The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
What does Kringle know that Nicodemus doesn't?
Con:
are. But the Master of Shadows doesn’t prefer to operate that way, no.” Nicodemus’s control over the gang of superpowered lunatics was starting to make more sense now. “Master of Shadows. That’s an old, old phrase for a spy master.” “Exactly,” Kringle said. “Nicodemus knows very nearly as much as I do. Anduriel has the potential to hear anything uttered within reach of any living being’s shadow, and sometimes to look out from it and see.”
Butcher, Jim. Skin Game (The Dresden Files, Book 15) (pp. 373-374). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.
So what does Vadderung/Kringle know that Nicodemus doesn't?
Personally I thinks its something very specific, one thing in particular that could be a huge advantage over the Nickelheads.
Yuillegan:
Well that could be true - he might know some secret or truth that Nicodemus couldn't know (for example, how Nicodemus meets his end. Or perhaps the really cheesy "Love always wins", in the more supernatural way).
But I think there are two more obvious possibilities. Or at least possibilities that would be in conjunction.
1. He has access to (a) certain pool(s) of information that Nicodemus does not;
2. He knew what was about to happen to Nicodemus (as in by the end of Skin Game).
All are possible. But no. 2 is the nicest fit in many ways, both from a story telling perspective (consider this conversation happens before most of the events of the book) and from a world-centred way.
Consider this - WOJ is that Vadderung is the kinda guy who knows what you will do a year before you do, and makes his moves a week before you do. His level of foresight and planning is beyond most. Only when something/someone of equal foresight, planning and skill do counter-moves do things get all Monday Night Nitro as everyone's planning cancels out. He probably was pretty certain about Mab, Hades and Marcone's game on Nicodemus. He "knew" pretty much what was about to happen to him. I think he was foreshadowing the ending. Which is not to say he doesn't have other resources that Nicodemus does not have access to, but I think that foreshadowing the ending fits best with that scene.
Arjan:
Nicodemus is always restricted by what Anduriel does not want him to know, Kringle has no such restrictions.
pcpoet:
Santa clause is a part of the belief system of children so Santa has knowledge of the supernatural world that can only be seen by children. nicodamids and the other denarians do not have that knowledge.
Bad Alias:
“Nicodemus [has] very nearly as much [money] as I do." If we substitute money for knowledge, we can demonstrate the principle that both could know many things the other doesn't. Kringle has more knowledge than Nicodemus, but that doesn't mean that Kringle knows everything that Nicodemus does and one or a few more things.
I think the point of the quote is to demonstrate exactly how deep Kringle's knowledge is. He's got the Santa surveillance of everyone's behavior and sleeping habits, if the song is correct, Hugin and Munin, the sacrifice of his eye and drinking from the well, and hanging himself for the rune knowledge. And all of that except the Santa stuff is what he was doing before the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda were written down. Who knows what he's been up to for the last 1,000 years or so.
--- Quote ---Two ravens sit on his (Odin’s) shoulders and whisper all the news which they see and hear into his ear; they are called Huginn and Muninn. He sends them out in the morning to fly around the whole world, and by breakfast they are back again. Thus, he finds out many new things and this is why he is called ‘raven-god’ (hrafnaguð).
--- End quote ---
Simek, Rudolf. 1993. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Translated by Angela Hall. p. 164.
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