Vote closed, also feeling a bit better so hopefully I can be a bit more active in the conversation
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Arc 11 Post 55: That Crooked Saunter
That Crooked Saunter
12th of January 2007 A.D.
There is no earthly reason for Sandra to show her traitor face unless its a trap... but she did not show her face though, she was under a veil... By the time the latter thought passed though your mind you are already a foot in the air. "Drive, I'll message you the coordinates!" you call over your shoulder. As the car swings back into traffic you've found the... 'proper' way to blend into the chaos such that no one would be able to notice that you had just been the target of an RPG strike. A giggle escapes on the night wind, just as unnoticed, as you scope up the offending grenade launchers, in both senses of the word.
Lost 2 Essence -> Now at 5/15 (MHM and ATP)
Some might say that smothering the two hit-men with their own telekinetically controlled jackets is cruel and unusual, you prefer to think of it as efficient and the only other witness agrees so...
"Sarcasm Majesty?"
"Never," you answer, laying it on just as thick, as you look around the, far-too-well-lit-for-you- tastes alleyway. Really where is that legendary Vegas sleaze when you need it. Flying is out unless you want to be in sight of birds, radar and amateur astronomers, but seeing as people aren't going to notice you anyway you decide to have the pair of them stumble along on the street, seemingly drunk or high or... something. This is Vegas after all, one does not generally inquire about the nautre of other people's entertainments. Which is of course when it occurs to you that the distraction might be double-fold: "Clippy, get me on the Spring Preserve, we have to warn then about the vampire."
"Connecting." The ever-calm and pleasant voice of your assistant helps ground you, as the tone rings once, a second time, then a woman's voice answers.
"West Pyramid Temple, what can we help you with?"
It's startling, not so much the change of name, it would be a bit odd to be publicly known as the Temple of Ra Descending, but just how chipper she sounds given the hour. Am I about to sound crazy to some clueless PR person whose only exposure to the occult were those crystals she got from a late night add?
No time to back out of it now. "A vampire of the Black Court named Nathaneal Cobbler is going to try to rob your temple very very soon."
The line goes dead a moment, you can't even hear her breathing—isn't that a lovely thought?— then she stutters out: "I think you have the wrong number miss." That is not the tone of someone trying to get rid of a crazy person, it is the tone of someone terminating a conversation that is way above their paygrade in a panic and they will have your number for when the boss looks over the conversation, hopefully.
Harry and the others arrive with another rental in tow, driven by Mutt, who if anything seems to find the stack of goons in the back seat a natural extension of a night on the town.
He does a double take seeing their faces though: "Those are Little Tommy's guys, Shadow Killers, what the hell were they doing shooting rockets in board daylight?"
"I plan to ask them," you turn to Mayeda. "Assuming Arlene would be so kind as to offer us some space to do so..."
A gulp resounds though the backseat. "Sure, sure I'm sure she'll be happy to help, delighted even."
With an inward sigh you get settle in for the rest of the drive to the temple.
***
Arlene is waiting for you in a side room, her garb about as far from the one you had first seen her in as it is possible to be: Dark browns and greys, a camouflage pattern meat for urban streets not woods and valleys and you'd wager a considerable fortunate there are many weapons, of the shooting and stabbing variety in those pockets. "I saw what happened, the attack, I guessed that you were in the car..."
"How?" Lydia asks curiously.
"Green light, eyes aflame." She waves in the general direction of the sky, as though all the world knows by now, which is both troubling and a bit flattering you must admit to yourself at least.
"Well we have had a run in with the person we came to Vegas to find and she's in connection with a local player..." You motion at the pair of still unconcious thugs. "Mutt said they worked for someone called Litttle Tommy...?"
"Tommy... no, he's a good boy, better at least than one would expect given his upbringing." She sighs at Harry's dubious look, but goes on to explain that even though Tommy might work for the mob, his particular outfit had never been involved in trafficking people, just guns and drugs, which made them something of a natural ally of the Followers of Ishtar. She suspects they had either been tricked or enchanted into doing something so foolish.
What do you do next?
[] Ask Arlene about the general goings on in Vegas of late so you have context for all this
[] Interogate the hit men
[] Write in
OOC: Welp so far so good, you did not fall into any —hypothetical— dastardly traps and you know a bit more about who your prisoners are.
