The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection

Harry's murders of Non-humans! (Cold Days spoilers)

<< < (22/30) > >>

Xandarth:

--- Quote from: ebliss1 on November 19, 2013, 07:41:51 PM ---Obviously we have not seen an in-book example of this, but the way they are written lends itself to this exact scenario being "possible". The DV magic-effects-scale does not take intent into account. Any magic that kills - even if the intent of the spell was benign - irreversibly turns a practitioner into a warlock, inless it was self-defense. If Harry were to come across a person freezing to death, and use a spell to light a fire to warm them, but that fire subsequently causes a building to ignite and kill a homeless person inside, he's irrevocably tainted.

--- End quote ---
I think you are mixing up the Laws and their enforcement here.

I don't think a single break of the law irrevocably damages the soul causing someone to be a warlock for ever. I imagine, just like most things in life, that different people's souls have different levels of resistance to breaking the laws. The White Council has a zero tolerance policy because there isn't a hard and fast rule as to how many people you can kill / mind rape / zombify / etc. before you irrevocably attempt to use that sort of magic to solve all of your problems.

The problem is that even with mundane tasks the more often you act in a certain way, the harder it is to modify that behaviour later. Just ask any gambling addict. Add in the fact that in the Dresdenverse you can't use magic you don't believe in, and the subconscious self-justification of appalling behaviour is already a factor the moment you cast the spell.

Just look at Molly. The first time she used her mind magic, she slightly altered her female friends mind to make her not use drugs with the self justification that she was protecting her baby. The second time she used it was on her boyfriend, but along with that benign self justification she also fed in her rage at him cheating on her and so she caused far more damage to him.

Then a few years later, she is obviously still of the opinion that mind magic isn't so bad so long as your intentions are right and she has a crack at Luccio's head with the self justification that she's only searching for traitors. But yet again, we know that Luccio is having a torrid love affair with Dresden and that Molly has a massive crush on him. Surely the first person she should have checked was Morgan, to see if he was actually a traitor or not, but instead she leaps straight in to the mind of the woman dating the man she loves a few hours after finding out Luccio is Harry's lover, knowing full well that this has lead to irreparable brain damage to everyone she has ever done this to.

There's no real closure on this either. Even after Harry has told her that she has just put both of their heads on the chopping block, she's still trying to convince him that she was justified in doing so because she has found actual evidence of someone else playing with Luccio's mind. Clearly, Molly is still headed down the slippery slope to becoming a warlock, however she's not there yet. She doesn't mind alter everyone whenever it's convenient for her needs. Only whenever she feels like a jilted lover. She's not at Grevane's level where he is so used to murdering people and turning them into zombies that he does this without even thinking of other solutions to his problems, but she's clearly on her way.

I wonder if the new Winter Lady will be as law abiding as she has been or if now she has diplomatic immunity from the Wardens if a new spate of mind altering will occur.

cass:

--- Quote from: Xandarth on November 20, 2013, 01:10:01 AM ---I wonder if the new Winter Lady will be as law abiding as she has been or if now she has diplomatic immunity from the Wardens if a new spate of mind altering will occur.

--- End quote ---

Possibly the only silver lining in this in terms of Molly's mental health and wellbeing is that she won't be able to, by and large.  She can't touch regular ol' humans unless they are affiliated with the Court.  So, changelings, etc.  (Whether the Council considers them mortal enough to count for breaking the Laws is up for debate, but I suspect yes.)  She could try mind controlling the sidhe, but I bet that until she gets up to speed, even that won't fly-- the sidhe excel at illusion-type enchantments and mental manipulation.

peregrine:

--- Quote from: Xandarth on November 20, 2013, 01:10:01 AM ---I don't think a single break of the law irrevocably damages the soul causing someone to be a warlock for ever. I imagine, just like most things in life, that different people's souls have different levels of resistance to breaking the laws. The White Council has a zero tolerance policy because there isn't a hard and fast rule as to how many people you can kill / mind rape / zombify / etc. before you irrevocably attempt to use that sort of magic to solve all of your problems.
...
I wonder if the new Winter Lady will be as law abiding as she has been or if now she has diplomatic immunity from the Wardens if a new spate of mind altering will occur.

--- End quote ---
Also, while the first violation doesn't do it, the WC just doesn't have the resources to mentor people to prevent followup violations, and it's only in rare cases like Harry and Eb that do that.

As for Molly, I imagine that while there's a tricky situation, Mab probably won't want Molly just slipping back into her bad habits, they could cause more problems for her than it's worth.

LordDresden:

--- Quote from: ebliss1 on November 19, 2013, 07:41:51 PM ---Obviously we have not seen an in-book example of this, but the way they are written lends itself to this exact scenario being "possible". The DV magic-effects-scale does not take intent into account. Any magic that kills - even if the intent of the spell was benign - irreversibly turns a practitioner into a warlock, inless it was self-defense. If Harry were to come across a person freezing to death, and use a spell to light a fire to warm them, but that fire subsequently causes a building to ignite and kill a homeless person inside, he's irrevocably tainted. The argument that he "inherantly believed that the homeless person should burn to death" falls apart since it was an unintended consequence, but the law and its rationale in the DV are absolute. He's a warlock and must die. Whether he feels remorse and that remorse messes up his mind, or if he simply chalks it up to "bad things happen and there's nothing you can do, but at least the freezing person's life was saved, so its a wash" is immaterial.
--- End quote ---

No, not quite so.  That's why the Council does have trials for Law breaking.  Circumstances do matter, esp. self-defense, but they take a really, really hard line on them (And human nature being what it is, politics matters.  Wizard A might be let off for the exact same actions that Wizard B gets nailed for, in the borderline cases, because of that.)

