Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
We should just open it, things from the Outside have gotten in. And that is the activation requirement, they have just learned stealth, if we inform the guardian of this new development it should release the exaltation.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
@DragonParadox Should this part still be here?
- Location
- Germany
That one only works while resting.
Good catch, fixed.
- Location
- Germany
There's a difference between some cultists and Nemesis as the Infiltrator, or something that can turn most of the USA into a desert.
One is a problem for Siddies, Wizards and maybe Night or Zenith.
The latter though, that is a problem a rising Dawn can solve by the blade.
Any exalted can be supernatural at anything, if they put the work in at it. And frankly just access to solar charms alone, makes things a thousand times easier for us.
- Location
- Germany
Sure.
But they are still best suited for tasks within their Caste.
A shadow war against Nemesis is not best fought by the bright blade, but rather by someone with a focus on Information like Molly.
Likewise if you want to face a big demon or ancient vampire you don't put your Eclipse at the front if you have other options, like the Sowrd-good Dawn.
They are predisposed to certain skill, and that is it really for the exalted castes. Anybody could be a stealth god, or a financial wizard. The only certain thing is that a Dawn will be a great fighter.
Eh.
If we manage to get Daniel, Michael, Murphy or Charity an Exaltation I would prefer that, just to have a known quantity.
But if the Exaltation chooses someone else I will be fully ok with that.
It works, when character isn't doing any strenuous activity. Talking isn't strenuous, the boost is for 24 hours.
[X] Yog
Ignoring context? No, I just don't see it as a gotcha. The solars won't win all the time, but they'll make progress and even when they lose so will the people around them.
Not every solar will want to wear a crown, but you don't qualify for exaltation with a lack of vision. Every one of them will have their own motives and varying levels of selfishness, morality, and baggage. I think any reasonable approximation of a group of real humans selected by these criteria would use their superhuman power to push their agendas.
You do too, that's the point of letting them go, it's just that you're convinced the new elite will enforce your standards so it's okay. Or that's what it looks like to me anyway.
It's worth remembering that the exaltations were not made with humanity's benefit in mind, they were made to exploit it. The gods wanted to make use of their relative lack of restrictions to get free of the primordials, and were given the gift of maintaining the games of divinity that they celestial gods went to go use.
If it seems odd that something so great for individuals is bad for the whole that would be why. Humanity at large was never a factor.
- Location
- Germany
I'd say that the first rebellion happened at least partially for humanity's sake.
Not on Autochton's side of things, but Sol, endlessly virtous, mirroring Lucifer's Rebellion ages later, definitly cared about humanity.
Freeing them all, gods and men, from the tyranny of the Holy Tyrant was the ideological base for much of it all.
That is not entirely true, Sol made those Exaltations before becoming caught up in the Games of Divinity and he was, by definition, a pretty swell guy, perfectly virtuous. He wanted Creation to be a better place under the eye of his Chosen. Some of the others were less interested in the well-being of humanity. Luna for instance was in love with Gaia, the world and cared less about the various things that walked upon her for their own individual sake. No one can fully know the intentions of the Maidens etc...
Point of order:
Sol empowered those Exaltations but he didnt make them, Autobot did. And Autobot, while fond of humanity, had a lot more trouble understanding it, and had all the intemperateness of his siblings to boot.
Not that Sol was that much different; IIRC the Dragon Kings used to sacrifice human hearts to him and he had absolutely no objection to this, moral paragon or no.
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COMMENTARY
Yeah, Lash is right that multiple Powers are deploying pawns. And we are probably one; its Winter that sent us here, after all.
Im wondering how much of what is going on is known to Winter.
I mean, Mab is not beyond manipulating someone in order to manipulate someone else. Its entirely possible that Maeve got funnelled information in the belief that she would drop it on Molly.
More Egyptian artefacts. I am still looking for the mummy that I think is involved here somewhere
My current thinking is that:
Molly + Harry: Talk to the Idol
Lash + Lydia: Talk to Fischer
Then after that, Molly should go back to the Hanging Gardens to pick up Mutt/Nelson, tell Arlene that we have solved her Blampire problem, get her aid then go to Rest and Recovery in a hotel suite, and call Big Corey on the phone from a bleach-filled bath tub.
And I ask is that a bad thing when a high level social exalted is their to direct, influence, and if needed kill off a single new exalted if they are a real problem.
The thing about the human sacrifice is... the humans were down with it. I do not think that it is ever implied the Dragon Kings ever dragged them up those temple steps. Seeing as this was a world of perfect and eternal reincarnation you could make the argument that heart extraction was a odd but morally acceptable custom.
Except for all the super genocide he wouldn't pause his godly gameboy to go stop. I'm not saying he didn't care at all, but the relative lack of activity from the point of his freedom on is telling about where his priorities were.
Perfectly virtuous by whose standards though?
