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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
- Location
- Germany
For Lash herself I'd still recommend she doesn't waste Faith on making herself immune right now.
VX is not that quick-acting and she can definitly use Body Control to heal herself if she gets infected, for no Faith cost.
- Location
- Germany
Tiffany's Science has payed off more than once this quest.
Good to have someone round out that weakness in our setup.
Hmm... make sense. Editing.
Aren't you guys planning to keep your word to Maeve? Sandra is not going to need charges after that I can say that much.
Sure but that will explain the rockets in the streets and what not. Its just a plausable denialbility. And the terrorism charges will allow the government and us to root out all her associates and basically fabricate ways to abduct whoever we want. We can make that new york cult a part of it as well.
This is post 9/11 america, might as well use the quasi-fascist law to our benefit.
COMMENTARY
Gonna note that the investigations of Arianna's disappearance will certainly have revealed records that she took a trip to the southwestern US to hire a naagloshii to go to Chicago.
She might even have come to Vegas first to get directions on where to find Seeker's lair.
That the naagloshii, Molly and Dresden are all here, but Arianna is not, is a pretty strong indication of what happened.
Whether its publicly acknowledged or not.
Arlene did say that this Marcel dude was young for what power he had, and it shows.
Too much anger and not enough fear in that Rampire's reaction.
We might have to fix that.
And as an aside, if Silk's canon control issues with her magic exist here?
Lash might well be able to fix that if she's willing to do a deal. She's fucking a Rampire, she's either a risktaker or desperate.
Plugging that avenue of influence from an ambitious Rampire is worth doing in and of itself.
Pleasure to deal with competent Feds.
But I dont really see anywhere they can help right now, and a lot of places where increasing the size of our party just slows us the fuck down.
Not to mention there's a bunch of things where the Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress are best served by plausible deniability, so when asked questions by other federal agencies and their political oversight, they can honestly claim ignorance of events.
Advanced alchemical bullshit. That for once Molly isnt responsible for.
Thats like access to Alchemy 4-6 to pull off that level of bullshit if we're using Path Alchemy, or Thaumaturgical Alchemy 3/4 if using VTM's thaumaturgy ratings.
Both paint Sandra as some sort of multidisciplinary magical polymath. Girlboss.
Like I said, Sandra is extraordinarily competent for an Outsider cultist, and has regularly punched above her apparent weight class with limited resources. Failing to take her seriously will bite us in the ass.
That would be a mistake.
An unsolved mystery that can be buried in the cold case files is much less of an issue than people actually arrested, sitting in a federal courtroom and subject to interrogation in front of a camera and a judge, with defense lawyers asking you to prove your allegations.
Thats why there were no charges for anyone involved in the rogue FBI team serial killings in Fool Moon. Even Murphy putting a bullet in the head of Agent-in-Charge Denton didnt attract an investigation, or hearings, or anything of the sort.
Everything got swept under a tidy rug, because official questions attract official answers in official records.
We do not need the law to root out her associates. We never have.
And even the worst excesses of the Patriot Act days required more due process than the supernatural world will give anyone who is believed to be trying to fuck everyone else over.
Nothing here belongs in the mundane judicial system.
Much less when you have to corrupt the justice system to actually put it there. Keep them separate.
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VOTE
[X] Thank her for the offer but this will be easier to handle with a small team
We already have six people in this war party.
We're on the edge of unwieldy. And frankly, its not like most of the people we have to talk to have any real respect for the authority of the organs of the US federal state.
Besides, there may be secrets we might be obliged to keep from the Feds.
Hard to do so if there's agents on your team.
[X] Thank her for the offer but this will be easier to handle with a small team
We already have six people in this war party.
We're on the edge of unwieldy. And frankly, its not like most of the people we have to talk to have any real respect for the authority of the organs of the US federal state.
Besides, there may be secrets we might be obliged to keep from the Feds.
Hard to do so if there's agents on your team.
We need to do this because then this will work as basis of every outsider supporter being declared a terrorist once the veil breaks.
This can serve as legal precdent for closed door sealed trials for crimes against reality.
And it will allow the library to acquire more funding and gain greater remit to root out troublesome groups for us. Like a red court duke of a city or the skinwalker cult. We can hunt them but we can't be everywhere, we need to start arming the nations of the world with tools to protect themselves.
Are you planning on killing them? Most of them aren't magical at all, or shouldn't be statistically speaking. They might have some very, very minor gifts, in the vein of every human being at least somewhat magical and capable of ritualistic magic, but for the most part, they are insane doomsday cultist terrorists. That their patrons are real (for a given sense of reality) is almost besides the matter.
