The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers

Harry should have trusted Ramirez

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morriswalters:
The more I look the less there is to see.  Butcher has created a super prison to contain deadly Gods and Monsters.  Then gives a two year old the keys to a lock he doesn't know exists. It no wonder Rashid choked.  Merlin must have been on a bender when he built this place and made Alfred the Warden.  One of the most appealing things about the idea of British prisoner being Merlin is that you can imagine he secretly safeguards the prison from idiots. Even though it evidently isn't the case.

Mira:

--- Quote ---I am not sure what point you are trying to make here...in any case I think all this shows is the danger in having the wrong person in the role of Warden, and so supports the idea it is better to have no Warden than a bad one.
--- End quote ---

That is called taking the easy way out, and it is dangerous.  A better solution would be to be very careful as to whom you put up to be Warden. 

--- Quote ---I get what you're saying, but the entire Dresden Files series (not graphic novels so much or side stories of other characters) are meant to be Harry's journals. This much has been implied since Storm Front. Harry makes constant general statements through out the series. The very scene you reference is a massive nod to the fact that the series that we readers are reading are Harry's journals.

--- End quote ---

But the subject in question is Eb's journal, not the overview of Harry's journals.  We don't even know if Harry wrote his files contemporaneously as they happened or as an end of career over view of what happened in his life. 

--- Quote ---And that particular passage that Ebenezar wrote is deduced by Harry as being left for him to read. Ebenezar wanted Harry to a) think about what the Island might actually be b) let Harry know the Council is taking special interest (in a negative way) in him and c) that Harry has Ebenezar's support (despite the hint about Maggie).
--- End quote ---
It really makes no difference whether Eb meant for Harry to read it or not, it is still Eb's own personal view of the situation.  Eb says,

--- Quote ---I sometimes can't help but think that there is such a thing as fate-
--- End quote ---

Notice he says "I" not "we" nor "the Council thinks."  In my opinion it makes it his personal view, not a general view taken up by the Council.

--- Quote ---Harry claimed the Island to give him a tactical advantage against a confrontation between him and the Skinwalker, the White Council and the White Court, and whichever Black Council operatives showed up to fight (including the mole in the Council i.e. Peabody). Harry had no idea the amount of tactical advantage the Island gave otherwise he would have won the battle far quicker and easier. He also had no idea the strategic value or the danger of the Island. He might have not rushed into it so quick otherwise.
--- End quote ---

Admittedly Harry didn't think it through, he surmised and was right that the island if he was successful would let him know where his attackers were coming from.  But that is all he got, since he had no clue of all the implications of what he had done, he was continued to fight the battle with a pea shooter when in effect he had a nuclear arsenal at his disposal.. It is a lot different now, that he understands.  One more point about the importance of the island having a Warden building on what Morriswalters says in the next post about the island having a two year old in charge [i.e. Alfred]

Here is what Morgan said about an intellectus, which Alfred/Demonreach/Island is; page 279 Turn Coat

--- Quote ---"And since beings of intellectus so rarely understand broader ideas of cause and effect, they can be unlikely to realize that a given event might be an indicator of an upcoming assassination attempt." He turned to me. "Though that's a terrible metaphor, Dresden.  Most beings like that are immortal. They'd be hard-pressed to notice bullets, much less be threatened by them."

--- End quote ---

The above is the crux as to why the island needs a Warden, though well equipped to defend itself, including the prison, it has a hard time recognizing when it is threatened.   

--- Quote ---I think you're going too specific there, in regards to what the Council are thwarting. I see it more as Ebenezar saying that the Council are getting in their own way and if they just let their real allies like Harry help them they might actually achieve some good, but it's their internal machinations and one-eyed behaviour that make it so much harder on themselves. I say this as Ebenezar refers to this "higher power" arranging "events in [their] favor" rather than pointing out specifically that a higher power seems to want a Wizard in the role in contrary to the supposed views of the White Council. But perhaps we will have to agree to disagree here though. I do believe that the "higher powers" i.e. Heaven do seem to play 4D Chess, and Harry is one such piece. It is hard to really see "luck" in the Dresdenverse considering some of the powers that are involved. It might not be as direct as the Knights, but things do seem to be arranged that should Harry make certain choices things put the good guys in a better position. But for Heaven to actually place someone in a position, they run the risk of abrogating choice, which seems to be directly counter to their mission. It all comes down to what choices people make.

