Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
I think this is a better idea than Yog's right now.
Make a verbal commitment to help, but dont just jump into making stuff without actually doing research on the issue and into the Summer Court. And Titania. And Aurora and everyone else involved in this sorry matter.
It might even turn out that diplomacy might be a part of the solution.
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VOTE
[X] BronzeTongue
The problem as I see it is that giving a fey Queen something the others don't appreciate but isn't actually a threat is to an extent normal court politics. The queens don't always agree, but they are allowed to do business on their own to various degrees. That seems like a manageable situation to me.
Removing the mantle however is new territory directly infringing on the formal authority of the higher queens. It's like unilaterally repositioning a nuclear power's ICBMs without approval. That it was possible at all is concerning, that you actually did it alarming at the minimum, and giving back control after you effectively took it is only a minor attenuation to that.
Getting Winter to protect us afterwards would make things worse, because it'd basically be setting up the fey courts to really get into it with their feud at the worst possible time.
The twofold version is still perfect.
It only downgrades against things that are mixed, pure attacks of one or the other are still blocked.
Fire and Earth SP would make you perfectly immune to burning and bullets, but "only" resistant to magma.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
...Everyone is so lucky Molly isn't evil it really is absurd how easy it would be to trash the entire setting.
My current belief at the moment, is that you are being precipitate.
We know nothing about current Summer Court politics, the relationship between Lily and Titania, with Aurora.
There is a lot to figure out before deciding if we should just make a splendor, what kind of splendor we should make, and whether diplomacy is a necessary part of the process, and how we should handle the aftermath.
Measure twice, cut once.
Promise that we will do something about this by next Christmas, at the latest.
Then go back and do our homework.
We might want to start with getting our hands on Lloyd Slate; I think he may be the only surviving member of the Aurora plot.
He can tell us stuff about both her, and Lily. And how Lily ended up as the scapegoat chosen to carry the Summer Mantle.
And we probably should talk to Fix.
Also worth noting that removing the mantle will just inflict Lily's problem on someone else. The thing will bounce to whoever's closest and most fitting to the task, which has nothing to do with how willing they are. That's how canon!Molly and Lily ended up with them in the first place.
For the purposes of actually helping her we mainly need current political information anyway.
That's going to be a hard sell. We could spend a favor on it, but honestly I don't want to eat that large a loss on charity work.
For the purposes of actually helping her we mainly need current political information anyway.
I'm betting on Lea's exorcism coming up soon, after the Vegas trip, and paying off Mab for his freedom with that.
And I suspect that Titania's grief might have some guilt there.
There has to be an IC reason that Aurora's Nfection took the form it did; Maeve's issues were with her mom and her Nfection allowed her to defy her mother, but Aurora wanted to depower Summer. Which was ruled by her mother.
There may be more there.
If we dont want the aftermath to be a bigger deal than the problem, we kinda need to do a deep dive into the family and background. Probably get some advice as well.
Thankfully, we have options.
This current scene, and the flower Lily gave us? Probably both count for Summer/Lily foci.
The former apartment of the old Summer Knight, Ronald Reuel, where he died? Another Summer Court focus.
His grave(he was buried in Chicago)? Another focus. The hotel where Aurora used to hold Court? Another focus.
We need to talk to Dresden. And Bob.
Why?
You're talking about this like it's some forgone conclusion, but we have better things to do with our time and resources. His fate is gruesome sure, but so are those of a lot of people who did a lot less to provoke it.
- Location
- Brazil
It's so easy both because of Molly's power and the fact that she's free to do whatever she wants. In DF the saying "Power has Purpose" is very literally applied to all supernaturals, the stronger you are the more limited your actions are.
Molly however has one of the greatest weapons that would ever be built with only her morality and will as limits. This is why I hate the idea of opening the Black Vault, the situations are delicate and the Exaltations will be like rhinos in a china shop.
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Are you sure? Because it says, to quote:
Are you interpreting this as "if an attack uses two or more vectors at the same time, such as a burning magma blade being fire and stone at the same time, then the defense is not perfect", rather than "if the protection is granted against two or more vectors of the attack, then the defense is not perfect"? I like this, but I think we need a ruling. @DragonParadox ?
This is a perfect opportunity to advertise. We discussed doing this separately anyway, and this is a good opportunity to introduce our capability to the courts.
The grammar is pretty unambiguous, it makes a point about how it only downgrades when you draw on multiple elements at once when it's granting protection, which only makes sense if you're differentiating from invoking a single one at a time.
The grammar is messy but I think single element protections should still be perfects. I cannot think of any thematic/conceptual reason why it would not be.
Intel.
He was Winter's good right arm in the mortal world for at least 8 years prior to 2002's Summer Knight. He was the one whose clash with then Summer Knight Reuel was the instigating incident for the Unseelie Incursion of 1994, when Milwaukee disappeared for at least two hours and the entire river valley was replaced by pristine forest on satellite imagery, with all communications ceasing.
He would be a windfall of intelligence information for both Molly and the Brass Courts on how the supernatural world has operated for, at a minimum, the previous decade before Dresden became active, and an overview of a lot of the supernatural setting outside of Chicago. Quite apart from the moral implications.
Something that just occurred to me.
