Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

With complete control of the vehicle and the ability to choose what to crash into, the car-devil should be able to kill her very reliably
Its a hundred and twenty thousand dollar luxury car. With all the safety measures that implies.
Just the passive safety measures alone like the rollcage will keep most normals alive, even if you could disable the airbags.
And Kattrin is not a normal.

Look at the other Valkyrie.
Gard remained functional through getting disembowelled by a Denarian, and being bounced off rock walls by a grenderlkin.
And she isnt a necromancer.

Its one thing to assert Kattrin might be discombobulated by getting hit by a car. Thats reasonable.
Quite something else to have the car hit something with her inside it.
I would put good money on her to walk it off without a scratch.
 
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Here's a thought:

She's probably headed to the tattoo parlor which had the cops called on it. Keep tabs on her and order the car to get to speed and crash INTO the tattoo parlor in question once it's hard for her to escape discreetly.

Alternatively, track her using the spirit, get nearby topside, and crash the car THEN attack her.
 
With complete control of the vehicle and the ability to choose what to crash into, the car-devil should be able to kill her very reliably.

And you'd want the seat belts to tighten, so her head and upper torso were in place to hit the pillar at 100+ mph
Black Rider won't actually be able to tighten the seat belts, but because of their electronic controls he should be able to keep them from engaging and helping to arrest her momentum. Between that and the airbags not working, at the very least she should be faceplanting into the steering wheel at high speed.

I've given Black Rider quite a bit of leeway in my plan, along with instructions to try to maximize damage to Katrina if possible.
Its a hundred and twenty thousand dollar luxury car. With all the safety measures that implies.
Just the passive safety measures alone like the rollcage will keep most normals alive, even if you could disable the airbags.
Yeah, but a lot of those safety features can be directly subverted by Black Riders. The airbags are under his control, the seat belts can be made to malfunction, and he can override the brakes. All of those features are electronically controlled and linked to the car's computer system. It also has a super powerful high performance engine for maximum speed. Black Rider isn't likely to get enough of an uncongested stretch of road to get up to full speed, but he will be able to accelerate pretty quickly with all of that power.
 
If binding specters to zombies was that easy Kemmler's heirs would just do that instead and remove the glaringly obvious weak point from their standard minion.
Noone says its easy.
But it is demonstrably within their capabilities to animate dead bodies, and to bind ghosts to their will.
We literally did just see a spectre attempt to posess Cindy two updates ago.

Raising zombies is easy. You just need dead bodies.
Grevane took seconds to raise a new zombie from a murdered guard in Dead Beat.
Putting a ghost in a body? Is going to be much harder.

This is not a capability issue, its a need issue.
Why would you invest the effort to create a selfwilled golem/superzombie if a mindless automaton is cheaper and easier to make?
We can also just give the car-devil a broad directive. If it sees a fuel tanker on the road, it can drive into that while making the cars engine explode. If it has space to accelerate it can spin into a reinforced wall at 100mph. The advantage is that the devil is sapient (and malicious). It can work out how best to kill its passengers.
: points at Mentor 5:
Collateral Damage R Us while working with a Knight of the Cross is contraindicated.
I dont see why people voted for a Knight of the Cross Mentor and keep proposing courses of action that put bystanders at risk.
 
I means do we want to delay them or ambush them?

If delay, as mentioned a fender-bender with a cop car that isn't too dangerous would work. Given how easy it would be for them to go after the girl and her grandpa, though, I'm thinking we want to kill them.

Chicago has tons of bridges, including 37 movable bridges. It's like a crapload of bridges. Could we order the car to drive off a bridge into the river at speed? That seems like a good start for at least softening them up before we go after them.

Running water seems likely to be a problem for the necromancer.
 
