Making a Magical Bunker

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Running water impedes magic- it doesn't wash it away completely. Harry can still summon some of his 8-10 shifts of power in Changes (and other books) when standing in running water. The curse that turns MacFinn into the Loup Garou is powerful enough not to be bothered by several generations of people having taken tens of thousands of baths and the entropy curse was powerful enough to nearly kill people while taking a bath despite Harry's attempts to deflect its energy. A major ward with a lot more shifts than that curse is going to ignore any amount of water. Also, nobody is going to think of everything. That's true. But consider that some people do have centuries to think that, and centuries of experience to draw from. Plus, they can summon spirits of knowledge to do the thinking for them.
As in anything, building a serious magical bunker is a matter of time. If a great mage spent literally decades designing and building that bunker, nobody is going to find out a weakness that he did not think of without also spending similar time thinking - especially if they cannot see what protections he or she has designed.


I'll tell you what. I'll sit for a day or so fully designing a magical bunker my current character could build in a year's effort. I'll send the writeup to my current GM. Then you, playing as a group of warden-level wizards, will have to plan an assault on it on paper (not actually run it - it would take too long). See if you can think of a way to find it, find what defenses it has, and penetrate them in a reasonable amount of time.

Oh I'm not saying it's always going to be easy or even likely for a small subset of the population of the world but couple the Sight with the fact that it's much easier to break things than to build them and you'll get my point.

As to running water, yeah the amount of water and the strength of the spell play a part in it.  MacFinn's curse was laid with faith magic, which doesn't appear to be affected by running water.  The entropy curse was being backed by an Outsider and they get to ignore natural laws like it's going out of style, plus a shower isn't very much in the way of running water.  A busted water main aimed directly at your average wizard's wards... probably go down in a matter of minutes.

Or, you know, fire.  If there's too much space and too many layers for a molotov cocktail to do the job, run a tanker truck into them, drop a fully fueled jet on them, circle the perimeter with gasoline and drop a match, or drop a satellite on them.  Really all depends on if you want there to be anything left when the wards drop or not.

[Belial666]

Your average wizard's wards are about 30 shifts for someone of Harry's ability and limited time spent building a defense and they are not going to have too many overlapping stuff. So a fuel truck, busted water main or falling aircraft/sattelite is going to breach them, probably.

Now, if the ward is 3000 shifts instead of 30, you should start looking for multimegaton nukes and Chichen Itza level magic if you want to breach it. Because nothing less is going to work. And 3000 shifts is not as hard to find as one might think. If you're a dark wizard, you can pay one of those border-running illegal immigrant ships to deliver a container or two of immigrants nobody is going to miss at your place. 100 sacrifices is 2000 shifts. If you're a non-Lawbreaker, you can do summons of sapient nonhumans to sacrifice. Still get the bonus power from, say, eating spirits or ritually sacrificing wildfae without the Lawbreaking. Then it is only the 300 exchanges (5 hours?) you have to spend casting that Ward.

[razorsmile]

No one seems to have mentioned thresholds. A nice threshold would boost the functionality of the rest, no? So, throw lots of parties, adopt a few kids and raise them right

That is, of course, in addition to the leylines and the explosive wards and self-destructs.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Your average wizard's wards are about 30 shifts for someone of Harry's ability and limited time spent building a defense and they are not going to have too many overlapping stuff. So a fuel truck, busted water main or falling aircraft/sattelite is going to breach them, probably.

Now, if the ward is 3000 shifts instead of 30, you should start looking for multimegaton nukes and Chichen Itza level magic if you want to breach it. Because nothing less is going to work. And 3000 shifts is not as hard to find as one might think. If you're a dark wizard, you can pay one of those border-running illegal immigrant ships to deliver a container or two of immigrants nobody is going to miss at your place. 100 sacrifices is 2000 shifts. If you're a non-Lawbreaker, you can do summons of sapient nonhumans to sacrifice. Still get the bonus power from, say, eating spirits or ritually sacrificing wildfae without the Lawbreaking. Then it is only the 300 exchanges (5 hours?) you have to spend casting that Ward.

So, would you say a gallon of flaming diesel would be enough to take care of one shift worth of warding?  Let's double it just to make sure.  Your average tanker truck holds 5500 to 9000 gallons of fuel.  A tanker at the high end would be enough to take out every shift of warding with one truck, even if it took three gallons per shift.  And it could be done by one Plain Mortal with a CDL, a high volume pump, and a match.