Rolls
ATP activation roll
MHM activation roll
*sevral rolls ommited for brevity, it takes you 6 seconds to choke out the hit men*
Manipulation+Subterfuge to make a pair of telekinetically controlled unconcious goons look drunk
ATP activation roll
MHM activation roll
*sevral rolls ommited for brevity, it takes you 6 seconds to choke out the hit men*
Manipulation+Subterfuge to make a pair of telekinetically controlled unconcious goons look drunk
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
I doubt they know much of anything if they are just grunts and we don't need them to find Sandra either. Still considering how little we do know anything could be helpful maybe let Lash and or Harry question them. At any rate before we go after Sandra we need to recharge.
COMMENTARY
Little Tommy's guys.
Son of Big Tommy, head of the Fieracelli crime family, and head of a crew of mercs specializing in supernatural shit.
Called it.
Arlene appears to have taken Mayeda's resurrection from the dead very much in stride.
Either her patron goddess nudged her, or she has a very good poker face.
Natural ally?
Well, according to the local ghosts they just murdered the head of the only clean LVPD department that there has been in the city, and the one that has been most successful at interfering with human trafficking.
We need to catch her up, and see if we get any data off her, before interrogating the mooks.
There is very little chance that turns out well.
Little Tommy Fieracelli has mojo.
In the source material, when a strike force of half-Reds went after his Mafia boss dad for being a competitor to their "shipping" business, this guy melee'd a full Red Court vampire and matched it for strength and speed.
He claims to hear the city somehow, and has a knack for showing up when shit is going down; for all we know he's another Exigent, or has a patron. If he or his dudes are dupes or enchanted, this just means that either he calls the Las Vegas PD to report the whereabouts of people who have been kidnapped, or he rolls up with his crew and stages an armed intervention.
These guys were willing to fire RPGs on the Strip, which demonstrates the access to heavy weapons and a certain disregard for consequences. Dont tempt them; too many civilians come to the Hanging Gardens to recklessly risk an attack by people willing to throw around RPG fire in Las Vegas traffic.
===
VOTE
[X] Ask Arlene about the general goings on in Vegas of late so you have context for all this
If he's strong enough to be a credible threat to us, and allied with Sandra, why wasn't he a part of attack on us in the first place? There are two options:
1) He's not strong enough to be a meaningful threat to us
2) He's not Sandra's ally.
Personally, I assume option 2. So, call him in, and let him hear what his guys have to say. It's just basic manners, when you have subverted members of someone's criminal organization in your custody.
Also, frankly, there are four of us here. Two exalts, a senior warden, and a demon. We can take him. Avoiding all confrontations is as detrimental as blindly stumbling into danger. In some ways more so, even.
There is very little chance that these guys are working with the mob little Tommy. No one even half competent would ever shit where they eat so spectacularly. So these guys are either Enchanted or are stupid enough to directly take work like that in public. Now I don't want to underestimate the stupidity of humans but I find it really difficult to believe any mob or Criminal of any age greater than 10 can think rocket launchers on a public Street yeah that's not going to get us in it the fuck ton of trouble immediately. So that leaves Enchanted and I hope it's Enchanted so we can " interrogate" the location of the person who Enchanted them.
- Location
- Germany
I mean, he can have mojo, but I doubt it would be enough for us.
He can go through a Red hitmen-team?
We went through a plane full of Elders under Arianna Ortega.
He can go through a Red hitmen-team?
We went through a plane full of Elders under Arianna Ortega.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I wonder why Arlene's information appears so out-of-date or just simply wrong when it comes to Tommy? If his behavior has changed significantly in recent times, that could be a good indicator for when shit starting going sideways in the city. Probably about when Sandra rolled into Vegas?
[X] Ask Arlene about the general goings on in Vegas of late so you have context for all this
[X] Ask Arlene about the general goings on in Vegas of late so you have context for all this
There's thing I don't think her information is out of date. No halfway competent mafioso would ever decide to kill a cop that has compatible goals for one and isn't in the way for another. Nor would they ever commence a outright operation to fire rocket launchers in the street in the city where they do business holy moly I struggle to think of anything more spectacularly out of character for a mob whether they're mercenaries or not. So the most likely candidate is the woman that is an outsider adjacent or outright possessed that has a history of mind magic has committed to mind magic upon these people.