I'm not saying he was evil, but it doesn't seem like it was his highest priority, and when the solars started getting super crazy he didn't even send a wellness check or anything. He gave over rulership to them, but if he strongly empathized with humanity at large and his chosen in particular I'd have thought he'd at least talk to them.
Yes, but it doesn't matter because we don't have one.
Molly has excellency, generic difficulty reducers, and info charms. She's good at manipulation and shadow games, but a real social exalt is a different animal.
It wouldn't take much to build an essence 1 Solar with the social chops to ruin Molly's day. They probably wouldn't win a fight, but coming in with bigger social difficulty reducers than we have an exotic effects for enhanced social manipulation isn't hard.
Molly has the vast majority of her exp in combat and crafting. The last social charm we bought was NWS.
This isn't a sure thing, and even winning in the end doesn't necessarily undo all the stuff that happened in the meantime.
By the time they started to get legitimately insane rather than just eccentric Sol was well and truly hooked on the Games of Divinity. Now one might ask how a being of perfect virtue become addicted, but the Games were older than he was, older and stronger than the concept of virtue. After virtue only existed because the Ebon Dragon wanted to be born as the Shadow of All Things, requiring perfect virtue to embody its opposite
- Location
- Germany
[X] Yog
I think in terms of practical action I mostly agree with this.
It's asking questions we need to ask before we can afford to rest for a bit.
I think in terms of practical action I mostly agree with this.
It's asking questions we need to ask before we can afford to rest for a bit.
- Location
- Norway
You misunderstand. I don't think Fëanor was a terrible choice, and not just because he did good things too. I think Fëanor is the sort of person an Exaltation can result in, after the effects you mention. He is very much like a Solar Exalted in having power, intelligence, perceptiveness and charisma far above humans, even above most other Mythic Age Elves, and feats we might call superpowers. Apart from the Silmarils, he's also invented the Palantir (magic telephones), being a legendary crafter, and was omnicompetent enough to do a linguistic reform in his spare time. He talked the Noldor Elves into leaving Valinor and crossing half the world to hunt down Morgoth with him. It took multiple Balrogs to beat him in a fight. There were very few people who could or would call him on his bullshit, which was one of the things contributing to his ruin by eventual bad decisions, pride, and stubbornness.
If you power him up even more than that, I imagine he probably convinces Finarfin to stick with him (bad), gets the Teleri ships without kinslaying (good), leaves the Elves more set against the Valar (bad), wins the Balrogs fight (good), dies trying to 1v1 Morgoth instead like Fingolfin did, too mixed to say.
I sympathize that the Silm is long and hard to remember everything. The inciting events go something like this:
1) Fëanor creates the Silmarils and locks them up at home in Formenos
2) The Valar hold a diplomatic reception trying to settle grievances, Fëanor is invited and attends
3) While the Valar are away, Morgoth murders the Two Trees
4) The Valar hear of this and ask Fëanor if he'd break the Silmarils to restore the Two Trees. Fëanor gets mildly upset that everyone wants his Silmarils.
5) While Fëanor is away, Morgoth continues to Formenos, steals the Silmarils, and murders Fëanor's dad
6) Fëanor gets extremely upset at everything and makes hasty decisions and swears an oath in anger.
His dead dad, the stolen Silmarils, the fact the Valar screwed up and trusted Morgoth and want to make Fëanor pay to fix it, this whole diplomatic reception looks suspiciously like a distraction by those same screwups, (he thinks) he could have stopped Morgoth and saved Dad if he'd stayed home, there's a succession crisis between him and his half-brother now, very upsetting circumstances.
The special power that would have helped him the most after that is something like "Let yourself be talked out of bad ideas you committed to" and the Solar Exaltation offers the opposite of that:
Righteous Lion Defense (•)
The Solar fortifies her convictions with the very fabric of the cosmos, making an invincible fortress of her heart.
System: Any attempt to cause or force the Solar to betray, undermine, or abandon her Intimacies automatically fails.
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I think Stalin would have enacted mass purges even with Judge's Ear or Crown of Eyes, partly because of not enough motes and not enough hours in the day to run around using powers on everyone, partly because of delegation to deal with the first issue, partly because the purges were getting rid of political enemies, undesirables, etc.
Djengis would probably have sacked fewer cities but more than zero. Having a power doesn't mean your enemies believe that you have the power, nor that they believe in the trustworthy metagaming rulebook-reading mechanics of your power, and Solar Diplomacy still has limits when the thing you're diplomatically demanding is subjugation at swordpoint.
This is EvWod not creation social was nerfed into the ground. That is the limit of social prowess. And again if that fails kill the guy, and try with the next one. We cannot fail if we bother to try.
I mean, given how much Hera hates him and the fact she did actually made him do things like that, it is waaaaaaaayyyyyyy more likely he was telling the truth than lying there, so....
Pretty sure the game of divinity was more of a very, very addictive drug than a gameboy as far as how much stuck with it the guy was is concerned.
Which means that his lack of response would have less to say about his virtue and care, and more about how addicted he got.
[X] Plan On the Clock