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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
I thought ghouls were born rather than made, like white court vamps.
Nevernever creatures that Dresden calls super ghouls cross over and sometimes leave a living victim behind, which turns into a bloodline. Which is how their population stays up even though they're cannon fodder that most everyone dislikes.
Do they have super puberty, occasionally pop up as unfortunate mixes of recessive traits align in mortals, or something like that?
Not going to lie, I'm kind of annoyed by this.
Most of the arguments about this have been rooted in practicality and best practices for providing long term assistance to people.
Appearances matter, but they haven't been the primary mover here.
Hell, we've spent more space in the last few pages on arguing about what the most effective way to help than we have on which approach best serves Molly's interests.
I happen to think the most effective thing for us is also the most effective thing for them, but it's still worth noting where the rhetorical focus has been.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Wouldn't that be a kick in the balls? Puberty hits, you suddenly gain mutant super powers like you've read about in the comics, but instead of being Wolverine or Storm, you're Perpetually Hungry Man.
Stealth 4. Not bad.
Academics 1 on all the younglings suggest they got education up to highschool level and noone went farther. The lack of Academics on the older ghouls suggests they are older than might first appear. A lot older.
So the Red Dog core were former Red Court servitors. Thats gonna make them popular with Dresden.
Does explain where the police armor comes from. And the confirmation of Adam being an assumed name makes one wonder what the dude is hiding from.
Given as the destruction of the Red Court presence in Chicago was 5 years ago, that means they've been down here that long.
Which suggests an appalling mortality rate; I doubt they've only had 6 recruits in 5 years. Looks like thats something extra for the Cyberdevils to keep an eye out for in the Chicago area, keeping an eye on runaway children reports.
Get a description of what ghoul puberty is like and feed the description to the cyberdevil collective.
Then call 911 and HMP a cyberdevil into the emergency response computer systems to keep an eye out for relevant reports in the Chicago area.
Whole experience is probably giving Charity and Lydia an eyeful.
Just how badly secrecy about magical heritage can turn out for kids, with a touch of "there but for the grace of God".
Well, that certainly makes our life easier with regards to paperwork.
Assuming all of them are young enough for their birth dates to not raise eyebrows, and have no outstanding criminal warrants.
According to the RPG, ghouls who manage to avoid dying can have lifespans well in excess of demonstrated human maximums, like Gilgamesh of Clan Ereshkigal(Baltimore), who has been leading his clan for two hundred years and is quite the physical terror.
Probably a little mad though.
They are.
The RPG says that ghouls are "probably scions- crossbreeds between uberghouls and humans in the long ago past-that breed true."
Dresden Files RPG Volume 2 Our World p58.
All ghouls have a human form. So its appears compatible to assume some ghouls passing as human in society and having offspring who undergo super puberty with no warning. And if I had to guess, different ghouls awaken at different ages.
Thats in addition to firstgen products of an encounter with a uberghoul, assuming they are still a thing.
Note that there are multiple ghoul clans, a veritable network of them.
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First generation ghouls are a thing rarer these days, but can still happen. It is universally a male pure-blood ghoul and a human woman. The mother usually sickens shortly after birth and the infant is generally stolen away by the local ghoul clan due to their perceived power/holyness. There is a reason why Lamashtu is called out as a demon-goddess who preys in infants, they tend to vanish when her hand is out in the world
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
[]Plan Diamonds Are Forever
-[] Masterworks for Money: 1AP
--[] Diamonds are a girl's best friend
-[] Look into the Minor Talents of Chicago: 1 AP
--[] A Rose's Tale
-[] A Friend in Need: 1AP
--[] Dreaming True
-[] The Bridges of the Spirit: 1AP
-[] Not a Wizard, but: 1AP
-[] Restoring the Last Station(0/8): 1AP
So just these left I think.
-[] Masterworks for Money: 1AP
--[] Diamonds are a girl's best friend
-[] Look into the Minor Talents of Chicago: 1 AP
--[] A Rose's Tale
-[] A Friend in Need: 1AP
--[] Dreaming True
-[] Not a Wizard, but: 1AP
-[] Restoring the Last Station(0/8): 1AP
So just these left I think.
DarkLight140
Credit to Team
- Location
- Lost in my thoughts
Speaking as someone who grew up in the area, Chicago is called the Windy City because it's full of blowhards. In conversation between those from the city invoking the title regarding the weather is vanishingly rare compared to using it to reference people. Claiming that it provides evidence of heightened exposure hazards for the homeless comes off as somewhere between ignorant and disingenuous to me; the temperature provides the primary dangers there because Chicago has one of the coldest average winter temperatures for a major US metropolitan area.
Not really. It just means that their knowledge atrophied to the point of being unusable. Note how only the youngest one still remembers how to use cutlery.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Since we are focusing on these 10 ghouls for now what are our long term plans for them? Are we going to try and retrain them from scratch for potential civilian jobs so we can mostly take them off our hands or are we going build up their existing skills to make them elite mooks that might be useful for us?
I don't think that we have any special advantages for the first. The training charm we have access to is limited in what it can be used to train.
If we are making them into an elite mooks formation then we need to get them arms and armor, but mostly importantly transportation. Likely building a large armored troop transport that looks like a normal 18 wheeler.
Or since we don't need to worry about drivers with the cyber devils we could do a bunch of smaller cars.
I don't think that we have any special advantages for the first. The training charm we have access to is limited in what it can be used to train.
If we are making them into an elite mooks formation then we need to get them arms and armor, but mostly importantly transportation. Likely building a large armored troop transport that looks like a normal 18 wheeler.
Or since we don't need to worry about drivers with the cyber devils we could do a bunch of smaller cars.
