Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
I'm not saying they're secretly behind everything, just that when they noticed us investigating them they decided to do so. Could be they were involved with the blamp and that social encounter was at their urging, but I think it's more likely the RPGs were the first thing they specifically did to screw with us today. They just timed it for when we'd already been fairly active, and if I'm right they'll follow up as they're able to in an attempt to disrupt us.
A key bit of information here is if they know about CSR. That completely changes the equation on exalts and most other types don't get something like it.
Technically 15 minutes to recover 1 Essence would have done something. You could have had this whole last conversation from inside a cup of bleach and now be up by 2 essence, though at the cost of revealing the trick to someone not in your party.
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Yeah. Now we have two conversations to have at once and have to balance social buffs versus the possibility of combat afterwards.
If I was nemesis I'd give this 15-20 minutes or until we look like we're doing something to send another essence soaking probe.
Worse, while the Outsiders and Angels know roughly how we work it's not clear to anyone else what things are active/costly and which are passive. Until we run out of gas in front of someone, at which point we'll start seeing people trying to make it happen again whenever they can.
I don't think it's that easy because exalts still burn even after they use their last Mote of essence. Your anima burning fully bright despite your tank being empty. That is before the consideration of scene long charms that can give the impression that the power seemingly a very least isn't very exhaustible. Only an outsider or an angel would really be able to tell that we were empty but that's because they can see directly into us and our soul or in The Outsiders case know the history of the exalted.
- Location
- Germany
[X] Plan two sides of the law
Both of those will be relatively harmless meetings unless they are directly controlled by Sandra.
Nobody here wants a public incident with civilian damages.
Both of those will be relatively harmless meetings unless they are directly controlled by Sandra.
Nobody here wants a public incident with civilian damages.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Has seen some shit, yes. Has borne direct witness to a mass casualty event (that would likely blow Splattercon out of the water, depending on when it hits and how busy the area is around that time), potentially a particularly gruesome one depending on how they go about it, which she feels (at least in some part) responsible for? That's the sort of thing that would be very difficult to just shrug off, potentially even for an Exalt.
Definitely not shrug off, but you guys did give her willpower 9, which is one off maximum. That is what I would roll if I ever had to go 'save not to freeze at the horrific sight' so she would probably be able to act.*
*Barring a bad roll.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Was talking more long-term trauma/guilt, PTSD, etc.
- Location
- Right Where I Am
He got here quicker than I was expecting. I thought we'd have a slight, not a lot, bit of time to refresh and reorient.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
[X] Plan two sides of the law
-[X] Split the party
--[X] Oliver Adkin
---[X] Harry
---[X] Lydia
--[X] Little Tommy
---[X] Tiffany
---[X] Molly
For some reason I seemed to remember someone talking about them rolling up with a convoy of humvees or something even scarier (tried searching 'bushmaster,' 'Stryker,' and 'humvee' to find the post), as opposed to 'merely' armored SUVs and a bunch of small arms. Anyway, I was going to say that if they have that level of supply, that's not even the scariest thing they could bring to the table, particularly seeing as Nemesis (presumably) has little to no concern about the Masquerade or collateral damage, and is ultimately likely the one pulling the strings here.
Something like mortars, recoilless rifles, or other heavy weapons would be. So what if they can't hit us because we're too fast? No-one else in our group is nearly so fast, and barring Harry's coat being even more bullshit than I remember, we're the only one who can take that sort of hit. Also, those would most definitely be AoE, and potentially very large ones. Furthermore, they outrange any of our abilities to directly hit them, and particularly for the former, can hit us from where we can't see, and where we might struggle to even determine where they're firing from. And before you say that that would draw all the attention, yes it absolutely would. Uncle Sam himself would probably show up, and kick their asses so hard that it wouldn't even be funny. But by then, the damage would already be done, and Nemesis would still likely be laughing all the way to the bank. Now, if we saw that coming ahead of time, I can think of a couple ways that our party could, if not neutralize, at least mitigate it. The first and most obvious being sending someone to hit wherever they're set up or setting up ahead of time, if we know where that is. The second would be Harry pulling out an absolute monster of a shield. The third would be Molly using Shintai + Lord of the Land to make some sort of barrier, and the fourth would be bringing in backup from our kingdom.
