Bull of the North

Obsidian Soul

Obsidian Soul

Member
Why hasn't the Immaculate Order sent its big guns to deal with the Bull of the North?  I really don't see him being able to survive having a scale of Immaculate Masters (a fang for each Immaculate Style) coming for his hide.  Who cares that the freaking Bronze Faction won't send any freaking Sidereals to help them.  Twenty-five freaking DBs with 1500 Xp that have mastered one of the freaking Immaculate Styles should be able to rip the Bull of the North and his circle to pieces, especially if they are outfitted with the best Artifacts and Hearthstones from the Immaculates' vaults.  I mean, the Realm should still have a few Solar Cords of Sorcery in their collection, to deal with the rare Solar that learned Solar sorcery before the Wyld Hunt could deal with them.
 
Because the Bull of the North isn't the only high profile Solar on the map?


The Wyld Hunt is dealing with the aftermath of the Jade Prison going tits up, and Solars flaring up across the Creation, including your PC's.  


The Bull is a canon example of how a Solar could do their do, but it's up the ST to create others who are going about their normal affairs, in Lookshy, in Nexus, in the Realm, in the Threshold. And ALL of them are about as experienced as the Bull, and a few are even more powerful.


The Bull is just an example of what the other Solars could do if they wanted to go high profile.  And that the Realm isn't rolling out shows how fragmented they are with in fighting amongst themselves now that the Empress isn't pushing their buttons and focusing them.


Sure the Realm could come down hard, but there's still the matter of where to send those big guns.  To Rathess? To the Lap? To where ever your PC's are hanging out? To deal with the Lintha?  To deal with Abyssals? To deal with  Behemoths?  To deal with the Fair Folk? To deal with the Bull of the North? To deal with some other horror that an ST puts together?


If the Bull of the North was the only player, the Realm would have crushed him a while back. But he's not. He's just one of many upstart Anathema doing their Cursed toe tap on the Creation...
 
Why hasn't the Immaculate Order sent its big guns to deal with the Bull of the North?  I really don't see him being able to survive having a scale of Immaculate Masters (a fang for each Immaculate Style) coming for his hide.  Who cares that the freaking Bronze Faction won't send any freaking Sidereals to help them.  Twenty-five freaking DBs with 1500 Xp that have mastered one of the freaking Immaculate Styles should be able to rip the Bull of the North and his circle to pieces' date=' especially if they are outfitted with the best Artifacts and Hearthstones from the Immaculates' vaults.  I mean, the Realm should still have a few Solar Cords of Sorcery in their collection, to deal with the rare Solar that learned Solar sorcery before the Wyld Hunt could deal with them.[/quote']
I see a few reasons why this hasn't happened.


1. The Wyld Hunt is currently undermaned and underfunded. If the Realm does have any Cords left it's in the custody of one of the great Houses and they're not about to give it up. I also think 25 1500xp DB's willing to go is tougher to come by in this enviroment. Especially since most of them would be taken out thus leaving the Hunt in even worse shape.


2. They'll have to actually get to the Bull. He has quite a few DB outcast in his service, a circle of solar, one of whom is a solar circle sorceress who has a several 2nd circle demons and celestial lions in her service. Not to mention his mortal army. ALthough they couldn't stop them Immacualtes they'll give the Bull warning and the time to get ready. Suddenly, getting to the Bull seems a little more difficult.


3. On top of all that the Bull is a badass. Hell, he took a Sidereal out with a single arrow


Then there's everything Jakk said. The hunt is stretched pretty thin which ties into my first point.
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Why hasn't the Immaculate Order sent its big guns to deal with the Bull of the North?  I really don't see him being able to survive having a scale of Immaculate Masters (a fang for each Immaculate Style) coming for his hide.  Who cares that the freaking Bronze Faction won't send any freaking Sidereals to help them.  Twenty-five freaking DBs with 1500 Xp that have mastered one of the freaking Immaculate Styles should be able to rip the Bull of the North and his circle to pieces' date=' especially if they are outfitted with the best Artifacts and Hearthstones from the Immaculates' vaults.  I mean, the Realm should still have a few Solar Cords of Sorcery in their collection, to deal with the rare Solar that learned Solar sorcery before the Wyld Hunt could deal with them.[/quote']
Didn't they already try once? Wasn't that why House Tepet fell? He took down an entire dynastic house. I would think 25 Db's with that much exp would be better fitted to staying on the safe side of the island.
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Big bad army that is only getting larger as well as the above
 
honstly, with the extreme cheesiness of the Sidereal Charms, ONE Sideral could take out the Bull, his Circle, and his entire army singlehandedly. Why waste DBs?


