This depends on how many operatives are here and available. He has at least some skill, so he's not a total scrub. He might not be in command of anythjng, but someone sent to spy on a knight of the cross with any hope of success is likely to be a valued asset. Plus, nothing stops us from killing him after interrogating him.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
[X] Threaten and compel the spy as Usum suggested, maybe he knows something useful
-[X] Use Excellency(Intimidation)
-[X] Question him, trying to dig up everything he knows.
—[X] If he starts lying, successfully resists social combat, or doesn't know anything useful, kill him. If he tries to leave, kill him. His shelf life is now measured in how useful he is.
-[X] Stunt: As you look at the red vampire standing in front of you, something behind your heart recoils; why, it almost whispers in your ear, is it still standing.
—[X] something boils through the air; invisible and intangible, but that demands attention with all the tenderness of a branding iron on bare skin. An authority this lesser thing as unknowingly defied.
—[X] "And who are you to question us?" Molly says in a voice she almost doesn't recognize. Something that carries the weight of a crown and the promise of fire.
Just wanted to try something alternative with the stunt, but I think it could still use some tweaks.
Functionally the same as Yog's, but it establishes that the red vampire is exp fodder.
We shredded the hit squad his court sent after a senior council member, unless this guy managed to convince a vampiric demigod to wait in the van with his murder monsters he and anyone he brought with them are barely road bumps combat wise.
-[X] Use Excellency(Intimidation)
-[X] Question him, trying to dig up everything he knows.
—[X] If he starts lying, successfully resists social combat, or doesn't know anything useful, kill him. If he tries to leave, kill him. His shelf life is now measured in how useful he is.
-[X] Stunt: As you look at the red vampire standing in front of you, something behind your heart recoils; why, it almost whispers in your ear, is it still standing.
—[X] something boils through the air; invisible and intangible, but that demands attention with all the tenderness of a branding iron on bare skin. An authority this lesser thing as unknowingly defied.
—[X] "And who are you to question us?" Molly says in a voice she almost doesn't recognize. Something that carries the weight of a crown and the promise of fire.
Just wanted to try something alternative with the stunt, but I think it could still use some tweaks.
Functionally the same as Yog's, but it establishes that the red vampire is exp fodder.
We shredded the hit squad his court sent after a senior council member, unless this guy managed to convince a vampiric demigod to wait in the van with his murder monsters he and anyone he brought with them are barely road bumps combat wise.
Oh, I like it. Where I tried to look at Molly's experiences for inspiration, you went straight to channeling Malfeas. No matter what wins, I think the vampire is about to rethink its life choices. I wonder if he's going to mistake us for someone. Like, in my stunt, if he's not too high on a totem pole, amf hadn't heard us referring to Michael as dad, he could well think we are either Maeve or Mab.
- Pronouns
- ImBuda
[X] Threaten and compel the spy as Usum suggested, maybe he knows something useful
-[X]Question him. Excellency(Intimidation)+ Impervious Primacy Mantle: -1 Essence, -1 WP
-[X]HMP on his phone if it enters line of sight
-[X]Ensure line of sight for own phone for Clippy+Cyberdevils to get a good look at his features and initiate photograph search of social media and accessible databases
-[X]Identify him as Red Court for benefit of party members
-[X]STUNT: You rise from your seat as he approaches, phone one-handed as you give it a clear view to the approaching vampire, before slipping the phone into a pocket. "Indeed." you say in a voice you barely recognize as your own, your eyes looking for weapons and personal electronics. "And just who are you, vampire of the Red Court?" And you meet his eyes
One thing did what knowledge did we receive from Usum about rakshas?
@DragonParadox
ED1: Changing vote
-[X]Question him. Excellency(Intimidation)+ Impervious Primacy Mantle: -1 Essence, -1 WP
-[X]HMP on his phone if it enters line of sight
-[X]Ensure line of sight for own phone for Clippy+Cyberdevils to get a good look at his features and initiate photograph search of social media and accessible databases
-[X]Identify him as Red Court for benefit of party members
-[X]STUNT: You rise from your seat as he approaches, phone one-handed as you give it a clear view to the approaching vampire, before slipping the phone into a pocket. "Indeed." you say in a voice you barely recognize as your own, your eyes looking for weapons and personal electronics. "And just who are you, vampire of the Red Court?" And you meet his eyes
One thing did what knowledge did we receive from Usum about rakshas?
