Yzarc
The Spark of Madness
As someone from 2.5E who rolled 27 dice on a difficulty 7 and blotched it with no less than two 1s, I beg to differ.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
- Location
- washington
I mean Harry's training with his gramps wasn't that long and they had to deal with actually learning magic wouldn't just the academic part be easier? Especially with exalted learning speed?
The largest issue with Oneiromancy is that 99% of its uses are a violation of the Laws. Specifically "Thou Shalt Not Invade the Mind of Another". That's pretty much all Oneiromancy does until 6 dots. Ok, there's also "find sleeping beings" 1 dot ritual in the Sorcerer Companion book, but as it is, I am struggling to think on how to use Oneiromancy lawfully. Maybe animal companions? You are allowed to shape their minds. In this way Rosie could synergy well with Lydia, who also has familiar-related powers.
And we'll need to talk with Rosie about the Laws sooner, rather than later.
And we'll need to talk with Rosie about the Laws sooner, rather than later.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, we have Occult as a key ability and ignore 1s, so… (does math) we have less than a 2% failure chance rolling 18 dice at DC9. Better than the odds of not rolling a crit fail on a d20 system by half. Good enough for me.
- Location
- washington
The dice will find a way
There is another way, don't use it on humans. The deathless fey dream on paths of silver and inhuman hungers tinge the dreams of the vampire. Of course any baby Oneiromancer who tried to do than on unwilling supernaturals would not live long, but if they were to say work in conjunction with... a counseling service for unwilling monsters that would be very useful indeed.
So, yeah, non-humans. Starting from animals (pet counseling and therapy, including for service animals could work as a business), and oneself (given how memorization works, I am fairly sure that using Oneiromancy as a learning aid to revise in dreams is possible), and continuing onto sapient unensouled non-humans.
This means that at some point Rosie will be interacting with fae on a continuous basis, though, if she chooses to develop her talent.
And we'll also need to make sure she doesn't try to aid her baby's sleep or soothe their bad dreams.
Edit: and there has to be some sort of divination aspect involved, given that she dreamed true of us.
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There is, dreams see into the Nevernever inherently, so you could for instance use your own dreams to find ghosts (whose haunts are basically their living dreamscapes turned deathscapes) or you know... look into the heart of Arctis Tor. That part is not indicated for novices.
Rashid's carpet could have been a magic item, and likely was.
Ebenezer's boulder otoh bears all the hallmarks of Evocation; we can see him actively maintaining the flight spell. Citation:
And from behind me came a deep, warbling, throbbing hum, like nothing I'd heard before.
My dad, the illusionist. I slipped the dark opal ring I'd gotten from Molly off my hand and palmed it.
Then I turned.
Hovering maybe twenty feet up, with his feet planted firmly on a stone the size of a Buick, was the Blackstaff, Ebenezar McCoy. One hand was spread out to one side for balance, fingers crooked in a mystic sign, sort of a kinetic shorthand for whatever spell was keeping that boulder in the air.
The other gripped his staff, carved with runes like mine, and they glowed with sullen red-orange energy. His face had twisted into a rictus of cold, hard fury. Flickers of static electricity played along the surface of the stone.
Peace Talks Chapter 31, Page 297
My dad, the illusionist. I slipped the dark opal ring I'd gotten from Molly off my hand and palmed it.
Then I turned.
Hovering maybe twenty feet up, with his feet planted firmly on a stone the size of a Buick, was the Blackstaff, Ebenezar McCoy. One hand was spread out to one side for balance, fingers crooked in a mystic sign, sort of a kinetic shorthand for whatever spell was keeping that boulder in the air.
The other gripped his staff, carved with runes like mine, and they glowed with sullen red-orange energy. His face had twisted into a rictus of cold, hard fury. Flickers of static electricity played along the surface of the stone.
Peace Talks Chapter 31, Page 297
Indeed, we see him breaking chunks off the boulder he's flying around on for use as ammunition in the same scene, which is not a very enchantment/crafting thing to do.