TL;DR, them rolling up with a bunch of soldiers with mostly small arms is still less scary than some (really any) sort of fire support, particularly if it can hit us from where we can't see them.
That, in conjunction with something nasty that someone called up that would get in our face, in a crowded area chock-full of civilians? Would be a legitimately sketchy fight pretty much short of us bringing heavy backup from our kingdom, or pulling out Shintai and all the stops.
-[X] Split the party
--[X] Oliver Adkin
---[X] Harry
---[X] Lydia
--[X] Little Tommy
---[X] Tiffany
---[X] Molly
For some reason I seemed to remember someone talking about them rolling up with a convoy of humvees or something even scarier (tried searching 'bushmaster,' 'Stryker,' and 'humvee' to find the post), as opposed to 'merely' armored SUVs and a bunch of small arms. Anyway, I was going to say that if they have that level of supply, that's not even the scariest thing they could bring to the table, particularly seeing as Nemesis (presumably) has little to no concern about the Masquerade or collateral damage, and is ultimately likely the one pulling the strings here.
Something like mortars, recoilless rifles, or other heavy weapons would be. So what if they can't hit us because we're too fast? No-one else in our group is nearly so fast, and barring Harry's coat being even more bullshit than I remember, we're the only one who can take that sort of hit. Also, those would most definitely be AoE, and potentially very large ones. Furthermore, they outrange any of our abilities to directly hit them, and particularly for the former, can hit us from where we can't see, and where we might struggle to even determine where they're firing from. And before you say that that would draw all the attention, yes it absolutely would. Uncle Sam himself would probably show up, and kick their asses so hard that it wouldn't even be funny. But by then, the damage would already be done, and Nemesis would still likely be laughing all the way to the bank. Now, if we saw that coming ahead of time, I can think of a couple ways that our party could, if not neutralize, at least mitigate it. The first and most obvious being sending someone to hit wherever they're set up or setting up ahead of time, if we know where that is. The second would be Harry pulling out an absolute monster of a shield. The third would be Molly using Shintai + Lord of the Land to make some sort of barrier, and the fourth would be bringing in backup from our kingdom.
TL;DR, them rolling up with a bunch of soldiers with mostly small arms is still less scary than some (really any) sort of fire support, particularly if it can hit us from where we can't see them.
That, in conjunction with something nasty that someone called up that would get in our face, in a crowded area chock-full of civilians? Would be a legitimately sketchy fight pretty much short of us bringing heavy backup from our kingdom, or pulling out Shintai and all the stops.
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The evidence suggests otherwise.
If the very Queens of Faerie, if Titania, if the Mothers themselves, wont even use the name, or talk about it without warnings and caveats? If middle-rank wizards like Morgan wont even discuss it?
Then spreading it around is dangerous.
They've been living with the issue for centuries. They have experience vastly surpassing ours to date.
The White Council even explicitly uses the public exposure strategy to defang certain magic rituals and organizations by spreading around knowledge of their rites, so that it basically gets DDOS'd by lots of minor would-be magic workers.
If the allied forces of order dont execute such an extremely basic countermeasure against Nemesis, then there are probably significant reasons why not.
You have not interrogated the prisoners or used the captured RPGs as Crown foci.
And you want to talk to the mafiosi?
This is literally jumping entire basic steps.
It was explicitly a kill-team of half-Reds, apparently led by a full Red.
He reemerged when a strike team of Red Court infectees and their "patron" tried to take out his father for getting too close to one of their shipping assets. He took on the Red Court vampire himself, duking it out with matching speed and strength.
Inhuman Strength, Speed and Toughness. White Court template, basically, but with no feeding dependency.
PLUS an external guidance system representing whoever or whatever his patron is actively taking a hand to .
By comparison, Arlene and Mayeda are both Emissaries of Power: people overtly marked by a greater power.