We will have to either kill, mind wipe, or incarcerate them at the end of this. Possibly do a combination of those three things. I rather not put them in our kingdom. So, again, unless we are planning on murdering them all, we pretty much have to get them taken away by feds. How they are going to do this, is a separate issue.
So, in the paradigm of maintaining the masquerade, I vote to accept observers from the Library - and that's what they are, make no mistake, they'll be there as much to spy on us, as they would be to keep mundanes away.
[X] A couple of discrete agents to smooth things over would be helpful
-[X] Not for combat, but to keep mundane law enforcement away and prevent masquerade breaches. Possibly to take mortal cultists away afterwards too.
- Location
- Germany
I seriously doubt it.
The student is just multiplying a non-magical substance, that he already understands from his background in Chemistry.
I think that's much more likely to be low-end magic, cleverly combined with mundane skill and knowledge. I'd call it level 1 on Path-Sorcery, with added requirements being a good Science score and less dangerous poisons that function by a similar principle as the basis.
And besides, we haven't even seen how well it works yet.
[X] A couple of discrete agents to smooth things over would be helpful
-[X] Not for combat, but to keep mundane law enforcement away and prevent masquerade breaches. Possibly to take mortal cultists away afterwards too.
Edit: Alchemy 1 includes: "the alchemist can create compounds and substances that are simply more advanced or potent versions of existing chemicals"
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Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
[X] Thank her for the offer but this will be easier to handle with a small team
-[X] This operation has already gotten messy. While we don't need her agents for what comes next, ask her to be ready to help contain the aftermath. The enemy have already brought military grade weapons into the conflict and are planning to use nerve gas. Who knows what the final result will be? Whatever happens, they are going to need a plausible explanation ready for public consumption, including those authorities not read in on the supernatural world.
-[X] This operation has already gotten messy. While we don't need her agents for what comes next, ask her to be ready to help contain the aftermath. The enemy have already brought military grade weapons into the conflict and are planning to use nerve gas. Who knows what the final result will be? Whatever happens, they are going to need a plausible explanation ready for public consumption, including those authorities not read in on the supernatural world.
[X] A couple of discrete agents to smooth things over would be helpful
-[X] Not for combat, but to keep mundane law enforcement away and prevent masquerade breaches. Possibly to take mortal cultists away afterwards too.
-[X] Not for combat, but to keep mundane law enforcement away and prevent masquerade breaches. Possibly to take mortal cultists away afterwards too.
What you are proposing is literally the opposite of what we want to see.
The next time someone arrests Dresden or Molly or some poor schmuck as a person of interest in a magic event, someone is sure as fuck going to pull this out as a threat.
The very first story arc of this quest involved Federal agents twisting the spirit of the law to serve their own political purposes.
And it has permanently tainted Daedalus in our eyes. And Molly also remembers Splattercon, and being interrogated by Lt Green and an FBI agent as a minor without a lawyer, without her parents, in a room with no recourse.
Why would we want to strengthen the legal instruments they can use to do this shit again?
The Library is not the only Federal agency that can threaten you with Federal laws, as we saw with Daedalus.
And Outsider cultists, and agents of other powers can get into government or government agencies and use their legal powers against people.
Not just targeting Molly, who can actually do something about it, but Jane McMinorTalent in Podunk USA, who has fuckall recourse. Even Dresden had problems when Rudolf the dirty cop fingered him with a false accusation.
The Library did not complain about their funding. And they explicitly do not want to assume that remit, because it puts them in the line of fire of groups with the power and will to murder them for it. They havent survived two hundred years without knowing their power level, which is something we've been complaining about Daedalus.
You are essentially trying to speedrun all the mistakes that Daedalus has been reviled for in this quest.
All mortals are magic in this AU according to the QM and Dresdenverse lore.
That was the point of the Pathfinder drug program in Cleveland.
We spoke to Frankie.
He wasnt insane, any more than an ISIS convert or a Aum Shinrikyo cultist was insane.
A convert to a nihilistic evil ideology, but not insane.
Marling's inner circle, the Frankies and so on, are not going to survive this anyway.
She is going to expend them one way or the other, the same way she was willing to expend this city.
And she's had months to install mods in them, with or without their knowledge.
Lack of active magical talent has never prevented people from being possessed or given magical upgrades.
The Pathfinders were able to upgrade most of their members. Molly makes bakemono, Lash thralls, the Fomori magic supersoldiers, the Stygian Sisterhood installed psychic mods on their members.
And Denarian!Marcone went from zero magic to magical powerhouse after Thorned Namshiel became his Fallen.
Like I said, the inner circle of true believers is not going to survive.
