Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
I mean yes, obviously, he's looting the ancient dead just so a lot people can gawk at their stuff and trouble their rest with the constant sweep of their feet. That almost feels like tomb raiding to prove how good of a tomb raider you are.
That could make for an interesting movie for us to produce.I mean yes, obviously, he's looting the ancient dead just so a lot people can gawk at their stuff and trouble their rest with the constant sweep of their feet. That almost feels like tomb raiding to prove how good of a tomb raider you are.
Make the main character a ghost from the modern day who gets pulled along to some museum in the future because some asshole took their skill for an exhibit or what have you.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
We could produce an action-adventure TV show as part of our new supernatural program lineup where the MC rips off Harry Keogh from the Necroscope book series, working with ghosts from different eras of history to solve mysteries, fight crime, punish the wicked, etc. Even to fight Vampires, just like the Necroscope does. Irony!
Or it could be a high school drama kind of thing, where the MC muddles through teenage angst and puberty with help from the ghosts of various prominent historical figures.
Lydia could be a consultant and maybe even an occasional guest star. And maybe she could arrange actual ghost guest stars, too, if they're available and interested.
EDIT: Huh, now that I think about it, the Vampires from the Necroscope series remind me of Red Court Vampires. It's been a few decades (holy crap, I'm getting old), but IIRC there are a lot of similarities. I wonder if Butcher took inspiration from them for Rhampires?
Or it could be a high school drama kind of thing, where the MC muddles through teenage angst and puberty with help from the ghosts of various prominent historical figures.
Lydia could be a consultant and maybe even an occasional guest star. And maybe she could arrange actual ghost guest stars, too, if they're available and interested.
EDIT: Huh, now that I think about it, the Vampires from the Necroscope series remind me of Red Court Vampires. It's been a few decades (holy crap, I'm getting old), but IIRC there are a lot of similarities. I wonder if Butcher took inspiration from them for Rhampires?
Last edited:
Just an attempt to bring Pentacle and scepter in line with the other four dot Charms. The decrease in difficulty for ancient sorcery and the cost decrease is strong but at the moment / with the spells in the book it less useful than a bunch of one dot and two dot charms.
The Pentacle and Scepter (●●●●)(Revised)
The Infernal spends long hours in meditation on the time before time, the epoch before light and law first blighted the universe, and the remnant impossibilities of that strange and pitiless mythology. From the scraps of such madness, she may uncover the deeper secrets of sorcery.
System: Upon purchasing this Charm, the Infernal permanently lowers the cost of all ancient sorcery spells by 1 Essence (to a minimum of 1), and lowers the difficulty of all ancient and modern sorcery rolls by one. While Fast Casting (Sorcerer Revised pg.62) modern sorcery the infernal no longer pays an additional willpower, nor do they use an additional Willpower releasing Hanged Spells. They also reduce the threshold for trading Skill for Power by one meaning they only need one more dot in a Path than the minimum required for a desired effect they can cast the spell at their highest difficulty and reduce the cost in Willpower by one.
@DragonParadox is this a possible revision for Pentacle and Scepter? I thought about making a separate charm or artifice along the lines of the elements I added but Pentacle is already so bare-bones and is meant to be about knowledge and power with magic that it felt right to add the modern sorcery effects to it to bring in line with other four dot Charms but if the modern sorcery should be its own charm that also makes sense.
Cracked cell grants admittedly situational just like sorcery, -3 difficulty on all actions for us it's in a favorite hell which makes it even less expensive than it usually be but for four XP that is just magnitudes better than TPaS. Without honor without hope yet again situational but grants two dice in a variety of conditions. Shadow spite curse we've used it to great effect but it just allows you to just completely negate your opponent having a dice pool if they are unfortunate enough to have less than five dice normally on any action including Magick.