@DragonParadox
ED1: Changing vote
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He does not have any extra info, what you get from rolls is also the comments of his faded memory. The higher you get the more information is retained.
Almost certainly won't mistake us for Mab. The fey and the knights don't work together very well. Plenty of things are associated with the cold other than winter.
Besides it's demonic primacy of essence, not faerie hegemon stance. The charm text implies they get some impression of the hells from how our authority pushes on them.
It'd still be fun either way though. I just hope we roll well enough to really freak him out on our first use of DPE.
COMMENTARY
-Lots of Finnish-American residents, check.
Thats one piece of the puzzle. Others are still missing.
-
And here we have one set of potential candidates.
Of course the Red Court would have a hand here. They have the right combination of immortality, financial and human resources and sheer recklessness to be fucking around with chtonic entities.
And being at war, I would not be surprised if some bright spark is looking to weaponize it; they have a history for it in the Dresdenverse. There's the Outsiders of course, but also the shoggoth in Warcry.
But they shouldnt have the right ethnic/cultural background to be fucking with Finnish myth. If they were doing this in 1953, there's no reason for them to wait more than fifty years to try again. Maybe if its a stellar convergence/The Time Is Right sorta deal, but there's no such indication so far. And Rampires would probab'y have murdered the FDA investigators anyway.
They are unlikely to be the only player here; interlopers, but not the original instigators.
Some detail we're missing.
-Question: How did this dude find us? We only arrived in the Cleveland area today, and we've visited four places so far: The FDA office, the Plain Dealer newspaper offices, Helen's home, and now this graveyard. None of them is a typical Rampire haunt, and I refuse to believe he just stumbled upon two girls and a middle-aged man on a graveyard bench.
For him to have known we were in town, someone has to have been staking one or more of those places out.
And someone has to have either followed us around or put a tracker on our truck to find us in the graveyard.
-Worth noting that many Reds do not have the strength to be daywalkers.
They dont have to sleep in the daytime, just stay out of the sunlight, but many of them dont have the strength or skill to make sufficiently powerful fleshmasks, so sunlight absolutely fucks them. Only the really old ones can walk freely in the daytime.
Its still daytime, and while he preferred shadow, he has no trouble stepping into the light.
Dude here either has a talent for this, sorcery protecting him, or he's old.
Not a Lord of Outer Night, but still something to be wary around.
This is reinforced by the fact that he notices and recognizes the Sword, even while its sheathed.
- "Boneless grace" spy has a 8 dice Stealth pool.
That suggests we're looking at Dex 4 + Stealth 4, or Dex 5 + Stealth 3. This is indicative of a pretty scary combat stat block.
And Rampires have narcotic spit as a projectile weapon.
-Worth noting that a Red Court operative in North America has no excuse not to know what Michael looks like.
Not since Bianca's Court burned down.
So I find it unlikely that this dude doesnt know who Michael is, even if he doesnt know who we are.
Iku Turso link is broken.
Not that it matters, but Molly gets -2 DC to Alertness rolls from Demonic Guide.
So she should have been rolling at difficulty 4, not difficulty 6.
But like I said, since we rolled a 1, doesnt change anything.
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- Location
- Germany
Might have been watching the graveyard?
Not sure why the Reds would put someone competent on the literal graveyard-shift, but there's been an unusual activity of Necromancers nearby in Chicago, so maybe they thought it was worth it.
Or they need the original patients for something, even the dead ones.
To note, Celerity adds bonus-dice to all Dex-based actions, without spending blood.
If vampiric superhumaness is portrayed for the Reds with WoD Vampire Disciplines, it would make sense for him to have some.
I don't know for sure that system is used though, haven't mechanically realized any Reds for DP yet.
It is not daytime, night fell as you reached the graveyard.