How much of Lily's issues with Titania are entirely organic problems with a grieving mother and intrusive Mantle, and what is the likelihood that there is a Nemesis agent or two quietly stoking friction?
I mean, if they got high enough to infect the Summer Lady four years ago around the events of Summer Knight, I suspect there's an agent or two elsewhere. There were two other agents in Winter besides Maeve and Lea, after all.
We might want to consider a sweep of Summer as well.
He was a drug addled rapist who beat people for Meave, not James Bond. We don't need him to get any general data, he's pretty much the most expensive way we could learn about almost anything he's been involved in.
We already have a centuries old English whampire who can give us almost everything you listed, and we can use money and the crown to get the rest.
He WAS Winter's James Bond.
Closer to Jack Bauer in MO, admittedly. Or maybe we should be looking at Jack Reacher or Jason Bourne for a more recent comparison. Or the Netflix Punisher.
He was no Dresden, but few are.
He was the sharp end of an almost-successful plot to permanently change the balance of power between Winter and Summer, and the plot's failure were not due to factors in his control. He successfully assassinated the Summer Knight, and kept it concealed from Maeve, Mab and Titania. The man was capable.
Drug user? Yes; no idea whether it affected his performance at all, given the Winter Knight Mantle being its thing.
Rapist? Almost certainly.
Two things can both be true.
Besides, we have Sarissa tell Dresden onscreen in Cold Days that Slate didnt start out as a drug addled rapist.
We have no idea how long he served, just that it was at least 8 years.
Mab wouldnt have let Maeve keep him around if he wasnt at least minimally effective.
He didnt survive a clash with then Summer Knight Reuel, who was explicitly a wizard, without being good at what he did.
Augustus cant give us stuff he never had.
The White Court are a medium power, and Augustus was only one of the bodyguards of a faction leader there.
By comparison, Slate was the Winter Knight. The right arm of the undisputed supernatural superpower of the setting, with a license to act in the mortal and supernatural world, and the access to secrets thereof.
Slate was the same tier of official troubleshooter that included people like McCoy for the White Council and Kincaid for Drakul and later the Archive. What Slate can give us, we cant actually buy.
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fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Somehow I feel like asking Mab her advice on weakening the force that guards the rest of reality against Winter might invoke a conflict of interests.
I do like outright returning the mantle to the summer court though. Especially if we can say it was done at the request of the Summer Lady
Hell no.
Evil Bob is a spirit/personality with the memories of working with and for the greatest necromancer of all time.
Magic, not politics or intelligence. And evil magic at that.
And he's one with his own agenda at that; we saw him try to betray Corpsetaker in canon, and he did try to kill Dresden.
Slate is, as far as Im aware, fundamentally human.
Divested of the Winter Knight mantle, all he has is the knowledge in his head and what skills he has.
He's containable in the worst case.
He also operated at the very highest ends of policy implementation for the setting's biggest superpower, and had regular interactions with both the heads of Winter and other heavy hitters of the setting on their behalf.
Magic AND politics.
As a HUMINT source, there's very few people who can give us what he can.
And their loyalties arent for sale
Oh, great. I'll change the vote then a bit so it's both possession and mind manipulation.
He was supposed to be their Bond, but he worked directly for Maeve most of the time. That's how he ended up turning traitor. He was even worse at his job than she is hers.
He was a meat head that Maeve kept around, and Mab didn't replace him on the spot because she was scouting people worth the effort to replace him.
The knight is a tool for the winter queens, and this particular knight was a blunt instrument. He probably got less than Dresden does, and Winter wasn't exactly open to him in canon.
You're also basically asking for him to pump him for information on Winter specifically, which arguably runs into one of the clauses that restrict our favor.
Either I'm right and he's worse than worthless, or you're right and trading him away would be a strategic problem for Winter. Not a good ask when he specifically isn't necessary for anything we're trying to do.
It's not like it's beyond our capabilities to become friends/trading partners with some Sidhe on either side of the line and get what we want that way.
Could well be the case, keep in mind default votes are formulated IC, based on Molly's thoughts on the matter. As a combination of votes and her own actions Molly no grudgingly respects Mab. As of right this moment she does not respect Titania as much, she has no reason to.
Honestly, this is the kind of advice that we should probably go to Summer and Winter Mothers for. From we saw they are much more cooperative than "lesser" queens, and much more open about being two sides of the same coin.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Dark Bob is likely the greatest Encyclopedia of dark and necromantic magic in the world maybe even including the Archive. As an Infernal who is friends with the Death God that is very valuable information that we are better able to put to actually GOOD use then anyone else in the entire setting both from a moral and skill perspective. Basically half our charms are dark power that we twist to good use what is some more?
Slade was a traitorous human. I don't consider him being fundamentally human to be at all a upside when he is explicitly a bad human with free will to exercise*. Spirts on the other hands can be bound in all sorts of ways. In fact if we say used Crowned in Fury on Dark Bob I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't even able to consider hurting himself to disobeying commands. He might rules lawyer, but we can have firm ground to stand on.
Dark Bob has also operated at the very highest ends of policy implementation for the setting's biggest superpowers. Winter, then Kelmar, then Harry.
*It doesn't even have to be acts of malice or careful thought. Say Slade gets high and rapes a girl when working for us. That is just as much a problem as anything Dark Bob might do.
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