The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Black Magic - Intent, Fact & Knowledge
Griffyn612:
--- Quote from: Vivictus on October 20, 2017, 06:05:34 PM ---Interesting. I take "doing something bad for the right reasons" as knowing what you're doing but feeling that it's justified or believing that it's the "least wrong" option available. The first scenario, killing in self defense seems to fall into this category.
I'm more questioning scenarios where there isn't any reasoning involved. e.g. A human is killed accidently and perhaps the practitioner isn't even aware of it after the fact. Still black magic?
Or, conversely a practitioner casts what if fully intended to be lethal black magic but fails to kill the target due to external interference. (Say, an entropy curse cast at a human that is redirected to a black court vamp...) Not black magic due to incompetence?
Another interesting scenario. If Butters had killed a human with a magic device during his Batman phase. The actual power is coming from Bob. So, not black magic and Butters doesn't experience any corruption?
--- End quote ---
This has come up from time to time, but I don't remember the details on the arguments. Snark and Mr. Death are better versed in the latest debates on this, I believe. They may chime in.
My take was that if you cast regular magic and it accidentally kills someone, it corrupts you. If you cast regular magic with the intent to kill, it corrupts you. If you cast dark magic with ill intent, but it doesn't succeed, it corrupts you. If you cast dark magic with ill intent, and it succeeds, it corrupts you.
There's some good WoJ on Eb and the Blackstaff that talks about just doing the things he does, even with the Staff protecting him from the worst aspects of dark magic, still requires a mindset that's disturbed, and psyche effects that are unavoidable for anyone not actually a sociopath.
Snark Knight:
--- Quote from: Vivictus on October 20, 2017, 06:05:34 PM ---Another interesting scenario. If Butters had killed a human with a magic device during his Batman phase. The actual power is coming from Bob. So, not black magic and Butters doesn't experience any corruption?
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Killing someone with an enchanted item has no more than the usual bad-for-the-soul moral implications of killing. That's literally what the Warden swords are designed for, for one thing.
On the other hand, Molly's rag lady phase probably was incurring soul corruption. We don't know for sure if she was limiting herself to only technically legal holomancy for stuff like tricking dirty cops into shootouts with Fomor servitors, or resorting to outright mental interference. But the strong implication of Jim's statement that it's effects that matter is that it's only the Wardens who would care about that - casting illusions meant to trick people to their deaths, and succeeding, was warping her mind no matter how she did it.
wardenferry419:
Perhaps the corruption comes from taking an elemental force of life and losing it in such a manner that it ends life.
jonas:
--- Quote ---casting illusions meant to trick people to their deaths, and succeeding, was warping her mind no matter how she did it.
--- End quote ---
I'd have to disagree, Lea basically taught Molly to use fear without breaking the laws of magic. Sure, it's a grey area, but it's the same grey area the Sidhe live in and they absolutely cannot abrogate freedom of will.
--- Quote --- crosses the line into black magic and what considerations determine it
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That's the clincher for the laws of magic, if you look at them, all 7 break free will universal laws, with a slight exception for #7, it could break the same law as Necromancy, but it's more just bad juju for reality.
1 Murder is pretty self explanatory, take away their choice entirely
2 It destroys them just the same, by slowly taking away who/what they were, taking away their freedom/soul as a human too.
3 Breaking into minds against their will..
4 Completely breaking the will of another.
5 Ghosts aren't supposed to effect fate/reality, have no body/soul to do so, ect.
6 Altering time, trying to alter someone else's choices or flow of fate/freedom. Interestingly if you use Bob's indirect methodology you can avoid the actual cosmic repercussions by standing in a grey area...
7 Outergates, all kinda of dead/undead gods and such.
If you take 'gaia' as our cabbalistic seraphim, TWC as our current Spiritus Mundus, spirit of our planet, and Nemesis as our dark mirror and wrap it up with Yeat's the second coming as our spirit being replaced in a mirroring opposite fashion throughout time and space and you have 'freedom of will' as the current order of the Spiritus Mundus and violating that as an unbalanced force. Lucifer exists 'here' to balance regular corruptive actions by bringing 'judgement' upon those actions... Magic has no dark god to dole out retribution or otherwise metaphysically balance out breaking the order of 'planet/star/archangel' So Nemesis, our dark mirror gets to act in that imbalance. In religious context, 'sin' was an unbalanced force which damned all of humanity before TWC saved them and made Hell for the damned(which in the DF prevents them from nothingness/outside/beyond), repurposed Satan the Accuser into Lucifer the Devil.
--- Quote ---Another interesting scenario. If Butters had killed a human with a magic device during his Batman phase. The actual power is coming from Bob. So, not black magic and Butters doesn't experience any corruption?
--- End quote ---
Probably not, Bob would just be another form of insulation, like a mantle or talisman or blackstaff.
Ananda:
--- Quote from: Griffyn612 on October 20, 2017, 05:07:58 PM ---The WoJ on the subject is that intent has no bearing on dark magic corruption. If you do something bad for the right reasons, you're corrupted.
--- End quote ---
That was the essence of Proven Guilty. Molly had good intentions and yet ...
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