Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

[Goldfish]

[X] Keep going down the list, maybe you'll find someone else like Karl in need of direction, maybe you'll find something worse
-[X] Exchange contact info with Karl and advise him to reach out to us if he runs into any supernatural-related issues.

 

[BronzeTongue]

[X] Goldfish

 

[恐Drake]

[X] Goldfish

 

[Yog]

Ok, so we know he was given a test. A test with a morality requirement to pass. And the morality was human, or at least near-human enough. He was given two boons: impossible ritual, and being allowed to leave. So, we need to know:
1) Who built this thing
2) Why it was left unfinished
3) What happens to those who fail

We also need to warn Karl about stuff, like Daedalus, because he's exactly the kind of guy they would recruit and/or study. And we probably want to hook him up to a support network too. Prevents him from breaking the Laws, protects / guides him away from making any deals with any things.

He lacks all the context, remember. "Fae? What, you mean like in fairy tales?", "wait, what do you mean all afterlives are real?". Etc.

[X] Keep going down the list, maybe you'll find someone else like Karl in need of direction, maybe you'll find something worse
-[X] Give him your, Order of Cauldron's and Jade Dogs (IRIS) contact information. Strongly advise him against making the deals with anyone or anything before he gets more context. Warn him about Daedalus and similar groups.
-[X] Empathy excellency
-[X] [stunt]: "If you are interested in learning more about the world behind the curtain, in developing your abilities, and using them safely, call me. When given a choice, you've already proven yourself, after all. Just remember: It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

 

[Goldfish]

[X] Yog

 

[BronzeTongue]

Ok, so we know he was given a test. A test with a morality requirement to pass. And the morality was human, or at least near-human enough. He was given two boons: impossible ritual, and being allowed to leave. So, we need to know:
1) Who built this thing
2) Why it was left unfinished
3) What happens to those who fail

We also need to warn Karl about stuff, like Daedalus, because he's exactly the kind of guy they would recruit and/or study. And we probably want to hook him up to a support network too. Prevents him from breaking the Laws, protects / guides him away from making any deals with any things.

He lacks all the context, remember. "Fae? What, you mean like in fairy tales?", "wait, what do you mean all afterlives are real?". Etc.

[X] Keep going down the list, maybe you'll find someone else like Karl in need of direction, maybe you'll find something worse
-[X] Give him your, Order of Cauldron's and Jade Dogs (IRIS) contact information. Strongly advise him against making the deals with anyone or anything before he gets more context. Warn him about Daedalus and similar groups.
-[X] Empathy excellency
-[X] [stunt]: "If you are interested in learning more about the world behind the curtain, in developing your abilities, and using them safely, call me. When given a choice, you've already proven yourself, after all. Just remember: It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

Click to shrink...

Or it was simply one of skills arranged to match his path. Could be that if he'd harvested the guy's organs to make a neat hat he'd have gotten a reward for that too as long as it was stylish enough.

Still, I like the vote.

[X] Yog

 

[fictionfan]

We probably don't want to leave a cyber devil out on its own; I feel at least a little responsible for them and this guy is someone we just met on the street.

Click to shrink...

And it would be by every metric better off then it would be if we leave it in the Wicked City. Don't try and pretend that this is because you care about them when you are arguing to leave it there*. As for the rest that is just a matter of word choice for a stunt and Olivia knows what the actual deal is.

*I have never understood the sort of moral system that cares more about the look of the thing rather than actually helping people. It seems hypocritical and self servicing more like virtue signaling.

Too harsh just frustrated.

 

[fictionfan]

Now I have two different votes. One is just Cyber devil well the other mentions Inner Darkness Unchained.

