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.
Well for what it's worth Clippy definitely finds the acronyms annoying and she sees severe biases in their methodology in that they seem to trust experimental data far more than eyewitness accounts, but they cannot get experimental data for a lot of the stuff they are talking about so the blanks get filled with... well she is not sure with what but she thinks it's stupid.
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".
Which is why we will allow zero flinching away from "the M word" on our site, while still talking in a reasonable manner, to try and make any Daedalus readers confront their biases. The fact that we have better information than them should help drive it in, and maybe cause some agents to start borrowing our vocabulary for stuff that their agency hasn't classified yet.
We have to assume Daedalus will read our stuff, and constructing it in a way to shake their biases is good for us, them, and any baby mages that also need to get any bad preconceptions removed before they join the wider magical community. Can't have the impressionable newbies have any silly notions about "not human" being the same as "not a person."
Maybe add some references about how much of this information comes out of centuries of study of magic from the inside, just to drive in for Daedalus that they're the newcomers and the veterans already know what they're doing.
It would in a sense be a full AI so not really automated as we understand it
Also stats added for your new followers so you guys can know what they can roll. Right now it is only a limited suite of Intelligence based Abilities, but that can change as they grow.
Maybe having the cyberdevils send "automated messages" to moderators from other species if certain types of "behavior to watch for" seems like it's showing up? Have the cyberdevils identify potential breaches of conduct and someone more human judge how to handle it?
That was my idea. An unsleeping sentinel with a direct priority line to (at least) Molly, and quite possibly Michael and/or Harry, if only because sometimes shit will come up when we're otherwise busy. Possibly also a line to all of the above and then some, for really major issues.
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.
Can we actually transfer, or at least share their l9yalty? As in, ordering them to be loyal to others. From CCC tricks with smart locks, we know that they can disregard our orders if previously ordered to do so.
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.
I think Paranet should be a staged project, with multiple levels of both involvement and development. The goal of Paranet is, ultimately, to provide information, connections, and, through it all, protection to its participants, and to reduce the frequency of warlocks appearing among them. Ideally this will also work to empower the participants, and unite them in some way that will make them loyal or at least friendly to us and each other.
As such, I think, it should be:
1) An informational resource. If you googles " computers started to break around me", you should get Paranet website. If you search for magic, you should get Paranet website. However, this has to work in a way that filters out wannabees and hostile agents. Not yet sure how this can be implemented. Some kind of web-base glamour? That would require subtle and complex magic.
Information about best practices, laws and customs, Laws, dangers of supernatural world should be available.
2) Social network architecture. Forums, Facebook, secure messengers. Stuff to connect people to each other and let them network. That's probably the main core of the project, and one that should be watched and moderated for hostile agents most of all.
This part should include collaborative projects platforms. I am willing to bet that a thousand minor practitioners spread around the country doing a synchronized rituals in places of power could do a lot.
3) Social services. I am willing to bet that a lot of warlocks started on their paths due to bad situations. Like having to use magic to get money. Or to find a girlfriend, or to cure their parents / children / friends. By providing those needs with stuff like medical and other insurances that cover magic-related stuff, helping Paranet members in finding stable jobs (which can be a problem for a person with an always-on entropy field) we reduce a lot of motivation to become warlocks.
A way to spread our demons by magic-proofing others' computers / phones should probably go here.
Can we actually transfer, or at least share their l9yalty? As in, ordering them to be loyal to others. From CCC tricks with smart locks, we know that they can disregard our orders if previously ordered to do so.
To an extent yes, but it will not be the eternal soul-deep pact they have with you. CCC tricks are entirely fine, but long terms transfers of loyalty are unlikely to work unless the other person is the sort demons would respect.
Which is why we will allow zero flinching away from "the M word" on our site, while still talking in a reasonable manner, to try and make any Daedalus readers confront their biases. The fact that we have better information than them should help drive it in, and maybe cause some agents to start borrowing our vocabulary for stuff that their agency hasn't classified yet.
