The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
He Couldn't Lose [SG Spoilers]
megarows:
--- Quote from: Argonometra on July 01, 2015, 01:33:10 AM ---If CD was any indication, we need to worry about the opposite. Harry struggles against the Winter Mantle (the 'natural order' personified) urging him to rape and kill. When Mab shows humanity, it is a rare and unnerving thing. The Summer Mantle overwhelms Lily, making her burn the landscape and attack indiscriminately- making her threaten the man her human side loves.
Nature is not the one being (ab)used here. It may not initiate Table rituals, but it certainly dominates their participants.
--- End quote ---
Those things aren't from nature though. They arise from the mantle, artificial constructs made by humans with black magic and human sacrifice. A mantle isn't "nature"... it's a thing created with murder. Literally, the definition of crimes against humanity.
The fae queens -- humans with stolen power obtained by black magic -- have inserted themselves into at the very least, atmospheric weather, in a manner similar to a human building a dam.
The Hoover Dam is built incredibly well. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but inevitably even with maintenance, it will fail. Lake Mead is less transient. And when Hoover Dam fails, all the water comes crashing down. Just like in DF when the balance of the fae queens fails.
But yes, nature always dominates in the end. Because it is eternal. What men create -- dams or mantles -- may last a very long time, but a finite amount of energy went into their creation. There is no free energy even for magic in the Dresdenverse.
This is the part of The Dark Tower I was referring to: (Song of Susannah, p109)
(click to show/hide)“How many Beams do there be, Susannah of New York?”
“Six,” Susannah said. “At least, there were. I guess now there are only two that—”
Mia waved a hand impatiently, as if to say Don’t waste my time. “Six, aye. And when the Beams were created out of that greater Discordia, the soup of creation some (including the Manni) call the Over and some call the Prim, what made them?”
“I don’t know,” Susannah said. “Was it God, do you think?”
“Perhaps there is a God, but the Beams rose from the Prim on the airs of magic, Susannah, the true magic which passed long ago. Was it God that made magic, or was it magic that made God? I know not. It’s a question for philosophers, and mothering’s my job. But once upon a time all was Discordia and from it, strong and all crossing at a single unifying point, came the six Beams. There was magic to hold them steady for eternity, but when the magic left from all there is but the Dark Tower, which some have called Can Calyx, the Hall of Resumption, men despaired. When the Age of Magic passed, the Age of Machines came.”
Mia shrugged. “You doom yourselves, Susannah. You seem positively bent on it, and the root is always the same: your faith fails you, and you replace it with rational thought. But there is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in rationalism.”
“The magic went away. Maerlyn retired to his cave in one world, the sword of Eld gave way to the pistols of the gunslingers in another, and the magic went away. And across the arc of years, great alchemists, great scientists, and great— what?— technicians, I think? Great men of thought, anyway, that’s what I mean, great men of deduction— these came together and created the machines which ran the Beams. They were great machines but they were mortal machines. They replaced the magic with machines, do ya kennit, and now the machines are failing. In some worlds, great plagues have decimated whole populations.”
“The Crimson King’s Breakers are only hurrying along a process that’s already in train. The machines are going mad. You’ve seen this for yourself. The men believed there would always be more men like them to make more machines. None of them foresaw what’s happened. This … this universal exhaustion.”
“The world has moved on.”
“Aye, lady. It has. And left no one to replace the machines which hold up the last magic in creation, for the Prim has receded long since. The magic is gone and the machines are failing. Soon enough the Dark Tower will fall. Perhaps there’ll be time for one splendid moment of universal rational thought before the darkness rules forever. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Argonometra:
--- Quote from: megarows on July 01, 2015, 02:52:39 AM ---Those things aren't from nature though. They arise from the mantle, artificial constructs made by humans with black magic and human sacrifice.
--- End quote ---
Yet these mantles manifest themselves through frost and blossoming flowers. If they're inventions of human sin, why aren't Summer Queens followed by streams of blood? Why is it that howling winds- not dying screams or tortured sobs- herald the Winter Lady's arrival?
Because the Mantles show themselves through clear natural phenomena, we may assume they are creations of nature. Natural creations? That remains to be seen. But there are plenty of situations where nature establishes a symbiotic relationship with human life and humanity's 'artificial' constructs.
--- Quote from: megarows on July 01, 2015, 02:52:39 AM ---A mantle isn't "nature"... it's a thing created with murder.
--- End quote ---
When Harry killed a man to protect his daughter, that was also nature. A natural instinct equal to any falcon call or palm leaf. Remember what his id said? "Protect the offspring."
--- Quote from: megarows on July 01, 2015, 02:52:39 AM ---But yes, nature always dominates in the end. Because it is eternal. What men create -- dams or mantles -- may last a very long time, but a finite amount of energy went into their creation.