[X] Plan just a cyber devil
-[x]Keep going down the list, maybe you'll find someone else like Karl in need of direction, maybe you'll find something worse
-[x]"Can I install a useful app on your phone?"
--[x]If Karl agrees use HMP on his phone well wet
---[x][Stunt] "Alan Turing you are to serve Karl to the best of your ability."
----[x]If the binding isn't permanent tell Karl how long it will last and offer to renew at that time.
--[x][Stunt]"One more thing. Just as beliefs shape magic magic also shapes belief. You can only do things that you truly believe in which is self reinforcing in a really slippery slope so the White Council has 7 zero tolerance laws of magic. Clippy show the 7 laws on screen.". You hold up your phone. "If you break any of them against your fellow man they declare you a warlock and chop your head off. Alan will be able to give you more details"

[X] Plan all the offers
-[X]Keep going down the list, maybe you'll find someone else like Karl in need of direction, maybe you'll find something worse
-[x]"Can I install a useful app on your phone?"
--[x]If Karl agrees use HMP on his phone well wet
---[x][Stunt] "Alan Turing you are to serve Karl to the best of your ability."
----[x]If the binding isn't permanent tell Karl how long it will last and offer to renew at that time.
--[x][Stunt]"Also if you are ever considering leasing your soul for power please consider me before all other offers. I will give you a better deal then any of my competitors."
--[x] Elaborate the deal if he asks awakening the soul and control over that so long as he serves.
--[x][Stunt]"One more thing. Just as beliefs shape magic magic also shapes belief. You can only do things that you truly believe in which is self reinforcing in a really slippery slope so the White Council has 7 zero tolerance laws of magic. Clippy show the 7 laws on screen.". You hold up your phone. "If you break any of them against your fellow man they declare you a warlock and chop your head off. Of course if you take my deal that stops being a problem."

 

[Yog]

[X] Yog

Click to shrink...

Or it was simply one of skills arranged to match his path. Could be that if he'd harvested the guy's organs to make a neat hat he'd have gotten a reward for that too as long as it was stylish enough.

Still, I like the vote.

[X] Yog

Click to shrink...

Just a note - it occurs to me that we should use him as a crown focus. If you don't mind, I'll add the question I think we should ask first. If you want, I can switch the question, but I think one should be asked. The reason I am using this one is that I think a) it's the most unknown aspect of the situation, b) it provides the most amount of context, c) it provides leads to new foci

Also, yeah, context-related power ups might be plausible

[X] Keep going down the list, maybe you'll find someone else like Karl in need of direction, maybe you'll find something worse
-[X] Use Karl as a crown focus to learn who or what created the Well he slipped into
-[X] Give him your, Order of Cauldron's and Jade Dogs (IRIS) contact information. Strongly advise him against making the deals with anyone or anything before he gets more context. Warn him about Daedalus and similar groups.
-[X] Empathy excellency
-[X] [stunt]: "If you are interested in learning more about the world behind the curtain, in developing your abilities, and using them safely, call me. When given a choice, you've already proven yourself, after all. Just remember: It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

 

[tenchifew]

[X] Yog

 

[Goldfish]

Just a note - it occurs to me that we should use him as a crown focus. If you don't mind, I'll add the question I think we should ask first. If you want, I can switch the question, but I think one should be asked. The reason I am using this one is that I think a) it's the most unknown aspect of the situation, b) it provides the most amount of context, c) it provides leads to new foci

Also, yeah, context-related power ups might be plausible

[X] Keep going down the list, maybe you'll find someone else like Karl in need of direction, maybe you'll find something worse
-[X] Use Karl as a crown focus to learn who or what created the Well he slipped into
-[X] Give him your, Order of Cauldron's and Jade Dogs (IRIS) contact information. Strongly advise him against making the deals with anyone or anything before he gets more context. Warn him about Daedalus and similar groups.
-[X] Empathy excellency
-[X] [stunt]: "If you are interested in learning more about the world behind the curtain, in developing your abilities, and using them safely, call me. When given a choice, you've already proven yourself, after all. Just remember: It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

Click to shrink...

I don't see a problem with using it.

