- Pronouns
- They/Them
I've actually written the update, sorry for not informing people! Well, mostly written. I'm going to edit it and release it later today.
The Lost Files (C:TL/Dresden Files) (CK2-ish)
- Thread starter The Laurent
- Start date
Ghost to Ghost, Part 4
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Ghost to Ghost, Part 4
[X] The Laws of Magic.
[X] How is Human Defined?
[X] 'The other day, huh?'
Cora Graves was aware that some tension wouldn't be eased quickly. Certainly, she understood that she would feel herself still a threat if the positions were reversed, not that they'd ever have been in such a way. Jeanne, who was glancing around the church curiously, sometimes helped, and sometimes didn't.
Certainly, right about now was a good time for something more than words, or something more than the words Cora had. But, on the other hand, she is relatively sure the situation can be salvaged, and more than that, the information she's gaining is worth the risks she was taking. "The other day, what happened?"
"Other night, I guess," Lillian said, uncertainly, "I was searching for the latest ghosts, the ones that had been made by...god, it's horrible, what these kids do to themselves and others. The violence doesn't have any purpose, by god it doesn't, yet they keep on doing it." She sounded sad and alone for a moment, but the woman rallied, and said, "So I was going out to see if I could help, when I saw this man with a fiddle trying to lead some of the ghosts away, but when he saw me he ran."
"The Fiddler," Cora said, calmly.
At that same moment, Gabe had burst out with, "The Fiddler?!" She turned, looking at Cora. "How did you know?"
"I've met him before," Cora said, and she saw a chance to deflect suspicion. "At a party. He was trying to steal a girl away, now he's stealing ghosts away."
"Tried to? You stopped him?"
"Of course I did," Cora said, keeping her voice even, "You do not need to sound so incredulous."
Gabe blushed, and she said, "No, I merely meant that he is somewhat powerful, and I'm surprised--"
"So was he," Cora said, and she allowed the words to drift through the air, watched as Gabe's expression set back into a certain distrust. "So he is gathering ghosts, and girls."
She frowned. "There are many things he could do with them, I can well imagine."
She glanced over at Gabe, who sighed, "And you're going to say you're the protector of this city? Something's off about you, you know. I'm a Wizard, we're pretty perceptive that way. I know you're planning something."
"What if she isn't?" Lillian asked.
"What rule is he not breaking?" Cora asked, "Necromancy was mentioned, yet ghosts do not count?"
It was a weakness, to reveal ignorance like that, but it was the only way to gain knowledge, and she was willing to do this, at least a little.
It made her nervous, and her contract-enhanced senses had calmed down slightly, but still registered threat, even danger. This could still explode into combat, even if for now the fuse had been damped.
"They don't," Gabe said, "I'm not up on ectomancy, but ghosts are nothing more than the reflection of the living, while enslaving them is surely a bad sign, it's not--"
"Hey, don't say I'm a reflection in front of me, cause I'm not," Jeanne said, rounding on Gabe, her finger wagging, hair bouncing as she leapt up and down. "I mean, I'm right here, duh. You can be a lot more polite. I mean, Mrs. Graves is always about being polite and stuff and she's been nice enough not to hurt you or anything like she did that one guy who threatened her, you remember the one, Jacques, who could shoot fire?"
It had been a year and a half ago. People did not try to threaten or kill Cora Graves nearly as often as they had used to.
"Sure. Une petit merde," Jacques said with feeling, his gruff exterior lighting up for a moment of memory.
Gabe looked at her at Jeanne haplessly and said, "I didn't mean to offend--"
"Yet you did, so apologize," Jeanne said, crossing her arms.
"Uh, I'm sorry?"
Cora stood up and moved over towards Lillian.
Gabe shifted for a moment, but Jeanne kept lecturing.
"Are these laws of magic written down for the perusal of interested parties, or is it merely a matter of being in the club?" Cora asked. It was the least she could admit of her ignorance, and she knew that perhaps it was too much.
She watched Lillian carefully, and Lillian said, "What are you going to use it for?"
"Understanding," Cora said.
"Trying to find limits, or rules that you can force someone to choose between breaking and keeping?" Gabe asked, and she was far enough that there was clearly something enhanced about her vision, because Jeanne had been rather helpfully chattering away.
"Hey, don't ignore me."