Ebenezar slashed his hand down at the boulder beneath him with a word, and in the same spell a blade of unseen force slashed a three hundred-pound section of rock free of the boulder he stood on and sent it zipping toward my boat at several hundred feet per second.
I wasn't even going to try to stop it. It was just too much energy, too much momentum. It would be like lifting a medieval shield to block a descending war maul. Sure, you can do it, but if you do, you're gonna wish you hadn't.
No. The smart thing to do is to give that war maul a single sharp lateral tap just as it begins its forward momentum. A few pounds of pressure in the right place, at the right time, are often more effective than expending heroic levels of energy.
And besides. If I tried to match the old man swing for swing, he'd bury me. Not so much because he was stronger, although he was, but because he was better than me, more energy efficient, milking twice the efficacy out of every single spell while expending half the energy to do it. Wizard fights between the old and the young were a reverse image of mundane confrontations between the same. I was the one who was weaker, slower, limited in what moves I could attempt, and had to play it smart if I wanted to win.
So as the old man sent the section of boulder at the Water Beetle, I lifted my staff, modifying the formula of my simple force-blow spell to send it in from the side instead of straight ahead, and smacked the projectile firmly in the flank as it got moving.
It streaked forward at an angle, wobbling and tumbling as a result, and smashed into one of the boats farther down the dock, plunging through the hull and part of the deck, straight on through the hold and out the other side, with such force that water splashed a hundred feet.
The old man brought his boulder around in a swooping arc, studying me through narrowed eyes, his voice bitter. "Now you learn that you don't have to swing for the fences every time."
Peace Talks Chapter 32, Page 301-302
I wasn't even going to try to stop it. It was just too much energy, too much momentum. It would be like lifting a medieval shield to block a descending war maul. Sure, you can do it, but if you do, you're gonna wish you hadn't.
No. The smart thing to do is to give that war maul a single sharp lateral tap just as it begins its forward momentum. A few pounds of pressure in the right place, at the right time, are often more effective than expending heroic levels of energy.
And besides. If I tried to match the old man swing for swing, he'd bury me. Not so much because he was stronger, although he was, but because he was better than me, more energy efficient, milking twice the efficacy out of every single spell while expending half the energy to do it. Wizard fights between the old and the young were a reverse image of mundane confrontations between the same. I was the one who was weaker, slower, limited in what moves I could attempt, and had to play it smart if I wanted to win.
So as the old man sent the section of boulder at the Water Beetle, I lifted my staff, modifying the formula of my simple force-blow spell to send it in from the side instead of straight ahead, and smacked the projectile firmly in the flank as it got moving.
It streaked forward at an angle, wobbling and tumbling as a result, and smashed into one of the boats farther down the dock, plunging through the hull and part of the deck, straight on through the hold and out the other side, with such force that water splashed a hundred feet.
The old man brought his boulder around in a swooping arc, studying me through narrowed eyes, his voice bitter. "Now you learn that you don't have to swing for the fences every time."
Peace Talks Chapter 32, Page 301-302
Its difficult, not unprecedented.
Point of order: Dresden draws that comparison, and there is good reason to think his numbers are way off.
That said, the general point is accurate. The supernatural world does eat people on an industrial scale.
Of the four changeling friends that the old Summer Knight Reuel was looking out for, one was dead by the end of Summer Knight, and another two by Cold Days, including the one who became Winter Lady.
Fix is the only survivor of the four.
The Ordo Lebes, smallscale practitioners, still lost multiple members in White Night to directed predation by Whampires.
Even the Alphas, a twelve strong pack of trained werewolves with a White Council ally, who survived the events of Fool Moon and the Faerie Court War in Summer Knight, lost Kirby to a naagloshi, and almost lost both Georgia and Andi to a snatch team of Fomori servitors just kidnapping human talents for servitorization and worse.
