However, the base of the game is that things were as canon was in terms of observable details when things started. For that to make sense and rule we're applying now must also fit the scenario we started from. From a setting perspective the rules have to be all one way, they didn't change the moment Molly exalted.
The "rules" have to be all one way? I don't know what your saying here. This maybe something you were discussing with Uju, your going to have to elaborate because I have no idea what this means.
Molly wasn't the only Exalt though or at least I thought it was established earlier that King Arthur was one. I'm not sure if this is relevant to what your saying though.
Establish connections with other assets. The subversion begins here. Start with the children.
[X] Get to meet some more 'interesting folks' Ghouls and Vampires supposedly down in the 'Undercity' Wasn't one city big enough?
-[X] Molly will pack a bleach bottle, 5 doses of Healing Potion and 2 doses of Speed
The "rules" have to be all one way? I don't know what your saying here. This maybe something you were discussing with Uju, your going to have to elaborate because I have no idea what this means.
Molly wasn't the only Exalt though or at least I thought it was established earlier that King Arthur was one. I'm not sure if this is relevant to what your saying though.
What I mean is that we should assume the mechanics of the setting consistently apply across the timeline extending prior to the start of the quest because the conceit is that this was how the setting worked all along. Things like the fundamental rules of magic and resources of the Outside have a huge influence on events and on how events played out up till quest start.
The way I see it, assertions about things like Peabody's resources that if applied to the events leading to the situation we're in would have made him take actions that don't conform to what we know occurred are wrong by default. It's like the vertical line test for plot consistency.
This is relevant to the discussion at hand because if the Outside could arbitrarily buff its minions with no limits and perfectly hide it from everyone then many of their strategies don't make sense. Sure they're alien, but they aren't idiots.
You jumped into this reply chain directly supporting Uju's position on points we were arguing over, so I took this as a continuation of one argument. My apologies if that was annoying, but I don't think I was being unreasonable in equating them given the context of the conversation.
Sounds like that calls for some just this side of impossible friendship cookies.
[X] Get to meet some more 'interesting folks' Ghouls and Vampires supposedly down in the 'Undercity' Wasn't one city big enough?
-[X] Molly will pack a bleach bottle, 5 doses of Healing Potion and 2 doses of Speed
-[X] Take the time to produce a sizable quantity of I-can't-believe-it's-not-magic cookies
—[X] Bake in the mad science lab of the last station with a focus on making them filling for full buffs: WHWH, CCC, TLF, BSM, FPoR, excellency.
—-[X] Maximize FPoR by doing some test batches first.
—-[X] Spend WP on the final batch.
-[X] [Stunt]: Taking a deep breath of the frigid air in her subterranean mad science lair workroom, Molly found herself moving to an almost inaudible beat as she prepared her tools. Something bold, proud, and red as the dawn before a storm. It almost made her laugh to pick up a whisk, but she could dance to this tune just as readily baking as forging a sword.
We haven't done this in a minute, let's look at those dice:
[X] Get to meet some more 'interesting folks' Ghouls and Vampires supposedly down in the 'Undercity' Wasn't one city big enough?
-[X] Molly will pack a bleach bottle, 5 doses of Healing Potion and 2 doses of Speed
[X] BronzeTongue
This might be a nice benchmark for our new crafting prowess. And hilarious.
[X] Get to meet some more 'interesting folks' Ghouls and Vampires supposedly down in the 'Undercity' Wasn't one city big enough? -[X] Molly will pack a bleach bottle, 5 doses of Healing Potion and 2 doses of Speed
[X] Get to meet some more 'interesting folks' Ghouls and Vampires supposedly down in the 'Undercity' Wasn't one city big enough? -[X] Molly will pack a bleach bottle, 5 doses of Healing Potion and 2 doses of Speed
-[X] Take the time to produce a sizable quantity of I-can't-believe-it's-not-magic cookies
—[X] Bake in the mad science lab of the last station with a focus on making them filling for full buffs: WHWH, CCC, TLF, BSM, FPoR, excellency.
—-[X] Maximize FPoR by doing some test batches first.
—-[X] Spend WP on the final batch.
-[X] [Stunt]: Taking a deep breath of the frigid air in her subterranean mad science lair workroom, Molly found herself moving to an almost inaudible beat as she prepared her tools. Something bold, proud, and red as the dawn before a storm. It almost made her laugh to pick up a whisk, but she could dance to this tune just as readily baking as forging a sword.
Would those anti-poison things we have a recipe for be effective against Peabody and red venom at all? Might be a good two for one where we spread the recipe around for the nominal sake of the reds and "incidentally" weaken Peabody's alchemical nonsense.
[X] Get to meet some more 'interesting folks' Ghouls and Vampires supposedly down in the 'Undercity' Wasn't one city big enough?
-[X] Molly will pack a bleach bottle, 5 doses of Healing Potion and 2 doses of Speed
-[X] Take the time to produce a sizable quantity of I-can't-believe-it's-not-magic cookies
—[X] Bake in the mad science lab of the last station with a focus on making them filling for full buffs: WHWH, CCC, TLF, BSM, FPoR, excellency.
—-[X] Maximize FPoR by doing some test batches first.
