Namshiel isn't the only Denarian or Denarian asset or ally. You shouldn't consider him in isolation. It also doesn't make much sense to expect him to run straight into the portal face first or something if that's what you've been picturing. He's a wizard type that's managed to live for thousands of years while being hunted by agents of God. He's not going to do that unless his IQ drops off a cliff for the sake of our convenience.
Namshiel and others don't have a choice but to run into a portal face-first, that's the point. The portal is the only point of connection. Saying "Namshiel is a wizard and therefor good with prep" and other similar comments is entirely meaningless, because it doesn't provide anything actionable or lead to anything actionable. It's useless to worry about unknown unknowns because by definition we can't do anything about them, or even be sure that they exist. It's equally possible that Engine of Extinction will notice an active exaltation and return. It's equally possible that Ebon Dragon will awaken from his slumber as Ebon Road and want us a a bride. It's equally possible that the Argent Maiden will claw her way back from death in this world where time travel and true rebirth are possible and consider us an enemy. Can we do anything about that? No, we cannot. Do we know that such things are possible? No, we do not. Same principle.
And I am pointedly leaving out my strong belief that under the Ruler(tm) Denarians almost certainly flat out cannot enter our realm, same as the Swords can't, because Swords are a direct counter to Denarians, and if the Sword isn't allowed to enter the same realm as a Denarian can, then they can't be a counter to Denarian (note that Michael was allowed to take the Sword to a Yomi hell, so this isn't an issue with it being hell).
For the "they will have backing and won't be acting alone" - it's a 3 meter diameter portal. That's the only point of ingress. I have actually
ran the numbers, you know? We know the intensity of Outer Gate conflict. A very conservative estimation of our military strength allows us to mount a better defense against a 3 meter portal than the defense that is sufficient to hold Outer Gates. This estimation does not take into account Molly's direct efforts, ie Exalted craft, specifically made spirits, perfect effects, etc. Unless you are postulating that a qualitatively more intense and dangerous attack on our portal is likely within the next month than the usual level of intensity of the assault on the Outer Gates by Outsider forces, I don't think I have to worry.
My claim is: someone will need
both a scene-long perfect defense, and a scene-long always-on perfect non-elemental attack effect with infinite damage to pass through a defense we can assemble quickly. Or an ability to completely bypass all defenses, ie a true OCP. Increasing the numbers of mooks will not be helpful in breaching the defenses.
I will take a rebuttal, but I will take it with numbers, because so far, and pardon me, all I am hearing is are meaningless and non-actionable qualitative statements "he won't be alone", "he can punch above his class", "they are good with prep", etc. Run an estimation. Game it out. Show me how large of a dice pool someone has to have to breach a reasonable estimation of our defenses. Show me an example of an effect that will easily bypass everything we can prepare in the next month or so. So far it looks (to me, perhaps I am unfair here) that I am the only one who did at least something like this, and this is deeply frustrating, because I don't see points I can meaningfully debate. All I see are repeated theses of "we don't have perfect knowledge of the whole setting, therefor danger" (again, I apologize if this summation is too lacking in detail).
The argument about other factions is also duplicitous, because we are also not alone. It assigns full freedom to act with arbitrary resources to enemy factions without acknowledging that they too have enemies of their own, we are not their only concern, and in many cases not the biggest concern even. I fully expect that in the event of a massed and significant enough assault on the portal, Knights of the Cross will be dispatched to help us. For Odin's intelligence agency to notice the amassing of resources and personnel and to warn us, free of charge. For White Council to alpha-strike the rhampire base with Blackstuff and Tunguska 2.0 before they can act. For an outsider war party to just be eaten by Maeve's forces deep in the Ways of NeverNever. Etc.
Sure we can, its not diffcult to find and kill him later if the task force failed.
After the damage is already done? No, I don't think so.
They can. They aren't children, they can fight a few black magisters. Its literally their entire purpose.
And they know we have arbitary divination. We proved them of this during this fiasco. They will accept we just know things.
Africa has seen at least one Solar, one Abyssal and up to at least 3 infernals in recorded human history. True Magi in Africa can plausibly get access to that legacy, up to and including an infernal exaltation or two. White Council is disorganized, has eaten a huge loss just now, and cannot act with lethal force. I don't like their chances at all.
We also have had explanations, at least somewhat plausible for all our feats of diviniation. We are still trying to downplay it.
a bunch of dudes that a few squads of our cyborg can deal with doesn't make it a major deal. We have effortlessly kicked the asses of these true magi and the only issue is we keep letting them set the pace of combat. If we attack first none of red wizards or true magi could do shit to a few hundred super cyborgs with fortune buffs and divination support and a few drone strikes.
how do you get them in and out without Molly's direct involvement?
No whats biting us is that we knew about these traitors for months and didn't do anything about them because we are too scared to actual take decisive action. We could have ended this so much easier if we had attacked these guys just even a day ago. Do what we did the Australian guy but to everyone of them. So much damage averted.
This I agree with. The whole catastrophe could be seen during planning phase, and I voted to deal with it on our terms instead of having to react to it, because this could have been, and was predicted. What is your evidence for a denarian attack on us and ours next month?
We didn't address this earlier because we were busy building our power base and handling other things. Like Las Vegas. We aren't murder hobos. We have priorities other than killing people.
This plan vote, the contention was between "deal with Peabody and co first, then do baby wizards" or "do baby wizards first, then do Peabody". Guess what
won?
