What leverage precisely do we have to negotiate with? Huge dicepools are great, but given Mab apparently plans to start negotiating Lydia's contract by killing her dad. What do we bring to the table to pre-empt this opening offer?
Join Combat is the original Perfect Social Defense after all.
The leverage is investment vs risk and effort. She gets her stuff back with no extra investment in time or effort. I don't expect her to lose social combat precisely, in fact she should be pretty great at it, but our abilities should be good enough to present the case that she can either take a solution that gets her main problem solved right now or put revenge first and continue into something requiring additional effort.
Part of which is backed by the fact that she really wants Harry on staff, and he's dug his heels in. Asking for a little give in her position in order to get what she needs and potentially advance her schemes around Dresden is a good deal for her.
Especially since the only material loss is Lydia, and her plot there was to arrange for Arawn to die in the struggle with the necromancers as she shows up, and then sell his life back to get Lydia on side. At minimum it was certainly not to kill him in front of her and then try to cut a deal, since that's stupid and she'd know it. A gambit that doesn't work very well now that Lydia knows the play.
Sure she could go straight to combat, but we can't stop her from doing that right now. We were just told a few pages ago that she's listening, aware of the situation, and can gate in wherever she likes. Which implies to me that she could handle this herself, but isn't because she's playing a game (and has better things to do).
Even if we knock him out Dresden has to summon her as soon as he wakes up. So all we'd be doing by knocking him out is going into that discussion with an even worse position.
In fairness I think they were talking about socially, not physically. Mab can wheel'n'deal but most of her social power is backed by her physical threat. She doesn't display superhuman persuasiveness in quite the same way Exalts do. Which is kinda the same thing you were saying earlier.
Not really, I don't think we have the social dice to roll Mab. Just that we have better odds of working a deal like the above than trying to pick a direct fight of one kind or another. It's not about exalts being strong, it's about picking the best possible positioning for our situation.
No they arent.
Parties of maxed level Exalts are allowed to fight Methuselahs and eventually Antediluvians. Giovanni.Ravnos.Toreador. And so on.
The ancestors of the vampire clans.
These considerations don't really matter to us right now though. Even if the design intent is that exalts can eventually face anything, that doesn't mean they can do it whenever they like or are guaranteed to win just because they're allowed to try where others can't.
If she's Cain tier then Mab is a challenging fight for a full circle of fully developed exalts, and therefore someone who can do awful stuff to us now and for most of the quest up to the end game tiers.
In what household has the disapproval of a teenager ever set policy?
The man wouldnt even tell her about her heritage, or what he was doing in Chicago
You overestimate Lydia's influence over her father's actions.
Yes, I do. Because I understand Mab's motivations, and that she wont put personal satisfaction over her responsibilities.
The only confirmed motivations I have for Arawn are his personal freedom.
Dude cut a deal with Kemmler over it.
I must disagree with the the statement that Mab would not put personal satisfaction over her responsibilities as we already since her do this for something than far more important for the war with the outsiders than merely Arawn, which is letting the Winter Lady Mavre ignore for her duties for so long that Molly in canon has to deal with the over century backlog of work such as for example collecting changelings meant to fight the war of the outsider war. If she was perfectly logical in her reasoning and thought process, that problem would not have occurred in the first place as the only reason for letting this go on is her sentiments she has with Maeve even at the cost of her duties. Which does indicate that with enough emotion she can and will do actions which are detrimental towards her responsibility.
These considerations don't really matter to us right now though. Even if the design intent is that exalts can eventually face anything, that doesn't mean they can do it whenever they like or are guaranteed to win just because they're allowed to try where others can't.
If she's Cain tier then Mab is a challenging fight for a full circle of fully developed exalts, and therefore someone who can do awful stuff to us now and for most of the quest up to the end game tiers.
I agree with the statement in general, but I don't agree with the last part.
DP is pretty fair in these things, over thousands of pages of quests I can only remember the option to face far superior enemies once (when Viserys was still very smol and his insistance on fully plundering an Illithid-fortress after we killed the local squid almost led to us encountering an Ulitharid).
Meanwhile we have been given options to increase Mab's enemy-rating a few times already.
So I am kinda assuming that pissing of Mab does not results in an instant 1v1 fight with an Essence 9 equivalent that squishes us, but rather with her taking shots against us in a less direct manner.