If they're not all dead, Im voting to dump them on Winter or the White Council, both of whom have procedures for this.
I agree that we probably dont want any of these people near our Hell.
How many of our secrets are you comfortable with unknown Federal agents seeing?
We already have issues with deciding whether to use RVD in front of Adkins to regenerate Essence; populating the files of a Federal agency is not something you should want to do.
Those Feds have to follow orders when asked to report. And those reports can be shared with troublemaker agencies like Daedalus, or given to other people as bargaining chips in a negotiation.
Or stolen and passed along by infiltrators
This is a situation where you warn the Librarians so they are on standby for cleanup/coverup afterwards.
What you neither need nor want is their agents along, making us secondguess what we can or cannot do in the moment. Especially since we still know very little about the Library and its backers besides their competence.
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Because there are people that trying to end reality. We need to make them so uncomfortable they are always hounded.
We use the billions we gain from conquering las vegas to fund a support network for minor talents.
Its not like they can't already do whatever they want to do with minor talents now. If they have the options to go the police its much more secure for them.
Times have changed, the veil will fall and they need to step up, you don't get to choose your battles as a fedeal agency, you have to protect the people.
They are only a mistake if we fail.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
We aren't even sure we are going to be doing that. It really depends on how this all plays out.
At any rate I don't want the FBI to know any of our secrets. They just need to be here for clean up anyways so why take the risk?
[X] Thank her for the offer but this will be easier to handle with a small team
-[X] This operation has already gotten messy. While we don't need her agents for what comes next, ask her to be ready to help contain the aftermath. The enemy have already brought military grade weapons into the conflict and are planning to use nerve gas. Who knows what the final result will be? Whatever happens, they are going to need a plausible explanation ready for public consumption, including those authorities not read in on the supernatural world.
They are already hounded.
Its literally a death penalty for mortals to mess with Outsiders, and every named character we've seen call on Outsiders or Outsider power has died an ignominous death in the series.
These are not discriminate tools.
The same laws you propose can be used by undercover Outsider cultists to coerce normals into abetting crimes against reality.
Can be used by dirty cops to harass their sponsor's enemies.
Its been less than a year since we saw Daedalus attempt to coerce Dresden into cutting a deal with them by arresting him for a murder they knew he did not commit.
And in the process, they let an actual baddie commit a mass murder of more than 20 people.
We are not conquering Las Vegas.
And even if we did, I cannot imagine exactly how you expect to make money from Vegas without turning Molly into either a crime lord or demanding taxes from the inhabitants.
A support network means nothing when you have made it legally permissible to rendition supernaturals and determine their fate in closed-door trials.
Molly is the family friend of a White Council wizard, and daughter of a Knight, and a connected CPD Lt is a family acquaintance. Molly was also detained and interrogated in a locked room as a minor without a lawyer or her parents present, or any of her rights read to her. This was less than eight months ago.
Abuses of the law happen all the time regardless of what is on the books. And in the Dresden Files, a distressing number of cops will either cover for abuses, or perpetrate them.
And yes, Im counting Agent Denton's FBI team as a reminder that the Feds are not immune.
They cant do what they want with minor talents now.
The existing legal tools of compulsion and coercion are limited, and they dont have the political support. Thats why people like Mortimer Lindquist can operate more or less openly. Why changelings only worry about hostile Fae.
That changes if we follow your recommendations.
You are literally proposing that we create the atmosphere of fear and suspicion the Walkers have been laboring to create for ages.
No they havent. Same shit different day. This is a problem thats been managed since before the birth of Christ; handing it
US Federal agencies have enough trouble keeping infiltrators from getting hold of sensitive information or getting agents of influence into positions of power. You're basically asking for the next Sandra to work her way into position as the FBI director and dictate how this shit is implemented.
Or, more likely, the FBI director's mistress. Or friend to their child. Or their barista.
They are a mistake for the same reason mutant persecution in the Marvel universe was a disaster for law enforcement.
Because make no error, thats in effect what you are proposing. This will be used to pressure and coerce the supernatural community and will make it more difficult to get information from them.
Literally everyone who lives in the US has seen or heard stories of the extent to which law enforcement can engage in abuses of power when there is no oversight. And has seen or heard of miscarriages of justice grotesque enough to turn the stomach.
And not just the LEOs.
Large sections of the national security apparatus did not cover itself in glory during the War on Terror days, and have done actively harmful things like torture.
And you are proposing that we hand a massive expansion of power and justification and enforcement to an apparatus we have knowledge will abuse it. When the stakes are as grave as Outsider breaches.
Thats just a bad idea.
