- Pronouns
- She/Her
So they're pulling the classic government tactic of 'we're the government so it's not a crime' with mind magics.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Not literally rewriting memories with mind magic, but that people will convince themselves of various explanations to preserve their world view if they can or repress stuff.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Yeah it's borderline the Lie from Mage the Awakening or Werewolf Delirium or something.
Most of the creatures who can't hurt mortals due to rules are all about turf and don't care if you're aware of what you've done or not.
The ones that can hurt you using your knowledge of them are things like certain Outsiders that are basically memetic hazards and clearly not something necessary in supernatural 101 in anything but general terms.
Remember that scene where Meave forces a musician to play until he died because he made the mistake of saying he'd die to play that well when listening to a better musician while she was around?
The only loss in learning stuff is that your reactions might make something curious if you act like you know something is up.
But that's a minimal loss when you consider that point Dresden constantly brings up about comparing the statistics of missing person cases and the losses various herd animals take to predators.
Knowing how to not being the easiest target would be a critical survival skill in those conditions. You just can't go so far as carrying holy water and cold iron nails around unless you're prepared for the interest you could generate.
Edit: autocorrupt
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Damn, this is just disgusting! Science is a search and paradigm shift according to objective data. There's nothing "supernatural" because if something exists, it's natural, damn it! What is happening in the world of Dresden is a massive brainwashing, there is simply no other explanation.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
It's not massive Brainwashing in the sense you think, it's cultural engineering, because most of the most effective predators benefit from knowledge on them being suppressed, which cottons on well with the Oblivion War going on which is the counter-intelligence vs the Outsiders, and it all kind of mashes up into the "Magic isn't real, it can't be real" memes.
Notably, this actually breaks down by the end of Battle Grounds, because what happened was so aggro, and so wide scaled, that hiding is quite literally impossible, and everyone's scrambling so the Reveal doesn't ruin everything forever.
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING AT THE APOCALYPSE
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
Note that we can't quite take our preconceptions into this: Dresden isn't a one-to-one mirror of our own cosmology and metaphysics. I mean, look at Mage or a number of other urban fantasy setting where you have something similar: Our current methodology of the world is just one of a vast number of equally accurate methodologies, each of which makes the world conform to the preconceptions of the beholder. Dresden isn't that overt but our reality is still the delicate meniscus over the benthic abyss of first Nevernever and then Other. Then much of it is not conducive to study and, if you can, you aren't really going to get something consistent with anything we call science.
That is in addition to the aforementioned suppression Alectai mentions.
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Honestly, this would fit into WoD, specifically Mage.
Sounds like what would happen if the Technocracy jobbed the Ascension War and was slowly losing bits of the Consensus to other paradigms.
So, actually not unfit for even base ExWoD, and probably even very fitting for ExWoD Dresden.
Edit: Not due to Consensus existing, but for the feel of it.
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Somewhat.
Random predation odds are actually really good for most random individuals, theres just too many people these days that actually hitting someone you know by chance is negligible.
Most supernaturals also cannot into human society, even the more human-like types like vampires(turns out considering the masses to be cattle also means that you don't really bother to differentiate one cow from another), so casual acquaintances are usually not a concern.
Close contacts are at greater risk, because even the socially blind supernaturals understand going for family and lovers. Of course, the Carpenters are under Angelic protection...except if they choose to go into danger, as Molly did, since the Angels have to respect Free Will.
For the rest, reacting means you stand out, and become Interesting. The odds there are worse than those of being merely ignorant.
All told, I think working particularly hard to keep up or disrupt the masquerade is pointless - the inquisitive should be informed and brought fully up to speed about the horrors of the world because they're going to cross those lines eventually, and the content are legitimately safer and happier as sheeple.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing after all.
- Pronouns
- He/They
I mean, consensus reality is one of the less contrived explanations for how you can get from a flat world in a sea of chaos to a round planet orbiting a star. Or maybe this is an AU where Creation was always round or the Earth is actually flat. As much as I love the idea that the Wheel of Ages can bring world-shaking cataclysmic changes to the point that the Age of Legends is almost unrecognisable compared to today, it is a headache to try and make sense of.