--- End quote ---

Oh I agree that the Higher Powers are playing four dimensional chess, and Harry indeed is one of the pieces.   If Harry were a mere pawn, I would agree that that would abrogate choice, but Harry has never been anyone's pawn.  Actually in his flexibly, he appears to play more like a Rook, very useful dangerous piece with plenty of choices of movement.

--- Quote ---Well, to be honest I think the Senior Council (in particular the Gatekeeper and the Merlin) are quite aware of some of the worst things in that prison. Which explains at least the Merlin's reaction. We don't know what the Gatekeeper said. Mab said Harry could do it...not that it would easy or even well controlled. We don't know the risks. I suspect that the battle of will would be intense, particularly the more powerful the being. The consequences of losing might be lethal, and not just to Dresden. We don't know how far a prisoner could go from the island, or how much control they would have outside the Island. Harry acknowledges that he could compel Ethniu but qualifies it that it would be "tricky and treacherous as hell" and "massively, massively unwise". We don't know what Kemmler did or didn't do while as Warden, although we do know he had powerful spirit allies too. The main thing that might have stopped Kemmler was that he knew the risks of trying to control a dark god or something and didn't think it might work out for him, not to mention that he spent only a little time on the Island as the Council worked very hard to prevent him from returning there after a while. Jim said the Council prevented him, hence why Luccio was in the Wild West in a Fistful of Warlocks (among other things). Do you really think Demonreach would stop a Warden using inmates to their advantage? I don't think Demonreach has a concept of morality. I think it only cares about the security of it's inmates, and putting more monsters in it's cells.

--- End quote ---

But that is why the mantel of Warden is so dangerous, that leaves open the question, why hasn't a Warden done it before now?  Kemmler may have known the risks, but why would that stop such a dark wizard?  I don't think the fail safes built in have anything to do with morality, more of practicality.  Why establish a maximum security prison, if the Warden could let any one out for his own use and become just another monster?

One more thing, it may be a matter of Fae semantics verses mere mortals, but when Mab said that Harry could use Ethinu to do his bidding, she wasn't exactly right but nor was she totally wrong.  The Ley lines that run under the island come from the prison itself, the energy of them is what the monster/inmates are giving off.  In Turn Coat while Rashid warns Harry against tapping into their energy, he also says;
page 299

--- Quote ---"First," he said, "do not tap into the power of this place's well.You are years away from being able to handle such a thing without being altered by it."
--- End quote ---

I take that to mean that while Harry isn't ready for it now, in the future he will have the knowledge and the strength to tap into the well without changing himself.  Is that what the Council is afraid of? That Harry will tap into the Ley Lines before he is ready and turn into a monster?

forumghost:
They're probably more worried about Harry striking bargains/making deals with the eldritch horrors inside, the same way he did with other Monsters, like Mab the Queen of Evil Faeries, or Lara the Mind-raping Sex-slaving Vampire, and so on.

morriswalters:

--- Quote ---Proverbs 28:1 – “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”
--- End quote ---

Yuillegan:

--- Quote from: Mira on January 24, 2022, 07:24:58 PM ---That is called taking the easy way out, and it is dangerous.  A better solution would be to be very careful as to whom you put up to be Warden. 

--- End quote ---
That would presume they can reach a consensus. The entire point is they don't agree on who a good candidate is. I imagine some think that no one is a good candidate. The entire point of the White Council is to limit power. The position of Warden gives too much power to an individual. This goes against their entire ethos. Not only that, it's the dark magic that flows from the place and the demons and dark beings that reside there that make it even more likely the Warden will be corrupted even if they start out as an uncorrupted individual (which considering Harry was well on the way long before he ever became Warden doesn't bode well). Even if the beings in question were not necessarily evil (which is probably almost none of them) the knowledge they possess (not to mention the powers they could grant) further allow a Warden, even a well-intentioned one, to gain too much power. Which again, goes against the mission of the White Council. So it isn't so much a question of a suitable candidate so much as how long any candidate is allowed to operate. Ideally, not long enough to gain too much power. Which I imagine for some of the senior Wizards would be no time at all.