That is why Arlene is taking 'enchanted' as her first theory. Although keep in mind this is a world with things like the Heirs of Kemmler in it. A particularly loyal mob soldier might be willing to take the heat for blowing something like that up hence why her other theory is tricked.
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3) He couldnt get into position in time for the ambush
4) His abilities are not relevant to a shoot RPGs at cars ambush
5) He was part of the trap that we declined when we chose not to pursue Sandra
6) He's dead or injured
Arlene literally just finished telling us that his crew run guns when they arent shooting supernaturals, and we just saw them deploy heavy weapons in the middle of a high civilian traffic area.
If they are running around with RPGs, I flat out guarantee they have other shit.
They are a crew of anti-supernatural hitmen. I quote:
In this AU, they are gunrunners as well, and have access to heavy weapons.
What do you think happens if you call, and the response is a convoy of SUVs to the Hanging Gardens with 50 cal HMGs or M249 SAWs, 40mm grenade launchers and semiauto Benellis loading Dragons Breath rounds? What if Sandra summons them up some supernatural meatshields as well like Cornerhounds or mistfiends or obscure shit out of the NeverNever?
Whats the death toll gonna be?
Molly and Lydia are tough, but neither Harry nor Lash are bulletproof(yet, in Lash's case).
And the Ishtarites and the civilian clientele are squishies.
There is no upside, and plenty of potential downside to inviting him here.
If you want to talk to him, interrogate his guys, use the Crown to screen them, then call for a meet somewhere there's no potential for collateral if he or someone else chooses to throw down.
And use a VPN, because since he's son of a Mafia boss and member of a crime family, the FBI might be tapping his lines.
Thats his base capability level in the DFRPG.That might not be his peak in this AU.
And with an Outsider agent like Sandra involved here, I cannot speak for what his peak could be, or what sort of backup he could have access to.
Assuming he's working for Sandra of course.
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- Location
- Germany
I think you are absurdly paranoid about some mafia-thug.
As you are about Sandra, who I still think is mostly human, if only to pass under the radar as well as she did.
I'd be extremly surprised if she had even half the combat-power of something like an elder Whampire being possessed by a Walker, that we easily beat.
To be perfectly clear, I think by now we are pretty close to the upper end of the supernatural powerscale, excepting Butcher's weird angel-wank putting them completely out of the scale everyone else operates on.
Aside from some ancient monsters likefor example Drakul and Mab there's little we couldn't take in a straight fight.
[X] Interogate the hit men
On top of the hilarious flashbang of a sentence fragment that is weird Angel-wank, I'm not sure where @uju32 is getting the assumption that Tommy is working with Sandra or ever would. This is on top of their regular catastrophizing about the enhancement or possible abilities of any and everyone that we meet.
The thing is, if he's an enemy, not calling him changes nothing - he'll either come or not come as enemy finds useful. The enemy forces know where are thanks to GPS tracking.
If he's not an enemy, then he might become an ally.
You are absurdly paranoid. And your approach will make him paranoid about us too.
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Literally his job to be a hitman.
I assume competence in my opposition, and an OPFOR whose literal opening strike was to use antitank weapons on an unarmored sedan display competence, paranoia and good planning.
You can be wholly human and still run around with lots of small-i infernal Investments, if I recall WoD rules correctly.
I guarantee that Sandra is at least an adsinistratus-equivalent. Might even be a prelatus.
She was trusted enough to know that Maeve was Nfested, and considered competent enough to go fuck with the daughter of a Knight of the Cross. And now she has been sent to Las Vegas.
I would not be at all surprised if she can call on multiple lesser Walkers of that sort, or one Walker and a supporting force, given preptime. And she's had more than six months of preptime since Chicago.
That must have been horrifying for them. Given the layout of the scene it's arguable that they couldn't acknowledge each other's assault, so from their perspective everyone around them just stood and watched while they were strangled by something they couldn't see or fight.
Didn't even roll intimidation and we're scaring the guy. Then again I guess he did just see Molly cut an RPG out of the air and casually take down two dangerous hitmen.
Plus the whole thing with threatening a blamp's "life" straight to its face and having it hide behind a god instead of do something about it.
I don't think we ever told them we were hunting what appears to be a willing servant of the Outside serving under nemesis, which may have been a mistake.
