The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
Law Breaking Vs Black Magic [Spoilers for everything]
huangjimmy108:
--- Quote from: 123456789blaaa on December 03, 2013, 02:43:01 AM ---I recall Harry saying it in the books as well.
The problem is that this doesn't explain why doing other horrible things doesn't corrupt you as well. You're going to have a hard time convincing me that (for example) slowly ripping someone's eyes out to get information has less of an impact on the wizards mind then blowing their head off with a fireball.
You can also kill lots of beings without souls/Free Will and you won't get corrupted either (at least not in the black magic sense). Given how similar and friendly Little Folk are to humans, it seems strange to me that killing them doesn't warp your mind just as much as killing a human. Maybe you could make a argument for a Red Court vamp or ghoul or whatever but the Little Folk? Or an angel? ???
I'm not saying it's completely wrong but I think there's something else causing the corruption as well. I'm partial to the RPG theory that the first few Laws are based around Free Will and the last few are just "wrong" in the sense of "Things That Man Was Not Meant To Do".
--- End quote ---
Torture for information and other mandane ways of doing evil i.e: violating free wil carries its own taint. In PG, Murphy admits feeling tainted when she shots agent benton.
The point is, when you add magic to the equation, the taint becomes much, much worst.
It makes sense. In PG, it is stated that the reason god gave human the 3 swords is to balanced the enormous advantages the supranatural have over the vanilla human. Providing an extra penalty for wizards that violate free wil does make sense for the balance.
Wizards are humans, they have free wil. If they choose to use their free wil to kill and enslaved, it is their choice, so long as they pay the penalty.
If a predanatural creature violates free wil i.e" eating people, they cannot pay the penalty by losing their humanity/sanity. They are not human in the first place. These creatures are penaltied by different means. The little folk are weak and cannot do much harm, but they are virtually imppossible to find without magic. Lesser fei i.e: Bridge trolls, are teritorial and can easily be avoided or chase away, even by vanilla methods. If humanity choose to stay in denial and refuse to believe in the supranatural and therefore caught off guard, it is the human's own fault.
Other predators like the rampires and the blampires are the real evils. For these creatures penalty comes in the form of weakness to sunlight, weakness against faith based magic and inability to cross threshold. And if they got too active, they'll have either the KotC or some wizards hunting and killing them.
Demons/creatures from the nevernever cannot cross without being summoned. And those creatures who is powerful enough to cross without invitation i.e" Mab, have an equal power balancing them i.e: Titania.
All in all, Butcher have created a quite balanced and realistic supranatural world.
peregrine:
Also, magic has a far greater requirement for investment to work. The wizard has to believe the thing is right, and will work, or it won't. You can't half-ass it.
However, you can entirely half-ass taking someone's eyeballs out with a melon baller. You can do that even if you're 49% opposed, as long as you're 51% for it. No sense of justification required in order to be able to do that horrible thing.
123456789blaaa:
--- Quote from: huangjimmy108 on December 03, 2013, 05:42:25 AM ---Torture for information and other mandane ways of doing evil i.e: violating free wil carries its own taint. In PG, Murphy admits feeling tainted when she shots agent benton.
The point is, when you add magic to the equation, the taint becomes much, much worst.
It makes sense. In PG, it is stated that the reason god gave human the 3 swords is to balanced the enormous advantages the supranatural have over the vanilla human. Providing an extra penalty for wizards that violate free wil does make sense for the balance.
Wizards are humans, they have free wil. If they choose to use their free wil to kill and enslaved, it is their choice, so long as they pay the penalty.
If a predanatural creature violates free wil i.e" eating people, they cannot pay the penalty by losing their humanity/sanity. They are not human in the first place. These creatures are penaltied by different means. The little folk are weak and cannot do much harm, but they are virtually imppossible to find without magic. Lesser fei i.e: Bridge trolls, are teritorial and can easily be avoided or chase away, even by vanilla methods. If humanity choose to stay in denial and refuse to believe in the supranatural and therefore caught off guard, it is the human's own fault.
Other predators like the rampires and the blampires are the real evils. For these creatures penalty comes in the form of weakness to sunlight, weakness against faith based magic and inability to cross threshold. And if they got too active, they'll have either the KotC or some wizards hunting and killing them.
Demons/creatures from the nevernever cannot cross without being summoned. And those creatures who is powerful enough to cross without invitation i.e" Mab, have an equal power balancing them i.e: Titania.
All in all, Butcher have created a quite balanced and realistic supranatural world.
--- End quote ---
Murphy saying she felt "tainted" is just the natural reaction to doing something she considers wrong for the first time. No evidence of the supernatural "turn you insane" type of corruption.
Can I get that PG quote? I always thought the swords were given to balance out the Denarian coins. One sword for 10 coins each.
--- Quote from: peregrine on December 03, 2013, 05:48:43 AM ---Also, magic has a far greater requirement for investment to work. The wizard has to believe the thing is right, and will work, or it won't. You can't half-ass it.
However, you can entirely half-ass taking someone's eyeballs out with a melon baller. You can do that even if you're 49% opposed, as long as you're 51% for it. No sense of justification required in order to be able to do that horrible thing.
--- End quote ---
I meant using magic to take someone's eyes out for the explicit purpose of torturing them. You'd have to believe the torture was right.
Serack:
--- Quote from: huangjimmy108 on December 03, 2013, 02:06:25 AM ---This raises another question.
Sure, a wizard dropping a building with the express purpose to kill someone is bad (Cosmically tainting), but what if a wizard is hired to demolish an empty building. Without the knowledge of the wizard, someone else uses that opportunity to kill their enemy by placing their victim inside that building. What kind of karmic balanced are to be levied in that case?
A case similar to this happened in GP. When Harry unleash his great fire spell at Bianca's party, he is targeting vampires. Unfortunately, several human were caught in the crossfire. So far, we did not see any taint happened on Harry for that act. I mean, Harry seems to remain sane enough after that.
This challenges the assumption that only consequences matters. I think intentions matters as well and both intentions and consequences both carries their own weight and functions independantly from each other. You intends bad but your act did no lasting harm, you got a little tainted. You don't intend harm but the act cause major harm, you got tainted. You intends harm and you succeeded, express way to worlockdom.
--- End quote ---
I basically tried to address this in this earlier reply:
--- Quote from: Serack on November 24, 2013, 07:06:26 PM ---Let me take this analogy a bit further and say Rodreguez uses his magic to disencorporate (like he did to the bullets in WN with his gauntlet) a building that he has every reason to believe is empty, and never ever finds out that it actually had a mortal in it. His magic directly shreaded a mortal and he never knows.
The "Wizards are card carrying members of humanity" portion of my reasoning for "Vs a Mortal Matters" would not kick in because he didn't chose to do it, however, the "Mortal Will has Metaphysical Mass" portion would still matter. It is concievable that because a mortal will was snuffed out by magic, the metaphysical ramifications of a free will being snuffed out by magic could affect this wizard. I can see the mechanics for this working being much like if a wizard gives his word by his magic that he would return something to someone before they die, Fed-Exes it to the person and never hears from them again because they had a heart attack before it was shipped.
--- End quote ---
Also, see the first WoJ I quoted in the first response in the topic which illustrates how consequenses matter a whole lot, even if intent isn't there.
Sully:
We have the swords being on the job for non-denarian reasons though.
I think there's a WoJ somewhere that says the sword equalize conflicts, taking away supernatural advantages.
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