fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Maybe later. I want to get in their face first and do some hard ball negotiations. If they work great. If they don't we can phone Harry about the red nest we dealt with.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Its seldom about Molly's personal survival.
Its the survival of her friends and party members, and the minimisation of collateral damage to others.
I doubt our XP gain would be increased if we ended this mission by burning the club to the ground to kill the vampires, along with several hundred civilians and several dozen thralls.
Red Court vampires are poison users, and we have no anti-poison charms.
And no sensory charms.
And no sensory equipment.
So if they dump police riot gas in the club and turn off the lights, we'd all be just as fucked as any mortal.
And we arent specced for nonlethal takedowns of mortal thralls. Michael isnt either. Dunno about Lydia.
And Im not even accounting for the possible presence of a vampire sorcerer or two with sorcery.
We arent invincible.
We cant assume we can swagger into an enemy stronghold without prep and everything will turn out fine.
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fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
I don't even know how we would manage that. We all fight with melee weapons. We aren't like Harry fighting with a flame thrower. If we kill the Ramps then we can just run away from the mortals.
The Infernals whole theme is cursed verdant nuclear fire, isn't it?
Akchually, Exalted constitution probably would take care of that one. Not that this is a particularly terrible blow to the overall argument, tho. Just a nitpick.
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This is somewhat of a concern, yes.
Ok, not delay. But to direct us against Pathfinders. Not today however - the reds aren't prepared, it seems:
The big question is - why do you think it'll inevitably come to a fight? Yes, these are red court vampires. In this, we are at least somewhat on an a temporarily allied side, it seems.
EDIT:
As far as I can see, we have these options:
1) Get him to pretend to keep spying on us, while not actually reporting our activities. This risks him recovering from his shock / fear, I think. But it's a stealth option, and probably the most sensible one, now that I think of it. Essentially, flip him against Red Court in this one activity.
2) Kill him. Also always an option, but I don't think it's IC.
3) Move onto his boss. Either fighting him, or talking with him. I favor talking. This can, in principle, be done now, or during the day. It makes sense to do this during the day, now that I think about it, when the club is closed, and the vampires aren't as free. That, however, risks more vampires being together. Plus, they would be anticipating being attacked at the moment of their weakness and would make preparations. I don't want to lose momentum here.
There are also other, more convoluted options, like pinning his death or escape on pathfinders / fae / etc.
Even if I wanted to modify my plan, or even change it, I feel I can't now that so many people voted for me.
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How precisely do you intend to get to the Ramps through the thralls?
With them having access to the contents of the local police armory and possibly any local gunstores?
Michael is a mortal. He walks.
He is approximately as fast as any other mortal, and slower when he's wearing armor and bearing a sword.
As we saw in Undertown, mortal and supernatural threats can fuck him up just fine.
Again, I will repeat: Police riot gas.
They have infiltrated the cops, they can get it trivially. A bunch of thralls wearing gas masks and lobbing CS gas and we're pretty badly debilitated in front of a gunline.
And the fact that we dont have flamethrowers doesnt mean THEY wont.
Or have a sorcerer. Or wards on the building.
Would it?
My recollection is that mortal poisons and diseases wont kill us in ExWoD, not that they wont have any effect.
And we dont currently have Transcendent Lord of Flies.
The Reds suffer from chronic backstabbing syndrome in canon.
They poisoned the drinks at their own diplomatic reception in Grave Peril in the knowledge it woulnt affect Reds but would affect mortals, using a loophole in the Accords to claim it didnt break the rules of hospitality. Their troubleshooter arranged for a duel with Dresden under the terms of the Unseelie Accords, and then attempted to break the rules when he began to lose.
They poisoned the White Council with a bioweapon under flag of truce using a diplomatic envoy in Changes.
Much of the underlying motive for the events of Changes was Duchess Arianna Ortega trying to overthrow her sire the Red King because she thought he was unfit for leadership, and her father trying, successfully, to get her killed first. He arranged for Dresden to kill her in a magic duel, then reneged on freeing his daughter after that by saying that it was his translator that spoke, not him.
The Red King sets the tone for the entire organization. The question isnt whether they'll betray you, its when and how.