--- End quote ---
Humanity itself endures. The towers and dams don't matter, they're just byproducts of life- human life. Judging us by dams is like saying all Dalmatians are going extinct because dog shit can be washed away.
megarows:
--- Quote from: Argonometra on July 01, 2015, 05:25:13 AM ---Yet these mantles manifest themselves through frost and blossoming flowers. If they're inventions of human sin, why aren't Summer Queens followed by streams of blood? Why is it that howling winds- not dying screams or tortured sobs- herald the Winter Lady's arrival?
Because the Mantles show themselves through clear natural phenomena, we may assume they are creations of nature. Natural creations? That remains to be seen. But there are plenty of situations where nature establishes a symbiotic relationship with human life and humanity's 'artificial' constructs.
--- End quote ---
Why didn't using the red court's bloodline curse, powered by human sacrifice, drive Harry insane? For whatever reason, we have situations where sometimes something created by black magic is innately tainted, and others where it is not.
My point is not that mantles secretly have goatees. My point is they are artificial constructs with a finite amount of energy. Whether they were created by petting kittens or murder.
--- Quote ---When Harry killed a man to protect his daughter, that was also nature. A natural instinct equal to any falcon call or palm leaf. Remember what his id said? "Protect the offspring."
--- End quote ---
Man is an animal and part of nature, sure. And a beaver will construct a dam just as man does. The difference in these things is the scale of consequences when what man (or beaver) creates inevitably fails.
--- Quote ---Humanity itself endures. The towers and dams don't matter, they're just byproducts of life- human life. Judging us by dams is like saying all Dalmatians are going extinct because dog shit can be washed away.
--- End quote ---
I think it is a question of scale. Man would not survive the beams or Tower falling in The Dark Tower. It would end all life, all reality, every universe. Just like that. Man did not build the Tower. The Tower as such is a fictional invention of Stephen King, but it is also a metaphor.
Yes, the Hoover Dam breaks, very sad, but Soviet Bear marches on. It is not an extinction-level event.
Something goes wrong with the fae queens, the weather gets messed up. Likely to kill more people than Hoover Dam from SK's description, but again, it's not like climate change is an extinction-level event or anything, amirite?
But is weather alone the only way fae queens have intimated themselves into natural processes? Is that their worst failure mode? And what about the dragons, if they are mantles as well? What about Hades, and his prison of souls? What would be the consequences of that dam breaking? We already know from the text that Demonreach's prison and the Outer gates are two "dams" that woud destroy us. Granted, those latter two are not natural processes being usurped, but they remain systems with entropy.
Humanity may survive many of these things. But past a point, the consequnces would be an extinction-level event. Maybe not necessarily the end all of realities like the Tower falling, but as far as we're concerned, game over.
Argonometra:
--- Quote from: megarows on July 01, 2015, 07:43:44 AM ---fae queens have intimated themselves into natural processes
--- End quote ---
If Harry is any indication, the Fae created and bear Mantles because of natural processes: to protect themselves, to protect others, to fight and/or survive better. Remember, Mab doesn't spend her days partying or swimming in mountains of gold: she fights Outsider incursions, she kills traitors, she disciplines the mightiest army Earth has ever known. ("Power has purpose," says Mother Winter in CD.)
Nature is not some flawless harmony where everybody gets what they want. Natural processes always conflict with each other- often to the detriment of nature itself- but that doesn't make them any less natural. It is natural for humans to dislike being cold (because cold is dangerous): therefore, it is natural for humans to build shelters. The resulting houses are no more artificial than the rain wearing them down.
Similarly, Mantle creation is a natural process. Unhealthy, yes- for the Fae involved, and perhaps even the world. But it is not unnatural, or unusual, for any creature to seek power.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: megarows on July 01, 2015, 02:52:39 AM ---Those things aren't from nature though. They arise from the mantle, artificial constructs made by humans with black magic and human sacrifice. A mantle isn't "nature"... it's a thing created with murder. Literally, the definition of crimes against humanity.
The fae queens -- humans with stolen power obtained by black magic -- have inserted themselves into at the very least, atmospheric weather, in a manner similar to a human building a dam.
--- End quote ---
I think you may be assigning a whole lot more characterization to all mantles everywhere, than is necessarily called for here. We know that the fae queens have used their Table to increase their Power, and can assume that some (but certainly not all) of that was Human Sacrifice. We Know that the The Erlking gathered his power by consuming energy in a qualitatively similar fashion to a DarkHallow, and we know that a Darkhallow can gather enough Power to birth in Immortal. We do not know if that is how they all work, or where they actually came from. There are lots of ways to level a building We've seen a Nuke in action, but we can go saying all explosions work that way.
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