We have to assume Daedalus will read our stuff, and constructing it in a way to shake their biases is good for us, them, and any baby mages that also need to get any bad preconceptions removed before they join the wider magical community. Can't have the impressionable newbies have any silly notions about "not human" being the same as "not a person."
Maybe add some references about how much of this information comes out of centuries of study of magic from the inside, just to drive in for Daedalus that they're the newcomers and the veterans already know what they're doing.
If we do launch something like that it might be interesting to have a page on this directly.
Something to directly call out the bad habit of trying to cope with the idea that the world isn't what you thought it was by coming up with comforting evasions that preserve your world view.
Maybe stick a direct jab like this in there just for fun: "… Calling a wizard an esper just so you don't have to deal with the idea of magic is letting your baggage interfere with your ability to interact with a world that doesn't particularly care about your comfort, and has known what's it about since prehistory.
It also makes you sound like a complete idiot to anyone with a better idea of what's going on than you'd get from reading Harry Potter. So do yourself a favor and avoid trying to convince a Magi of the White Council that he's really a deluded psychic, or a demon that it can't take your soul because the hells aren't real."
- Paranet Archives, "The M word"
I'm not totally sure if it's a good idea IC yet, but OOC writing article snippets makes for interesting omake fodder.
Can we actually transfer, or at least share their l9yalty? As in, ordering them to be loyal to others. From CCC tricks with smart locks, we know that they can disregard our orders if previously ordered to do so.
I think Paranet should be a staged project, with multiple levels of both involvement and development. The goal of Paranet is, ultimately, to provide information, connections, and, through it all, protection to its participants, and to reduce the frequency of warlocks appearing among them. Ideally this will also work to empower the participants, and unite them in some way that will make them loyal or at least friendly to us and each other.
As such, I think, it should be:
1) An informational resource. If you googles " computers started to break around me", you should get Paranet website. If you search for magic, you should get Paranet website. However, this has to work in a way that filters out wannabees and hostile agents. Not yet sure how this can be implemented. Some kind of web-base glamour? That would require subtle and complex magic.
Information about best practices, laws and customs, Laws, dangers of supernatural world should be available.
2) Social network architecture. Forums, Facebook, secure messengers. Stuff to connect people to each other and let them network. That's probably the main core of the project, and one that should be watched and moderated for hostile agents most of all.
This part should include collaborative projects platforms. I am willing to bet that a thousand minor practitioners spread around the country doing a synchronized rituals in places of power could do a lot.
3) Social services. I am willing to bet that a lot of warlocks started on their paths due to bad situations. Like having to use magic to get money. Or to find a girlfriend, or to cure their parents / children / friends. By providing those needs with stuff like medical and other insurances that cover magic-related stuff, helping Paranet members in finding stable jobs (which can be a problem for a person with an always-on entropy field) we reduce a lot of motivation to become warlocks.
A way to spread our demons by magic-proofing others' computers / phones should probably go here.
Yeah, you'll notice that my plan tries to provide the first two points in a basic form right away. I don't think we can do the last two points until we build up a little, though, but that's why I included that it was a base to expand from, instead of a finished project. Getting the ParaNet up to the scale of our ambitions will be an action sink, but we can start with the basics with only 1-2 AP, and the sooner we start the first couple of steps, and get the informative and social networking parts active, the sooner we start seeing dividends.
Also stats added for your new followers so you guys can know what they can roll. Right now it is only a limited suite of Intelligence based Abilities, but that can change as they grow.
So, 5 dice (Int. + Computers or Int. + Technology) for high. tech R&D design and for programming, I would assume? That's not bad. And they don't need to sleep and are far quicker than mortals in accessing web archives, textbooks, part catalogs, scientific papers and such. Yeah, I think that offloading at least some of higher tech designs and software engineering to them (after buying like 20 independent computers, so there's a multitude of demons) is a worthwhile idea. We'll have to look those over afterwards (possibly with an excellency, if we buy technology one, and certainly with CCC, BSM and WHWH running), but in general that's a good starting point for a lot of projects.