Wasn't there a couple of other times? I seem to remember a couple of others. We could have ended up fighting Relath in the battle for Torturer's Deep, for one. There may have also been an occasion north of The Wall?
No, she really isn't. Some small fragments of Winter are our enemy. Mab probably barely knows of our existence.
And even if she was our enemy, there is not one god damned thing we could do about it. She could kill us with trivial ease. She has lieutenants who could kill us with trivial ease. She could accidentally kill us as a side-effect of using her power against an actual threat. If she was actually angry, just hearing her speak could explode our head like a rotten melon.
We are a gnat compared to Mab, only able to irritate her in the most minor of ways, like buzzing around her ear when she's busy with shit that actually matters. You know what happens to annoying gnats? They get swatted.
I'm so tired of people in this thread who act like being an Exalt gives us the ability to square off with anything short of the White God. We are freaking insignificant right now, and that won't change unless we live long enough to grow into real power.
I'm so tired of people in this thread who act like being an Exalt gives us the ability to square off with anything short of the White God. We are freaking insignificant right now, and that won't change unless we live long enough to grow into real power.
I would like to relate a story from my Exalted 2e days about that.
We were playing Abyssals (Solar-tier). A new player joined the group. The GM had him play through a character introduction scenario along typical Abyssal lines: your mortal life ended, the Black Exaltation found you on the verge of death, offering you power and encouraging you in particular to use it to destroy the world, starting with little steps like getting up from death and taking revenge on the people who killed you. Then you can meet up with the rest of the party.
The new Abyssal enthusiastically took this deal, he didn't have any Artifacts yet but he figured "Melee Excellency" should be enough to defeat a handful of mortals. He lost.
"Melee Excellency" was great for landing a hit on the one of the caravan guards he attacked, but he was new and probably overestimated the danger of attention-getting anima flare, (or maybe running out of essence? I don't know his exact motives, the point being that in 2e you spent Essence separately on attacking and defending) so he was limiting his essence expenditure on defense, so multiple mortals managed to hit him and deal damage and inflict wound penalties that made it easier for the others to kill him with follow-up attacks.
The GM quickly decided "Okay, your Exaltation jumps to someone else who's dying since it's already out in the world [blah blah Jade Prison blah blah Monstrance lore], and it gets Past Life background for free, so you can use the lessons from this encounter as in-character reasoning immediately on the advice of your previous host. And that means it's the same Caste of Exaltation and just recycle the character sheet, I'm not going to make you reroll session 1."
Abyssal Incarnation 2's slightly altered backstory was being an abused prisoner who would start out by killing the guards who had beaten him and dumped his body. He waded in, willing to spend lots of essence this time in fighting the guards, Melee Excellency all day both attacking and defending. He lost again.
This time he lost because of the rule that if you're surrounded, you don't get defense dice against one of the attackers (the one behind you is treated as having surprise), and he had not taken the Surprise-Negation charm, so he got stabbed in the back with a lucky hit, the guards made their Morale check on seeing one of their number dead, and continued attacking until Abyssal 2 died.
The GM and player were both a little sheepish about mister Loses-To-Mortals at this point, so they improvised a suggestion of "dying of thirst/poison in the desert" for the 3rd host, and fighting one desert monster (giant scorpion) which he successfully defeated to meet up with the rest of the party.
Abyssal Incarnation 3 would later get killed by a Lunar, iirc. The player had learned about Perfect Defenses and conserving resources in peer fights rather than going all-in on a single super combo that gets noped, so he was cautious with his essence expenditure and dragged out the fight.
Unfortunately, Lunars have the advantage in a dragged-out fight because they have a charm that gives them 1HL/turn regeneration indefinitely for a one-time activation cost.
-
Fighting the Primordial Host is something that Exalts did with extensive backing, training, blessings, equipment, numbers (hundreds of Celestials, thousands of Terrestrials), and still took casualties, and cheated a little on that because their casualties get to respawn as the Exaltation finds a new host. The collective voting of SV can probably avoid tactical errors like being too conservative about essence expenditure, but "dying to mortals" is still something that can happen to Exalts, even more so in a modern day setting where the mortals have better guns.