In a direct comparison to another 4 dot charm. Life Denying Curse - you have regeneration, no you don't. You have something to shrug off mental damage that isn't a perfect Defense, no you don't. You have something to shrug off someone eating away at your happy memories, no you don't. You have the ability to unweave Magic/Charm effects (Magnanimous Warning Glyph, Mind Spider Curse,Dreams of Disease) stuck to you, no you don't get fucked. If you're a werewolf that relies too much on your regeneration, no you aren't you're dead the second The Infernal hits you as your regeneration disappears and so do your health levels.
This trend continues every four dot charm is magnitudes better then TPaS. Ablation of brass and fire A Perfect Defense, offering of blood and meat a complete refresh of non-aggravated damage also a shintai rollback, Soul Sand devil stance turning into a tornado 10 yd across that is really difficult to hit and can still hit with the strength of an exalted, thousand fold typhoon hand multi- attack charm even though it's situational and requires Athletics it's still multiple attacks per round for one Essence, on and on this is with me excluding the ones that make fomori which are kind of redundant because we already have a fomori making charm but it's also not including the ones that make fetishes or other perfect defenses.
So I wanted to rewrite that incorporates things that have already been said about the charm while also giving credence to the idea of the flavor text of an insight into sorcery into magic as a whole and also brings it in line and makes it useful on some level.
At the moment even if you were a user of ancient sorcery in the system you're better off just not bothering with the charm (TPaS) and getting other charms that increase your dice pool or lower your difficulty and then just cast the ones that can be cast at the top of the day or at the beginning of the month and then just don't bother to use combat spells because for the cost of both the Spells themselves and the charms you can get multi attack charms that allow you to shoot multiple times / Punch or any other type of attack multiple times in a round whether you're talking about a favored hell or not.
The fact that there is no way for ancient sorcery spells to cost less than two Essence means you always have to judge what TPaS is affecting versus what could possibly be in use and typhoon hand with any Athletics is a better value because if you have any Excellency for combat it gives you two or more attacks per turn with an Excellency for the same cost as the most inexpensive spell. With all that in mind.
In a direct comparison to another 4 dot charm. Life Denying Curse - you have regeneration, no you don't. You have something to shrug off mental damage that isn't a perfect Defense, no you don't. You have something to shrug off someone eating away at your happy memories, no you don't. You have the ability to unweave Magic/Charm effects (Magnanimous Warning Glyph, Mind Spider Curse,Dreams of Disease) stuck to you, no you don't get fucked. If you're a werewolf that relies too much on your regeneration, no you aren't you're dead the second The Infernal hits you as your regeneration disappears and so do your health levels.
This trend continues every four dot charm is magnitudes better then TPaS. Ablation of brass and fire A Perfect Defense, offering of blood and meat a complete refresh of non-aggravated damage also a shintai rollback, Soul Sand devil stance turning into a tornado 10 yd across that is really difficult to hit and can still hit with the strength of an exalted, thousand fold typhoon hand multi- attack charm even though it's situational and requires Athletics it's still multiple attacks per round for one Essence, on and on this is with me excluding the ones that make fomori which are kind of redundant because we already have a fomori making charm but it's also not including the ones that make fetishes or other perfect defenses.
So I wanted to rewrite that incorporates things that have already been said about the charm while also giving credence to the idea of the flavor text of an insight into sorcery into magic as a whole and also brings it in line and makes it useful on some level.
At the moment even if you were a user of ancient sorcery in the system you're better off just not bothering with the charm (TPaS) and getting other charms that increase your dice pool or lower your difficulty and then just cast the ones that can be cast at the top of the day or at the beginning of the month and then just don't bother to use combat spells because for the cost of both the Spells themselves and the charms you can get multi attack charms that allow you to shoot multiple times / Punch or any other type of attack multiple times in a round whether you're talking about a favored hell or not.
The fact that there is no way for ancient sorcery spells to cost less than two Essence means you always have to judge what TPaS is affecting versus what could possibly be in use and typhoon hand with any Athletics is a better value because if you have any Excellency for combat it gives you two or more attacks per turn with an Excellency for the same cost as the most inexpensive spell. With all that in mind.