"No, trying to see if you will attempt to apply those rules to what I can do," Cora said.
"What you can do…" Lillian asked, frowning.
"Yes," Cora said, "It is quite unlike what the Wizards can do, so here we are."
"It only matters for humans," Gabe pointed out, pushing past Jeanne, her expression very uncertain. "Why?"
"If having a soul is what it takes to qualify as human," Cora said, making a decision, "Then I am human."
"What? Looking like…" Gabe trailed off and Lillian made the sign of the cross. The other woman couldn't see what Cora Graves looked like--she had to assume Gabe could still see, however she had done so--but her imagination must have filled in quite a picture.
"Yes," Cora said.
"Then…" Gabe looked scared and confused and for a moment Cora's heart softened. She was clearly in over her head, and there was a decent guess that she was inexperienced. That was not enough to excuse any mistakes, any more than they excused Cora's mistakes, the errors she'd made as a Hedgefresh Changeling, the speed at which she'd thrown everything overboard but the anchor--and regretted none of it--so she decided to think it through.
Wizards. Evidence pointed to them being normal humans who gained their power through 'normal' means. That meant that for all she knew, this girl here had never killed anyone, never been in a fight. She wasn't a Changeling, to be treated as if every delicacy might be a pressure point, but she also wasn't a Changeling in the sense of the word that meant always one thing: survivor.
And maybe that's what she saw. Cora saw someone for a moment that…
"How...who...what did this to you?" Gabe said, horrified and disgusted, and somehow angry.
Interesting, and unexpected in a sense. Hrm.
Cora Graves just looked at them for a long moment, not answering.
Gabe took a breath, and then another and said, "There's a way I can be sure. Have you heard of the Soulgaze? When a Wizard locks eyes with someone for the first time, for long enough, they can see a vision of each other's souls. Of who they are. But only a human, a being with a soul, can do so."
No. 'See a vision of each other's souls.' Even were this true--and to be fair Cora suspects it likely that Gabe was at least telling the truth as she saw it--that was far more than she trusted anyone with.
"No."
Gabe frowned and said, "I understand. If you're not trying to…" she trailed off, truly looking lost, and yet there was little Cora could do to help her, especially not without revealing far more than she planned on doing.
"There's...another possibility," Gabe said, "A failed Soulgaze. When you feel it start to happen, there's a moment where I can pull away, the last moment. If I felt it, the tug, that'd mean you were telling the truth. I wouldn't have to look, and you'd know if I did, it's not something I could hide." She took a breath, "It'd be proof you couldn't fake, and I wouldn't have to pry into your secrets, and you into mine."
Cora considered it for a long moment. It made logical sense, and she also knew that it very well could be a trap. In fact, she knew that she didn't have to trust at all, and it was perhaps a telling indictment of her life that this is what reassured her. "Can you repeat all of that in just one moment?" Cora asked. "I have a way to tell truth from lies."
The sight of truth and lies was easy to activate, of course. It always felt a little odd, because it was the opposite of what one would expect. Instead of thinking of the truth, Cora focused on lies, on all of the ways a person could deceive her, and then out her very being stretched to grab the strands of everything.
Wyrd bound and tied and was everywhere, and when someone spoke a lie, fate itself knew it was a lie, knew the truth, knew everything and nothing at the same time: it was an absurd blind god in that respect.
And she had a contract with this knowledge, with the feeling, a sort of buzzing, when someone was lying. "Now, could you please repeat your explanation of what a Soulgaze is."
"When a Wizard or other…" Gabe looked uncertain, "other magical human of great enough talent, stares into the eyes of a human for the first time for long enough, each party gets a glimpse at each other's souls." True. "This glimpse can reveal much, though I haven't done it often. A Wizard can feel a Soulgaze coming on, and so if I felt it and then broke contact just in time, well for me at least that'd be more than enough proof that you had a soul." True.
"Very well," Cora said.
"Really? You're gonna," Jeanne began.
"Very well."
"Fine," Jeanne pouted, glaring at Gabe and stomping over to Jacques.
"She doesn't seem to like you," Lillian said gently to Gabe.
"How will I ever live with it?" Gabe asked, but she sounded genuinely hurt. "How did you--"
"Saved her," Cora said, aware that she too had to tell the truth. She could have avoided the question entirely, but she knows that saying this will work well.
