Truly Lydia's cruelty knows no bounds.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Problem is that using Command The Dead costs 1 Essence. Lydia has 6 Essence, and recharges 5 Essence a day.
So the essence economy favors fewer, bigger constructs, even with the Dragons Nest.
Except if she gets to count swarms as a single individual.
For when you need strength and movable cover. Larger golems are better meatshields, essentially. Plus toughness. And, well, yes, in Dragon's Nest you regenerate a point of essence each 15 minutes. That's still 4 castings per hour, so Lydia can only be expected to only produce what, 10 zombies per day of dedicated effort? At most. Thus, large powerfully build statues. Personally, animated Foo Dog golems probably would work well. Some sort of asura statues, etc.Why bother with huge, or even person sized, war machines if we can shape their bodies for them?
Even without woodworking specifically, Molly is excellent at crafting stuff. If you squint a little making mechanical systems out of wood is still mechanics anyway, so we might be able to work that in to the same effect.
Take the same volume and fill it with master crafted hardwood spiders of sizes ranging from serving platter to thumbnail.
Depending on just how far it can stretch they could be given limbs capped in metal blades and internal explosives that they can set off as suicide charges once they're crawling on someone.
If we assume the vehicle is something capable of holding 4-5 people, and 3 people's weight is in wooden drones then Lydia could respond to being upset by burying people in something like 400 lbs/181 kg of pissed off exploding bladed spiders.
Other figurine sized animals would also work, though bugs are probably the creepiest option assuming we stick with natural templates at all.
It's almost too bad both Molly and Lydia are goody two shoes; if you think like a mad scientist the possibilities are endless.
I don't care how tough you are, if someone throws a fistful of splinter edged critters the size of your pinky who's greatest ambition in life is to nest in people's eyes at your face you're going to have issues focusing on anything else for a bit.
They last for a lunar month and keep indefinitely at a dragon nest, so there isn't much of a reason not to keep what the unimaginative (that is, sane) might call an unnecessarily large pile of horrifying murder-drones around to draw from at need.
Without the nest the essence economy of keeping lots of small things around is trash, but we have one so we might as well take advantage.
You are inventing problems. Here, specifically, you are inventing side-effects, where it's almost exlicitely said that there are none. Compare to the following examples from the same source:
•• Speed: Though it shares a name with a common drug, Speed is not chemically related to it. It is much safer, and just allows the user to run twice as fast for the duration of one scene. However, this is still exhausting, and after the scene, the user makes a Stamina check (difficulty 6) or else suffer -2 on all physical die rolls due to exhaustion for the next hour.
Here it mentions that the process is stressful / the effect is exhausting. No such crash down is mentioned at all for the "no sleep" potion.
Or we take Sorcerer Companion book:
•• A liquid that allows the drinker to go for an entire week with only one hour's sleep per night.
compare to
•••• An incredibly unhealthy "study aid" that sharpens the user's focus unnaturally, granting them +1 Intelligence and +1 Wits, which can take them above their normal maximums for a scene, after which time they'll typically crash hard, needing a full 12 hours of sleep.
See the mention of "incredibly unhealthy" in the 4 dot recipe? And how it's (or anything like this) is missing from the "no sleep" potion?
All textual evidence points to this potion being meant to be perfectly safe, both when using it and afterwards.
You misunderand me. To elaborate, by "near mandatory", I meant "if coffee allowed you to forgo sleep save for one hour per night, with no downsides, than, in order to remain competitive with your peers (starting from school and continuing with the job market), you would almost certainly have to drink it habitually. Otherwise, you'd be outcompeted and left behind".
Carriage of the Ankou pretty explicitly uses teleportation of some sort to get the car to Lydia: "Afterwards a whistle is enough to call it to your side, where it will appear in three turn's time. The appearance is not very noticable to those not expecting to see supernatural effects, a car might simply be in a parking spot that was previously empty while nobody looked there." It also doesn't require the car to be turned on.
You yourself pointed out many times that normal feds aren't equipped to deal with and shouldn't poke supernatural. If we want anything to come out of it, except for a new office of the FBI being suborned, the Librarians (or some other competent supernaturally-aware supervising organization) needs to be informed that pathfinders are actually a supernatural dangerous faction.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Actually how does Prince of Ruin attitude interact with ruined clothing? Because that has been a recurring problem for Molly.
