Remove ads

Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

Reader mode
Alratan said:
Why would he automatically become subordinate? That doesn't logically follow. With a monopoly on Sanctuary grade medical tech he becomes a national and international player, Chicago at that point means almost nothing to him. It's just one small market among hundreds of more important ones.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The same reason everyone in vegas was subordinate to the dragon. Like he didn't pay them salaries but if he made a rule then people followed them.

The actual reveanue from the medicine doesn't matter, its a few billions. His actual real world influences in term of followers and connections and real estate is in chicago. You can't really shift that in the short term even with that amount of money.
 
Ivar said:
The last point is a question for everyone here. Meeting Charity's parents is inevitable. The question I have is how far should we drag them into the supernatural to explain everything. Or leave them on the edge of ignorance about the true nature of the world...and Molly's true nature.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Depends on who they really are as people and their reaction to Michael (first of all). If they are just uppercrust old money, and they accept MIchael, then limited exposure and probably an offer of rejuvenation. If they don't accept MIchael because he's not from their social circles... We have a lot of options:
1) Of the Line of Charlemagne - this is an almost completely mundane option, but one that still makes Michael more than a pair to Charity. Queen of England is obliged to call us sister according to etiquette, after all.
2) Church affiliation. I harbor suspicion about at least Charity's mother being very religious, and MIchael is, well, a knight of the cross. It wouldn't be hard, I think, to get a cardinal or two to vouch for him if needed. Hell, I bet Pope would more be more than happy to write a letter to smooth sir knight's family troubles.
3) Molly's money. Even in an almost completely mundane setting, Molly is a self-made genius millionaire well on the way to becoming a billionaire. That deserves respect.

So, in summary - if they turn out to be good people and our association is positive, they would make good test cases for immortality treatments. If they are not, then depending on how much trouble they are, we bury them with either mundane means, or appropriately over the top supernatural political means.
 
New crazy theory. There is no Wyld beyond the outer gate. There are ruins of Creation, infected and consumed by oblivion. We are inside a universe inside a universe that is dead. This would explain why if the Neverborn are outside the world, they have not been reborn. This would also explain Jim's words about the abundance of Mordite beyond the outer gate.

I'm also glad that we're finally going to stop being adventurers and finally build infrastructure. Especially considering how long we've been talking about creating a god of Chicago...maybe Manse will be next.
 
Last edited:
Ivar said:
I think I'll call on Canon this time and say that the Feds won't do anything to Marcone anytime soon. Our involvement with him is unlikely to lead to anything more than Daedalus's intervention... And frankly I think we're headed toward a standoff with them anyway. Maybe even an alliance with the Library. Do we need that now? No. But it will be in the future, most likely.

Yes, you're right that Marcone is not necessary and we could do better. But I think the peaceful option is potentially better for us, especially if we can stabilize and ease the situation. And I think we can.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yog said:
On the subject of Marcone('s people) and IDU - those affected by IDU shouldn't be covered by the Laws. Which should be good for Harry in the event of a confrontation.

Odin at least doesn't seem to care, and he's a smart political operator at least nominally on the side of humanity if general. And has government contracts.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
In canon the Feds weren't in an expansionist mood and Marcone wasn't trying to take over a state. This isn't a matter of if there will be a problem, but when and how extreme.

I don't understand why you're being so dismissive of this problem. It is trivial to weaponize the mundane authorities against Marcone even if they don't press the issue themselves, and the ones that are aware are subject to political and institutional pressure to make it worse.

Stop for a moment and imagine the positions of the following people when the supernatural mob starts expanding across an entire state:

1) Mundane FBI members hunting Marcone
2) Daedalus, supernatural FBI
3) The Library
4) A red wetworks group instructed to Shadowrun against Molly in her home territory.

What factors do you think they're subject to? What do they know and how do they feel about it? What are they able to share and who are they accountable to? What might you attempt, and what consequences might result from success or failure?

SV and SB in general have a tendency to operate on the assumption that other factions are interested in doing whatever would be convenient for the protagonist at the time. I think you're doing that now.


DragonParadox said:
protection rackets
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Hope the extortionists with pills that cure cancer don't bring any "industry experience" with them. Probably going to be priced as a luxury product to wealthy executives paying millions and nobody else.

Having had to deal with cancer stuff in my personal life I'm unenthused about this decision and its implications.
 
BronzeTongue said:
Hope the extortionists with pills that cure cancer don't bring any "industry experience" with them. Probably going to be priced as a luxury product to wealthy executives paying millions and nobody else.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I mean it's going to be priced like contraband is the point. But the people selling it want more than money, things like informers, recruits, bases of operation and the general tacit support of the communities they operate in. Since they will be moving away from fear as a basis of enforcing their will they will have to hand out some of the magic pills to get what they want. Is that going to lead to an equitable system of distribution? Hell no, but it's also not just going to be sold at the highest price the market can bear, ironically enough because this isn't a legal market.
 
Yog said:
At most our deal with Marcone buys him exclusivity in Illinois. We can distribute those ourselves in Vegas, if nothing else.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Rather than exclusivity, more like early adopter status.