"...oh?" Lillian asked, looking at Cora with those wide, uncertain eyes.
Gabe now stood in front of Cora, and up close she was a little more imposing, solidly built and mildly handsome, and if she certainly looked young, very young, she also seemed determined as she met Cora's gaze and said, "Don't look away, I'll look away for you."
So Cora doesn't. Cora watches the woman's face, and most of all those dark brown eyes, and she sees the moment the woman sees something, because Gabe stumbles backward, breaking eye contact, her own eyes wider than ever.
"Oh god. Oh god…" Gabe said.
"Do not take the--" Lillian began.
"I'll take whoever's name in vain I want to right now," Gabe snapped, shaking slightly. "She's telling the truth."
"Oh," Lillian said, and she turned to look at Cora. "Oh."
Their looks are almost painful. Cora Graves does not like pity, not at all. Certainly, she hates to be pitied, and despite the hostility they'd evinced, now they were looking at her with sympathy and pity, and it was frustrating though not so much that her mask of calm was broken. It was frustrating because she'd divorced herself so far from it, she'd moved past it long ago and it wasn't important, what she'd done in Arcadia, what her Keeper had made her do, and it wasn't important who she was before--a contemptible addict.
Their looks remind her of it for one too many moments, before she dismissed those worries, drove them out of her head with a pitch-fork. When she worried, her nightmares were far, far different, her fears less about weakness and more about power and its limits.
"What...are you?" Gabe asked.
Cora looked at them for a long moment, wondering at what she should say. She couldn't lie, not exactly, but it was easy enough to imagine slipping around the words, around the limits. Mayor Booster could make an art out of it, really, but she wasn't too bad at the act of telling lies without saying them. But she did know that it was an added complication, but one worth it considering the slim possibility it was a trap.
Like this whole church was, in one sense.
So after a moment of thought, and no more than that, Cora answered.
Cora's Approach:
[] "I call myself a 'Changeling.': This would of course make sure not to hint at the fact, at least not yet, that there are over a hundred of them in this city. Details revealed would be that she was taken away by a being through the 'Hedge' and changed in certain ways, but that she then escaped and has powers based on this. Deeper information would be avoided, and the goal of this approach would be to set up a means to justify gaining more information on Wizards in the future in the guise of an 'exchange' of information.
[] "I am a potential ally in action against the Fiddler.": Emphasize the fact that Cora is against harm being done to ghosts unnecessarily, and that she has active antagonism against the Fiddler, and thus a desire to thwart him, and that at this point an alliance of convenience might be helpful.
[] "I do not wish to answer.": Keep the mystery, and try to turn around the conversation to gain the information on the Laws of Magic and other topics without revealing anything of note. Time is on her side, after all, in gaining information on Wizards without revealing vulnerabilities ahead of time.
[] Write in. Write-in should consist of a truthful 'I am' statement, and how this informs a general approach to what Cora is looking for out of this meeting.
******
A/N: So, here we go. The averted soul-gaze seemed to work, and Cora has the uncomfortable feeling of having people feel pity over what they imagine must have been done to her. Overall, it was pretty successful, and she managed to get over her paranoia, even. ...by using magic to make it a sure thing. None of her rolls were amazing, and neither were the results, but they were good enough to muddle through to this point, the 'close in'.
Sorry this is almost late, I merely forgot to post it because I was working on End of an Era. So here you go.
[X] The Laws of Magic.
[X] How is Human Defined?
[X] 'The other day, huh?'
Cora Graves was aware that some tension wouldn't be eased quickly. Certainly, she understood that she would feel herself still a threat if the positions were reversed, not that they'd ever have been in such a way. Jeanne, who was glancing around the church curiously, sometimes helped, and sometimes didn't.
Certainly, right about now was a good time for something more than words, or something more than the words Cora had. But, on the other hand, she is relatively sure the situation can be salvaged, and more than that, the information she's gaining is worth the risks she was taking. "The other day, what happened?"
"Other night, I guess," Lillian said, uncertainly, "I was searching for the latest ghosts, the ones that had been made by...god, it's horrible, what these kids do to themselves and others. The violence doesn't have any purpose, by god it doesn't, yet they keep on doing it." She sounded sad and alone for a moment, but the woman rallied, and said, "So I was going out to see if I could help, when I saw this man with a fiddle trying to lead some of the ghosts away, but when he saw me he ran."