Maybe it's like the Elves and Valinor in the Tolkienverse where the Earth is flat for us but round for everyone else - if we try and take a plane trip across the ocean we'll fall off the edge of the world and end up in the Nevernever. That would kind of suck.
There is also a bigger question than world shape, though not to say thats not an important one.
Exalted's Creation is completely made out of Essence, and the Loom of Fate, and thus Fate itself maintains and controls what would traditionally be physics, not just actual Destinies.
The degraded form of this world seems to imply Essence has degenerated into magic, but the material shape of the world seems to be...mostly...fine, with the exception of missing Magical Materials.
And if Essence degenerated so, is the world completely made out of the material form of magic, as it was Essence? Whats running physics? Is Fate still a thing? Elemental Poles also don't exist, which isn't that big a surprise.
The Wyld seems to have overlapped into the same space sideways of the world, but what happened to the Mouth of Oblivion and the Underworld? If there was one thing truly timeless and eternal, I'd imagine it would be the dead and nothingness.
Lots of things to find out for us and our Urge, so thats interesting.
Only if you do not pay attention to the fact that there has never been a consensus. A more or less general perception of reality appeared among the majority only with the development of universal education, before a clear picture of the world was fixed in the heads of a vanishingly small stratum of the population.
Despite its name, Consensus Reality does not imply by itself a universal...consensus worldview, and can be different in isolated or geographically distant places.
It works like that in modernity due to universale education, which in Mage is a Technocrat invention and tool first.
OK looks like we are narrowly going with Splattercon!!!
Oh, I understand that it's not normal exalted. However, I assumed that the "WoD" part wasn't WoD, but rather WoD inspired Dresdenverse, ie that we could use canon knowledge of Dresdenverse.
- Location
- Texas
I think they mean that the Exalted side uses the setting assumptions from ExWoD and not those from canon Exalted. How things worked in Crreation doesn't necessarily inform how they work now.
Arc 0 Post 24: A Story Half-Told
A Story Half-Told
6th of July 2006 A.D.
Thankfully a gaggle of whispering strangers isn't all your entrance had drawn. You catch a flash of red in the crowd and one literally glittering smile, because of the braces as Izzy barrels towards you: "Where have you been? I tried calling, but all I got was your brother tryin' to sell me come cock and bull about you being sick and you wouldn't answer. I was afraid you had run off with Nelson and then where would I be? Trying to cheat off Alec in history?"
"And what pray is wrong with my history answers?" came a drawl from behind you. In contrast to Izzy's 'burn on a cloudy day' freckled complexion and excited chatter Alec Morgan had the face and the drawl of a New Orleans Creole that made him seem kind of standoffish until you got to know him and appreciate his dry sense of humor.
Case in point... "What's wrong is you barely getting a passing grade on the last one," Izzy huffed.
"Which is still better than not passing," Alec replied serenely. He shivered a little. "Is there a draft in here. When I said they should put up the AC I didn't mean this much."
"Yeah, when has the school ever gotten that right?" you joke a little awkwardly, ignoring the fact that while your friends are not keeping to the four foot bubble that seems to have formed around you when you entered the school Izzy had also not gone in for a hug as she usually does. Probably for the best really, you think resolutely swallowing the lump in your throat. "I was at Splattercon," you do not speak it in the proper tone this time, you are not in the mood. "You heard about the gas leak right? It was crazy, people running around seeing things because of the poisoning, there was a fire. "
"Yeah, heard the cops were involved, well they would have with so many people getting hurt." Alec looks you up and down like he is searching for bruises.
"Yeah I got questioned and Nelson did get arrested for punching someone in the chaos. My dad had to come bail me out, like not literally but it was close," you mix lies and half truths smoothly, omitting Harry. There is absolutely no way you are going to mention Harry in front of Izzy given what you had done next.
"Asking to make use of his shower end then emerging draped only in a towel was indeed a rather crude attempt at seduction," Usum offers from the peanut gallery. "It still might have worked, but for the intervention of your mother."
