The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
The YLC (Why Little Chicago) thread
Sheaman3773:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on September 18, 2012, 08:02:32 PM ---Possibly, but I'm not remembering any other supporting evidence for that model off the top of my head.
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How about how Bob made Harry order him to unlock those memories in the first place?
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on September 18, 2012, 08:02:32 PM ---Indeed, but he does seem to have a tendency to get into situations where looking for extra power is necessary despite his preferences.
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Granted.
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on September 18, 2012, 08:02:32 PM ---Which allusion ?
Lash telling Harry about the ingredients for the Darkhallow, I was slightly misremembering: DB, pb, p.373, Harry reports it to Butters and we don't see it directly. (I suspect there is something in there we need not to see, fwiw.). "The last several years have seen some serious magical turbulence around Chicago. Kemmler's disciples can put the turbulence to work for them too." is the line I am reading as indicating that the boundary between our world and the NN is still in flux, and that that is being useful to Kemmlerites, and that that could have been planned by Mavra
If you mean the Unseelie Incursion of 199-something when Milwaukee vanished, I am pretty sure it's in SF but it's an aside of Harry's and I'm not at all sure where in the text; maybe we should ask one of our betas with searchable e-texts.
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No, I remember the Unseelie Incursion one, that was discussed the first time Harry was describing Susan/Arcane in SF.
Ah, I see. Well, while it is certainly interesting enough that I'll be including it in my fanfic if it ever gets off the ground, I'm not completely convinced that it is canon. I had assumed previously that he was talking about all of the crap that kept going down in Chicago. But if you're right, and Mavra directly planned it that way, why make sure it's in Chicago? Because she knew that she'd have access to blackmail material on the local White Hat at just the right time? Though...I suppose you could argue that Mavra, working with Cowl, delayed the instigation of the Darkhallow until she had the blackmail material needed to get Harry involved...in order to create a situation in which the RC exposed themselves, in order to extend the war further...but how could they have known that Harry would manage to stop Cowl just in time? I'll buy that Cowl was sure that he could stop Grevane in time, but they counted on Harry recovering, breaking a Law of Magic so that he could survive to get close enough to the funnel to stop Cowl? It was really close--what was their backup plan if the Erlking had just killed Dresden right off or whatnot, pretend to fub it up at the last second?
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on September 18, 2012, 08:02:32 PM ---Predicting that annoyed Faerie will exact payback does not seem to me to take very much effort, and as for the vampires making the decision to trespass on Faerie in the first place, I don't think that takes prediction so much as manipulation. The Red Court sorcerous auxiliaries are, in this model, working with Cowl, and may well be able to sell the Reds on that being a safe thing to do if they expect to have a god-level protector imminently.
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I meant more of what I said above, about how close Cowl got to god-mode.
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on September 18, 2012, 08:02:32 PM ---I remain unconvinced that this is actually workable, though. By what Harry says about gods in general in PG, most of them seem to have been actively exiled from Earth into the far NN; it would not surprise me if the process of transformation into deity was followed nigh-instantly by removal from the theatre of operations, and if Cowl knows this and the Reds do not.
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So I ask again, why would Cowl play it so close if he was never intending to actually ascend? Barring any sort of time traveling theories, of course.
lovejoy69:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on September 18, 2012, 08:02:32 PM ---...
Which allusion ?
Lash telling Harry about the ingredients for the Darkhallow, I was slightly misremembering: DB, pb, p.373, Harry reports it to Butters and we don't see it directly. (I suspect there is something in there we need not to see, fwiw.). "The last several years have seen some serious magical turbulence around Chicago. Kemmler's disciples can put the turbulence to work for them too." is the line I am reading as indicating that the boundary between our world and the NN is still in flux, and that that is being useful to Kemmlerites, and that that could have been planned by Mavra
If you mean the Unseelie Incursion of 199-something when Milwaukee vanished, I am pretty sure it's in SF but it's an aside of Harry's and I'm not at all sure where in the text; maybe we should ask one of our betas with searchable e-texts.
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Not a beta, and in terms of the weakened barrier these may not be what you were looking for, but here goes for what they're worth:
- Storm Front, chapter five, paperback p. 57 in my edition: ..."the Unseelie Incursion of 1994, when the entire city of Milwaukee had vanished for two hours. Gone."
