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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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Goldfish said:
We can secure the gates for now and learn more about the situation at our leisure. There is no reason to rush this, and every reason to delay it.

[X] Harden the door as much as it's needed that Lydia might take what hounds wish with her. You will have words with Amoracchius-that-is-Excalibur and perhaps with others and then you will find some way to right this ancient wrong one way or the other.
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^^^^
There is NO RUSH.
We cannot undo releasing these people, and we have no control over what they choose to do after they are released. Or over the reactions of others to our doing so.

Iron Roby said:
Who would you consult further? It's about his knights, not Arthur himself, so what would (or could) Amoracchius tell us? Especially after Arthur put it down? There are certainly Fae who knew them (and Odin certainly has access to more accurate stories, if he didn't knew them personally). But we can just ask Arawn, who shared an island with them, and who is not exactly going to hold back any potential negative things we should know about them.

Ultimately, any opinion is just going to be given to us from the perspective of either maintaining the status quo or releasing some potential wild cards into it. And that's going to be given based on the views of the person, not some knowledge we don't have.

And that cost-benefit analysis is ultimately something we will have to decide ourselves anyway, which we can do depending on how the negotiations go.
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The option literally says to talk to Amoracchius.
Our father's sword. There in our home.
We also get to talk to the Fae, who were consulted originally.

Saints are not infallible.
Howver, there's reasons why several hundred years later, the Saint David still had no problem with leaving them imprisoned when he did.

Again, do not rush into things you cannot rush out of.
 
Btw, why are people not looking at the exalted that show up in the ExvsWod manual for examples of what would type of exalted will be showing up in the modern age? Like exaltations are looking for great people rather then people with bronze age morals. These are very different circumstances then the times that gave birth to the Golden age solars.

Like, some people makes it sound like exaltation got built in mind changers to make people the worst they can ever be, which makes their argument kinda silly from my point of view.
 
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uju32 said:
Exactly what I said.
The Exalted I named all exercised more agency in their lives than the vast majority of mortals that ever lived in Creation.

Similarly, the fact that Hercules had a divine enemy does not in any way change the fact he was literally born with a silver spoon in his mouth; biological son of the king of gods, born to the wife of a king, raised in a royal household, favored by more gods, blessed with divine investments, trained by divine edict.

Odysseus was sure as fuck no victim; the misfortune that came his way was more or less of his own making and choices, his and that of his crew.
Misfortune does not make you blameless, or remove your agency when you are as privileged as these people were.
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I'm sure that Hercules definitely had the ability to not kill his family when Hera cursed him definitely. I'm sure Odysseus could have just not met Cerce and had part of his crew turned into pigs I'm sure he could have not gotten stranded on Ogyia where a titanness had her way with him for God knows how long. No amount of strength exempts you from being a victim of circumstance. Every exalt no matter their power is a victim of the great curse because it literally slowly warps the mind of every single one of the exalted. There's nothing they can do about it because inherently it's subtle and immediate application on existing flaws exacerbates and creates an issue of self-reinforcing Cycles. What was once a bit of a vain individual is not someone who literally cannot see the flaws in their own actions. What was once a kind-hearted man cannot see the suffering of another human being without bursting into tears. The idea that Exalts just because they have power and agency are not victims of a curse that literally warps their minds is insanity.
 
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Earth-Destroyer said:
Even a newly exalted straight out of character gen can have a limit break, of kill an entire city population. Limit breaks are serious stuff, and many of them can casually cause a solo exalted to be driven cause mass slaughter, either by their own hands, or by inaction, and that for people they like, enemies why would other exalted even bother saving them. Personally I think people really overblown the long term effects of the Great Curse, compared to absolute horror of people just limit breaking regularly.
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I think this post does a good job of explaining why I often don't want to run and play White Wolves games. They are built for drama and tragedy and so on. And I got sick and tired of them at one point. And I'm not talking about the themes, but the mechanics of the game. It's not a problem with them. It's just that I'm not the kind of person who comes to a game wanting to make a dramatic story out of it.

Overall, however, I think this quest works extremely well precisely because of how it works on a system that is not nearly as heavily tuned in that direction. Plus I don't think people are here to create a tragic story about Molly ruining everything.
 
I'm reminded of the Sidereal Exalts having their vision of the future, and making the decision to try reasoning with the Solars or casting them down.
 
Vanguard_D said:
Btw, why are people not looking at the exalted that show up in the ExvsWod manual for examples of what would type of exalted will be showing up in the modern age? Like exaltations are looking for great people rather then people with bronze age morals. These are very different circumstances then the times that gave birth to the Golden age solars.
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1)Because these are literally Bronze Age people with Bronze Age morals.
And greatness is not inconsistent with bronze age morals.

2) The world hasnt changed all that much.
Genocides, ethnic cleansings and the like still happen, ordered by modern people with modern sensibilities. Rwanda and Yugoslavia are less than a decade ago IC, Sudan is currently ongoing,

Artemis1992 said:
We can kill them, if we judge that to be the best course of action after we get to know them.

