Ah, my mistake. It was during the conversation with Thomas in his hummer just after the first fight with Tessa's crew.

“I just met them, but already I hate these guys,” Thomas said. “But why are they here? Why now?”

“Offhand? I’d say that they were out to wax Marcone and prove to the other members of the Accords
that vanilla mortals have no place among us weirdos—I mean, superhumans.”

“They’re members of the Accords?”

“I’d have to look it up,” I said. “I doubt they’re signed on as the ‘Order of Demon-possessed
Psychotics.’ But from the way Mantis Girl was talking, yeah.”

Thomas shook his head. “So what do they get out of it? What does taking Marcone prove?”

Harry mentions it to Michael during Small Favor, saying that they're members of the Accords under a different name. We don't know what the false front is called, though it's not difficult to imagine that everyone knows it's a false front (especially after Small Favor).

Adding to this point, would you say that a spell to give yourself a non-physical temporary aspect (like Lucky) would need to take you out before it could take effect?

Not a bad idea. I'll have to fiddle around some of the antagonists a bit, but it's certainly doable.

If somebody's so tough against magic that they deserve armour 20 and forty extra stress boxes against it, you might as well just give them the Immunity Power.

But if somebody comes up with a big enough spell, maybe that Immunity will fail.

This would normally be mechanically impossible, but Aspects can do anything.

Yeah, when you get to that kind of defensive power the effects can easily be covered by Physical Immunity. However, there is a big difference mechanically between being hideously tough and completely immune. One you can take down if you hit it enough, the other you have to work around.

Personally, I prefer making my players do the work around thing, since it means they have to get creative.

Ebenezar loans Harry his staff after he turns up at the battle of Chitzen Itza. Mechanically this would be possible because Harry opened up a few focus/enchanted item slots when he lost his staff/blasting rod, but I'd probably houserule it that you have to either be very similar in character to the previous owner (like Morgan's Warden Sword, for example) or the items in question have to be similar to your old ones (like Eb's staff that was made from the same lightning struck oak as Harry's, as well as being made in a similar style).

So I managed to creep out one of my players with a soulgaze during the last session. It was from an Ectomancer that had been Driven Mad by Grief due to losing his fiancee; becoming obsessed with her to the point where he kept photos of her on every available surface. I'll not try to recreate it since a lot came down to the atmosphere I'd set up, but I managed to evoke a mixture of fear and empathy from one of my players through it. It's definitely ranking up there as one of the best moments of the campaign for me, if only because it got my power gamer to care for an NPC.

So, given that soulgazes are a major part of the Dresdenverse and a great way to let the players get an insight into major NPCs, what sort of techniques do you guys use to get the right effect across? Have you ever been particularly proud of a soulgaze or managed to bring that elusive extra level into the game that really gets the players involved?

Basically, what's your best soulgaze story?

Not so much a 'he's screwed' moment, but still fairly humorous from the second session of the campaign I'm running.

One of my players (a sorcerer hitman specialising in summoning/binding and spirit evocations) decided it would be a good idea to sneak through a police station to the evidence locker, where a few personal effects of a murdered Summer Sidhe (Puck, of a Midsummer Night's Dream fame) are being held. He gets down to the locker easily enough with a couple of illusions and a veil, and into the room where the personal effects are. At this point I surprise him with an Unkindness of Unseelie Ravens, which are down there for basically the same reasons he was.

It's the perfect opportunity for me to introduce the Winter side of the equation for this campaign, so I figure I'd have them talk before any action goes down. Let him get a feel for what they're up to and perhaps strike up a commonality. They go with the classic 'State thy business!' line, at which point my player says the absolute worst thing you could possibly say to a bunch of Winter thieves. "I'm here to protect Puck's belongings from falling into the wrong hands."

Naturally I could only play it one way. Every single raven in the room went mad with hatred and attacked him. Lucky he was still under his veil, otherwise he'd have been pretty well savaged. He took them all out by tagging the Steel Shelves stage aspect and setting up a huge air evocation to smash up the place.

Currently one of the ravens is a hostage of the group and is undergoing an interrogation (of sorts) with a drug addict PC. >_>