Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
This is essentially how all physics modeling is done in real life. We predict the number of habitable planets in the universe, develop nuclear fusion, build atomic reactors with models. What you are talking about is the range of applicability of the model. Which I specifically noted to not be all-encompassing.
Are there possible entities and events out there that do not fit my model? Yes, absolutely, we know of at least several: Ebon Dragon's Neverborn (I keep using this example since it was confirmed to exist in text), probably all other Neverborn, angels, when acting unbound by the Rules, SuperSayians, Xeelee (since we know that aliens exist, we cannot discard the possibility of an alien invasion), E9 akuma!Molly from the future (time travel exists, so we cannot discard the possiblity of a future evil Molly coming back to corrupt / replace us), Ferrovax and Pyriothrax acting together, Advaita Iraivan gaining sentience and deciding to wreck our sh*t. And if some of those sound absurd, that's because they are, but we cannot, by the very nature of them being unknown, disregard those unknowns.
My point is that we cannot do anything about those anyway. We don't know how strong they are, how plausible they are, how dangerous they are, if they exist at all or not. We cannot plan for them full stop. We don't know if one AP spent for one turn would be enough to defend against them, or if 8 AP and 24 SGI AP spent for the next twelve turns will, or if spending more AP on this is even meaningful. Perhaps the only way to defend against them would be to reassemble the exalted host, train everyone up to at least E5, and have 50 TransPrimordial devil tigers on our side. Perhaps even that would be not enough. This way lie meta arguments, and I seriously don't want to go that way.
So, we have to completely disregard unknown unknowns. Because we don't know anything about them. Planning for them is impossible, the only way to allocate resources if we are worried about those is to allocate all resources to the problem. And that way lies defeat because of opportunity costs. So, yes, I am disregarding those.
Within the boundaries of what we were shown, and what we know from canon sources, however, I stand by my analysis. We saw how an ancient war god fights. We saw how a yama king designed superweapon built using malfean brass fights. We saw how a heavily invested by outsiders archmage fights. We saw how a lesser walker fights. Saw how a magic-specked denarian fights. None of those with the possible exception of the archmage make large and prepared magitechnological armies meaningless. Further, we know that large magical armies of modereately enhanced humanoids are a good strategy to defend the Outer Gates. We know that large magitechnonological armies of <E5 dragonblooded were instrumental in defeating Primordials, and later in defeating solars. There's a long and consistent trend in both settings that indicates that large magically enhanced armies are a very big hammer even the strongest of heroes and monsters cannot completely disregard as a threat, especially when forced to openly confront on prepared ground.
TL;DR: Because it's completely impossible to plan for unknown unknowns, we have to plan for known unknowns. Within the range of what we, or at least I, know and can estimate of the setting, spending 1 AP + 2 AP + several SGI AP (rolled into Sanctuary management and some other things) should be good enough without incurring strong opportunity costs that would come bite us later.
Nah, you pretty much got exactly what I am saying. I am glad to hear that I am capable of communicating my thought at least somewhat effectively.
Twenty years no, of course not, but please recall that in setting it has been less than two months since we got those debts. Less than a season to produce miracles of ancient wonder unlike anything the world has seen since the Age of Legends is not long. It's goddamn miraculous and I fully expect most of our debtors to assume it'll take at least a year for us to get back to them. Well, maybe not Archive, since she has at least somewhat of a mortal perspective of time.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
Yeah, you somehow missed the entire point of my own responses. You literally just repeated yourself here with more words.
Okay. Tell this to BronzeTongue then. That conversation has nothing to do with me. I don't care.
Wait. Did we introduce ourselves as such? Did the dragon grandma already know who we were? Was this all a test of character?
Your point,as I understand it, is "you cannot trust your math, because there are things jn the setting we don't know about and cannot quantify at all". My response is "I can trust my math within the scope of the setting we have been shown and can reasonably expect to interact with based on canon sources. We have no way to plan for or respond to the parts of the setting outside of that scope. This means, that in order to be able to act at all, we have to disregard those parts, and work with what we know". If this is not your argument, I apologize. If you or @BronzeTongue have some other instruments or methods to plan for the unknown unknowns, I would like to learn about them.
Bit of a long term thing: I wonder if we should raid that dragon that Michael killed before we start on the dragonbloods Dragon Nest. Mats from that, if there are any left, might probably have some synergy with what we are aiming to help them with there.
Probably, yeah. Also, we have another potential bargaining chip: "slow aging by a factor of 12" is alchemy 4 canon recipe. By a factor of 365 is alchemy 6. You have to take a potion per week though. Maybe we should talk to Tiffahy? @DragonParadox can Shape Flesh restore youth? If yes, and it should be able to do so, Restoring dragonblooded elders to their youth would immediately provide a serious boost to their community, and buy us a lot.
Wait, actually... can Tiffany tinker with Breeding background? Like, it's not just blood, I get it, but it is also blood. It seems like Tiffany + Molly + maybe Odin should be able to get dragonblooded to Breeding N/A (children are almost guaranteed to exalt).