Rosie is a tasty little baby gazelle that was just born on the African savannah, and there is a race between her figuring out how to walk and run before the hyenas and lions smell the blood and show up for dinner.
Point of order: Molly was a Grade A snooper at doors. Thats how she knew details about things like Dresden's love life.
Very little chance Michael actually told her about it. Besides, in this AU the teenage Carpenter children know about the Denarians and were taught to identify them because they are in the direct line of fire.
In this universe, information being a memetic threat is an issue.
Supernatural entities considering people knowing about them as bringing them into their purview is an issue.
Not to mention that there's the subset of people desperate enough or greedy enough to seek them out.
Canonically, Harry's brother Thomas didnt know what the Denarians were when he first fought them at Marcone's safehouse in Small Favor. Harry didnt tell him about the Denarians until after he killed one.
And he never told him about Lasciel.
Most supernaturals dont know who they are. And spirits explicitly dont like to talk about them either.
Strictly speaking, not entirely accurate.
1)The White Council allegedly views non-Council summoning of demons with a very jaundiced eye. One where the response is often lethal. Morgan declaring that demon summoning(not use for black magic, just summoning) was likely a sufficient violation of his parole to get Dresden the death penalty was an explicit plot point near the climax of Storm Front iirc.
2) I remember Dresden saying that if the Council had found out about Lasciel when she was there, they'd have him executed.
3) You can, however make a blanket policy to "make no bargains, and no deals" with supernatural entities that arent on an explicit whitelist. Its the same principle why zoos keep chimpanzees but civilians are strongly advised not to.
Or why possession of radioactive material is restricted.
Or, in Fool Moon, why Dresden was willing to give lessons to Kim Delaney but balked when she asked for high end warding/binding.
These things arent the same.
- Storm Front Morgan is probably a very bad measure of Council general policy, he was actively looking for something to pin on Dresden
- I think the Lasciel thing is more the Council not wanting to lose all the secrets inside Dresden's skull to the Nickleheads, after all they do not go after said demon hosts directly when their name is not 'Harry Dresden'
- That seems more like a worry that whatever Kim was trying to bind would kill her than that the Council would kill her
Most sorcerers in the WoD seem to have multiple Paths.
If you check the organizations part of the Sorcerer books, they all appear to teach multiple.
Even if one is your Primary.
In Dresden Files, most minor practitioners seem to have at least some Summoning/Binding/Warding, because one of the essentials seem to be some level of protective warding around your home to reinforce your threshold.
And possibly for protection when you're outside your home.
Even non-practitioners like Butters know enough in the way of Warding to throw up a warding circle to defend against ghosts, for example.
1)Fair. But he wasnt going to make the decision, other wizards were.
And Dresden believed him, which lends credibility to the suggestion; you'd expect the parolee to have looked up the relevant laws.
2)Not particularly. The Denarians have Fallen in their heads, with all the knowledge that implies.
A sub-forty year old wizard who only became a Council functionary after Dead Beat doesnt really know any deep lore.
To my recollection, Dresden picked up Lasciel several books before becoming a Warden.
Besides, the Council were at war for essentially all of the books post-Grave Peril, first with the Reds and then the Fomori.
Manpower issues were likely a thing.
And its not like they actually get a heads up on Nickelhead presence anyway.
3)Why not both?
After all, the White Council would only kill her, and they'd try to do it clean.
A nonhuman supernatural entity of that power level could well do worse. And did.
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- ST Dresden was barely on his feet and still shell-shocked about the Doom, also OOC the first few books had not settled on certain aspects of world-building. Dresden also claims the circle Kim wanted in Fool Moon could bind an archangel
- Procedures, Ways, training methods, even just the addresses and known abilities of powers of older wizards. Anduriel may be able to get any one of these things eventually, but not all of them and not as coherently. Plus one would think that if the council was always at war with the Fallen Harry would not be so clueless about them when he first met them, something like passing out descriptions of all the more obvious ones to every wizard makes sense. Yet he did not know what Ursiel was until he soul-gazed the poor SoB
- Sure it could have been both, but it does not have to be is my point, the risk of the binding itself adequately explains his hesitancy.