 

[Aria the Mage]

[X] Keep going down the list, maybe you'll find someone else like Karl in need of direction, maybe you'll find something worse
-[X] Use Karl as a crown focus to learn who or what created the Well he slipped into
-[X] Give him your, Order of Cauldron's and Jade Dogs (IRIS) contact information. Strongly advise him against making the deals with anyone or anything before he gets more context. Warn him about Daedalus and similar groups.
-[X] Empathy excellency
-[X] [stunt]: "If you are interested in learning more about the world behind the curtain, in developing your abilities, and using them safely, call me. When given a choice, you've already proven yourself, after all. Just remember: It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

 

[fictionfan]

Formal ownership of the land seems unlikely. As mentioned in the chapter Harvard has owned that property almost as long as it's existed. It'd be a huge scandal if nothing else.

It's probably simpler to subvert the entire university than take one building. Which started as a joke, but actually seems surprisingly plausible at a second look.

Harvard has a weird setup with a special corporation with a small number members that owns the whole thing. Nowadays it's a 13 person board, but the quest is happening in 2006. From its foundation to that year the corporation only has 6 members, it changed things up because the president at the time was a sexist fuckup*. He's staring down a no confidence vote and the university is in managerial turmoil.

Which is the perfect time to make a deal with a devil.

We don't have VEE but we could offer him a social rebuild via IDU, dirt on his rivals (which we naturally keep copies of in addition to any blackmail we dig up on him), and demonic AI assistance in doing the hard parts of his job.

All he has to do is sign on the dotted line.

Taking the other seats will be harder, but we have the best information warfare tool in existence and they're secretive academic plutocrats. There's something for us to use.

Justifying it IC is a little tricky, but I can sort of see making the argument that we're giving these guys their just desserts and saving the university from suffering simply because it's leadership is unconcerned with their wellbeing and completely unequipped to deal with their new supernatural terrain feature.

* I'm assuming that we won't have real people appearing in the quest, but that events should roughly be the same. So even if the current president is completely different their general struggles with the school would be the same.

Click to shrink...

The order of operations would seem to be this.
1. Cyber Devil's search. Mostly because it's close to a free action.
2. Use NWS on all 6 members.
3.Use that Information for another Cyber devil search to collect up evidence.
4. Go to each member and give them an offer they can't refuse. Inner Darkness Unchain them. In this case the downsides we are suppressing with MIS would have to be more substantial. Like needing to eat gold.

 

[BronzeTongue]

And it would be by every metric better off then it would be if we leave it in the Wicked City. Don't try and pretend that this is because you care about them when you are arguing to leave it there*. As for the rest that is just a matter of word choice for a stunt and Olivia knows what the actual deal is.

*I have never understood the sort of moral system that cares more about the look of the thing rather than actually helping people. It seems hypocritical and self servicing more like virtue signaling.

Too harsh just frustrated.

Click to shrink...

That bar is literally so low it's in hell. I don't think that the implication that anything we do that's better than hell is okay that comes out of argument here is a particularly good one. We're not spending all our time on a humanitarian mission rescuing cyber devils from the wicked city either way, so I'm not sure that's a can of worms you want to open*.

I don't think it's unreasonable to be uncomfortable with the idea of grabbing people we have absolute power over and handing them out to random strangers like a cheap gift bags even with how we use them already.

It seems like you're just doing it to do it, which I'm just not interested in.

And yes, the rest of my post is just word choice. It's important word choice though, because doing it the other way pointlessly increases the difficulty of what we'd be trying to do and isn't context sensitive to our whole audience.

Her knowing the deal as we laid it out to her before she took it and her taking what we say to other people to be indications of our thoughts aren't contradictory. Especially since you're relying on her looking at us making a deal and thinking we're actively deceiving someone to get them to take it, but didn't do that to her.