It doesnt change our obligations towards local supernatural customs and practices, because people judge you on them.
It just means that whenever we are dealing with Reds, we stay on our guard.
Because they will inevitably try to fuck us sooner or later.
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Doesn't mean we should give information away for free though. Best practice is to force your opponents to jump through as many hoops as reasonably possible for this sort of thing.
Because the red court as an institution is full of treacherous assholes; especially when dealing with mortals since just about everything in their lives is set up in a way that encourages them to think of humans as cattle instead of people.
These guys do stuff like run outsiders through Winter territory, and cheat in Accorded duels. It's safest to assume they will stab us in the back. Walking into the place and letting them maneuver around us is asking to get "tested" at best.
If we're going to get in a fight we shouldn't surrender the initiative.
You know, I find it kinda funny that Michael is descended from Charlemagne, while wielding Excalibur, while another knight wields Durandal.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
By virtue of us being an Olympic level athlete that can fly on top of that if needed. Also if the mortals are armed with guns then they aren't going to be in the front.
But the current plan is going directly to the leader to get in his face. This isn't the reds doing a coordinated attack on us. Although that might happen later if we don't deal with the problem one way or another now.
More interesting question: was Joyeuse real holy sword in the DF?
Assaulting the place is one thing, but walking in and talking drops a lot of the confusion and chaos off. It makes it easier for them to rearrange what resources they have on hand to deal with us specifically. I think we could win a well planned fight, but walking into their nest and letting them pick how it starts isn't my idea of good planning.
We almost certainly would be tested, and if we roll poorly would end up in one of the worse possible variants on how that fight could initiate.
They probably have a lot of nasty tricks set up, but I don't think they'd go for this one in most cases. Not for fights they plan to wade into anyway.
They have that issue with broad spectrum super senses that can be overwhelmed with input. Irritants like tear gas would probably be more effective against them than against mortals, until they burn blood to shrug it off anyway.
Molly is not an Olympic level athlete.
She is Athletics 1. Novice. Her combined Dex + Athletics is 5 dice, which is lower than that of a professional athlete. She has no Athletics charms, and no Athletics excellency. Yes we can fly, but we cant outfly a bullet. Yet.
And neither Lydia nor Michael can fly.
The current plan is walking into their base, at night, with a full house of
AFTER being told they have the local police in their pocket. No plan, just a belief we can bully them.
Thats just remarkably unwise.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Well if you think that it's such a bad idea write up some better plan. Maybe you will get other people to vote for it.
I dont think I agree.
If they have the cops subverted, they have access to the same PPE that cops would use when doing this.
And being based out of a nightclub, they are going to be very well fed.
Im just looking at the interior of a night club and considering what happens if they just turn off the lights and then shoot Michael straight off. Or Lydia. Neither of them are as tanky as Molly is, and Molly has no sensory charms.
I am.
Just working on the stunt.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Michaels sword does glow. So does ours actually. Actually if we are fighting then we are going to be burning with anima. It will be brighter than it was with the lights on.
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To start with, Exalts all poisons and diseases roll at -2 difficulty to resist or soak. Further stuff depends on how Exactly DP runs riot gas, but the version I can find on the net from M20 is 3 Bashing damage/1-turn debuff if deals damage, which means basically we get to resist it with our soak. Which is another -1 difficulty.
At target difficulty 3, we generally soak that most of the time. If we have any of our soak enhancers, we soak that 100% of the time.
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Molly is strong enough that she could carry Lydia or Michael while flying though not both. Also she could not use her shield while doing so obviously since she needs a hand to do the carrying.
These are all true, but remember, unless we are dealing with a Lord of the Outer Night, we have good chances of scaring them enough to prevent a fight. Red Court vampires value their lives. By acting aggressively enough, fast enough and with enough grandeur, I think we can frighten them into at least backing off. We really don't want them acting. Because their actions are likely to involve mass civilian casualties. That needs to be prevented. I am not allying with them. I am laying down ground rules. "If you burn down a house full of mortals, I will make you swallow this holy sword, then string you up by your own smoking entrails. Then my friend here will summon your ghost from the afterlife, so I can string it up by its entrails for a couple of centuries. Tread carefully". Stuff like that.