Wasn't there a couple of other times? I seem to remember a couple of others. We could have ended up fighting Relath in the battle for Torturer's Deep, for one. There may have also been an occasion north of The Wall?
No, she really isn't. Some small fragments of Winter are our enemy. Mab probably barely knows of our existence.
And even if she was our enemy, there is not one god damned thing we could do about it. She could kill us with trivial ease. She has lieutenants who could kill us with trivial ease. She could accidentally kill us as a side-effect of using her power against an actual threat. If she was actually angry, just hearing her speak could explode our head like a rotten melon.
We are a gnat compared to Mab, only able to irritate her in the most minor of ways, like buzzing around her ear when she's busy with shit that actually matters. You know what happens to annoying gnats? They get swatted.
I'm so tired of people in this thread who act like being an Exalt gives us the ability to square off with anything short of the White God. We are freaking insignificant right now, and that won't change unless we live long enough to grow into real power.
Even if we can't take her now, what's she going to do? Mab explicitly can't act against people who hold no debt to her, and we hold no such debt. She can't kill us because Harry failed his task
So are you just ignoring the discussion around why that's a bad plan, or if there something you think mitigates it?
Accepting for a moment the premise that she's an irreconcilable enemy that we must oppose, which I don't agree with, this is bad strategy.
She's stronger than we are, holds the cards right now, and holds the cards in the foreseeable future. If you want to fight someone like that you don't announce it by slapping them in the face and running away.
Don't roll over on everything, but be ready to make your first shot count cause it only gets harder from there.
I don't agree with your basic premise, but even if I did Mab herself would be the last person I want to know about the "Fuck Mab" policy.
To be more specific about the circumstances, Harry just summon as soon as he's next capable of it. So as soon as he wakes up. That means we're having a conversation in the next few IC hours that will have serious influence on the fates of everyone involved. We need as much of an advantage as we can get, and pissing Mab off first doesn't accomplish that.
I agree with the statement in general, but I don't agree with the last part.
DP is pretty fair in these things, over thousands of pages of quests I can only remember the option to face far superior enemies once (when Viserys was still very smol and his insistance on fully plundering an Illithid-fortress after we killed the local squid almost led to us encountering an Ulitharid).
Meanwhile we have been given options to increase Mab's enemy-rating a few times already.
So I am kinda assuming that pissing of Mab does not results in an instant 1v1 fight with an Essence 9 equivalent that squishes us, but rather with her taking shots against us in a less direct manner.
No (default) option being a trap doesn't mean they're all equal, or that compounding bad choices won't have an impact.
Mab probably won't immediately execute us, but she holds immense hard and soft power that we can't counter. If we try to play hard ball there's no reason for her to press back, and we have few palatable fallback options.
Fighting her probably doesn't end in an immediate execution, but it doesn't substantially help us actually win.
Even if we can't take her now, what's she going to do? Mab explicitly can't act against people who hold no debt to her, and we hold no such debt. She can't kill us because Harry failed his task
That's not true. Greater fey can involve themselves in the affairs of mortals who involve themselves in their business. Debt is just an easy in for them that lets them pull direct voodoo stuff.
Maeve enchants a musician to play to death using a poorly worded wish in her presence; everything from Arctis Tor onwards puts us in her reach.
No (default) option being a trap doesn't mean they're all equal, or that compounding bad choices won't have an impact.
Mab probably won't immediately execute us, but she holds immense hard and soft power that we can't counter. If we try to play hard ball there's no reason for her to press back, and we have few palatable fallback options.
Fighting her probably doesn't end in an immediate execution, but it doesn't substantially help us actually win.
Yeah, and that's an easier play to make in a negotiation. Which is hampered by us attacking her agents specifically to impede her.
Negotiating a trade off that leaves the mantle with some fey and Lydia in the clear in exchange for debt that we pay off with exorcism (once we have it, know how good it is, and become aware of the value to Mab) would be a pretty good ending all told.
So are you just ignoring the discussion around why that's a bad plan, or if there something you think mitigates it?
Accepting for a moment the premise that she's an irreconcilable enemy that we must oppose, which I don't agree with, this is bad strategy.
She's stronger than we are, holds the cards right now, and holds the cards in the foreseeable future. If you want to fight someone like that you don't announce it by slapping them in the face and running away.