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Well, they have stealth 4 and no obvious supernatural "tell" as it was, like fear of the sun, running / holy water, etc. Are they even inconvenienced by threshold at all? The obvious choice would be to train them as stealth / infiltration specialists capable of passing as mortals.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Stealth is your Sam Fisher/Solid snake style sneaking skills. Larceny is for knowing about stuff like security systems, lockpicking, cons, etc. What skill would even be mundane disguise?
Subterfuge / Performance ?
Anyway, I maintain that ninja way is their way.
Well it's less 'remember' and more 'cares enough about it to do so'.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
We don't have any skill in Larceny so we can't teach it. Also if we plan on using as spec ops the problem of getting them to location skill exists.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
I figured it was simpler to fold stealth into the skill lists for the ghoul groups.
Adam/Bones/Lockjaw: Firearms 3(Skilled professional but not expert), Brawl 3(Skilled professional but not expert), Subterfuge 1(Knows the Basics of Deceiving and spotting deception), Stealth 4(Experts at sneaking around like Sam Fisher/Solid Snake)
5 Younger Ghouls/Sarah: Brawl 2(Have some understanding of fistfighting by human standards), Melee 2(Have some understanding of how to handle a sword or similar weapons), Academics 1, Stealth 4(Experts at sneaking around like Sam Fisher/Solid Snake)
We can use the more experienced Ghouls if we want to have a sniper watching an event I just realized. Though first we'd need rifles. And we'd have to decide on when to do that carefully once we get them.
If we send out both of them one of them can even be a spotter.
Edit: Besides the Sniper route we can also use them to have people followed.
TL;DR:
Our Ghouls are currently good for
1. A Sniper Team if we can get them a rifle
2. Tailing people
3. Generic Muscle/Security
Adam/Bones/Lockjaw: Firearms 3(Skilled professional but not expert), Brawl 3(Skilled professional but not expert), Subterfuge 1(Knows the Basics of Deceiving and spotting deception), Stealth 4(Experts at sneaking around like Sam Fisher/Solid Snake)
5 Younger Ghouls/Sarah: Brawl 2(Have some understanding of fistfighting by human standards), Melee 2(Have some understanding of how to handle a sword or similar weapons), Academics 1, Stealth 4(Experts at sneaking around like Sam Fisher/Solid Snake)
We can use the more experienced Ghouls if we want to have a sniper watching an event I just realized. Though first we'd need rifles. And we'd have to decide on when to do that carefully once we get them.
If we send out both of them one of them can even be a spotter.
Edit: Besides the Sniper route we can also use them to have people followed.
TL;DR:
Our Ghouls are currently good for
1. A Sniper Team if we can get them a rifle
2. Tailing people
3. Generic Muscle/Security
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
There's no way gunsmithing is more than one degree removed from our mechanics specialty for Craft, so we roll 12 dice with Excellency. Procuring guns is not a problem for us. Ammo is slightly more of a problem, unless we spend a ton of time making bullets by hand. Although we are fully capable of doing that in small batches for select missions where we need sniper overwatch.
Having Craft as a key ability and TTC as a charm really does simplify logistics that way.
Making guns and bullets is likely to be the easy part, maybe we could make machines to make those, the problem would be the gunpowder.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Most modern guns include the powder with the bullet, so I was counting them together. Although, if our crafting abilities could turn coal into diamonds, create custom alloys for a shield, or make spectacular cooking, I really don't think that the chemistry involved in making the gunpowder is where our abilities are going to fail. And a good bit of the raw chemicals involved in the makeup of gunpowder can be found in some form in your average kitchen. And that's discounting custom gunpowder made with substitute ingredients. There's plenty of ways to make common household chemicals go boom, after all, and if we design the gun from the ground up to use our replacement powder and use advanced TTC chemistry tools beyond the reach of what your average DIY chemist can do, there shouldn't be any problems.
You can definitely make gunpowder out of household items with enough time
Good night guys, update will be in the morning.
Good night guys, update will be in the morning.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Would it be helpful if the Ghouls have intimidate or not? I am picturing going somewhere with two Ghoul bodyguards. But we are already supernaturally intimidating and they would be unlikely to be able to guard us against anything. Could they be used as tool that adds to our intimation roll?
yes but for the Fortune path as it keys off of intimation, and for every 3 helpers that roll a success the max path rating increases by 1. 9 helpers could let Molly with fortune 3 cast 6 dot effects.
Kind of seems like getting a few yappy chihuahuas to help an Abrams tank intimidate people. Unless we use them in a stunt or something I'm not sure what they bring to the table that justifies making an infernal more intimidating under most circumstances.
The only edge case I can see off the top of my head would be dealing with someone we don't want to clue into the supernatural, but do want to credibly threaten. In which case having some hefty people to hold them down and threaten to shatter their knees or something would be useful.
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING AT THE APOCALYPSE
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
I mean, a lot of it comes down to the fact that we won't consistently be there. We are going to have too many irons in the fire, fighting one war on a dozen fronts, and sometimes we're going to have to leave things to allies and followers. These guys will be keeping the peace with whatever other community members we accumulate while we are personally negotiating terms with the Red King or something.
Some of the guys we are keeping in line would be baseliners, some other forms of low level gribbly. Or even just other ghouls we haven't met yet. Kind of our secret police? Watching, interceding where its sensible, telling us when its not, giving the feeling of their being present even when they aren't because you just never know.
Its always better to handle things ourselves but Its not always our choice: Sometimes our problems are going to have to wait in line.
Hah. We really will need to move up on the gem manufacturing market. These guys will be receiving a salary.
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Well yeah, minions being able to do stuff for you is one of the major selling points. I was addressing the idea of them being useful props for enhancing our intimidation, not their general utility.