Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

More like a demigod I think.

No noticable Winter-affinity and more power than most Changelings have before they decide their path as Fey or mortal.
when we met her we pegged her as a changeling so probably a changeling. She definitely counts as a scion though. Given scions come in dozens if not hundreds of stripes in the grand scheme of existence.
 
[J] Put on sunglasses. Assume Illinoise acent
-[J] We're on a mission from God.

Also

[J] Dad works for God. Gard works for Santa Clause. I work for free wafflecones.

[J] Winter probably. Not 100% sure how just yet, but Mab is likely behind all of this somehow.
 
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I hope cindy is a more powerful talent than her grandfather cause if she is she might be able to mentored by dresden. She probably isn't though and she definitely would have the same specialty or specialties as dresden. He can definitely teach her plenty though.

Edit: Oh speaking of cindy give her a quick rundown on the laws of magic if it becomes prevalent or her grandpa dies.
 
True, yeah. For the vote, the Gard's part is a bit weak, I feel. On the other hand, it leaves it up to her to disclose stuff about herself. She's really an independent ally, not like our father, for whom I feel we have the right to speak of who he is.
I don't think it's that weak; there's only so many polite ways to do this sort of introduction without stepping on toes, especially for a mercenary we just met.

Could be she'd like the advertisement of being fully introduced, could be that she's not interested in spreading her name around like this. Best to leave it to her to be more specific if she wants to be.

True though I definitely ship it for our brother she seems like a proper potential party member for us honestly maybe not at the higher levels we'll eventually work at. But, still someone we can call on for help I think so I intend to nurture this friendship.
She does have potential as a party member. I'd rather not deal with other exalts at the moment, but a DF demigod could potentially hang in there with us power wise.
She hasn't shown any Winter-related abilities so far.
Commanding the Earth, gathering animals and calling a ghost, that all fits with Arawn's original domain, not Winter's power.

So propably not Fae.
Maybe that's the reason the winter court is handling this so strangely.

We know from canon that entities can hold and act on different mantles from Odin. There can be very significant physical and spiritual differences in the same entity depending on how you invoke them.

Winter has the fealty of and obligations to Ankou, but what if he did something like Odin and swore under one name and kept the other in reserve? Then fathered Lydia while manifested under his 'free' name.

Either as part of a plot related to regaining status, or because he legitimately didn't want to tie a child of his to winter directly.

If Ankou is here doing something that isn't winter related; like say hunting for a necromancer to use as fuel for something in his free identity, then Mab would be interested in making sure he survives but not necessarily his success.

She also might not be able to mobilize a troll hit squad to defend him if he's technically a foreign power right now.

It could also tie into why Holt is doing this now and not sometime in the last 300 years. His daughter mixes his oldest divine nature with mortal life, making his core self vulnerable to their ritual. As opposed to stealing a mantle outside of Halloween but leaving the rest of the god alive and pissed off about it if it's possible at all.
 
[X] Let dad handle things, he is probably used to the whole post-rescue situation more than you
 
Actually, do we know Lydia's birthday?

I'm wondering if her hitting some specific age of importance to Ankou's old people, or simply hitting supernatural puberty hard enough to have measurable powers, is the project he's close to completing. Probably with some other preparations he's trying to make.

Perhaps it's not just the type of offspring, but also a level of investment from the parent thing.

As in, he's put a lot of power into her directly, and is establishing a ritual related to his old domain to do something with that fact. Best case it'd be having Lydia ritually force something like corpsetaker into the afterlife to spark the formation of a new minor mantle, making her the closest thing DF has to an exigent.

Worst case, he's doing it to somehow sacrifice her for power. Assuming I'm not wildly off base anyway.

Edit: It might not be a birthday thing either.

Plenty of cultures have had rites of passage that people on the cusp of adulthood had to go through to be considered full members of the community.

Maybe he just needed to wait for her to awaken enough power to successfully complete some ritual based on that using inherited embers of his fading divinity, and the timing is purely based on spiritual biology.

That would be what Holt is trying to steal, why she needs the corpsetaker, and in turn why corpsetaker didn't eject Lydia's soul when entering her body.

The plan being to keep Lydia intact enough for the ritual, then seize her at the moment of transcendence and use the implied passing of the torch to the next generation as a sympathetic connection to eat both of them for power.
 
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If Ankou is here doing something that isn't winter related; like say hunting for a necromancer to use as fuel for something in his free identity, then Mab would be interested in making sure he survives but not necessarily his success.
We are an Exalt. We lack spirit killing charms at the moment, and those almost certainly will be needed to permanently deal with Holt, who is at least in some way immortal. I think it would be poetic justice to feed her to Lydia. Probably a terrible idea too (especially if we fear Nemesis infection on Holt's part), but still, poetic justice. And it is likely to make Lydia an independent free agent in terms of power / divinity.
 
