The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
How Harry would do the Dark Hallow in Changes wag
Rasins:
So, I'm a little confused.
Does the power from the spirits go to the one who eats the DH, or the power of the deaths, or both?
And IS the Earlking a Mantle, or an ascension that gave power and he's kept it? What I mean is that is "Earlking" a Mantle, or a title. And he has a power, but is it a cohesive mantle, or just, like Harry, an source of power?
Quantus:
--- Quote from: Rasins on June 29, 2017, 01:45:26 PM ---So, I'm a little confused.
Does the power from the spirits go to the one who eats the DH, or the power of the deaths, or both?
--- End quote ---
Best interpreation I have is to consider a Darkhallow to be like holding a straw with the top plugged by your thumb; the "Power" that actually gets eaten is the Water (the Ghosts, all Necromantic energy), and the Life that gets drawn out by the resulting Vacuum is the Air that you release with your thumb to let that water fall out. The Air/Life is filling a void left behind by the Necromantic ghost energies that got consumed, but the amount of Life/Air available to fill that void directly limits how much Water/Necromantic energy can Move (ie get consumed) in the first place, as both things happen together. So you stir up whatever arbitrary number of ghosts you can, because that's where the Power comes from; and that part is made easier by having a thin/weakened Border and also if you have powerful NN creatures with Ghost Summoning capabilities. But if you dont set your proverbial Dinner Table in a place that has an equivalent amount of Life Energy floating around you to fill in the space as you draw it down, you wont be able to swallow.
--- Quote ---And IS the Earlking a Mantle, or an ascension that gave power and he's kept it? What I mean is that is "Earlking" a Mantle, or a title. And he has a power, but is it a cohesive mantle, or just, like Harry, an source of power?
--- End quote ---
I am as confident as I can be that he's a Mantle without having a direct WOJ that uses the term. But he's always described as a Peer to Mab (in a way that does not mean Power levels) and a direct counterpart of Kringle who /is/ specifically a Mantle. We know per WOJ that Eldest is an important and common Mantle, so I dont know if the Erlking is defined as the Eldest Goblin, or if it's perhaps a Hunter Spirit mantle that happens to reside in a goblin king currently.
Rasins:
Okay, I like the straw analogy. That makes sense.
The part that confuses me then, if the Erlking is present, his power would be consumed, but he's alive, so ... there's a contradiction there.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: Rasins on June 29, 2017, 02:46:47 PM ---Okay, I like the straw analogy. That makes sense.
The part that confuses me then, if the Erlking is present, his power would be consumed, but he's alive, so ... there's a contradiction there.
--- End quote ---
His Power would /not/ be consumed, is my point. He personally might be Killed, but that's not the same thing. Maeve was Killed, but her Power, her Mantle, simply moved on to the next host unharmed. If his power were Consumed, the Mantle itself would be destroyed/subsumed into the new Necro-Mantle.
Bakoro:
Jeez people, I know Jim likes to play tricksy Sidhe "gotcha" games, but sometimes we just have to take the words for what they actually say.
Jim explicitly says that the more lives that would have been sacrificed, the more power the caster would receive. All the life energy not protected by necrotic magic would have been consumed. All the ghosts would have been consumed, all the lives of all the people, the flowers, and bugs, in the city would have been consumed, and if the Erlking was around, he would have been consumed too, along with all his power (which by itself would have been enough to make an new Immortal). The Erlking wasn't consumed by the Darkhallow because the Darkhallow was interrupted before it could go off (hence Chicago not being a giant cemetery in the books). Maeve's mantle didn't get destroyed when Maeve died because that mantle is it's own magical construct, a discrete thing that exists beyond any one person, and there wasn't any necro-vortex trying to eat it at the moment.
We know that Halloween is when Immortals grab power from each other. That's part of the whole Dresdenverse origin of "Halloween" as we know it. On Halloween, the Erlking was mutable and could have his power partially or wholly consumed, or even be killed. If he has a mantle, as in a magical construct that sits on top of him like the WK mantle sits on Harry, then even that would have been wholly consumed added to the new Immortal's power. That's the whoooooole point of all this "mutable on Halloween" business. If it wasn't like that, then there'd be virtually no point in adding in that particular detail, especially in bringing up the Darkhallow specifically. Jim could have and probably would have left it at "Immortals can die on Halloween".
--- Quote ---
“Halloween is when they feed,” Bob said. “Or . . . or refuel. Or run free. It’s all sort of the same thing, and I’m only conveying a small part of it. Halloween night is when the locked stasis of immortality becomes malleable. They take in energy—and it’s when they can add new power to their mantle. Mostly they steal tiny bits of it from other immortals.”
“Those Kemmlerite freaks and their Darkhallow,” I breathed. “That was Halloween night.”
“Exactly!” Bob said. “That ritual was supposed to turn one of them into an immortal. And the same rule applies—that’s the only night of the year it actually can happen.
--- End quote ---
I'm just not sure how much clearer it can get without Jim himself coming in a laying it out bare one way or another. Maybe someone can ask him at the next Q&A he does.
This is something that's been tossed around for years now. People are freaking obsessed with mantles. Everything's a mantle now, everybody's got a mantle.
Not every "mantle" is a discrete magical construct like the Queens and Knight have that hops from one vessel to the next. Immortals have a mantle of immortality that's it, I don't see anything that says it *has* to zip onto someone new, the Queens' mantles do that because it's part of what they are, they're cosmically important.
Sometimes the "mantle" is just like, an idea, basically, like being the "leader".
Being a leader doesn't give you an explicit personal power boost like you can all of a sudden lift heavy objects over your head. What it does do is give you power, because other people might follow your orders when you tell them to help you lift heavy objects. When a leader is gone, sometimes someone takes up the role, sometimes the group itself is dismantled (pun totally intended). There seems to be a mighty fine line between things that are just ideas in people's heads, and things that are actually magic, I recognize that, but the line is there.
Erlking is an immortal, he has the "mantle" of immortality, but there's nothing that says he has a "mantle" like Vadderung has Santa, or that it's something that will get passed along when he dies. His power might just die along with him and disperse like a body turns into dust, ready to be used in creating something new. Nothing says that when Vadderung stops being Santa, that the mantle goes to someone else, it might not even exist outside the realm of ideas.
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