Yes, that is about on par with an employable professional in their best fields and a talented amateur in the secondary skills. That seemed to fit two dot allies. Of course they also have the advantages that comes with them being tech demons as well, but that is why you are using primordial magic from an age lost to time rather than paying Jim the local hacker.
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?
It's a shame Shintai is so limited in deployment, they might not take a 17 year old teenager seriously but I bet they'd take a demonic tyrant wreathed in nuclear fire and ancient glorious light seriously.
It is terribly concerning how much they're recoiling from the truth of things, they're just asking to get their dreams eaten by something awful.
It's a shame Shintai is so limited in deployment, they might not take a 17 year old teenager seriously but I bet they'd take a demonic tyrant wreathed in nuclear fire and ancient glorious light seriously.
It is terribly concerning how much they're recoiling from the truth of things, they're just asking to get their dreams eaten by something awful.
To be honest, I'm too disappointed to care that much if they get totally screwed. They could have been something necessary for mortals, but they screwed up at the starting line by breaking the basic rules of their job.
Convincing them to take us seriously is a secondary problem at best; the real issue is that we have every reason to believe that they'll screw us over whenever it suits them, and that they're already doing that to other people. Association is dangerous for Molly and for her reputation with others.
I don't see it that way.
Being able to punish supernatural criminals in the USA would inevitable have to involve a treaty with the Fey Courts, the Vampire Courts or the White Council made in equal standing.
This is basically impossible.
If Mab were willing or able to keep her people from hunting humans for fun, sport or nourishment she would have done so long ago.
What means does the goverment have to pursue a Fetch in Arctis Tor, or even a Red Vamp in Chichen Itza?
Any serious attempt at law-enforcement against supernatural powers will most likely end in open war between the goverment in question and several supernatural powers and have terrible consequences for the entire world.
^^^
The supernatural is not an international crime problem, its an international relations problem.
And the potential consequences are measured in the hundreds of millions of lives for both sides.Literally every supernatural nation out there has jurisdictional claims that predate essentially every mortal institution besides the Catholic Church, and sufficient capabilities to make most wars hurt.
Isn't one of the big problems of the White Council right now that it is overworked because of the massive increase in human population? Having an organisation with government backing that can take care of the grunt work could be a big help no? Tip offs for budding warlocks. Outreach to more talents so that they don't become warlocks in the first place. As long as the organisation can be trusted they could do a lot of good.
The mortal world is not one organization.
Its a little over two hundred different countries and thousands of ethnic groups, each with their own governments, laws, history, geographic and mystical significance and cultural attitudes towards the supernatural.
Not everyone is going to react like you think Western nations will.
And frankly, by population, North America was around 8% of the world population. Asia is 60%.
The 510 million odd people in North America circa 2006 matter a lot less than the six hundred million plus in Europe, the billion in Africa, or the two billion plus in China and India alone, or the billion plus in the rest of Asia.
That is true, but not pursuing this goal is betraying the trust and the mandate invested into them by the citizens. The government is elected on the basis that it will fulfill its mandate. That mandate involves maintaining national security. If it willingly abandons said mandate and obligations while keeping the benefits, it transitions from a legitimate government to... I'n not sure what, but certainly not a legitimate government.
No it isnt.
As long as the potential costs of action outweigh the costs of inaction, there is a strong argument for letting sleeping dogs lie.
Places like the US lack official policy because noone in the know really wants to answer the question of what happens if you come into conflict with people whose portfolio includes things like global climate systems.
No, it wouldn't. It would require "we don't have an extradition treaty with fae courts, and no jurisdiction to pursue criminals in their territory. We will pursue their criminals in our territory, but won't go to war against foreign nation states with nuke equivalents".
Mab and other high level "named" fae like Leanasidhe would probably be granted diplomatic immunity.
While certainly a risk, it's better than ignoring the problem entirely and not using government resources where they can be used. Like finding minor talents, investigating, or at least identifying supernatural crimes, preventing rise of warlocks by means other than head chopping.
And when they tell you its NOT your territory? Or they have preexisting claims?
