Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

[uju32]

I at least want it for focuses of the crown, to locate Katrina's hidden stashes of emergency funds, treasures, magical artifacts and blackmail on her fellow monsters she almost certainly had.

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1)She had a physical address to act as a scrying focus. Lydia still has her old jacket; thats another.
We are not lacking in valid scrying focuses for when we figure out how to travel by the NeverNever and show up in Boston.
Assuming we consider it important enough to be worth following up on.

2)Im assuming Gard, Mathews or the White Council will get to them first.

They all have first mover advantage; Gard and Mathews were present at her death, and the White Council will know as soon as Dresden makes a call and report. They have the resources to physically follow up from Monoc and the Winter Court respectively. They can deniably launder that stuff in ways we cant afford atm.

The White Council have a Warden in Boston to investigate her place immediately, and Dresden is Warden regional commander.
He'll have made the call.

Until we can physically travel to Boston, we cant do anything about that.
By the time we do so, all but the most obscurely hidden stuff will have been picked clean by others.
Still, Gard, Mathews and the White Council are all better alternatives than the Daedalus people, or some of Holt's cohorts.

 

[firefrog600]

So do people want to start making a list of questions and focuses for Molly cause there are dozens if not hundreds of questions we can ask for the days Molly isn't played by us?

 

[DragonParadox]

Well yeah I assume there will eventually be entire months of time in which we don't spend any essence ourself simply cause we don't play out those days. So Molly spending essence on random questions with focuses when we aren't playing her makes sense.

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Sure, I meant for the investigation your essence tank does matter.

I'll give you guys a section just for no pressure questions the next time we have a turn vote.

 

[firefrog600]

Sure, I meant for the investigation your essence tank does matter.

I'll give you guys a section just for no pressure questions the next time we have a turn vote.

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Honestly on days we don't play Molly two questions a day kinda makes sense. Plenty of avenues for focuses like wiki articles, maps, items, books, etc etc.

God the internet is a treasure trove of focuses for Molly.

 

[uju32]

Sure, just keep in mind it does cost 1 Essence to cast it

What @LightLan said, getting rid of the Nightmares cost 6 XP from what I recalled since it got you 2 Freebie points at character creation.

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@DragonParadox
QUESTION
Actual OOC question:
1)Who ordered the attempted hit on Gorfel outside Harry's house?
2)Who killed Greene and why? We could probably burn a Crown question to look at his picture in an online news article and get a detailed outline of the events leading to his death, but since the story arc is over I dont think its necessary.

Feel free to decline answering if it is still plot-relevant, though.

 

[Yog]

So do people want to start making a list of questions and focuses for Molly cause there are dozens if not hundreds of questions we can ask for the days Molly isn't played by us?

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I have some which are mostly lore / background information, but might lead to more:
1) Who killed Kennedy?
2) The fate of Elvis
3) Either the identities or locations / places of origin of any extraterrestrials to have visited Earth. Also "the list of true alien abduction stories / people who were really abducted by extraterrestrials". This could be used to at least distract Daedalus project people, to potentially establish contact and get a source of advanced non-human technology, which might or might not be subject to techbane, and on the very, very low probability end of things find Autochtonia, because people in there, if anyone is still alive, would count as extraterrestrials, I think.
4) These ones can and should be used after we get to E3, get some wish granting and training charms, and our kingdom - go to various competitions and use them as catalysts to look for identities of the "world's smartest man", "world's most talented human martial artist", etc. Then recruit those people. We can have minions. We should get the best ones. Looking for objectively best teachers is also something we could and should do. Schools / universities for our siblings as well.
5) "The location of the world's oldest building" - we could also specify "man-made building" and possibly (if this is not too OOC) "prison" - these ones could be used to start our investigation into our exaltation, and potentially to locate the Black Vault. In general, we could walk around Chicago looking at various types of buildings and ask about the different kind of buildings
6) This one has a lot of different answers - go to a paleontological museum to look at early hominid skeletons (or just look it up online), and ask about where humans came from. This one could be IC for Molly. Creationism vs. Darwinism. And OOC I am curious if this will give us information about Primordials, or if humans have been remade since.
7) Visit Lydia's library, and ask questions (this will need to be improved upon) along the lines of "the greatest secret known to the author of this book" or something like this. Maybe, in the books about Arc of the Covenant, Templars, Search for the Holy Grail, etc, we could ask for locations of those objects.

 

[DragonParadox]

@DragonParadox
QUESTION
Actual OOC question:
1)Who ordered the attempted hit on Gorfel outside Harry's house?
2)Who killed Greene and why? We could probably burn a Crown question to look at his picture in an online news article and get a detailed outline of the events leading to his death, but since the story arc is over I dont think its necessary.

