Wherever we're heading, @DragonParadox, is it far enough that we could benefit from spending at least 15 minutes in a perfume bottle of bleach to recover more Essence while in transit?
[X] Head to where 'your' vampires said their fellows had gathered, Orpheus' former abode
The meeting started with introductions, Molly introduced her friends and Viserys did the same. It was a strange introduction for everyone involved and they all had to adapt quickly on the spot.
But to everyone's surprise they were more similar than anyone had expected. Both parties had a Knight, of course the nature and temperament of each knight was like knight and day but at their core both are warriors that fight for what they believe.
Both parties had a Unusually powerful wizard, one was a man with the stubbornness of a mule and the heart of a hero while the other was a woman of startling insight and intellect. But they both loved magic with a passion and eyed each other with wariness and respect.
The pair of precocious teens with phenomenal power and a hatred for the heartless god-beings that hurt their family was unremarked because no one wanted to piss off Dany.
Finally, there were the leaders of the troupes. Both were young beings with immense power, sovereigns of their own realms and powerful enough to fight gods. It was the meeting of an immovable object and an unstoppable force.
It is strange of Viserys to meet someone that can play the game of etiquette with him. Someone whose words were as honey sweet as his own and whose actions rang with competence. It was invigorating for him to meet his match after out arguing devils and out swindling djinns.
"So that's how we pranked Sir Richard here, you should have seen the look on his recruits' faces when he came in with pink armor." Dany says as the last of the food is cleared and dessert is brought in. Sir Richard gave an exasperated yet fond smile towards Dany.
"That was a funny story Dany, but now that dinner is over let's get to the reason for this dinner. I believe Ms Molly had some concerns regarding our enterprise and she wanted to ask some questions." Viserys says and the mood in the room turns from jovial to a bit more somber.
"Of course, First I would like to thank you for accepting this meeting. Usually mysterious billionaires are a pain in the ass to get a hold off. But as a Free-Holding Lady of Chicago, I had some concerns, not major concerns but things came up during a regular intelligence sweep of Chicago and I wanted to ask you some questions regarding these revelations." Molly says with the perfect mixture of respect and authority to assure that her words won't cause offense yet couldn't be rebuffed easily. Viserys especially like that part where she subtly threatened him with the casual mentions of the Accords that bound this world's wizards and monsters, implying she had legal standing to demand these answers from him. He also didn't miss the implication that she had an fairly capable intelligence arm to her operations and what she may have found out during her investigations to make him nervous about lying.
"Of course, We would be happy to answer any questions you have. It is a pleasure to make the acquaintance of a free-holding lady. We have been doing some research as well. We actually wanted to expand into Chicago, the Ley Line Nexus will be very useful for our expansion. But we wouldn't want to cause any conflict, it would be harmful to the local socio-political structures." He replies and his couter stroke isn't subtle but it gets the point across.
She gives him a considerate look for a second and then starts asking the question.
"Our concern was with your cell phones, they appear to be sympathetic receivers and casting foci to channel some sort of ritual. I was worried that it wouldn't harm the people of Chicago or in general." She queries and Lya responds adroitly.
"Oh I see where your concern would come from. If you have the correct ritual array you could use the phones, receivers and repeaters for a specifically designed ritual." She mumbles for a second and notes something down, probably planning on theorizing just such a ritual. Viserys loved Lya with all his heart but she was often distracted with magic.
But she continued as if she hadn't doodled a spell diagram.
"No it's not a ritual link, when we were designing our casting tool for our mage wrights. We realized that digital mediums are so much more versatile that a page of spell knowledge or a grimoire or a spellbook. So I spent 6 months creating Universal Digital Spell modules that can replicate most spells up to the third circle, anything above that and the circuitry of the devices can't handle the energy throughput. It lets the Magewright cast spells they don't know and even innovate some new spells. Viserys told me about this business concept that you guys have here called open innovation and I got to say it's very good." She says with the air of a professional emitting too many details.
"Hold on, that can't be right. Normal people don't have the reserves to cast any spells so no matter how fancy your tech it can't cast spells." Harry Dresden interrupts and Viserys can hear his fascination and yet disgust with the concept of mass produced magic.
"Yes we encountered the same issue, we anticipated it. I was getting to that before I got interrupted." Lya says as harr withers from the comment "We found a few potential solutions to the problem such as tapping into environmental magic, directly converting electricity into magic and even sympathetic magic like what you suspect. But ultimately they were discarded for various reasons of cost and practicality and scalability. We instead created a biotech module essentially a nutrition tank filled with a custom made electro-vore bacterium. The bacteria converts electricity into magical energy that is harvested when the bacteria die in about a day. A crystal capacitor holds the magic till needed. It became too big for a phone so it was made into a separate module. The spell link you are concerned about is the connection point for the module to power the Spells."
Everyone from the other party is giving them incredulous looks and Molly's eyes go wide as she considers the technical brilliance of Lya's solution. She immediately pulls up pictures on her phone and his draconic senses lets Viserys see that it is the inside of his phones.
"We discovered that the mobile phone with the spell link, if protected with a password, slowly draws in the ambient magic from their user's Aura and grows better as it adapts to the user and becomes more secure and intuitive. Metaphysically speaking, and it makes the people that use the phone more sensitive to the arcane." Viserys explains the other question he anticipated.
"That's insane. Stark Raving Madness. Why would you want to do that? It's a breach of the masquerade. You can't do that." Harry says and Viserys can feel the room become more agitated and Harry starts to gather his magic.