That's fair to an extent, but there are other factors.
If she times it right she could spend down to one essence at 11:45 or so and be topped up the next day. At which point she has a lunar month to get them transferred to the nest. She could also just use the nest to boost recovery and awaken them there.
There's also the matter of relative utility. Human sized golems can't easily be hidden, and are unlikely to keep up with an exalt in combat. Not that they're useless, but I suspect they'd be less effective than their stat line implies outside of a few specific applications.
Being able to make things that are smart enough to follow orders, however, makes it possible to create a lot of interesting equipment.
A Batman style utility belt full of grasshopper-grenades that force themselves down vampires' throats when they try to bite you, centipede chains that you can order to grapple people autonomously, and similar tricks would provide a lot of tricks that could physically keep up with Lydia and take strain off her essence economy since they're prepared in advance.
Fair, but since they don't have exalt stat lines I think mobility issues would be a problem in combat.
If we start purging vampire lairs in town then an army of human+ golems would make sense as support, but for for stuff like we've been doing so far I'd take detcord with a cuddling problem or spiky wallet sized face huggers* over them.
No reason we can't experiment a little and see what mix of options works best though.
* Before anyone asks why we'd ever need this; Nicodemus. Nicodemus is the reason.
Oh, obviously. There's a whole variety of things to try. I have some illustrations prepared, even.
EDIT: And the question to ask is: do our charms allow us to train zombies?
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[X]Plan Snitching
Strict raw no, but strict raw also doesn't allow training terrestrials which is, lol. And then it could by bypassed by turning them into dragonblooded fomori, which is, just, lmao.
Ask DP directly, if you feel that is relevant to the foreseeable future.
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The second part of any such question would be "do mortal animals count as mortals" for the purpose of exalted teaching charms. And yes, here I am strictly in the cheese realms, I think.
[X]Plan Snitching
The not really accurate it when your not eating you do most of the growing. In modern life that just tend to only be when asleep. Their are a lot of benefits to fasting. In fact the brain's growth hormone only really gets produced in quality amounts after 3+ days without eating.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Could you cite some study on that or give me some keywords to search for myself? Because this is itching my bullshit detector so I want to check it.
Edit: Well turns out there is a study done on rats where having them fast for 3 days correlated with production of BDNF which is a chemical associated with brain development.
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No, you're ignoring them.
Consider why it isnt something that literally every alchemist and wizard is drinking every week.
I mean, if we follow your argument about it having no longterm side effects at all for vanilla humans, you'd think every wizard, or at least every Warden, would be essentially quaffing the things nonstop since the beginning of the Vampire War.
After all, 1 dot recipes are dirt cheap to make. If they arent, then either they cant or there are reasons not to.
Molly is an Exalt.
Physical consequences for vanillas are largely irrelevant to them.
That doesnt mean psychological and social ones dont matter.
Ah. I see your argument.
Still dont agree.
Sleep is incredibly important to people in general. For minors, sleep is when physical growth happens. For adults, thats when a lot of learning is integrated. Its when a lot of physical healing happens, if I remember my lessons correctly.
If anyone tried to push widescale adoption of a super energy drink to replace most sleep time, I'd be comfortable predicting a public health disaster in pretty short order.
In order for the car to get down to the Dragons Nest to keep the golems charged, it has to be transported there.
Unless you are arguing that Lydia can travel down there, then summon the car IN the Dragons Nest and leave it there.
Which might work if you had a spare car to dump there.
But would leave Lydia without a getaway car in the event of shit going down, because she cant have two vehicles tagged.
And one stuffed with killdrones is a warhead delivery bus, not a getaway car.
1)The Pathfinders, as far as we're aware, are not a faction.
They appear to be a deniable catspaw for the Fomor. Their Pentex.
We know very little about the Fomor, and nothing about other Pathfinder cells.
2)In this instance, this is none of our business.
We killed a good portion of that entire cell, including all the sorcerers. We blew up the support base, and partywiped its inhabitants.
We left some cult members behind for the cops.
The fact that something hinky was up is obvious as soon as reports about "Nursing Home of Horrors" hit the newswires.
Furthermore, iirc we told Dresden what we did this summer when we got back, who will have sent that up the line to the White Council. We do not need to hold their hands here.