- Location
- washington
I mean for binding why wouldn't it? As powerful as certain Dresden files beings are there are plenty of rules they follow by and plenty of weaknesses they have. Word of Jim archangels are multiverse beings yet they can still permanently fall if given the chance just from one choice in one dimension as seen in skin games with Michael.
Not that any of that's true here in your quest. In the books though I don't see how it contradicts things.
Because if that would work, if that was something a minor practitioner like Kim could do it would be trivial for the Denaians to keep Uriel on lockdown for eternity and a day with duped sorcerers. Other angels could not interfere because of free will and there are only so many knights and a lot more minor practitioners able to draw circles.
Is kind of underdeveloped as a Path, at least in Revised. It needs additional work. I previously mentioned that Paths are "spectrums of effects" rather than strict "spell-lists"; well, Oneiromancy is one of those that's that benefits from that the least.
I also personally find it mechanically whack, because it needs like, 4 dots to accomplish WP recovery or coherent message-sending, stuff that other paths get at 1-2 dots. It also get none of potentially nifty effects that could be themed off dreaming, or any rituals, or anything, really.
- Location
- washington
In fairness an archangel could probably just refuse the summoning? Also you know they have canonically at least what is basically omniscience.
Edit: same ways there's no way mab goes to every single person who says her name three times. Probably.
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The intelectus of an arch-angel is limited and the Denarians would only have to get lucky once. I just do not think it is reasonable for them to be bound by mortals that unskilled because as a faction they are crippled in dealing with mortals by the need to protect free will
- Location
- washington
I mean archangels barely affect the world as far as we know or at least mortals anyways. I don't think it's been retconned so much as a detail you find stupid? Also the limits of said intellectus have not been defined so there's at least good chances they know of anything that summons them. I'm not sure archangels even normally take summonings so I still see no reason why this wouldn't work. Also as far as I know as powerful as certain beings are in this setting there are plenty of ways to kill stupidly powerful beings in canon I'm unsure why some things aren't just that easy. Given harry could just be wrong let's be honest though a gun could kill at least some gods on Halloween though I don't see why a binding couldn't bind one.
It is kind of a base assumption that they normally do big important things that have to do with the workings of the universe, things that would be rather hard to manage if they were nailed to a spot by a bit of chalk.
Bro, i will be the first in line to say that dresden file entities are massively overhyped compared to their capacity. Helll apparently the eye of balor can just kill an archangel if they don't despite the fact that it shouldn't even reigister to a galaxy folding being.
But them being able to be bound would be like if someone can bind mab but even more so. It maybe technically possible but no one can do it.
But them being able to be bound would be like if someone can bind mab but even more so. It maybe technically possible but no one can do it.
1)Fair point about the worldbuilding.
2)Nah.
The White Council has literally thousands of adult members who are older and more knowledgeable than Harry about the inner workings of the place. Dresden is kinda infamous for not spending time at the Council.
If the Denarians wanted information, they have always had the option of doing a honeypot on some random wizard by showing up with a new face, worming into his good graces and looting his brain.
Kinda like Ascher/Lasciel tried with Dresden.
Or just the magic equivalent of brute force cryptography: kidnapping a victim and doing a Father Vincent to them in a dungeon somewhere before feeding them to a ghoul. Not much you can do to defend against Nicky showing up with antimagic bracelets, a five dollar wrench and Anduriel to crosscheck answers by shadowhopping.
3)Clarification: He recognized it was a demon, and guessed it was a Fallen angel. But he didnt know the Denarians were a thing.
His exact words at the end of chapter 6 were "The Fallen cannot do that. They are not allowed."
That said, yeah, if he didnt know about the Denarians, its not goimg to be common knowledge among wizards.
4)Fair enough.