"Calm down, Harry. Mr Viserys has been forthcoming with us today and has been nothing but honest with us. I am sure he has valid reasons that we can talk about." Molly says and her words have the calming effect and everyone relaxes or at least appears to, Viserys knows that Sir Richard was this close to beheading the hot headed wizard.
"Indubitably, Miss carpenter. My reasons are fairly simple. Harry is right. I, we, do wish to break this masquerade." He gestures to his side of the table " SImply because I believe it is the right thing to do. I have spent a lot of time in this world researching the hidden magical side and what I have found appalls me. Entire countries are held under the thrall of vampires, this one included, supernatural phages and predators prey upon humanity with impunity, Supernatural beings dictate the fate of the world from the shadows. I can't abide by that state of the world. But don't worry, my plan isn't completely overthrowing the current order. It will be a gradual shift over the years." His words were true yet there was an uncompromising steel to them that he truly didn't mean, he had to learn to compromise in his life. But it wasn't about speaking the truth and meaning it, it was to gauge the people's reaction to his words.
Molly had a thoughtful look in her eyes and as did the fallen Tiffany. It was in contrast to Micheal and Harry's look, their experience warring with the accuracy of Visery's words. It was a conundrum that would ultimately let him uplift the people of this world, and get back home. I know this omake is very much a overly explainer and its very overly verbose. But i don't know how else to showcase superhumanly competent schemers. Apologies for any mistake. next one is from molly's prespective.
Viserys: "And while it is not of primary concern, I am bothered by the lack of interaction the gods of this world have with their followers. I will, of course, make myself available to those of suitable mindset and faith who wish to wield Divine magic in my name."
Wherever we're heading, @DragonParadox, is it far enough that we could benefit from spending at least 15 minutes in a perfume bottle of bleach to recover more Essence while in transit?
[X] Head to where 'your' vampires said their fellows had gathered, Orpheus' former abode
Like I said, this is Peace Talks Harry. Sarissa handled most of his physical therapy after he was reborn, but Mab specifically handled upping his situational awareness to threat, and his casting. And she did so without him having a staff, or a wand, or any sort of tool to help.
Casting drills to build his fundamentals back up aren't a blank check to write in whatever it's be convenient to have winter have taught him. If you're going to make a claim as specific as "It's definitely impossible - or at least deeply impractical - veil from radar and Harry knows this for a fact because Winter told him so" you should cite something demonstrating showing that.
I could claim that it is in fact possible and Harry knows how, but it never comes up because no one ever thinks to use it on him, with the same level of support.
I genuinely doubt it.
Veils do not appear to work like a fixed spell, and more like an ongoing ability. Like you are actively using your fingers to manipulate the world. And that requires at least some level of sensory feedback to do so.
Wizards do have sensory feedback; their senses do not work like baseline humans' do and it isn't just magic in use. Wizards design spells by looking at the world as it stands and doing things to the energy in it. This sensory problem is basically striking at the fundamentals of how they work.
I mean, searching for something with Thaumaturgy isn't exactly a plug a play activity either. Is Dresden supposed to be using his actual eyes to pick out the connection or something?
No Im not.
A lot of Winter's nobility, if not the vast majority, can veil no problem. Pretty good veils at that, according to Cold Days!Dresden.
We see the Redcap and his clique do so in Cold Days, along with some impressive combat shapeshifting.
My point was that demonstrating impressive magical ability in various fields is why Harry and Molly were ever in consideration for their roles at all. Molly was really good at veils and illusions before she received any instruction from the fey.
This isnt just wizard business though.
This is allegedly old Native American business from before the predecessor to the White Council, and old spirit business, and you can be sure they keep an eye on events in the neighborhood.
So you're no longer banking on the council to tell them? Cause the abrupt shift to another group kind of implies it.
I'm very doubtful any Native American mages would piss on a fed if they were on fire. The strong ones would be a lot fewer generations removed from all the broken promises, back stabbing, and ethnic cleansing we prefer to avoid thinking about.
Take a skim through this. The US signed 368 treaties with various Native American nations before 1778 and 1871; pretty much every one of which was bullshit, immediately broken, or both. To be completely fair a few of those incidents could plausibly be ignorance and stupidity instead of deliberate malice, but even then there was no hesitation to take the opportunity to redefine inconvenient terms snd the things done in the name of that are impossible to excuse.
America has come a long way since then, for all it still has left to go, but I can't imagine a Native American mage trusting the feds with anything at all.
This isnt just wizard business though.
This is allegedly old Native American business from before the predecessor to the White Council, and old spirit business, and you can be sure they keep an eye on events in the neighborhood.
White Council claims jurisdiction over all mortal human practitioners of magic primarily inhabiting material world of planet Earth. So far as we know, most Native American magical practitioners are humans, barring some of them actually being dragonblooded exalts, which would be a very edge case. Thus, by the same legal reasoning that gives Russia a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and control over USSR-made nukes, whatever the old Native American shamans created, is now the White Council's inherited business, unless they (Native Americans that is) wish to claim independence.
White Council claims jurisdiction over all mortal human practitioners of magic primarily inhabiting material world of planet Earth. So far as we know, most Native American magical practitioners are humans, barring some of them actually being dragonblooded exalts, which would be a very edge case. Thus, by the same legal reasoning that gives Russia a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and control over USSR-made nukes, whatever the old Native American shamans created, is now the White Council's inherited business, unless they (Native Americans that is) wish to claim independence.
