The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers

Is Lea stronger than the Winter Lady?

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Mira:


Well, I can see Lea being stronger than Maeve, when it was said that she was the strongest second only to Mab.  Second in strength may not mean just raw power, it could mean political influence. Let's face it, Maeve had been next to useless for that last hundred and fifty years or so..  However, she may not be stronger than Molly who was a powerful wizard before she became Winter Lady..

peregrine:
I was just about to say that.  Molly has her wizard power in addition to her Lady power.

However, while Maeve was neglecting her duties for 150 years, she still had a large retinue built up and more practice in the fae arena.  Plus, Molly's skills lie in more subtle and delicate areas, not necessarily ones of power and strength.  So it could go either way.

Carl:

--- Quote from: vultur on July 20, 2018, 07:31:01 AM ---Oh, Lea is definitely stronger than the Ladies. It's mentioned several times, and also look at her performance in Changes (she kills two Lords of Outer Night with one spell, though admittedly by surprise -- and gives Harry and Susan really powerful magical items) versus the frankly pathetic performance the Faerie Ladies have demonstrated on-page... we see 3 of them die, 2 to massively inferior opponents (Aurora to Harry + pixies, Maeve to Murphy). Sure, Maeve was on Halloween, but Lea would just have shielded herself or dodged the bullet or frozen Murphy in ice or something... she's confident enough in her ability to defend herself that she lets Molly try to stab her with iron in "Bombshells" and casually blocks it (and she's not immortal... she specifically says that Molly would have killed her...)

Lily does some pretty impressive stuff, admittedly, but it's really not THAT much beyond what we've seen Harry do ... her wave-of-fire spell in CD probably involves a lot less energy than Harry's Winter Knight freeze-the-lake effect in CD, and likely is comparable to Harry's lake-freezing "twenty-story column of fire hot enough to vaporize ten-gauge steel" all the way back in WN, which is just him moving energy around with standard wizard magic, no Winter or Hell/Soulfire or other boosts involved. Her follow-up sun-ball spell is pretty impressive, admittedly, but it seems like a faster-cast version of Harry's "little ball of sunshine", not something on a whole different level...  And more importantly, Harry is totally without gear and running out of energy in that fight. If Harry had been anywhere near full power, he'd have taken Lily down before she ever got a chance to put together the sun-ball spell; just blocked the wave-of-fire and then struck back.

I think the Mothers are kind of... outside everything else. There's a WOJ that the Erlking is Wyldfae, not subject to Mab or Titania, but he has "origins in the Summer-side of the cycle of seasons" and is beholden to Mother Summer (but pretty much everything in Faerie is...)

I'm not sure they are even Fae in the strict sense, Mother Winter has iron teeth after all.

Possibly it's excluding beings like Kringle and any other Winter-affiliated or Winter-leaning Wyldfae.

--- End quote ---

We see Molly pull a vastly larger version of the lake freezing spell at the start of Cold Case. Harry doesn't even come close to that. Also Lily's spell is far hotter than almost anything we've seen dresden do in the books. I think some of his Hellfire empowered stuff might come close, but it had the same instantaneous obliteration effect on Fix's sword that The Denarian Hellfire empowered circle had on the Denarian's thrown into it. Over most of a hilltop. Compared to Molly's Cold Case freezing spell the level of power involved was pretty modest, but it was still shockingly high by any previous standard we've seen. You hit an apartment block with Lily's spell and it won't set it on fire like Harry would, it will turn it into straight up vapour, it and everything in it will just disintegrate like it was hit by a star trek phaser.

Carl:
Ughh, hit post too soon. That said i still suspect Lea is more powerful, but there's no hard evidence of it. On the other hand it may well be that the Lady is more combat focused.

Another thing to remember, Molly is only that powerful when drawing on the mantle. Thats fine for a lot of things, but she can't apparently use it to empower her illusion magic in any way and she's still limited complexity wise in what she can do. She doesn't really do anymore without drawing on the Winter Mantle than we've seen her do before she got it. Which actually makes the fact in Skin Game that she's been holding of mental attacks from the best of the Winter fae in her dreams for months really impressive, thats plan old mortal "Harry Dresden is way more powerful than me" Molly kicking serious fae but with just immense control of a limited amount of power.

In any kind of combat setting thats still going to make Molly hell on earth for the bad guys in a way Harry can't even think of matching. But there's probably a lot of non-combat applications of raw power that she's going to struggle with.

Maz:
Molly's wizard powers doesn't necessarily carryover and in fact I'd think it doesn't?  Wizard magic is mortal.  Faerie magic is not.  Similarly, if a wizard were turned a vampire, they don't carry their mortal magic... their SKILLS do have some strong correlation from what we've been told but it is fundamentally different. 

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