"The Fiddler," Cora said, calmly.
At that same moment, Gabe had burst out with, "The Fiddler?!" She turned, looking at Cora. "How did you know?"
"I've met him before," Cora said, and she saw a chance to deflect suspicion. "At a party. He was trying to steal a girl away, now he's stealing ghosts away."
"Tried to? You stopped him?"
"Of course I did," Cora said, keeping her voice even, "You do not need to sound so incredulous."
Gabe blushed, and she said, "No, I merely meant that he is somewhat powerful, and I'm surprised--"
"So was he," Cora said, and she allowed the words to drift through the air, watched as Gabe's expression set back into a certain distrust. "So he is gathering ghosts, and girls."
She frowned. "There are many things he could do with them, I can well imagine."
She glanced over at Gabe, who sighed, "And you're going to say you're the protector of this city? Something's off about you, you know. I'm a Wizard, we're pretty perceptive that way. I know you're planning something."
"What if she isn't?" Lillian asked.
"What rule is he not breaking?" Cora asked, "Necromancy was mentioned, yet ghosts do not count?"
It was a weakness, to reveal ignorance like that, but it was the only way to gain knowledge, and she was willing to do this, at least a little.
It made her nervous, and her contract-enhanced senses had calmed down slightly, but still registered threat, even danger. This could still explode into combat, even if for now the fuse had been damped.
"They don't," Gabe said, "I'm not up on ectomancy, but ghosts are nothing more than the reflection of the living, while enslaving them is surely a bad sign, it's not--"
"Hey, don't say I'm a reflection in front of me, cause I'm not," Jeanne said, rounding on Gabe, her finger wagging, hair bouncing as she leapt up and down. "I mean, I'm right here, duh. You can be a lot more polite. I mean, Mrs. Graves is always about being polite and stuff and she's been nice enough not to hurt you or anything like she did that one guy who threatened her, you remember the one, Jacques, who could shoot fire?"
It had been a year and a half ago. People did not try to threaten or kill Cora Graves nearly as often as they had used to.
"Sure. Une petit merde," Jacques said with feeling, his gruff exterior lighting up for a moment of memory.
Gabe looked at her at Jeanne haplessly and said, "I didn't mean to offend--"
"Yet you did, so apologize," Jeanne said, crossing her arms.
"Uh, I'm sorry?"
Cora stood up and moved over towards Lillian.
Gabe shifted for a moment, but Jeanne kept lecturing.
"Are these laws of magic written down for the perusal of interested parties, or is it merely a matter of being in the club?" Cora asked. It was the least she could admit of her ignorance, and she knew that perhaps it was too much.
She watched Lillian carefully, and Lillian said, "What are you going to use it for?"
"Understanding," Cora said.
"Trying to find limits, or rules that you can force someone to choose between breaking and keeping?" Gabe asked, and she was far enough that there was clearly something enhanced about her vision, because Jeanne had been rather helpfully chattering away.
"Hey, don't ignore me."
"No, trying to see if you will attempt to apply those rules to what I can do," Cora said.
"What you can do…" Lillian asked, frowning.
"Yes," Cora said, "It is quite unlike what the Wizards can do, so here we are."
"It only matters for humans," Gabe pointed out, pushing past Jeanne, her expression very uncertain. "Why?"
"If having a soul is what it takes to qualify as human," Cora said, making a decision, "Then I am human."
"What? Looking like…" Gabe trailed off and Lillian made the sign of the cross. The other woman couldn't see what Cora Graves looked like--she had to assume Gabe could still see, however she had done so--but her imagination must have filled in quite a picture.
"Yes," Cora said.
"Then…" Gabe looked scared and confused and for a moment Cora's heart softened. She was clearly in over her head, and there was a decent guess that she was inexperienced. That was not enough to excuse any mistakes, any more than they excused Cora's mistakes, the errors she'd made as a Hedgefresh Changeling, the speed at which she'd thrown everything overboard but the anchor--and regretted none of it--so she decided to think it through.
Wizards. Evidence pointed to them being normal humans who gained their power through 'normal' means. That meant that for all she knew, this girl here had never killed anyone, never been in a fight. She wasn't a Changeling, to be treated as if every delicacy might be a pressure point, but she also wasn't a Changeling in the sense of the word that meant always one thing: survivor.
