I'll put it this way - electric doesn't mean electronic, and batteries used in military systems are not batteries used in household devices. If Dresden can drive a car, and there's an enchanted phoneboard in headquarters, then the bomb is certainly viable.
It also needs not be inside the Halls. Being nearby would work.
We have seen techbane fuck with automatic weapons and even radio, both 19th century shit.
The Hidden Halls has an enchanted phoneboard, but no electrical lights.
Just magic.
Again, you are vastly underestimating the issues. I think, at least, just my opinion.
As for outside the Halls, any attack at that point would run into the protective magic wards designed to shed anything short of an actual god, which would tank it along with everything else.
No effect on the Halls. Sucks for Edinburgh, though.
Obtaining enriched fissile material if you are Lawbreaking is easy. As is obtaining nukes themselves. There are
missing nukes IRL. That at least one or several of them are in supernatural hands (likely fomor and quite possibly warlocks of some kind) is very plausible. Obtaining enriched material is easier.
From there one has to speculate, but I am betting that entropic magic or time magic can be used to affect the rate of nuclear decay and radioactivity. From there, you enchant two pieces of subcritical mass to lower its radiocativity, rendering them temporarily inert, push them together to produce critical mass (still inert), then encase them in a sturdy casing (possibly enchanted). And you are done. Now you break the enchantments, and you have yourself a nuke. The casing just needs to survive long enough for the reaction to really start going. For additional yield, instead of turning the magic off, turn in around to increase the rate of nuclear decay (that's basic entropic curse by the way).
And we know that magic can mess with time and probabilistic events.
1) Transmuting radioactive isotopes like U-235 and Pu-238 with magic requires Matter 5 + Forces, which does not appear to be thick on the ground in the Dresdenverse.
Nevermind the idea of actually stealing fissile materials from national stockpiles without notice from mortals OR supernaturals; Butcher told us that nuclear testing was detectable magically and led to the White Council investigating in the beginning.
And the only missing nukes are in physically inaccessible places, hostile even for most supernaturals.
2) You are doing a lot of speculative handwaving here to skip over shit that takes thousands of people, millions of man hours and the equivalent of hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars of infrastructure.
They're wizards, not Exalts. They still have to put in the work.
Specifically, working with nuclear forces appears to be a Rank 5 Sphere effect in Mage.
Nevermind that you are talking about taking this into the Hidden Halls, one of the most heavily warded places in the world, and assume that your hostile probability manipulation effect will work there.
Or that this is precisely the sort of thing that even supernaturals pay attention to.
To be clear?
I find it entirely plausible that entropic or time magics can be used to modify or enhance weapons technology, even nuclear tech.But wholesale replacement as you are suggesting here is entirely too far fetched as described.
Literally easier to brew sarin or VX or novichok and dump it in the tunnels; thats only Matter 3, as far as I can tell.
And frankly, its something Im expecting.
Not for this purpose. Wizards know what nukes are and where to get them.
1) Nukes are not designed to be man-portable.
There's a reason the only two such things in the US arsenal are the Davy Crockett with a sub-kiloton yield and a weight of around 20 kilos, and the SADM which is around 30 kilos and 10 tons to 1kt.
2)The Red Court owns Latin America. Brazil is a nuclear threshold state; both it and Argentina had extant nuclear weapons programs in the Cold War, and both still have nuclear power programs. So exactly why do you think the Reds have left theirs alone, and have even outsourced chemical weapons to the Fomor?
On the nuke stuff; I doubt Peabody could acquire one on this timetable, but we did technically give him a partial answer to tech bane. Really we gave it to the entire council, it's just a matter of if they've realized it and how much they'd be willing to trust it.
Eh.
They knew Mikaboshi before we showed up, and he's not the only Yama King who uses modern tech. Non-technically inclined vampires like Leinth Skavis recognized the cyberdevils on sight. I dont really think it changes anything on the technical end; evil wizards are not going to treat bound cyberdevils any better than Yama Kings, or trust them, and the devils will return the favor.
What the Big Book of Yomi Wan does change is on the political side, because it made it significantly easier to recognize specific factions, contact them, and even find your way around the geography.
I mean Uju is right about splitting up here. Only Sophia can get rid of mind control and we need both political authority and power to deescalate while minimizing casualties.
What we don't need to do is split our combat power then have each side deal with traps and the like alone. Molly's rapidly dwindling essence is countered by having so many other assets on hand, splitting up makes that more of an issue. I'd rather not the weaker combat party have to deal with Luccio and or Peabody with Outsider mooks alone or something.
[X] uju32
^^^
Also worth noting that the more people we have at a task, the quicker it will go. If we have the whole party as a single murderball, we can just roll over opposition fast and with minimal casualties, instead of getting bogged down or having to burn Essence.
Sophia is the only one who can do (quick)exorcism.
Lash is the only one who can handle environmental poisons like VX or sarin.
Molly is the only one who can handle high-end counterspelling and unweaving.
McCoy is the only one with political authority.
Everyone here serves a purpose. Splitting up weakens us.