-S
 
I suppose it does beggar the question--what the heck are 1500XP Dragon Bloods doing taking orders from any idiot in the Dynasts' camp?  


These fellas are the ones who are giving the orders, shaping their own Houses' destiny, and looking with covetous eyes upon the vacant throne.


And if you are a Dragon Blood in the middle of trying to plot your House's ascension to the throne, are you really going to give some of your strongest rivals even more power and goodies that they can turn against you?  The Wyld Hunt isn't the Spetznaz, just lying around waiting for things to happen in their Dragon Cave of Coolness.  They should still be characters, and if you're going to make them powerful, they should have their own agendas, and at that power level, it's not worrying about girding their loins for battle against upstart Anathema, who are still far away, doing bad things to your rivals, you are girding your loins, and greasing all the wheels to do in and hamstring those bastiches.


And unless you are rolling out with the Dragon Blooded Breeding Farm idea with the Gold Faction having been training DB's in it for a few hundred years, there aren't DB fedaykin just running around.  


Yes, powerful DB's who are commanding their own units, but if you're the Scarlet Empress, do you really want perfect Circles of extraordinarily powerful DB's congregating, getting wise?


Nope. You assign them duties far and away from each other, you spread them out.  You can still then call upon them when you need shit done, but you don't let them accrue too much power on their own.  This is the kind of structure that keeps folks in charge in a cut throat world of nasty politics.  This is the kind of thing that would be structured to prevent the Hunt from getting too much power, and challenging the power of the throne.


Now that the Empress has vacated the premises, you're going to get a lot of DB's watching each other, very closely.  And the most powerful, both politically and with Sorcerous might, are going to be playing their games to jockey as well, to either back the right pony for the Throne, and reap the benefits of putting him or her on the Throne, or to get themselves installed.  Either way, the most powerful of DB's are either looking to get the hell off the Blessed Isle to avoid the coming conflageration, or gearing up to enter the fray.


Either way, the Bull of the North, beating up rabble and ill favored sons and daughters of Houses on the rocks is of little consequence.  Especially with the Deathlords and Fae sitting out there.  Not when the keys to the Defense Grid could end ALL those theats in most DB's minds--and getting their hands on that power is going to be more important than throwing a lot of resources away at the Bull of the North, who already did a number on a House that didn't take this sort of realpolitik to mind.


Better, in most DB's minds, is to consolidate their power, get the keys to the real deal, and then rain First Age death on the rabble from the North and all his piss ants. And in order to do that, you've got to take out all your rivals, which means getting lost in plans and mechanizations orchestrated against not Anathema, but other DB's.
 
I was talking about the DBs that are part of the Immaculate Order.  Now,  I know that there aren't any firm numbers, but I would say that at least 10% of the Dynastic DBs and 40% of the Outcaste DBs on the Blessed Ilse are part of the Order, which would be like a little over a thousand DBs.  While most of them aren't combat monsters, it is a matter of pride for them to master their Immaculate Style, so a fair number of them have mastered at least one Style.  Now, there is the question of why would you waste a DB when have Sidereals?  There are, at most, 50 Bronze Faction Sidereals running around and most of them are too busy with keeping fate going to bother with hunting down Solars.  They are going to send young (less than 250 years old, I imagine) Sidereals to deal with the problem, and they only have, at most, ten of them lying around.  The Immaculate DBs, however, have probably around 300 members who have reached maximum Essence (one third of DBs do reach retirement age after all) and they are able to go around Creation without too much trouble.


Remember, Bull of the North used the Arrows of Death on the Sidereal.  All he had to have was a piece of clothing or a hair, and it would have flown across Creation to strike the Sidereal without any warning.  They come in sets of three and, quite frankly, Bull of the North only has two more, so he can't do that trick much more.
 