And maybe that's what she saw. Cora saw someone for a moment that…
"How...who...what did this to you?" Gabe said, horrified and disgusted, and somehow angry.
Interesting, and unexpected in a sense. Hrm.
Cora Graves just looked at them for a long moment, not answering.
Gabe took a breath, and then another and said, "There's a way I can be sure. Have you heard of the Soulgaze? When a Wizard locks eyes with someone for the first time, for long enough, they can see a vision of each other's souls. Of who they are. But only a human, a being with a soul, can do so."
No. 'See a vision of each other's souls.' Even were this true--and to be fair Cora suspects it likely that Gabe was at least telling the truth as she saw it--that was far more than she trusted anyone with.
"No."
Gabe frowned and said, "I understand. If you're not trying to…" she trailed off, truly looking lost, and yet there was little Cora could do to help her, especially not without revealing far more than she planned on doing.
"There's...another possibility," Gabe said, "A failed Soulgaze. When you feel it start to happen, there's a moment where I can pull away, the last moment. If I felt it, the tug, that'd mean you were telling the truth. I wouldn't have to look, and you'd know if I did, it's not something I could hide." She took a breath, "It'd be proof you couldn't fake, and I wouldn't have to pry into your secrets, and you into mine."
Cora considered it for a long moment. It made logical sense, and she also knew that it very well could be a trap. In fact, she knew that she didn't have to trust at all, and it was perhaps a telling indictment of her life that this is what reassured her. "Can you repeat all of that in just one moment?" Cora asked. "I have a way to tell truth from lies."
The sight of truth and lies was easy to activate, of course. It always felt a little odd, because it was the opposite of what one would expect. Instead of thinking of the truth, Cora focused on lies, on all of the ways a person could deceive her, and then out her very being stretched to grab the strands of everything.
Wyrd bound and tied and was everywhere, and when someone spoke a lie, fate itself knew it was a lie, knew the truth, knew everything and nothing at the same time: it was an absurd blind god in that respect.
And she had a contract with this knowledge, with the feeling, a sort of buzzing, when someone was lying. "Now, could you please repeat your explanation of what a Soulgaze is."
"When a Wizard or other…" Gabe looked uncertain, "other magical human of great enough talent, stares into the eyes of a human for the first time for long enough, each party gets a glimpse at each other's souls." True. "This glimpse can reveal much, though I haven't done it often. A Wizard can feel a Soulgaze coming on, and so if I felt it and then broke contact just in time, well for me at least that'd be more than enough proof that you had a soul." True.
"Very well," Cora said.
"Really? You're gonna," Jeanne began.
"Very well."
"Fine," Jeanne pouted, glaring at Gabe and stomping over to Jacques.
"She doesn't seem to like you," Lillian said gently to Gabe.
"How will I ever live with it?" Gabe asked, but she sounded genuinely hurt. "How did you--"
"Saved her," Cora said, aware that she too had to tell the truth. She could have avoided the question entirely, but she knows that saying this will work well.
"...oh?" Lillian asked, looking at Cora with those wide, uncertain eyes.
Gabe now stood in front of Cora, and up close she was a little more imposing, solidly built and mildly handsome, and if she certainly looked young, very young, she also seemed determined as she met Cora's gaze and said, "Don't look away, I'll look away for you."
So Cora doesn't. Cora watches the woman's face, and most of all those dark brown eyes, and she sees the moment the woman sees something, because Gabe stumbles backward, breaking eye contact, her own eyes wider than ever.
"Oh god. Oh god…" Gabe said.
"Do not take the--" Lillian began.
"I'll take whoever's name in vain I want to right now," Gabe snapped, shaking slightly. "She's telling the truth."
"Oh," Lillian said, and she turned to look at Cora. "Oh."
Their looks are almost painful. Cora Graves does not like pity, not at all. Certainly, she hates to be pitied, and despite the hostility they'd evinced, now they were looking at her with sympathy and pity, and it was frustrating though not so much that her mask of calm was broken. It was frustrating because she'd divorced herself so far from it, she'd moved past it long ago and it wasn't important, what she'd done in Arcadia, what her Keeper had made her do, and it wasn't important who she was before--a contemptible addict.