Don't roll over on everything, but be ready to make your first shot count cause it only gets harder from there.
I don't agree with your basic premise, but even if I did Mab herself would be the last person I want to know about the "Fuck Mab" policy.
To be more specific about the circumstances, Harry just summon as soon as he's next capable of it. So as soon as he wakes up. That means we're having a conversation in the next few IC hours that will have serious influence on the fates of everyone involved. We need as much of an advantage as we can get, and pissing Mab off first doesn't accomplish that.
No (default) option being a trap doesn't mean they're all equal, or that compounding bad choices won't have an impact.
Mab probably won't immediately execute us, but she holds immense hard and soft power that we can't counter. If we try to play hard ball there's no reason for her to press back, and we have few palatable fallback options.
Fighting her probably doesn't end in an immediate execution, but it doesn't substantially help us actually win.
Edit:
That's not true. Greater fey can involve themselves in the affairs of mortals who involve themselves in their business. Debt is just an easy in for them that lets them pull direct voodoo stuff.
Maeve enchants a musician to play to death using a poorly worded wish in her presence; everything from Arctis Tor onwards puts us in her reach.
Why are you assuming we are talking to her at all? We knock out Harry, then leave. He wakes up and calls Mab as soon as hes able and says "I found Ankou, then he got away. Since you asked me to find him my debt to you is paid". Then Man leaves because what else is she going to do? Hunt us down? If she could hunt down anyone who got in the way of her plans she wouldn't be constantly acting through catspaws
Why are you assuming we are talking to her at all? We knock out Harry, then leave. He wakes up and calls Mab as soon as hes able and says "I found Ankou, then he got away. Since you asked me to find him my debt to you is paid". Then Man leaves because what else is she going to do? Hunt us down? If she could hunt down anyone who got in the way of her plans she wouldn't be constantly acting through catspaws
She doesn't hunt everyone down no, but she does act against them. She's not going to let this go afterwards with a shrug, in fact she's likely to get more aggressive about it.
Further, you're basically abandoning Dresden to manage a pissed off Mab alone. He's not protected from punishment for failure; it's an implicit part of his deal with her. He also still has debt, so this is a bad play for him either way.
You're betting on Mab doing nothing in response, on nothing being even slightly inconvenient with Arawn, and the rest of the encounter politely tidying itself up without issue. These are bad bets because we have no reason to believe they're terribly likely compared to any other option, and losing one or more screws us.
She doesn't hunt everyone down no, but she does act against them. She's not going to let this go afterwards with a shrug, in fact she's likely to get more aggressive about it.
Further, you're basically abandoning Dresden to manage a pissed off Mab alone. He's not protected from punishment for failure; it's an implicit part of his deal with her. He also still has debt, so this is a bad play for him either way.
You're betting on Mab doing nothing in response, on nothing being even slightly inconvenient with Arawn, and the rest of the encounter politely tidying itself up without issue. These are bad bets because we have no reason to believe they're terribly likely compared to any other option, and losing one or more screws us.
She'll have no reason to go after Harry in this case.
He fulfilled the letter of the deal.
She literally can't fault him for that. Fae are like that.
She'll keep it in mind for future marching orders since his debt isn't fully paid IIRC, but this time she got outsmarted.
And the fault for that gets attributed to Molly, because Dresden did do exactly as he was told.
There won't be a punishment for Harry, because he did his part. Not his fault "his best" meant Arawn being long gone.
Further, you're basically abandoning Dresden to manage a pissed off Mab alone. He's not protected from punishment for failure; it's an implicit part of his deal with her. He also still has debt, so this is a bad play for him either way.
She'll have no reason to go after Harry in this case.
He fulfilled the letter of the deal.
She literally can't fault him for that. Fae are like that.
She'll keep it in mind for future marching orders since his debt isn't fully paid IIRC, but this time she got outsmarted.
And the fault for that gets attributed to Molly, because Dresden did do exactly as he was told.
There won't be a punishment for Harry, because he did his part. Not his fault "his best" meant Arawn being long gone.
Depends on how this ends. If he deliberately doesn't, but has enough wiggle room to squint and say he might have had other reasonable concerns then as long as the final negotiation works out he's fine. But straight knocking him out and then leaving him to summon her alone after total failure would not be good for his health. It's entirely within her ability to make him miserable, deal or no deal, and he's aware of it. It's telling that the only time Harry directly defies her, or otherwise seriously attempts to subvert the intent of her orders, was with his suicide.
