Author Topic: Who is Sandra Marling?  (Read 9729 times)

Offline morriswalters

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Who is Sandra Marling?
« on: November 21, 2018, 02:37:40 AM »
I have decided that my mind is going.  And everybody but me probably has realized this.  But on my umpteenth reread of Proven Guilty it just occurred to me that Sandra Marling is the prime mover.  She triggers all the events of the book. 

She knows who Molly is. She plants the idea that traps Molly into Black Magic by suggesting that fear can control addiction.  All the young people who Molly was associating with have her as a common denominator.
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Molly looked at me obliquely for a second and then said, “She’s a part-time volunteer at one of the shelters where I’m doing community service. She helped Nelson out when he was younger. Rosie too, and her boyfriend.“

As the convention Chair she would have known that Madrigal Wraith was on the agenda.  She would have known the theater owner and the location of his theater.  She's at the hotel when all the events happen.  She leads Harry to Molly so he can  get her away from the police and allow her go home where she was vulnerable. 

She is described as middle aged and while there is no description of her height, there is this.
Quote
“Mister Dresden!” called a voice from across the crowded convention hallway. I looked up to see Sandra Marling hurrying through the crowd toward me. The convention’s chairwoman looked exhausted and too nervous to be awake, much less standing, much less politely pushing her way through a crowd, but she did it anyway. She still wore the same black T-shirt with the red SplatterCon!!! logo on it, presumably the same I’d seen her in the night before.
“Ms. Marling,” I said, nodding to her as she approached. “Good afternoon.”
For Harry to see her in a crowd and identify her she would need to be tall enough to be seen.  That's a stretch, but humor me.

Last, but not least, myrk or something like it is used in the attack and will be used again later in Small Favor under similar conditions by whoever sent the Hobs.  As well as a ward.

My WAG is Kumori.  But that is purely a WAG.
It also occurred to me that she was a ghoul posing as a human with Maeve doing the magic is the background.  Again a bad WAG.


Offline wardenferry419

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #1 on: November 21, 2018, 08:34:54 AM »
There have been alot of theories about Sandra Marling. Starting with her "fishy" name.
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Offline morriswalters

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #2 on: November 21, 2018, 11:23:56 AM »
/facepalm/  I can't believe I didn't make the connection.

Offline Bad Alias

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #3 on: November 21, 2018, 04:23:41 PM »
Two points I picked up:
  • Mouse never growls at her.
  • She has a cell phone.

Offline wardenferry419

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #4 on: November 21, 2018, 11:21:29 PM »
Perhaps some sorta thrall status makes her less of a danger and more of a victim to Mouse.
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Offline Snark Knight

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #5 on: November 22, 2018, 12:30:44 AM »
Two points I picked up:
  • Mouse never growls at her.
  • She has a cell phone.

Good catch on the cell phone. Zoo Day did establish that some kinds of possession on a sufficiently different wavelength are hard for even Mouse to notice, though.

Offline morriswalters

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #6 on: November 22, 2018, 02:09:18 AM »
Perhaps some sorta thrall status makes her less of a danger and more of a victim to Mouse.
Maybe a thrall of Madeline Raith's?  The drugs that landed Molly in trouble are right up the White Courts line.  And the they have local political connections in terms of courts.  She does something similar in Turn Coat with the lawyer?.

Offline Bad Alias

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #7 on: November 22, 2018, 04:42:40 PM »
The cell phone thing just means she isn't a sufficiently powerful mortal magic user. I think Mort can use them, and Binder definitely can.

I may be mistaken, but I believe we have seen Mouse growl at black magic users and monsters with the exceptions of everyone already knew the threat was present, and Harry said the black magic user/monster was okay.

Offline Snark Knight

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #8 on: November 24, 2018, 12:40:28 AM »
I may be mistaken, but I believe we have seen Mouse growl at black magic users and monsters with the exceptions of everyone already knew the threat was present, and Harry said the black magic user/monster was okay.

I mean, by definition if a villain was being super stealthy and Harry and the audience didn't recognize them yet, we wouldn't know if Mouse missed alerting on somebody.

Offline Bad Alias

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #9 on: November 24, 2018, 02:26:20 AM »
I mean, by definition if a villain was being super stealthy and Harry and the audience didn't recognize them yet, we wouldn't know if Mouse missed alerting on somebody.

Sure, but we have never seen a situation in which someone turned out to be a villain (defined as monster/black magic user), and Mouse didn't alert to them before Harry figured out why/how that person was a villain. I feel that it would be a cheap trick if Sandra turned out to be Marva, and Mouse didn't alert to her. Now if she was some sort of cutout, that would not bother me.

P.s. please correct me if I am wrong.

Offline morriswalters

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #10 on: November 24, 2018, 02:35:07 AM »
It makes one wonder if Goodman Grey could pull if off?

Offline Snark Knight

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #11 on: November 24, 2018, 03:16:28 AM »
It makes one wonder if Goodman Grey could pull if off?

I'm not still not sure how evil he is when he's not taking 'paying the Rent' jobs. The Monster LLC spinoff will be interesting if it ever happens.

Offline Bad Alias

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #12 on: November 24, 2018, 03:45:15 AM »
It makes one wonder if Goodman Grey could pull if off?

He seems "lawful neutral" to me, though we don't have much to go on.

Offline morriswalters

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #13 on: November 24, 2018, 04:19:37 AM »
I don't know that I buy Goodman Gray.  I don't see him doing something that took as long as the game Sandra Marling appears to be running.  But when he did the money guy it appeared that the impersonation went deep. 

The other question that keeps on bugging me is how did they find Molly in the first place.  It is never explained in White Knight how they went about finding low level practitioners. Or did I miss it? I mean they don't advertise. And the Fomor are attacking them by Skin Game. Does somebody have a magic detector?

Offline kbrizzle

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Re: Who is Sandra Marling?
« Reply #14 on: November 24, 2018, 05:54:21 PM »
I don’t buy Goodman Grey either. My read on Sandra Marling was that whoever she is, she is an agent of the Black Council. The couple of theories with merit in my opinion are that she is affiliated with the Black Court, or that she is affiliated with the Fomor - there have been speculations that both may have ties to the Outsider plot.

@morriswalters

That’s a good question. The simple answer is probably that they are constantly on the lookout for magical talent through various occult groups around the world.

If I were being conspiratorial however, I’d say that it has something to do with how Michael & Charity met. We know that Charity had some power & was following an increasingly insane sorcerer, Gregor (in the vein of Sells & Kravos), who was sacrificing his followers to a Dragon (Siriothrax I believe) for power. I have another WAG that these are the types of folks who are calling up Outsiders whenever they do show up. Anyway, Michael slew the Dragon, saving Charity. I wouldn’t be surprised if this put the both of them on the revenge list of the Black Council. So when Molly is of age, they send in Sandra Marling to begin pushing her towards the dark side.