Part of Listens-To-Wind's backstory is that he struggled as a young wizard between the ideals of the council and rallying magical support to fight the colonial powers. So the council had to have been active in North America long enough to have wizards sold on their management significantly before any settlement started. Otherwise it'd be strange for him to have started out with that problem.
Honestly, I am not sure if the lottery is really worth an AP. Securing a multi-billion trade deal with USA government seems like a better idea, as it also comes with political benefits.
1)Anything thats going to bring in money will cost AP. Thats more or less a given.
2)The US govt does not do multi-billion dollar trade deals with private individuals.
Anything thats going to interest the various elements of the US govt sufficiently to hand over billions of dollars for exclusivity will involve thousands of people of oversight and review, and be sufficiently destabilizing that we will be dealing with the aftermath for the rest of this quest.
And likely in ways that makes it more difficult to work with people outside the US, where the vast bulk of humanity is from.
Significant constituencies in India, China and South America do not regard US political policy with fondness, after all.
Not to debate much but we have at least a handful of individuals at cutting edge levels to some degree due to being practiced for like 3000+ years right? Not a lot but like some individuals with beyond 5 dot skills and such. Some well way less applicable I'm sure some screen writers have like 6 dots in whatever applicable skill that takes which is great for some bitchin plays and stuff not so much for combat.
The top expert that Molly had available to deal with a defect in the weapon shipment to the White Council only had Fortune 4.
If that was the top expert available to the head of state of Sanctuary, I suspect there arent many Tier 5/5+ experts anywhere in the population. Just like there are no wizards.
You're looking at a lot more cooperative work from a lot of mid-rankers than a handful of top experts.
Broad talents, not tall talents.
===
Not that your wrong but I do think there's probably some level of radar adjacent since exploration is a decent part of 5 fold courts culture into the wastes. So being able to tell when things are coming is probably something developed in the past century or two. No idea how reliable it'd be and it could work on principles nonexistent on earth though.
Like I said, Sanctuary's conditions are weird.
I have serious doubts about the development path of radar, in a domain whose natural conditions involve exceedingly powerful magnetic fields, huge metal outcroppings, and aerosolized metal blizzards. I quote:
To venture into this hellscape in an attempt to escape the kingdom of your heart without permission and a guide, is to face an almost guaranteed demise, for even if one was to clad themselves into a space-worthy thermally sealed suit, they would still be fleeced to the bone by a never-ending blizzard of ferrous snow. Electrically charged iron and nickel dust cyclone with the wind speeds far exceeding a hundred meters per second obscures the borders of your realm from outside observation to eye and any electronic equipment.Only those wise in the ways of your soul can dare hope to navigate this terrain.
And yet, not every place within your self is so inhospitable. For even as the iron cyclone rages at the border of the world, a no less ferocious anticyclone expands from its center. Where they meet, in a strip of land 496 kilometers wide, their clash in the skies is both ferocious and life giving.In that narrow space, the titanic magnetic fields generated by them cancel each other, and their particles' collisions generate heat enough that eternal ring of lightning plasma is raging in the skies, unable to escape its natural confinement. The temperature is high enough that liquid water can flow in this equator. The light is soft and bright enough that photosynthesis is effective. And life, or at least life recognizable by Earthborn eyes at first glance, strives there, desperate to occupy this narrow ring of space allowed to it. Dense and ever shifting forests rustle in the ever-blowing winds, their deep blue crowns endlessly shrugging metal dust from themselves. Their trunks stretch ever further in hopes to catch the lightning and fill their underground capacitors with vital energy. Fast and dangerous beasts, iron hided and sharp toothed traverse metal coated land of ever shifting shadows below, seeking either fruit or prey, for life is short and dangerous in this world, and no source of nourishment is to be dismissed.
It is among these forests that civilization of your world exists. It is confined mostly into five great megacities sitting in five corners of a great pentacle, 5747 kilometers from the center of the world. Each city-state is positioned on top of a great pole of metal, large enough to generate its own magnetic field and prevent metal dust from passing into the city, and to serve as a source of free electricity for the city-state's industry. Only the tips of the great pillars protrude above ground, but they are still more than ten kilometers high, extending far enough into the skies that the air pressure at their tops is barely a half of what it is where they enter the ground, and akin to the one you are accustomed to. The size of each settlement is far larger than any that could be found on Earth. Each boasts the population equal to the largest nations of your birth world. They are connected to each other by a vast cavern system, partly natural, and long since expanded with intelligent intent, forming the beams of the pentagram, with great armored trains coursing through the tunnels.
This does not appear to be a radar-friendly environment to me, and is the sort of thing to incentivize alternative technological paths for sensing purposes.
Part of the issue with the two places being so radically different is that we cant automatically assume that shit built to work in one place will necessarily work in another.
:le shrug:
Casting drills to build his fundamentals back up aren't a blank check to write in whatever it's be convenient to have winter have taught him. If you're going to make a claim as specific as "It's definitely impossible - or at least deeply impractical - veil from radar and Harry knows this for a fact because Winter told him so" you should cite something demonstrating showing that.
I could claim that it is in fact possible and Harry knows how, but it never comes up because no one ever thinks to use it on him, with the same level of support.
They werent casting drills.