—-[X] Spend WP on the final batch.
-[X] [Stunt]: Taking a deep breath of the frigid air in her subterranean mad science lair workroom, Molly found herself moving to an almost inaudible beat as she prepared her tools. Something bold, proud, and red as the dawn before a storm. It almost made her laugh to pick up a whisk, but she could dance to this tune just as readily baking as forging a sword.
[X] Get to meet some more 'interesting folks' Ghouls and Vampires supposedly down in the 'Undercity' Wasn't one city big enough?
-[X] Molly will pack a bleach bottle, 5 doses of Healing Potion and 2 doses of Speed
-[X] Take the time to produce a sizable quantity of I-can't-believe-it's-not-magic cookies
—[X] Bake in the mad science lab of the last station with a focus on making them filling for full buffs: WHWH, CCC, TLF, BSM, FPoR, excellency.
—-[X] Maximize FPoR by doing some test batches first.
—-[X] Spend WP on the final batch.
-[X] [Stunt]: Taking a deep breath of the frigid air in her subterranean mad science lair workroom, Molly found herself moving to an almost inaudible beat as she prepared her tools. Something bold, proud, and red as the dawn before a storm. It almost made her laugh to pick up a whisk, but she could dance to this tune just as readily baking as forging a sword.
Simon Peabody canonically is the prime candidate for the deaths of Senior Council wizards Aleron LaFortier and Simon Petrovich, the Archangel Brute Squad, and all the Wardens and wizards who died in Dead Beat.
Even when he died, he still managed to take fifty wizards and Deputy Warden Commander Donald Morgan with him.
He was the author of Die Lied der Erlking, the book that was used to summon the Erlking in Dead Beat.
He has the skill and resources to summon a mistwraith so deadly that it took the entire Senior Council to contain and banish it, and the skill and subtlety to mindcontrol the commander of the White Council's military.
Thats just the canon version. The one here has apparently received upgrades with his direct affiliation to Ashraaaf.
The fact that people voted, and made decisions based on the assumption that he was a scrub is one of the most frustrating things it has been my misfortune to argue about in this quest so far.
You all are underestimating Kakuzu, to quote an old Spacebattles meme.
If we face any combat challenge from Peabody, I expect it to be I the form of either him throwing bewitched wizards at us, where we have to fight non-lethally or in the form of him calling on some Yomi Wan power that he got access to thanks to our Big Book of Yomi Wan being in his hands. The first has basis in canon. The second is a result of our actions.
Why wouldnt he both use enthralled mobs and himself?
Why would a guy who has a notNephandi demigod-thing as a sponsor go to Yama Kings for power?
Besides, he's an elder wizard who is at least a hundred years old with a canonical proficiency in summoning spirits, and we're running on WoD rules for them.
He could literally pull out a One Winged Angel form; he has access to a bunch of them in MtA:
Deity Form
Dead Magic 2 page 80
Forces 3, Life 4, Prime 4, Spirit 2, optional Entropy 5
This rote allows the mage to become an Avatar of a god, though at the cost of paradox as it is always vulgar. The mage gains the benefits of Friction Curse, Telekinesis and Better Body, they take on the aspect of the deity via Mutate Form and use Wellspring to replenish power. Spirit calls to the deity who permits this transformation. Optionally, Entropy 5 can be added to renew the deity's worship, reinvigorating the idea of the deity in those who see its avatar
Holy Union
Ascension, page 197-199
Spirit 4, Prime 3, Mind 3, optional Life 5
The Holy Union ritual summons a psychopomp spirit from the deep Umbra and binds a part of its essence to the mage's avatar, granting several of the psychopomp's powers to the mage, specifically related to guiding souls and manipulating avatars. The version that can manipulate the avatars of the living requires Life 5. This is the ritual used by Heylel to become rebis, which is still the term for those who go through this ritual.
Spirit is used to summon the psychopomp, Prime prepares the mage to assimilate the essence permanently (as in Enchant Life), and as the fragment is sentient, Mind is needed to communicate with it. As mentioned above, Life is needed to manipulate avatars attached to living beings (such as merging two of them, as Heylel did) and otherwise the rebis is only capable of manipulating disembodied avatars and avatar fragments.
The ritual requires 10 successes to last for a day, 14 to be made permanent, plus one per additional subject, but because this is attempting to force something alien into the avatar, it attempts to reject it resulting in a +2 difficulty to the effect. Pages 198-199 of Ascension detail the powers this effect grants, and the consequences of those powers.
Iron Avatar
Tradition Book: Euthanatos (First Edition) page 67
Tradition Book: Euthanatos (Revised) page 60
Life 3, Matter 3, Mind 2, Prime 2, optional Spirit 4, Time 4
This rote merges the visages of Kali and Shiva to turn the caster into a four-armed killer. The user of the rote becomes 10 feet tall; their skin turns the color of wrought iron, and their four hands end in talons, each holding a menacing weapon. Usually, these weapons are swords, though variants with other weapons exist.