In the case of the fire, for ex, the Council would consider the circumstances.  Should the wizard have seen the risk of the fire getting out of control?  Were they in a situation where the fire getting out of control was freakily improbable?  That does matter, even to the Council.  After all, any use of magic sets in motion chains of events that sooner or later, somewhere or other, bring about a death that wouldn't happen, just as all actions do, even if only years later and after hundreds of links in the chain of events.

But the Council is hard-assed about it, precisely because they want Wizards to think carefully and act carefully with their power.  Think before you cast, and don't throw your power around trivially.  If you make a fire to warm a cold person, make sure it's inside a circle of rocks or on concrete, and don't do it in a tinder-box firetrap of a building.

The Council isn't nice about this...but where there's a lot of power things aren't always nice. 


--- Quote ---But my point is that this has nothing to do with administration of justice. The WC does not execute wizards who have killed via magic as punishment or as a cosmic scale balancing. They do so because the person has become an irredeemable monster who will do nothing but inflict more suffering on others exponentially. Mortals have the concept of Justifiable Homicide. If a criminal is hurting someone and you take action to save the victim even if your won life is not in danger, but in the process the criminal dies, that's justifiable homicide. Do so with magic, and you need to die. That's according to Eb and has nothing to do with right and wrong.

--- End quote ---

True.  The Laws of Magic are less like law-enforcement in the usual sense, and more like a prophylatic measure.  Think of isolating a carier of a deadly, hyper-contagious disease away from human contact, with or without consent.  It's not fair, it may not be right that this person who did nothing wrong gets this treatment, but it may also be necessary.

LordDresden:

--- Quote from: Karthak on November 05, 2013, 03:25:46 PM ---When he's laying down the law to the winter court:
My voice echoed throughout the whole chamber as clearly as if I’d been using a PA system. “All right, you primitive screwheads. Listen up. I’m Harry Dresden. I’m the new Winter Knight. I’m instituting a rule: When you’re within sight of me, mortals are off-limits.” I paused for a moment to let that sink in. Then I continued. “I can’t give you orders. I can’t control what you do in your own domains. I’m not going to be able to change you. I’m not even going to try. But if I see you abusing a mortal, you’ll join Chunky here. Zero warnings. Zero excuses. Subzero tolerance.”
I paused again and then asked, “Any questions?” One of the Sidhe smirked and stepped forward, his leather pants creaking. He opened his mouth, his expression condescending. “Mortal, do you actually think that you can—” “Infriga!” I snarled, unleashing Winter again, and without waiting for the cloud to clear, hurled the second strike, shouting, “Forzare!” This time I aimed much of the force up. Grisly bits of frozen Sidhe noble came pattering and clattering down to the ice of the dance floor.

When I first read this I did a mental double-take. Harry committed murder there. Seriously, he straight up murdered a sapient being for the crime of disagreeing with him, and somehow it's okay because it was a Sidhe, not a human. And nobody calls him out on it. There have been other instances of speciesism in the series, but this takes the cake.

--- End quote ---

Did he commit legal murder?  No.  Mab gave approval.

Morally, Harry is in extreme danger, and he knows it.  Not long before he did that, he was musing about the danger of power corrupting, one little step at a time.  At the time he was thinking about the moral risk of sex with Sarissa, even with consent, under the peculiar circumstances, but it applies more generally.  Harry isn't unaware of the danger.

The problem is that it's also true that Harry probably really does have to behave that way, and do things like that, to enforce what authority he has in Winter.  Not enforcing his authority is suicidal.  Literally.  He very probably does have to be the Alpha Monster to keep the other monsters at bay.  Does that make it OK morally?  Not necessarily.

Note that we saw something similar in the short story Even Hand.  What Harry did that Sidhe noble, John Marcone did to a prisoner who started to waste his time with empty bravado.  The situation is not entirely similar, of course.  Harry was less in a position of power relative to the others than Marcone was to his prisoners, Marcone had more options available.  In each case, though, both men (who are very similar in some ways, psychologically, though they spin in oppositely) issued an order or asked a question, with either a stated or implied threat of death in the even of non-compliance, and then enforced that threat.

By declaring mortal 'off limits' around him, Harry hopes to protect them and himself from traps using mortals, the way Maeve tried to use Sarissa.  If the Winter Fae know that the moment they even try something with a mortal to get at Harry, he'll immediately go to DefCon 5 and nuke them on the spot, it provides an incentive not to make that attempt in the first place.  That helps avoid things like somefae grabbing Karrin or Butters or Billy and using him/her as a tool in a play against Harry...or so he hopes.

Since the warning has already been issued, Harry doesn't have to concern himself with things like boundaries or the fae claiming that he's just plucking Karrin's eyes out and it's no concern of Harry's, the warning's already in place so Harry doesn't need an excuse to act.  The fact taht it's a capital offense means that a fae has at least what should be a good reason to think carefully before trying anything 'clever'.

Harry has allowed himself to be put into a position where he may literally have no options other than behaving immorally or dying.  It's the latest link in a long chain of bad consequences stemming from a long chain of bad choices going back to his 16th year, and his ill-advised deal with Lea.  It was compounded by later bad choices, especially in Death Masks.  As Uriel keeps trying to pound into him (and is starting to penetrate), bad choices tend to give bad results.

The situation Harry (and Molly) are in now is also glaring proof of the wisdom of Bob's warning to Harry, way way back in Summer Knight, that wise mortal avoid getting mixed up with the Sidhe.  At all. For any reason.  Note that this is also the traiditional view of the Fae in myth and legend.

Did Harry take a step closer to corruption at the party?  Almost certainly.  Was it as  big a step as it could have been?  No, because his options really were limited.  But it was a step.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page