fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
I am surprised that Harry has never asked us who the traitors in the white council are. He has to at least guess that we know or could easily find it out.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Speculation: He's just mindful of the information laundering problem and doesn't want to make our intellectus public.
Like I said, thats my guess based on what we know.
We know they are organized enough and plentiful enough that it doesnt require senior field agents to show up to take custody of lesser akuma. Talking to a mortal senator of your own side is distinctly less dangerous , because human society isnt organized on might makes right rules. At least, not so much anymore.
The Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress has no nukes. It controls no nukes.
And you are not going to talk the US into nuking one of its own cities and killing several million people on a "Demons are coming! Honest!" Thats a fast way to get committed to a mental institution.
Not to mention that this is not a naagloshii. There's no guarantee nukes will kill it, nor do you have any idea how many would be necessary. The WoD analogue for something capable of depopulating a chunk of a continent was Zapathasura's rampage across the Indian subcontinent, and it took three kuejin boddhisattva, multiple nukes and an orbital sun mirror system to put it down.
Time(Chronomancy) Path/Divination Path. Possibly with an enchanted item or potion since she had time to prep.
Or an investment if she did a deal with a spirit; Totem is a lawful Background in ExWoD.
Could also be a sub-White Council tier wizard; there's at least half a dozen in Chicago alone as of Dead Beat.
Furthermore? We know from canon that focused sorcerers in the Dresdenverse can match or exceed proper wizards in their area of specialty after all. The Leanansidhe said that about Mortimer Lindquist the ectomancer, and Dresden claims that Hannah Ascher had Senior Council-tier fire magic and almost nothing else.
Last edited:
There are enough missing nukes and mystic nuclear equivalents that a serious faction making a credible bid at puppeting at least some parts of the government for several centuries while dealing with supernatural nasties pretty much has to have some in case of local and not-so-local apocalypses.
Not the point - the point is, if they knew what was going on, and what was at stake, they'd have their most powerful weapons aimed at the place already.
Seems some variant of divination. Probably a ritual or hung spell.
Vote is exactly tied.
No there arent.
1)There is no mystic nuclear equivalent that isnt a single wizard or high tier supernatural.
The Eye of Balor is as far as we know, unique. When the supernatural world wants some serious shit done, they send an elder wizard or someone in that weight class to tear shit up.
2)Nukes are not store indefinitely weapons; they require ongoing maintenance and refurbishment, as do their delivery systems.
Just the tritium component of a modern US thermonuke has a halflife of a dozen years, and has to be refurbished regularly.
Furthermore, every lost nuke not accounted for is at the bottom of the sea, in seawater, one of the most corrosive common liquids around. The idea that you can pull up one of those post-immersion and it has any weapon value besides as recyclable fissile material is hilariously wrong.
3)People underestimate just how much effort it takes to maintain a nuclear capability or nuclear program. How many thousands of people and billions of dollars it costs each year just to keep an active capability. The UK spends around 3 billion dollars in 2022 to maintain a stockpile of 260 weapons, of which only 120 are in submarines and only 40 are deployed at any given time.
And thats after having the US subsidise part of their program's development costs.
TLDR
There is no covert agency with its own independent nuclear deterrent.
Its too expensive in resources and people, and too noticeable in terms of the infrastructure it requires to maintain.
4)And respectfully, its literal lunacy to expect the organs of a nationstate to nuke its own cities preemptively.
Even in the bad old days of the Cold War, dictatorships wouldnt do that shit.Anyone who gives that order will not have it followed, and will be lucky to only get arrested and confined for mental issues.
.....
There are 3 million people in Vegas.
Nobody human preemptively kills that many people if there's even a chance of their surviving.
These are the Dresden Files.
Where the Fae Courts can throw around individual weather phenomena with the equivalent of half the world's total yearly electrical generating capacity. Where Ebenezar popped Krakatoa and caused Tunguska.
I mean, your average hurricane has more energy in it than the world's current combined nuclear arsenal.
*shrug*
They're the same vote. The only difference is the stunt.