Feel free to decline answering if it is still plot-relevant, though.

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Plot relevant in both cases, you guys can get the answers, but how Molly reacts to them is relevant.

 

[firefrog600]

We can finally know who killed Tupac.

 

[BeepSmile]

Speaking of our future lottery winnings, we already have a potential source for a trustworthy lawyer and possibly a financial manager. Arawn setup contingencies to help Lydia become emancipated and give her access to his resources, so she should be able to connect us with those same people.

They're likely expensive, but discretion and competence is worth quite a bit, IMO.

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He could even direct them via letter or tell her who to talk to. He's only mostly dead!

 

[Odysseus2099]

3) Can we remove our Nightmare drawback?

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Not sure how DP is treating this, but Brother Divsimar was offering to teach us the Qiao of the Meng.

*** Nightmare Exorcism
Many Shih turn to drugs and alcohol in an effort to alleviate their mental anguish. Shih using this power take a more direct approach by erasing the memory's emotional impact and hopefully, removing the mental scars that memory creates.

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As written this should be able to get rid of the Nightmare flaw without XP expenditure, as well as provide a solution to future derangements that may occur in our line of work.

 

[BronzeTongue]

Not sure how DP is treating this, but Brother Divsimar was offering to teach us the Qiao of the Meng.

As written this should be able to get rid of the Nightmare flaw without XP expenditure, as well as provide a solution to future derangements that may occur in our line of work.

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That sounds like exactly the wrong sort of ability for an exalt to have long term. Sure the intended use is trauma, but if you can deal with emotional problems by deleting the emotions it could be easy to slip into a very unhealthy headspace.

Remembering doing or seeing something horrible, but flatlining all emotion associated with it, sounds like it'd slowly desensitize you to it.

 

[firefrog600]

That sounds like exactly the wrong sort of ability for an exalt to have long term. Sure the intended use is trauma, but if you can deal with emotional problems by deleting the emotions it could be easy to slip into a very unhealthy headspace.

Remembering doing or seeing something horrible, but flatlining all emotion associated with it, sounds like it'd slowly desensitize you to it.

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But then you delete the unhealthy headspace and everything is fine.

 

[BronzeTongue]

But then you delete the unhealthy headspace and everything is fine.

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Certainly, and I'm sure one of Molly's devils would let her know she was going crazy if she ends up completely enured to horrible demon magic because she keeps deleting her horror at its consequences.

 

[Odysseus2099]

That sounds like exactly the wrong sort of ability for an exalt to have long term. Sure the intended use is trauma, but if you can deal with emotional problems by deleting the emotions it could be easy to slip into a very unhealthy headspace.

Remembering doing or seeing something horrible, but flatlining all emotion associated with it, sounds like it'd slowly desensitize you to it.

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Seems to me it would do the opposite, experiencing each horror you witness or enact as if it was the first time, with no build up of past trauma to numb you to it.

Still not great, but not in the same way.

 

[BronzeTongue]

Seems to me it would do the opposite, experiencing each horror you witness or enact as if it was the first time, with no build up of past trauma to numb you to it.

Still not great, but not in the same way.

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If it erased the memory sure, but the experience remains after the emotion is gone.

Which leaves you with an ever increasing number memories containing awful stuff that you can recall in all their gory details and have no reaction to. Eventually the impact would fade relative to the body of similar stuff she can remember, and she wouldn't even be able to remember a time when she felt differently.

 

[firefrog600]

If it erased the memory sure, but the experience remains after the emotion is gone.

Which leaves you with an ever increasing number memories containing awful stuff that you can recall in all their gory details and have no reaction to. Eventually the impact would fade relative to the body of similar stuff she can remember, and she wouldn't even be able to remember a time when she felt differently.

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So we all agree there's no problem?

 

[BronzeTongue]

So we all agree there's no problem?

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… not sure if you're joking our not here. To be clear, I was being sarcastic when I said our devils would bail us out.

Deleting emotions like this is probably not a huge problem for a monk who's probably not going to make it into their 60s anyway.

An infernal with a lifespan measured in thousands of years that not only gets desensitized, but loses the ability to determine when it happened or what the difference was is the background of a big bad.

 

[firefrog600]

… not sure if you're joking our not here. To be clear, I was being sarcastic when I said our devils would bail us out.

Deleting emotions like this is probably not a huge problem for a monk who's probably not going to make it into their 60s anyway.

An internal with a lifespan measured in thousands of years that not only gets desensitized, but loses the ability to determine when it happened or what the difference was is the background of a big bad.

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Oh yeah I get ya was joking.

 

[Odysseus2099]

If it erased the memory sure, but the experience remains after the emotion is gone.