*checks stat blocks*
Mutt is physically stronger, but Tommy, while a little weaker, is as tough and as fast, and he has no feeding dependency, so he has better staying power in a fight.
And these are the canon stat blocks.
If Tommy has been playing footsie with Sandra Marling and her friends, that might no longer be true in this AU, given some of the options that they can offer.
Our one consolation is that since the RPG shooters were mundane mortals, then they arent routinely offering upgrades to all their mundane mooks.
Nope.
This would be the equivalent of someone acting in Mab's name, borrowing Winter's army and Mab not noticing.
No, his personal power base is his role as the caporegime of the Shadowkillers, a Fieracelli Family-associated merc group.
Its organizational and reputational power as well as combat power. If he's lost control of them, most of it is gone. And he is still on the hook for shit they did when he was apparently their boss. Like killing a senior cop.
Two: I stated that he duelled a Red Court vampire one on one. Not that he took on multiple vampires.
Three:
I am stating that in order to organize the ambush that just happened without his knowledge, his entire organization would have to be subverted. Not just one or two persons.
I have explicitly stated that his crew has to number in the double digits.
An operation of this level requires extensive subversion of his entire organization to carry out, not just suborning a handful of hitters, from tracking the victims to accessing the heavy weapons. This isnt a "rogue operative" thing.
GPS tracking REQUIRES HUMINT.
Like I said, there's almost a hundred rental car offices in Las Vegas; you need to have people in every single office in order to have had a reasonable chance of detecting Molly's party coming in to hire a car in the first place.
Magic is right out, because we've got the hitters in hand, and they are mundane mortals.
Molly is a magical vortex of Infernal power whose presence in a city can be noticed by those with eyes, but I am reasonably sure we have had this discussion before, and that it was established that you cant simply just track it from across the city.
Can I get a citation for that? Because I am reasonably certain thats not true.
We have both Word of Ebenezar and PoV testimony from Dresden in Blood Rites for Lord Raith being immune to magic due to old god/Outside-aligned investment of some sort.
"I'll take him with me," I got out between gritted teeth.
Ebenezar let out a bitter laugh. "No, you won't, Hoss."
"How do you know?"
"I've tried," he said. "Three times. And I didn't even get close. And you think your mother went without spending her death curse on her murderer? The creature who had enslaved her? Might as well ask if a fish remembered to swim."
I blinked at him. "What do you mean?"
"He's protected," he said quietly. "Magic just slides off him."
"Even a death curse?"
"Useless," he said bitterly. "Raith is protected by something big. Maybe a big damned demon. Maybe even some old god. He can't be touched with magic."
"Is that even possible?" I asked.
"Aye," the old man said. "I don't know how. But it is. Does a lot to explain how he got to become the White King."
"I don't believe it," I said quietly. "She'd been close to him. She must have known he was protected. She was strong enough to make the White Council afraid of her. She wouldn't have spent her curse for nothing."
"She threw it. She wasted it."
"So now my mother is incompetent as well as evil," I said.
"I never said that-"
Ebenezar let out a bitter laugh. "No, you won't, Hoss."
"How do you know?"
"I've tried," he said. "Three times. And I didn't even get close. And you think your mother went without spending her death curse on her murderer? The creature who had enslaved her? Might as well ask if a fish remembered to swim."
I blinked at him. "What do you mean?"
"He's protected," he said quietly. "Magic just slides off him."
"Even a death curse?"
"Useless," he said bitterly. "Raith is protected by something big. Maybe a big damned demon. Maybe even some old god. He can't be touched with magic."
"Is that even possible?" I asked.
"Aye," the old man said. "I don't know how. But it is. Does a lot to explain how he got to become the White King."
"I don't believe it," I said quietly. "She'd been close to him. She must have known he was protected. She was strong enough to make the White Council afraid of her. She wouldn't have spent her curse for nothing."
"She threw it. She wasted it."
"So now my mother is incompetent as well as evil," I said.
