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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Arcteryx on September 04, 2010, 03:37:01 AM
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Do wizards stand by and twiddle their thumbs? What's would be the White Council's official response? And the individual wizards? The fay just stay out of the way and hide out in the Nevernever? ie. how involved does the supernatural get in the affairs of mortals?
I'd assume vampires are always in there and somehow profiting from it, but even them.
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Edited to warn of possible spoilers
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Well, Kemmler caused World War I. I bet wizards were hunting him down. In World War II, he was raising mass graves, so they were trying to get rid of him again. In other wars, we know they've taken sides personally. Eb and Arthur ran into each other in the French and Indian War. Blacks and Reds probably used the chaos to take root, Fae probably watch it like TV, ghouls follow battlefields, MonOc was probably talent-scouting, etc. Depends on the group, but many could benefit from war.
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Well we don't know what they were doing exactly during said French Indian War. They may or may not have had sides. Part of the purpose of Laws of Magic was to keep the White Council as nationally neutral as possible so that personal loyalties to philosophy didn't rend the Council asunder.
However I would imagine that they would do like they did in WWI and WWII and stop other members of the supernatural from causing or taking advantage of the chaos.
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Well we don't know what they were doing exactly during said French Indian War. They may or may not have had sides. Part of the purpose of Laws of Magic was to keep the White Council as nationally neutral as possible so that personal loyalties to philosophy didn't rend the Council asunder.
However I would imagine that they would do like they did in WWI and WWII and stop other members of the supernatural from causing or taking advantage of the chaos.
We've been told by Jim that Eb and Arthur were on the opposite sides.
The Laws of Magic rule over magic, not how wizards act otherwise. The Council as a whole is neutral, but their members can do whatever they want really, so long as the follow the Laws.
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I'd love to argue this point, but I'd be pulling most of my arguments from a post Small Favors book.
So from non-spoiler books:
The White Council does not want to see members attacking each other. They know that if they fight among themselves that the monsters win. Summer Knight talks about how the White Council takes pains to show that they are united against the world. That's not possible if they were actively fighting on different sides in a war.
Supporting different sides, well, that's not the same as actively fighting. Doing little things to help out, that's probably allowed.
Richard
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I'd love to argue this point, but I'd be pulling most of my arguments from a post Small Favors book.
So from non-spoiler books:
The White Council does not want to see members attacking each other. They know that if they fight among themselves that the monsters win. Summer Knight talks about how the White Council takes pains to show that they are united against the world. That's not possible if they were actively fighting on different sides in a war.
Supporting different sides, well, that's not the same as actively fighting. Doing little things to help out, that's probably allowed.
Good distinction.
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In film & literature, there's a popular plot device where Hitler and his cronies explore and get into some mighty bad mojo; how would you guys reconcile something like that with the existence of a White Council & the Accords?
Would the Allies have responded in kind without the benefit of the White Council?
My thought is, whoever is involved, either on the Axis or Ally side, would have been completely aware of the White Council and the rest of the supernatural infrastructure.
Say the Axis initiates something like this, would the White Council have approached the Allies and said, those darned enemies of yours are into some hellraising mojo, let us help you set up some kind of special unit to counter it. Or would they have moved in on their own to take care of it since obviously raising Outsiders and other stuff like that is clearly Lawbreaking.
I'm kind of leaning towards the latter - ie. they'd have just moved in without consulting the Allies.
What though, if the Allies had a similar force, and they and the Wardens started stepping on each other's toes and getting into each other's way?
I'm trying to wrap my head around some backstory for my campaign and wanted to have something in place that respects canon as much as possible; ie. Kemmler, Eb, Kincaid... at the same time, ramifications from what happens "back then" should resolve to something in the present that also respects the canon's state of the world as Harry knows it.
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Morgan fought in the trenches of WWI.
I'm not aware of confirmation whether that was before or after he acquired his powers.
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Historically?
Historically the Thule society (a German group that backed the Nazis) were into the occult. There's a group of "witches" in England who claimed to have focused all of their magic to keep the channel stormy for six weeks when it looked like the Germans might invade. Various other occult claims are made about that period.
In game terms, the Thule society might have been low level practitioners (selected for their politics than power level) or wannabees with virtually no effective power - both have appeared in the books. As far as wizards backing politicians, well, I don't see that happening.
But I could see elements of the White Council doing a little weather magic, adding some real power to the hundreds of others, to keep the channel stormy.
Richard
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Morgan fought in the trenches of WWI.
I'm not aware of confirmation whether that was before or after he acquired his powers.
Yes, but WWI was caused by the Necromancer Kemmler, so WHAT Morgan was fighting in those trenches is up for debate.
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There's a theory that the annexation of Poland was purely so that Hitler could get his hands on the Spear of Destiny. It may be that there was a whole level of supernatural involvement on the quiet. It wouldn't be entirely out of line with the spirit of the Dresden Files for the 3rd Reich to be attempting to elevate Hitler to godhood via ritual, artefacts and human sacrifice.
