The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
Law Breaking Vs Black Magic [Spoilers for everything]
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Tami Seven on November 28, 2013, 06:46:14 PM ---Corpstaker, too. But yeah, Cowl is dangerous but was not quite as blatantly evil as the other two. At least not until the ritual. That doesn't mean he's a nice person who isn't tainted.
--- End quote ---
He isn't tainted to the extent that it messes up his mind and judgement, in the way that, say, the Korean kid at the start of PG blatantly is.
We have evidence that using the force of magic that Harry normally uses, which is repeatedly described as a positive and life-driven/aspected/oriented force, for killing or warping people's minds is corrupting and perverting and messes up the caster.
We also have evidence that necromancy is a fundamentally different force. Harry notes this in GP when looking at the black barbed-wire spell. It isn't life-aspected, if anything it's death-aspected.
Therefore we have no reason to lump both forces together under the heading of "black magic" and expect them both to work the same way in every detail.
Tami Seven:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on November 28, 2013, 07:20:04 PM ---He isn't tainted to the extent that it messes up his mind and judgement, in the way that, say, the Korean kid at the start of PG blatantly is.
We have evidence that using the force of magic that Harry normally uses, which is repeatedly described as a positive and life-driven/aspected/oriented force, for killing or warping people's minds is corrupting and perverting and messes up the caster.
We also have evidence that necromancy is a fundamentally different force. Harry notes this in GP when looking at the black barbed-wire spell. It isn't life-aspected, if anything it's death-aspected.
Therefore we have no reason to lump both forces together under the heading of "black magic" and expect them both to work the same way in every detail.
--- End quote ---
Sooo...then there is Grey Magic?
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Tami Seven on November 28, 2013, 07:36:49 PM ---Sooo...then there is Grey Magic?
--- End quote ---
I think calling necromancy "magic" at all invites this sort of confusion, in much the same way that lumping such disparate entities as White, Black and Red Courts together and categorising them as vampires does (if the relevant defining feature there is "feeds on people", why aren't ghouls considered a kind of vampire?); it's in character for the White Council, but I do think "bloody awful at taxonomy" is a trait we are meant to see the White Council historically as having, and a lot of the more detailed world-building stuff we pick up along the series is Harry learning that this detail or that of the DV is more complicated than White Council received wisdom has it.
Serack:
--- Quote from: 123456789blaaa on November 28, 2013, 08:03:47 AM ---
--- Quote ---"Or maybe I'm just not quite arrogant enough to start rearranging the universe on the assumption that I know better than God how long life should last. And there's a downside to what you're saying, too. How about trying to topple the regime of an immortal Napoleon, or Attila, or Chairman Mao? You could as easily preserve the monsters as the intellectual all-stars. It can be horribly abused, and that makes it dangerous."
--- End quote ---
Now I know you probably think Harry is mistaken and close-minded here but I'd say that Necromancy=evil is what Jim is going for. There is the Mother Winter-Kumori-Death connection for one thing.
--- End quote ---
Dude, that quote fits into this whole paradigm for me like a foot in a shoe.
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on November 28, 2013, 03:28:48 PM ---
--- Quote ---Now I know you probably think Harry is mistaken and close-minded here but I'd say that Necromancy=evil is what Jim is going for.
--- End quote ---
Not at all. It seems fairly obvious to me that what Jim is going for there is that plans that involve killing innocents are evil, and then that following your own judgement regardless of the consequences is evil. (This latter from Harry I do take as irony.) Nothing in there specifiies that it's the mechanism you use to do those evil things that makes them bad; Harry would be just as disapproving of a mundane dictator with utopian fantasies that involved killing lots of innocent people, I reckon.
--- End quote ---
Actually the 7 laws kinda do indicate that the mechanism matters. And Harry's "ye shall know them by their fruits" paraphrase helps reinforce that they have the right idea. Of course my whole point is that it isn't the laws themselves that make it black, but rather that it's black so they made a law against it, but it certainly is indicated (if not specified if you want to hide behind that term) that the mechanism matters.
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on November 28, 2013, 05:29:27 PM ---I'm not disagreeing with that point. At all.
I am saying that the evidence of the first passage the Count quoted looks to me like using necromancy to actively save a life - the random gangster whose soul Kumori did something to so that it didn't leave his body and the hospital had a chance to get him back to a point where he could live - is not an inherently evil act, and Harry is realising and acknowledging that.
--- End quote ---
I can see levels to the point that is being raised here that are quite profound. It might not be inherently evil, however it is profoundly reality warping. People die, their souls leave their body, the world continues turning... Except when some necromancer comes along and says, newp I don't want it to happen that way, and I'm going to rewrite reality so that this soul is forced to stay within this dead body and have it get revived. Perhaps this isn't a bad thing, but it certainly is HUGE, and probably puts significant stress on the necromancer's humanity because they are playing "god" with mortal souls on a level that is disturbing and maybe even dangerous.
Which is kinda Harry's point when he rejected her arguments.
HOWEVER, say Kumori does learn to defeat death, and manage to keep from going MFing Kemler bat-shit eating baby stew insane, reality might have given her enough feedback warping that she is no longer human and has transcended to become something else that is constrained in how it acts in other ways. or something... I'm still playing with that idea in my head.
peregrine:
I don't know that you can say that what Kumori did was necessarily keeping the soul bound to his dying body. It seems to me that what she did was use her necromancy to stop the body from dying in the first place, so that the soul never left. That the pain he was in was from having to deal with the physical damage, not anything metaphysical from being bound to his now dead body.
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