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Yeah, but a lot of those safety features can be directly subverted by Black Riders. The airbags are under his control, the seat belts can be made to malfunction, and he can override the brakes. All of those features are electronically controlled and linked to the car's computer system. It also has a super powerful high performance engine for maximum speed. Black Rider isn't likely to get enough of an uncongested stretch of road to get up to full speed, but he will be able to accelerate pretty quickly with all of that po
The passive ones dont. The car structure, the crumple zones, the seatbelts.
Thats before even coming to her personal defenses.
I mean, note that the GM literally said upthread that a traffic accident is likely to leave her without a scratch.
You are not sure what Katrina would do in the event of an accident. I mean on the one hand she does seem to be in a hurry, on the other hand that is a very expensive car and if she just abandons it, well that is going to be really hard to get back. There is also the inconvenience of the fact that you would put her through a bad crash, one that would get the paramedics called certainly... and leave her suspiciously unharmed. A crash would cause a hard to discern, but large snarl in her plans as far as Molly can tell. Of course if you intend to plan around it you would have to explain what you did to Gard and so far you were careful not to tell her about the machine control.
Vanilla mortals walk away from three digit kmph collisions in relatively cheap and midrange cars.
Kattrin isnt a vanilla mortal.
And this isnt a cheap car.
 
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I will point out that trying to save hostages in Dresden Files is hard. Any hostage will have their hair, blood, etc taken. Making tracking down an escaped hostage really easy.
 
Its a hundred and twenty thousand dollar luxury car. With all the safety measures that implies.
Just the passive safety measures alone like the rollcage will keep most normals alive, even if you could disable the airbags.
And Kattrin is not a normal.

Look at the other Valkyrie.
Gard remained functional through getting disembowelled by a Denarian, and being bounced off rock walls by a grenderlkin.
And she isnt a necromancer.

Its one thing to assert Kattrin might be discombobulated by getting hit by a car. Thats reasonable.
Quite something else to have the car hit something with her inside it.
I would put good money on her to walk it off without a scratch.

From what I can find on the Mercedes-Benz CLS-Class, a vast majority of its modern safety systems are reliant in some way on computerized components to operate. "Just turning off the airbags" level sabotage does screw up a lot of what it's good safety ratings are based on.

Even setting that capability aside, it's worth noting that this particular vehicle actually got a really bad score on the protection for the lower legs of the driver and it's safety cage in general (source here).

A straight rollover should be simple for Black Rider to perform, and to arrange to hit the safety cage the worst possible way over multiple flips. Failing that, it should also be possible for him to set it up to crush her from just above the knees down.

Since Clippy can access the internet and talk to Black Rider, it should be simple for her to look this sort of information up and pass the necessary data to him to create a perfect storm of lethal conditions on demand.

Gard might have walked off being disemboweled, but she still had the mechanical trauma; if Kat works the same way then she shouldn't be able to move on her own for a while after a successful hit.

Supposing she does use items to soak it, she'd still be trapped in the vehicle for a while. In all likelihood for long enough that the authorities get involved and make her day even more complicated.
Raising zombies is easy. You just need dead bodies.
Grevane took seconds to raise a new zombie from a murdered guard in Dead Beat.
Putting a ghost in a body? Is going to be much harder.

This is not a capability issue, its a need issue.
Why would you invest the effort to create a selfwilled golem/superzombie if a mindless automaton is cheaper and easier to make?
They keep doing it even when they know a full wizard is going to be involved, so I'm skeptical that they could all do it at the drop of a hat.

Even if they could, Kat doesn't seem to be as good as they are. Whatever her abilities are, she felt the need to get Matthews to finish her ritual prep for her. That doesn't speak of a depth of skill to me.
 
I somehow doubt that anything that Black Rider could pull off would hurt her as a baseline.
Besides. She has Time Stop.
Just press pause, metaphorically speaking, either just before or during the crash, and then exit the vehicle and walk to the side of the road. Resume. Car goes crash while Kattrin is standing at the side of the road, or even well on her way towards us.
 
