The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Mortal Government Knowledge of Magic
Quantus:
--- Quote from: Snark Knight on July 18, 2017, 10:07:04 PM ---Something like Luccio's eyeglasses focus from the new short story (enhanced perception but at a much lower intensity than the sight) would help with detection. Circles would be tough to keep undisturbed anywhere with a lot of people walking about between tables though.
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Agreed on both counts. The only place I could actually see it working is actually the roulette wheel itself, or anything similar that has a central mechanical fixture that everyone is expected to remain entirely clear of before the "action" begins. Wouldnt work for most card games; would be damn complicated on craps. All the electronic games (slots, video poker etc) should be alright so long as they make the electronics extra-fragile.
LordDresden2:
--- Quote from: Shift8 on July 18, 2017, 03:38:53 PM ---Some of you guys have an inordinate capacity for suspension of disbelief. I like the DV as much as anyone, but good grief. A plot hole is a plot hole.
You guys are attributing the US government with plot power comparable to ministry of magic in Harry Potter. And the other half of you is giving human rationalization totally unrealistic capabilities. It doesn't work this way IRL.
Note I'm not saying the cat is totally of the bag here. But people would absolutely, totally, completely certainly, without a doubt, indubitably, know that something strange happened. They may not know what kind of animals attacked them. They may not even think it was magic. But its crazy to say that the general facts of the incident would not be known. Not. Possible.
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Oh, they'd be known. But so would 200 other 'facts' about the incident that didn't happen to be true.
You're right that trying to pretend that 'nothing happened' would be futile. That's not how you'd go about it. Instead, you'd cloud the issue. You get a starting help from the chaos and confusion that accompanies any nasty incident like that, on any scale.
On a larger scale, it would be like a mass shooting. Think about the confusion that usually accompanies such incidents. There's 1 shooter, no, 3 shooters. There are 15 dead, no, wait, 12 dead. The shooter was armed with an AK-47. No, wait, it was a pair of Glocks. No, wait, it was 2 shooters, and they were shooting at each other.
It usually gets sorted out over a day or two, but imagine if somebody in a position of authority was deliberately trying to cloud the issue and confuse the matter. Now imagine that it involves lots and lots of confused, scared, and mixed up witnesses, with conflicting accounts. Imagine that somebody has his own people claiming to have see 'x, y, and z' and x, y, and z are all made up at the same time. Imagine that those same someones are deliberately clouding the issue every step of the way throughout the investigation.
The forensics found weird stuff? Put out a story that they also found imaginary weird stuff B, C, and D, and then have somebody else 'debunk' B. Use the protests of the real witnesses that C and D didn't happen as yet more fodder for the confusion.
You've got a cop or an FBI guy who won't take a hint and shut up? Remind him that he's still 10 years from retirement, has a kid in college and mortgage, and jobs are hard to come by. If you're really ruthless, he can have an accident.
If somebody has the necessary money and connections, they could really confuse the issue to the point that nobody, even among the authorities, was sure of anything. Then you put out your sane-seeming, rational-seeming explanation. If necessary, fake up a reason to divert a bunch of FBI or police resources elsewhere for a while.
It's the same thing Murphy used to do as head of S.I., on a grander scale and with a bigger budget.
It's not infallible, of course. But it's not as hard as all that if you've got the resources.
LordDresden2:
--- Quote from: Snark Knight on July 18, 2017, 08:14:33 PM ---I wonder about the casino issue, actually. Cheating casinos to establish an early-career nest egg is bit of a plot point in the Alex Verus series, for one. Now, in the DV, certainly trying to cheat a house owned by Marcone would be a bad idea (I wonder if that has something to do with how he originally got clued in?), but are all big casinos aware?
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Define 'aware' and 'casino'.
The fact that they are still in business suggests that somebody involved with them is taking steps to keep practitioners from cleaning their clocks. Even a fairly minor practitioner who was also smart and clever could do it, if there were no defenses in place. Also remember that somebody in the Chicago Cubs organization knew enough to ask Harry to see if there really was a curse.
(Apparently, it's been lifted or dispelled as of 2016...or maybe the magical disruption from Changes messed it up.)
