Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

[Yog]

[X] Why were you killed (Will give a shorter less detailed answer, but will only return a null result if the boat driver actually died of natural causes)

That's more important, I think. Simply "I saw a monster under the lake" is unlikely to get someone killed, as no police would believe it. I want to know the motivation of the killers.

 

[Goldfish]

"So..." you carefully sip your morning coffee. "Either the evil cultists are really not down for 'those damn kids' on their watery lawn or that guy knew something or saw something he shouldn't have."

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To give the evil cultists a bit of credit, as I rapidly approach the "get off my lawn, you damned kids!" age, this does seem more and more tempting.

 

[Goldfish]

[X] Why were you killed (Will give a shorter less detailed answer, but will only return a null result if the boat driver actually died of natural causes)

 

[Wwind]

Huh, I like Raksha. Pity they were so underdeveloped in Exalted. Especially the magic system - a convoluted nightmare. The Shards of Exalted Dream martial arts Raksha were actually better done then originals if you ask me.
E3 exalted had some nice new raksha snippets. Hope they won't fuck it up.

P.S. Raksha aren't evil per-se. They don't really understand suffering and so neither do they understand evil. They also can 'dismantle' human souls, either eating up their insides or using soul's 'organs' as components in their magic.

 

[DragonParadox]

P.S. Raksha aren't evil per-se. They don't really understand suffering and so neither do they understand evil. They also can 'dismantle' human souls, either eating up their insides or using soul's 'organs' as components in their magic.

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I'm sure the lack of evil is of great comfort to the human who is getting his soul eaten from the inside.

Seriously though you can have non-hostile relations with the Rhaska, in fact Exalted are among the best people to do it since they can just let the Fair Folk feed on them for a price and then jut grow back the missing soul-piece without lasting harm.

 

[uju32]

Among the Dead Anew

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Rolls
Rolling for Ancestry, max result
Police info (the vampire was old and hardly used his email; also low on the totem pole) a dud
Rolling for strange Happenings at Soul''s Rest, found something
Nightmares... still holding out

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1) This tells us several things if they killed this dude, as seems likely
-The Oathfinders have members on the site of the nursing home, either directly embedded in the staff or posing as residents
-They have no influence with the local police department. If they did, the PD would at least have made a pro forma attempt to visit the boaters, even if they had no actual legal excuse.
-They arent in cahoots with the Reds. Or the Reds would have been able to lean on the police on their behalf
-Whatever they intend to do, its going to be public. Not a ritual in a basement of the nursing home, but at a minimum something on the shoreline where it can be witnessed

2)Loling at Clippy's annoyance with Le Blanc.
At least we got his contacts list.

3)The duration of the boat festival gives us a timeframe.
Apparently its time sensitive if they are murdering random civilians to get them out of the way.
Is there a stellar conjunction in July/August 2006? An eclipse or something?

OOC: I kind of struggled with this one, a part of me just wanted to roll Wits+Investigation to see if you asked a good question but that just felt like taking away player agency when talking about limited resources like Crown Questions. This is the only question you got for the speedboat race discovery so better a shorter update with a vote at the end I decided eventually than one bad roll killing the lead.

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Would have been Perception + Investigation, actually. So 2 dice, not 3.

Wouldnt have killed the lead though. There's at least three viable focuses involved here that are of potential significance:
The dead man/grave
The boat he rode along the shore, which presumably caused his death
The location where he had the stroke
The boat festival itself, along with its duration

Looking at their declared route/locations on the Lake would provide additional datapoints
@DragonParadox
QUESTION
1)How old was the dead guy?
2)How long was the race competition originally supposed to go on for? Till when? Because that gives us a time frame for when the Pathfinders didnt want any people around, and when presumably everything is going down
Else they'd have just waited.
3)When were the deaths in 1953? Midsummer? Winter? Et cetera?

 

[DragonParadox]

Looking at their declared route/locations on the Lake would provide additional datapoints
@DragonParadox
QUESTION
1)How old was the dead guy?
2)How long was the race competition originally supposed to go on for? Till when? Because that gives us a time frame for when the Pathfinders didnt want any people around, and when presumably everything is going down
Else they'd have just waited.
3)When were the deaths in 1953? Midsummer? Winter? Et cetera?

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1. 27
2. The next stage of the race should have started today and ended the day after tomorrow
3. Strung out over a period between July and September, it took a while for people to realize that the stuff was apparently killing people

 

[Earth-Destroyer]

@DragonParadox Could we please get an information post about exactly which book for path magic we are using. I thought we where using the new M20 book that came out last month

How you are handling Crafting.

And how splintered gale incarnation clones work, for Path magic and MA. And can they study and learn dots in something and transfer it to Molly like medicine.

 

[uju32]

[X] Why were you killed (Will give a shorter less detailed answer, but will only return a null result if the boat driver actually died of natural causes)
That's more important, I think. Simply "I saw a monster under the lake" is unlikely to get someone killed, as no police would believe it. I want to know the motivation of the killers.

Click to shrink...

