The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers

Could the Blackstaff Cure a Warlock of Corruption?

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groinkick:

--- Quote from: Wizard Sibelis on July 07, 2018, 08:06:26 PM ---Yep. now you wanna uselessly cross over arguments here or what huh? don't like my idea? isn't that a shame....

--- End quote ---

Yeah that was kinda rude.  Sorry bout that.

Arjan:

--- Quote from: peregrine on July 08, 2018, 01:28:33 AM ---Eh....  Permission under duress might make it legal under the Laws of Magic. 

--- End quote ---
Knowing the white council it is probably a grey area you can get away with if you have the right connections but strictly speaking if the alternative is chopping your head off it is always under duress.

--- Quote ---But I don't know that, if you know that it's under duress, you wouldn't get the taint. 

--- End quote ---
The taint and the laws are different things. There is some correlation but that is all.


--- Quote ---And giving permission under duress doesn't mean that the warlock wouldn't be trying to resist it all the same, getting that conflict and psychological trauma anyways.

Now, if for some reason a warlock did seriously repent and want help, and thus cooperate and consent to that, things would probably go easier for everyone involved.

--- End quote ---
I think there are several seperate things here that interact and influence each other but are not identical.

The taint will pressure the warlock to do more things that produce even more taint so removing that will make healing possible but the psychological damage will still be there just like killing people with the blackstaff will not give you the taint but can still result in normal psychological damage. Just removing the taint would not damage someone. Replacing it with positive energy might even help someone but that is outside the capabilities of the white council as well. Mouse can do it.

Wizard Sibelis:

--- Quote from: groinkick on July 08, 2018, 05:21:31 AM ---Yeah that was kinda rude.  Sorry bout that.

--- End quote ---
apology accepted.

vultur:

--- Quote from: Fcrate on July 07, 2018, 10:06:22 AM ---Such a process will surely be lengthy and draining on the wizard's energy (And mental health)

--- End quote ---

I doubt it, once the Blackstaff learned how to do it. Mind magic doesn't seem to be inherently super slow or exhausting - the Corpsetaker could do it against Harry pretty quickly in DB, the big mental battle in GS didn't take that much real-world time, etc.

There are a lot of warlocks compared to the number of Wardens, but there's only like 300 Wardens worldwide at best. I don't think the number is really that large in absolute terms.

And you wouldn't necessarily have to do it every time. They could still execute the really scary (eg Kemmlerites) and/or overtly malicious (eg Victor Sells) types. Just having the option for people who did black magic without knowing about the Laws and for not-obviously-evil purposes (like Molly in PG) would probably help the Wardens' relations with the less-powerful practitioners (and thus access to information) a ton.


--- Quote from: forumghost on July 07, 2018, 01:23:03 PM ---I mean the issue with that is that if you start meddling with peoples brain-meats to 'cure' them they wind up like Molly's friends as their subconscious tries to overcome the brainwashing, likely driving this hypothetical Warlock even more insane then the Black Magic would have done.

--- End quote ---

I doubt it. It doesn't seem like mind magic has to inherently drive its targets crazy, Molly just didn't know what she was doing.

I mean Mab is willing to do it to Harry in Small Favor, and she definitely expects to recruit Harry as Winter Knight at that point (she says flat out something like "you will kneel at my feet and ask for the mantle"). So if she expected the results to be long-term incapacitating, she wouldn't do it.

OK, that was short-term, but Peabody was manipulating the Senior Council and Wardens for years (and with malicious intent, unlike the Mab example) and they didn't all go nuts -- in fact, there weren't any obvious symptoms. If they started showing mind-magic symptoms, the whole plot would have been exposed way sooner.

Harry does say something in PG implying that mind magic inherently works that way, yeah, but we know from GS (and DB) that at that point Harry didn't really know anything about mind magic. And anyway, at that point he's worried about convincing Molly that this is A Really Bad Idea.

Quantus:
To the OP:  There are two possibilities, and Im not sure how much either of them are proven.

1) The act of Performing the psychic surgery on a person might itself be Black Magic, so trying to cure it would be Tainting. I think this would only be a danger if they were trying it on an unwilling Warlock, as opposed to surgery on a willing target (like the Council had to do a bunch after TC). Same way the Mental Break-in training they started was not tainting the whole Council, because they were never truly breaking into an unwilling target.

2)The Blackstaff item itself can Cure a Warlock.  This is very possible, but only if the Blackstaff is actually sucking out the taint (as it appeared to me in Changes) rather than blocking it's initial infecting.  After that the question is whether the blackstaff can turn that power to another target or if it only works on the Bonded wielder. 

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