Last edited:
- Location
- Right Where I Am
Yeah, and my feelings are rather split.
If Molly had to preserve a nuke with nothing but magic she thinks the most straightforward solution would be time stasis, it cannot degrade if time does not pass for it. That said a wizard high enough in the time sphere to do that is not what you would call common given the Laws (whole avenues of research are cut off for people who do not want to go insane). A sorcerous ritual could also do it, but it would be rather obvious. Lastly just shoving the thing into some corner of the spirit world that runs at 1/100.000 to Earth time or the like would also work, but that would imply passing a rather large chunk of steel through Faerie.
- Location
- Earth
Uh, Prince of Ruin attitude is a single dot charm...
Have fun with that thought
Last edited:
Molly could do it with Ancient Sorcery: Blessing of the Wood Dragon, which would simply keep fixing the weapon, negating any requirements for maintenance.
Thing is, nukes require two or three things
- Warhead
- Delivery system = cruise missile, fighter/bomber aircraft, ICBM
- Guidance/detonation system
You need all three for deliverable nukes.
Airplane nukes literally require an entire unique training and maintenance pipeline for
Same for the cruise missiles. And the ICBMs.
Then you have to keep them guarded and safe, so some other nefarious bastard doesnt steal them.
Literally thousands of people involved.
And thats not even counting what the magic of a wizard can do to the electronics of a weapon; you're literally rolling the dice on either your techbane potentially frying the detonation mechanism, or setting it off.
Dresden might be a particular outlier, but wizards dont take plane flights for a reason.
You're not getting one to stand next to a live warhead either.
I know. There's a reason Im scared of Solaroids.Uh, Prince of Ruin attitude is a single dot charm...
Have fun with that thought
Look up Edward Teller's GNOMON and SUNDIAL proposals if you want some idea of why a Solaroid does not even have to leave his backyard to end the world.
MOLLY could design and build one.
Its not all that difficult; both the fission bomb and the Teller-Ulam design for thermonukes are from the 1940s/early 1950s, and have their basics in the public domain.
And she's a bullshit Exalt who favors Craft; she could refine her own fissile material from scratch, even.
Expecting an organization without her advantages to maintain a nuclear deterrent on the down low is ludicrous.
The material and intangible costs are too high.
Then there's the politics. Thats like giving the CIA or the KGB its own pocket nuclear deterrent which they decide when and how to use, with no input from anyone else. Not even the governments of the Cold War tolerated that shit, and the KGB had its own battalion-size military forces IIRC.
Last edited:
Vote closed.
Arc 11 Post 70: That Masks May Ring Like Bells
That Masks May Ring Like Bells
13th of January 2007 A.D.
"Hello? Hello?" you speak into the phone, a tone of voice perfectly suited for a young and eager to please intern with their eyes on the dream job ahead - something a fellow college age student can sympathize with. "Is this Jacob Cole? My name is Maggie, of Five Score Fellowship, and I am calling you about Sandra Marling. Could you give me several minutes? You see, by luck of the draw, she became a candidate for our scholarship grant, and I need to make a detailed character profile of her for my bosses. I understand you are her friend, so would you mind helping?"
Lost 3 Essence -> Now at 12/15 (All Things; Betray Empathy; Excellency Etiquette Excellency)
"Oh yeah... she's great, takes some getting used to but she's got some big ideas, ideas that'll change the world really. I don't think she's interested in a scholarship though, I think she's rich or something, she's been talking about traveling the world to spread... to find herself and help other people find themselves too. She's great. Really giving, people should be more like her. So about that scholarship, how do you get in the draw?"
The more you talk to the guy on the other end the less natural his mannerisms feel. On the one hand he keeps trying to steer you to some other topic or get you to hang up, but as you continue to steer him back towards Sandra you find the same ideas, the same phrases really repeated over and over. There's a name for that, thought stopping techniques. Generally used by cults to keep control by weeding out inner doubts, they are not usually this blunt...