"I never said that-"
Murphy picked up the gun, but before she could aim it at Madge, there was a blur, her head snapped to one side, and she dropped to the ground in abrupt stillness. Raith stood over her unmoving form, and bent with businesslike haste to recover her knife, his eyes moving to Thomas.
Fumbling in haste, I seized the sheath of my cane-sword from my belt, grabbing hard at my will, struggling to pull together power through the cloud of raw terror that had descended over my thoughts. I managed it, and normally invisible runes along the length of the cane burst into blue and silver light. There was a deep hum, so low that it could be felt more than heard, as I reached into the power the cane was meant to focus-the enormous and dangerous forces of earth magic.
I reached out through the cane for Lord Raith-
And felt nothing. Not just empty air and drifting dust, but nothing. A cold and somehow hungry emptiness that filled the space where he should have been. I'd felt something like it before, when I'd been near a mote of one of the deadliest substances that any world of flesh or spirit had ever known. My power, my magic, the flowing spirit of life, just vanished into it without getting near Raith.
I couldn't touch him. The void around him was so absolute, I knew without needing to doubt that there was nothing in my arsenal of arcane skills that could affect him.
But Madge didn't have any such protection.
I redirected my power, easily found the knife in Madge's hand, and without the circle to protect her, there was nothing she could do to keep me from seizing the knife in invisible bands of earth force, magnetism, and sending it tumbling out of her grip and into the abyss of the chasm near them.
Fumbling in haste, I seized the sheath of my cane-sword from my belt, grabbing hard at my will, struggling to pull together power through the cloud of raw terror that had descended over my thoughts. I managed it, and normally invisible runes along the length of the cane burst into blue and silver light. There was a deep hum, so low that it could be felt more than heard, as I reached into the power the cane was meant to focus-the enormous and dangerous forces of earth magic.
I reached out through the cane for Lord Raith-
And felt nothing. Not just empty air and drifting dust, but nothing. A cold and somehow hungry emptiness that filled the space where he should have been. I'd felt something like it before, when I'd been near a mote of one of the deadliest substances that any world of flesh or spirit had ever known. My power, my magic, the flowing spirit of life, just vanished into it without getting near Raith.
I couldn't touch him. The void around him was so absolute, I knew without needing to doubt that there was nothing in my arsenal of arcane skills that could affect him.
But Madge didn't have any such protection.
I redirected my power, easily found the knife in Madge's hand, and without the circle to protect her, there was nothing she could do to keep me from seizing the knife in invisible bands of earth force, magnetism, and sending it tumbling out of her grip and into the abyss of the chasm near them.
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^^^
An hour of rest would have yielded +4 Essence, and gotten us back to 70%.
Not even that.
If we had used Crown questions on the RPG launchers that we brought along to vet the Shadowkiller's allegiances, we would have had a good chance of +1 Essence. If we had interrogated the prisoners before inviting people over, we would have had a chance of turning over secrets to proc Essence regeneration.
This was just an egregious error.
You are putting both the social experts on one team, and the non-social on the other.
Tiffany should not be on the same team as Molly.
She has Lore of Longing 2, which she can use for free, and her Charisma 3, Appearance 5 comes in very useful.
Plus, she can try to activate Enhanced Social Traits from her Apocalyptic Form by rolling Faith at DC6.
And as the daughter of a god of death, Black Court vampire talk is in Lydia's bailiwick.
Plus, her mother is Egyptian.
Which gives her standing to talk with Egyptian pagan cults.
Also, Harry has experience with mafia types from Chicago. So he should be on the mafia team
This should be
Team Egypt: Lydia + Tiffany: Oliver Adkin
Team Mafia: Molly + Harry: Little Tommy
Furthermore, it puts one melee combat specialist on either team in the event that things go bad and you dont want to start throwing around magical fire or the like in the confines of a nightclub.
