Yes, strangers.So classmates from school are strangers? Teachers? Neighbors? There is no end of people that can be targeted if the objective is to hurt us who are closer to us and don't have any defenses. But unless you are proposing that we become a hermit from fear the only thing to do is the best we can. Which in most cases means taking revenge.
1)That's inaccurate.The whole point of the scheme is that the white council nominally considers them their responsibility, but only pays enough attention to kill the most overt warlocks.
The whole point was to exploit the inattention of the council to cull mortal mages from the population by going after the demographic most likely to produce noteworthy talents.
It wouldn't have worked at the desired scale if the council was paying enough attention to actually matter before it was far too late.
As to the under siege stuff, that might have been too extreme. They are however more at risk even with their knowledge. See how senior members of the ordo die on contact with middling members of the white court running the most direct possible campaigns.
They are in fact targets because most of them are more material than regular mortals for most purposes. Reds keep something of the talents they had pre conversion, whites are iffy but since they eat from your spiritual energies it wouldn't surprise me if talents taste better, people like the pathfinders prefer someone with more to work with when they start their butchery.
It's a pretty clear pattern that makes people like them just powerful enough to be better food but not quite powerful enough to actually stop someone from taking them.
Best they can do is make it more annoying than it's worth most of the time. That might not be a siege like what the fomor put them under, but that feeling of insecurity isn't paranoia.
I think you're dramatically overstating the risk of our involvement; I doubt this will be used against us much more than the paranet is used against Harry.
Yeah.Ok, this looks pretty solid, looks like we are joining the local minor talent organization. How did someone put it? As though a whale has joined the shrimp colony.
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Dec 31, 2022 at 3:07 AM, finished with 126 posts and 29 votes.
[X] Yes, join the Order of the Cauldron
[X] Write in, Plan Viser!
-[X] Had you not been what you are, you'd have joined in a heartbeat. As it was, they can likely see well, what you do. Joining directly would have implications on many fronts. Instead, would they be willing to accept you as an aid, possible protector, sorta kinda joined wink wink nudge nudge. Basically you like them lots, but you don't want them to be overwhelmed by your official presence.
-[X] Lydia is naturally someone different though, and she has her own voice! She also has your very complete support.
[x] No, do not join the Order of the Cauldron
[X] Yes, join the Order of the Cauldron
-[X] As an associated member? Explain how various obligations might keep both of you from the meetings at times.
... How is the number of people in a group relates to us being able to have friends, including close friends, in that group? The argument, as I understand it, wasn't "they can hurt anyone in our school to make us hurt". It was "we have mundane friends, including close ones, from school. Those could be hurt to attack us". Unless you posit that Molly doesn't have mundane friends, or should abandon them.The average Illnois public high school has around 490 students, which is around 20-30 students less than the US national average.
Thats an average of a hundred and sixty some students per grade. Not counting teachers. An apartment building can have a close to a hundred apartments. A neighborhood can have even more residences.
So, again, like I said, strangers.
For those at home keeping track, a listing of current organizations and associated flash points
I'm thinking of it as a safety in emergencies.I am not in favor of letting people know we can bug cellphones. Especially since Beckitt canonically works for Marcone.
None of these people have any ability to keep secrets from motivated opposition. Furthermore, they dont really need the ability to magicproof their electronics anyway. They arent wizards, they dont mess with magic strong enough to fry electronics.
The whole point of the scheme was that the White Council was distracted with the other war and thus a window of vulnerability existed if they threw in with the Reds, and they could do it covertly. Furthermore, the perpetrator(s) when seen, deliberately dressed like Warden(s) to foster distrust between the White Council and the human magical community.
Which is why despite the murders starting in four other cities on the west coast, which is Ramirez's stomping grounds, neither he nor any White Council affiliated wizard ever heard about it, and why the Ordo went to the trouble of hiring an investigator(Elaine) with no affiliation with the White Council.
Dresden himself?
Only got his heads up from Murphy and Chicago law enforcement, not the magical community, and when he went asking questions in the community where he prevented the Darkhallow, he was treated as a suspect.
MacAnally literally asked him if he was the killer. Mac!
Dude who called him in on an (unpaid) missing women report that sent him tangling with a grendelkin. Who was aware of his palling around with Knights. Asked him if he was murdering magical women.