[X] Explain that as much as you are working with anyone it's with Harry who is in jail
-[X] That's kinda a start of a long discussion. In short, I am a free agent, and am in this to help a friend and out of the general "stopping nazi necromancers is a good thing" civic duty sense. Dad is a Knight of the Cross, if it tells you anything - they are God's agents protecting people against forces of evil. Ms. Gard is an ally, she's here for personal reasons.


I'm captured by the events and I hope we get some answers in turn.
 
We are an Exalt. We lack spirit killing charms at the moment, and those almost certainly will be needed to permanently deal with Holt, who is at least in some way immortal. I think it would be poetic justice to feed her to Lydia. Probably a terrible idea too (especially if we fear Nemesis infection on Holt's part), but still, poetic justice. And it is likely to make Lydia an independent free agent in terms of power / divinity.
I think it depends greatly on the context.

If Ankou is putting together some sort of ascension ritual for his daughter and it needs her to ritually perform an act worthy of a death god to complete then Holt seems like fair game.

If the necromancers manage to start something and we can stop it by inverting it somehow then that might be worth trying.

Deliberately engaging it Kemmlerite tier necromancy seems like a bad idea outside of that though. Especially if doing so risks san damage from Lydia still being mortal when it starts.
 
[ ] Gesture towards your Dad. 'He works for God, yes that God. I'm his apprentice.' Gesture at Ms Gard 'Ms Gard is here because she has a grudge against the people we're pursuing'. Gesture at Cindy 'Cindy is an unaligned practitioner'.

Basically Yog's write in, but folding us in under Michael. It's even technically accurate. The best kind of accurate.
 
I think it depends greatly on the context.

If Ankou is putting together some sort of ascension ritual for his daughter and it needs her to ritually perform an act worthy of a death god to complete then Holt seems like fair game.

If the necromancers manage to start something and we can stop it by inverting it somehow then that might be worth trying.

Deliberately engaging it Kemmlerite tier necromancy seems like a bad idea outside of that though. Especially if doing so risks san damage from Lydia still being mortal when it starts.
Yeah, I was thinking mostly of the second one - that we'll invert the trap laid for Ankou somehow.
 
Cindy continues to amuse me. Here's hoping her sister turns out to be a magic user as well; and both are recurring minor characters. Giving Molly a small taste of her mother's anxieties sounds hilarious.

Porter as a usename? Interesting choice. Definitely not his True Name, but his choice of name is suggestive. Older than the city isnt that impressive, given that the first non-native American settlers were only around 1790, and the city was incorporated in 1837.
But choosing to become an essentially urban elemental is certainly an interesting choice. I wonder what he knows of Demonreach.

Lydia's comments suggest that she was convinced to invite the Capriocorpus into her head.
Which suggests her father taught her nothing about basic safety protocols and stranger-danger when dealing with spirits and the supernatural. Thats childrearing malpractice for someone in his line of work.

Poor Charity is about to get a bunch of impromptu guests dumped on her head
The more I think about the number of eggs the woman juggles, the more sympathetic to her I am.
Hmm. Michael's wounds looks like a Per + Occult + Stunt roll
That was an interesting encounter roll; rolling 76 on a d100+30 at DC45 suggests that if we hadnt gotten Porter to move us, we'd have only barely avoided a combat encounter on the way out.


VOTE
[X] Explain that as much as you are working with anyone it's with Harry who is in jail

OOC? Our XP gain seems to be related to how many things we try and succeed at, so we cant exactly make a habit of shunting stuff off on others. And this is a relatively low risk endeavor.
If Molly fails, Michael or Gard can take over.

IC, we're the only person here that Lydia knows, and who has a previous relationship with her.
That makes us the best person to attempt to explain things to her.

EDIT
Approval vote:

[X] Explain that as much as you are working with anyone it's with Harry who is in jail
-[X] That's kinda a start of a long discussion. In short, I am a free agent, and am in this to help a friend and out of the general "stopping nazi necromancers is a good thing" civic duty sense. Dad is a Knight of the Cross, if it tells you anything - they are God's agents protecting people against forces of evil. Ms. Gard is an ally, she's here for personal reasons.
 
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[ ] Gesture towards your Dad. 'He works for God, yes that God. I'm his apprentice.' Gesture at Ms Gard 'Ms Gard is here because she has a grudge against the people we're pursuing'. Gesture at Cindy 'Cindy is an unaligned practitioner'.

