover this development unless we're sloppy with infosec.

Or did we establish that Lasciel has some sort of Lash-related Intellectus effect going on? I can't remember.

 

[Artemis1992]

Can someone remind me how the Denarians are going to find out about Lash's new chassis? I get that that Nicodemus can spy on people via shadows, if he's specifically paying attention to them, but otherwise I don't think they have anyway to discover this development unless we're sloppy with infosec.

Or did we establish that Lasciel has some sort of Lash-related Intellectus effect going on? I can't remember.

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Lasciel's Coin is still buried in Dresden's basement.

I suspect if she manages to leave, which she will sooner or later, she'll have some idea what happened.

 

[Vanguard_D]

Lasciel's Coin is still buried in Dresden's basement.

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Nope, we were told Harry handed that over to the church pretty quickly after the excorism.

 

[uju32]

Flesh she can make every resident of the station peak human. Maybe take the ghouls even further. Soon have better protection then Harry's regularly snipered and attacked apartment if it doesn't already.

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We dont know how much Flesh she has.
She has no pacts feeding her Faith to spend on high-end Evocations.
The residents of Last Station arent necessarily interested in having some random woman do magic on them either.

And even peak human aint gonna do fuckall against multiple Denarians with warforms and sorcery. Or even one Denarian.
Canon Denarians like Ursiel!Genoskwa and Lasciel!Hannah Ascher could immolate Last Station if they were allowed to cut loose without even needing significant preptime.

And thats just the Denarians. I doubt they are the only ones that would have interests in attempting to snatch a newborn Demon.
I suspect a naagloshii would find her hard to resist. And Lash can probably think of a lot more threats.

Right now, for her purposes and personal wellbeing?
Up top, behind Harry's wards, with Harry in the vicinity and Mouse guarding the threshold?
Is the second safest place for her in Chicago.

The safest place would be behind the Carpenter threshold, but thats not happening.

PS
Harry's apartment hasnt actually come under attack ever since Mouse got big enough to guard it.
There's a reason for that.

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Can someone remind me how the Denarians are going to find out about Lash's new chassis? I get that that Nicodemus can spy on people via shadows, if he's specifically paying attention to them, but otherwise I don't think they have anyway to discover this development unless we're sloppy with infosec.

Or did we establish that Lasciel has some sort of Lash-related Intellectus effect going on? I can't remember.

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Word of QM is that both Heaven and Hell know; that was the point of the message she got. So the Denarians know, or will know in the next day or so. In incarnating a Shadow, we literally did something that has never been done in Creation before.
That kinda thing draws eyes.

I mean, we literally spent several hours on a Dragons Nest in Chicago doing the ritual.
I suspect anyone with any knowledge of the lines of power in Chicago knew something big was going down. And Last Station isnt warded against scrying.

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Lasciel's Coin is still buried in Dresden's basement.

I suspect if she manages to leave, which she will sooner or later, she'll have some idea what happened.

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Nah.
The Coin was sent to Father Forthill almost as soon as we exorcised Lash.

 

[Zoolimar]

Can someone remind me how the Denarians are going to find out about Lash's new chassis? I get that that Nicodemus can spy on people via shadows, if he's specifically paying attention to them, but otherwise I don't think they have anyway to discover this development unless we're sloppy with infosec.

Click to shrink...

Unless the Lash is locked up somewhere forever people are going to notice her. So I give a month maybe two tops for everyone and there mother who is high enough on the power ladder to know a general idea of what happened and want to know more.

Or did we establish that Lasciel has some sort of Lash-related Intellectus effect going on? I can't remember.

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Even if Lasciel doesn't have it Lucy certainly does. And Nicodemus and Co talk to demons frequently enough that even if they miss the development themselves they still would be told about it. Would cost Hell a minor act but it's a serious enough force major to be worth it.

 

[uju32]

Even if Lasciel doesn't have it Lucy certainly does. And Nicodemus and Co talk to demons frequently enough that even if they miss the development themselves they still would be told about it. Would cost Hell a minor act but it's a serious enough force major to be worth it.

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I dont think it costs Hell anything to talk to its minions on Earth
Any more than it costs Heaven anything to send word to the Knights and their Swords about missions and the like.

Besides, we even saw Dresden call up a demon to trade for information in the earlier books, so we know that there are regular contacts with Earth.
If the Denarians dont already know, they will by morning.