Before devoting successes to duration, the mage must increase Strength to 6, spend three successes to soak lethal and aggravated damage (soak dice per success) and two more for extra arms. The extra arms give the mage four extra dice on unarmed and Melee dice pools. Additional successes may be spent to add two dice to these dice pools by making the mage more coordinated in their use. Three more successes must be spent to create an aura of supernatural fear around the mage, causing Sleepers to flee and others to require a Willpower roll at difficulty 6 with a minimum of three successes to avoid doing so. An additional success is needed to power it at all, along with three points on quintessence.
The ritual to invoke this is time consuming, as it requires many successes, and so it is often combined with Time so that the effect may be prepared in advance of a battle. If Spirit is added, a spirit of destruction is invited into the mage's body, giving the mage access to its Charms, though anything other than a complete success risks possession.
Vulcan's Hammer
Tradition Book: Order of Hermes (Revised) page 67
Life 4, Matter 3, Forces 3, optional Prime 2
It is important for a Hermetic mage to be capable of subtlety. Sometimes, however, a Hermetic needs to be the most blatant person on the planet. The mage sculpts a statuette of themselves out of iron-rich clay, inscribing their True Name onto it ten times, kneading it into the clay before firing it. With this clay statuette, the mage can assume the shape of Vulcan's Hammer, a grossly vulgar war form made from iron. In this form, the mage gets +3 Strength, -2 Dexterity (minimum 1), +4 Stamina, fails all Social Attribute rolls automatically (other than intimidation), and anyone who comes into physical contact with the mage takes standard Forces damage from this effect. With Prime 2, the mage deals aggravated damage with hand-to-hand attacks.
Warp-Spasm
Dead Magic 2 page 120
Forces 3, Life 4, Prime 3
The mage's very body warps to make them into a fury-filled warrior. They get an extra dot in all Physical Attributes for every two successes and two extra dice of damage in melee due to emitting extreme heat. If the mage maintains this form for longer than a scene, they must spend a point of Willpower for each extra duration or else become a mindless berserker.
All of these are canon Mage warform rotes that are available to wizards under ExWoD.
And the user can still cast magic while they are active.
Im not even talking non-canon rotes, like say offloading lethal damage to wizards or people who he has mindcontrolled/enchanted.
Despite everything that happened in Vegas, there remains a distinct tendency to underestimate a wizard with preptime.
No we did not.
McCoy is a hitman, not an investigator. He's also canonically one of the guys who Peabody doses with magic mindcontrol ink
Why would we take the risk?
As is, the current one is just as sponsored by outsiders as the canon one, so the fact that we saw him maybe being possessed isn't in and on itself an indication of change because he probably also was in canon from Bronze's POV.
Seriously, this is a multi page argument about peabody. Dude is a invested mage. Its not a big deal. People in the world of darkness spank nephandi all the time, thats why they choose to hide. We can take him and without issue even.
People in the World of Darkness do NOT routinely spank elder Mage Nephandi; those encounters are few and far between, and often end badly for the adventurer and the general public alike.
This is some of that arrogance Ive been complaining about.
Why wouldnt he both use enthralled mobs and himself?
Why would a guy who has a notNephandi demigod-thing as a sponsor go to Yama Kings for power?
Besides, he's an elder wizard who is at least a hundred years old with a canonical proficiency in summoning spirits, and we're running on WoD rules for them.
He could literally pull out a One Winged Angel form; he has access to a bunch of them in MtA: Deity Form
Dead Magic 2 page 80
Forces 3, Life 4, Prime 4, Spirit 2, optional Entropy 5
This rote allows the mage to become an Avatar of a god, though at the cost of paradox as it is always vulgar. The mage gains the benefits of Friction Curse, Telekinesis and Better Body, they take on the aspect of the deity via Mutate Form and use Wellspring to replenish power. Spirit calls to the deity who permits this transformation. Optionally, Entropy 5 can be added to renew the deity's worship, reinvigorating the idea of the deity in those who see its avatar Holy Union
Ascension, page 197-199
Spirit 4, Prime 3, Mind 3, optional Life 5
The Holy Union ritual summons a psychopomp spirit from the deep Umbra and binds a part of its essence to the mage's avatar, granting several of the psychopomp's powers to the mage, specifically related to guiding souls and manipulating avatars. The version that can manipulate the avatars of the living requires Life 5. This is the ritual used by Heylel to become rebis, which is still the term for those who go through this ritual.
Spirit is used to summon the psychopomp, Prime prepares the mage to assimilate the essence permanently (as in Enchant Life), and as the fragment is sentient, Mind is needed to communicate with it. As mentioned above, Life is needed to manipulate avatars attached to living beings (such as merging two of them, as Heylel did) and otherwise the rebis is only capable of manipulating disembodied avatars and avatar fragments.
The ritual requires 10 successes to last for a day, 14 to be made permanent, plus one per additional subject, but because this is attempting to force something alien into the avatar, it attempts to reject it resulting in a +2 difficulty to the effect. Pages 198-199 of Ascension detail the powers this effect grants, and the consequences of those powers. Iron Avatar
Tradition Book: Euthanatos (First Edition) page 67
Tradition Book: Euthanatos (Revised) page 60
Life 3, Matter 3, Mind 2, Prime 2, optional Spirit 4, Time 4
This rote merges the visages of Kali and Shiva to turn the caster into a four-armed killer. The user of the rote becomes 10 feet tall; their skin turns the color of wrought iron, and their four hands end in talons, each holding a menacing weapon. Usually, these weapons are swords, though variants with other weapons exist.
