The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Was Ascher telling the truth?
wardenferry419:
While much is possible and detailed understanding of warden activity is lacking; what has been showed, generally, paints the wardens as a dedicated and principle group tasked with difficult actions and hard choices.
LordDresden2:
--- Quote from: wardenferry419 on December 16, 2017, 01:40:40 PM ---The corruption that we have seen within the wardens and WC has been isolated and individualistic and not systemic.
--- End quote ---
We haven't seen a lot of it over time, though. At the start of the story, the Wardens appear to be more or less on the square, but we don't know much of their overall history.
LordDresden2:
--- Quote from: wardenferry419 on December 12, 2017, 09:13:17 AM ---As Billy Joel sang "It's a matter of trust." Who do you trust, the experienced and reliable warden/cop or the teenaged warlock/punk that says the warden was mean to me? One has done his duty for awhile and the other ignorantly thinks they know everything.
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If I'm an uninformed, or semi-informed, minor magical talent? Probably neither, or I might trust the warlock if I didn't know the true score. How do I know that Warden has been doing his duty for years? How do I know what his actual duty even is? How do I know that Council isn't full of it and handing out lies to preserve their own power?
People who've been around the block a few times might begin to notice that the Wardens do more good than harm, but that would take some experience, and even then the Wardens are scary.
If I was mostly uninformed about How It Works, and faced with a choice of believing the Molly of Proven Guilty or a Warden who had come to kill her, I might well think that it's a choice between a scared kid who tried to do something good (and in fact did do something good in the course of screwing up), and a psychopathic murderer with a sword.
If I sided with Molly and saved her from the 'psychopathic murderer', after a bit I might begin to realize I had made the wrong choice...but that would take some time and seeing the effects in action.
LordDresden2:
--- Quote from: Arjan on December 12, 2017, 04:30:53 PM ---Warlocks are not human? That is exactly why being branded a warlock is something to be feared by minor talents more so because some wardens can be very creative in explaining the laws when it suits them, see Morgan.
Who did not trust his own system, and he should know.
Who also showed that the white councils attitude to fair trials is not restricted to warlocks. Nobody accused Morgan of being a warlock but he was hooded anyway and had no defense exept for what nepotism brought him.
We know the warden counted members like Justin so expecting exemplary behaviour from all of them is not realistic. And more important thee is no appeal possible and the whole affair can be finished on site with whoever available.
So much power with so little oversight and no appeal or second opinion is scary. It is not good for people even the best of them.
And what Bob said was not a lie, with that cloack he can.
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I suspect that there is at least some oversight. We don't know any details about how the Wardens are organized, but I doubt they really have completely free hands. But they can get pretty close, as Bob noted, and a clever one who goes bad can hide it for a long time, as we see with Justin.
LordDresden2:
--- Quote from: wardenferry419 on December 12, 2017, 05:38:35 PM ---Let me suggest an alternative to there being no Wardens. Instead of trying to track, determine guilt either by their actions and/or a soulgaze, and executing them; you let warlocks do whatever they want. Wouldn't that be a nice world to live in; but, only if you are a warlock.
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That's really the only excuse for the Council's policies, that the alternative appears to be vastly worse.
The question is whether the Council and the Wardens could do a better job than they do, or organizes things to produce better outcomes. At the very least, they need to do a better job of PR in the magical world.
--- Quote ---A person born with magical aptitude is given both a gift and a burden. A gift to use power that few have. A burden to use that gift properly. Would it be it better if novice magic users knew that the WC existed and that there are consequences and punishments for misuse of power? Maybe. But ignorance of the WC does free the novice from the responsibility that hurting others for selfish cause is wrong.That queasy feeling you get before you do bad is not indigestion it is the rumblings of guilt.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, but it's not that simple. Yeah, killing with magic might produce that queasy feeling...unless you're defending yourself against attempted rape or murder. Then it might seem appropriate. (In fact, is has to seem appropriate in the moment to use magic to do it.)
Transforming another? Yeah, we know why the Council sees it as murder, but why would a new talent? Esp. since people can self-transform safely.
Reading minds? Meddling with them? Even here, it's possible for a wrong thing to seem very right under some conditions, see Molly Carpenter. And note, too, that Molly really did almost surely save Rosie's baby from being born addicted, so there's an additional complication. Molly didn't just think she was doing good, she really did do something good in the process of doing something bad. The Jedi mind trick? You're saying Ben Kenobi was a monster just for distracting an enemy?
Messing with the dead? OK, a lot of people would recoil from that out of native revulsion...but there are people would think they could do good that way, too. Esp. since there are gray areas even here.
Messing with time? Well, anyone familiar with much science fiction would know how many ways time travel might cause problems, but if you'd never thought about it, or assumed that the past was fixed...
And the Seventh Law doesn't even require magic to break. In theory, a total mundane could fall foul of the Seventh Law simply by reading the wrong book in innocence. Think about that.. You find an old book in your great-grandmother's attic, read it, and someone decides you have to die for it. For reading a book.
It is by no means obvious to an uninformed person that this stuff is bad, or why, or why the response has to be so harsh.
The Council does try to remove the stuff that's forbidden so people can't accidentally read it...but even that looks bad to the naïve. 'You're saying you have the right to dictate what I can do with my powers, how I can use them, heck, what I'm allowed to even read?' 'Yes. And I'll kill you if you don't comply.'
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