They literally are. Arcana are inherently loyal to their makers unless you think we're just going to plan on abusing the everliving shit out of this spirit for multiple stories in a row.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
1) Loyalty is not obedience.
2) A major god is not an arcana. The Arcana system is not meant, nor is it equipped, to allow you to raise city god-class entities.
Furthermore, you are talking about creating a person, and people have their own opinions. Ask any parent.
They might not like wyldfae. They might demand control of every Dragon Nest in the city limits. They might object to the work done on the Chicago River, or to industry, or to money going to another city.
At that scale, personal preferences and foibles become issues of geopolitical importance.
There's a reason the divine bureaucracy in Exalted Creation was a menace to the people who lived in the vicinity.
A river god in mourning could devastate everyone within several thousand miles.
Yes we can. Arcana spirits are built loyal by default. They can become disloyal if we abuse them later, yes, but they start off purpose-built with clear loyalties and investment into the jobs we make them for. It's directly in the design document. A guardian spirit / god of Chicago is going to be a stalwart defender of Chicago.
Loyalty is not obedience as Primordial War showed, but I'd like to point out that it took horrific abuse by Primordials to make Incarna rebel, and they still maintained duties they were built for.
Yes, they are a person, but they are not a human person, and antropomorphising them too much is a folly, and, dare I say it, a form of racism. We are building them from ground up, and we are building their interests and loyalties.
I maintain that you are overly negative again.
Thats for an Arcana.
Not a City-God.
1) To my recollection, abuse had nothing to do with the Incarna rebelling.
They wanted the Games of Divinity, the divine Xbox. Thats why they were pretty much parked in front of it as soon as the Primordial War ended.
2) We have precedent in Exalted, in World of Darkness about what you can expect from city gods, and in the Dresden Files on what you can expect from major spirits and gods. They are all very human, with pretty human motivations.
Their value systems might be different, but what drives them is not.
You dont create an entity that closely linked to a major human city and not expect it to take on mostly human motivations.
3) Your prerogative. I think that you arent really grokking the implications of what you are trying to do.
Regardless, we dont have the resources to pursue that now anyway.
Certainly not in the next turn.
Yes for a city God how do you think this God is going to be coming to existence it's just going to do magic its way in or we going to build it like an Arcana very specifically either using a Phantasm base and then either upgraded or directly attach it to the city there's no other way to do it exalted craft is the only way to do this.
Tell me if we're not using exalted craft to build the God how are we going to do it? Obviously we must be using something else because we can craft Gods with exalted craft. Though this particular God is apparently too strong for exalted craft despite it already making Gods.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Even if you model something like an arcana(edit: for whatever reason), that does not mean it (edit: necessarily) is an arcana metaphysically speaking.
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Gods are Spirits we make spirits, I don't know how else to say it the idea that the magnitude needs to change both metaphysical and mechanical category simply because the thing is larger is completely false and I don't know why people are making the equivalency.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I don't see the point, nor do I have any desire, to try to redeem these captured warlocks. These guys aren't just a couple of unfortunate Lawbreakers. You don't bring that sort to an attack on the Halls, of all places. Rather, they are true blue warlocks, traitors and murderers complicit in some really heinous shit.
Interrogate them, if necessary, then allow Lydia to shuffle them free from their mortal coils.
Interrogate them, if necessary, then allow Lydia to shuffle them free from their mortal coils.
We dont know the specifics of their cases.
However, its not about redeeming them, though that would be nice, because every wizard the Council loses weakens it.
Its about proving that False Spring Beckons works, by demonstrating it on people who the White Council would kill anyway.
Which means less opposition to using it on people who were brainwashed, or who blundered.
What resource are we lacking?
We god-forged without exalted crafted in this quest. Yes, least god, but the same principle. Our exaltation defaults to making gods, and arcana spirits are treated as such.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Mah... Could they not be brainwashed victims? Interesting perspective.
In Dresden Files mind control does actual real damage to the person who is being mind controlled so keep it simple otherwise the brain of the person your mind controlling will rupture. Same for most mind and mental manipulation it's why Molly's friends are either deathly afraid of drugs or in a mental hospital.
There's no simple or real mechanism by which these people could be so entirely complicit without having their brain leaking from their ears at which point they're not really complicit they're dying because they're having multiple aneurysms.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Anything is possible, but I doubt it in this instance, considering who they were with and what they were doing when they were captured. That degree of mindfuckery would make them far less functional than they would need to be if the BBEG wanted to use them as reliable minions to cover his ass while monologuing and mustache-twirling.
Also, I don't really care if they're brainwashed. Not here, not now. This isn't the time for misplaced mercy or trying to set an example of our capabilities. We're here to get shit done and clean up the Council's mess, not film a Hallmark movie or advertise our services to those who need their brains unwashed.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Magic isn't the only way to brainwash someone in the first place. Conditioning, indoctrination, magic drugs like Rampire saliva, magic enforced conditioning due to how black magic corrupts the mind ect.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
That contradicts the heart to heart Molly had with Carlos and what she decided to do in response IMO but alright.