They were alertness and responsiveness drills, to which he could respond with magic or just physically. I quote:
"I have no use for weakness, wizard." She shivered in a kind of slow, alien ecstasy. "Rest. Heal. Sleep. I shall most likely kill you on the morrow."
"You? A Princess Bride quote?" I croaked.
"What is that?" she asked.
Then she was gone. Just gone.
And that was day one of my physical therapy.
* * *
I could describe the next few weeks in detail, but as bad as they were, they did have a certain routine to them. Besides, in my head, they're a music video montage set to the Foo Fighters' "Walk."
I would wake in the morning and find Sarissa waiting for me, keeping a polite and professional distance between us. She would help me take care of the needs of my weakened body, which was rarely dignified, but she never spoke about herself. At some point after that, Mab would try to kill me in increasingly unexpected and inventive ways.
In the video in my head, there's a shot of me eating my own meal again—until, just as I finish, the giant bed bursts into flames. I awkwardly flop out of it and crawl away before I roast. Then, obviously the next day, Sarissa is helping me walk to the bathroom and back. Just as I relax back into bed, a poisonous serpent, a freaking Indian cobra, falls from the bed's canopy onto my shoulders. I scream like a girl and throw it on the floor. The next day, I'm fumbling my way into new clothes with Sarissa's help—until a small swarm of stinging ants comes boiling out of them onto my flesh, and I have to literally rip the clothes off of me.
It goes on like that. Sarissa and me on waist-high parallel bars, me struggling to remember how to keep my balance, interrupted by a tidal flood of red-eyed rats that forces us to hop up onto the bars before our feet get eaten off. Sarissa spotting me on a bench press, and then Mab bringing a great big old fireman's ax whistling down at my head at the end of my third set so that I have to block with the stupid straight bar. Me slogging my exhausted way into a hot shower, only to have the door slam shut and the thing start to fill with water. Into which freaking piranha begin to plop.
On and on. Seventy-seven days. Seventy-seven attempted murders. Use your imagination. Mab sure as hell did. There was even a ticking crocodile.
She trained his senses and his responses. And his paranoia.
Not his casting.
Wizards do have sensory feedback; their senses do not work like baseline humans' do and it isn't just magic in use. Wizards design spells by looking at the world as it stands and doing things to the energy in it. This sensory problem is basically striking at the fundamentals of how they work.
I mean, searching for something with Thaumaturgy isn't exactly a plug a play activity either. Is Dresden supposed to be using his actual eyes to pick out the connection or something?
Wizards have sensory feedback with life and magic, and the patterns of nature.
As far as Im aware, we've never seen a wizard experience sensory feedback from something technological in the setting.
We see Dresden sense lightning and storm patterns, but not electricity in the wires, for example.
What does that have to do with anything?
My point was that demonstrating impressive magical ability in various fields is why Harry and Molly were ever in consideration for their roles at all. Molly was really good at veils and illusions before she received any instruction from the fey.
My point is that Molly wasnt recruited for her skill at veils or illusions.
Lea displayed an interest in Molly before she even developed any magic; she spoke of her to Michael back in Grave Peril, iirc.
So you're no longer banking on the council to tell them? Cause the abrupt shift to another group kind of implies it.
I'm very doubtful any Native American mages would piss on a fed if they were on fire. The strong ones would be a lot fewer generations removed from all the broken promises, back stabbing, and ethnic cleansing we prefer to avoid thinking about.
Take a skim through this. The US signed 368 treaties with various Native American nations before 1778 and 1871; pretty much every one of which was bullshit, immediately broken, or both. To be completely fair a few of those incidents could plausibly be ignorance and stupidity instead of deliberate malice, but even then there was no hesitation to take the opportunity to redefine inconvenient terms snd the things done in the name of that are impossible to excuse.
America has come a long way since then, for all it still has left to go, but I can't imagine a Native American mage trusting the feds with anything at all.
I am.
Im also pointing out that they have/should have sufficient alternative sources of information for something this public that it does not benefit the White Council in any way to be less than forthcoming about this.
Especially since Dead Beat was only 18 months or so away, and the Council is, according to Ebenezar McCoy in Proven Guilty, still very reliant on the efforts and goodwill of allies and friends picking up the slack for it in the aftermath of the Council's major military losses of that time.
===
Im aware of what the history of the United States with regards to its Native American citizens has been.
At least as bad as its been with its African-American citizens.
However, we know that whoever wrote the basic field manual for Daedalus appeared to be better informed about Native American magical phenomena than just normal human magic.
And that it is explicit for this quest that the Feds intervened decisively in the lesser skinwalker-Navajo war:
Such were the gifts of the Great One Bobby explained in the dreamy infatuated voice of one wholly enthralled to the allure of a vampire, to break man's works and man's minds, to make hearts race with terror and then rip them from bleeding hearts. Unsurprisingly perhaps the Broken Arrows have a special loathing for the Navajo though it is taboo for them to hunt them without a direct command from their foul 'god'. All that had changed when 'that whelp Ralph' killed and devoured the heart of a medicine man. There had been open war for almost a full month kept from the outside as much by the sheer remoteness of the desert before somehow the feds had gotten involved and driven the cannibals put into what they called 'the bone wood' and which you recognize at once as a particularly macabre layer of the Nevernever. There the survivors had honed their craft, grown their power, feasting on the essence of unfortunate spirits driven into that tainted place...
There arent many magically-knowledgeable US Federal organizations around.
And based on their performance in Chicago, that aint Daedalus; if they cant handle anti-muggle wards, lesser skinwalkers would have eaten them alive. Possibly literally.