We've seen the Swords used at night in Death Masks, again in Small Favor, and a third time in Changes.
They arent as bright as you would presume, they only glow in the hands of their users.
And having seen dance floors, I suspect you underestimate how much area there is to illuminate.
Our anima banner is not going to illuminate the fellow fifty feet away with an M4 drawing a bead on Michael or Lydia.
Especially since Molly is Perception 2.
It gives us warning against surprise attacks, but it wont do it for attacks aimed at others.
Yog's vote puts us at a significant disadvantage, and the reds almost certainly will test us at minimum. The boss isn't going to accept us coming in and telling him how to run his operation uncontested. If that ends in a fight, it will be the worst fight we can have with them.
I mean, he's already harming innocents. What's he going to do, let his thralls and blood slaves go? How about the shock troops he's using to pad out his forces? That answer is going to be no unless we beat compliance into him.
It's utterly ridiculous to think we can walk in and dictate terms like this without any trouble. We need to either pick a reasonable approach to parley or raid the place, not half ass it and screw up both approaches.
It also implies a lot more cooperation than we want with back stabbing parasites who institutionally regard us as uppity food animals.
How about we compromise on how we approach this?
[X] The vampire has serves his purpose
-[X] Release him to carry a message to his leader.
—[X] Establish some basic, stay out of each other's way boundaries. We know he's watching, he knows we know, the usual business. Have Clippy generate a burner email for basic communications, and get whatever our soon to be former minion's address for the same.
—[X] Lean on Usum for formal diplomatic language as an arch demon of the thousand hells might use for such an occasion.
-[X] Stunt: "What to do with you?" Molly muses aloud, ignoring the poorly hidden agitation of her temporary servant.
—[X] For a moment the wind cuts deeper, and the shadows almost seem to move on their own. As her attention comes to fully rest on the vampire, it freezes like a deer caught in the headlights.
—[X] "I think", Molly says in a bitterly cold voice, "You're going to carry a message for me to your nest"
This accomplishes similar things without putting us in a bad position for both fighting and negotiating.
I mean, he's already harming innocents. What's he going to do, let his thralls and blood slaves go? How about the shock troops he's using to pad out his forces? That answer is going to be no unless we beat compliance into him.
It's utterly ridiculous to think we can walk in and dictate terms like this without any trouble. We need to either pick a reasonable approach to parley or raid the place, not half ass it and screw up both approaches.
It also implies a lot more cooperation than we want with back stabbing parasites who institutionally regard us as uppity food animals.
How about we compromise on how we approach this?
[X] The vampire has serves his purpose
-[X] Release him to carry a message to his leader.
—[X] Establish some basic, stay out of each other's way boundaries. We know he's watching, he knows we know, the usual business. Have Clippy generate a burner email for basic communications, and get whatever our soon to be former minion's address for the same.
—[X] Lean on Usum for formal diplomatic language as an arch demon of the thousand hells might use for such an occasion.
-[X] Stunt: "What to do with you?" Molly muses aloud, ignoring the poorly hidden agitation of her temporary servant.
—[X] For a moment the wind cuts deeper, and the shadows almost seem to move on their own. As her attention comes to fully rest on the vampire, it freezes like a deer caught in the headlights.
—[X] "I think", Molly says in a bitterly cold voice, "You're going to carry a message for me to your nest"
This accomplishes similar things without putting us in a bad position for both fighting and negotiating.
I prefer not to build strategies on bluffs.
Because you get called on bluffs.
EDIT
Dont get me wrong. Sometimes its necessary to do so. But it shouldnt be a first resort when you have no fallback plans'
They already know this.
Michael Carpenter is The Fist of God. He's been a Knight of the Cross since before we were born. They are very well known in the supernatural world. We have no need to speak for him; his reputation speaks for itself.
There's a reason they were watching for his license plate on traffic cameras.
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Close.
I was going to demand his phone, type a burner email address on it, get his phone number and return it with a HMP cyberdevil.
Something along these lines.
[]The vampire has serves his purpose
-[]Release him
-[]Ask how many sorcerers they brought with them
-[]Demand his phone, type a burner email address in, HMP it, then return it
-[]Have him carry a message back
-[]Stunt:???