 

[Modus_Tollens]

She needs to stay with Harry. For both of their sakes. If she needs space, sure, we always have a bunk for her ready. But those two need to watch each other's backs.

 

[fictionfan]

[X] Plan Identity plus stunt
-[X] Offer something
--[X] Some money to get herself on her feet
--[X] Documents to legalize her identity
--[X] A place to stay at the Last Station until she can find her own, if she wants to.
--[X] Improving protections of whatever place she chooses to stay at
-[X] Make a point to socialize with her regularly over the next month at minimum.
-[x][Stunt]"And I will of course offer you the same things that I offer everyone who comes to the Last Station. Food, a place to rest, a way to earn money and help with legal paperwork for establishing an identity."

Also I now see why DP kept insisting that MIS doesn't work on Lash. If it did then she could go full torment with suppressed side effects.

 

[BronzeTongue]

[X] Plan Clear Her Head
-[X] Some money to get herself on her feet
-[X] Make a point to socialize with her regularly over the next month at minimum.

[X] Let her and Harry go on their way

Switching to an approval vote for no housing offer options. I'd prefer to do something, but I don't think Last Station is a good idea.

 

[DragonParadox]

We dont know how much Flesh she has.
She has no pacts feeding her Faith to spend on high-end Evocations.
The residents of Last Station arent necessarily interested in having some random woman do magic on them either.

And even peak human aint gonna do fuckall against multiple Denarians with warforms and sorcery. Or even one Denarian.
Canon Denarians like Ursiel!Genoskwa and Lasciel!Hannah Ascher could immolate Last Station if they were allowed to cut loose without even needing significant preptime.

Click to shrink...

It should be noted that Flesh 5: Shape Flesh can do more than get someone to peak human condition, it can add exotic aspects, say snake fangs that inject a neurotoxin or gills to breathe underwater, but it is still limited by the constraints of biology and more importantly it is limited by the constraints of time and power, specifically Faith. Molly is quite sure Lash is not going to be enacting any mass transformations anytime soon

 

[Goldfish]

[X] Plan Clear Her Head

 

[fictionfan]

So if we assume that the Denarians are following WOD demon rules likely with a extra custom flaw "Stuck in a coin" would anyone care to try and guess at their builds?

 

[Yog]

Im on board with everything here except the Last Station bit.

Remember what happened with the Will of Kakuri?
Last Station is not currently up to taking an attack by multiple Fallen and their minions, not without the potential for major casualties among the residents. The defenses are better, but not that much better. Not against Denarians.

Lash needs to be up top, where the Denarians will at least have to worry about discretion, instead of in Undertown where they can choose to cut loose without worrying about observers.

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1) I don't expect her to take us up on this offer - Harry is most likely to offer her a place to stay too. But there needs to be options for her to choose from, so she's not forced into one choice
2) Right now Last Station is much better defended
3) Anyone attacking Lash is unlikely to bother with subtleties - she's too important for that
4) This is not meant as a permanent solution
5) Unlike almost any other place, we can teleport to there (transfer to our kingdom, transfer back to Last Station, as long as there's correct music playing)

I agree with your concern, but I'm not prepared to just leave her on the street. Or to essentially force Harry to house her, or for her to room with Harry. It's unlikely that anyone will organize a serious attack in about two weeks it'll take us to set up something more permanent.

We will need to beef up defenses next turn, no matter what we choose. We invited way too much ire to do otherwise. Probably start working on that manse project too.

 

[DragonParadox]

Also I now see why DP kept insisting that MIS doesn't work on Lash. If it did then she could go full torment with suppressed side effects.

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While this is true I did not go that far into reasoning. What Lash is, the scale of her powers is pretty explicitly at the level where even DPE does not work, much less MIS, the Fallen are even refered to in their core book as the Princes of Creation, the paralets are pretty obvious. Here with the way Lash was invested... Molly just did her level best to make a Exigent, she does not have the skill or the tools, but she came close enough that when you add what Lash is, her own heroic journey of stepping out of her maker's shadow that you get this.