"Not helping," you send trying and failing to keep a blush down. That had been mortifying and the conversation with your mother had been worse since you had to sit there and take it and play dumb.
"Did you break up with Nelson?" Izzy asks, misinterpreting whatever was going on with your expression.
"Yes," you bite off. It's not like you had been really together, you had kissed a few times but that was three months ago before you knew about the baby. "It's just... I don't know where Nelosn is gone OK, you can stop worrying about him."
Izzy gives you the 'aww' look like she is about to suggest a tub of ice cream for your loss or something, but then Alec gives her a warning look probably from figuring out you were more pissed off than sad.
"So is that were you have been all this time?" he asks. "Parental house arrest for springing you out of the real thing?"
You nod and roll your eyes, that is a good excuse. "The best lies are the ones people tell themselves," Usum offers making you feel a dirty. You do not want to think of your friends like that, but at the same time what are you supposed to do? Explain that you were kidnapped by evil fairies because you used mind control to try to cure Heroin addiction? They didn't even know Rosie and Nelson took anything stronger than weed, never mind the 'magic is real and it can eat your face' side of things.
"Mom thought I might have taken sick from the gas, I mean I did have a headache, but it was gone in a few hours," you strengthen the lie. "Still she kept me in for two whole days and now here I am having to tell Mr Mendoza that I missed class because of gas inhalation."
"Oh honey, you missed a test," Izzy says commiserating and this time you have no issue with accepting it. Your chemistry teacher liked his subject and as far as you could tell did not much like his students... and he especially did not like when his students made light of it.
Alas the fifteen minutes than you had saved by waking up early were well and truly gone by now and all you could do was face the music or in this case the 'pop' quiz he would always make up for the students who he suspected of trying to weasel their way out of one of his regular ones.
Yet with the paper in front of you things aren't as hard as you remember them being. No more sweaty hands because you do not sweat and your nerves are a distant thing. There is just more room in your head to think... and someone else to bounce ideas off.
"What am I ever going to need chemistry for?" you grouse at Usum in the middle of a particularly annoying problem about organic chemistry.
"Explosives seem a convenient weapon against foes too petty to wield essence against," he replies forcing you to bite back a laugh.
The rest of the school day is mercifully lacking in tests though a few teachers do give you funny looks when you trot out the story about the gas leak and the signed excuse slip from your mother
What do you do after school?
[] Go rollerblading with your friends
[] Visit Rosie in the hospital, it's the least you can do
[] Take another go at those bookshops about magic this time with Usum fora guide so you do not pick up duds
[] Go talk to Harry, you have a lot more to tell him and it would be nice to do so without Mom listening in
[] Stay home and out of any trouble that might come your way
[] Write in
OOC: In case you are wondering what Molly would have wanted to tell Charity after the shower incident it starts with 'you were five years older than I am now when you had me and dad's almost ten years older than you' and it would have gone downhill from there.
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- Location
- florida
What an incredibly practical answer. We probably have the craft for it too.
And hand grenades should work with green sun nimbus flare just fine.
[X] Visit Rosie in the hospital, it's the least you can do
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- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Go talk to Harry, you have a lot more to tell him and it would be nice to do so without Mom listening in
This or stay home. We need to avoid all possible magical attention until Harry and McCoy are ready to face the White Council.
Under no circumstances should we go anywhere near Rosie, or anywhere else where we might run into any of the wizards wandering about Chicago right now.
This or stay home. We need to avoid all possible magical attention until Harry and McCoy are ready to face the White Council.
Under no circumstances should we go anywhere near Rosie, or anywhere else where we might run into any of the wizards wandering about Chicago right now.
- Location
- florida
This seems like an excuse to avoid a possibly unpleasant experience, but not a bad point otherwise.
Won't the White council also be speaking to Harry soon? If something large and magical went down here recently. Or there is a dark practitioner running around.
If you want to "avoid potentionally running into white council agents" staying away from Harry only seems reasonable.
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OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
[X] Go rollerblading with your friends