I mean, the last time these guys got adjacent to magic, some bright spark in the CIA apparently tried to weaponize it during the 1960s, and created such a mess that the Knights had to step in to clean things up.
I'm of two minds on this.
The Librarians are basically the good feds, it's remarkable how consistently they've avoided fucking up while still doing a dangerous job and it inclines me to want to involve them. Not just for their utility, but because as mortals being cut out is part of how they're kept down.
If we want the system to get better and for mortals to have more say in the supernatural then we need to by some means encourage the parts of it that we want to be more prominent.
Look at Von Trier's interlude; the senator listened to her because she had a better argument, but the more the government guys have to sit on their hands the more they'll want to change the game until they don't have to. This is fundamentally why groups like Daedalus keep cropping up.
On the other hand, if she comes back to Senator what's-his-name with the politically correct way to say "Because we aren't assholes the woman you saw on TV deflecting RPGs with a sword called and reported the situation. We have agents on the ground now working to quietly resolve the situation" makes Daedalus look almost comically incompetent*. It's creatively reframing the truth a bit, but that's office politics.
On the other, it does give them information and access we might be better off if they didn't have. It may also cause us issues when we want to extradite Sandra to Maeve's magical extradimensional torture basement. Which we still need to do so that she actually goes somewhere the information will be of use and so that Maeve doesn't hire someone else to retrieve her from the feds.
*That's also part of why I'm tempted to make a deal with them on limited runs of ray guns for Uncle Sam.
I maintain they'd be materially useful to their agents, but inside every grown adult there's a five year old who thinks lasers are cool. Which makes them politically valuable in excess of their material utility for a group in their position. In the great what have you done for me lately evaluation the argument can be framed like this:
Librarians:
- Understand what's happening
- Are cool enough to get invited to smokecultists behind the bleachers with demon princesses
- Know a guy who'll sell them the good ray guns
Daedalus goons
- Need a felony to find their own ass
- Are laughed at for making up their own words for things they 'discover' that everyone else already knows about
- Want to flash Vegas to see how it reacts
The Librarians are basically the good feds, it's remarkable how consistently they've avoided fucking up while still doing a dangerous job and it inclines me to want to involve them. Not just for their utility, but because as mortals being cut out is part of how they're kept down.
If we want the system to get better and for mortals to have more say in the supernatural then we need to by some means encourage the parts of it that we want to be more prominent.
Look at Von Trier's interlude; the senator listened to her because she had a better argument, but the more the government guys have to sit on their hands the more they'll want to change the game until they don't have to. This is fundamentally why groups like Daedalus keep cropping up.
On the other hand, if she comes back to Senator what's-his-name with the politically correct way to say "Because we aren't assholes the woman you saw on TV deflecting RPGs with a sword called and reported the situation. We have agents on the ground now working to quietly resolve the situation" makes Daedalus look almost comically incompetent*. It's creatively reframing the truth a bit, but that's office politics.
On the other, it does give them information and access we might be better off if they didn't have. It may also cause us issues when we want to extradite Sandra to Maeve's magical extradimensional torture basement. Which we still need to do so that she actually goes somewhere the information will be of use and so that Maeve doesn't hire someone else to retrieve her from the feds.
*That's also part of why I'm tempted to make a deal with them on limited runs of ray guns for Uncle Sam.
I maintain they'd be materially useful to their agents, but inside every grown adult there's a five year old who thinks lasers are cool. Which makes them politically valuable in excess of their material utility for a group in their position. In the great what have you done for me lately evaluation the argument can be framed like this:
Librarians:
- Understand what's happening
- Are cool enough to get invited to smoke
- Know a guy who'll sell them the good ray guns
Daedalus goons
- Need a felony to find their own ass
- Are laughed at for making up their own words for things they 'discover' that everyone else already knows about
- Want to flash Vegas to see how it reacts
So, and just to be clear - you are aiming at killing them all? Because that's at least partially our choice to make, not just Sandra's. You are going after them with lethal intent, not subduing them, but killing them.
I dont expect it to matter. Not for the inner circle.
I think we are going to end up in a Pathfinder-type shooting situation at the end of this where lethal force is likely to be the only option, and any survivors will likely go to the White Council or Winter. If they are implementing chemical WMDs at scale, Im expecting the equivalent of suicide vests up close, magical or otherwise.
More broadly? I have no current reason to believe that the Library can safely hold or contain people who have deliberately committed/opened themselves to the Outside; they appear competent, but as far as we know they dont scale that high, and as an organization they are barely two hundred years old.
EDIT
The Library have a liaison with the White Council.
I doubt this is the first time they have run into Outsider cultists, or the White Council's policy towards them.
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