He's not protected from punishment for failure; it's an implicit part of his deal with her. He also still has debt, so this is a bad play for him either way.
It's not a failure and she's a fae, they don't do "implicit" parts of the deal. They're whole thing is they are bound to the letter, not spirit, of the law.
Hi s deal was to find Ankou and then call man as soon as he could after. If we knock him out he's achieved that goal. If Mab wanted otherwise... Well she's a thousand year old fae, it's up to her to word her deals more carefully.
[X] Knock Harry out, he cannot call Mab if he's unconscious and she cannot even blame him for planning it if you do it now Fuck Mab, she's as much our enemy as these people if not moreso
1) Mab is the main reason reality is alive right now.
She commands Earth's defenses, and her immediate successors are infected by the Enemy.
The death toll and consequences from her death would be hilariously bad.
2)Mab is not our enemy.
Else we would have died on the tree in Arctis Tor well before Dresden and party got there. Whatever scheme was running didnt need us alive to get Dresden into Arctis Tor, just kidnapped.
3)Mab will murder us in a fight if we throw hands. To quote Word of Jim:
I'm still curious about who could hurt Mab. Other than Titania, nobody comes to mind.
Hmmm. In terms of pure, raw power, several who have appeared or been mentioned in the books could pull it off, though neither side would really "win" as much as "continue to exist." Plus, the sudden absence of Mab would do freaking HIDEOUS things to the earth. But here's who has the necessary horsepower do it:
o Titania–though it would be a coin toss. Almost literally.
o The Mothers (who wouldn't)
o The White Council. As in, ALL the White Council. Every wizard on the planet. And they'd need her Name.
o Drakul.
o Ferrovax.
o The Red Court–again, ALL the Red Court, though their odds wouldn't be good.
o The entire White Court–very, very long odds on that, but if they actually pulled it off, whoever took Mab would effectively control her power.
o Cowl (if the Darkhallow had succeeded).
o A union of the old Elders of the Black Court. They were freaking scary until the Whites arranged to have them hounded down by mortals.
All of that, of course, assumes that Mab is standing there alone, outside of Faerie, and not commanding an entire nation, literally millions and millions and millions of nightmarish creatures of every description. Which she does.
There's a REASON that when Mab said, "Sign these Accords and abide by them," people listened.
The Wild Hunt lead by a couple of Denarians such at Thorned Namshiel, The Erlking and a bunch of Outsiders could get the job done. That would have been a fight to see (from a distance).
Nah, they wouldn't even come close. I mean… it's like comparing apples and… and hand grenades.
Just about the best they could hope to accomplish would be to force Mab to make an effort. Though when Mab came for them, it wouldn't be a kick-down-the-door-and-kick-ass kind of encounter. It would be a One-two-three-four-five-Hey-weren't-there-SIX-of-us-here-a-second-ago? situation.
I mean, sure, the Erlking is a peer of Mab's–but there's kind of a reason that it's /Mab/ who rules the Worst of the Worst in Faerie, and not the Erlking.
All of which doesn't even TOUCH on the way power is actually balanced in Faerie, because neither Mab nor the Erlking would attempt such a thing, or /consider/ attempting such a thing. It would upset the natural order. Conflicts between most of the Fae powers are very subtle, and generally involve proxies, pride, sex or all of the above.
Harry (or Molly or Murphy or Butters or any other mortal) has more potential to harm Mab than that crew. Not much more likelihood of victory, true, but it isn't /zero/, either.
Jim
Other factions have to exert their entire strength, and stack advantages to even have a chance at fighting Mab.
We're a baby Infernal.
If we eat our veggies and dont die, we'll be very powerful by E4 and E5. And because we're an Exalt we're likely to have more freedom of action. But at our strongest we still would not be able to solo Mab.
Right now, at E2, we're something she'd wipe off the side of her shoe.
