The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
Who Attacked Arctis Tor, and Why
Arjan:
The attack looks more like a desperate action that failed. You do not attack Arctis Tor without a very good reason. It is a waste of resources and some of those resources were hidden resources, the use of hellfire points in that direction.
To even contemplate such an attack Nemesis must have thought she had a chance to achieve a worthwhile goal and that goal was not the capture of Arctis Tor, impossible to hold anyway, or the destruction of Mab, very unlikely to achieve.
Nemesis must also have been in a hurry to try something like this and not something more elaborate. There is only one explanation for that. Nemesis hoped to capture Lea before she could tell Mab about Maeves infection. Mab feigned some weakness and send all her troops away and waited for the attack. Nemesis hoped with Maeves help to get in and take Lea away but failed because Mab was ready and Maeve was revealed anyway. Lea was the bait and Nemesis went for it.
Maeve tried a second time with Harry but Lea had enough self control to prevent that.
raidem:
Hey, how about the attack on Arctis Tor was an attack of opportunity similar to Murphy's belief that the car hit on Harry was an attack of opportunity.
It is given to us as a means of explanation in the same book. Could it also be relevant to the attack on Arctis Tor too.
dspringer1:
--- Quote ---This part doesn't track with what we've seen. Mab would never make a bargain with an invading enemy at the heart of her power to go away. To do so would be to indicate weakness, and Mab never shows weakness. I get how you are tying her inaction into a larger plan, but Mab's larger plans always have her dealing from a position of strength. If Thorned Namshiel and his forces had invaded Winter, won their way to the gates of Arctis Tor itself, and Mab says "If you go away and not attack me any longer, I'll give you _____ ", then it would appear to one and all that Mab was unable to defeat TN's forces in the middle of her domain. Regardless of whether it was part of a larger plan or not, that sort of show of weakness would never happen by Mab.
--- End quote ---
Totaly agree. My arguement is that somebody made the deal with Mab much earlier, before Mab began to realize the Outsiders were making a major play. Because this agreement existed, the Black council KNEW that they could attack Mab in her place of power and not be destroyed by Mab. I would argue that Mab has been trapped in this way since she first began to recuit Dresden due to all her talk about adoring freedom then.
--- Quote ---Nemesis hoped to capture Lea before she could tell Mab about Maeves infection. Mab feigned some weakness and send all her troops away and waited for the attack. Nemesis hoped with Maeves help to get in and take Lea away but failed because Mab was ready and Maeve was revealed anyway. Lea was the bait and Nemesis went for it.
--- End quote ---
No way to capture lea or attack Arctis Tor without negating Mab. They fought Mab's guards outside the citadel --- it is not like they tried ot sneak in. Which means they either wanted Mab go fight (suicidal in her place of power) or they were confident that Mab could not fight.
Maeve might oppose Mab, but counting on Maeve to oppose Mab on your attack would have thrown away a secret and highly valuable asset (Maeve). The Black council woudl never have done that withought great need. And arguably, even if Maeve threw down with the black council folks, they still would have lost. Mab would have destroyed Maeve and created a new Winter lady who was not infected. yes we know now Mab was paralyzed by her love of her daughter, but I doubt anybody else knew this at the time of PG
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: ebliss1 on February 24, 2015, 06:30:54 PM ---This part doesn't track with what we've seen. Mab would never make a bargain with an invading enemy at the heart of her power to go away. To do so would be to indicate weakness, and Mab never shows weakness. I get how you are tying her inaction into a larger plan, but Mab's larger plans always have her dealing from a position of strength. If Thorned Namshiel and his forces had invaded Winter, won their way to the gates of Arctis Tor itself, and Mab says "If you go away and not attack me any longer, I'll give you _____ ", then it would appear to one and all that Mab was unable to defeat TN's forces in the middle of her domain. Regardless of whether it was part of a larger plan or not, that sort of show of weakness would never happen by Mab.
--- End quote ---
I can maybe just about believe that kind of argument as plausible to Harry, when he brings it up about why to keep fighting the Red Court. It's still wrong but I can believe he believes it.
Mab, otoh, doesn't work for me at all.
There's something fundamentally Chaotic, to my mind, about this whole "worried about appearing weak" thing. It presupposes that other entities' short-term opinions of you are widely variable, and that they will act based on those short-term opinions; that it doesn't matter if you've been visibly strong for a thousand years, an afternoon of not looking strong is a risk. It presupposes that if someone does you an injury, you do better to go way over the top in retaliation and frighten them off, rather than respond proportionally and treat them as a rational actor who will accept a fair exchange.
Mab is the essence of Lawful. Faerie are bound to equal exchange, the entire supernatural legal system in the DV is something of which Mab claims personal ownership. That's a perspective that focuses on the long view, on understanding that if you can win against a given opponent 99.9% of the time, them getting lucky enough to end up in the 0.1% today doesn't make a blind bit of difference to what they can plausibly achieve against you tomorrow and the odds overwhelmingly favour them failing miserably if they try.
So I don't read Mab as giving a bent penny over anyone stupid enough to think "she bargained with an enemy under duress" means "now she's weak" because she's no less an archangel-level hitter for the sake of one specific circumstance, and the enemy who came out ahead is going to lose longer term, and anyone with any sense knows this. Why should she worry about people having opinions of her that are wrong ? She knows who and what she is.
forumghost:
"Terrible pride in that creature. She'll never bend it."
Mab won't permit herself to appear weak to anyone, because her Ego is roughly the size of her Army.
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