 

[BronzeTongue]

1) I don't expect her to take us up on this offer - Harry is most likely to offer her a place to stay too. But there needs to be options for her to choose from, so she's not forced into one choice
2) Right now Last Station is much better defended
3) Anyone attacking Lash is unlikely to bother with subtleties - she's too important for that
4) This is not meant as a permanent solution
5) Unlike almost any other place, we can teleport to there (transfer to our kingdom, transfer back to Last Station, as long as there's correct music playing)

Click to shrink...

1) Making offers we don't want people to take is a bad idea. What are we supposed to do if they take them? It's not like it's permanent, just what she starts with.

2) It's not better than Harry's wards pound per pound. He can actually keep people out if he needs to, partially because he's defending a smaller area with simpler access needs with more energy.

3) There's some stuff they can't pull because it's too much trouble. Lash is important, but not infinitely so.

5) Our teleport is pretty delayed because of the meditation requirement, and has preconditions about communications and hardware that are easy to disrupt. It's not terribly helpful overall.

 

[fictionfan]

So if we assume that the Denarians are following WOD demon rules likely with a extra custom flaw "Stuck in a coin" would anyone care to try and guess at their builds?

Click to shrink...

After looking I don't know if I can really make it fit. There is no lore of Shadows so trying to figure out what lores Anduriel might have doesn't work out that well.

Although it does occur to me that maybe they are all fairly high in many lores? But their level of torment depends on their host's cooperation. The high torment abilities are generally very worthless for effectively guiding a host.

 

[DragonParadox]

After looking I don't know if I can really make it fit. There is no lore of Shadows so trying to figure out what lores Anduriel might have doesn't work out that well.

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The Thirty Fallen do not exist inside their hosts, they exist inside the Coin and invest a portion of their power as well as general sponsorship into the members of the Order of the Blackened Denarius.

Make of that what you will.

 

[fictionfan]

The Thirty Fallen do not exist inside their hosts, they exist inside the Coin and invest a portion of their power as well as general sponsorship into the members of the Order of the Blackened Denarius.

Make of that what you will.

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So maybe Nicodemus is in fact a fairly skilled and powerful sorcerer specializing in shadow magic and all hints of that being Anduriel are misdirection. It did always seem a little odd that he hasn't picked up at least a bit of magic after all this time with a very knowledgeable tutor.

 

[Zoolimar]

It should be noted that Flesh 5: Shape Flesh can do more than get someone to peak human condition, it can add exotic aspects, say snake fangs that inject a neurotoxin or gills to breathe underwater, but it is still limited by the constraints of biology and more importantly it is limited by the constraints of time and power, specifically Faith.

Click to shrink...

I probably should note that "being limited by biology" is a limitation only if you are trying to modify someone to fight on the level of Queens and the like. Mother Nature gets up to some serious mad science in her spare time. The only reason impact of many horrible and wonderful developments is so limited is due to the fact that normal biological creatures also need to worry about feeding themselves through hunting, grazing and the like and a lot of more powerful biological adaptations would make it difficult without built in safeguards or limitations.

The calorie intake that human society can easily provide is absolutely ridiculous by Nature's standards.

Such thing as Darwin's spider silk doped with carbon nanotubes is more or less impossible to create on industrial scale without genetic engineering but it leaves Kevlar in the dust and something Lash should be able to incorporate into her modifications. Biological near immortality (minus cancer eventually), armor, muscles with much higher performance per pound than human ones, senses that leave a good chunk of technological sensors in the dust and so on, and so on. Nature works under a "good enough" paradigm where refinement happens only when similar organisms fight for the same niche but someone who has ability to choose traits for a particular task can cherry pick the best.

Higher up supernatural beings would be outside the biology ability to contest, without going full Kaiju, but something like rank and file Red Court vampires? Yeah, they have nothing on Mother Nature.

 

[Yog]

1) Making offers we don't want people to take is a bad idea. What are we supposed to do if they take them? It's not like it's permanent, just what she starts with.

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To be clear - I am fully prepared for her to take us on our offer. I just don't expect her to. It's still an important gesture.

2) It's not better than Harry's wards pound per pound. He can actually keep people out if he needs to, partially because he's defending a smaller area with simpler access needs with more energy.

Click to shrink...

Since the Will of Kakuri stuff we have vastly improved the protections.

5) Our teleport is pretty delayed because of the meditation requirement, and has preconditions about communications and hardware that are easy to disrupt. It's not terribly helpful overall.

Click to shrink...

True, conceded.