Before devoting successes to duration, the mage must increase Strength to 6, spend three successes to soak lethal and aggravated damage (soak dice per success) and two more for extra arms. The extra arms give the mage four extra dice on unarmed and Melee dice pools. Additional successes may be spent to add two dice to these dice pools by making the mage more coordinated in their use. Three more successes must be spent to create an aura of supernatural fear around the mage, causing Sleepers to flee and others to require a Willpower roll at difficulty 6 with a minimum of three successes to avoid doing so. An additional success is needed to power it at all, along with three points on quintessence.
The ritual to invoke this is time consuming, as it requires many successes, and so it is often combined with Time so that the effect may be prepared in advance of a battle. If Spirit is added, a spirit of destruction is invited into the mage's body, giving the mage access to its Charms, though anything other than a complete success risks possession. Vulcan's Hammer
Tradition Book: Order of Hermes (Revised) page 67
Life 4, Matter 3, Forces 3, optional Prime 2
It is important for a Hermetic mage to be capable of subtlety. Sometimes, however, a Hermetic needs to be the most blatant person on the planet. The mage sculpts a statuette of themselves out of iron-rich clay, inscribing their True Name onto it ten times, kneading it into the clay before firing it. With this clay statuette, the mage can assume the shape of Vulcan's Hammer, a grossly vulgar war form made from iron. In this form, the mage gets +3 Strength, -2 Dexterity (minimum 1), +4 Stamina, fails all Social Attribute rolls automatically (other than intimidation), and anyone who comes into physical contact with the mage takes standard Forces damage from this effect. With Prime 2, the mage deals aggravated damage with hand-to-hand attacks. Warp-Spasm
Dead Magic 2 page 120
Forces 3, Life 4, Prime 3
The mage's very body warps to make them into a fury-filled warrior. They get an extra dot in all Physical Attributes for every two successes and two extra dice of damage in melee due to emitting extreme heat. If the mage maintains this form for longer than a scene, they must spend a point of Willpower for each extra duration or else become a mindless berserker. All of these are canon Mage warform rotes that are available to wizards under ExWoD.
And the user can still cast magic while they are active.
Im not even talking non-canon rotes, like say offloading lethal damage to wizards or people who he has mindcontrolled/enchanted.
Despite everything that happened in Vegas, there remains a distinct tendency to underestimate a wizard with preptime.
Simon Peabody canonically is the prime candidate for the deaths of Senior Council wizards Aleron LaFortier and Simon Petrovich, the Archangel Brute Squad, and all the Wardens and wizards who died in Dead Beat.
Even when he died, he still managed to take fifty wizards and Deputy Warden Commander Donald Morgan with him.
He was the author of Die Lied der Erlking, the book that was used to summon the Erlking in Dead Beat.
He has the skill and resources to summon a mistwraith so deadly that it took the entire Senior Council to contain and banish it, and the skill and subtlety to mindcontrol the commander of the White Council's military.
Thats just the canon version. The one here has apparently received upgrades with his direct affiliation to Ashraaaf.
The fact that people voted, and made decisions based on the assumption that he was a scrub is one of the most frustrating things it has been my misfortune to argue about in this quest so far.
You all are underestimating Kakuzu, to quote an old Spacebattles meme.
Why wouldnt he both use enthralled mobs and himself?
Why would a guy who has a notNephandi demigod-thing as a sponsor go to Yama Kings for power?
Besides, he's an elder wizard who is at least a hundred years old with a canonical proficiency in summoning spirits, and we're running on WoD rules for them.
He could literally pull out a One Winged Angel form; he has access to a bunch of them in MtA:
Deity Form
Dead Magic 2 page 80
Forces 3, Life 4, Prime 4, Spirit 2, optional Entropy 5
This rote allows the mage to become an Avatar of a god, though at the cost of paradox as it is always vulgar. The mage gains the benefits of Friction Curse, Telekinesis and Better Body, they take on the aspect of the deity via Mutate Form and use Wellspring to replenish power. Spirit calls to the deity who permits this transformation. Optionally, Entropy 5 can be added to renew the deity's worship, reinvigorating the idea of the deity in those who see its avatar
Holy Union
Ascension, page 197-199
Spirit 4, Prime 3, Mind 3, optional Life 5
The Holy Union ritual summons a psychopomp spirit from the deep Umbra and binds a part of its essence to the mage's avatar, granting several of the psychopomp's powers to the mage, specifically related to guiding souls and manipulating avatars. The version that can manipulate the avatars of the living requires Life 5. This is the ritual used by Heylel to become rebis, which is still the term for those who go through this ritual.
Spirit is used to summon the psychopomp, Prime prepares the mage to assimilate the essence permanently (as in Enchant Life), and as the fragment is sentient, Mind is needed to communicate with it. As mentioned above, Life is needed to manipulate avatars attached to living beings (such as merging two of them, as Heylel did) and otherwise the rebis is only capable of manipulating disembodied avatars and avatar fragments.