Their looks remind her of it for one too many moments, before she dismissed those worries, drove them out of her head with a pitch-fork. When she worried, her nightmares were far, far different, her fears less about weakness and more about power and its limits.
"What...are you?" Gabe asked.
Cora looked at them for a long moment, wondering at what she should say. She couldn't lie, not exactly, but it was easy enough to imagine slipping around the words, around the limits. Mayor Booster could make an art out of it, really, but she wasn't too bad at the act of telling lies without saying them. But she did know that it was an added complication, but one worth it considering the slim possibility it was a trap.
Like this whole church was, in one sense.
So after a moment of thought, and no more than that, Cora answered.
Cora's Approach:
[] "I call myself a 'Changeling.': This would of course make sure not to hint at the fact, at least not yet, that there are over a hundred of them in this city. Details revealed would be that she was taken away by a being through the 'Hedge' and changed in certain ways, but that she then escaped and has powers based on this. Deeper information would be avoided, and the goal of this approach would be to set up a means to justify gaining more information on Wizards in the future in the guise of an 'exchange' of information.
[] "I am a potential ally in action against the Fiddler.": Emphasize the fact that Cora is against harm being done to ghosts unnecessarily, and that she has active antagonism against the Fiddler, and thus a desire to thwart him, and that at this point an alliance of convenience might be helpful.
[] "I do not wish to answer.": Keep the mystery, and try to turn around the conversation to gain the information on the Laws of Magic and other topics without revealing anything of note. Time is on her side, after all, in gaining information on Wizards without revealing vulnerabilities ahead of time.
[] Write in. Write-in should consist of a truthful 'I am' statement, and how this informs a general approach to what Cora is looking for out of this meeting.
******
Perusasion: 1 success
Intimidation: 3 successes
Persuasion: 2 successes
Empathy: 1 success
Sight of Truth and lies: 9 successes
Intimidation: 3 successes
Persuasion: 2 successes
Empathy: 1 success
Sight of Truth and lies: 9 successes
A/N: So, here we go. The averted soul-gaze seemed to work, and Cora has the uncomfortable feeling of having people feel pity over what they imagine must have been done to her. Overall, it was pretty successful, and she managed to get over her paranoia, even. ...by using magic to make it a sure thing. None of her rolls were amazing, and neither were the results, but they were good enough to muddle through to this point, the 'close in'.
Sorry this is almost late, I merely forgot to post it because I was working on End of an Era. So here you go.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] "I am a potential ally in action against the Fiddler.": Emphasize the fact that Cora is against harm being done to ghosts unnecessarily, and that she has active antagonism against the Fiddler, and thus a desire to thwart him, and that at this point an alliance of convenience might be helpful.
We can give the speech later, to someone we know more.
Yeah, didn't think about how revealing things would be personally for Cora. Ouch.
Also, this combined with the soul gaze means they think that we're a recent victim probably. A powerful but naive one, and that'll color interactions with them in the future?
We can give the speech later, to someone we know more.
Yeah, didn't think about how revealing things would be personally for Cora. Ouch.
Also, this combined with the soul gaze means they think that we're a recent victim probably. A powerful but naive one, and that'll color interactions with them in the future?
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[X] "I call myself a 'Changeling.': This would of course make sure not to hint at the fact, at least not yet, that there are over a hundred of them in this city. Details revealed would be that she was taken away by a being through the 'Hedge' and changed in certain ways, but that she then escaped and has powers based on this. Deeper information would be avoided, and the goal of this approach would be to set up a means to justify gaining more information on Wizards in the future in the guise of an 'exchange' of information.
Warning them of Keeper kidnappings would reduce suspicions that fall upon us later
Warning them of Keeper kidnappings would reduce suspicions that fall upon us later
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The most IC write in I can think of would be like, I am not a victim, and then segueing to helping them out. Nip that pity in the bud.
Not totally IC cause I'm not sure Cora would protest that much, though.
Not totally IC cause I'm not sure Cora would protest that much, though.
[X] "I call myself a 'Changeling.': This would of course make sure not to hint at the fact, at least not yet, that there are over a hundred of them in this city. Details revealed would be that she was taken away by a being through the 'Hedge' and changed in certain ways, but that she then escaped and has powers based on this. Deeper information would be avoided, and the goal of this approach would be to set up a means to justify gaining more information on Wizards in the future in the guise of an 'exchange' of information.