The Library been at this for two hundred years. They've heard of the Pathfinders.
Seriously, Im not sure why you think we need to hold their hand, when they showed up and asked for Molly?
Its been a month since we got back from Cleveland.
3)If you check back to where we hacked the Daedalus group, you see them bitching about the Library poaching their "espers".
The Library has been around long enough to be a lot more clued in than any federal agency about the occult.
4)We killed people in Cleveland.
We blew a hole in the basement of a nursing home with seniors inside. Im really not enthused about taking responsibility for that event to a Fed, even when they asked us to be frank. We're not on that level of closeness.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Chirality Prohibition Index was essentially designed to mass produce Ninja Turtles.
It gives them language, a uniform, martial arts.
And an E1 Infernal will spend less than half his daily Essence pool to train a squad of four.
Adult human doesnt work. Too big, too bulky. Child-sized might, if it wasnt for the creepy factor; eight year olds are four feet and seventy pounds. So are pygmies.
I've said that, in my opinion, the optimal size and form factor is somewhere along the size of a Eurasian lynx; 3-4 feet long, forty to sixty pounds with a tail and with multiple prehensile tentacles poking out of the dorsal surface of its back, like a displacer beast.
Only with switchblades in the tentacle tips.
Thats assuming we are allowed to use fictional form factors.
2)Look.
If we're serious about blowing him up, Principle Invoking Onslaught is 12xp. Get a grenade launcher
Alternatively, make a bunch of Black Hornet-style UAVs, HMP them with cyberdevils, and give them a nice little explosive payload.
Wont kill Nicky as long as he has Judas' hangrope, but might be useful for his confederates.
Their is no downside to using the potion to get a ton more done, for an exalted. Mortal get kind of irritainal after a few days without sleep. But exalted all have charms that let them go entire week with only a single meal and a nap a week.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, the biggest reason I can think of to not use the potion is willpower regen, and wizards kind of need their willpower, so...
Of course, Qiao of the Meng bypasses that problem, but since mortal sorcerers have a hard time learning Qiao, there's not a lot of people with dots in both Meng and Alchemy, which would explain why that potion isn't in common use. And also mean that we can use it with no drawbacks once we get the right stuff, if that really is the problem.
Of course, Qiao of the Meng bypasses that problem, but since mortal sorcerers have a hard time learning Qiao, there's not a lot of people with dots in both Meng and Alchemy, which would explain why that potion isn't in common use. And also mean that we can use it with no drawbacks once we get the right stuff, if that really is the problem.
For the same reason why RAW oWoD mages are like, at least an order of magnitude stronger mechanically than the way fluff presents them. White Wolf/Onyx Path aren't super good at systems that wield together with their lore nicely, and very often fluff is incongruent with mechanics.
It is a lot worse with mages, who are strong in lore, but get completely and utterly absurd mechanically and absolutely need GM to be to ready to rule zero "Wait, no, stop, this is too much" every five minutes with players who don't know how to take it easy.
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Yeah I'm on board for that on Molly's side of things, just speculating on how Lydia can mess with her 'zombies'.
On Nicky himself, I don't expect us to actually figure out how to kill him immediately since if it was that easy IC to figure his tricks out and kill him he'd be dead already.
But if he's around ruining our day I don't see why we shouldn't ruin his too.
If he doesn't want to be hit with drone strikes while face-spiders look for fun places to stab then he can stay out of Chicago.
I don't expect that to actually stop the Denarians, but I'd be relatively satisfied if they double checked that they really had to be here whenever one of their plans involves heading into Molly or Lydia's territory.
No one is disputing that exalts have a stupidly good constitution in regards to stuff like this.
The setbacks here are social. Molly doesn't live in a shack at the edge of the woods and her story didn't start in Arctis Tor. We benefit from those connections, but there's baggage too.
Personally I'm fine with the idea of using sleep reduction potions when on the job; heaven knows Harry might have been willing to kill for them during parts of his career, just not obviously doing it on a regular basis just cause.
Having charms for something isn't a good example of properties of the exalted at baseline. The whole point of charms is to make them more than they were.
All that said, the infernals do have at least one charm with good sleep reduction and no unpleasant side effects to manage:
So we might be able to compromise on that.
I pretty much expect this is how we are going to get it done now, yeah.
