The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers

How do Wizards make a living?

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toodeep:
I can't help but wonder how a mind wizard might be able to set up a heck of a business as a psychiatrist/councilor.  It is only black magic to use mind magic if it is uninvited (i.e. invade).  If a wizard has permission to alter your mind, it is technically legal, though it might still have negative effects on your sanity.  I'm just wondering if they could advertise a 100% successful smoking prevention counseling.  The fact that the councilor asks for permission to use magic to alter your mind would be laughed at and approved by most people who don't believe in magic...

Bad Alias:

--- Quote from: toodeep on October 28, 2019, 08:09:47 PM ---It is only black magic to use mind magic if it is uninvited (i.e. invade).  If a wizard has permission to alter your mind, it is technically legal.

--- End quote ---
The treatments that the young wardens got in Turn Coat are probably examples of legal uses of mind magic. Also what Molly does when she senses peoples emotions. What Molly does would be useful for counseling or negotiating.

toodeep:

--- Quote from: Bad Alias on October 28, 2019, 08:34:42 PM ---The treatments that the young wardens got in Turn Coat are probably examples of legal uses of mind magic. Also what Molly does when she senses peoples emotions. What Molly does would be useful for counseling or negotiating.

--- End quote ---

Agreed about Molly's abilities being good for counseling.  She might be a great lawyer if she can easily (noninvasively) read whether someone is lying, etc.  Though in both cases knowing the truth or knowing how someone feels doesn't always help unless you know how and why they are trying to rationalize things, and what the root cause of something is.  Knowing your patient is lying doesn't necessarily help you treat them.

What I was talking about was more like smoking cessation or something of that ilk where with their permission you go in and put in a magical block making it impossible to smoke, etc.  Or maybe using magic to more reliably allow them to recall something from the past, etc.

Kindler:
If I was a wizard in the DV, I would be one of the greatest criminals the world has ever seen.

Even just knowing how to navigate the Ways would be absolutely priceless. National borders become utterly meaningless when you can pop from Chicago to Edinburgh in a half hour. I could smuggle anything I wanted, steal whatever I wanted, and flee from the police at a moment's notice.

I wouldn't be an assassin or anything, but no bank vault would be safe from me.

Bad Alias:
@Kindler: Right? I think I'd focus on ripping off drug dealers' cash houses. It would probably be like stealing candy from a baby. Use some supernatural means of finding cash houses. Tracking money you spend on drugs, having dew drop faeries find them, and probably a billion other ways. Use a veil to get in, use a sleep spell to put everyone to sleep, if the electronic devices haven't been fried already, hex them, then pack up the cash, and go. Rinse and repeat until you biggest money problem is laundering the money into the legitimate financial system.

Theoretically, you should be fine reporting the source of your income as theft because the government "can't" use that information against you, but word on the street is that the information gets to the law enforcement branches of the government. I imagine that you could just come right out and say that you got the money through wizardry.

The higher up any food chain you go, the more likely you are to run into someone who knows about the supernatural who can do something about it. We don't really know how high up in any organization you have to go up before they become wise to the supernatural, but it wouldn't shock me if most national organizations didn't know about the supernatural. It would shock me if most national orgs that have been around for some time didn't, at the very top levels, know about it. The head of the Chicago mob, at least one organization in the federal government, and one of about 400 Cook County judges all know about the supernatural. The Cubs are willing to pay a lot of money to get rid of a curse, so they probably know.

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