White Council claims jurisdiction over all mortal human practitioners of magic primarily inhabiting material world of planet Earth. So far as we know, most Native American magical practitioners are humans, barring some of them actually being dragonblooded exalts, which would be a very edge case. Thus, by the same legal reasoning that gives Russia a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and control over USSR-made nukes, whatever the old Native American shamans created, is now the White Council's inherited business, unless they (Native Americans that is) wish to claim independence.
I dont know if we can assume modern human legal precedent has any bearing on supernatural common law.
Human wizards were almost certainly involved in the creation of the Archive, for example, but you dont see them trying to give her orders.
The White Council formally claims a lot of things, not all of them enforcible.
Prior to the war breaking out, the Reds had mortal or part-mortal sorcerers in their employ. So, apparently did some of the Whites. The Council never formally pressed the issue.
When the Sin-Eater chose the Dragon as its representative in 1905, whatever agreements or treaties were made did not give them veto power either.
Besides.
Most Native American magical practitioners appear to be shamans, and the shamanic magical traditions appear to meld religion and magic; generally the Council appears to prefer not to go out of its way to tussle with gods and the servants of gods.
Good point about the DBs.
Porter did say he'd met an Exalt once(or at least someone who felt like Molly) a long time ago.
Something we might want to follow up on in the future.
2)The US govt does not do multi-billion dollar trade deals with private individuals.
Anything thats going to interest the various elements of the US govt sufficiently to hand over billions of dollars for exclusivity will involve thousands of people of oversight and review, and be sufficiently destabilizing that we will be dealing with the aftermath for the rest of this quest.
And likely in ways that makes it more difficult to work with people outside the US, where the vast bulk of humanity is from.
Significant constituencies in India, China and South America do not regard US political policy with fondness, after all.
We are already supplying demonic rayguns to White Council. Expanding from there to establishing actual relationship with Earthside humanity is a logical step.
Also, sure US government will give billions of dollars to private individuals and off the books. It all depends on what said individual is offering.
Molly looked at the unfairly pretty man that sat across from her, his delicate yet distinguished features hid a mind sharp as a razor, his voice with liquid sex cut with heroin and whenever he laughed with his companions he had a kind smile.
Normally Molly wouldn't be enamored by the looks of supernatural opponents, but Viserys wasn't the unnatural beauty of the fae. But it was just a passing thought in her analysis of the situation.
His beauty wasn't the real danger, his words were honeyed. It reminded her of dealing with Tiffany when she was stuck in Harry's head.
Molly wouldn't lie and say that she hadn't had the same thoughts before. But the experience of her father and Harry had dissuaded her from pursuing those goals. Then the Library of Congress had insisted on the need for a masquerade as well, hiding secrets from even their own compatriots. After that she had become the Free-Holding Lady of Chicago and Empress of her Soul World. The Accords had slowly warped her in chains, voluntarily and slowly to her own benefit, because these chains of the system came with incentives. A buy-in that was a poisoned apple, putting her ambitions to sleep so she fights to maintain the status quo instead of improving the world. Her work was important, she had saved the world a dozen times over but she knew that the rush to save the world has distracted her from chaining the world in a better direction.
These thoughts pass through her head in a millisecond and her supernal skill allows her to present her point without being belligerent like harry.
"That seems like a great goal, I tend to agree with a lot of what you are saying. But there are complications you may not be aware of, potential points of catastrophe that make it a difficult transformation." She pauses and then gives a truncated and censored but comprehensive summary of the outsider and fallen threats as well as the newly emerged formor empire.Tthe last one seems annoy Viserys in particular.
"You think that you are the only one that cares about humans. We have fought time and time again to save human lives. We protect them, often from themselves if we have to." Harry says and his conviction rings through his words.
Molly sees Viserys absorb their briefing and turn to his friends.
"I guess history does truly rhyme." He says and his friends laugh as Molly's companion looks on with confusion.
He turns to her and says.
"I don't know if you will believe me, but I swear to you we have faced all of the threats you have described. Remember how we told you we were banished by the void outside of reality in a last spiteful act, these outsiders you describe exactly like the minions we faced from it. We had our own undersea biomancers bent on domination, we had our own devils bent on turning the world into their own fiefdoms." He pauses in his emotional declaration and looks Molly in the eyes.
"We won against them all. We burned out the Illithids, We defeated and made binding peace with the devils, We broke the Ifrit slavers and We took over the Blood War. We rebuilt heaven and banished the Void." He invoked these grand deeds and something responded, she could hear the weight of these deeds in his words, a sort of invocation of epoch defining events that were powerful even in another world.
"We did all that by stuffing enough spell steel down our enemies throat and then we planted an Imperial Legion in far flung planes. Mortal Men stood in control of Dis for a decade before the Insurgency pushed us out and even then we got concession out of Asmodeus. We captured the chief of the winter queen, the chief minion of the void, and used her to banish the void from our world. The imperial legions held the line against the Horsemen of the apocalypse and their horde of demons and the winter court that day. Because they were equipped with the tools and knowledge to make a difference. The potential of a human is more than anyone, even us, can know. It is the height of hubris to dictate that humanity can't know about their birthright." He concludes his soliloquy.
Everyone in the room stays silent after that monologue and just digests the word for a few seconds.
Molly appreciates the speech on a technical level, a call to action and evocation of his past achievement but Molly had something to say.
"That is all impressive and it is likely it will work but I think it isn't comparable to this world. The population and technology of our world means that it would only take a single nuke or chemical wmd to devstate cities and add into the free proliferation of knowledge from the internet, which I am surprised hasn't leaked your magi-tech, means that it will become a potential vector of dissemination of forbidden summonings and formation of massive cells of outsider cults. It's happening even now and they aren't getting advantage from the Theological, social, economic and political upheaval that will surely occur after lifting of the veil. Even you had to fight a dozen apocalyptic factions in the formation of your empire and frankly they lacked the tools for devastation and force multiplication. We are already struggling with the erosion of social fabric with the advent of social media. Imagine what it could mean if your goth neighbor could summon demons. It would lead to the kind of persecution that would make the witch hunts seem chill." Molly points out just the most obvious flaws in that speech.
"Also you could do all that because you conquered everything as a Fascist Dragon Emperor. We don't want that to be an expectation on you. No offense." Harry adds as well with unusual insight.
"All fair points. But that is the point I am saying. Our world proves that it is possible to give magic to a population that didn't have it before. I am not disregarding whatever new challenges we will face and that your enemies won't try to use it for nefarious purposes. That is why I planned for it to be a slow process. But if it is possible to do it, and we will do our best to make sure it's not misused and we are quite capable of it the enemies aren't the only ones capable of using the advantages of this world, isn't it a moral duty to give the spark of magic back to humanity despite the risks. It might permanently solve the problem this world faces." Visery responds and gives a wry smile to Harry "I don't want to rule the World Mr harry. I am quite happy running my company and giving the tools to the people, and I can get any changes I want legally. I don't need to conquer anything, I am rich."
Molly snorts and even harry chuckles.
Yeah I am feeling a bout of inspiration I don't know how long I can sustain it. Also apologies if no one is in character but i have always envision Viserys has a core of idealist buried under mountains and planets of pragmatism.
The problem here is most of the U.S. gov isn't even aware of the supernatural or Molly's significance. They aren't going to be able to just hand off billions on a whim, that amount of money exchanged for anything at all has to be documented. Otherwise you'd have billions of dollars vanishing into thin air and a superpower simply can't function that way and remain intact.
I highly doubt the L.O.C. alone even has the budget to hand off billions and maintain operations. That money would have to come from somewhere which means other aspects of the U.S. which aren't in the know. Molly doesn't even have a track record that would justify dropping billions on her to most people, it would just seem ludicrous.
Our best bet would likely be to buy up some already existing, but fairly small military contractor company then set about heavily expanding it.
U.S. government absolutely hates buying military equipment abroad and will pay though the nose to produce domestic instead. We aren't going to be able to sell them ray guns at least not in bulk. They would rather spend billions reverse engineering then then pay that money to us.
After all a billion dollars payed to reverse engineer goes right back into the U.S. economy to be taxed again. A billion dollars to a foreign country just disappears.
[X] Spend your last focus and a mote of essence to find out where Sandra is right now
The problem here is most of the U.S. gov isn't even aware of the supernatural or Molly's significance. They aren't going to be able to just hand off billions on a whim, that amount of money exchanged for anything at all has to be documented. Otherwise you'd have billions of dollars vanishing into thin air and a superpower simply can't function that way and remain intact.
I highly doubt the L.O.C. alone even has the budget to hand off billions and maintain operations. That money would have to come from somewhere which means other aspects of the U.S. which aren't in the know. Molly doesn't even have a track record that would justify dropping billions on her to most people, it would just seem ludicrous.
While LoC almost certainly lacks resources, they should have contacts. And if we are going to expand into Earthrealm, getting those contacts should be useful.
While LoC almost certainly lacks resources, they should have contacts. And if we are going to expand into Earthrealm, getting those contacts should be useful.
I tried once and decided the system incompatibility was too large to do anything more than vaguely guess and roughly convert, for a lot of different reasons. One of the things that struck me was that D&D/PF is littered with pseudo-perfect effects everywhere starting at level 1.
You know Magic Missile, the iconic 1st level spell for beginner wizards? Look closely at it and realize it hits without an attack roll, deals damage without a saving throw, and the damage is of an esoteric type that isn't affected by damage resistance or energy resistance. Also, it hits incorporeal creatures.
If you wrote up an Exalted charm that combined autohit, ignore soak, long range, and spirit-striking, the GM would probably nerf it and glare at you.
If you want to pull the curtain on the supernatural to the government, like the Treasury to get those billions for instance it is going to be an uphill battle
Anyway good night guys, you all know what you came into these tunnels to find, that is what Molly and Co will be looking for in the next update.
Negotiating with the LoC is not negotiating with the entire US govt.
Especially when you are talking about getting your hands on sums that are more than the GDP of small countries.
We are already supplying demonic rayguns to White Council. Expanding from there to establishing actual relationship with Earthside humanity is a logical step.
Does not follow.
Establishing formal relationships with mortal governments is a whole different kettle of fish from establishing relationships with their spookyside arms.
And when presenting yourself as an independent faction, it pays not to look like some other faction is bankrolling you.
No they do not. They never have. There is no such thing as off the books when you're talking about 9 and 10-figure sums.
And the fact that you are even making that suggestion means that you arent internalizing how much money you are talking about, or exactly how much oversight is involved in moving US federal moneys around. Or exactly how noticeable that amount of money is in the financial system.
You've said billions. Let me lowball this at 3 billion, and give you some comparative benchmarks.
You are talking about sums in excess of the 2023 budget of the smallest Federal departments like the Small Business Administration. You're talking roughly enough money to buy a 45,000 ton America-class light carrier, or a 70,000 ton Queen Elizabeth-class light carrier.
You're talking about 10% of the 2007 US Marine Corps budget . You're talking enough money to operate three US Navy carrier strike groups for a year, or to buy 36x F35s at 2023 flyaway cost, or 300x UH-60L Black Hawks at flyaway cost. You are talking roughly three times yearly US military aid to Egypt, and roughly the amount that Israel gets each year in military aid.
You are talking almost 4x the 2023 budget of the Library of Congress itself.
The entire budget for all 17 intelligence agencies in the US intelligence community, from the CIA to the NSA, is estimated at more than $80 billion in 2019.
You're asking for more than 3% of it.
Its more than the nominal GDP of Bhutan, Liberia and the Central African Republic circa 2021.
Its more than the nominal yearly budget of 94 countries as of 2020, including Gabon, Rwanda and Kyrgystan.
Its almost the same as the UN regular budget of 2023, which was $3.4 billion.
No body is going to give a private individual that much money without a truly mindbogglingly valuable offer.
And at that point, if its something valuable enough that a government will intervene for exclusivity instead of letting it go to the open market, governments and government officials start thinking in terms of eminent domaining whatever the item is, and daring you to go to court over it. Or passing windfall tax laws.
I tried once and decided the system incompatibility was too large to do anything more than vaguely guess and roughly convert, for a lot of different reasons. One of the things that struck me was that D&D/PF is littered with pseudo-perfect effects everywhere starting at level 1.
You know Magic Missile, the iconic 1st level spell for beginner wizards? Look closely at it and realize it hits without an attack roll, deals damage without a saving throw, and the damage is of an esoteric type that isn't affected by damage resistance or energy resistance. Also, it hits incorporeal creatures.
If you wrote up an Exalted charm that combined autohit, ignore soak, long range, and spirit-striking, the GM would probably nerf it and glare at you.
I don't think it's actually esoteric it says Force damage which nothing in D&D is immune to because well nothing in D&D is immune to magical blast or otherwise affected by just magical energy in general. Also I wouldn't consider resistances or immunities soak because they're not that they're DC reducers and special modifiers or character like merits or backgrounds that Grant special circumstantial reductions from damage dice from certain types of damage.
The spirit striking has more to do with the fact that it's essentially an Essence blast that hits things that are also made of magic in a normal world of Darkness game it would be a perfect attack that hits and does damage on eight or up rolls of the intelligence plus one and then a being in the world of darkness could roll their soak against it which is the difference between Health points and soak because soak is meant to represent kind of thing Health Point are meant to represent General toughness in the face of damage.
Then due to be untyped it would be depending on the Spell lethal or bashing and that is it and while normal humans can't soak lethal in general with such a low dice pool at such a high difficulty too do damage you would see combats that have magic Missile being cast and hitting but aren't doing amazing amounts of damage.
Though I admit the be able to hit everything instantly and hit incaporeal spirit is a bit strong but the low levels of damage in a world of Darkness setting would offset that I guess it would really be down to like a negotiation between the Storyteller and the person trying to make it.
I thought of this while I was typing this out but you could consider a magic Missile essentially a correspondence one Prime three rote by shooting a mass of undifferentiated Primal energy their both hitting pretty much anything within their sight instantly but because it's an undifferentiated mass of Primal energy it does normal damage essentially if it's a dart like magic Missile it does lethal if it's a blast outward it does bashing but it has no other characteristics to give it any other type of damage.
I don't think it's actually esoteric it says Force damage which nothing in D&D is immune to because well nothing in D&D is immune to magical blast or otherwise affected by just magical energy in general. Also I wouldn't consider resistances or immunities soak because they're not that they're DC reducers and special modifiers or character like merits or backgrounds that Grant special circumstantial reductions from damage dice from certain types of damage.
Force damage is esoteric. Two monsters in D&D are resistant or immune to it that I know of: the Force Dragon and the Helmed Horror. Everyone else, full damage taken. Armor won't protect you, Damage Reduction won't protect you, Resist Energy spells won't protect you.
Here we're already hitting major disagreements in system conversion wrt "soak". D&D resistance seems to obviously be the closest thing to Exalted soak mechanically, because it reduces damage taken after you've been hit.
I can see the argument that the role it fills is more like soak-DC-reduction, but going this route creates new problems: 1) resistances scale more or less indefinitely while DC has a very very narrow range to play in so the conversion gets harder, 2) doing role conversion makes it even harder to match up other parts of the system, in particular, 3) the role of armor providing AC in D&D but soak in Exalted, both of which can nullify some attacks, is an argument that magic-missile-bypasses-AC translates to magic-missile-bypasses-soak.
I also disagree with your Prime rote, but my argument isn't really about the specifics of Magic Missile as such, it's that Magic Missile is an example of how very different D&D is from level 1 and how much mess that leads into. Here's another incompatibility:
D&D (maybe not 1st edition) expects you to take HP damage, and expects your HP to grow from 7 at the start to 100+ in high levels, so it hands out perfect attacks like candy and guaranteed damage and damage-on-a-miss effects, and is fine-grained about damage amounts and resistance and "d6 per level" scaling. Your health and damage consistently grow with experience.