I somehow doubt that anything that Black Rider could pull off would hurt her as a baseline.
Besides. She has Time Stop.
Just press pause, metaphorically speaking, either just before or during the crash, and then exit the vehicle and walk to the side of the road. Resume. Car goes crash while Kattrin is standing at the side of the road, or even well on her way towards us.
She isn't Dio, she can just slap other singular targets with a stop effect if she can focus enough to hit them. Further, interacting with it breaks the time lock; even if she could pause the wreck, how does she get out without reengaging the crash?
 
[X] Inform others of Kattrin coming, and how far away she is
[X] Use Lydia's picture (phone our brother if we don't have it and there's none in the Internet to find) and the Crown to locate her, then go find her now. She can't be allowed to fall into Kattrin's hands, if what you suspect about her ancestry is true.
I think this is the least bad voting option I can think of atm.
A version of Yog's plan.

VOTE
[X]Write-in: Inform others of Kattrin coming, and how far away she is. Go after Lydia first, then find alternate path to surface.
-[X]Crown of Eyes: Plot path to the current location and destination of Daniel Carpenter's current girlfriend.
-[X]If Gard gives number for Hendricks' burner phone, type message for Clippy to tell Bunny to send a text message to Hendricks updating him on status and plans, giving him a description of the car, and to keep an eye out for the occupants.
[X]STUNT: You pocket your phone as you get off your knee. "Holt's car's coming this way. Forty five minutes out at current speeds. And she's bringing a friend." Abrupt silence meets your declaration, and you take a moment to dust off your knee. "Cant tell what it is, just that its human shaped and fits in a car seat, but has no life signs. Time we get Cindy" a nod"out of here." You pause, mind racing, as you finally make a connection. "Wait....Holt's a seer isnt she?" you say slowly. "Could she predict the Ankou's daughter would...." The expression on Gard's face gives you your answer. "Fff...udge. Alright everyone, change of plans."


COMMENT
HMP spirits can apparently talk to each other over distances.
So Molly can use that to keep in touch.
Tell one spirit to tell another to send a text message to someone else.
 
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The passive ones dont. The car structure, the crumple zones, the seatbelts.
Thats before even coming to her personal defenses.
I mean, note that the GM literally said upthread that a traffic accident is likely to leave her without a scratch.
Not all traffic accidents are created equal, and my plan calls for Black Rider to arrange as bad an "accident" as he can manage.

Also, the seat belts are going to be of minimal help, basically only preventing people from being throw out of the car, since they too are partially controlled by Black Rider. They won't lock in place unless he allows them to.

Way to go, Mercedes, building all of these electronically integrated safety features into your high end luxury cars without even considering what could happen if a Cyberdevil took possession of one of them... 🧐
Vanilla mortals walk away from three digit kmph collisions in relatively cheap and midrange cars.
Kattrin isnt a vanilla mortal.
And this isnt a cheap car.
And sometimes a relatively low speed crash is immediately fatal or leads to catastrophic limb amputations. Often times, even when someone is not seriously hurt they still end up trapped in a car for hours while rescue personnel work to cut them out of the mangled vehicle.
 
She isn't Dio, she can just slap other singular targets with a stop effect if she can focus enough to hit them. Further, interacting with it breaks the time lock; even if she could pause the wreck, how does she get out without reengaging the crash?
Interacting with people breaks the time lock.
If interacting with objects did, she wouldnt even be able to move because touching the ground with her foot would break it.
 
Could she predict the Ankou's daughter would...." The expression on Gard's face gives you your answer. "Fff...udge. Alright everyone, change of plans."
Aren't you effectively stunting in the answer to a question we don't actually know is true?

For all we know her powers as a seer are a lot more limited than you're suggesting. Or it could be a lot more strategic, involving old school auguries that require rolling rune carved knuckle bones or gutting farm animals.

Considering who exactly she got that power from those options seem a lot more likely than the idea that she gets free form visions.
Not all traffic accidents are created equal, and my plan calls for Black Rider to arrange as bad an "accident" as he can manage.
I do think it'd be worth having Clippy run support here, and feed performance data to Black Rider so optimize the crash.