The ritual requires 10 successes to last for a day, 14 to be made permanent, plus one per additional subject, but because this is attempting to force something alien into the avatar, it attempts to reject it resulting in a +2 difficulty to the effect. Pages 198-199 of Ascension detail the powers this effect grants, and the consequences of those powers.
Iron Avatar
Tradition Book: Euthanatos (First Edition) page 67
Tradition Book: Euthanatos (Revised) page 60
Life 3, Matter 3, Mind 2, Prime 2, optional Spirit 4, Time 4
This rote merges the visages of Kali and Shiva to turn the caster into a four-armed killer. The user of the rote becomes 10 feet tall; their skin turns the color of wrought iron, and their four hands end in talons, each holding a menacing weapon. Usually, these weapons are swords, though variants with other weapons exist.
Before devoting successes to duration, the mage must increase Strength to 6, spend three successes to soak lethal and aggravated damage (soak dice per success) and two more for extra arms. The extra arms give the mage four extra dice on unarmed and Melee dice pools. Additional successes may be spent to add two dice to these dice pools by making the mage more coordinated in their use. Three more successes must be spent to create an aura of supernatural fear around the mage, causing Sleepers to flee and others to require a Willpower roll at difficulty 6 with a minimum of three successes to avoid doing so. An additional success is needed to power it at all, along with three points on quintessence.
The ritual to invoke this is time consuming, as it requires many successes, and so it is often combined with Time so that the effect may be prepared in advance of a battle. If Spirit is added, a spirit of destruction is invited into the mage's body, giving the mage access to its Charms, though anything other than a complete success risks possession.
Vulcan's Hammer
Tradition Book: Order of Hermes (Revised) page 67
Life 4, Matter 3, Forces 3, optional Prime 2
It is important for a Hermetic mage to be capable of subtlety. Sometimes, however, a Hermetic needs to be the most blatant person on the planet. The mage sculpts a statuette of themselves out of iron-rich clay, inscribing their True Name onto it ten times, kneading it into the clay before firing it. With this clay statuette, the mage can assume the shape of Vulcan's Hammer, a grossly vulgar war form made from iron. In this form, the mage gets +3 Strength, -2 Dexterity (minimum 1), +4 Stamina, fails all Social Attribute rolls automatically (other than intimidation), and anyone who comes into physical contact with the mage takes standard Forces damage from this effect. With Prime 2, the mage deals aggravated damage with hand-to-hand attacks.
Warp-Spasm
Dead Magic 2 page 120
Forces 3, Life 4, Prime 3
The mage's very body warps to make them into a fury-filled warrior. They get an extra dot in all Physical Attributes for every two successes and two extra dice of damage in melee due to emitting extreme heat. If the mage maintains this form for longer than a scene, they must spend a point of Willpower for each extra duration or else become a mindless berserker.
All of these are canon Mage warform rotes that are available to wizards under ExWoD.
And the user can still cast magic while they are active.
Im not even talking non-canon rotes, like say offloading lethal damage to wizards or people who he has mindcontrolled/enchanted.
Despite everything that happened in Vegas, there remains a distinct tendency to underestimate a wizard with preptime.
No we did not.
McCoy is a hitman, not an investigator. He's also canonically one of the guys who Peabody doses with magic mindcontrol ink
Why would we take the risk?
The canon one had no direct link to Outsiders that we know of.
This one is directly linked to one.
People in the World of Darkness do NOT routinely spank elder Mage Nephandi; those encounters are few and far between, and often end badly for the adventurer and the general public alike.
This is some of that arrogance Ive been complaining about.
There's the thing about that every single Elder council member should also be capable of things like that simply because we're told that they are masters of their craft hell listens to wind is literally someone who is capable of scrapping with a lesser deity in melee range through transformation McCoy the 7th most powerful wizard in the white Council can throw people across mountains pull satellites out of the air kill God knows how many people in one swing of his hand, Martha Liberty could pull off both the God form and Union spells she's a master Spirit Channel being and Eater of the Weak does not make you any stronger than your peers it very explicitly does not do that.
You can claim Investments you can claim outer knowledge you can't claim that no one else is competent in the same skill set that they are known to be competent in. Never mind all of those things are capable of being counter spelled and just through weight of people counter spelling because counter spells are cumulative not individual would mean any spell that he threw would immediately fail if more than a single wizard cast counter spell at the same time.
It is the claiming of one-sided Buffs that always draws the attention of people who disagree with you @uju32 not that he isn't dangerous but that somehow no one else benefits from a history change or conversion it is only the bad guys and it's patently false we see Arthur using magic enhances ability we see Dresden being capable of active counter spelling which we never see him do outside of ritual in Canon. This is before we get to the fact that Ward's have a real mechanical effect that could completely smother most magic users both in Dresden files and Mage and sorcerer revised that if turned on Peabody would either reduce him down to just his Investments which is a guy with Investments versus a bunch of arch Mages or reduces his magic so far down that a below average member of the white council could counter spell every spell that comes out of him.
It rings incredibly disingenuous and slightly snide to hype Peabody up so much and then claim that exalted assistance is immediately needed and necessary to deal with him. @BoredMan has a realistic argument our presence there only improves the possible outcomes of that scenario but it's not the white council could not beat Peabody.
The problem with taking Peabody seriously is that there is a fundamental imbalance between a Mage and Molly.
A Wizard is mostly human, has 7 health and no particular ability to soak aggravated without an active spell to do so.
Molly has a massive healthpool, can soak anything you can throw at her and can be reflexively immune to a lot of different effects. And she is extremely fast and deadly for WoD standards.
So if the Wizards makes one mistake, has one bad Arete roll, gets even mildly surprised, he's instantly dead.
Meanwhile if Molly makes a mistake or a bad roll, she soaks the counter and tries again. Several times if need be.
There is simply no margin of error at all for a mortal Wizard to fight Molly, but a huge margin of error for Molly, which makes the odds of them winning any direct confrontation extremely low.
Simon Peabody canonically is the prime candidate for the deaths of Senior Council wizards Aleron LaFortier and Simon Petrovich, the Archangel Brute Squad, and all the Wardens and wizards who died in Dead Beat.
Even when he died, he still managed to take fifty wizards and Deputy Warden Commander Donald Morgan with him.
He was the author of Die Lied der Erlking, the book that was used to summon the Erlking in Dead Beat.
He has the skill and resources to summon a mistwraith so deadly that it took the entire Senior Council to contain and banish it, and the skill and subtlety to mindcontrol the commander of the White Council's military.
The fact that people voted, and made decisions based on the assumption that he was a scrub is one of the most frustrating things it has been my misfortune to argue about in this quest so far.
You all are underestimating Kakuzu, to quote an old Spacebattles meme
Just the clear. I am going to give you a 100% guarantee that if we decide to fight him right there that we will win against him and it will be very easy.
Like the one thing i am not worried about in this quest is combat. Like he can do institutional damage which is risky but i don't think he can deal with essentially unblockable 20 agg on the first round.
People in the World of Darkness do NOT routinely spank elder Mage Nephandi; those encounters are few and far between, and often end badly for the adventurer and the general public alike.
This is some of that arrogance Ive been complaining about.
No, they do. Why do upu think they hide in the deep umbra. Their only pressnce in the solar system is in the war around jupiter and i think some hidden nodes. Being a nephandi doesn't make you better than other mages and there are a lot more of them that hate them.
An idiot can start a wildfire that requires the efforts of an entire state to contain with a cheap lighter. Peabody wasn't an idiot and what he did wasn't easy, but the difficulty of making a mess doesn't necessarily map to the difficulty of cleaning it up.
We don't have an endless array of details, but that doesn't mean there aren't bounds. In my view the specific details of canon need to make sense in the context of anything changed in the grey are; they're the fixed points of history.
Peabody should be making best possible use of all resources available to him as he sees it. He shouldn't suddenly remember he has the ability to craft super rituals that only an exalt can defeat targeted in exactly the right way that our existing powers can't deal with them. If he could do that then the resources should have been evident in canon.
My dude. Those are things that already exist.
The fucking strega witches in Blood Rites were able to summon a Great Walker with preptime, a ritual and a blood sacrifice, and they were actual fucking scrubs. DuMorne called up He Who Walks Behind as well.
There's a distinct lack of respect on your part for what an elder wizard with no scruples is capable of.
And its less excusable after Vegas, where a female wizard apparently less than half Peabody's age almost killed a city.
I don't either, but you're making wildly excessive claims about our opposition that encourage runaway power scale escalation past what's reasonable. We have plenty of options for this personally and through allies.
… Okay, so that is a thing. I think that introduces all sorts of problems in our context*, but it does exist. Not sure why they made a whole new system separate from rotes and injected them back in, but White Wolf has a reputation for a reason.
I never said that an Arcana could play by exalted rules, just that the exalt only barrier is harder to reach than you imply. For a vast majority of situations including the ones we involve ourselves in a very good sorcerer should be able to contend the effects in play. The buff games are a pain, but we can play them too.
The Wicked City and the direct attention of its ruling lord is not the new default.
* We can't really boost essence, so if these effects are common or reasonably achievable then every charm without an activation roll is trivial to defeat.
1) It does not. The book was pretty clear about needing to be yay high to ride with regards to some effects.
If you think some random spellcaster is going to try to fuck with the charms of an Arete 8-equivalent Celestial Exalt, in combat time, and not just have the effect bounce, I dont know what to tell you.
2)You have been declaring that an Arcana would give close to the same counterspelling as Molly or her party members, and that is both mechanically impossible and narratively implausible.
Furthermore, Olivia is a poor counterspeller for much the same reason in high-tier conflict; she caps at 10 dice as a sorcerer, currently only has 8 dice, and can still botch.
Given as we're looking at DC8 rolls for combat counterspells even in the absence of enemy debuffs, she is not reliable.
Lydia doesnt cap, but she has only Occult 1, and lacks the relevant Excellency.
She's good at unweaving magic because she favors Intelligence, but she's a worse combat counterspeller than anyone else on our party, and will remain that way without additional investment.