Exalted (and White Wolf generally) expects your HP to stay at 7 approximately forever, maybe up to 14 if you are a Tanky Exalted, and expects you to get very clever about not taking damage at all. If you take a strength booster and a big sword at level 1, or special attack charm with appropriate attribute booster and excellency, that's most of the damage you'll ever get. ExWoD in particular makes all your best options available at the start. Growth is mostly sideways into having more options and shoring up weaknesses.
A 20th level D&D character can trample down thousands of level 1 characters. An Elder Exalt has to step carefully around a circle of 5 fresh Exalts. Converting between one system and the other can't even preserve relative power in a reasonable fashion!
(An unreasonable approach might be something like "Take your Essence score, add 10, that's your Character Level in D&D.")
Force damage is esoteric. Two monsters in D&D are resistant or immune to it that I know of: the Force Dragon and the Helmed Horror. Everyone else, full damage taken. Armor won't protect you, Damage Reduction won't protect you, Resist Energy spells won't protect you.
Here we're already hitting major disagreements in system conversion wrt "soak". D&D resistance seems to obviously be the closest thing to Exalted soak mechanically, because it reduces damage taken after you've been hit.
I can see the argument that the role it fills is more like soak-DC-reduction, but going this route creates new problems: 1) resistances scale more or less indefinitely while DC has a very very narrow range to play in so the conversion gets harder, 2) doing role conversion makes it even harder to match up other parts of the system, in particular, 3) the role of armor providing AC in D&D but soak in Exalted, both of which can nullify some attacks, is an argument that magic-missile-bypasses-AC translates to magic-missile-bypasses-soak.
I also disagree with your Prime rote, but my argument isn't really about the specifics of Magic Missile as such, it's that Magic Missile is an example of how very different D&D is from level 1 and how much mess that leads into. Here's another incompatibility:
D&D (maybe not 1st edition) expects you to take HP damage, and expects your HP to grow from 7 at the start to 100+ in high levels, so it hands out perfect attacks like candy and guaranteed damage and damage-on-a-miss effects, and is fine-grained about damage amounts and resistance and "d6 per level" scaling. Your health and damage consistently grow with experience.
Exalted (and White Wolf generally) expects your HP to stay at 7 approximately forever, maybe up to 14 if you are a Tanky Exalted, and expects you to get very clever about not taking damage at all. If you take a strength booster and a big sword at level 1, or special attack charm with appropriate attribute booster and excellency, that's most of the damage you'll ever get. ExWoD in particular makes all your best options available at the start. Growth is mostly sideways into having more options and shoring up weaknesses.
A 20th level D&D character can trample down thousands of level 1 characters. An Elder Exalt has to step carefully around a circle of 5 fresh Exalts. Converting between one system and the other can't even preserve relative power in a reasonable fashion!
That is really interesting though to start off with you're essentially saying a dragon whose element is to use another conversion quintessence/magic is immune to having undifferentiated magic thrown at it and a specifically built magical construct is immune to undifferentiated Magic being thrown at it.
I would argue that resistance scaling what is essentially indefinitely is not actually a problem for as far as DC reduction goes because that means that they soak damage from these attacks that pretty low DC if they have like a base soak of six then having just a -3dc means that they soak all damage from this damage type at 3 which means 70% of the dice thrown on damage at them will not actually injure them at all. Another thing is the reason I said they're more like backgrounds or merits is because that is literally what they would be on a character sheet this character is beloved by fire divide any damage taken from fire by two after soak, you inherit the metallic scales of your ancestor fafnir increase your soak by 3 divide any damage taken from metal weapons by two after soak. Things like that.
As far as the AC to soak bypass idea I don't think that works but not just for the reason of these stats are meant to represent the same thing but because the way dungeon and dragons does AC means essentially that it bypasses Parry/Dodge attempts because Rogues have high AC because they have uncanny Dodge and things like that. In Dungeons & Dragons you're soak is your HP your health points the fact that a commoner has four Health points and an adventure can have hundreds kind of seems to state that yes you're difficulty to being hit and dealt damage is your AC While the actual robustness of your body is your health points.
Also the internal logic of that doesn't quite click at least not for me because it's soak even if it's not from armor is meant to represent the amount of damage a character can inherently try to take without being hurt so anything bypassing that while doing damage either means the attack is functionally speaking shaping or otherwise reality manipulation of the target or originating from inside of the target that's why you can take as a mage at least unsocable levels of aggravated damage from attacking your own pattern to gain quintessence.
There's the thing though the difference between a Essence 5 exalt and five Essence one exalts isn't the difference between a level 20 any class versus five level ones it's the difference between a level 20 and five level 12s inherently exalted can deal with the what is essentially slightly beefed up peasant that is a level 1 adventurer just like the level 20 Barbarian could.
Though I do agree there are a lot of weird overlaps and conversion issues that occur especially the expecting to take damage portions. In the end DND is meant to be a combat system that has the occasional social or non-combat spell or action tacked on while the world of darkness is meant to be a was essentially a story about all of the facets of a character's life not just their dungeonearing so they need stats and abilities that extend outside of that. Though I am sure if you wanted to play someone who just got more powerful as the game went on like in D&D you could probably make it work. There's a lot of finagling with odd subsystems and magical abilities and specific artifacts and general things like that you could do but it would be weird because I don't think any of the world of Darkness games have like an official leveling system rather than power stats which increases the general ability of your character rather than increasing your health or actual damage output.