That is still better than keeping them imprisoned.
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No its not.
Its not better for them, its not better for people who they harm in the interim either.
And it sure as fuck isnt better for MOLLY.

Killing people is not a casual process. It leaves marks on people.
 
DragonParadox said:
Arthur's dream was grander, it was the dream of all great men in those days, the dream of Rome, to be Emperor.
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DragonParadox said:
and vowed he before Powers and Principalities great and small that he would be Emperor in Rome and in the City of Constantine to the East, that he would bring all Christendom under his banner as Augustus Cesar come again.
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So it's not just Britain at risk from Arthur, it's half of Europe and North Africa. :V Molly would probably stop him before it got that far, but I'm still a little concerned about how far Arthur could get if he fucks off to Constantinople while Molly's back is turned and coups Turkey (again) and goes from there.

uju32 said:
Measure twice, cut once.
This is not an emergency. Do not take major steps without consulting with other people. One month wont make much, if any difference as opposed to fifteen hundred years.
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[X] It's been fifteen hundred years since Arthur fell, five hundred since the last vestige of Eastern Rome fell, try to reason with the knights through the bars that their quest is lost but they need not be. You understand now the pain of Arawn, but that pain alone does not merit three souls bound until the End of Days

Letting them out would be a major step, but this isn't a vote option to let them out unless I'm seriously misreading it, this is a vote option to talk to them and see if they can be reasonable now that their whole previous quest is over. The knights are some of the people we should be consulting with as part of this planning.
 
uju32 said:
1)Because these are literally Bronze Age people with Bronze Age morals.
And greatness is not inconsistent with bronze age morals.
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Kind Arthur and his knights are very much not Bronze Age people with Bronze Age morals.

They're Christian Sub-Roman Britons whose morality and ethics are much more familiar to us than anything from a thousand years earlier.

DragonParadox said:
Unless you argue her around to letting them live somehow that is her default yes.
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To be honest, I'm not surw why it should be up to her, rather than just asking them what they want to do and then making a judgement. We can easily grant them refugee in Sanctuary
 
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uju32 said:
1)Because these are literally Bronze Age people with Bronze Age morals.
And greatness is not inconsistent with bronze age morals.

2) The world hasnt changed all that much.
Genocides, ethnic cleansings and the like still happen, ordered by modern people with modern sensibilities. Rwanda and Yugoslavia are less than a decade ago IC, Sudan is currently ongoing,
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So modern people are going to gain bronze age morality from getting an exaltation and start genociding nearest population? Like this is where you lose me in your argument. It goes to such a silly extreme that it does not even sound like actual reality or how exalted and exvswod is played. There is no possible way for me to take that seriously.
 
[X] Harden the door as much as it's needed that Lydia might take what hounds wish with her. You will have words with Amoracchius-that-is-Excalibur and perhaps with others and then you will find some way to right this ancient wrong one way or the other.

Eh, I'm not super attached to this vote, but am going to second that this isn't urgent if I understand. We could use the Crown to see if they're fully conscious, I suppose.
 
There are multiple sources of information we can investigate before speaking with these people, not just the angel slumming as a sword, some of them that may have been their contemporaries.

All we've heard so far is a summary of a summary. I don't understand why y'all are in such a rush to make drastic decisions which cannot be undone. We could come back in a month or two, after making the effort to really dig into these peoples' history and motivations to determine if they actually deserve to be freed.

It's been 1500 years, a few more weeks won't make a difference.
 
DragonParadox said:
does not merit three souls bound until the End of Days
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I'm not an expert on this, but wasn't the original theology around judgement day that everyone is basically on hold until it happens and gets their eternal reward or punishment afterwards? This doesn't seem materially different than killing them on the spot and letting (their) god sort them out.

Frankly they got off light for breaking guest right in the home of a death god and killing one of their hosts.


DragonParadox said:
Arthur in all of his deeds and all of his travels prove himself wise enough to pick out one thread of gold out of nine times nine?
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I side with the Queen on this one. I don't trust his motives to really change.
Dmol8 said:
People:



this reads like a Solar Exalted version of the Myth of King Arthur. Keep that in mind going forward because those Knights trapped there may recognize something of what Molly is now.
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The supernatural guys are calling him a red dragon, and a lot of Arthurian myth has him associated with dragons. The golden thread is clearly more of a value thing and is talking about his behavior post terrestrial exaltation.
Earth-Destroyer said:
Even a newly exalted straight out of character gen can have a limit break, of kill an entire city population. Limit breaks are serious stuff, and many of them can casually cause a solo exalted to be driven cause mass slaughter, either by their own hands, or by inaction, and that for people they like, enemies why would other exalted even bother saving them. Personally I think people really overblown the long term effects of the Great Curse, compared to absolute horror of people just limit breaking regularly.
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Mechanics vs. lore. The lore outright says it was degenerative, but that property is never relevant in gameplay.

The subtly is in the reflection of their character; a good limit break should relate to the character in question. It should be an exaggerated response to something they'd care about. A former slave going ham on slavers, someone who lost their children reacting to people harming theirs, that sort of thing. So when they go off you can look at it and go "if anyone was going to do something like that it'd be them".