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Fair enough there seems to be an instance of non-Law Breaking action by a wizard that the council will punish with death potentially because there is no known way to get a Shadow out of a wizard's head without surrendering magic. Though that does raise the question of why the Denarians are not better known since they seem to be the greatest threat of Fallen corruption.
1) They scare people.
Bob was pretty terrified when Dresden showed him Ursiel's sigil. People dont talk about scary stuff.
They're not only terrifyingly dangerous in their personal capacity, with esoteric capabilities? They are also often working with logistical support from Big Lucy and the Organization Down Under.
Very few sensible supernaturals want that sort of attention.
Even someone as powerful as Odin needed Mab to be around in order to be sure to block Anduriel from spying on his conversation with Dresden in Skin Game.
2) Nicodemus Archleone has a policy of wiping out Church archives about Denarians in general and himself in particular every other century according to Father Forthill in Death Masks. I suspect he does much the same to other places and people he can get at.
Thats added incentive for those who know to keep their mouths shut.
3)They're the most potent threat, rather.
All those sorcerers and minor talents who will willingly do deals for power or sacrifice victims way outnumber them. And entities like Chauncy are always willing to do a deal.
The Denarians just have much more grandiose ambitions, unlike the small fry.
4)Remember how people knowing about naagloshi makes them more powerful?
I wouldnt be surprised if there's a conceptually similar effect with the Fallen ie they get pinged when someone is thinking about them or pays them attention, even without calling their name.
Sorta like one of the Infernal anima powers, the one that draws your attention whenever someone mentions your name.
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A quote that would have been perfect "You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
May have been hyperbole.
Invade the mind of another is loose in some ways, depending on the political mood of the counsel at the time.
I mean, they allow notice-me-not charms that only work by surface level mind edits and stuff like sleep spells without more than a little grumbling.
The big line as far as I can see is performing persistent editing; the deeper you go the worse. Stepping into a dream to look around is less invasive than the variety of effects they do allow, so my bet is that absent our interference she'd get a conversation like Mortimer had; a warden giving him a Thou Shalt Not style warning about where the lines are.
Powers that shape dreams would get progressively more grey as they became more impactful, and then only as they influence other people. Persistent self buffs might be fine.
It seems reasonable to me that you'd learn how to control your own dreams before those of others, so mid dot effects to do usefully things plausible.
Take memory for example; one of the key functions of sleep relates to encoding things in long term memory. Baseline humans kind of suck at this, but using dream magic to construct something like the classic mind palace trope might help with that.
Then from there building dream constructs to auto search and pattern match could be immensely helpful. Not as an immediate thing, but imagine being able to take one glance through an area you're investigating, then take a nap and allow some dream daemons compare it to perfect copies of everything similar you've ever seen, against algorithms programmed from your memories of forensic analysis techniques, to pull patterns and relevant data for you at speed.
If you take dreams to be somewhere between temporary states of altered cognition and interactions with the spirit world, and dream magic the ability to program them, then there's a lot you could do.
An entire suite of utility tools might be possible, from little things like calculators leveraging the mind's own subconscious physics engine to training dreams to boost learning for other skills. You might even be able to do stuff like build a checksum dream to detect mental alterations, to catch stuff like that time Harry was forced to forget he liked to use fire.
Depending on the exact limits a really good dream sorcerer might be able to create something like a HUD via daydreams.
Stuff to highlight important things like where to stab this obscure monster that you saw in a book once to make it die properly, escape routes glimpsed from building plans, or profiles assembled from background research and past experiences injected into your stream of consciousness as you recognize an important person's face.
If programmable altered states of mind are possible, then translating that to low level skill boosts by way of autocorrect style mental overlays might be available for a really good practitioner.
Some of those are a stretch to one extent or another, but they seem a lot less bullshit than manifesting dreams as physical things.
Including stuff like this would make Rosie's variety of magic a lot more flavorful and interesting to work with without causing balance issues, legal trouble, or throwing out the fundamental nature of the path.