2)Thats inaccurate. Vampires eat your life energy, directly or not. There's no indication that talents taste better; we literally see Thomas eat a sorceress in the Backup short story, and we know Dresden got fed on in Grave Peril. The only entity we know that gets power from killing the magically gifted are skinwalkers, and for them its wizards. Minor talents dont seem to count.
The Fomor had an interest in kidnapping minor talents, but the Fomor doesnt have the clout to operate openly on land.
Not until after Changes.
For Reds at least, magical skill carries over, so a sorcerer would be able to translate his human knowledge and ability at magic into whatever the Rampire equivalent is.
But there is no textev I recall in the books or RPG for minor practitioners in general being of interest.
Else the Reds who dominate Latin America, which is 8% of the world's population, would have scoured it for them and tried to weaponize them in the ongoing war against the White Council.
3)The Paranet is independent from Harry. Deliberately so, in fact.
He helped found them. He funded them with financial reparations extorted from the White Court, but he doesnt call the shots there.
They call him in, or some other trusted Warden, where necessary, but they arent considered one of his adjuncts for the purpose of enemy retaliation.
Thats not what we just did.
Yeah.
Shaping up to be one of those teachable moments about overreach, imo.
What you are describing is basic autocracy situation. Or, rather, transition to autocracy, where the most promoted trait in the government population is (political) passivity, and not interacting with the government agencies. You are likely to see a lot of resentment, especially if the government is not seen as providing security for the population in exchange, and a lot of passive resistance of "I haven't seen nothing, officer" kind. This is a situation ripe for a revolution, not through violent means, but through building parallel governing bodies. Stuff like courts, self-policing, social security, medical care, etc. And we can provide at least parts of those.With the explosion in population post industrialization the White Council is quite overwhelmed by the number of emerging talents, this was the case even pre-Vampire War, but it is worse now. Under those circumstances triage has been enacted. Given how destructive warlocks can be the enforcement arm cannot be ignored, but outreach? Community building, like Harry did with Paranet? That has sadly fallen off all the more so as wizards fall behind the tech curve because of the techbane. you are not going to find many snail mail correspondence circles in 2006. While it is true that the perpetrator in White Night worked to exploit distrust between the Council and the community of magic users as Harry himself talks about at the beginning of the book that distrust is older than this one incident, and that is because while the cutting off of heads never fell off other aspects of engagement did. It is as though the government kept up the police force, but slashed education and healthcare into the ground
Others have voted for this plan, so changing it is problematic (this is a constant issue with how voting-by-name works, as it locks you into a certain vote).@Yog could you take cyberdevil out of your plan? Practitioners can have senses that detect them and they are dark beings made of alienation, if I were part of a magical group that suddenly started distributing things to them I would be rightly alarmed, to say the least.
I doubt we can't convince them to take it but it will take a hit to our reputation and I think they are one of the things we should only give away when they were really ours instead of what is basically an informal self-help group for people of middle-age.
If you like them, I would encourage you to vote for them - there's nothing stopping you from adding them to your vote. You might notice that I specifically put them not as subvotes, but as separate additional actions, so they would be counted separately from the main vote.At least the other two I agree, Lydia can resolve the ghosts without difficulty and gain some XP of her own, and I am very interested in the possible magic objects and who knows, if you have some interesting ones we can make a deal / buy for them.
So... The big cost/benefit analysis is the question "how unique is our ability to summon cyberdevils?". We are probably the only one who can summon them en-masse and have magically ensured perfect loyalty. They are also almost certainly rare to nonexistent in the Western world. But, with how they were set up, I kinda expect mortals to also be able to summon them, if with much more effort, and having to bargain for their loyalty. Enma-O and the likes should be able to command them.
We can reasonably guess that the devils can't be detected easily. Can they be exorcised easily? Probably also not, at least not without the possessed objects' destruction. Do we risk them being known about? ... I am torn on this. We probably don't want to create an arms race here.
What you are describing is basic autocracy situation. Or, rather, transition to autocracy, where the most promoted trait in the government population is (political) passivity, and not interacting with the government agencies. You are likely to see a lot of resentment, especially if the government is not seen as providing security for the population in exchange, and a lot of passive resistance of "I haven't seen nothing, officer" kind. This is a situation ripe for a revolution, not through violent means, but through building parallel governing bodies. Stuff like courts, self-policing, social security, medical care, etc. And we can provide at least parts of those.