Even if the DB's are a part of the IO, why would these older Exalts get themselves girded for war with a Solar and his army, when there are more pressing affairs inside the Realm?  With the political tumult, the IO is going to have to secure theri place in the new order, and running around the Threshold, where there are Demons, Solars, and all sorts of other things that are NOT healthy are lying in wait.


Elder DB's didn't get to be old by running against critters that could kill them, and that includes EACH OTHER.  I would posit that there are NOT a lot of Perfect Circles of DB's, especially not of the 1500XP variety.  There aren't reserves of Super Elite Dragon Bloods who are just champing at the bit to dig into some Anathema ass.  There are Elders who got to where they are by being damn careful, and that means not pissing off too many of your colleagues, and Anathema with pointy things.  


The Wyld Hunt hasn't had a real Anathema problem for a long while.  Not powerful Exalts for a long time--most of them are picked off with handy tips from the Bronze, when they're all soft and squishy from Exalting all new and shiny.  The few, very powerful DB's are all ensconsced in their own realms of power, and aren't about to duck out, unless the Bull is getting boats ready to take out Lookshy, Nexus, or the Lap, and possibly not even then, because the fallout could mean ripe pickings elsewhere.  Especially for the IO, who could use the turmoil to further cement their power.  


If the Bull were the only one out there, they would eventually be able to get motivated, when all other politcal capital was reaped, then he would be taken out by a few very motivated Circles, perhaps led by a few elder DB's, but the Bull isn't the only one.  


There are so many new threats, that the DB's don't know which way to dodge, duck, or dismember.  So, instead, they focus on what they can do--which is play their games for their own throne and their own Isle, and when the dust settles from that, the last player will have the capital and the goodies to do what they should have been doing all along--and by then, chances are it will be too late.  Too many ducks nibbling at their empire, too many fires to put out.  And thus endeth an Age...
 
It's your table, and if you want to run a numbers based assessment of the situation, and play it out that way, your perogative, but I just don't see that such a situation ever developing, because of the nature of the Realm and the DB's as presented.  They are political animals, and they will play those games out, as opposed to running the numbers in a logical fashion--because there is no longer a central figure to unite them and keep them in check.  Too many factions all vying for dominance.
 
Evan the Sidereals would have some problem geting to him he has so many high Essence people around him inculding himself that evan their Astrolgy is failing agains't him and with the Gold Faction protecting him as well he is proving to be a hard nut to crak
 
In what book would a whiteboy find all this metaplot about the Bull?  I've skimmed Caste Book: Dawn, but only for the Charms and artifacts.
 
In what book would a whiteboy find all this metaplot about the Bull?
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It's in several books, actually, but it's been written in such a way that only asians, blacks, and latinos can read it. Sorry.


-S
 
Setting aside that it probably isn't the best meta story to have such a big npc just be taken down by the realm.


IMO it is the risk.  It is too great.  While DB's or Sidereals in enough numbers could probably take him down or his whole army or whatever they are gonna lose people not to mention the potential of creating a shadowland wherever the battle takes place.


It seems to me the wya the writers have setup the meta plot they have several large factions viaing for several different things.  The Sidereals are trying to keep balance but there are just too many big threats out there to try to just take down one without leaving something exposed to another big npc.  If you take out the Bull of the North then you leave yourself potentially exposed to a Deathlord, or you fuel their army with dead bodies, or you expose yourself for an attack from the Norht by Lunars and tribes, or you expose yourself to lose of tribute by nations in the North that figure out you aren't as poweful now that you lost X number of big bad ass people.


The sidereals as far as I run them are calculating people who are almost perfectionists in how they set things up.  So they are going to weight all the risks and fates and such stuff and act at the most opportune time they see, but the problem is they can't get all the fates predicted, they don't know what the deathlords are going to do or are doing.
 
Stillborn said:
In what book would a whiteboy find all this metaplot about the Bull?
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It's in several books, actually, but it's been written in such a way that only asians, blacks, and latinos can read it. Sorry.


-S
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Thrice-damned affirmative action.  Come, blood apes!
 
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