I must disagree with the the statement that Mab would not put personal satisfaction over her responsibilities as we already since her do this for something than far more important for the war with the outsiders than merely Arawn, which is letting the Winter Lady Mavre ignore for her duties for so long that Molly in canon has to deal with the over century backlog of work such as for example collecting changelings meant to fight the war of the outsider war. If she was perfectly logical in her reasoning and thought process, that problem would not have occurred in the first place as the only reason for letting this go on is her sentiments she has with Maeve even at the cost of her duties. Which does indicate that with enough emotion she can and will do actions which are detrimental towards her responsibility.
Mab is not Maeve. I repeat, Mab is not Maeve.
Else we would ALL be dead IC.
And the Winter Queen has limited ability to give the Winter Lady orders. Thats how Maeve got to slack off.
The Winter Lady is a helper to the Winter Queen, and their weird triumvirate, but she has a lot of room for free will.
You'll notice that Mab's Number 2, and the third strongest person in the Winter Court after Mother Winter and Mab, is the Leanansidhe. Not Winter Lady Maeve.
Even if we can't take her now, what's she going to do? Mab explicitly can't act against people who hold no debt to her, and we hold no such debt. She can't kill us because Harry failed his task
This is just false.
Mab, and Winter, cant act directly against mortals who arent already involved in her/their business. Once you are up in her grill, bets are off. Else you would have Outsiders jump into people and Mab would be unable to act.
1) Molly is not pure mortal any longer. She's an Exalt. A Prince of the Earth.
2) Even as a mortal, Molly managed to get kidnapped by fetches.
The Wild Hunt can operate on Earth and graboff victims at given times.
Mortal protection from the Fae Courts is conditional, and has limits.
3) Molly's Exaltation was a war trophy of Winter. We stole it. That makes us involved with Winter by default.
Furthermore, Molly has been involved in Winter business since Arctis Tor, and deliberately chose to involve herself in Winter business here after learning it was Winter business. Even if that protection applied to her, she deliberately gave it up
5) You are interfering with Mab's personal Emissary in the completion of his job
The idea we could dance around Winter going nyeh nyeh was never going to pass the sniff test.
Even if we can't take her now, what's she going to do? Mab explicitly can't act against people who hold no debt to her, and we hold no such debt. She can't kill us because Harry failed his task
And this is why I spend so much time trying to set the rrcords straight
1) Mab is the main reason reality is alive right now.
She commands Earth's defenses, and her immediate successors are infected by the Enemy.
The death toll and consequences from her death would be hilariously bad.
2)Mab is not our enemy.
Else we would have died on the tree in Arctis Tor well before Dresden and party got there. Whatever scheme was running didnt need us alive to get Dresden into Arctis Tor, just kidnapped.
3)Mab will murder us in a fight if we throw hands. To quote Word of Jim:
Hmmm. In terms of pure, raw power, several who have appeared or been mentioned in the books could pull it off, though neither side would really "win" as much as "continue to exist." Plus, the sudden absence of Mab would do freaking HIDEOUS things to the earth. But here's who has the necessary horsepower do it:
o Titania–though it would be a coin toss. Almost literally.
o The Mothers (who wouldn't)
o The White Council. As in, ALL the White Council. Every wizard on the planet. And they'd need her Name.
o Drakul.
o Ferrovax.
o The Red Court–again, ALL the Red Court, though their odds wouldn't be good.
o The entire White Court–very, very long odds on that, but if they actually pulled it off, whoever took Mab would effectively control her power.
o Cowl (if the Darkhallow had succeeded).
o A union of the old Elders of the Black Court. They were freaking scary until the Whites arranged to have them hounded down by mortals.
All of that, of course, assumes that Mab is standing there alone, outside of Faerie, and not commanding an entire nation, literally millions and millions and millions of nightmarish creatures of every description. Which she does.
There's a REASON that when Mab said, "Sign these Accords and abide by them," people listened.
Nah, they wouldn't even come close. I mean… it's like comparing apples and… and hand grenades.
Just about the best they could hope to accomplish would be to force Mab to make an effort. Though when Mab came for them, it wouldn't be a kick-down-the-door-and-kick-ass kind of encounter. It would be a One-two-three-four-five-Hey-weren't-there-SIX-of-us-here-a-second-ago? situation.
I mean, sure, the Erlking is a peer of Mab's–but there's kind of a reason that it's /Mab/ who rules the Worst of the Worst in Faerie, and not the Erlking.