Interacting with people breaks the time lock.
If interacting with objects did, she wouldnt even be able to move because touching the ground with her foot would break it.
She's a person, and would be in an enclosed space. Assuming she can effect that large a volume in the first place, she'd have to get out without applying the equivalent force of a couple phones vibrating to any point in the vehicle.

Now that I think about it more, there's a bigger problem with this. Freezing the car in time doesn't change her own inertia. She'd immediately jolt forwards at the speed she was moving at, break the spell, then get caught in the car resuming motion.
 
[X] uju32
@uju32
I'd suggest integrating a prayer into the stunt, as Molly 'is' a devote Christian, though not to her father's level. Even a simple plea for help to herself.
 
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Aren't you effectively stunting in the answer to a question we don't actually know is true?
For all we know her powers as a seer are a lot more limited than you're suggesting. Or it could be a lot more strategic, involving old school auguries that require rolling rune carved knuckle bones or gutting farm animals.

Considering who exactly she got that power from those options seem a lot more likely than the idea that she gets free form visions.
Gard's first comment to Molly was that she walked outside Fate.

Gard did this herself to Dresden in Dead Beat to save his life; she foresaw the place and time of his fated death, and showed up with an axe to interrupt the assassin on Marcone's orders.
Note that Gard is not a seer. I expect the actual seer, whose seidr is prophecy, is somewhat more flexible.

She's a person, and would be in an enclosed space. Assuming she can effect that large a volume in the first place, she'd have to get out without applying the equivalent force of a couple phones vibrating to any point in the vehicle.

Now that I think about it more, there's a bigger problem with this. Freezing the car in time doesn't change her own inertia. She'd immediately jolt forwards at the speed she was moving at, break the spell, then get caught in the car resuming motion.
You are forgetting this is magic. Its not a hostile genie. Force disrupts it for other people not herself.
And we were explicitly told that Kattrin uses time magic for kidnapping people from public places, which wouldnt work if it was working on hostile genie logic. Notice we havent asked Cindy how she got kidnapped in the first place?

Also note that what we know about Kattrin's magic is what we were told by those who saw it and lived. I quote:
As far as Gard known Katrina can cast, in rough order of difficulty:
  1. Perception-Warp, which is an enchantment that leaves you standing around while the world spins around you and critically that you can only break with a will roll. Since she is not actually altering the flow of time she can just freely stab the victim while they cannot percieve her properly. Also good for taking prisoners in broad daylight from a public place
  2. Slow, which takes away some of your dice when fighting her, you do not know how many but it is an unfair number
  3. Stop, can be used on people, can be used on sniper bullets and like slow it gets used instantly
One definitely falls, it is enchantment, the others actually warp time so you would need a shaping defense against them.
As far as Gard has seen absolute, from the way Odin... er I mean Donar the totally-not-a-god explained it to her she is not aiming at you when she does that, she is aiming at the space-time you inhabit. Unless you have some way to contest her power over that space-time you get frozen. Her limitations are as follows:
  1. She only has two eyes and they are in the front of her head
  2. The more things she freezes the harder it gets
  3. A simple tap on someone frozen undoes the spell.
She is not a wizard, she could kill about 90% of wizards dead on first encounter before the Wardens came after her in force. Think about how rare the manipulation of time is among the White Council. We only see the Gatekeeper do it and there is a Law against going to deep into it so even those who might have the talent might be hesitant to mess with it.
She obviously is not in her head, but as far as Gard and her sisters have seen the stop power is harder than the slow and the more people she uses it on the harder it gets. Mechanically she is assigning successes on her dice to freeze people and eventually she runs out of successes.
This suffers selection bias, because combat magic =/= survival magic.
If she accelerates herself enough to get out of a trap you may never notice. Same with if she stops the surroundings.
Especially if any potential witnesses die.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by uju32 on Sep 13, 2022 at 7:44 PM, finished with 120 posts and 14 votes.