Wards don't solve everything.  To quote Harry, "Magic doesn't solve anything... It just makes things more complex."  If you're really wanting this place impregnable, go with a layered strategy of wards, minions, and mundane things like three foot thick steel blast doors.  Even then, a dedicated and well planned assault could still breach the defenses, it's just highly unlikely.

[Belial666]

Blowing up a tanker truck might break through a bank vault door. That's 12 shifts, not the 5000 shifts you expected.


You might have noticed that shifts of power or effect, weapon ratings and barriers do not go up linearly. For example, a human with Might 3 can lift about 200 pounds. That doesn't mean that four humans with Might 3 can rip a bank vault door off its hinges which is a 12-shift block; the shifts don't add up. Even if you had a hundred such humans they'd barely be able to lift the door's weight (about 10 tons) off the ground . A vampire master with Might 6 and supernatural strength could pick up such a weight and use it to whack people or rip the bank vault door off its hinges without even rolling. And so can a wizard of the power level Harry had in Storm Front if he tried for a fairly big spell.
Shifts of power or effect increase the real-world effect (such as weight lifted, toughness of barrier, amount of physical damage, time needed to complete a task) by about 50% per shift. This means that, on average, 2 shifts increase means a doubling. 20 shifts increase the real-world effect by at least a thousand times.

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Oh I wasn't talking about pitting the explosive power of the fuel against the wards.  I was talking about pumping flaming fuel at the wards  with a fire hose or similar until they collapsed.  Fire purifies just as surely as running water adds entropy.  In that circumstance, shifts are very much linear.  Yeah, it might take a while but the person inside the wards would be in no position to do much about it if he's relying strictly on ward strength to defend himself.

[Richard_Chilton]

Wards are anchored to physical objects.  Usually the walls of a house (if anchored to a the threshold) but sometimes a Ogham Stone or the like.  Destroy a house and there's no threshold to anchor the ward to.  Blow up the Ogham Stone and there's nothing anchoring the mega ward you've built.

Which is what I thought you meant by the tanker truck.  Blow up a tanker truck next to a Ogham Stone and there's no Ogham Stone to anchor the ward.  Blow it up next to someone's house and the walls are gone - meaning no threshold to anchor the ward.  Blow it up next to the White Council castle in Scotland and... Well castles can take a pounding.  I'm not saying that there wouldn't be damage but the bulk of the castle will there be there to anchor the ward.

Richard

[Belial666]

You'll notice I used a graveyard as the anchor for the various wardings in the house. The ground of the graveyard itself is hallowed (or cursed, as the case may be) and thus it has a base threshold of +3 on which you can anchor the wards. That's the ground of the area itself that serves as anchor, rather than some structure that can be destroyed.
As for the fire, unless your attack roll exceeds the ward's strength with that fire hose, the Ward is going to reflect the fire back at you. And no human can get attack rolls high enough to overcome that reflection for a major ward without equally powerful magic.
One way to penetrate normal wards is to use Mordite, which drains all mortal magic. But for the example wards, Elena used Outsider sponsored magic thus Mordite isn't going to weaken them - it may even make them stronger.
Another important point is that no mortal is going to see through the greater veils in that ward setup that make them ignore the stronghold as if it did not exist. A wizard opening The Sight breaches the greater veils... and is immediately faced with the Sight backlash of witnessing the true forms of several dozen bound Outsiders, which leaves him insane. So you either totally ignore the existence of the stronghold or you are obliterated by seeing it if you have a human mind.


There are a few more tricks set in the writeup I gave a few pages back. It is not the best stronghold I've designed but it is fairly thorough. My sorceress needed a safe place to hide from the entire White Council in the past - after you're beheaded a few times it kind of loses its novelty and becomes rather tedious.

[Richard_Chilton]

You'll notice I used a graveyard as the anchor for the various wardings in the house. The ground of the graveyard itself is hallowed (or cursed, as the case may be) and thus it has a base threshold of +3 on which you can anchor the wards. That's the ground of the area itself that serves as anchor, rather than some structure that can be destroyed.

So if a priest comes around and does a "this place isn't concentrated anymore" your wards would go?
That rite does exist - when they close a church, move a graveyard, etc someone does that rite...
Also (don't read if you haven't read GS):

(click to show/hide)

The threshold of a graveyard keeps things in, not out

Cursed graveyards... I don't see them having a threshold.  If so, then a simple blessing would hallow it.

As for the fire, unless your attack roll exceeds the ward's strength with that fire hose, the Ward is going to reflect the fire back at you. And no human can get attack rolls high enough to overcome that reflection for a major ward without equally powerful magic.

Wards don't provide mundane protection.  They provide magical protect.  For example, there's that time that someone tossed a pipe bomb through Harry's window.

The only time they effect mundanes is if you put landmines in your wards.  If don't do that they don't slow down anything that isn't affected by a threshold.

... and is immediately faced with the Sight backlash of witnessing the true forms of several dozen bound Outsiders, which leaves him insane. So you either totally ignore the existence of the stronghold or you are obliterated by seeing it if you have a human mind.

Okay, I have to ask - how do you bind outsiders?

Richard

[Belial666]

1) "Cursed" as in dedicated to an evil god. The temples and burial sites of various old religions for example. It helps if whoever erects the wards is also the priest or priestess that did the dedication ritual to said Old God.

2) Harry specifically makes his normal wards not work against mortals and mundane dangers. It would be kinda hard to explain to the White Council how a passing vandal that threw a stone at his house had a Landmine blow back at his face and blast him to bits. Even so, when his major ward is up, it does work against mundanes; he had to specifically bring it down when the FBI came to investigate else it would have blasted them to bits if they tried anything.

3) Justin DuMorne knew how. So does Cowl. The Gatekeeper probably knows and so does the Blackstaff. I also assume when someone has Sponsored Magic: Outer Gates, they'd know how to do it just like someone with diabolism can bind demons.



Ultimately, remember that wizards can perform terrifyingly awesome feats of power with enough preparation. A single senior-council-level caster made a volcano blow up with what was probably a couple months of preparation. The spellcasters that prepared the ritual at Chichen Itza called up enough power to kill an entire nation spread across the world in a similar timespan. There is no reason someone could not perfom protective magic at similar scales and my stronghold designs are just that; protective magical constructs with the same kind of power put in them as spells that could make a crater out of Chicago.

[Richard_Chilton]

1) "Cursed" as in dedicated to an evil god. The temples and burial sites of various old religions for example. It helps if whoever erects the wards is also the priest or priestess that did the dedication ritual to said Old God.

The thing is, there's nothing in the books or game that gives a "cursed" area a threshold.

2) Harry specifically makes his normal wards not work against mortals and mundane dangers. It would be kinda hard to explain to the White Council how a passing vandal that threw a stone at his house had a Landmine blow back at his face and blast him to bits. Even so, when his major ward is up, it does work against mundanes; he had to specifically bring it down when the FBI came to investigate else it would have blasted them to bits if they tried anything.

Day Off was set after Harry had strengthened his wards.  Thomas, Murphy, etc had been given special keys so they could enter without harm.  You never read "I had a cheap door there because the wards would keep everyone out"; no you read descriptions of his kick ass "you ain't getting in" door.  You read about a window getting broken when someone threw a pipe bomb.

Show me one place where it says that wards (or thresholds) protect the mundane parts of a house (doors, walls, windows) and I'll stop harping on this, but I can't recall anything like that in the books or the RAW.

3) Justin DuMorne knew how. So does Cowl. The Gatekeeper probably knows and so does the Blackstaff. I also assume when someone has Sponsored Magic: Outer Gates, they'd know how to do it just like someone with diabolism can bind demons.

Did Justine bind He Who Walks Behind or did he did with Him?
Does Cowl force the Outsider to do his bidding or do they work together on common goals?
Personally I can't see Outsiders telling someone how to bind them - or allowing someone they are sponsoring to do it.  Just as I can't see someone with Summer Fae Magic being told how to bind Lily I can't see someone with sponsored magic: Outsider being able to bind Outsiders...

As for how to bind Outsiders, there's nothing published on how to do it.  Check out the post on Case Files: Evil Acts at http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,28864.msg1242215.html#msg1242215 for the current state of Outsiders in the game.

Richard

[Silverblaze]

I think I'd handle my bunker differently.  "If the devil wants in, he'll get in."

Make a bad ass enough spell caster to actually protect himself a few rounds.  Fill your sanctum with offensive monsters/guardians also.  Then make the wards keep foes in. Damage them when they try to leave via wards.  Compell hopelessness or fear.  Trap them in a mental maze.  Kill them at your leisure.
 No one expects to be kept in.

Making friends with a holy roller to help keep your threshhold high could be a nice help too.

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Getting into a sanctum past wards isn't as hard as it sounds.

I assume most wizards breathe.  Burn fires outside long enough, the heat will diminsh oxygen inside slowly.  Burn long enought thats a problem.  Could just super heat the externals.

Lay siege.  Patience is a virtue for a hunter.

Send innocents there to get fried (in the case of Harry's wards). This works fine in some cases for bad guys too.  bad publicity and mortal attention will make a wizards life hell.  Enough people die or disapear in an urban area people will notice.  Even in rural settings this works...just takes longer.

Convince local criminals to use the property for nefarious dealings.  They die, wizard gains enmity of local criminals.  Get city hall to build a road through the area, or something similar.

I prefer anhydrous immonia for those underground dwellers.  It's heavier than air...its also very cold and poisonous.  It will freeze dry your lungs fresh out of a tank.  It doesn't get much nicer later.  Pump that into a sanctum through minions or force magic (won't work for wizards who hex everything, but plenty of magic doesn't cause hexing. pump in the gas.  They'll leave, come out, or die.  Anhydrous immonia may not be cheap, but it isn't expensive.

Stop up ventilation systems or ways air gets in.  Suffocation is a bad way to die.  Similarly, bury the sanctum.

Sounds likely get in.  Psychological warfare works here, play ACDC at all hours full blast.

Drop 1000 gallon propane tanks from planes (similar to bombing runs and if you can affor that you might as well use bombs, but the propane tanks will cause the inhabitants ears to bleed and maybe rupture ear drums better than traditional bombs.

All else fails.

Out of spite continually pelt their home with compost or carrion... manure and fertilizer; etc.  No one likes a smelly house. 

None of this is fool proof, but most wizards won't expect these methods of getting at them.   

[Richard_Chilton]

None of this is fool proof, but most wizards won't expect these methods of getting at them.

And that's the key to getting passed anyone's defences - hit them in a way they haven't thought about.  If they don't see the attack coming then they go down quickly.

Like how at one point Harry didn't plan on having to defend from fire.  Or that pipe bomb through his window.  And how no wizard had thought about how Kincade's "You're dead before you can hear the shot" method of escaping death curses.  Or how the Summer Lady hadn't counted on a bunch of tiny wild fae armed with box cutters.  Or how Dresden hadn't thought to defend his dreams against attack.

Or practically any ending of any Dresden book when Harry pulls a "I beat the bad guy" maneuver out of the air.

There is no way to defend against everything and your defences have to work 100% of the time while the attacker just has to get lucky once.

Richard

[Sanctaphrax]

Actually, really good defenses only need to work once. Then the attacker's dead.

But this is beside the point.

I think that Belial's mostly right here. While I disagree with him about the feasibility of assembly-line thaumaturgy, most of what he says stands.

Will ignore specifics like graveyard thresholds and binding outsiders. Replace graveyard with holy ground and outsiders with clockwork golems if you don't like 'em.

A ward blocks physical or magical force. The writeup in YS says that it reflects force, actually. I see no reason for a thrown incendiary to pierce a ward when a thrown person can't.

Generally speaking, nothing bypasses a basic ward unless

a) you go through the Nevernever
or
b) you have the key.

Molotov cocktails and the like are totally worthless. So's a tanker truck bomb.

Lifting up the entire city block with magic and launching it into space might work, though. You can do that without ever actually breaking the wards.

Really, a guy behind a 50-shift ward can feel pretty safe as long as he never goes outside and somehow controls the adjacent Nevernever absolutely. Nothing except Thaumaturgy or massive teamwork is getting through.

Nothing fancy required. It can still help, though.

[Silverblaze]

Actually, really good defenses only need to work once. Then the attacker's dead.

But this is beside the point.

I think that Belial's mostly right here. While I disagree with him about the feasibility of assembly-line thaumaturgy, most of what he says stands.

Will ignore specifics like graveyard thresholds and binding outsiders. Replace graveyard with holy ground and outsiders with clockwork golems if you don't like 'em.

A ward blocks physical or magical force. The writeup in YS says that it reflects force, actually. I see no reason for a thrown incendiary to pierce a ward when a thrown person can't.

Generally speaking, nothing bypasses a basic ward unless

a) you go through the Nevernever
or
b) you have the key.

Molotov cocktails and the like are totally worthless. So's a tanker truck bomb.

Lifting up the entire city block with magic and launching it into space might work, though. You can do that without ever actually breaking the wards.

Really, a guy behind a 50-shift ward can feel pretty safe as long as he never goes outside and somehow controls the adjacent Nevernever absolutely. Nothing except Thaumaturgy or massive teamwork is getting through.

Nothing fancy required. It can still help, though.

If the building isn't standing anymore, I'dsay that'd work too.  Truck bomb could in that way work.  Pretty sure hte wards do not make the stuff they are put on indestructible.