For what it is worth, one dot charm really isn't difficult to fit into next spending point. Alchemy dot potion is technically more efficient, but a couple of xp points is not an end of the world.
I've actually been wondering if she could animate crude oil into an amorphous golem thing.
If Molly can enchant or ensorcell it into a cohesive block form, it can change shape at will between form factors of roughly equivalent mass. A seventy pound mass would go from displacer beast to lynx to pygmy sized humanoid to snake to velociraptor.
Sorta like a shoggoth, just not evil.
........
............
And now that I've described it the QM is going to throw several of them at us, isnt he?
^^^
I have no objection to the potion itself, or its use when necessary.
Just not constant use.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
I missed this. What are the chances that the salon in question is the Coiffure Cup?
6 XP actually. It's a favored hell. I know that this is way late, but I was rereading and noticed a mistake.
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We have been over this:
1) This is a 2 dot recipe, which already severely limits the range of those capable of using it
2) We don't know if most senior council members capable of brewing it aren't using it habitually in this quest. We only know one person who is possibly able to make it so far - Dresden.
3) We don't know the recipe. How many fiddly components are in it, how bothersome it is to brew, how expensive, etc. We only know that it's a 2 dot recipe, which limits how hard it is to make. "There are bound to be side effects" is only one possible interpretation. You latched onto it, and insist that it's the only one possible. It isn't. It isn't even the one most likely.
And again, you are inventing trouble where I specified, explicitely "if its only effect was making people need less sleep". "Less sleep" doesn't inherently mean "worse sleep" or "don't get all the benefits of sleep, like people sleeping 8 hours per day do". We know that different people need different quantities of sleep. In real life, the best the nature can do so far is ~3 hours per day for humans, using several genetic mutations to increase sleep effectiveness. It's conceivable that the same can be done artificially.
This is exactly what I am arguing about. Lydia designated a car with Carriage of the Ankou charm (probably a van that Molly has modified). Lydia goes does to the Dragon's Nest. Lydia uses the Carriage of the Ankou charm while in the Dragon's Nest, teleporting the car to her.
As to "needs a getaway car" - an armored van full of killdrones is a good getaway car, because killdrones can delay people.
We know that they as an organization are country-wide at least, and have been active for decades. This qualifies them to be called "a faction", even if they are actually just agents of Fomori.
There's no textual evidence of this. At all.
As far as I can tell based on the description of the potion in the books, even mortals can drink it habitually. It likely makes sleep magically more efficient.
I am still trying to work out why people think that Molly needing only 1 hour of sleep via the use of potions would be strongly associated with Molly taking drugs in Charity's and Michael's minds (unless there are other social repercussions people mean, which I am not seeing at all, as long as we don't wake our family while still living in Carpenter house).
Personally, I am much more worried about this potion (Sorcerer: Paths of Power):
•• Enhance Ability: an elixir that can enhance a specific ability in a person who drinks it. The drinker gains a specialty in that ability for the duration (or +2 dice when it is relevant if they already have one) for one hour per success on the creation.
Now this looks like a combat drugs, acts like a combat drug, and if taken habitually probably form a (non-chemical) addiction like any performance enhancer.
Given that the whole "wood golems" started with my question "can Lydia animate oil" to which the answer was "yes, you get your flaming animated blobs of oil", the answer is yes.I've actually been wondering if she could animate crude oil into an amorphous golem thing.
If Molly can enchant or ensorcell it into a cohesive block form, it can change shape at will between form factors of roughly equivalent mass. A seventy pound mass would go from displacer beast to lynx to pygmy sized humanoid to snake to velociraptor.
Sorta like a shoggoth, just not evil.
........
............
And now that I've described it the QM is going to throw several of them at us, isnt he?
- Location
- Earth
It's worse.
Charity believes there can't be magic without a cost.
So to her it's a magical drug with disastrous cost.
Because there can't be such a thing as magic without cost.
Now that's a good argument. The counter-argument to use (and prepare beforehand) is, in my opinion "the cost twofold: the cost of the reagents needed to make the potion, i.e. the monetary cost of obtaining said reagents, and the time and effort spent making said potion, i.e. investiture of power, skill, time and effort that we expend where we could have been doing other things". The important thing is to make her internalize that "Molly's time and effort aren't free, they are, in fact, quite expensive".