 

[uju32]

After looking I don't know if I can really make it fit. There is no lore of Shadows so trying to figure out what lores Anduriel might have doesn't work out that well.

Although it does occur to me that maybe they are all fairly high in many lores? But their level of torment depends on their host's cooperation. The high torment abilities are generally very worthless for effectively guiding a host.

Click to shrink...

The Thirty Fallen do not exist inside their hosts, they exist inside the Coin and invest a portion of their power as well as general sponsorship into the members of the Order of the Blackened Denarius.
Make of that what you will.

Click to shrink...

The Thirty Fallen are probably best thought of as Earthbound, I suspect.
Demons on a cocktail of steroids and meth.
Anduriel would be a mix of Light 5 and Firmament 2.

 

[DragonParadox]

I probably should note that "being limited by biology" is a limitation only if you are trying to modify someone to fight on the level of Queens and the like. Mother Nature gets up to some serious mad science in her spare time. The only reason impact of many horrible and wonderful developments is so limited is due to the fact that normal biological creatures also need to worry about feeding themselves through hunting, grazing and the like and a lot of more powerful biological adaptations would make it difficult without built in safeguards or limitations.

The calorie intake that human society can easily provide is absolutely ridiculous by Nature's standards.

Such thing as Darwin's spider silk doped with carbon nanotubes is more or less impossible to create on industrial scale without genetic engineering but it leaves Kevlar in the dust and something Lash should be able to incorporate into her modifications. Biological near immortality (minus cancer eventually), armor, muscles with much higher performance per pound than human ones, senses that leave a good chunk of technological sensors in the dust and so on, and so on. Nature works under a "good enough" paradigm where refinement happens only when similar organisms fight for the same niche but someone who has ability to choose traits for a particular task can cherry pick the best.

Higher up supernatural beings would be outside the biology ability to contest, without going full Kaiju, but something like rank and file Red Court vampires? Yeah, they have nothing on Mother Nature.

Click to shrink...

Oh yeah Lash could definitely outdo a normal Red Court Vampire. but there are also the limits of the Secret World, she cannot give any creations she makes flesh-masks so any changes have to be reasonably subtle.

 

[uju32]

1) I don't expect her to take us up on this offer - Harry is most likely to offer her a place to stay too. But there needs to be options for her to choose from, so she's not forced into one choice
2) Right now Last Station is much better defended
3) Anyone attacking Lash is unlikely to bother with subtleties - she's too important for that
4) This is not meant as a permanent solution
5) Unlike almost any other place, we can teleport to there (transfer to our kingdom, transfer back to Last Station, as long as there's correct music playing)

I agree with your concern, but I'm not prepared to just leave her on the street. Or to essentially force Harry to house her, or for her to room with Harry. It's unlikely that anyone will organize a serious attack in about two weeks it'll take us to set up something more permanent.

We will need to beef up defenses next turn, no matter what we choose. We invited way too much ire to do otherwise. Probably start working on that manse project too.

Click to shrink...

1) Dont make offers you dont want people to take.


2) No it isnt.
The Denarians are still restricted by both the Accords(which they signed) and the Rules of Heaven which have limits to how much power they are willing to display in public without freeing Heaven to take countermeasures, Mouse specifically scares Nicodemus, and Michael literally lives in the same city and visits Harry.

By contrast, Last Station is somewhere they can cut loose more comfortably, and I've seen what a Denarian feeling frisky can do with the right host. Its not pretty.
Last Station in particular shares particular geographic vulnerabilities by virtue of being underground.

By putting Lash on the surface, we leverage those elements of the Rules that Heaven enforces that prevents Nicodemus et al from doing shit like hulking out on live TV or attacking the White House in disguise to start a new war.
Y'know, the things we know they can do.


3)That is not true, any more than anyone has tried to attack Molly blatantly with supernatural powers in public
We havent seen anyone come rampaging into school, have we?


4) Still matters.


5)It took Lasciel!Hannah Ascher one attack to collapse a good portion of Hades' halls, with thousands of tons of rock on her own head in Skin Game. Thats the kind of shit you have to consider with Denarians who arent playing nice.
Especially since this might just be a kill mission instead of a snatch.


We're not leaving her on the street.
Harry has lived with her in his head for three years; he can and will put her up for a month at least, and we can make new arrangements starting from January.