Sure, he can be the initial distributor, to spread the word and generate buzz among the wealthy and powerful, but that only lasts for so long before we shift the business model. Let him make his money and collect his favors while dealing with the hassles of it all.

Once we move from the high price low volume product stage, we can transition into the low price high volume market. By then, most of the teething issues should be sorted out.

We just need to make sure we patent any purely mundane drug formulas to prevent the pharmaceutical industry from reverse engineering them from the early samples they're bound to acquire, then trying to snake them out from under us while taking in untold billions in pure profit.
 
Goldfish said:
Rather than exclusivity, more like early adopter status.

Sure, he can be the initial distributor, to spread the word and generate buzz among the wealthy and powerful, but that only lasts for so long before we shift the business model. Let him make his money and collect his favors while dealing with the hassles of it all.

Once we move from the high price low volume product stage, we can transition into the low price high volume market. By then, most of the teething issues should be sorted out.

We just need to make sure we patent any purely mundane drug formulas to prevent the pharmaceutical industry from reverse engineering them from the early samples they're bound to acquire, then trying to snake them out from under us while taking in untold billions in pure profit.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If Marcone is smart, he'll probably pay for FDA approval himself, and then try to get us to set up production in Chicago.
 
Yog said:
At most our deal with Marcone buys him exclusivity in Illinois. We can distribute those ourselves in Vegas, if nothing else.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We didn't have anything planned for that when we voted, and I'm not sure how far we can stretch what we did vote to do there. When you vote for only one distributor to have something you only have one distributor for it.

It's also all secret, and frankly it's a lot to ask for people to cross a distance roughly similar to going from Moscow to Paris to pick up the alternative anyway. The local monopoly is pretty strong.


DragonParadox said:
I mean it's going to be priced like contraband is the point. But the people selling it want more than money, things like informers, recruits, bases of operation and the general tacit support of the communities they operate in. Since they will be moving away from fear as a basis of enforcing their will they will have to hand out some of the magic pills to get what they want. Is that going to lead to an equitable system of distribution? Hell no, but it's also not just going to be sold at the highest price the market can bear, ironically enough because this isn't a legal market.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That isn't really substantially better though. Access to life saving treatment being gated behind absolute loyalty to the system sharing them out.

I fundamentally don't see a difference between the moral fiber of mobsters and say the health insurance system. Organized crime just has enough romanticism to it that it has better PR.

"Don't worry, we won't put you in financial debt for getting you access to lifesaving medical care, just obligate you swear loyalty to your insurer and assist them in whatever they feel like doing today"

If you're too poor to pay in cash and don't have the access to perform white collar crime you can just sign up to be a novice vampire hunter.
 
BronzeTongue said:
We didn't have anything planned for that when we voted, and I'm not sure how far we can stretch what we did vote to do there. When you vote for only one distributor to have something you only have one distributor for it.

It's also all secret, and frankly it's a lot to ask for people to cross a distance roughly similar to going from Moscow to Paris to pick up the alternative anyway. The local monopoly is pretty strong.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We didn't talk about exclusivity at all, yes. We also haven't planned to spend AP on distributing the stuff ourselves.

We have, in principle, three plausible points of ingress - Chicago, Vegas, and our portal zone. Theoretically Boston too, in the future. Marcone's operation is limited to Chicago, with the aim of expanding to Illinois. He's unlikely to be able to expand farther without changing his mode of operation, I think. So, we should be able to distribute stuff from Vegas at least without running into a confrontation with him.

If we seriously want to start Marshal plan / uplift, then I think what we should do is:
1) Brief the government on the supernatural. Contact the Federal Reserve guy, brief him, work through him and the Library to brief others.
2) Establish secret trade with USA as an entity. This would require a permanent portal, and the portal not being on USA soil would actually work better, I think.
3) Have the government fast track our stuff - with enough interest a lot of things can be fast tracked, I think.

It's something to do, but I don't think it's something to do now.
BronzeTongue said:
Stop for a moment and imagine the positions of the following people when the supernatural mob starts expanding across an entire state:

1) Mundane FBI members hunting Marcone
2) Daedalus, supernatural FBI
3) The Library
4) A red wetworks group instructed to Shadowrun against Molly in her home territory.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
All this applies to Las Vegas too. In fact, it applies to Vegas more. Because it is, for all intents and practices, an independent state, and not part of the USA right now. the lord of Las Vegas does not answer to USA government, passes their own laws, and has granted a foreign government military basing rights. Think about it again - we have negotiated military basing rights on USA soil with an unelected city lord. That's treason.
 
BronzeTongue said:
That isn't really substantially better though. Access to life saving treatment being gated behind absolute loyalty to the system sharing them out.

I fundamentally don't see a difference between the moral fiber of mobsters and say the health insurance system. Organized crime just has enough romanticism to it that it has better PR.

"Don't worry, we won't put you in financial debt for getting you access to lifesaving medical care, just obligate you swear loyalty to your insurer and assist them in whatever they feel like doing today"

If you're too poor to pay in cash and don't have the access to perform white collar crime you can just sign up to be a novice vampire hunter.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Well yeah, you guys are working with the mob, famously not known for their fairness and understanding.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top