In fact, it's established that there are quite a few people who know that the supernatural is real in some form in the DV. They aren't a majority of the population, but I'd hazard that a large minority knows or suspects something of the truth, even if only tidbits or a basic knowledge that there's Something There. A much smaller, but still substantial, percentage knows quite a bit.
As Harry has said more than once, it's not even exactly a secret. It just isn't advertised.
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Given the diversity of different talents at the lower end of the food chain or the range of skills that can be concentrated in a wizard-level or nearly such practitioner, blocking all possible all possible avenues of cheating could actually be very difficult. Trying to magic-proof a casino would mean countering everything from an ectomancer like Mort with a ghost partner reading the dealer's cards to him at blackjack, to a sensitive like Molly passively detecting opponent's confidence levels changing hand by hand at poker, to someone with short-range future awareness like that Paranet member who got shot in GS taking advantage at the roulette wheel. That's a pretty massive range of vulnerabilities to deal with.
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But 90% of it would be the basic stuff.
Yeah, Harry could wipe out most casinos without even trying, and it's not clear they could stop him. Ditto Elaine, or Molly. But it's also not likely that many Council-level talents would bother. The casinos don't have to protect themselves from the Council, it's Joe the low-power but really clever practitioner who could really use 200 grand that they mostly have to worry about.
LordDresden2:
--- Quote from: Quantus on July 18, 2017, 07:10:18 PM ---Id call the Paranet the most modern and least secret one of these.
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But there's a really simply way to counter the Paranet, if you like keeping quiet stuff quiet.
You don't try to wipe them out, cut off the Internet access, or intimidate them. That would be time consuming, difficult, dangerous (you might draw Council attention), legally fraught, and expensive.
Instead, you set up the Metanet. And the Maginet. And the Cryptohistorical Society. Fake sources, fake news, fake magic. You get clever hucksters from Madison Avenue to come up with convincing nonsense. You mix in just enough truth, just enough reality, to make it convincing.
Suddenly the Paranet is just one group of kooks among many. If you're not already an insider, you have no way to know which one is the Real Deal.
This is in fact something I pointed out years ago (posting as LordDresden): Charity Carpenter's attitude about magic is actually completely rational and reasonable, if you happen to be a low-level talent. The risk of pursuing it, and the difficulty of determining who to trust and who to run from, and the side-effects and dangers of the pursuit, probably make it smarter to turn away, unless you're a pretty high power talent. The risk/reward ratio is unpromising.
For ex, to use my old example from years ago, suppose you're a young talent trying to figure out how to use your abilities, and you purchase two books. One is Elementary Magic by E. McCoy. The other is Basic Magic by H. Relmmek.
How is the untutored, unconnected youth supposed to know that he can trust McCoy, but should burn the Relmmek book in a hot fire and scatter the ashes? He can't.
Quantus:
--- Quote from: LordDresden2 on July 19, 2017, 04:36:43 AM ---But there's a really simply way to counter the Paranet, if you like keeping quiet stuff quiet.
You don't try to wipe them out, cut off the Internet access, or intimidate them. That would be time consuming, difficult, dangerous (you might draw Council attention), legally fraught, and expensive.
Instead, you set up the Metanet. And the Maginet. And the Cryptohistorical Society. Fake sources, fake news, fake magic. You get clever hucksters from Madison Avenue to come up with convincing nonsense. You mix in just enough truth, just enough reality, to make it convincing.
Suddenly the Paranet is just one group of kooks among many. If you're not already an insider, you have no way to know which one is the Real Deal.
This is in fact something I pointed out years ago (posting as LordDresden): Charity Carpenter's attitude about magic is actually completely rational and reasonable, if you happen to be a low-level talent. The risk of pursuing it, and the difficulty of determining who to trust and who to run from, and the side-effects and dangers of the pursuit, probably make it smarter to turn away, unless you're a pretty high power talent. The risk/reward ratio is unpromising.
For ex, to use my old example from years ago, suppose you're a young talent trying to figure out how to use your abilities, and you purchase two books. One is Elementary Magic by E. McCoy. The other is Basic Magic by H. Relmmek.
How is the untutored, unconnected youth supposed to know that he can trust McCoy, but should burn the Relmmek book in a hot fire and scatter the ashes? He can't.
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Well sure, just about anything is vulnerable to a sufficiently motivated Conspiracy, but how is that relevant?
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