- In Dead Beat, I don't remember any explicit discussions about whether the barrier between worlds has continued to be weaker than it ought to be ever since GP, but that's not to say that it isn't in the text somewhere. What I do remember is in chapter three, paperback p. 33 in my edition, Bob and Harry discuss how the Nightmare and Bianca had tormented ghosts to weaken the barrier leading up to that Halloween. And in chapter ten, paperback p. 106-continuing in my edition, Mort tells Harry that he himself has been having dreams which is an unusual occurrence for him, and that ghosts won't talk to him about what they're sensing, which usually means they're being made very upset about black magical workings. And in chapter twenty-six, Harry and Thomas talk about the past few days' disruptions to weaken the barrier but don't specifically say that the barrier has been kept abnormally weak ever since GP.
kytheros:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on September 18, 2012, 08:24:04 PM ---
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But said player would need to know of Little Chicago's existence.
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I'm unconvinced that's unlikely or difficult, if we take Lara's intelligence report on Harry's wards in BR as reasonably representative of the information-gathering capacities of major powers under the Accords.
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Harry's wards are one thing. They're on the outside, and nothing's concealing them. Little Chicago was in his basement, behind the wards, the only way to see in there is to physically eyeball the place, somehow scry the place(through the wards), or brave Lea's garden.
Sure, if you're keeping an eye on Dresden you can find out he's getting deliveries of model buildings and if you've got a tail on him you learn he's wandering around the city poking at places. That still doesn't tell you what he's doing if you're not highly knowledgeable about thaumaturgy.
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Oh, I suppose that someone might have had Thomas and/or Murphy let them in for a look around and spotted Little Chicago ... but they'd have had to do so (a) during time periods that Thomas/Murphy would not be missed, (b) times that Dresden wasn't around, and (c) probably multiple times in order to gain sufficient understanding of Little Chicago's construction - plus they'd need some way to not get noticed by Bob or Mouse.
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We have a sizable timespan in the middle of PG when neither Bob nor Mouse are home, fwiw.
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While, strictly speaking, true ... that's also a timespan when both Thomas and Murphy would have been noticed as missing. Also ... that's probably not enough time to figure out what Little Chicago is, how it was built, notice something is wrong with it, figure out how to fix it, starting cold - plus bypassing the wards, all without being noticed. Little Chicago took Dresden 6 months of work, plus an unknown and indeterminate amount of planning and preparatory work. I think the person who fixed Little Chicago would have needed way more time than was available in PG, they would have needed to start studying/learning up on Little Chicago for a lengthy stretch of time, possibly ever since Dresden started.
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--- Quote --- Then the question becomes, if you're going to have Thomas/Murphy secretly let you into Dresden's place, so you're probably not friendly with Dresden - why are you fixing Little Chicago?
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I think the logic there is back to front; fixing Little Chicago seems only to fit with a benevolent approach, or at least having more use for a living Harry than otherwise (which could be any number of the hostiles we have seen in the series more minded to use him for their own ends than kill him.) As to why a friendly would want to do it secretly, well, maybe it's a friendly whom Harry would not recognise as a friendly, or be readily persuadable to recognise as a friendly while up to his eyes in other plot elements.
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They still need to know about it. Though the motive for secrecy is believable, yet they'd probably need to have messed with Thomas/Murphy's mind if they used one of them to get in, since nothing was ever said. Hmm, I suppose one of their ward-bypassing talismans could have been used to make a copy at some point, but the problems of Mouse and Bob are still there.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Sheaman3773 on September 18, 2012, 09:22:31 PM ---How about how Bob made Harry order him to unlock those memories in the first place?
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Indeed, but Bob then goes back to status quo ante wrt the memories when Harry says the conversation is over, is my read on it. Telling him to cut them off goes above and beyond that, and Bob thanking harry for it seems to me to confirm that.
--- Quote ---Ah, I see. Well, while it is certainly interesting enough that I'll be including it in my fanfic if it ever gets off the ground, I'm not completely convinced that it is canon. I had assumed previously that he was talking about all of the crap that kept going down in Chicago. But if you're right, and Mavra directly planned it that way, why make sure it's in Chicago? Because she knew that she'd have access to blackmail material on the local White Hat at just the right time?
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I think Harry's location in Chicago is why all this stuff happens in Chicago in the first place, yes. I read Mavra playing Bianca, in GP, as well as Harry specifically to get the war started, as well as to start the shredding of the border.
--- Quote --- Though...I suppose you could argue that Mavra, working with Cowl, delayed the instigation of the Darkhallow until she had the blackmail material needed to get Harry involved..
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I don't believe the Word of Kemmler showed up by coincidence. I can entirely believe Cowl or Mavra was sitting on it for all the time since whenever Kemmler died. I am also firmly convinced that the entire plot of BR is designed to get that blackmail material; I am convinced that the image of Death Harry sees with the Sight behind Kincaid is Mavra or a Mavra-puppet junior Black Court vampire with a Polaroid behind a veil.