Unless he's really stupid it's unlikely a mob boss would show up to something like this. If he's good enough to have arranged this he's good enough to know we're involved, especially since he's been tracking us via a car that's been here multiple times today.
If he's a second hand nemesis pawn via mind magic it's even more pointless, because they're hunting us and wouldn't let him respond to a legitimate issue even if they somehow didn't see through it.
—————-
Unlike pretty much everyone else the outsiders know exactly what an exalt is. To the point that low level knights like the one we ate have seen them fight.
Two RPGs weren't going to kill us, and they didn't try too hard to lead us anywhere or set off something bigger. Not even something as "basic" as expanding the size of their crew in focusing down Harry/Lash to eat up our attention and pin us to protecting them.
Worse for them, they confirmed Sandra had definitely noticed us and gave us a lead on their resources in town. A plan that not only fails but outright backfires if your enemy doesn't do a very specific thing, in this case chase Sandra, is a stupid plan.
Unless that wasn't the point at all, or at least not the only one, cause what that fight did cost us was essence. Not a lot, but they basically hit us at the next opportunity available after our charms reset for the scene.
We should probably start regenerating them now, because I think we're facing our first targeted mote tap attempt from someone who knows exactly what they're doing.
Edit: error
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Because people dont lose track of RPGs, not in the US.
This aint Afghanistan; you cant exactly buy them on any street corner. Furthermore, gunrunners dont lose track of their merchandise. These came out of his crew's arsenal, and that would have required his authorization. Same with the namedropping and pressure that would have been necessary to track the rented car's GPS.
To be fair?
Nemesis is not exactly freely talked about in the supernatural world, and allegedly has a nasty habit of doubling back to murder people who know or talk about it. So we might want to not talk about the Nemesis bit specifically.
And as far as I know, Arlene doesnt know about the Sin-Eater or its function, or the deal that the Dragon made with it and how the human trafficking trade has contributed to Las Vegas occult protections.
Thats restricted knowledge as well.
The sin in Las Vegas has very little to do with human trafficking mostly because human trafficking takes humans that sin out of Las vegas. Two a woman who is known to have a proficiency with mind magic just has to get at lieutenants who do have to be out in public some times. To get those weapons because mafiosos and most organizations are vulnerable to mind control.
Believe it or not it's not about losing merchandise it's about how do we prevent someone who's completely on the side of destroying reality from using mind control on our people because normally mind control is employed by soul sucking vampires who don't want to do crazy overt shit like fire rocket launchers down Main Street and other beings that want to maintain the masquerade. This is also outside of the fact that yes militaries and most mortal organizations do in fact misplace heavy Munitions a worrying amount at times. I myself have no military service time but both of my parents do and they swear my dad did artillery and my mom did Communications and just shells and radios and pretty much anything that could go missing did occasionally go missing when they were in Afghanistan and Kosovo.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
We aren't in either of those places lol.
The point of the matter is people do indeed misplace equipment. The fact of the matter is the idea that anyone has perfect control over any of their equipment even in areas they have complete control over is false. This is before we even get into the matters of actual magic involvement.
Yeah @uju32 I get it when people agitate for running hands with the top end of the setting, but not everyone is actually a secret badass hiding their true power until there's a convenient exalt to fight.
My bet here is that nemesis has decided to try killing us by draining our mote pool with a combination of low level encounters and pressure applied with urgent looking plot hooks.
Run us around town fighting mortals just good enough to make us spend on it, and then hit us with a viable kill squad.
Something that's only possible because it knows personally how exalts work under the hood* or can talk to people who do, not because these mooks are particularly scary.
* Hell, Sandra knew Molly before she took her second breath, it wouldn't be hard to guess at a number of Molly's key skills and excellencies based on that and basic knowledge of our recent activities.
True, but it's not like nemesis needs human belief to be here. The only Outsider it doesn't try to broadly spread the name of is itself. Not telling people is only of marginal utility and leaves them missing the context that someone who lives for subverting people one way or the other is directing operations in their area.
Edit: error
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Yeah... I will say this much, this is a more magical Las Vegas, rarer and more precious things have been misplaced than a couple of surplus RPGs. That said from what Molly understands the human trafficking, for sex, blood and life force is a significant part of that feeds the Sin Eater. Yes it takes people out of Vegas, but it also brings more people into Vegas, always more people, same as the tourism and symbiotic with it.