To my recollection, the only time we've seen a single Rampire at a time in Dresden Files canon was when Ortega showed up in Chicago with his crew, and that was a single vamp performing surveillance of Dresden's apartment who got rumbled by Susan.
Their standard hit teams are six or more members. Their travel crews are larger.
Even when Bianca sent Dresden a formal invitation, she sent two siblings.
Its really unlikely that he's here alone.
COMMENTARY
1)First thing you do is identify the threat so all your party members are on the same page.
They know its a threat, because nobody skulks near graveyards eavesdropping on strangers, but they dont know precisely which, so they dont know how to respond.
We dont need anyone getting poisoned by Rampire spit or hypnotized by looking in their eyes.
2)Catch and release. We dont want it dead. Yet.
Rampires are like roaches; there's almost never just one, and they never travel or operate alone.
And to my recollection, while only Chicago is specifically barred to them since Death Rites, the Reds do not operate this far north since the War started anyway. LeBlanc and the events of Love Hurts nothwithstanding
So if they're literally on Lake Erie, in the vicinity of bad mojo, its a Big Deal. We want the entire crew as well as their objective in this part of the country. That means we need it to scuttle home, make reports, send emails etc. So we can follow up.
Catch and release.
3)We want its cellphone number.
Really?
We're sitting on a graveyard bench at night in an area where we know Bad Shit is going down? Huh.
That sense of invincibility is certainly hitting different.
1)They're not Blacks. I dont see why they would be. Not to mention that they'd be more likely to be working with necromancers than watching for them. The entire Darkhallow last year was coordinated with a Red Court offensive to distract the White Council. Thats why when Dresden called for backup, he only got six Wardens.
2)Nieminen's grave was undisturbed. So I dont think thats true. And if they needed a watch on a cemetery?
They'd just use a thrall addicted to Rampire saliva for something like that anyway, not a vampire. A local would blend in better, and have no trouble in daylight.
2)Respect thread with citations:
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- Location
- florida
I'm also in favor of carrying out actual intelligence operations. As opposed to going in murder hobo force blazing
At least for now. I'm always a proponent of decisive action, but as far as we know he could be here picking flowers for his grandma.
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- Location
- Germany
Yeah, with those creds I'd definitly give them some Potence and Celerity as base-package.2)Respect thread with citations:
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Maybe a bit of Fortitude too, especially the older ones.
Could be that they're twitchy enough to have magical sensing equipment/wards up in their local place of power that detected us. I don't want to overestimate how "loud" we are, but it seems like it could be a factor.
Something like that makes more sense to me than a stakeout of these locations, because they aren't that interesting. It's a waste of manpower to stick people on them in most cases. Molly may need to learn to suck in her supernatural gut so to speak. Heaven help the person who needs to explain that to a 17 year old infernal.
It's either that, or Micheal is under subtle watch by everyone who matters and they tracked us from the moment we left town. But that doesn't seem like the kind of thing the white god would let us walk into blind.
Yeah. My bet is that the original group choked in the 50s, and that the red court swooped in to pick up the pieces, which is why this wasn't a problem till now.
Bring it. Even discounting Lydia, we've got a knight of the cross with us against people with a type weakness to faith. We might as well be watching a Superman vs. the incredible kryptonite cyborg cage match. We already shredded a powerful red hit squad, I think it's unlikely that something stronger than they sent for Ebenezer of all people is waiting around in Cleveland.
You've got a point about being on the same page, but I still don't feel threatened here.
I don't want to get high on our own supply, but we're not Harry and this guy is not Mab. Our skill set isn't the same as his, and the set up here isn't arranged in a way that forces us to forgo our most effective options. Further, I'm not convinced that time is on our side here.
Not in the sense that there's a doomsday clock running (though there probably is something if a knight is needed), but in that they benefit from prep time more than we do now that they know we're in town.
Smashing their face in, using the crown to get everything we can out of this guy, and making a full court press before they can adjust might be the ticket here.
For all our advantages, giving them the space to get tricky in isn't good for us.
Red Vampire; he literally lives on murder. When they change being sadistic assholes gets burned into the place they used to keep a soul. It's possible that he's the Drizzt of reds, but that sort of thing is significantly rarer for them than it is for white vampires. I can't recall it even being something considered by anyone in the books.
Full wizards can be forcibly changed, and be messily murdering their friends and family within the week.
- Location
- Germany
[X] BronzeTongue
@DragonParadox
QUESTION
1)Can we use HMP on a phone bulge in a pocket? Or do we have to see the phone physically?
2)How good is Cyberdevils 2 against a hostile's cellphone? Can it hack into the contacts list and phone book?
Can it at least get hold of the cellphone number of someone we are standing in speaking range of from the regular broadcasts of the cellphone to the local cellphone tower?
- That does not work no, you have to see the actual phone
- They are as good as a professional hacker which means that to hack a tower you have to get into the servers of whatever company owns them so not really something that can be done in minutes unfortunately.
@DragonParadox
QUESTION
1)Fair.
2)I was thinking more along the lines of a cellphone stingray. Specifically:
Stingray phone tracker - Wikipedia
It should be doable imo.
But thats a QM judgement call, hence my question.
EDIT
3)How long to get into the local cellphone servers? Thirty minutes? An hour?
Because we dont need to get into it in real time.
We just need the history of what cellphone numbers were in the graveyard at the same time we were.
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QUESTION
1)Fair.
2)I was thinking more along the lines of a cellphone stingray. Specifically:
No celltower access necessary; all cellphones that are powered on are constantly broadcasting who they are, and listening for replies from the tower. I was thinking we could do this with Cyberdevils 2 to get the phone number from the cellphone broadcasts.Stingray phone tracker - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
It should be doable imo.
But thats a QM judgement call, hence my question.
I think that at least part of how that thing works is hardware which cannot be replicated with just a phone. After all if that were the case no one would make a stingray, they would just create the stingray app.
@DragonParadox
QUESTION
Fair. Thank you for the answers.
One last question. How long do we estimate to get into the local celltower servers? Thirty minutes? An hour? Two hours? Six?
Because we dont need to get into it in real time.
We just need the history of what cellphone numbers were in the graveyard at the same time we we had this encounter.
Then we can call them and roll HMP over the phone, giving Cyberdevils 2 direct access.
Three hours per roll, can be retried, though on a fail the company will know it was attacked by someone.
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I don't know why he's here exactly, but I do think it's unlikely that it's coincidence.
Even if it is, red vampires are obligate human predators. Most of them go all but feral after they change, and revel in killing humans. The ones that don't are just slightly better at restraining the same fundamental nature.
That doesn't go away even in the oldest and strongest willed of their kind.
It's like happening on a wolf pack that you know has a taste for human flesh in a national park while you happen to be armed. You might not have been planning to go hunting, but if you leave them alone they will kill again. It's just how it is.
To be clear, despite the length the setting goes to to justify it, I'm not saying killing them all is moral good. It's just that right now we can't do shit about the root problem, and our options on a case by case basis are to kill them or let them eat humans.
If and when we can find a way to ensure a mutual non-predatory peace we absolutely should take it. Until then this sort of thing has the same moral weight as a buffalo bashing in a wolf's skull, despite the sapience of the parties involved.
We can handle him just fine, but the person he kidnaps off the street for dinner tonight probably won't be so lucky.
The white court is the only type of vampire that bucks this trend. They actually retain humanity on a fundamental level, and examples from two of three subtypes are known to find non harmful ways to feed. Like the Thomas's light one night stands, or that one Malvora that produces horror movies so they lightly tap an entire crowd instead of destroying a single person.
Those guys shouldn't be killed without checking exactly what they're doing first.
As to the specifics of this situation, I am voting to interrogate him first. I'm just also adding the provision that we initiate combat if it doesn't work.
Maybe we could compromise on a counter ambush? I don't want to give up initiative, but following him home to kick down the door would work about as well. At which point we could easily confirm if he's a statistical anomaly by looking into their slave pens and body disposal setup.
If I'm wrong I'll happily change my future approach here, the setting would be less depressing if the reds weren't pure monsters.
Thank you.
So if all else fails, we know what we're doing when we get to a hotel room this evening.
And this dude needs to live. For the moment.