Tell that to Nicodemius Archleone after Hades vault rai
I will address this, because its been long enough ago that I think you are forgetting the actual sequence of events
1)In Small Favor, Nicodemus betrayed Mab's Accords in getting the Denarians to attack a signatory outside of the rules, and then to violate the diplomatic immunity of the mediator that they called for by kidnapping and torturing her.
He also incurred Marcone's enmity by kidnapping and torturing him. This is important.
2) In Skin Game?
Nicky called in a favor that Mab incurred around a thousand years ago during the last transition when Anduriel lent her some aid to perform her duties. He did this in order to steal shit from Hades.
3) Critically, Mab didnt do shit to him.
She and Marcone and Hades laid a trap, and he walked right in eyes open despite being given repeated opportunities to turn back.
Everything that happened to him, Nicodemus did to himself. Thats why it hurt.
He sacrificed his own daughter to get into Hades vault.
He damaged his own reputation, expended his own allies, minions and resources, for this. Noone made him do that. People tried to talk him out of it. His wife/ex tried to make it physically impossible for him to go on. He went ahead anyway.
3)When the heist was over, but the mission was still ongoing, he broke the truce by attacking the Winter Knight and his allies with the help of the Genoskwa and Lasciel/Ascher. Harry had just come prepared for such a betrayal.
Because Mab had warned him.
And in so doing he got yet more of his allies(Lasciel/Ascher) killed or incapacitated.
4)Then, in the most spectacular case of sour grapes yet, he goes out, gathers up his remaining mortal minions, and uses them to attack Michael's home and family(which also happens to be Winter Lady! Molly's family), only to get punked and lose them all, and have to flee in fear from a rekindled Fidelacchius and a new Knight.
Oh, and Winter Lady Molly has casus belli for vendetta against him as well
So in conclusion
-Mab was not allied to Nicodemus, just repaying a favor owed to an enemy by lending him her Knight
-Everything that happened to Nicky, he did to himself. Against advice.
-He tried to betray the people he'd hired, just they were prepared for it.
-Then instead of cutting his losses, he tried to murder the family of Michael Carpenter (and Molly Carpenter, the new Winter Lady) and gets blown the fuck out
-And now he's made it extra personal for Winter Lady Molly as well
They are aquatic. It's advantageous to fight in the water, not in the (presumably) air-filled base
That's incorrect.
They are
amphibious. They can fight in water or in the air.
Add actual fortifications and you have the advantage.
The situational benefits of fighting in an enclosed space, where you can force the vampires to come at you in limited numbers, is superior to allowing them to melee you in open waters where they outnumber you 1.5 to 1.
Lash is a shadow of a Fallen. Even if it is barely a year old, its personality, memories and experiences are shaped by eons and eons of cruelty and evil that is Lasciel. Lash is literally designed to be an evil seductress incarnate. And that's leaving aside how in this quest Lash is a subsoul of Lasciel.
The sins of the parent are not the sins of the child. Not in this cosmology.
The primary issue with Lash was getting through to her that she wasnt Lasciel, and that she had a choice.
Lash is a cross between a clone and a child; closest example I can think of is an Eclipse Phase beta fork.
She has an independent existence. She runs on Dresden's hardware, not Lasciel's.
Thats why she is mortal enough to be killed by brain damage.
This isnt Ex2.
If she was a subsoul of an angel something as trivial as brain damage due to mental acceleration would have done nothing.
At worst she'd respawn.
Mab is also called cruel.
Mab is called cruel by
outsiders. Her own people dont call her cruel to my recollection.
De Leon is called cruel by his own underlings.
They are not the same.
He is currently in the process of protecting human civilization from predations of old and evil forces.
Point is: in canon Dresden redeemed worse than what he is. Certainly worked with worse. Using only the text of the quest as it is written, there's a continuity of consciousness between human self and a vampire self. Which means that the vampire could, in fact, be redeemed. And I would certainly not hold someone's typical 16th century attitudes towards natives as a completely damning characteristic against them.
1)No, he is in the process of backstabbing a geopolitical rival.
The fact that it also has the ancillary benefit to Humanity of potentially discomfiting eldritch intruders into our reality is welcome, but thats not the primary reason they are here.
Its worth remembering that its Red Court policy to reach through the Outer Gates to bring Outsiders, who want to destroy reality, for use as combat assets in the current war. Molly's first combat encounter after getting home from Arctis Tor was against a Red Court assassination team with Outsider assets.
Im sure Blanche believed what he told us.
But you really shouldnt take the explanation of low level Rampires at face value for why their bosses are doing stuff.
2)No, that isnt true.
Dresden redeemed Lash, thats all, and Lash hasnt done what any of the vampires here has done. She remembers a ton of what
Lasciel has done, but she's done nothing herself. Frankly, between Harry and Lash, Harry has dirtier hands.
And Dresden only worked with anyone clearly terrible post-Skin Game.
3)Thats inaccurate.
The quest as written has said nothing about the nature of Red Court vampires.
We are working off of canon and Word of Butcher.
This. As long as someone is dealing in good faith with us, and so far these vampires do, we should be dealing in good faith with them.
We ARE dealing in good faith.
We make no promises we dont intend to keep, we dont betray people during a truce. Nobody is even suggesting killing all the Reds after this mission as long as they dont try to backstab us first.
Thats very much not the same thing as being naive about the nature of our temporary allies, or turning our back on people who will take the first opportunity they can get away with to do us harm.
Reds are untrustworthy.
Whether its nature or nurture makes no real difference at this point; it might matter in the future when we have space to put them and can make them something else, but not now.
That is a great charm for whipping something out when nobody expects it, but the actual best firearms and heavy weaponry would outpace most of "default" weapon templates by far thanks to Alchemy and Enchanting; temporary weapons lag behind by a lot in comparison to their crafted equivalent.
I am very much not interested in guns as our ranged option, I just want to be mostly realistic about what our blasty charms are competing with. Upper tiers guns from the M20 statblook are very impressive.
...TBH, the only reason why I even think about ranged is the cool factor; somebody already mathed out that we can reach near mach speed with just core charms and shintai, and that was before Alchemy + Enchanting came into the picture with their additional multiplicative boosts.
60 yards, tho. That's just painful. Mind Hand's dice pool is worse, but its range is "as far as you can see" and it has pretty much no visible effects.
1)I've been using the weapon stat block in ExWoD, and in that stat bloc Sandstrike Blast has the same 8 damage rating as the most powerful firearm available there, the shotgun. The 15 damage AoE effect that costs 1 Essence is almost 2x that.
2)Mind Hand Manipulation is more a utility effect than a combat one.
Worth getting for disable, disarm and manipulation, but not really something for killing hostiles at range.
3)60 yards range is likely to be adequate when combined with mobility charms.
Do recall the ranges at which most Dresdenverse combat appears to occur is fairly short. White Council Wardens carry handguns but dont seem to bother with longarms for much the same reason.