"You need to chill out, Sandra'd be the first one to tell you, there's more important things in life than money and power and all that shit. It's all a rat race and it's not even other rats that run the race. It's cats. You know cats? I used to have one, but then I figured out he only behaved 'cause I'm so much bigger than him, but he's like a tiger that lives in your house. I don't have a cat anymore."
"Jacob," you ask gently, like you are talking to a child, "what happened to your cat?"
"I don't have a cat anymore," he repeats.
"Why?" you press, injecting a bit more authority into your tone.
"He was mean and he scared me and... and... I don't have a cat anymore." It feels like you are breaking though something, cracking the carefully preserved mask he still presents to the everyday world to find something broken and hollow.
"Did Sandra have something to do with that?"
"No! No! I did it! I did it!" he shouts in your ear.
"Did Sandra tell you to do it?" Repetition seems to be the key to keeping him talking, you are keenly aware of the fact that he is one button away from ending the call and probably informing Sandra that someone was asking after her, but you want to get to the bottom of this, you have to.
"No, no, she only does good things, I figured it out on my own, on by own," he half-babbles.
"So it was a bad thing then, a mistake," you say slowly, like you are thinking deeply on the matter. "Jacob what was the name of your cat?"
"Cheshire," something seems to tear behind his voice and he starts sobbing. There's nothing more you can do over the phone you realize. Maybe there's nothing more you can do even in person.
Regretfully you say goodbye, not that Jacob can understand you and end the call. The next number on the list, Jaida Porter just leaves you hanging, she won't take a hidden number call maybe, at least you dearly hope it's something innocent like that. Kate House however does answer and this time you do not ask about Sandra, not directly.
"Hello, Mrs Porter Maggie, of Five Score Fellowship and we'd like to ask about one of your colleagues who was lucky enough to win a draw with us, a Mr Cole, Jacob Cole..."
From the first word of her answer you realize you'd guessed right. Conditioning someone into a fine thrall who acts outwardly normal is hard enough, making it so they can't betray their master is harder still, plugging up all the connections well that is already too complex to bother with, at least that is what Sandra thinks. And it's going to cost her, you vow.
Jacob you find out comes from a wealthy family, but he is interested in stepping out of his father's shadow, or at least he used to. His father had passed away last October and he's been dealing with a lot of 'family stuff' since then. Kate a plenty of times when he had skipped school and one instance of him withdrawing a lot of cash for something.
You very carefully do not ask what or who for as you are starting to get the shape of things. Jacob with his technically millionaire parents and recent inheritance is the piggy bank of the group. That certainly puts his insistence that she's independently wealthy in a new light. As you get to chatting with Kate over her breakfast you get the sense that she really enjoys it, one would not go so far as to call her a gossip, but... she knows everything that's going on in UNLV and not just on the mundane side. She knows there are beautiful people you do not want to hang out with and that there are some places where it is very important to watch your drink so as not to get hooked. After about half an hour of maneuvering you are pretty sure Sandra herself is the source of much of the information which does make a kind of sense, after all Jacob was talking about things which hint at the true shape of the city, but why?
Something to chew on later, for now you ask about the final four starting with Frankie Lewis.
"Oh Frankie's the life of the party, but you know not really scholarship material. I think school might be a bit much for him to be honest," Kate goes off and all you have to do is make the odd approving hmm... There's a lot of actually funny stories like the time he has set the flag in the quad on fire with unsanctioned fireworks tried to buy a new one and got the flag of Liberia instead, no one had noticed until morning or the time he had gotten the entire football team to use shampoo spiked with photo-reactive pigment that made their hair progressively more green. Though unsurprisingly he had been pranking people less of late. 'Some people' said he was dealing, though Kate of course did not believes them. Interestingly she also tells you that when he does his brewing on school property he usually does so in the old disaffected boiler room which campus legend claims is haunted.
The other three do not get as much of a reaction, loners, she is too polite to say 'weirdos'... and then she realizes she's been talking to you for almost an hour.