The only person who might come close to Molly is Tiffany, who can go up to 15 dice with preptime and the use of Lore of Flesh, but unfortunately she can both botch Occult rolls, and she doesnt have the Occult Aptitude Merit yet.
So yeah, like I said beforehand, Molly is, and remains the best counterspelling option
And in refusing to actually equip her for this, we unilaterally disarmed ourselves prior to a major engagement.
That is a bullshit comparison. She's has access to all kinds of lore and experience using it through the memories of her forebears. The outside self evidently can't just whisper some secrets in your ear and instantly level you up.
If they could just do this for free then they would spam it all the time before things even became a problem.
I'm working from the assumption that the canon backstory happened under these rules and would proceed as canon did without our actions so far. Peabody wouldn't be acting like this if they could use him like that.
There are costs and limits to their investments, trade offs we don't immediately see the rules for but which clearly limit the power of their agents. In most contexts making the floor to countering the problem exalted grade weight should be a flag that you're exaggerating the situation.
And what makes you think they dont spam it to loyalists who have the capacity to sustain it?
Have you heard of the Stygian Sisterhood? Thomas has, but Dresden certainly hasnt, yet they exist anyway.
You shouldnt be using a 32 year old stayathome wizard's memory as a benchmark for an exhaustive rogues gallery of baddies.
Its not like Nephandi wizards are thick on the ground; generally even wicked wizards generally want the world to keep standing, even if only so they can fight over the spoils.
People who want to end Creation completely are rare.
We literally just dug up a couple Dragon Blooded Exalts in Wales, and found out that there are Celestial Exalts in Demonreach.
And you are assuming the canon backstory happened under canon backstory rules? Despite IC information about say, Mab's ascent to power or the AU ancestry of her children(in canon its an Austrian music composer, probably Schubert, not Merlin)?
Canon Peabody as far as we know did not have a Nephandi demigod's fingers in his soul.
He stopped because he wasn't willing to hit her with magic or shoot her with his pistol. Leaving him with physically overpowering someone who did have some sort of juice going.
The point of contention I have with you here is that I think stealth like this is expensive and they have some sort of investment cap. You discard that cost and then take every special case as something which can be added on for free.
But we never see that taken to its logical conclusion. Vitto wasn't channeling that thing to subtly advance himself, that power level was his panic button.
If he thought he could take her he would have allowed her to step on the island with him and then called up Alfred to bind her.
He punked Lara and a Valkyrie that way in Peace Talks. That he didnt speaks to profound doubts about his then current ability to engage her and the Walker riding her in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Chicago.
No, stealth is not expensive.
Stealth is routine for an Outsider or an Outsider-aligned entity. The Outer Gates literally exist because of just how easy it is for an Outsider to slip into the body of an injured soldier or returning medic; one of their jobs is to be a CAT scan
The Gatekeeper lowered his hood.
He had short hair that was still thick and gleamed silver, but his features were weathered, as if from long years under harsh sunlight. His skin was paler now, but there was still something of the desert on his skin. His face was long, his brows still dark and full. He had a double scar on his left eyebrow and cheek, two long lines that went straight down, a lot like mine, only deeper and thicker and all the way to his jawline, and they were much softer with long years of healing. Maybe he hadn't been as good at flinching as I was, because he'd lost the eye beneath the scar. One of his eyes was nearly black, it was so dark. The other had been replaced with . . .
I looked around me. Yes, definitely. The other eye had been replaced with the crystalline material that was identical to that which had been used to create the gates and the walls around them.
"Steel," I said.
"Pardon?" he asked.
"Your, uh, other eye. It was steel before."
"I'm sure it looked like steel," he said. "The disguise is necessary when I'm not here."
"Your job is so secret, your false eye gets a disguise?" I asked. "Guess I see why you miss Council meetings." He inclined his head and ruffled his fingers through mussed, tousled hood-hair. "It can be quiet for years here, sometimes. And others . . ." He spread his hands. "But they need a good eye here to be sure that the things that must remain outside do not slip in unnoticed."
"Inside the wounded," I guessed. "Or returning troops. Or medics."
"You've become aware of the adversary," he said, his tone one of firm approval. "Excellent. I was certain your particular pursuits would get you killed long before you got a chance to learn."
"How can I help?" I asked him.
He leaned his head back and then a slow smile reasserted itself on his face. "I know something of the responsibilities you've chosen to take up," he said, "to say nothing of the problems you've created for yourself that you haven't found out about yet. And still, in the face of learning that our world spins out its days under siege, you offer to help me? I think you and I could be friends."
"Wait," I said. "What problems? I haven't been trying to create problems."
"Oh," he said, waving a hand. "You've danced about in the shadows at the edge of life now, young man. That's no small thing, to go into those shadows and come back again—you've no idea the kind of attention you've attracted."
"Oh," I said. "Good. Because the pace was starting to slow down so much that I was getting bored."
At that, Rashid tilted his head back and laughed. "Would you be offended if I called you Harry?"
"No. Because it's my name."
"Exactly," he said. "Harry, I know you have questions. I can field a very few before I go."
I nodded, thinking. "Okay," I said. "First, how do you know if the adversary has . . . infested someone?"