--- Quote ---but how could they have known that Harry would manage to stop Cowl just in time?
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They don't have to, sfaict. Nobody needs to stop Cowl if Cowl never intended to actually go through with the Darkhallow in the first place.
Looking at the situation before Harry arrives at Darkhallow Ground Zero, Grevane's running the ritual. If Harry happens not to show up, Cowl just has to hit Grevane about as hard as he hits Carlos in the actual text, knock him out with a few seconds to spare, and that's it for the Darkhallow. Escaping from a collapsing Darkhallow at very short notice is something we definitely see Cowl do, and have evidence for a possible explanation of, I think, in Cowl's quick vanishing trick at the end of his first appearance in DB (probably not a veil, because we know from FM that invisibility does not work on wolves, and the smell of mildew left when Cowl vanishes seems to me to connect on to the smell of the bit of NN Peabody runs to in TC; my conclusion is that Cowl is [remarkably good at NN quick getaways.)
I think once Harry has actually shown up, Cowl is improvising on a "if I have a witness that i can convince that I a) seriously meant this and b) failed, then I get the added bonus that a) nobody looks for other possible motivations and b) the White Council thinks I am dead" grounds.
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It was really close--what was their backup plan if the Erlking had just killed Dresden right off or whatnot, pretend to fub it up at the last second?
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Without Harry having Sue to hand to get that close, it does not seem to me there'll be any Council witnesses close enough to see Cowl and Kumori doing a last-minute bunk. From the distance Luccio and Morgan are, it can just look like the ritual catastrophically fails, and with no necrogod produced, I'm not seeing anything suspicious about the bullet being dodged - it's not as if anyone's reinvented the Darkhallow without Kemmler in the past forty-to-sixty years, so "this is a difficult thing that they screwed up" looks plausible to me. (Harry thinks it's surprisingly simple once he's actually seen it; to my mind the "surprising" rather than the "simple" is a better metric of how the rest of the Council are likely to assume things went down. Also bearing in mind that what the Council have by way of CSI is stretched to its limits in the much more controlled environment of laFortier's murder in TC, and seems very unlike;y to be able to give any information to change that assessment here.)
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: kytheros on September 19, 2012, 12:13:38 AM ---Harry's wards are one thing. They're on the outside, and nothing's concealing them. Little Chicago was in his basement, behind the wards, the only way to see in there is to physically eyeball the place, somehow scry the place(through the wards), or brave Lea's garden.
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Lara has got good enough intel on his wards to know that if Harry goes into lockdown as per DM he won't be able to get out again and therefore he would be the only option for Thomas to feed on. That does not read to me like they're a perfect defence against deducing information from/through.
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--- Quote ---We have a sizable timespan in the middle of PG when neither Bob nor Mouse are home, fwiw.
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While, strictly speaking, true ... that's also a timespan when both Thomas and Murphy would have been noticed as missing.
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IIRC, we have Harry's lunch with Lily and Maeve, several hours of stuff at the hotel with Murphy around at the beginning of it, Harry getting knocked out and captured by Madrigal, and then Thomas appearing to save the day. Depending on how long Harry is unconscious and captive, that's a span of a good few hours with Murphy unaccounted for and longer for Thomas.
--- Quote ---Also ... that's probably not enough time to figure out what Little Chicago is, how it was built, notice something is wrong with it, figure out how to fix it, starting cold - plus bypassing the wards, all without being noticed. Little Chicago took Dresden 6 months of work, plus an unknown and indeterminate amount of planning and preparatory work. I think the person who fixed Little Chicago would have needed way more time than was available in PG, they would have needed to start studying/learning up on Little Chicago for a lengthy stretch of time, possibly ever since Dresden started.
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Bob sees the change and deduces what it will do in moments.
Also, if you believe as I do that Cowl in WN is pulling his punches to not kill Harry while looking like he barely missed killing Harry, that entails deducing a fair bit about Little Chicago's capacities in a matter of a few seconds.
Little Chicago is a major undertaking in a direction of magic that Harry's really not focused on before. I think it taking him six months is comparable to Molly's slow progress with shields, frex. I can believe a Senior Council level talent like Cowl with some experience in that form of magic being able to figure it out and fix it on a scale of hours. I can believe an entity at Mab levels of superhuman being able to do it in minutes. (The analogy that seems apt here is that I have been doing a particular subset of computer-programming-type things professionally for close on twenty-five years, and there have been times in my particular field of expertise when I've been presented with a specific unfamiliar-to-me problem using basic principles I know well, and have solved or made more progress on it in ten minutes than people without that have been able to in months.)
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