Regained 3 Essence -> Now at 15/15 (CSR)
Healed 1 Wound -> Now at 13/15
You have to end the call yourself when mom calls to ask if you are OK, she had seen the news. To that you answer that yes there had been an ambush, no you had not gotten hurt, all of you were in a hotel now ready to continue the investigation now that you had rested. It's not technically a lie, you had not gotten hurt in the ambush, you'd been stabbed by an Ancient Egyptian Idol that contained the key to a prehistoric super-weapon, completely different.
Lost 1 Essence -> Now at 14/15 (Subterfuge Excellency)
What do you do next?
[] Stay on the phones, you still have a bit of healing to do
-[] Keep talking to Sandra's 'friends'
[] Go out
-[] Talk to Silk at the Xanadu
-[] It's risky, but maybe you shoudl check in Jacob
OOC: As a reminder, the time in 09:45, you still have a bit until the meeting you set the the bibliomancer.
Last edited:
- Location
- washington
we've hit chapter nice. that is all.
Rolls
Who Picks Up?
Introduction
Do you notice? vs Sandra Subtlety (Successes x2 since you are trying to notice what she did from nothing more than a phone call)
Redirect vs Opposed willpower
Talking to Kate
Wits+Streetwise to figure out why her
Redirect to the other Group vs Opposed willpower
Exalted Lying vs Charity's Bullshit Detector... closer than it had any right to be
Who Picks Up?
Introduction
Do you notice? vs Sandra Subtlety (Successes x2 since you are trying to notice what she did from nothing more than a phone call)
Redirect vs Opposed willpower
Talking to Kate
Wits+Streetwise to figure out why her
Redirect to the other Group vs Opposed willpower
Exalted Lying vs Charity's Bullshit Detector... closer than it had any right to be
Last edited:
- Location
- Earth
68 is doubled, so technically this is chapter 70.
I don't really see treating damage and disease as the same. Mechanically most WoD/white wolf systems don't let you cure illness until after you're very good at mending injuries.
Healing path sorcerers for example get the ability to reduce the stage but not cure basic sicknesses at dot three, which is also where they gain the ability to heal as much Agg as they have the casting resources for and cleanse even magical toxins.
Dot five gets you the ability to correct congenital issues and still has a carve out for not being able to cure the most virulent disease, and the next step up from there is resurrection.
The life sphere enables minor healing at dot three, and the lore of flesh doesn't do anything about them till dot four. The lore of awakening does have a two dot power which does it, but it's a difficulty eight for diseases like tuberculosis with a clause stating that more dangerous things should have higher difficulties.
All of this is possible to deal with, but I called it hard because the average supernatural with this sort of ability effectively has an easier time turning themselves into a duck or reconstructing someone with six of seven health boxes filled with Agg than they do curing the common cold.
Fixed, thanks.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Given the complexity of a nuclear device, I would consider techbane causing a detonation to be quite unlikely. A fizzle maybe, but even then… At least for modern implosion type warheads.
- Location
- Germany
[X] Go out
-[X] Talk to Silk at the Xanadu
Maybe she can help, if not we could at least suggest she gets the hell out of town.
-[X] Talk to Silk at the Xanadu
Maybe she can help, if not we could at least suggest she gets the hell out of town.
True. A low chance of setting off a nuke in your face is still a pretty good incentive to stay away from them.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
We've already pushed our luck pretty far talking to Sandra's pawns. If we haven't already caught her attention, the chances that we will do so go up significantly if we keep making calls.
Jacob is an interesting angle, but I'm not sure what good it would do us to follow that particular thread.
[X] Go out
-[X] Talk to Silk at the Xanadu
Jacob is an interesting angle, but I'm not sure what good it would do us to follow that particular thread.
[X] Go out
-[X] Talk to Silk at the Xanadu
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
May I say that all these phones calls would have been a great opportunity to use Golden Years tainted black. Basically could have ruined Sandra's relationship with all her pawns and considering how her relationships seem to have been built on mind magic it feels like just undoing her influence. Would not have even cost us any essanse.
Last edited: