The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
How powerful is Ivy getting?
Conspiracy Theorist:
The purpose of the Archive is two-fold
(1) publicly itis solely to ensure that all human knowledge is retained against calamity such as the fire at Alexandria
(2) secretly it is to win the Oblivion War, to remove all recorded of names or rituals which might summon beings such as those in maximum security at Demonreach.
It strikes me the Archive and the Warden are working at cross purposes, Harry can use that knowledge to summon said beings and put them in maximum security. But Harry doesn’t know about the Oblivion War, and Ivy may not know of Demonreach as there doesn’t appear to be a user manual. This may have been a secret passed down orally by the Senior Council. Frankly, Harry is being extremely lax in writing it up in the Files, but he hasn’t done that in the narrative yet.
As pointed out above Ivy probably isn’t very good at spontaneity- being what she is she is probably on the autistic spectrum as well, and this will affect to some degree how she approaches problems. She is best with problems recorded in human knowledge, but the Titan may pre-date the Archive or even written language, creating a blind-spot, with only post literary myth to go on and the Fomor not being human and hiding away creates another similar blind spot. She knows everything recorded by the White Council, including their intelligence reports and may know everything recorded by the White Court if they are considered human enough.An alliance of the Titan and the Fomor must have been Ivy’s worst nightmare, she obviously had no indication the attack was going to happen and was blind sided with everyone else.
Knowing this you can work around the Archives Intellectus and exploit her lack of knowledge, as Nick obviously did to trap her.
Dagroth:
--- Quote from: I_hate_lotr on November 25, 2021, 04:03:53 AM ---She's the embodiment of knowledge but with as many people on the planet and the internet.
--- End quote ---
There's something I'm wondering about here: Ivy has access to everything written or printed on paper (Not just books, for example, in I think "Small Favor", Harry writes the message along the line of "Hold on, help is coming" on a random piece of paper, and Ivy later says she got it.) - but with computers, Internet, audio- and e- books, etc... well, does she have access to all that information, too? (Magic has problems with modern technology, as evidenced by Harry's)
If not, that'd seriously limit her knowledge. Or maybe even nullify her purpose. H.P. Lovecraft's works most likely also exist in audio- and e- book form, for example, and they made humanity aware of some of the Old Ones. Other ones can also easily be on the Internet, e-books, digital audio recordings... if Ivy's power can't access that kind of stuff, that'd make it largely obsolete in a modern age, at least until magic "catches up" (I don't remember where, but Harry once said, or narrated, that magic once caused warts and the like, which made its practicioners easy-ish to identify - presumably, it will eventually adjust to modern tech, and the side effects move on to something else).
Mira:
I really don't think it is a matter of how powerful Ivy is getting, the Archive always had that power.
The issue has always been of Ivy controlling her emotions and letting the Archive doing what it needs to do. I think that is what Luccio was getting at when she warned Harry about treating Ivy like a normal little girl at the end of Small Favor.
morriswalters:
There's a WOJ somewhere about Ivy and computers. There isn't anything special about print per se. ASCII or it's other forms are just another way of encoding ideas and thoughts, like text.
Avernite:
--- Quote from: Mira on November 28, 2021, 02:05:58 PM ---
I really don't think it is a matter of how powerful Ivy is getting, the Archive always had that power.
The issue has always been of Ivy controlling her emotions and letting the Archive doing what it needs to do. I think that is what Luccio was getting at when she warned Harry about treating Ivy like a normal little girl at the end of Small Favor.
--- End quote ---
The Archive must inherently be conservative - after all it's fighting a war that takes centuries / millennia. What Harry was doing is push it/her to be active NOW, which is a risk, but comes with way more power expenditure.
So if Ivy gets out of the way and only the Archive acts, it will be careful to extricate itself from situations where she can show her power. But when Ivy acts, she stands up and shows what the Archive can really unleash in terms of direct power, as she did at the aquarium.
(the more subtle power of information, that probably works better in Archive-mode)
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