"Experience," he said. "Decades of it. The Sight can help, but . . ." Rashid hesitated. I recognized it instantly, the hiccup in one's thoughts when one stumbled over a truly hideous memory gained with the Sight, like I'd had with—
Ugh.
—the naagloshii. "I don't recommend making a regular practice of it," he continued. "It's an art, not a skill, and it takes time. Time, or a bit of questionable attention from the Fates and a ridiculously enormous tool." He tapped a finger against his false eye.
I blinked, even though he didn't, and looked up at the massive gates stretching overhead. "Hell's bells. The gates . . . they're . . . some kind of spiritual CAT scanner?"
"Among many other things," he said. "But it's one of their functions, yes. Mostly it means that the adversary cannot use such tactics effectively here. As long as the Gatekeeper is vigilant, it rarely tries." The horns sounded again, and the muscles in his jaw tensed. "Next question."
I hate trying to be smart under time pressure. "This," I said, pointing up at the gates. "What the hell? How long has this attack been going on?"
"Always," he said. "There are always Outsiders trying to tear their way in. There are always forces in place to stop them. In our age, it is the task of Winter to defend these boundaries, with the help of certain others to support them. Think of them as . . . an immune system for the mortal world."
My dude. Those are things that already exist.
The fucking strega witches in Blood Rites were able to summon a Great Walker with preptime, a ritual and a blood sacrifice, and they were actual fucking scrubs. DuMorne called up He Who Walks Behind as well.
There's a distinct lack of respect on your part for what an elder wizard with no scruples is capable of.
And its less excusable after Vegas, where a female wizard apparently less tha
Nobody is saying Wizards can't do amazing stuff with preptime.
Sure,destroying a city is possible.
Winning a close match with Molly though, that's an enterily different kind of challenge, that Wizards aren't suited for, at least without extensive and specialised preparation.
Preptime is the killer app of wizards. Its what they are known for. I have no doubt that the Merlin and Rashid and other Senior Council members have contingent effects/hanging spells preset for random encounters and ambushes; thats how they managed to live this long. Rashid in particular. Even when Petrovich was ambushed, he stacked bodies like cordwood.
But if you stripped all of that away by fiat, and successfully got the drop on them? Any wizard would die.
Aleron LaFortier was murdered in the Hidden Halls of Edinburgh with a knife. Because he didnt expect it in a safe space.
Maggie LeFay was murdered during childbirth with an entropy curse, when she was outside wards, her normal defenses would have been down and her attention was focused elsewhere.
Time effect says hello. So do hanging spells with conditional triggers.
This is an elder wizard with preptime; we dont know their Spheres besides Mind, Matter, Forces and Spirit, but they've been around for a while, and have had access to the Council's extensive library on current and theoretical magics.
Just the clear. I am going to give you a 100% guarantee that if we decide to fight him right there that we will win against him and it will be very easy.
Like the one thing i am not worried about in this quest is combat. Like he can do institutional damage which is risky but i don't think he can deal with essentially unblockable 20 agg on the first round.
Back on SB, when Rihaku used to run fast-paced quests pretty regularly, he ran a Naruto Quest with an original protagonist.
Before your time, I think. This claim puts me much in mind of what happened with Kakuzu, and how underestimating him turned out with us having to fight a hybrid abomination of him and Orochimaru after it had killed and assimilated Jiraiya.
I can think of several ways to handle 20 Agg damage as a Mage with no scruples and several years of preptime.
One of them has even been demonstrated in the quest so far.
No, they do. Why do upu think they hide in the deep umbra. Their only pressnce in the solar system is in the war around jupiter and i think some hidden nodes. Being a nephandi doesn't make you better than other mages and there are a lot more of them that hate them.
They hang out in the Deep Umbra because of Paradox.
Much the same reason why Archmages live in Horizon Realms. You never almost never see Prelati on Earth, and never see Gilledians; what you generally run into are pawns/Dregvati, Nephandi and Adsinistrati.
Also, you appear to be conflating Threat Null and the Nephandi. Not the same thing.
Threat Null are what the Void Engineers and allies fight out in space post-Avatar Storm. The Nephandi are on Earth, and have always been.
This is an elder wizard with preptime; we dont know their Spheres besides Mind, Matter, Forces and Spirit, but they've been around for a while, and have had access to the Council's extensive library on current and theoretical magics.
No, there is no paradox in the umbra, they could stand on the other side of the veil and no paradox would touch them. There are regularly battles in the solar system with giant battleships, no paradox there.
They hide in the deepbecause they get hunted down.
We know what happens when they have unchallenged combat superiority, the unnamed happens.
Also, you appear to be conflating Threat Null and the Nephandi. Not the same thing.
Threat Null are what the Void Engineers and allies fight out in space post-Avatar Storm. The Nephandi are on Earth, and have always been.
No i am not. I just mean that the only real threat of the nephandi has always been infiltration. You don't see giant nephandi conquering countires because they get killed if that happens. (And we know its possible because of north korea so its not like its impossible.) Never mind this i misremembered. Never been done by a nephandi.
They are not linebackers in combat, they are infiltrattors and tempters.