Every supernatural nation out there can make legal claim to predating every mortal political entity that currently exists, and to having prior arrangements with the force of law.
Not to mention that new species literally spawn out of the NeverNever spontaneously with no allegiance to the status quo.
The Japanese dreameater spirit that Butters faced off against in his short story was from a species that was like a decade old, and spawned by the popularity of a new children's toy in the West.
Not to mention the entire class of entities that are literally perceptually-forbidden to mortals, even wizards, above the age of majority.
No, they are not better off ignoring the supernatural, it is frankly complete and utter stupidity to ignore them considering the fact that even right now, hundreds of thousands of people are being vanished by the supernatural. This is not something which can be ignored and will not be ignored by governments due to the immense death caused by them.
A million people died to Covid in the US alone. In 2006, an estimated nine hundred thousand died of malaria, and the funding to get rid of that scourge remains patchy. Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide over a population of six billion is not going to even cause a blip in the calculations of decisionmakers, not when they look at some of the alternatives.
I mean, there are literal memetic threats that grow stronger based on people knowing about them.
Ignorance is a literal magical defence.
Thats why the Oblivion War is a thing.
And that's the problem. If a goverment really wanted to deal with that it would be much worse than the War on Terror ever got.
Edit: They would have to treat the Courts like countries sheltering terrorists, with all the consequences.
And they might also go after the easiest targets if they xan't hit the big ones, which are minor practicioners.
Much, much worse. Especially given that there are no technological defenses against magic and the supernatural.
Its a great way to wake up and find out that a wave of hysteria has made the Archbishop of Canterbury the legal government of the UK, or large sections of Western Europe now insisting that the Pope is their head of state. And thats just in the West.
How many sacrificed political prisoners to fuel an ascension ritual for *checks* Kim Jung-Il?
Do the Lords Resistance Army wage a war of extinction against "tainted" people?
How many people would a drug cartel sacrifice to a demon for safe passage of a large cocaine shipment to the US?
Did the new president of the Democratic Republic of Congo cut a deal with a Fae lord for power to win his election/mount a successful coup? Or are his enemies just spreading the rumor to delegitimise him?
Really, any kind of sharp state transition is going to go very bloodily and poorly for the common man and minor supernaturals.
A gradual increase in awareness and understanding how to manage the supernatural is a generational prerequisite to the Masquerade falling without mass civilian victims
This. Its worth noting that in the Dresdenverse, its the Bad Guys that are pushing for ever more spectacular Masquerade breaches.
From the loup garou murdering its way through the police station to the Darkhallow involving hundreds of undead in Chicago to the nerve gas bombing of an African city to the attack on the FBI building to the Fomor attack on Chicago.
You can generally draw conclusions about the outcome of a decision and who benefits by looking at who its supporters are.
You say I'm playing silly purist games, well I say you're playing silly bait-and-switch games, where you change between the government being the only game in town and being the strongest game in town, and I find it rather aggravating. "Monopoly". "Exclusive". Those are purist words.
But if you want to insist, fine, the US Government can very easily maintain a "monopoly" on the use of force by declaring the White Council nationalized and incorporated as an official government organization. On paper.
You mean the White Council declaring the United States a tributary state ? After all, they have been under the White Council's supernatural protection for decades, and the Council has a continuous existence back to around the fall of Rome.
And can probably point at old agreements.
People will reach for knowledge and weapons yeah, but I don't think it'll happen in a way that splinters the nation. That would effectively require all the people in the government to act like they do in comic books and movies; namely to get out of the way so others can step in.
It would be a bloody mess, but the familiar and trusted would be more accessible and familiar to most people. In the US I'd imagine there'd be riots, followed by the national guard and military units restoring order. Then it would turn into a bloody and complicated cross between a war and peacekeeping operation.
The United States had decades of moral panic by sections of the nation over things like alleged demonic messages in rock music and roleplaying games being a conduit to Satan.You want to confirm the existence of among other things, bloodsucking vampires, succubi who can scare or fuck you to death, Lucifer, and literal rituals for calling up demons from (a) Hell to make bargains.