All of which doesn't even TOUCH on the way power is actually balanced in Faerie, because neither Mab nor the Erlking would attempt such a thing, or /consider/ attempting such a thing. It would upset the natural order. Conflicts between most of the Fae powers are very subtle, and generally involve proxies, pride, sex or all of the above.
Harry (or Molly or Murphy or Butters or any other mortal) has more potential to harm Mab than that crew. Not much more likelihood of victory, true, but it isn't /zero/, either.
Jim
Other factions have to exert their entire strength, and stack advantages to even have a chance at fighting Mab.
We're a baby Infernal.
If we eat our veggies and dont die, we'll be very powerful by E4 and E5. And because we're an Exalt we're likely to have more freedom of action. But at our strongest we still would not be able to solo Mab.
Right now, at E2, we're something she'd wipe off the side of her shoe.
Mab is not Maeve. I repeat, Mab is not Maeve.
Else we would ALL be dead IC.
And the Winter Queen has limited ability to give the Winter Lady orders. Thats how Maeve got to slack off.
The Winter Lady is a helper to the Winter Queen, and their weird triumvirate, but she has a lot of room for free will.
You'll notice that Mab's Number 2, and the third strongest person in the Winter Court after Mother Winter and Mab, is the Leanansidhe. Not Winter Lady Maeve.
This is just false.
Mab, and Winter, cant act directly against mortals who arent already involved in her/their business. Once you are up in her grill, bets are off. Else you would have Outsiders jump into people and Mab would be unable to act.
1) Molly is not pure mortal any longer. She's an Exalt. A Prince of the Earth.
2) Even as a mortal, Molly managed to get kidnapped by fetches.
The Wild Hunt can operate on Earth and graboff victims at given times.
Mortal protection from the Fae Courts is conditional, and has limits.
3) Molly's Exaltation was a war trophy of Winter. We stole it. That makes us involved with Winter by default.
Furthermore, Molly has been involved in Winter business since Arctis Tor, and deliberately chose to involve herself in Winter business here after learning it was Winter business. Even if that protection applied to her, she deliberately gave it up
5) You are interfering with Mab's personal Emissary in the completion of his job
The idea we could dance around Winter going nyeh nyeh was never going to pass the sniff test.
being honest mortal laws should still apply to us uju I don't really care if we have an exaltation that doesn't make us any less mortal the entire thing was designed for mortals.
It's not a failure and she's a fae, they don't do "implicit" parts of the deal. They're whole thing is they are bound to the letter, not spirit, of the law.
His deal was to find Ankou and then call man as soon as he could after. If we knock him out he's achieved that goal. If Mab wanted otherwise... Well she's a thousand year old fae, it's up to her to word her deals more carefully.
1)So do we have any idea of what the letter of Mab's agreements with Dresden are?
Or how preexisting precedent modifies them? Molly knows very little about Winter Law and its practice, or supernatural customary law. She certainly hasnt seen the text of the Unseelie Accords.
You really dont want to ruleslawyer alone with the Fae while Molly has Law 0.
2)Interfering with Mab's Emissary has Consequences if she chooses to exact them. And we arent Dresden
3)It hasnt actually solved the problem, just postponed it. The Arawn problem remains.
Mab has enough surveillance on Arawn to know how old Lydia is, and has never been short of assassins, any more than Titania is.
She can send an assassin like Cat Sith and have him killed to reclaim the Mantle, and Lydia without a father
Solving the problem involves talking to Mab before she loses patience and solves it herself.
being honest mortal laws should still apply to us uju I don't really care if we have an exaltation that doesn't make us any less mortal the entire thing was designed for mortals.
Why?
It doesnt apply to Maeve, or Lily, or Sarissa, or Winter Lady Molly, all of whom were born mortal before inheriting a Mantle.
It doesnt apply to the Archive, who we see under attack by hobs in Small Favor, and she's literally a little girl.
Doesnt apply to half-Rampires; we see Lea shut down Susan and her partner Martin in Changes.
It doesnt apply to Denarians, because we see Elder Gruff oneshot the Denarian Magog on Demonreach.
It doesnt even apply to changelings, since we see both Summer and Winter Court abusing them in Summer Knight.
Mortal isnt some blank get out of jail free card.
Turns out that being born mortal does not make you mortal for the purpose of supernatural law when you are mantling Power.