We have a good idea of what happens to people unfortunate enough to see and remember the monster.
Their brain doesnt break, their mind does.
And given as dude didnt die on the spot, I doubt he saw Iku Turso.

He was killed either because he saw specific people doing stuff, or as a general deterrent to delay the race thing.
And for us, right now, whats important are the identities of the people he saw, what they were doing, and the identities of everyone involved in his presumed murder.

1. 27
2. The next stage of the race should have started today and ended the day after tomorrow
3. Strung out over a period between July and September, it took a while for people to realize that the stuff was apparently killing people

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Too young for a natural stroke.
Not impossible, just implausible in a young, physically active person. So good odds that if we look at where he was found, it will be magically significant due to signs of a magical murder. Entropy curse, probably.

Right in the pocket, it seems. The perps belive things are coming to a head.

July/September?
So its a late summer/the stars are right kinda situation.
I suspect it might even be linked to a 53 year cycle. Probably magical.

Thank you for the answers.

 

[DragonParadox]

@DragonParadox Could we please get an information post about exactly which book for path magic we are using.
How you are handling Crafting.
And how splintered gale incarnation clones work, for Path magic and MA. And can they study an learn dots in something and transfer it to like medicine.

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1. Sorcerer Revised because that is the one I have
2. Using either the crafting doc from the author of the EXvsWoD book and the paths for alchemy and enchanting from Sorcerer Revised
3. Splintered Gale Incarnation produces a mortal version of the exalt with no supernatural powers but otherwise identical. This incarnation can learn path magic and martial arts as a mortal might through training and the expenditure of XP. Technically if you have a Path as the Exalt you can be the teacher of your own mortal body, adapting the material to be used without the advantages of Exaltation

 

[uju32]

VOTE
[X] What did you see at Soul's Rest? (If cogent will provide a detailed vision)


Our demons dont think it was a natural death, and his age and demographic suggest it isnt either.
So use the option that gives us the most details.

We need details and faces we can plug into Crown of Eyes.
If we can ID one member of the local Pathfinders cell, we can use that to unravel the entire network, either with Crown, or by unleashing the cyberdevils on the Internet.

If this fails, we have the poor sap's ID, and his boat registration for doovers.
We go use his boat as a focus, or get access to his apartment and use the place he was struck down as a Crown focus.
Either works.

 

[BronzeTongue]

For my part I think the most thematic way to bring the infernals in line with everyone else is to hang it around their personal hell; not just in style, but in literal effect. It's clearly supposed to be a cornerstone of the type, but is ambiguous about its interactions with the world at large.

Instead of pulling solaroid abilities in, we should get stuff for drawing more and more power from the hell in the "real" world.

Their whole bit is basically "I'm a (literally) god damned world, come at me if you're hard enough". Some more mechanical support for acting like that would be neat.

 

[the DragonBard]

[X] What did you see at Soul's Rest? (If cogent will provide a detailed vision)

 

[Yog]

He was killed either because he saw specific people doing stuff, or as a general deterrent to delay the race thing.
And for us, right now, whats important are the identities of the people he saw, what they were doing, and the identities of everyone involved in his presumed murder.

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I don't much care what he saw. I care why he was killed. Do his killers fear the investigation? Is their operation entering critical stages and everything is time sensitive? What threat him seeing something represented? That's what important. I want to know why he was killed, not in generalities, but in specifics.

 

[Goldfish]

[X] What did you see at Soul's Rest? (If cogent will provide a detailed vision)

 

[uju32]

I don't much care what he saw. I care why he was killed.

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What he saw is relevant to the case.
And importantly, generates a lot more leads than motive.

Do his killers fear the investigation?

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Yes.
They were shut down in 1953 by apparently entirely mortal authorities. And they are running a nursing home, which is a very regulated installation with government inspections and family scrutiny.

Its entirely logical they dont want to draw adverse scrutiny.

Is their operation entering critical stages and everything is time sensitive?

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Yes.
Else they wouldnt have bothered making a scene and asking the cops to attempt to get rid of the racers; they'd have just waited for them to finish in a couple days and go away. Its a tournament; those things dont last more than a month tops.

As you'll notice upthread, I asked, and the previous deaths in 1953 were in the July September time period.
There is something about the time of year.

What threat him seeing something represented?

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Word getting out.
They have enemies. Obviously. The Red Court literally sent people here from Latin America on their account.
And Rose of Autumn was explicit that she thought the wizard cops would intervene if they found a Pathfinder op.

Hell, bad publicity and you risk resident's families pullimg their family members out.
If your ritual involves said residents, thats kinda bad.

That's what important. I want to know why he was killed, not in generalities, but in specifics.

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Most of the things you want to know? Already stated or inferred.

Me? I want to know WHO he saw, and who might have fingered him for death.
Faces that the Crown can link to names. Shore location. Boats or tools used. Things that Crown and Cyberdevils can use to help us work our way up the chain.

Precise motive isnt important, as long as we're reasonably sure this was Pathfinder work.
And Im reasonably sure that a 27 year old physically active dude doesnt suffer a lethal stroke after a brush with a Pathfinder op by happenstance.