And you dont think it will splinter the nation?
Or be used to prosecute various outgroups, who will turn to whatever occult aid they can get, resulting in a self-reinforcing cycle?
You have a lot more faith than I do.
Not to mention the potential for people to make gamer moves in pursuit of personal and geopolitical objectives.
The Knights already had to clean up one set of fuckups by the US natsec establishment during the Cold War.
I am reasonably sure that the same governments who have nuclear MAD as defense policy will not be averse to exploring the uses of the supernatural likewise.
And a lot of smaller countries and governments will be a lot interested in defences that only cost lives and bargains, not a major industrial/infrastructural buildup.
And not just countries.
I can certainly see all sorts of potential for tribes in Central Africa or cults in LA to murder their neighbors to further an ascension ritual for the leader or symbol. For Taliban field commanders to bargain for combat support. For tech billionaires to take yearly foreign trips for "life extension" treatments.
The problem being those disguised amongst us, and literal raiders from another dimension.
It'd be steppe nomads all over again - the best way to reduce raiding is diplomacy, but people are mad and want to take a swing, and it feels really satisfying when you connect on a couple but only further increase raiding for trying.
^^^^
This. And when you are swinging at nations with people of mass destruction, you risk a lot more than just a retaliatory raid.
Like I've pointed out before, the impetus for the current Unseelie Accords was the Summer and Winter Knights getting into a clash, its escalating, and then Milwaukee vanishing for two hours.
The problem is it's very hard for the system to fall without mass casualties because there are powers on both sides of the curtain interested in keeping it up. The only way it's going to fall slowly as far as Molly can tell is if it is already agreed upon and then arranged to do so for public consumption.
Anyway vote closed.
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Oct 25, 2022 at 9:08 AM, finished with 95 posts and 21 votes.
[X] [Soul's Rest] Heavy, Try to get into the company financial data
[X] [Daedalus] Start by checking with what Wright knows. Make sure to steal any credentials he has on a local password manager to assist hacking later.
[X] [Daedalus] Light, hack a few agents email accounts, get a feel for their basic procedures as well as more on how they see the supernatural. Also includes data on the Museum incident
-[X] Focus on what kind of oversight they have. See if their cavalier attitude to the law and due process is intentional in their foundation, or if you could actually reign them in by bringing higher authorities.
[X] [Daedalus] Medium, hack the internal network, full personnel files, see how they get their funding and from whom, who are their allies and their rivals
Even that has all sorts of risks.
Lovecraft allegedly set back entire centuries of magical containment and got killed for it.
Hell forget the actual memetic threats that benefit from increased exposure.
I can imagine what happens if someone publishes the Word of Kemmler on the Internet.
Or The Idiots Guide to Necromancy. Or just a set of rituals calling Outsiders.
To be honest, I'm too disappointed to care that much if they get totally screwed. They could have been something necessary for mortals, but they screwed up at the starting line by breaking the basic rules of their job.
Convincing them to take us seriously is a secondary problem at best; the real issue is that we have every reason to believe that they'll screw us over whenever it suits them, and that they're already doing that to other people. Association is dangerous for Molly and for her reputation with others.
Eh, there's still a possibility to scare them straight… such as by putting up an article about what happened to the last government agency to poke at the supernatural, and how the Church had to clean up their mess. I am fully on board with putting an article on that on the ParaNet when we get it up.
The United States had decades of moral panic by sections of the nation over things like alleged demonic messages in rock music and roleplaying games being a conduit to Satan.You want to confirm the existence of among other things, bloodsucking vampires, succubi who can scare or fuck you to death, Lucifer, and literal rituals for calling up demons from (a) Hell to make bargains.
And you dont think it will splinter the nation?
Or be used to prosecute various outgroups, who will turn to whatever occult aid they can get, resulting in a self-reinforcing cycle?
You have a lot more faith than I do.
Not to mention the potential for people to make gamer moves in pursuit of personal and geopolitical objectives.