The Infernal spends long hours in meditation on the time before time, the epoch before light and law first blighted the universe, and the remnant impossibilities of that strange and pitiless mythology. From the scraps of such madness, she may uncover the deeper secrets of sorcery.
System: Upon purchasing this Charm, the Infernal permanently lowers the cost of all ancient sorcery spells by 1 Essence (to a minimum of 1), and lowers the difficulty of all ancient and modern sorcery rolls by one. While Fast Casting (Sorcerer Revised pg.62) modern sorcery the infernal no longer pays an additional willpower, nor do they use an additional Willpower releasing Hanged Spells. They also reduce the threshold for trading Skill for Power by one meaning they only need one more dot in a Path than the minimum required for a desired effect they can cast the spell at their highest difficulty and reduce the cost in Willpower by one.
While the decreased difficulty of modern sorcery has been said in quest a few times I wanted to add it directly to text. This revision is meant to also cover modern sorcery on top of ancient sorcery. The charm even without this revision is primarily focused on making casting ancient sorcery not an active detriment to the player's health this version focuses on that except also including modern sorcery.
Not eliminating the cost of using modern sorcery but rather giving the kind of exalted feeling of yes you are a greater spellcaster than mortal Sorcerers you can cast spells faster you can use more hanged spells and even spells of a lesser rank come easier to you. All of this without reducing the actual cost of using modern sorcerer spells still cost willpower to cast you just don't have to suffer greater willpower costs in both hanging spells and casting quickly and your Mastery show itself a bit sooner.
This hopefully also follows the idea of making sorcery not an active detriment to a player's Health if you can cast spells in one round without needing to eat up a lot of your willpower even at a higher difficulty or cast lesser spells without needing to eat a lot of willpower it would hopefully incentivize casting spells as a whole. A way to empower modern sorcery while feeling like an exalted sorcerer rather than a Mage in exalted clothing if that makes sense.
Not eliminating the cost of using modern sorcery but rather giving the kind of exalted feeling of yes you are a greater spellcaster than mortal Sorcerers you can cast spells faster you can use more hanged spells and even spells of a lesser rank come easier to you. All of this without reducing the actual cost of using modern sorcerer spells still cost willpower to cast you just don't have to suffer greater willpower costs in both hanging spells and casting quickly and your Mastery show itself a bit sooner.
This hopefully also follows the idea of making sorcery not an active detriment to a player's Health if you can cast spells in one round without needing to eat up a lot of your willpower even at a higher difficulty or cast lesser spells without needing to eat a lot of willpower it would hopefully incentivize casting spells as a whole. A way to empower modern sorcery while feeling like an exalted sorcerer rather than a Mage in exalted clothing if that makes sense.
Last edited:
It also applies to path sorcery, if I recall the ruling correctly. Actually, @DragonParadox , Splendors are described as solidified ancient sorcery. Would PaS apply to any of the following:
1) Splendor crafting
2) Prodigy Crafting
3) magic style Arcana crafting
?
Sort of a tangent on the archeology stuff, but it occurs to me that ghost volunteers could replace museums with something much better. No need to for artifacts, just get ghosts to tell stories about what they lived through.
The restless dead get powered by the attention of visitors, the living get more direct access to their history, and nobody has their grave ransacked by (statistically speaking, British) assholes anymore.
The restless dead get powered by the attention of visitors, the living get more direct access to their history, and nobody has their grave ransacked by (statistically speaking, British) assholes anymore.
Oh yeah It got mentioned a bunch of times in thread but that's only the minus one difficulty which is.... fine, but it's nowhere near as impactful as it is for ancient sorcery and isn't really the issue/quality of life problem with modern sorcery.
Generally speaking the revisions I made / the parts I added to Pentacle and scepter are too essentially match the impact of the charm on Ancient sorcery with modern sorcery. The lowered Essence cost and lower difficulty because inherently they make sorcery faster to cast / easier to cast and generally more affordable on the essence pool. This is the territory of a one Dot charm and I do mean that literally Excellence charms are one dot CCC is a circumstantial -3 difficulty modifier ox body easier to survive damage and things like that.