Little things like this are a matter of good craftsmanship, no individual thing is itself going to screw you but getting sloppy still degrades things. We don't need to obsessively optimize every little turn of phrase, but this particular approach is more likely to drive him away from making a deal and make a new circlemate less certain about our goodwill for no gain.

It's a stunt, but what we say and how we say it do matter.

* I would support invading the wicked city to save them though, given the opportunity. We can purée Mikaboshi and have Clippy drink him from a big gulp so she can run the city for us. It'll be great.

 

[fictionfan]

That bar is literally so low it's in hell. I don't think that the implication that anything we do that's better than hell is okay that comes out of argument here is a particularly good one. We're not spending all our time on a humanitarian mission rescuing cyber devils from the wicked city either way, so I'm not sure that's a can of worms you want to open*.

I don't think it's unreasonable to be uncomfortable with the idea of grabbing people we have absolute power over and handing them out to random strangers like a cheap gift bags even with how we use them already.

It seems like you're just doing it to do it, which I'm just not interested in.

And yes, the rest of my post is just word choice. It's important word choice though, because doing it the other way pointlessly increases the difficulty of what we'd be trying to do and isn't context sensitive to our whole audience.

Her knowing the deal as we laid it out to her before she took it and her taking what we say to other people to be indications of our thoughts aren't contradictory. Especially since you're relying on her looking at us making a deal and thinking we're actively deceiving someone to get them to take it, but didn't do that to her.

Little things like this are a matter of good craftsmanship, no individual thing is itself going to screw you but getting sloppy still degrades things. We don't need to obsessively optimize every little turn of phrase, but this particular approach is more likely to drive him away from making a deal and make a new circlemate less certain about our goodwill for no gain.

It's a stunt, but what we say and how we say it do matter.

* I would support invading the wicked city to save them though, given the opportunity. We can purée Mikaboshi and have Clippy drink him from a big gulp so she can run the city for us. It'll be great.

Click to shrink...

Yes we can't spend all our life summoning Cyber devils or we don't want to much like we questers could give all our money to charity. But we should still be looking for and using every excuse to summon more of them.

 

[BronzeTongue]

The order of operations would seem to be this.
1. Cyber Devil's search. Mostly because it's close to a free action.
2. Use NWS on all 6 members.
3.Use that Information for another Cyber devil search to collect up evidence.
4. Go to each member and give them an offer they can't refuse. Inner Darkness Unchain them.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, something like that. I'd prefer to use the carrot and the stick here so they don't go shopping for something to drive us off.

Assuming they're not themselves too awful to work with anyway. It's always possible to nuke their lives and try subverting the replacements.

If they're in too deep with someone else we might want to do that anyway. Our own profits aside, I'd prefer major institutions not answer to things that eat people where possible.

I'm assuming they aren't though, because Odin sold us this on the idea we could take the place over and if the whamps or whoever already owned the university it wouldn't exactly be unoccupied.

 

[BronzeTongue]

Yes we can't spend all our life summoning Cyber devils or we don't want to much like we questers could give all our money to charity. But we should still be looking for and using every excuse to summon more of them.

Click to shrink...

Every excuse when we remember and it's convenient? There's a lot of arguments to make here, but the moral one puts this in an odd light.

I wasn't joking about invading the wicked city to save the cyber devils. They're the best idea the thousand hells have had in millennia and Mikaboshi doesn't deserve them.

There is a moral angle here, but asserting it like this seems largely performative to me.

All else aside, I'm interested to see Harry's take on the moral imperative to save demons from hell by summoning as many to earth as possible. Preferably with Tiffany around to help mess with him.

 

[fictionfan]

Yeah, something like that. I'd prefer to use the carrot and the stick here so they don't go shopping for something to drive us off.

Assuming they're not themselves too awful to work with anyway. It's always possible to nuke their lives and try subverting the replacements.

If they're in too deep with someone else we might want to do that anyway. Our own profits aside, I'd prefer major institutions not answer to things that eat people where possible.