The Knights already had to clean up one set of fuckups by the US natsec establishment during the Cold War.
I am reasonably sure that the same governments who have nuclear MAD as defense policy will not be averse to exploring the uses of the supernatural likewise.
And a lot of smaller countries and governments will be a lot interested in defences that only cost lives and bargains, not a major industrial/infrastructural buildup.
And not just countries.
I can certainly see all sorts of potential for tribes in Central Africa or cults in LA to murder their neighbors to further an ascension ritual for the leader or symbol. For Taliban field commanders to bargain for combat support. For tech billionaires to take yearly foreign trips for "life extension" treatments.
I don't want to deliberately breach the masquerade, I just think people are dramatically underestimating the resilience of mortal communities and governments, particularly in the US. Probably because movies and TV take step one as "then they collapsed" to let the rest of the plot happen. It's worth noting that most actual explanations for stuff like that are really stupid.
The US federal government is ridiculously huge, and has absurd amounts of money and power flowing through it. It's not going to just go "guess I'll die" the stooges at the top notwithstanding.
Whether it wins in any objective sense is a different question, but it will act, and for most people it's going to be the most familiar touchstone and strongest material actor available.
I think there will be serious persecution, but that there will also be a lot of us vs. them thinking which becomes more inclusive of fellow mortals the more obvious the supernatural is.
It would get real dark for a while, but I think the bigger factor would be in whether the feds bite of more than they can chew or not.
The supernatural world has its own balancing factors, so it's not like the lords of the outer night can just show up to go to war with the muggles without getting shanked by someone else. As long as they start with cleaning up the many solo predators, or the ones from groups that don't as a policy defend their members from things that happen while hunting, they probably have the strategic depth to stay in the fight.
Not that I'm saying it's infallible, but don't go assuming everyone is an idiot just because the talking heads say so.
If it does fail, it won't be splintering so much as exploding violently. I don't really see a scenario going down where the US gets kicked over without the literal and metaphorical fallout fucking everything up for everyone on at least one continent.
Edit: I'm talking about the US because that's where we are, but in general I think most major powers would weather the storm without total collapse. Things would get really bad in a lot of places, but people aren't going to roll over and die or ignore all prior affiliation and power structures just because new ones were revealed.
If it does fail, it won't be splintering so much as exploding violently. I don't really see a scenario going down where the US gets kicked over without the literal and metaphorical fallout fucking everything up for everyone on at least one continent.
Which certain groups may very much want to happen (that is, a catastrophic disruption of the status quo and a major mass casualty event). Such as (correct me if any of these are wrong) the Black Court, the Kemmlerites, the Denarians, and the aforementioned Outsiders
What happens if/when, say, the PotUS gets compromised by one supernatural polity or another? They can potentially do a lot of, if not material damage, then certainly damaging trust in/tolerance for the government. For that matter they manage to get the right people compromised/controlled (for instance, the crew of an ICBM silo or of an SSBN), they could also potentially start a nuclear exchange, likely with little to no advance warning. The US Government/Military is potentially a massive weak point as a singular entity that is a) rather poorly protected against the supernatural and b) has the potential to cause a whole lot of damage very quickly if compromised. Not as vulnerable as a more authoritarian power might be, but it's only a matter of controlling tens of people as opposed to a handful. I don't know what protection the Library of Congress people give VIPs in the government, but it's probably nowhere near as much security as, say, the White Council, or the White Court, or other such supernatural polities.
A million people died to Covid in the US alone. In 2006, an estimated nine hundred thousand died of malaria, and the funding to get rid of that scourge remains patchy. Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide over a population of six billion is not going to even cause a blip in the calculations of decisionmakers, not when they look at some of the alternatives.
....... That is one of the worst analogues you could use with the current situation, such as the fact unlike Covid which is extremely subtle being microbes, the supernatural are Not. The continuous mass disappearances, the eating of humans by ghouls, trolls, the murdering of them by various entities are not subtle. It is the sort of actions which would completely reorient decisionmakers completely as it dwarfs the scale of any mass murder done in recent history. It dwarfs the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War and many other wars in recent memory.