1) It doesnt matter how we build it, its not going to be an arcana.
Thats a specific class of entity that Holden deliberately limited in scope. The most you get out of that is minor spirit.
2) The Archive is five thousand years old.
It was created with mortal wizardry, as far as we can tell, demonstrating that artificial spirit constructs can be done in mortal wizardry in the Dresdenverse. And not to mention that Exalted Sorcery is a thing as well.
Time. Political buy-in.
Resources/Reagents NA. Sorcerous know-how. Legal research about the current rules for spirits allowed to be active in the real world; we'd almost certainly have to talk to Uriel.
You are proposing we build a city god for the third biggest city in the United States, the only global superpower currently existing, and a city thats a major magical nexus in its own right.
And that every other major magical actor will sit on the sidelines.
Consider what it took to make the Archive.
Consider the death toll it takes to invoke a Darkhallow to elevate an existing archmage into a god. Consider what it took Voormas to become the Grand Harvester of Souls.
You havent even begun to grok the scale of the mega-project that should be involved in making a major god from scratch.
This is not a 1 or 2 AP project.
Remember, this isnt canon.
The bad guys took a level in efficacy as well as we did.
Mercy is never misplaced.
The Council might choose to execute them anyway, if they think that they acted out of sound mind. Note that we arent offering it to Peabody, because we are sure he knew what he was doing.
But let it not be because the Council thinks that they cant be redeemed.
And we specifically voted to promise Carlos to try to save people.
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Vote closed, sorry for the delay, got distracted by the news.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Ah well. It can be brought up later then.
Ideally though the White Council gets out of this with as little casualties as possible given that they're in the middle of a war and any warlock redeemed is one less casualty lost to a people that require decades to be made combat ready.
Ideally though the White Council gets out of this with as little casualties as possible given that they're in the middle of a war and any warlock redeemed is one less casualty lost to a people that require decades to be made combat ready.
That still means they are complicit though. I don't want to come off like I'm Dresden Files proper but there was a real Choice involved in let's raise necromantic constructs and try to blow down this building so fighting spills out into streets full of civilians.
There can be some level of mind manipulation here I don't doubt that but you have to assume that a person has a choice at some point in this process they could have decided you know being here doing this isn't good for a variety of reasons not the least of which it might result in me literally dying I should leave and then they stayed.
Without direct magical compellence they had a choice in how this day was going to go for them even if it was just them kind of hiding out and keeping an ear to the ground for how it was going to end.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Black magic corruption, Rampire saliva, I gave examples of direct magical compellence your just ignoring what I'm saying. In any case I'm not going to get into a debate about the importance of redemption and why we bother with doing so in prisons instead of just executing everyone.
Neither of those directly compel action though that's what I was getting at. Neither of them require that you kill anyone vampire saliva can just as easily be extracted from their corpses as it can their living mouth.
Black magic corruption very specifically doesn't compel planned action like even with this example that you were giving that means they were just in an altered state of mind if they are actively tripping on red vampire Venom or black magic but neither of those actually compel them to you know kill everyone,
One of them just makes them more likely to kill in general if that is the black magic they are using and the other very specifically makes the Drinker docile not actually compelling them to action in any way.
That is what I mean by they had a choice simply because black magic doesn't compel planned action neither does vampire Venom they're not actually compelled through those things to do anything unless out and out mind control is applied to them they had a choice in how today was going to go.
On the subject of redemption people have to want and take specific specific steps to be redeemed these people are One just straight up necromancers Two attempted terrorists Three possibly Mega murderers depending on how exactly they were getting the fuel for said necromancy and all of them were in a trust of warlocks beforehand.
I really can't talk about death as far as the prisons as America doesn't do prisons for Redemption they're completely punitive. Which are pretty much explicitly because justice system isn't administrated by people who can have all of the answers sometimes the people are innocent so generally killing them is in poor form so it's better to just have sentences that can be carried out and if someone is revealed to be innocent later they can be compensated for their misspent time and still be alive.
Those reasons don't quite stand up in this case these warlocks are very specifically One warlocks Two attempted Mass murderers Three actual necromancers Four in trust with greater warlocks who have sold their soul to the outside there's a whole variety of reasons why I don't feel particularly stressed about Redemption for these people.
Edit: Compellence is a form of coercion that attempts to get an actor (such as a state) to change its behavior through threats to use force or the actual use of limited force.
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Sorry if something I said in there comes off as angry or a tirade it's just it doesn't really take me very long to type a lot so I just try to get my point across and sometimes that means a lot of text.
Though I do feel the need to say this on reflection you meant extenuating circumstances and that is my bad. Because there's only so much I can glean from text I can't context check what you mean when you say words that aren't what you mean.
Which is to say yeah these warlocks might have a series of extenuating circumstances that directly led to today.
Arc 14 Post 40: Sorcerer's Snare
Sorcerer's Snare
18th of February 2007 A.D.