Others have voted for this plan, so changing it is problematic (this is a constant issue with how voting-by-name works, as it locks you into a certain vote).
If you like them, I would encourage you to vote for them - there's nothing stopping you from adding them to your vote. You might notice that I specifically put them not as subvotes, but as separate additional actions, so they would be counted separately from the main vote.
Which should tell you something about the expectations of the community. People thought that the warden commander might be a serial killer going after minor talents, and went to an external investigator before involving him or reaching out to the council to ask what the hell was going on.Dresden himself?
Only got his heads up from Murphy and Chicago law enforcement, not the magical community, and when he went asking questions in the community where he prevented the Darkhallow, he was treated as a suspect.
MacAnally literally asked him if he was the killer. Mac!
Dude who called him in on an (unpaid) missing women report that sent him tangling with a grendelkin. Who was aware of his palling around with Knights. Asked him if he was murdering magical women
Fair enough on the white court, but minor boosts are still something for the reds.The Fomor had an interest in kidnapping minor talents, but the Fomor doesnt have the clout to operate openly on land.
Not until after Changes.
For Reds at least, magical skill carries over, so a sorcerer would be able to translate his human knowledge and ability at magic into whatever the Rampire equivalent is.
The paranet was founded and funded by him, and had to get by on his reputation to get started. He was also regularly involved in its operations and receiving intelligence from them on supernatural events.The Paranet is independent from Harry. Deliberately so, in fact.
This you have a point on though.I am not in favor of letting people know we can bug cellphones. Especially since Beckitt canonically works for Marcone.
Read the question I was answering.... How is the number of people in a group relates to us being able to have friends, including close friends, in that group? The argument, as I understand it, wasn't "they can hurt anyone in our school to make us hurt". It was "we have mundane friends, including close ones, from school. Those could be hurt to attack us". Unless you posit that Molly doesn't have mundane friends, or should abandon them.
[X] Yes
-[X] Cyberdevils for a more secure and magically hardened line of communication
Again, you're doing too much.[X] Yes
-[X] Leadership excellency
-[X] Cyberdevils for a more secure and magically hardened line of communication
[X] Ask Pauline for the list of the haunted properties she knows of, starting with the most problematic. This sounds right up Lydia's alley, and you could probably get some nice deals on those, once they are exorcised.
[X] Ask Anna for a private tour of the museum's collection, especially the most magically interesting objects. Those sound like something to use the Crown on.
If it gets out that we can stick cyberdevils in cellphones, those will be the first thing to get tossed by an enemy.I'm thinking of it as a safety in emergencies.
You can't call for help if you are abducted, killed or charmed by a Whampire.
But your devil-phone can.
@DragonParadoxsorry if this jas been brought up, but is it possible for Cyberdeamons to communicate with eachother remotly without needing to work through existing networks?
Related Idea: Inserted into a cyberdeamon phone is one end of a (tiny) paired magic item set - two linked "switch/button in a box"s.
When the cyberdeamon in the phone moves the switch, that movement is reflected/replicated in the other part of the pair. Or a colour change or temperature change or voltage change.
Basically morse code speeds of data transmission with unlimited range.
Franky all that sounds like a win for us one of the reason the Reds are doing so well in the war is having a tech edge.If it gets out that we can stick cyberdevils in cellphones, those will be the first thing to get tossed by an enemy.
Without our being able to literally teleport, we do not have the response time to be relevant anyway. I dont see what it achieves that an emergency contact on the phone doesnt already.
And I see too many downsides for when it leaks. We really dont need to put hostiles on alert to trash all electronics.
Furthermore, many people arent actually comfortable with putting whats essentially a wiretap thats under someone else's control on their phones.
They almost certainly do, otherwise there would be no reason for someone to stay away from them when closing a deal. And even if they do not, they still sound as a perfect type of objects for Lydia to handle and get XP from.1)Hauntings are not something that affects property values.
There are hospitals that are in operation that have had ghosts for most of a century. Agatha Hagglethorn was a thing in the books as far back as Grave Peril.
Ok, this is a brainfart on my part, correcting.2)The museums of Chicago are open to anyone with a ticket. We do not need to be seen with Anna in public to go to the museum.
Furthermore, Anna doesnt work for a museum, she works for the Art Institute. This place
https://www.artic.edu/collection
I fai, to see why you think this collection will have anything of magical significance