And the numbers are not small
In the US alone, 900,000 people are vanished yearly by the Supernatural according to Dresden in Dead Beats.
"Maybe," he said. "But I don't see how things that hunt and kill human beings could be there among us without our knowing."
"How big was your graduating class in high school?"
Butters blinked. "What?"
"Just answer me."
"Uh, about eight hundred."
"All right," I said. "Last year in the U.S. alone more than nine hundred thousand people were reported missing and not found."
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah," I said. "You can check with the FBI. That's out of about three hundred million, total population. That breaks down to about one person in three hundred and twenty-five vanishing. Every year. It's been almost twenty years since you graduated?
So that would mean that between forty and fifty people in your class are gone. Just gone. No one knows where they are." Butters shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "So?" I arched an eyebrow at him. "So they're missing. Where did they go?"
"Well. They're missing. If they're missing, then nobody knows."
"Exactly," I said.
He didn't say anything back.
I let the silence stretch for a minute, just to make the point. Then I started up again. "Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's almost the same loss ratio experienced by herd animals on the African savannah to large predators."
This is bare minimum 18 million people per generation of humans completely vanishing thanks to the presence of the supernatural. Or in other words to paint the picture, it is the equivalent of 1/4 of babies born in the US yearly dying.
And this is in a first world nation
Globally across the World that specific statistic is going to be far worse.
The Supernatural and Covid are not equivalent and can never be equivalent. It is immensely annoying to equate two very different things with one another when the different characteristics of the threat completely alter the equation. And I will emphasize further the more people trying doing false equations like these.
Which certain groups may very much want to happen… Such as (correct me if any of these are wrong) the Black Court, the Kemmlerites, the Denarians, and the aforementioned Outsiders
What happens if/when, say, the PotUS gets compromised by one supernatural polity or another? They can potentially do a lot of, if not material damage, then certainly damaging trust in/tolerance for the government. For that matter they manage to get the right people compromised/controlled (for instance, the crew of an ICBM silo or of an SSBN), they could also potentially start a nuclear exchange, likely with little to no advance warning.
Yeah, which would be one place where the balancing factors come in. Whether the US or whoever can 1v1 irl the red court or whatever is immaterial outside of IC jingo because it won't be happening in isolation.
Various supernatural powers would struggle with each other for influence, and more than one will likely make progress.
I just don't think the mortals will be helpless observers to this conflict. They have plenty of tools that make them relevant in a fight with a majority of the problems they'll actually have. An expedition into faerie would obviously go belly up, but killing fey in the mortal world isn't a problem.
It's also worth noting that at least one entity in the government already knows and has know for a while. Presumably they'd do something if the masquerade broke, making simply walking up and launching a decapitation strike complicated.
As unfamiliar with magic as the mortals are, it's worth remembering that the supernatural end of things also struggles with what mortals have been up to. As Harry himself noted when it comes to the influence sniper rifles have on the traditional advantages of a wizard.
I think a lot of cocky people on both sides would have unpleasant surprises waiting for them.
As unfamiliar with magic as the mortals are, it's worth remembering that the supernatural end of things also struggles with what mortals have been up to. As Harry himself noted when it comes to the influence sniper rifles have on the traditional advantages of a wizard.
I think a lot of cocky people on both sides would have unpleasant surprises waiting for them.
I was thinking more 'using mind-control to get easy (though perhaps not trivial) access to mortal WMDs/nukes to spark off a mortal WWIII,' sort of situation.
That could easily cause massive mortal casualties very quickly which, for certain groups, would be excellent news.
Also, sneaking an invisible wizard/warlock in, or teleporting one in, during say the state of the union address, and blowing up the Capitol Building? I legitimately do not know whether the US Government would have any countermeasures to that and, if whoever did this really did want to preserve the Masquerade (which is not a given), they could make it look like a 'garden-variety' suicide bombing or, if they were feeling really mean, like someone snuck a suitcase nuke (which does exist IRL) into the Capitol Building and detonated it.