Part of that reason at least from what Molly suspects is that Nemesis is paranoia fuel. It cannot be tracked, for all but the greatest powers of the setting it cannot be expelled and it can be contacted by temptation and subtle treachery alike if you do happen to come into its presence. It's motivations are obscure, its plans impossible to read and they mingle personal malice if its hosts with alien will. As bad as Nemesis is the fear and paranoia it leaves behind can be worse, since stoking those is so much easier than any other plan it could forge. I understands terror and suspicion the best of all human emotions save resentment.
That said you guys do not have to go with common wisdom, for one thing you do have a means to both find it and expel it with means the math is a little different from where Molly is standing... but at least them it comes to the find part well that is not common knowledge yet.
Is there more to it? Who knows, Harry certainly does not have clearance to ask the Gatekeeper that kind of stuff
Maeve pretty much did, though. And no, this isn't the equivalent, because we don't know how important these two guys were to Tommy's organization.
No it doesn't. It requires two people with access to the armory or the way to get weapons somehow to be suborned. Nothing more.
Molly, Lydia, Tiffany and Harry are a combination of powers unique and strong enough that I am fairly sure they can be tracked when together. Why is magic right out? Sandra was right there, could act as a spotter, and likely has some of (mortal) Molly's stuff to act as a focus for sympathetic magic for the purposes of tracking. I think it's rather safe to assume that she'll always be able to track Molly.
I am putting people who don't give off "is evil" on one team to talk to the guy who might react badly to said evil feelings, and the people who give off "is a fallen" / "is a yama queen" feeling on the other team.
There was that mutilated body pile in the haunted nazi submarine from the start of the quest.
I'm not saying this is normal, or even possible, for human psychology. It's a perk for exalts because no one wants a super solider that explodes under severe trauma. Like how they'll always physically heal perfectly regardless of what you do to them as long as they're still alive and you didn't cut anything off.
It's not really any more impossible than Molly healing from every bone in her spine being reduced to powder with two work weeks of bed rest, it's just weird in a way that's harder to dismiss.
That was two essence levels ago.
Well directed and informed he's a threat by way of being able to mote tap us with raiding tactics, but you're going to need significantly better evidence to convince me that random characters are going to beat us up purely because they were named. Especially when you do it for everyone we meet.
Skilled combat wizards, powerful spirit creatures, and the top end powers of the setting are one thing but half reputable gun runners are another.
Molly isn't exactly running around with a dime store investiture or something, punching her in the face isn't how a guy like little Tommy is able to seriously threaten her.
That was me. The post you are looking for is this one:
Tommy being here means there's an escort nearby.
On a night when someone is firing off RPG rockets on the strip, he would be mad not to.
That, however, doesnt protect most other people.
If, as Lily says in Cold Days, Nemesis specifically targets for death or subversion those who know about it, the more people who do, the bigger the target pool.
And in a setting like the Dresden Files where knowledge is not neutral and can open you up to influence, where the Oblivion War is all about devoting significant effort getting Humanity to forget about some entities in order to reduce or eliminate their influence on reality, thats a Bad Idea.
I mean, Arlene is Marked by Ishtar personally.
Ishtar aint said shit to her about it apparently, and the Mesopotamian Queen of Heaven would have been a big deal back when gods walked the earth a lot more freely.
QUESTION
@DragonParadox
Does Arlene's briefing on the known players of the supernatural Las Vegas scene as she knows them trigger Molly's Essence regen for the scene? Molly certainly didnt know a bunch of the things mentioned there
I was too, though this source is sketchy so maybe it's just wrong:
Cite
You mean hit squad. Dollars to doughnuts nemesis is going to sic them on us. Even if they're not subverted arranging an incident to set them off when the city is already going to shit shouldn't be hard.
An armored convoy would be too much to get away with, but what they can conceal should still be enough to eat a good portion of our remaining reserves.
- You are right, that is 2 more Essence for you
- As for Ishtar not mentioning Nemesis to Arlene, that might have to do with the way in which most gods can and cannot talk to their worshipers, not necessarily the nature of Nemesis. Faith is not a telephone and for someone without a natural magical gift or sponsored power to commune with the divine actually doing so might be very difficult. Gods are not meant to be very active at the moment.
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