Basically Yog's write in, but folding us in under Michael. It's even technically accurate. The best kind of accurate.
Except it isn't accurate at all, is suspect on the face of it, and might be a problem for us if we start claiming it.

We made a deal for instruction, but we aren't a squire to the knights of the cross. There isn't any intention of succession or induction into the order.

Molly also looks pretty off theme for them, so it's a hard sell to make in the first place.

Finally, working with the knights but not for them give us an interesting space to play in.

We can do stuff that benefits Heaven without actually giving points to Hell because we're just a mortal making mortal choices from an official perspective.

If we go around making it clear that we formally work for them, rather than "simply" receiving tutoring and doing what we like with the lessons then that might change.

Sure it's rules lawyering for the sake of blatantly cheating, but we're playing a hell princess and talking about fighting fallen angels.

Cheating is on brand and the Fallen have no leg to stand on complaining about it.
 
[X] Explain that as much as you are working with anyone it's with Harry who is in jail
-[X] That's kinda a start of a long discussion. In short, I am a free agent, and am in this to help a friend and out of the general "stopping nazi necromancers is a good thing" civic duty sense. Dad is a Knight of the Cross, if it tells you anything - they are God's agents protecting people against forces of evil. Ms. Gard is an ally, she's here for personal reasons.
 
Although Arawn works for Mab, he can't be a fey. He's like Odin, an Immortal with a capital I entity from before the universe existed/time began who has chosen to take on a mantle belonging to the Winter Court in return for greater ability to interact with the material world, just as taking on the mantle of a Celtic god allowed him to do back when that religion had worshippers.

I'm not sure whether when Gods have children, the mantle they're using at the time is the determining factor in their scion's powers.

Something to consider is that Immortals like deities can't be killed except on Halloween, although mantles can be transferred. Mortals can only ascend to Immortality on Halloween as well.

Thinking of why Molly smells of divinity, if the old gods predate the current universe, so may her Exaltation.
 
[X] Explain that as much as you are working with anyone it's with Harry who is in jail
-[X] That's kinda a start of a long discussion. In short, I am a free agent, and am in this to help a friend and out of the general "stopping nazi necromancers is a good thing" civic duty sense. Dad is a Knight of the Cross, if it tells you anything - they are God's agents protecting people against forces of evil. Ms. Gard is an ally, she's here for personal reasons.
 
Although Arawn works for Mab, he can't be a fey. He's like Odin, an Immortal with a capital I entity from before the universe existed/time began who has chosen to take on a mantle belonging to the Winter Court in return for greater ability to interact with the material world, just as taking on the mantle of a Celtic god allowed him to do back when that religion had worshippers.

I'm not sure whether when Gods have children, the mantle they're using at the time is the determining factor in their scion's powers.

Something to consider is that Immortals like deities can't be killed except on Halloween, although mantles can be transferred. Mortals can only ascend to Immortality on Halloween as well.

Thinking of why Molly smells of divinity, if the old gods predate the current universe, so may her Exaltation.
They change how they present in a lot of fundamental ways, so I don't think it's totally out of the question that it does matter. We don't really see it at work in canon in a way that specifies one way or the other.

Mantles all have to follow some big rules, but the individual ones can have some variations.

For example, the knights' mantles can be moved around more freely, in part because they're weaker but also because they have a different purpose.

At the very least this whole sequence of events implies that Holt and corpsetaker think there is a loophole here of some kind that cheats the major rules, so I wouldn't take stuff like Halloween limit as exclusive fact. There could be edge cases or modifications from how the setting was crossed with exalted that change how things work.
 
You think we could try making the earth elemental's place less a fortress and workshop more like a meeting for chicago Supernaturals? Kinda like a magical version of community farmer's marketplace.
 
They change how they present in a lot of fundamental ways, so I don't think it's totally out of the question that it does matter. We don't really see it at work in canon in a way that specifies one way or the other.

Mantles all have to follow some big rules, but the individual ones can have some variations.

For example, the knights' mantles can be moved around more freely, in part because they're weaker but also because they have a different purpose.

At the very least this whole sequence of events implies that Holt and corpsetaker think there is a loophole here of some kind that cheats the major rules, so I wouldn't take stuff like Halloween limit as exclusive fact. There could be edge cases or modifications from how the setting was crossed with exalted that change how things work.

Mantles come with a fair amount of power. Even if Arawn wasn't killed by it, losing most of his ability to interact with the material world and Holt gaining a new set of abilities wouldn't be a good outcome for us, and would be for her.
 
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