At that point… Well, the fear-Whampires (I don't remember their names) for one could bask in the fear of an entire nation. Alternatively, such a massive quantity of deaths could be used to fuel some manner of ritual or summoning?
I was thinking more 'using mind-control to get easy (though perhaps not trivial) access to mortal WMDs/nukes to spark off a mortal WWIII,' sort of situation.
That could easily cause massive mortal casualties very quickly which, for certain groups, would be excellent news.
I get it, my point was that they aren't helpless even if stuff would get bad. There are systems in place for mundane subversion that would make this harder, even without the existing supernaturally aware mortals who would be fighting this.
Really, something like what you're talking about is more of a risk while factions like the Denarians can take their time to work on a generally ignorant faction.
The fact that they haven't done it implies that it isn't worth the trouble, and it woofer easier once people become aware of the threat.
I get it, my point was that they aren't helpless even if stuff would get bad. There are systems in place for mundane subversion that would make this harder, even without the existing supernaturally aware mortals who would be fighting this.
Really, something like what you're talking about is more of a risk while factions like the Denarians can take their time to work on a generally ignorant faction.
The fact that they haven't done it implies that it isn't worth the trouble, and it woofer easier once people become aware of the threat.
The Denarians at least have the Knights keeping (AFAIK) pretty well on top of the worst of their schemes… I'm not sure if the other problematic groups have the same sort of… counterbalance, I guess?
Also, mind control. I can think of very few security systems that don't have some manner of admin access, for one, and most such counter-subversion protocols AFAIK don't, perhaps even can't, account for someone who can compromise/control an arbitrary (which for these purposes likely doesn't need to be all that many) number of people, and can take control of people more or less at will. That is very much an OCP at least for IRL governments. Admittedly, the governments here might have at least some manner of countermeasures for those sorts of subversions, but I question their efficacy in comparison to what, say, the White Council or the Winter Court have in place.
The Denarians at least have the Knights keeping (AFAIK) pretty well on top of the worst of their schemes… I'm not sure if the other problematic groups have the same sort of… counterbalance, I guess?
Also, mind control. I can think of very few security systems that don't have some manner of admin access, for one, and most such counter-subversion protocols AFAIK don't, perhaps even can't, account for someone who can compromise/control an arbitrary (which for these purposes likely doesn't need to be all that many) number of people, and can take control of people more or less at will. That is very much an OCP at least for IRL governments. Admittedly, the governments here might have at least some manner of countermeasures for those sorts of subversions, but I question their efficacy in comparison to what, say, the White Council or the Winter Court have in place.
The thing is they can't just arbitrarily subvert people at will in an unnoticeable way at the drop of a hat.
Stuff like nuclear weapons launch can be stopped by one person in the chain refusing to comply. There have been more than a few times where detection systems came back with bad readings and people on both sides of the Cold War went "this doesn't make sense, so even though by the book I should I'm not ending the world today".
The people involved in critical systems are also monitored, and mind magic causes incidental behavioral changes even at its best.
So something like you're talking about requires a master mind mage to get uninterrupted unobserved access to multiple people despite measures being taken to counter exactly that. If they screw up the job even a little at any step it's getting flagged and the operation is blown.
It's not infallible, but it's not trivial either. Raise would be long term influence on decision makers, but that isn't the same as trying to nuke the planet.
This is the sort of stuff I was talking about when I was saying people underestimate how governments work. For all the stupid stuff that happens, they also have a lot of brilliant people dedicating their lives to the functions they deem most critical.
That value judgement isn't always sound, but people can be frighteningly competent within their areas of expertise even when doing silly stuff outside of it.
For stuff like this don't think stuffy politician. Think about the system you'd have if you gathered the best people you could find in populations of hundreds of millions, gave them the best education and training available, and a budget high enough to land on the moon multiple times. Then field test it against people who really want to break what you've built and iterate.
Magic is in many ways out of context, but tech is new to the game at this level too and mortals don't have to stay static with how they address things any more than anyone else does.