The reduced Essence costs is doing a lot of heavy lifting and well in my opinion failing to move the 20 XP Boulder. The addition of the modern sorcery features to match that impact on Ancient sorcery make it so fast casting spells in one turn won't eat up two willpower at a time, that exalted Sorcerers don't have to pay twice to use hanged spells, that exalted might allows you to use lesser stature spells with greater proficiency than non-exalted sorcerers generally quality of life / making Pentacle and Scepter actually the charm for understanding sorcery of all kinds.
Yes to all, it is a pervasive advantage.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
That could probably be made a reality well before the Masquerade is broken.
They be marketed not as ghosts, however, but rather super advanced holograms.
I mean, Dresden advertises as a wizard and no one has told him to cut it out. As long as we make the ads campy enough to sound like a gimmick why not do the same?
Not to jump topics too much, but didn't @uju32 have a bunch of plans for this money?
I mean we all sort of do, but I think he had a thing laid out for trust funds and the like.
For the portion we keep personally it might be interesting to make it a sovereign fund for the FCF and get magically empowered strong AI to use it on the markets.
Given how our planet's economy is shown to work it seems likely that it should have people who are better at modern economics than this world has ever seen. There just hasn't been time or the right convergence of factors to match them. Even if someone had a Sutra grade spirit with deep economic knowledge they wouldn't have had centuries of time to compete with others of their class like ours have.
It should be like sending a modern aircraft carrier group to fight an age of sail armada.
A slaughter so complete that even the people performing it are surprised it wasn't against some sort of law.
I mean we all sort of do, but I think he had a thing laid out for trust funds and the like.
For the portion we keep personally it might be interesting to make it a sovereign fund for the FCF and get magically empowered strong AI to use it on the markets.
Given how our planet's economy is shown to work it seems likely that it should have people who are better at modern economics than this world has ever seen. There just hasn't been time or the right convergence of factors to match them. Even if someone had a Sutra grade spirit with deep economic knowledge they wouldn't have had centuries of time to compete with others of their class like ours have.
It should be like sending a modern aircraft carrier group to fight an age of sail armada.
A slaughter so complete that even the people performing it are surprised it wasn't against some sort of law.
- Location
- Brazil
I just want to use a good amount of money, our contact with the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (who may or may not have been fired after the Mikaboshi bombshell) and our Sutras to play in the investment market, not too heavily so as not to attract too much attention.
This will increase our money and allow us to create a central parent company for all our businesses, even if we only have two so far, and help us have more influence in the college since we still want to have full control over the location of our Forge of Wonders.
[X] Molly, Tiffany, and Lydia.
Vote closed.
Arc 15 Post 41: Barren is the Dark
New
Barren is the Dark
13th of March 2007 A.D.
"Once this was a boundary," Lydia speaks with an even, solemn tone as she walks under the shadow of the the pyramid Sneferu-Shining-in-the-South the name of pharaoh now given onto the stone and bright indeed it still shines, still clad in limestone. "Between Upper and Lower Egypt, between the East shore which is for the living and the West which is for the dead. They called the city Mem-Nefer, Established and good and they sanctified it to Ma'at, the principle of cosmic order because they feared that," she traces the arc of what modern scholars had come to call the Bent Pyramid.
"What? Shoddy engineering or royal meddling?" Yesterday on the plane over you had read that the reason it looked like that was because the pharaoh may have changed his mind several time during construction only over a million cubic meters of stone royal decree lone does not shift and so the arc of Sneferu's passage into the heavens was bent by the weight of his own thwarted ambition.
"Chaos, darkness, destruction." Lydia says simply. "We stand on the Western shore, beyond the black land where the dead have dominion, but the old kings are not here as exiles. They are here as guards."
She points out into the desert, her shadow still stretching long before her as the hours of the morning are yet short.
There are no paths leading to the place the R'hani marked on out map, no reason for anyone to wander that way, no water and no trace of human habitation, or at least so it seemed on the surface.