The pair Lydia managed to 'save' for a value of the word so miserly as to be almost an insult could not be more mismatched. One is a large mustachioed man, his robes stained with soot and burned around the edges, the other a woman of middling years, her long grey hair tied back in an intricate braid. The only thing alike about them is their eyes. You don't like looking in their eyes, but you do. That's how Mom and Dad taught you to talk to people and they deserve this much. "I won't take up much of your time. Do any of you know where Wizard LaFortier and the Merlin are. Wizard Peabody indicated that he had bound the former to his life with magic."
"I don't know what Samuel did, I don't know what he can do," the portly man, 'Honorius', someone behind you whispers, starts, his voice ragged. "And as to what his Master can do I am not sure it can be known, but Lucio, she was sent to kill the Merlin once Samuel has gotten him out of out hair. He didn't say in so many words but it was understood. The wardens, the young one's, it really is quite day, but they wouldn't listen. They were to be used as a distraction. With the leadership of the Council thrown into doubt and Ebenezer dead we were to do a purge of your own under the guise of hunting Arthur's killers, sharp-tongued Momus abroad and loose."
"What the fuck's a Momus?" you hear Harry and to be honest you agree.
"Satire personified in Aesop's Fables, I assume he meant irony," Lydia answers reflexively... causing him to flinch. What on Earth had gone on between the two of them.
"He set her on fire," Sophia informs you, the memory of the deed riding the words.
Shit! Lydia's fine, that's clear as day, but Harry's peace of mind is a different matter. You almost wish Tiffany was back in his head where she could force him to listen to sense.
The wizard does not answer, instead he whispers. "All for nothing, all for nothing... I guess he was right about that part at least."
"What part?" Morgan dons the interrogator's manner the same way he draws his sword, with direct and without flourish, without wasted effort.
"We'll die fast, you'll die slow. Nothing is forbidden, everything is forsaken. Really it was always unlikely to work, just more likely than doing nothing."
"It?" you press, though not too hard.
"Stearing the council into a new role... or maybe I should say it's old role. They don't want to kill the world, not really, well most of Them don't and the rest could be mollified with sacrifices, sent dreaming into the long dark. But they would need priests, attendants."
Like the Starborn, the thought flashes through your mind in and instant. Just like Shaw even the inner circle had a story where they were the heroes. Doesn't everyone? They thought they would be priests and herald of the rising Old Ones.
Someone snaps their fingers, Tiffany. What...?
"That is what's in it for what's her name, the one who held a knife to your throat?" Before Harry can answer she finishes. "Kumori, she wanted to end suffering, to end death. There is really no way a god of the Darkhallow would be powerful enough to affect the fundamental laws of the universe, but if the Outside is no longer Outside..."
"Then we are all of us unmade in our essence and something new and unspeakable is born from the cauldron of our blood," Wizard Mai cuts in, not that your friend lets that stop her.
"Now that the obvious has been spoken... I meant to say that was her hook. Transgression and freedom on the one hand, salvation on t he other, be it from the evils of this world, or from the supposed darkness of the age that is to come, the same one they are ushering in."
"Where did the Merlin go? Why wasn't he at headquarters?" Morgan asks the woman, Rebeca Mortimer, drawing from the list of Crown-spied traitors.
She just looks at him blankly.
"Where did the son of a bitch send Lucio to? Where is Arthur? Answer me!" There's more than anger in his voice, more than he'd like to show: fear and pain.
McCoy puts a hand on his shoulder, as though to restrain him, though something tells you it's more there for support, to remind him that he's not alone.
Honorius thankfully is still up to talking, indeed something tells you he might keep talking even if all of you left, offering his confession to a blank wall: "Paris, they should all be in Paris now, it was tricky, but we managed to convince Arthur that we had things under control here, we had to kill... it doesn't matter now, Sacrifices had to be made, but we convinced him things were under control here and he had to go to Paris. That, we got him to believe was where the heart of the rebellion lay. He did not take much convincing, what Englishman would need to be convinced long that there is something foul afoot in France?" He laughs though the sound seems to pain him. "Then we sent in the Wardens after him. I do not know if they are in thrall or if they had been made to believe the Merlin is a traitor. It does not really matter in the end, they were meant to die there, along with at least some of the Paris circle for authenticity."
"He went by the Ways?" You try to work out in your head how long that would take, but it's pointless without knowing a lot more about where that particular path winds through.
"Yes and they followed him likewise."
You look at Lydia, but she shakes her head. 'That's all he knew', the expression seems to say.
So you have wardens of the White Council hunting down its leader and his guard and a Denarian still loose in the Hidden Halls, or at least you hope he's still here. Otherwise he's done what he came to do and no matter what that is, it would end ill.
What do you do?
[] Split up again
-[] Even harder
[] Time to call in some back up, maybe Luccio at least is still on the ways where the fey could stop her
-[] Call Winter
-[] Call Summer
[] Deal with Namshiel first, Paris can wait
[] Write in
OOC: Finally did it. I am scared to find out how many errors are in this one, but I hope you guys enjoy anyway. Sorry again for how late this is.
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