? Then coming expecting to come from a position of authority is not unexpected, they are literally a government agency which is expecting their authority within the nation they are representing to be respected both for sovereignty and territory reasons. As for the supernatural, bare in mind that most encounters they will have with the supernatural would be the most visible which are things such trolls attempting to eat people, phobophages along with other stuff which would reinforce their impression of supernatural as being hostile, leading to the adversarial approach and the conduct they have towards it. Non hostile supernatural in Dresden tend to blend in far more and not cause incidents which would attract attentions of Daedalus, thereby leading to the sample size that results in this outcome.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
? Then coming expecting to come from a position of authority is not unexpected, they are literally a government agency which is expecting their authority within the nation they are representing to be respected both for sovereignty and territory reasons. As for the supernatural, bare in mind that most encounters they will have with the supernatural would be the most visible which are things such trolls attempting to eat people, phobophages along with other stuff which would reinforce their impression of supernatural as being hostile, leading to the adversarial approach and the conduct they have towards it. Non hostile supernatural in Dresden tend to blend in far more and not cause incidents which would attract attentions of Daedalus, thereby leading to the sample size that results in this outcome.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Just because they think they have legitimate authority doesn't mean many folks from the supernatural community actually agree with them, or respect that authority.
It doesn't help that they appear to wield their authority like a hammer. If they wanted to do it right, they would consult with anthropologists and maybe even specialists in folklore. Even without actual supernatural lore to fall back on, there are a lot of valuable lessons to be learned from simply attempting to understand different cultures rather than bulling their way into every situation like a badge means anything to most non-Humans, some of whom have been around since before North America was colonized by Europeans.
I am still desperately worried about them stumbling into a White Court Web and getting completely compromised.
I really think Molly should attempt some sort of contact.
I really think Molly should attempt some sort of contact.
- Location
- Germany
It's hard to actually convince people who think of you as a 17-year old with weird powers of anything though.
In a sense we have a much easier time being taken seriously by supernatural beings who can easily tell we are a big deal.
Unless goverment-agents are CoDs for the purpose of Demonic Primacy of Essence maybe?
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Probably only applies to politicians, though some agents likely qualify as well.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
We'd be better off convincing the government to take us seriously if, instead of contacting them as a teenager with powers, we appeared to them as the leader of a mysterious cabal of technomancers (something they don't even theorize as possible, currently) who are surprisingly well-informed about the supernatural, run the ParaNet that we created and contains a wiki that draws on said wealth of information on the supernatural, and only contacts them through the internet.
And of course by "cabal of technomancers," I mean cyberdevils. Because cyberdevils.
This is actually at least a part of a long-term solution, and we should probably talk about Paranet design in detail at some point soon. What kind of thing do we want it to be? A social network? An information resource? Some kind of service provider for practitioners? What knid of services? "a secure intelligent and loyal phone / laptop immune to magic within one month of ordering"? Communal banking and financial advisory, medical insurance that can actually cover magical accidents, job hunting help? There is a lot that can be done with Paranet if we are serious about it, and devote time, money and cyberdevils to it. And us administering it gives us a lot of political power among its users, more as the scope of the project grows. Up to and including magical rituals only possible with lightspeed modern mobile communications, with hundreds of practitioners joining together across the globe.
With Daedalus and the like around, however, we also need to think of security. On one hand the network should be as easily found as possible, and as easily found as possible. On the hand, we should be VERY serious about personal information, and warnings about possible hostile agents trying to get it.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
That makes certain biases and holes(like calling the white council the Lawmakers) more concerning, what agendas might a source that presents the laws of magic as political construct have...
- Location
- florida
What's our social dicepool? With excellency? Point made though.
I like the idea that we should create and run paranet off the backs of our demonic horde of followers instead of waiting on it.
We have occult 5 and excellency. We know more than enough to create some insanely useful resources for people.
We just don't well... know the people to make it useful and trustworthy.
True Metal Power
Lisa: The Hintful
- Location
- Russia
This interlude made me want to play Cataclysm DDA. I hope they wouldn't let samples of an elder god to infest water supply.
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- Location
- washington
I wonder if they think their more informed than they are or that they have the rationale to realize they are woefully under informed.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
That was more that once enough portals were opened the outer god could open portals back.
- Location
- washington
Hey dp how much do they think they know from what their stuff says and how much do they admit their inquired to handle or have no clue about?