  • [X] Black Rider Will Ride Again!
    -[X] Assuming he can confirm that Katrina is driving, give Black Rider the command to crash his current chassis into a nearby solid object, such as a large tree, stationary garbage truck, sturdy wall, etc. at maximum acceleration with a specific aim toward injuring Katrina as seriously as possible, perhaps even killing her, so long as doing so doesn't endanger bystanders. Going over the side of a bridge would be a good alternative, if an opportunity presents itself.
    --[X] Black Rider will interface with Clippy, using information about this model of car and automobile accidents in general pulled from the internet, to insure the crash is as severe as he can manage. He will also send Clippy all of his GPS data so we can retrace Katrina's route.
    ---[X] Before initiating the crash, he is to lock the doors, prevent Katrina from braking, prevent the seat belts from properly engaging, and trigger all of the airbags a moment before impact in order to render them ineffective.
    ----[X] Assure Black Rider that we will find him a new chassis soon.
    -[X] Using the extra time this buys us, we will try to locate Lydia while also searching for another exit from Undertown. Michael will keep a close guard on Cindy for the time being. Ask Gard if she has any quick and dirty means to keep Katrina from easily tracking Cindy's location, assuming she probably has hair or even blood samples from the girl.
    [X]Write-in: Inform others of Kattrin coming, and how far away she is. Go after Lydia first, then find alternate path to surface.
    -[X]Crown of Eyes: Plot path to the current location and destination of Daniel Carpenter's current girlfriend.
    -[X]If Gard gives number for Hendricks' burner phone, type message for Clippy to tell Bunny to send a text message to Hendricks updating him on status and plans, giving him a description of the car, and to keep an eye out for the occupants.
    [X]STUNT: You pocket your phone as you get off your knee. "Holt's car's coming this way. Forty five minutes out at current speeds. And she's bringing a friend." Abrupt silence meets your declaration, and you take a moment to dust off your knee. "Cant tell what it is, just that its human shaped and fits in a car seat, but has no life signs. Time we get Cindy" a nod"out of here." You pause, mind racing, as you finally make a connection. "Wait....Holt's a seer isnt she?" you say slowly. "Could she predict the Ankou's daughter would...." The expression on Gard's face gives you your answer. "Fff...udge. Alright everyone, change of plans."
    [X] One of us can hang back with Cindy once we are closer to the surface and we can deal with Katrina once and for all
    -[X] Ask Michael to stay back. Not because he is less relevant in fight, but because he is the best option for protecting an innocent during this mess.
    -[X] Ask Black Rider to crash the car into the most solid object near the tattoo parlor it can find (the one with lowest odds of demolishing a building and harming people). Activate the airbags shortly before impact, both to make them useless and to stop Kattrin from bracing for the hit. Then it's time to face her.
    [X] We need to find another way out to the city, we can't get into a fight while Cindy is with us
    [X] Inform the others of incoming Katrin and nonbreathing company.
    -[X] Set up an ambush at the ladder of the basement
    [X] Inform others of Kattrin coming, and how far away she is
    [X] Use Lydia's picture (phone our brother if we don't have it and there's none in the Internet to find) and the Crown to locate her, then go find her now. She can't be allowed to fall into Kattrin's hands, if what you suspect about her ancestry is true.
 
We at least have about 30 to 45 minutes while Katrina is in transit, then she will have to skip by the mortal authorities to get into the tattoo shop's basement to enter Undertown, then make the trip to Cindy's former location.

With some help from Black Rider, we can buy ourselves much more time while possibly injuring Katrina somewhat in the bargain. That will give us a chance to look for Lydia, find another exit, and maybe get Cindy somewhere Katrina cannot easily find her. NOT the Carpenter household. The place is a haven for the Carpenters, not a safe house for anyone on the run from supernatural crap.