- Location
- Chicago
[X] "I am a potential ally in action against the Fiddler.": Emphasize the fact that Cora is against harm being done to ghosts unnecessarily, and that she has active antagonism against the Fiddler, and thus a desire to thwart him, and that at this point an alliance of convenience might be helpful.
Don't give a categorical name, that is too much information. I am not worried about these guys making any connections, but people higher up the food chain.
Don't give a categorical name, that is too much information. I am not worried about these guys making any connections, but people higher up the food chain.
- Location
- California
[X] I am someone who has overcome
- Location
- Chicago
This is hardly the one and only option to choose how information about changelings is presented. Furthermore, just because the information will eventually become known isn't cause to hasten that date. We should make the most of the time we have left when people don't know what we are.
But the time is passing, and fast. The more we wait the more probable that someone will unravel it on their own and cost us control over the first message. Other freeholds exist and some are more or less trusting or easily manipulated.
What exactly do we intend to use the doubt for and against, that the Wizard here would be motivated to talk to?
What exactly do we intend to use the doubt for and against, that the Wizard here would be motivated to talk to?
Noxious
An excellent host
- Location
- South Africa
[X] "I am a potential ally in action against the Fiddler.": Emphasize the fact that Cora is against harm being done to ghosts unnecessarily, and that she has active antagonism against the Fiddler, and thus a desire to thwart him, and that at this point an alliance of convenience might be helpful.
lkmcclenahan
That which doesn't kill me, only makes me stranger
- Location
- UK
[X] "I call myself a 'Changeling.': This would of course make sure not to hint at the fact, at least not yet, that there are over a hundred of them in this city. Details revealed would be that she was taken away by a being through the 'Hedge' and changed in certain ways, but that she then escaped and has powers based on this. Deeper information would be avoided, and the goal of this approach would be to set up a means to justify gaining more information on Wizards in the future in the guise of an 'exchange' of information.
- Location
- Sweden
[X] "I am a potential ally in action against the Fiddler.": Emphasize the fact that Cora is against harm being done to ghosts unnecessarily, and that she has active antagonism against the Fiddler, and thus a desire to thwart him, and that at this point an alliance of convenience might be helpful.
[X] "I call myself a 'Changeling.'
- Pronouns
- They/Them
She's not. Partially because she doesn't think humanity is a side in the first place. For one, she comes from a world where vampires have souls.
Like, real-talk here, a vampire in her same position would qualify as human by Dresden-files standards.
Vampires have souls in the new world of darkness. Vampires can also eat each other's souls for power, because vampires are fucked up, but they have to have a soul to eat in order to be devoured and devouring.
So the idea of this great divide between those who are 'human' and those who aren't and how somehow everyone has to pick a side would seem bizarre.
She's on the side of her friends, her family, her dependents (like the Prophet Circle), her Freehold and Court, and to a lesser extent all Changelings who are on her side[1], St. Louis and America as a sort of secondary 'I live there' loyalty...and not that much beyond it.
Being fair here, who, in the absence of a war in which humanity is all lumped together as one, would be on the side of humanity?
Humanity carries no inherent loyalty, let alone morality, and so no leader alive today (IRL) is on the side of 'humanity.' They might be on the side of the collective interests of the world for the betterment of our children or whatnot, but humanity is too abstract unless brought into focus.
*****
Okay, that was a long way of saying what I was saying, but I hope that makes sense?
[1] Yes, that sentence seems odd. But what it basically means is, even her loyalty to other Changelings is condition. She's clearly not on the side of the dangerous Loyalist or the murderous lunatic, and them being Changelings means nothing in that case. Relational status matters more.
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- Location
- Tarn-Vedra
[X] "I call myself a 'Changeling.': This would of course make sure not to hint at the fact, at least not yet, that there are over a hundred of them in this city. Details revealed would be that she was taken away by a being through the 'Hedge' and changed in certain ways, but that she then escaped and has powers based on this. Deeper information would be avoided, and the goal of this approach would be to set up a means to justify gaining more information on Wizards in the future in the guise of an 'exchange' of information.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Tally? The vote closes tomorrow.
- Location
- Daybreak
Winner!:
4/15 Votes
1 Vote Each.
9/15 Votes
4/15 Votes
1 Vote Each.
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