Which leaves you with an ever increasing number memories containing awful stuff that you can recall in all their gory details and have no reaction to. Eventually the impact would fade relative to the body of similar stuff she can remember, and she wouldn't even be able to remember a time when she felt differently.

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Going numb from repeated exposure to the same trauma happens anyway. The way I see it, it would be like magically healing a friction blister repeatedly without giving yourself a chance to develop callouses. Every time you do something similar you just end up hurting yourself again, rather than becoming desensitized.

What you're describing is, in fact, the normal, non-magical reaction to repeated trauma. I'd assume the technique actually does something different from the norm to actually be worth getting.

 

[Earth-Destroyer]

San the curse exalted only lose a point of willpower for a month for tanking instant mind breaking events.

 

[BronzeTongue]

Going numb from repeated exposure to the same trauma happens anyway. The way I see it, it would be like magically healing a friction blister repeatedly without giving yourself a chance to develop callouses. Every time you do something similar you just end up hurting yourself again, rather than becoming desensitized.

What you're describing is, in fact, the normal, non-magical reaction to repeated trauma. I'd assume the technique actually does something different from the norm to actually be worth getting.

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The difference is that even when you're desensitized to something you can still remember how you used to react even if you don't do so in the moment anymore. Which means someone reasonably self aware or who's otherwise been confronted with an issue related to it can reflect on how they've changed.

If you have no memory with actual emotional weight to it of reacting any differently than you do right now that becomes more difficult.

It's useful for the monks because they can suppress their problems until they die, and aren't so powerful that they can't be stopped by their peers before they do significant damage most of the time. Peers who are familiar with all this and have experience managing it.

 

[JayTar]

The difference is that even when you're desensitized to something you can still remember how you used to react even if you don't do so in the moment anymore. Which means someone reasonably self aware or who's otherwise been confronted with an issue related to it can reflect on how they've changed.

If you have no memory with actual emotional weight to it of reacting any differently than you do right now that becomes more difficult.

It's useful for the monks because they can suppress their problems until they die, and aren't so powerful that they can't be stopped by their peers before they do significant damage most of the time. Peers who are familiar with all this and have experience managing it.

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This is slippery slope thinking. Extreme overuse of the technique over a long term under specific circumstances might cause the results you are concerned over. But it's hardly inevitable. Perhaps for a different exalt it would be a concern, but we can just vote to use it responsibly.

It's not like Molly is going to use it every time she feels sad or horrified. Only those times which are so horrific, so traumatizing, that it overcomes her very significant mental resistance leaves lasting mental damage.

The sort of circumstances that would require overuse technique like such sound like they would come with much greater problems anyway. And not dealing with the accumulated mental damage would cause much greater problems then detachment.

So while there might be concerns, I don't think we should let that stop us from getting the technique or using it on our Nightmares.

 

[Earth-Destroyer]

Exalted don't suffer from mental problems from trauma full stop.

 

[BronzeTongue]

This is slippery slope thinking. Extreme overuse of the technique over a long term under specific circumstances might cause the results you are concerned over. But it's hardly inevitable. Perhaps for a different exalt it would be a concern, but we can just vote to use it responsibly.

It's not like Molly is going to use it every time she feels sad or horrified. Only those times which are so horrific, so traumatizing, that it overcomes her very significant mental resistance leaves lasting mental damage.

The sort of circumstances that would require overuse technique like such sound like they would come with much greater problems anyway. And not dealing with the accumulated mental damage would cause much greater problems then detachment.

So while there might be concerns, I don't think we should let that stop us from getting the technique or using it on our Nightmares.

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"Just make good decisions" isn't exactly a plan. No one gets into a coping mechanism thinking they're going to overdo it and cause themselves a problem*.

This isn't slippery slope thinking, it's considering the long term impacts of our decision making.

Since the current conversation is about using it to resolve trauma and the use case of the technique itself is regular use to deal with the things the users are exposed to, which the text itself lists in the same category as alcohol and drug use, I think the consideration is warranted.

Part of this is also an eye towards the implications of our behavior during the quest on the post quest ultimate fate of the characters.

If we vote for Molly to erase her emotions when they cause her problems instead of dealing with them then I don't see why she'd stop. Doing that over a very long term strikes me as a bad idea for the reasons I've already stated.

* On the OOC level, it's also bold to assume that a quest will make good choices and monitor the consequences of its actions. Remember, SV competence sometimes includes talking ourselves into voting for suicide.

 

[OctarineShrike]

Then you've got stuff like exhausting yourself fishing in A Simple Transaction and going into the Deep Chaos in the beginning of Immersion.

From the "Treat the quest like a game of Slay The Spire you want to win" perspective those decisions were only mildly less stupid than the infamous stab yourself for power incident.