"Once," your friend speaks again in that same cadence not meant for the shape of English many hours later as the desert races by outside tinted glass windows of a black 'Land Rover' conjured from the depths of her own Essence. "These lands were green and life abounded: antelope and crocodile, goat and lion swine and wild dog and man, there's always man where there is life for the taking isn't there? Then the rains died and the sands crept in and those who did not go east died. The West bank is for the dead."
"But they didn't die all at once did they?" you guess.
"People are stubborn, they won't give up the ways of their ancestors, the lands where they bones of their fathers are buried easily and alas where a people wither and perish things of that nature come take heed. You know it's funny, every depiction I've seen of the Sahara in the US has been in daytime when the most dangerous thing is the sun, but to the people of Khemet the desert night held particular terror. After all what could there possibly be out here that Ra would have to smite the last so dreadfully to keep it at bay? I found a lot of prayers about banishing 'night demons' in father's library, most pretty run-of-the-mill, dealing with haunts and vengeful ghosts, sending the odd demon packing..." Lydia sneaks a mischievous look at Tiffany, but when that doesn't get a rise she continues. "But there was one that was odd, among the oldest texts, written out like an inverted invitation carved with a trembling hand. During a brief span of time in the Old Kingdom Egypt cohabited with another civilization across the Nile, one that did not build steps towards the sun, but dug down into darkness."
"But you said you found a ward against these so called 'gods'? So did that come from their own people them?" you ask, trying to put the pieces together, even though you know that time had worn away many of them to dust.
"Every faith has its heretics," Lydia waves in the direction of the barren dunes. "The worse life got one imagines, the greater the temptation to defect, to cross the river and trade hard earned lore for a plot of land. We are going to be there in an hour. How are you planning to dig the place out?"
"Get a work crew like we did guarding the gate to Sanctuary." It seems the most reasonable way, but Tiffany clears her throat.
"Be careful. The monster might not be in there anymore, but I very much doubt the tomb is empty. Ever if he didn't care to fill it places like that don't stay empty long."
How do you want to explore the nameless tomb?
[] A shallow dig, just enough to point your Crown at, after all you know the thing you're hunting isn't here
[] A deep dig. Since the last person who tried to excavate this place was killed and turned odds are good many of its treasures remain and unlike stealing from the properly dead Lydia wouldn't mind in the least if you helped yourself
[] Write in
OOC: Lydia's still at full because she both did her research yesterday and crafter an appropriate vehicle at the same time so she got her essence back at midnigth.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Would it be worth reaching out to our Library of Congress contact to possibly arrange for the tomb to be discovered "legitimately" after we go through and clean out the dangerous stuff?
Once the curses have been removed, monsters slayer, and traps sprung, this place could have a lot of cultural and historical value.
Once the curses have been removed, monsters slayer, and traps sprung, this place could have a lot of cultural and historical value.
- Location
- Canada
Are we really gonna go grave-robbing and be careful??? The time and place for humility is Sunday and church respectively; we can't break Molly's streak of escalating every situation she's in by at least 2 Defcon states!
[X] A deep dig. Since the last person who tried to excavate this place was killed and turned odds are good many of its treasures remain and unlike stealing from the properly dead Lydia wouldn't mind in the least if you helped yourself
[X] A deep dig. Since the last person who tried to excavate this place was killed and turned odds are good many of its treasures remain and unlike stealing from the properly dead Lydia wouldn't mind in the least if you helped yourself
Do you want to trample on the land of the dead?
I am not sure Lydia would approve.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Depends on what we find. It could hold a major trove of significant artifacts that increases knowledge about a once prominent culture which is now lost to the world.
The dead might not care if the place sees the light of day once more. Lydia is equipped to make that determination.
[X] A deep dig. Since the last person who tried to excavate this place was killed and turned odds are good many of its treasures remain and unlike stealing from the properly dead Lydia wouldn't mind in the least if you helped yourself
[X] A shallow dig, just enough to point your Crown at, after all you know the thing you're hunting isn't here