My two cents

 

[Artemis1992]

[X] What did you see at Soul's Rest? (If cogent will provide a detailed vision)

 

[Goldfish]

Here's a thought; Soul's Rest isn't merely a front for the Pathfinders' victims from the Dreamless Sleep experiment, but it was instead established by the victims themselves. Of course, all of those victims living there have been soul-fucked by Outsiders/Old Gods/Fomori/Raksha into monsters of one sort or another.

Rather than acting as a source of victims, the place is probably a coven full of murderous elderly people.

 

[Arhin]

[X] Why were you killed (Will give a shorter less detailed answer, but will only return a null result if the boat driver actually died of natural causes)

 

[uju32]

PS
It occurs to me. Now we know the Soul's Rest management complained to the cops?

We could get a copy of the police report(we could walk in to the police department and ask with Social OR walk in and use HMP on the police receptionist's computer OR use our cyberdevils to hack in OR demand the Reds find out), and use that as a Crown focus to find out who gave the order to lodge a formal police complaint.

Dollars to doughnuts the same person who gave the order for the police complaint is in the chain of command for who murdered the dude, and the command of the local Pathfinder cell.

So Im not too fussed at the moment.
Regardless of which option wins, this is the piece of information that breaks the case wide open.
We're just on a timer, because it seems stuff is going down in the next two or three days.

 

[Wwind]

I'm sure the lack of evil is of great comfort to the human who is getting his soul eaten from the inside.

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Oh I wouldn't dispute that.
I just wanted to mention that when raksha do something monstrous by human standards, they don't do it because they are 'evil'. Raksha literally can't understand things like pain, death, family, etc. At least not without a long, long exposure to humans. Begging a raksha for mercy for example, is meaningless, it thinks you are playing a role.
Now, ones that live in 'formed' world for a long time do manage to adapt. There was even quite a prosperous nation ruled by Raksha nobles who managed it just fine.

 

[uju32]

Here's a thought; Soul's Rest isn't merely a front for the Pathfinders' victims from the Dreamless Sleep experiment, but it was instead established by the victims themselves. Of course, all of those victims living there have been soul-fucked by Outsiders/Old Gods/Fomori/Raksha into monsters of one sort or another.

Rather than acting as a source of victims, the place is probably a coven full of murderous elderly people.

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Nah. Figuring out who owns the place was one of the very first things we did, remember?
And frankly, if this was run by a coven of murderous elderly Dream-eaten, it would be an exclusive retirement home instead of one thats notable for attractive pricing and advertising to undercut its local rivals.

The glove doesnt fit.

 

[Artemis1992]

This one seems at least mostly adapted to our reality.
It's at least not an Outsider.

But playing the role of the ancient sea-monster is not going to promote good communication with mortals.
If the thing had taken the mask of anything remotly human, then an age spend on this planet would have propably turned it relativly humanish.
Or at least as much as most Fey seem to be.

But it has been legendary monster all this time, so if anything, it will be stronger attached to the role than when it first entered reality.

 

[XenonPrime]

July/September is just after the Summer Equinox for the Chicago area if that helps with anyone's musings.

Most mystical events and dates around this time seem to be focused around the tail end of high summer and harvest times.

July 2006 had a conjunction of the Moon and Jupiter on the 6th, the 18th July Mercury had an inferior solar conjunction, the 23rd had a conjunction of the Moon and Venus, the 25th of July (Tomorrow for Molly) was a New Moon.
The 27th of July had a conjunction of the Moon and Mars, this is also the close approach of the Moon and Mars.

The 29th and 30th had meteor showers with the moon at apogee.

If you're working with rituals tied to the stars and cycles there are some fairly reasonable events to tie your mystical focus to/draw power from, although nothing I can see that screams 'The Stars Are Right' but that's looking at it from a Anglo-Saxon traditional perspective on my part.

Just from a very bare understanding of astrological significance the Mars/Moon conjunction could be useful for a ritual with a combative or aggressive theme, it would also be auspicious night for energising, strengthening or confronting a foe or obstacle.

 

[BronzeTongue]

This one seems at least mostly adapted to our reality.
It's at least not an Outsider.

But playing the role of the ancient sea-monster is not going to promote good communication with mortals.
If the thing had taken the mask of anything remotly human, then an age spend on this planet would have propably turned it relativly humanish.
Or at least as much as most Fey seem to be.

But it has been legendary monster all this time, so if anything, it will be stronger attached to the role than when it first entered reality.

Click to shrink...

It's probably closer to its mask than a fey is to a mortal at this point. Rakasha have a weakness to iron, but the myths for this guy don't say anything about it. That's the sort of detail that gets recorded commonly in this sort of thing for a lot of reasons IC; it's absence doesn't mean Turso is immune now, but it is at least indicative that something changed there.

If it's actually fully immune to iron now it's arguable that it's less a Rakasha than something that chest-burst out from one after too many eons trapped in reality.