I'm assuming they aren't though, because Odin sold us this on the idea we could take the place over and if the whamps or whoever already owned the university it wouldn't exactly be unoccupied.

Click to shrink...

That is carrot and stick. Unaging and other health benefits as the carrot and blackmail and the suppressed disadvantages as the stick.

Also what in the world are they going to shop for? Molly is harder to ward off then just about anything. Everything else in her weight class can at least be deterred by a threshold or some other exotic weakness.

Also we would obviously put cyber devils in their phones and computers to keep an eye on them even as they are being helpful.

All else aside, I'm interested to see Harry's take on the moral imperative to save demons from hell by summoning as many to earth as possible. Preferably with Tiffany around to help mess with him.

Click to shrink...

You know the difference. For Molly it is risk free. No one has any obligation to risk themselves to help save others. The obligation is even less felt when the others being saved are likely assholes.

Wizards don't avoid demon summoning on moral grounds, but risk.

 

[BronzeTongue]

That is carrot and stick. Unaging and other health benefits as the carrot and blackmail and the suppressed disadvantages as the stick.

Also what in the world are they going to shop for? Molly is harder to ward off then just about anything. Everything else in her weight class can at least be deterred by a threshold or some other exotic weakness.

Also we would obviously put cyber devils in their phones and computers to keep an eye on them even as they are being helpful.

Click to shrink...

I didn't say that it'd work, just that it could be a pain to deal with.

Fair enough on IDU, I was thinking that unasked for demonic investiture wouldn't really work as a bribe, but the perks can be nice if we want them to be.

You know the difference. For Molly it is risk free. No one has any obligation to risk themselves to help save others. The obligation is even less felt when the others being saved are likely assholes.

Wizards don't avoid demon summoning on moral grounds, but risk.

Click to shrink...

The joke there was about his reaction and not an implication about our personal risk.

I just think if we're already exercising discretion on when and where we do this based on our benefit among other factors we might as well hold a higher standard to our behavior than just beating Mikaboshi's example.

 

[fictionfan]

The joke there was about his reaction and not an implication about our personal risk.

Click to shrink...

You say as a joke but you seem to believe in virtue ethic* well I am more consequentialist**. Which means that we are never going to agree, but also makes me wonder why you are playing a Infernal quest?

*the look of the thing vastly simplified
**the end results

I just think if we're already exercising discretion on when and where we do this based on our benefit among other factors we might as well hold a higher standard to our behavior than just beating Mikaboshi's example.

Click to shrink...

And to me it looks like when you don't take them out you are in fact defaulting to Mikaboshi because that is where they are right now and are in fact not holding yourself to a higher standard. I take it that you would never pull the lever for the trolley problem? It is the same dilemma. Inaction means more harm, but also not your fault.

Of course in this version the trolley problem the people you save also reward you.

 

[Yog]

@fictionfan what's the purpose of HMPing Karl's phone? As far as I can see cyberdevils don't actually provide noticeable benefit for him. He needs more knowledge, context, and precautions, but cyberdevils don't help (much) with that.

 

[fictionfan]

@fictionfan what's the purpose of HMPing Karl's phone? As far as I can see cyberdevils don't actually provide noticeable benefit for him. He needs more knowledge, context, and precautions, but cyberdevils don't help (much) with that.

Click to shrink...

1.Cyber Devils are super useful for basically everything a college student wants to do from researching papers to scheduling.
2. People get attached to them which in turn gets Molly a foot in the door for future deals.
3. They are loyal to Molly just in case Karl actually is a crazy warlock and we happened to miss it.
4.I have no idea how you think cyber devils don't help with knowledge, context, and precautions. We use them for that all the time. Also allows for options like allowing to call someone without actually giving Karl the number. It's a great way to give contacts and information in a controlled way.

 

[Yzarc]

[X] fictionfan

 

[Ivar]

[X] Yog

 

[Degorium]

[X] Yog