That's a basic requirement for it to remain largely unknown the way it was.
 
Goldfish said:
All we've heard so far is a summary of a summary. I don't understand why y'all are in such a rush to make drastic decisions which cannot be undone. We could come back in a month or two, after making the effort to really dig into these peoples' history and motivations to determine if they actually deserve to be freed.
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I believe the answer is yes. They deserved to be free from punishment for killing Arwan's first wife. They served their time. That is not the question. The question is whether they deserved to live again or whether they deserved to go free in the sense that they would die and go to afterlife.
 
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uju32 said:
The option literally says to talk to Amoracchius.
Our father's sword. There in our home.
We also get to talk to the Fae, who were consulted originally.

Saints are not infallible.
Howver, there's reasons why several hundred years later, the Saint David still had no problem with leaving them imprisoned when he did.
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I know the option says Amoracchius, I just don't think the sword will have anything to say, except for character references for the time period when they served Arthur, while he still held the sword. It's just not information I see a lot of value in, given how much they have likely changed since then, both during later life and this punishment.

As for saints, I have very little faith in medieval Dresdenverse saints' competency in the sphere of punishment, given how Saint Patrick apparently saw nothing wrong about creating a dangerous inheritable werewolf curse.

Edit: Also, the vote is to negotiate, not release. We can, in fact, still rush out of this. I just think we are better to judge how they are now, not somebody who knew them 1500 years ago.
 
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Goldfish said:
There are multiple sources of information we can investigate before speaking with these people, not just the angel slumming as a sword, some of them that may have been their contemporaries.

All we've heard so far is a summary of a summary. I don't understand why y'all are in such a rush to make drastic decisions which cannot be undone. We could come back in a month or two, after making the effort to really dig into these peoples' history and motivations to determine if they actually deserve to be freed.

It's been 1500 years, a few more weeks won't make a difference.
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OOC speaking, I'm not sure I want to spend several more updates than need be on that matter.

They are imprisoned for far to long, so there's not much that could change my opinion. Why then, waste space on more questions?
 
DragonParadox said:
Not all of them were Christian, though Arthur himself was, but the point stands, they all shared a general sense of what was righteous or they would not have been there.
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Yes, even if they're not Christian they operated in a Christian society. Gildas makes it quite clear by context when he condemns Brittonic petty kings for being unrighteous that they're being poor Christians, not that they're pagans like the Saxons.

There's also some interesting scholarship that strongly suggests that the tradition of anointed kings in the style of the Biblical kings seems to have arisen much earlier in Sub-Roman Britain than on the continent, where the Germano-Roman traditions of kingship went through a different evolution.
 
Ivar said:
I believe the answer is yes. They deserved to be free from punishment for killing Arwan's first wife. They served their time. That is not the question. The question is whether they deserved to live again or whether they deserved to go free in the sense that they would die.
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We don't even know if they're conscious, if they've been held in magical stasis, if they've experienced extreme time dilation, if the long imprisonment has destroyed their sanity, etc. The simple act of interfering with their prison could be detrimental or even destructive.

But no one wants to make the effort to learn any of this. They would rather kick in the door and wake up the neighbors by blasting Crazy Train at max volume.
 
Goldfish said:
We don't even know if they're conscious, if they've been held in magical stasis, if they've experienced extreme time dilation, if the long imprisonment has destroyed their sanity, etc. The simple act of interfering with their prison could be detrimental or even destructive.

But no one wants to make the effort to learn any of this. They would rather kick in the door and wake up the neighbors by blasting Crazy Train at max volume.
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Okay that's a bit reductionist because we definitely don't learn any of those things by reinforcing the seal either. Also why would they be in stasis or experiencing time dilation. They were captured put in manacles by a relatively minor Pantheon that was only barely capable of holding them. We know without Saint David's intervention they would have gotten out by themselves. So they were already captured and still pushing which means they were conscious when he applied his intervention. Unless he was using some never before seen Magic we know time dilation is not a thing in Dresden Files not outside of weird pockets of the never-never anyway.

They deserve either to go to their proper resting place or to have their sentence finished but either way they should not be in prison until the end of time.
 
Vanguard_D said:
So modern people are going to gain bronze age morality from getting an exaltation and start genociding nearest population? Like this is where you lose me in your argument. It goes to such a silly extreme that it does not even sound like actual reality or how exalted and exvswod is played. There is no possible way for me to take that seriously.
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Dramatically oversimplifying the entire argument here. We've done rounds on this before an covered a lot of ground.

The examples from the book are informative, but so are the rules and prior lore. We see what they will accept and how they act, and have no particular reason to believe they'll take a poll before doing what they do.

There are also basic concerns that are irreconcilable with the idea that they all go to good people. Namely, that if you get 10 people in a room you'll get at least 20 different definitions of what good is. Expecting the exaltations to only go to people you regard as good is fundamentally the same as expecting the universe to agree with your moral system and enforce it.

I don't want to leak politics into this, but make a list of modern conflict regions and put an exalt in each of at least two different camps in the fight. Consider what happens next.

That is something I view as a reasonably optimistic result of the exalted walking the earth again.
 
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