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Speaking of the spear of destiny. It is suppose to have a nail from the cross on it. Which can't be so in the dresdenverse. However the original metal head of the spearhead could still be around. Whereas it wouldn't have been Soaked in Blood as long as the nails, it would still I think garnish power. Besides the fact that so many people believe in it. Of course aren't their like 3 spears in various museums around the world claiming to the be "the one"? (Maybe they all are a single piece of a 3 piece whole)
Along that line of thought, Before the Dresden RPG, I was running a Dresden game with the Witchcraft system. I had a "knight want-to-be character" but couldn't justify giving them one of the "true swords" so I came up with a minor sword theory. based on the metal, ceramic, bone pieces that had been tied to the Cat-O-Nine Tails used to torture Christ. They had been gathered by a group, and placed in the pommels of 9 swords. They acted like the Swords of the Cross but on a much smaller scale.
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Speaking of the spear of destiny. It is suppose to have a nail from the cross on it. Which can't be so in the dresdenverse. However the original metal head of the spearhead could still be around. Whereas it wouldn't have been Soaked in Blood as long as the nails, it would still I think garnish power. Besides the fact that so many people believe in it. Of course aren't their like 3 spears in various museums around the world claiming to the be "the one"? (Maybe they all are a single piece of a 3 piece whole)
It could be argued to have the Aspect 'Godslayer'. There are indeed at least 3 that make the claim, and it's not unreasonable to think that a powerful artefact may have been split up to prevent its use. There's a whole load of nasty powers you could associate with it if you wanted to take the angle of it being forged specifically to kill a god. And that also raises the question who was it forged by?
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You're confusing the spear of destiny with the Vienna Lance (also known as the Hofburg spear). The spear of destiny was the spear used to poke him in the side to make sure he was dead - an might have killed him.
Richard
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You're confusing the spear of destiny with the Vienna Lance (also known as the Hofburg spear). The spear of destiny was the spear used to poke him in the side to make sure he was dead - an might have killed him.
Richard
Actually I am fairly certain they are one and the same.
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Awesome stuff, guys - these are the sorts of stories I was hoping to hear. Its just rich with story seed & adventure possibility... and it lets me construct a probable course of action for the supernatural world during some of the more important conflicts in that part of the world.
My only real pauser for thought is whether or not the Allies came up with a counter response of their own, or was it the White Council who did something about it, or if it was a combination of both.
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At the risk of being slightly more silly than a number of the (very good) posts above, Morgan could easily have been fighting Zombies in the trenches. It's hard to get men to charge across no-man's-land in trench warfare. Zombies? Much easier. And Nazi Zombies are a constant theme in recent video games.
There's plenty (!) of ground for magic in warfare, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Assassinate an enemy general? Entropy curse ("Holy crap! My gun just discharged accidentally! I swear I'm not an assassin!"). Trouble with morale? Send in the zombies. Lost track of an enemy column? Ask a fairy... Or just scry for it. Weather not what you want? Nudge it to make it over-cast - or get rid of a storm. Want to keep submarines out of your harbour? Summon a water spirit and have it guard the harbour mouth. Want to guard a convoy from submarines? Another water spirit. Want to fly a large wing of aircraft past an observer? Confuse them for just a few minutes - just long enough for them to assume they're a friendly flight returning.
The list goes on and on.
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Don’t forget about the great work the Hedge Wizards did during the Battle of Dunkirk.
Quoting from Professor Wiener’s “Military History in the Supernatural 20th Century World”; “While the English practitioners, working mostly in London, focused on using the weather to ground the Luftwaffe, several covens of Irish practitioners influenced Goering, using black magic, to convince Hitler in holding back the amour long enough to enable the evacuation of the beaches at Dunkirk. Most of the Hedge Wizards then presented themselves to Wardens for judgment. The aftermath of those judgments resulted in years of debate and internal strife for the White Council, keeping them out of direct involvement of World War II.”
Sadly, my copy of Wiener’s book is nearly unreadable. It was found in the burned down and flooded accord sanction neutral grounds in the heart of New Orleans 9th Ward.
I am guessing, but it seems the Wardens became even more proactive after the Dunkirk judgments.
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The spear of destiny isn't the Hofburg spear. The Hofburg spear is a different one, and one that the Nazis did get.
To quote:
Vienna Lance (Hofburg spear)
The Holy Lance in the Schatzkammer of Vienna
The inscription on the Holy Lance
The Holy Roman Emperors had a lance of their own, attested from the time of Otto I (912-973). In 1000 Otto III gave Boleslaw I of Poland a replica of the Lance at the Congress of Gniezno. In 1084 Henry IV had a silver band with the inscription "Nail of Our Lord" added to it. This was based on the belief that this was the lance of Constantine the Great which enshrined a nail used for the Crucifixion.
Much more information can be found at:
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Lance[/ur], including how it was taken to Dresden in WWII and returned to Austria by the Allies.
Richard
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The spear of destiny isn't the Hofburg spear. The Hofburg spear is a different one, and one that the Nazis did get.
And yet that same wikipedia entry identifies the Hofberg Spear as one of 3 or 4 relics that are claimed to be the Holy Lance (aka the Spear of Deastiny) or part of it. In fact none of the relics that appear in that article actually are the spear of destiny. Just because the actual history doesn't tally with the claims doesn't prevent it from being a decent hook for a roleplaying game using the idea that they all do contain parts of the spear that require reassembly...