[X] Black Rider Will Ride Again!
-[X] Assuming he can confirm that Katrina is driving, give Black Rider the command to crash his current chassis into a nearby solid object, such as a large tree, stationary garbage truck, sturdy wall, etc. at maximum acceleration with a specific aim toward injuring Katrina as seriously as possible, perhaps even killing her, so long as doing so doesn't endanger bystanders. Going over the side of a bridge would be a good alternative, if an opportunity presents itself.
--[X] Black Rider will interface with Clippy, using information about this model of car and automobile accidents in general pulled from the internet, to insure the crash is as severe as he can manage. He will also send Clippy all of his GPS data so we can retrace Katrina's route.
---[X] Before initiating the crash, he is to lock the doors, prevent Katrina from braking, prevent the seat belts from properly engaging, and trigger all of the airbags a moment before impact in order to render them ineffective.
----[X] Assure Black Rider that we will find him a new chassis soon.
-[X] Using the extra time this buys us, we will try to locate Lydia while also searching for another exit from Undertown. Michael will keep a close guard on Cindy for the time being. Ask Gard if she has any quick and dirty means to keep Katrina from easily tracking Cindy's location, assuming she probably has hair or even blood samples from the girl.
Remember who your Mentor 5 is. And who the PC is when you attempt cold blooded murder.
And wnat the consquences are for the PC.

Because too many people forget what we signed up for when we chose to roleplay Molly Carpenter, loving daughter of Michael Carpenter, Knight of the Cross.
 
So what exactly is the follow up here?

We run away and pick up Lydia, trying to stay ahead of Kat.

Phase one requires us to run the gauntlet and escape the local equivalent of the underdark without getting caught while dragging dead weight, which would really suck. If we do get slowed down we're trapped in an enclosed space with Kat and her zombie, and they get to be on the offensive.

If we get out ahead of her, and get to some sort of transport, then we need to flee somewhere. Can't exactly take the targets with us to the ritual site unless we feel like playing delivery driver for our opponent after all. But if Kat is really that good a seer and thaumaturge then we probably can't stop her from getting a general bead on us.

So we've got to bunker down somewhere, probably the church, and she gets to come sr us any way she pleases. If she's as good at preparing for everything under the sun as we've discussed, then I'd rather not see her siege kit.

If that for some reason doesn't work out, we're down to attacking Kat in a prepared position or trying to ambush her while she knows someone's gunning for her.


Gard's first comment to Molly was that she walked outside Fate.

Gard did this herself to Dresden in Dead Beat to save his life; she foresaw the place and time of his fated death, and showed up with an axe to interrupt the assassin on Marcone's orders.
Note that Gard is not a seer. I expect the actual seer, whose seidr is prophecy, is somewhat more flexible.
Gard is still a Valkyrie, and has death vision, Kat was kicked out of the office.

Having seer powers doesn't mean she got an entire new form of intellectus. Being flexible doesn't mean she can run powerful divinations from the side of the road.

Getting cliff notes for what's going to happen next week by augury is plenty powerful to name one example.
You are forgetting this is magic. Its not a hostile genie. Force disrupts it for other people not herself.
And we were explicitly told that Kattrin uses time magic for kidnapping people from public places, which wouldnt work if it was working on hostile genie logic. Notice we havent asked Cindy how she got kidnapped in the first place?

Also note that what we know about Kattrin's magic is what we were told by those who saw it and lived. I quote:
You're mixing up applications. She kidnaps people by warping their perceptions, but that doesn't actually stop time. Hitting things while frozen breaks them out, even if it's just an object doing it. Which is why buzzers counter the ability.

It's magic but it's not a charm. That spell lets her freeze time, not selectively play with her physical reference frame. That would be a very different power with very different combat implications that Gard would have mentioned.

As far as I can see, she can't just selectively halt parts of how something interacts with the world. Either it's frozen in time or it isn't. If she didn't freeze herself then she's still subject to regular physics.

If she does freeze herself, then when she unfreezes she's back to doing what she was before. In this case moving 90mph in the direction of traffic.
 
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