White Court clothing [BG Spoilers]

[Griffyn612]

There was a mention of some special clothing that Lara was wearing in Battle Ground. I think there was a previous mention of it in maybe Peace Talks, but was there another somewhere along the way?  I meant to revisit it after the initial reading because it seemed like a known thing but I didn't remember it.

Edit: Here's the references towards the end of Battle Ground.

A group of panicked, fleeing octokongs went by as Lara and her people came bounding out of the chaos, their flowing, shroudlike white robes stained in various shades of blood. None of them looked hurt, and I saw one take a panicked blow from an octokong’s emptied arquebus. The shroud material twitched and moved, gathering thickly beneath where the blow began to land, and the body beneath seemed to briefly lose mobility and stiffen as the arquebus struck—and rebounded, the shroud actively pushing the weapon away, as the White Court vampire wearing it dealt a pair of lethal blows and breezed on by in a little twirling dance step.

Lara’s fighters sailed through the air with the greatest of ease, taking thirty-foot strides in great, leaping bounds, moving almost weightlessly, their shroud-armor fluttering and snapping.

Ethniu batted Lara aside like a rag doll and rose—only to stumble, as Lara’s shroud-armor writhed off the vampire like a living thing, like some kind of bizarre invertebrate from the deep sea, and wrapped around the Titan’s knees, binding them together. Ethniu fell back down again and was forced to briefly struggle against the living cloth.

[Rigil Kent]

It seemed like something new to me. I don't recall it having shown up before ... though I could be mistaken...

[Griffyn612]

It seemed like something new to me. I don't recall it having shown up before ... though I could be mistaken...

Seeing it in combat seemed new to me, but I kind of almost recall something about clothes settling on or around her or another Wamp at some point.

[TheCuriousFan]

Huh, the only other living clothes I remember are Sharkface's cloak.

[Griffyn612]

Huh, the only other living clothes I remember are Sharkface's cloak.

It might not have been Dresden Files.  I read some scifi stuff recently that had smart clothing that put itself on, so maybe I'm remembering that.

Still, it makes me wonder at the mechanism behind the Wamp's clothing.  It's like it's enchanted in smart cloth that obeyed Lara's presumed mental command (attacking the enemy) even after being detached.

[whitelaughter]

Still, it makes me wonder at the mechanism behind the Wamp's clothing.  It's like it's enchanted in smart cloth that obeyed Lara's presumed mental command (attacking the enemy) even after being detached.

Well, if it was flayed from someone/thing that was under her control, the enchantment would only need to handle movement. Possibly strip away the humanity from a rival vampire, so that all that remains is a mobile skin?

[Griffyn612]

Well, if it was flayed from someone/thing that was under her control, the enchantment would only need to handle movement. Possibly strip away the humanity from a rival vampire, so that all that remains is a mobile skin?

But it doesn't act or look like skin.  Otherwise Harry would have been more adamant about how gross it looked.  And it's described as looking like fabric, so it's not likely even leather.

I'm trying to think of any enchantment we've seen that's even remotely like what the fabric is.  Short of spirit possession animating objects (like Bob and the statues), we haven't seen that level of manipulation, other than Before's tendrils, like TCF said.

But I took that as more that Before is used to having tentacles, and he made something that would let him control them like regular limbs.  I don't think they would have worked if detached.

We've seen the Wamps mess with Little Folk before, using them as lamps.  I'm wondering if they're doing the same with the cloth, imbuing it with some spirit creature similar to Bob but not in his class.

And depending on the level of cooperation, would Harry do the same with his duster to make it similar to Strange's cloak of levitation?

[Conspiracy Theorist]

The White Court is Etruscan in origin, it is the language they choose to converse in. The Etruscan’s had their own version of the Fates,  same beings different names to the Greek.

What if the cloth was a gift from the Fates? A Ravelling as opposed to an unravelling. Given that The Queens of Faerie are inheritors of the Greek Fates (amongst others) it may explain what Winter wants with an alliance with the White Court, they are revisiting an old association. Oh and the God of War in the Etruscan Pantheon, the Ares equivalent is  Laran.

I think that the White Court arise out of something that happened in relation to Erus (Eros) and Psyche,  the original Whamp being a scion of them or their daughter Volupta/Hedone corrupted somehow. Psyche is depicted with butterfly wings (Psyche is Greek for butterfly) it’s no accident that is how we see Thomas depicted in Grave Peril.

[Rigil Kent]

It may also be completely new. In Peace Talks, when Harry goes to Lara's place (before the Wardens ambush him and interrogate him about visiting her/sleeping with her), he (Harry) notes that the wards on the Raith mansion have been seriously upgraded. Stands to reason that Lara also got some new badass clothes at the same time since she's obviously prepping for the worst...

[Telynn]

I wondered about those clothes too.  It isn't like Butcher to write about something like that and not circle back around to it with a further explanation.  Hopefully in the next book.

[Professor Q]

I don't believe we've seen these before, but their style did make me think of Madrigal's arm bands.

Madrigal, meanwhile, carried a spear with a seven-foot haft, and his arms were wrapped with two long strips of black cloth covered in vaguely oriental characters in metallic red thread. I’d have guessed that they were constructs of some kind, even before I felt the ripple of magical energy in them as he walked with Vitto to stand facing us from thirty feet away.

Perhaps White Vampire practitioners have an affinity for enchanting cloth items.

[Griffyn612]

I guess I'm mostly curious about method and origin.  We haven't seen much in the way of self-propelled enchanted items in the Dresdenverse.  We've seen it in other series like Harry Potter and Alex Versus, but with its physics grounding, the Dresdenverse has so far constituted movement and reaction with intelligent sentient beings. 

Between the movement and intelligence and the durability, I don't think we've seen anything like it.  Not for Insider folks.

[Mira]

What is really creepy about them is they are described as "shrouds."  This is usually what is wrapped around the dead..

[Griffyn612]

What is really creepy about them is they are described as "shrouds."  This is usually what is wrapped around the dead..

I think they're supposed to be like body wrap linens. Fashionable ones, of course, because the White Court would stand for nothing less.

I'm picturing something like this but in all white.

[Dina]

I imagined it more like a symbiont, like Venom, only white.