The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers

Unsolved Mystery Book3 Cowl

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Arjan:

--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on November 23, 2017, 06:44:07 PM ---OK, that's a very different read on things from mine. To my mind the objective of the series villains as a whole is to weaken all the strong supernaturals, mostly by getting them to fight each other.

This does depend on believing that a completed Darkhallow would have left a god-tier power actually able to operate on Earth afterwards; we have I think circumstantial evidence that this is not the case, such as Harry explaining in PG that all the old gods are in the NN, and the bassanid in "Last Call" seems to think that was a thing actively and deliberately done.

--- End quote ---
Only if you take all the power and even then you can give something up later as Odin shows. The biggest powers are dormant but the lesser powers have quite some influence and can do things. I do not think he necessarily wanted to take it all but...

I do not think Kemmler would have wanted it or anyone would have wanted it if it transformed you into a powerful garden plant. Everyone thought the first thing the new god would do is to eliminate the competition.

If he is really an outsider tool as I think he is not interested in the long term problems of too much power and the effects on himself. He just takes it to kill and break and the rest be damned.

Besides the gates are in the nevernever. He can do quite some damage there. And I do not think the new god Cowl would be concerned with the effect of him being on earth anyway, the more chaos the better.

--- Quote ---Levitating under the thing is not demonstrated the same thing as taking power.

--- End quote ---

He was about to begin, he was so close to it:


--- Quote ---The tip of the vortex spun down, danced lightly upon Cowl's lips, and then slipped gently between them. Cowl howled out the last repetition of his chant, his mouth opening wide.
--- End quote ---

That is more than just levitating. That was why Harry could do so much damage with his staff, Cowl was at his most vulnerable point.


--- Quote ---The blow connected, right on what felt like the tip of his upturned jaw, snapping his mouth shut and knocking him to the ground. The vortex abruptly screamed and filled with a furious red light. I choked out a cry and fell down on my right side to the ground
--- End quote ---

No use making yourself so vulnerable or going so far with the ritual if you are not trying to take a big chunk of power.



--- Quote ---We know from how quickly Cowl and Kumori vanish in the fight with the Alphas earlier that they are very good at fast gates out (the clue that it's a gate rather than a veil is leaving a lingering smell of the same place Peabody runs to at the end of TC.)  So setting up a quick getaway that looks like a faked death is well within Cowl's capacities there.

--- End quote ---
He obviously can get away quickly but I do not think that is sufficient reason to stay behind. The argument is that faking his dead is useless because he is just faking the dead of a fake identity. It forces him to assume another identity otherwise the whole effort would be undone the next time he is seen.

It is no use to fake the dead of a fake identity. It is only usefull to fake the dead of a real one.

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: Arjan on November 23, 2017, 08:09:01 PM ---I do not think Kemmler would have wanted it or anyone would have wanted it if it transformed you into a powerful garden plant. Everyone thought the first thing the new god would do is to eliminate the competition.

--- End quote ---

And that looks to me like exactly the thing you want your competition to believe is possible if it does actually turn you into something nominally powerful but practically useless.



--- Quote ---He was about to begin, he was so close to it:
That is more than just levitating. That was why Harry could do so much damage with his staff, Cowl was at his most vulnerable point.

--- End quote ---

I've read those passages too, and I disagree.  There's no point in faking things unless you fake them convincingly, and I read that as Cowl doing just that; I see no necessary connection between Harry hitting Cowl in the jaw and the vortex flashing red, I find it every bit as convincing that the thing was going to do that just then anyway.


--- Quote ---No use making yourself so vulnerable or going so far with the ritual if you are not trying to take a big chunk of power.

--- End quote ---

No use trying to deceive someone if you are going to fail on plausibility at the key moment; besides, I am arguing that Cowl isn't actually meaningfully vulnerable at that point because he knows he can get away quickly and safely.


--- Quote ---The argument is that faking his dead is useless because he is just faking the dead of a fake identity. It forces him to assume another identity otherwise the whole effort would be undone the next time he is seen.

It is no use to fake the dead of a fake identity. It is only usefull to fake the dead of a real one.

--- End quote ---

As we see earlier in DB, "Cowl" is a recognisable identity; Harry knew him from Bianca's party in GP.  There were lots of other supernaturals at that party, and I see no reason to expect any of the older, serious players to be any less perceptive than Harry.

So "the weird wizard who showed up with an extremely powerful athame at Bianca's party, wearing a hooded robe and distorting his voice in ways that could not scream I AM HIDING MY IDENTITY more if he had a pink neon sign over his head saying that" is an established identity many powerful and dangerous entities could have recognised, and blamed for his part in the subsequent chaos; Winter, at least, is going to want his head at some point in retribution for the damage the athame caused/enabled.  Faking the death of that identity is therefore a worthwhile exercise, to my mind.

Arjan:

--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on November 23, 2017, 09:51:32 PM ---And that looks to me like exactly the thing you want your competition to believe is possible if it does actually turn you into something nominally powerful but practically useless.

--- End quote ---
We have seen beings at those power levels. They are not useless, they do things. They can even do more if under outsider influence, see Maeve.

An outsider infected after darkhallow Cowl would have been a real disaster.

--- Quote ---I've read those passages too, and I disagree.  There's no point in faking things unless you fake them convincingly, and I read that as Cowl doing just that;

--- End quote ---
And the most convincing way of faking it is just doing it.

--- Quote ---I see no necessary connection between Harry hitting Cowl in the jaw and the vortex flashing red, I find it every bit as convincing that the thing was going to do that just then anyway.

--- End quote ---
Normally it would not end, it would go on until the power was absorbed. But it stopped and that saved a lot of lives.

--- Quote ---No use trying to deceive someone if you are going to fail on plausibility at the key moment; besides, I am arguing that Cowl isn't actually meaningfully vulnerable at that point because he knows he can get away quickly and safely.

As we see earlier in DB, "Cowl" is a recognisable identity; Harry knew him from Bianca's party in GP.  There were lots of other supernaturals at that party, and I see no reason to expect any of the older, serious players to be any less perceptive than Harry.

So "the weird wizard who showed up with an extremely powerful athame at Bianca's party, wearing a hooded robe and distorting his voice in ways that could not scream I AM HIDING MY IDENTITY more if he had a pink neon sign over his head saying that" is an established identity many powerful and dangerous entities could have recognised, and blamed for his part in the subsequent chaos; Winter, at least, is going to want his head at some point in retribution for the damage the athame caused/enabled.  Faking the death of that identity is therefore a worthwhile exercise, to my mind.

--- End quote ---
That is why you use a disposable identity. You can just drop it any time and noone will be any wiser. But he did not drop the identity, he used it again in White Night.

So if he wanted to fake the dead of Cowl it makes no sense to appear as Cowl only a few books later, he could have started a different disguise.

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