Odin told them who you are, but yes that is how Molly introduces herself normally since 'daughter of a Knight' is hopefully a bit of a counter to the hell aura.
No, it can deal with some of the secondary problems of aging and basically push humans to the maximum biologically achievable age, but more than that requires some kind of internal magic.
Fits with the Icelandic naming system in this case even, as her name if born there would be Margret Michaelsdóttir
[x] Inform them
-[x] offer to arrange a meeting another time.
So,this was all a test, and Odjn a) already knew we were coming, b) knew about the connection between dragonblooded and the thing in dragon's belly. I wonder if he is amused by our attempts to take the prize before he can...
Also, do I understand correctly that the conclusion of the event is that we basically outsourced the hunt for Bob to dragonblooded? Or are we getting to Egypt right now to finish the hunt? I am a bit unsure about what is happening, sorry.
Edit:
Would transformation splendor work? 3+ dots, to make the effect permanent.
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BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
It's called the Crown of Eyes. Use the god and the Rampires we took from the plane raid and recently from South America as foci for the Red Court. So on so forth.
Odin did not know you were coming, but he did have someone on site with a phone so when Kristin reported back with someone of your description he told the Dragonblooded who you are
The dragonblooded want to hunt him, but you can take actions to help if you want
Yes, though it would come with some kind of catch, you cannot get immortality for nothing
What Yog is saying is that in a model, it doesn't matter that there are parts of the equation that change the result in some extremely specific circumstances, the entire point of the model is to predict in the kind of scenarios that are likely enough to happen to matter, and disregard the ones that don't.
Newton's model of the laws of physics is completely wrong when you begin to try and use it at to predict how planets and star act, yet it works quite well at our level.
In this case, unless we enter the apocalypse, we can predict what will happen with enough of a margin of error to be acceptable and draw conclusions from that.
Yog isn't even saying he doesn't want to continue fortyfying the portal later on, he said he had no problems with that, he is saying he doesn't think we should spent more than this amount on AP on it for next turn because more is a waste of time with what we know.
If you want to go meta, you have to remember that even if things are in the hands of the QM, it is also not in his interest to bring out things we cannot stop in the first place as it just ends the quest.
You cannot ask about unknown unknowns by definition, as you do not know what to ask for if they are unknown unknowns.
At best you can ask about known unknowns, which Yog did say were already taken into accounts in his reasoning.
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To give an example when it comes to models, it wouldn't matter if gravity had a special exception that says that you will fly away if you jump with exactly the right amount of force down to the nanonewton at the very exact micresecond the moon is at the right place once a year. Sure, it would influence the results if taken into account, but when you are making predictions you can safely remove it anyway.
That's what Yog is doing, it doesn't matter that some things can influence the results of his predictions, they aren't likely and thus can be disregarded safely.
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BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
I'm aware of everything that you just said. I don't need his statements to be further clarified to me by anybody else.
Sure. However you can get information on such things by asking broad questions.
Broad questions are unlikely to give usable answers.
The broader you ask, the more likely you are to end up spending time preparing for things that don't matter.
BoredMan
Maintaining the Agenda is our top priority
? You ask broad questions and move onto more specific ones. How useful the responses you get depend on the question(s).
Takes too long and too much essence that we could have used elsewhere on things we know are actually dangerous.
Plus we can't ask about unknown unknown even with broad questions anyway, as it would first require getting focuses for them, which we can't search for since we don't know they exist.
That includes trying to search for focuses for it, as we can't search for them without focuses close enough to them to search, which comes back to the first part. Trying to search for unknown unknowns with the crown is likely to lead to a catch 22 in short order.
There are limits to the crown and this is one case where they matter.
Doesn't help.what question would you ask? "Who threatens the portal?" or something like that? But the crown doesn't see the future. If Ebon Dragon wakes up next morning and decides to attack us through the portal, the crown wouldn't see him when we ask the question.
You could ask for the list of beings capable of threatening the portal. But shinma exist, White God exist, Neverborn exist, etc. So you'll get a long list of beings where many of them can roll over us, no matter what we do or don't do.
You could try to be more specific, and add "and have a reason to attack the portal". This sorts away at least some beings, but doesn't really help. If Red King bargains with Lucifer himself to attack us next morning, at the time of the question, Lucifer wouldn't have a reason to attack us.
And with time travel, things are more complicated still. Luna might not exist right now, being in the process of dodging the end of the First Age through time travel, for example. She might become a thing tomorrow. Same with Primordials, future evil Molly and such.
Basically, the Crown can be used to narrow down estimations, but it doesn't really help in general. The pool of unknowns remains, effectively, infinite.
Not to say it's useless, I would like to have better knowledge of our enemies capabilities. But for those, we can already make guesses, see my earlier posts. Red King cannot be powerful enough to be able to murder the whole of White Council on his own without unacceptable risks, or he would have done so. And we can concentrate more power than the whole if WC in one place, on prepared ground.