- Pronouns
- She/Her
My personal plan for the ParaNet is to start as a wiki/primer on the supernatural world, with a target audience of "newly awakened talent with no magical mentor," containing everything that they need to know in order to live as happy and safe of a life as possible, including who the good/bad guys are, the Laws of Magic and why they exist, how not to get chewed up and spit out by supernatural politics or eaten by something, and other such things we want literally everyone connected to the supernatural to know.
Add in an attached forum administrated by cyberdevils and a submission box for questions, information, and calls for help, and that should be good enough for the initial ParaNet setup that we can expand on over time.
Might want to include, if not stuff like the supernatural bookstore for risk of Daedalus tracking, at least Accorded Neutral Territory locations, as well as the rules and penalties surrounding them. After all, if Daedalus is dumb enough to mess with Neutral Territory even after being explicitly informed of what it is, we aren't in charge of what happens after that, so it's not a very big risk.
Add in an attached forum administrated by cyberdevils and a submission box for questions, information, and calls for help, and that should be good enough for the initial ParaNet setup that we can expand on over time.
Might want to include, if not stuff like the supernatural bookstore for risk of Daedalus tracking, at least Accorded Neutral Territory locations, as well as the rules and penalties surrounding them. After all, if Daedalus is dumb enough to mess with Neutral Territory even after being explicitly informed of what it is, we aren't in charge of what happens after that, so it's not a very big risk.
- Location
- washington
Well we slightly are signatories are as far as I know at least partially responsible for whoever ducks with said territory. Since if someone attacks neutral ground everyone has to give a shit. Even if others clearly handle the policing more than others. Attacking neutral ground is a sure way of getting dog piled.
Are you guys sure you want to expose all those newly awakened to beings of congealed alienation and spite. Yes they are loyal to you without question, but that does not mean they will be nice to Marry the newly awakened minor talent. In fact even Clippy struggles to understand just what nice is.
- Location
- washington
I mean they can at least help organize it and protect it. Now should they be the only one part of it no. They definitely should be part of it though for defense purposes.
- Location
- florida
So they are perfectly at home in many parts of the internet? Nice.
Also hint taken. Community manager and QA need to be humans.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
We could have them just mostly watch for various red flags that may indicate problems that need to be addressed?
Say, if they pick up a report of something that is consistent with a really nasty gribbly that needs to be dealt with stat.
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- Location
- florida
Thats not the issue. They can do spywork. It's the human elements that they will have a hard time with.
I assume they can bust trolls pretty effectively though.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, the cyberdevils can handle cybersecurity and collating information from the forums and submissions box into usable reports and actionable intel for us, as well as watching for evidence of anyone else trying to take advantage of the ParaNet in a way we didn't intend, such as by tracking down young practitioners from the forum and using them for their own ends, but we definitely want more human/moral moderators.
Well the internet created them so yeah.
Sure you could try something like that, it would not be guaranteed, but it would be a literal unsleeping sentinel.
There's also the attitude issue baked into their approach to the supernatural beyond the institutional stuff, and their implicit hostility.
To me all their acronym games read like the mental equivalent of flinching away from something that burned you. The bloodless and indirect phrasing makes it easier to reject what is happening in front of you while still working around it. It's the difference between talking about human trafficking run out out massage parlors and calling it sexual slavery.
Recontextualizing like this is mental baby proofing and a way to create the illusion of control by exhaustively categorizing everything. Not that you don't need some stuff like this, but knowing is less scary than not knowing and putting things in boxes is incredibly comforting.
The problem here is that it's easy for this sort of thing to feed into biases. My suspicion is that they're tending towards the implicit belief that people talking about magic and ghosts are silly and superstitious, while talking about psionics and LLEs is cutting out the bullshit to deal with "the truth".
It's hard to get people to cooperate if you're condescending to them, especially if they can see you doing a crazy to normal person translation in front of them.
It's this sort of thing that got a lot of early colonists killed. They couldn't get over being racists assholes long enough to listen to the people who lived in the area they just rolled up to about stuff like diseases and dangerous environments.
I could just be reading too much into it, but the level of effort they're putting into playing word games to avoid an association with who and what they're talking about isn't an encouraging sign.
- Location
- washington
Hey dp how much do they think they know from what their stuff says and how much do they admit their inquired to handle or have no clue about?