This doesn't mean they are right of course. But it's very easy to see how they have made the decision to get there.

Jim likened it to the White Council badly needing firepower as they are so outgunned right now. Perhaps think of it like picking which country to give a stash of nukes to (to use your nuke analogy). Who would you trust to be steward? Would they become corrupted by the power? How long would it take? What other influences are on them, are they vulnerable? It's one of the many reasons given for nuclear disarmament (in the sense of not letting any more countries build nukes - which of course is to the benefit of whoever has nukes already, particularly the more you have). Most NATO countries would react similarly to the Senior Council if all of a sudden someone starts building/inherits/receives a stockpile of WMDs i.e. they would all gang up on that country and force it to depower before the country got too strong to stop. In Harry's case, it's like if a somewhat tense ally of the US like Japan suddenly got nukes but was also sizing up against one of the USA's main rivals (i.e. China or Russia). The USA would likely be uncomfortable but would also appreciate the position of having a new powerful ally so ready to fight their potential foe (particularly as in Japan's case they would be inside the missile warning systems). That being said, such a thing would likely ratchet up the tension in an already very tense environment...just like Harry being Warden has.


--- Quote ---But the subject in question is Eb's journal, not the overview of Harry's journals.  We don't even know if Harry wrote his files contemporaneously as they happened or as an end of career over view of what happened in his life.
--- End quote ---
True enough. But my rebuttal was to your argument that private journals don't have general statements, and as the entire series is full of general statements I think we can make a reasonable assumption that private journals do have general statements in them. Not to mention that the specific bit Harry reads was intended by Ebenezar for Harry to read. So while it might not be for public access, the section we are discussing was meant for more than just Eb to read (in point of fact it was intended for someone else specifically who is discussed in the passage).


--- Quote ---It really makes no difference whether Eb meant for Harry to read it or not, it is still Eb's own personal view of the situation.  Eb says,
Notice he says "I" not "we" nor "the Council thinks."  In my opinion it makes it his personal view, not a general view taken up by the Council.
--- End quote ---
The specific bit you quote here ("I sometimes can't help but think there is such a thing as fate") is Eb's opinion specifically on how he feels the Council is getting in it's own way. He quite literally says right after the "I" statement "We, in our ignorance, do to thwart it". So it's Ebenezar's ("I") opinion about how the White Council ("we") are subverting themselves.


--- Quote ---Admittedly Harry didn't think it through, he surmised and was right that the island if he was successful would let him know where his attackers were coming from.  But that is all he got, since he had no clue of all the implications of what he had done, he was continued to fight the battle with a pea shooter when in effect he had a nuclear arsenal at his disposal.. It is a lot different now, that he understands.  One more point about the importance of the island having a Warden building on what Morriswalters says in the next post about the island having a two year old in charge [i.e. Alfred]
--- End quote ---
Exactly right, it is different. Hence why Jim says that the Senior Council's only thought is that Harry must have been really stupid because they don't think he knew what he was doing when he signed up. Which is exactly why they didn't execute him straight away (that, and the fact they really need a weapons stash right now). Except all bets are off since Battle Ground because he clearly knows how to defend his Island far better now AND has shown he can take on major heavy weight hitters. All he needs to show now is that he can compel those beings into giving him power and/or knowledge, and even perhaps potentially commanding them as his personal weapons and he will completely terrify the White Council. It's the equivalent of showing he can build, defend, and deploy nukes.

I think you've misunderstood Morris's point. The two-year old Morris is referring to is Harry, not Alfred. Hence why he points out Rashid choking. So did Eb when he found out (although there are clearly other reasons he thought Harry was crazy i.e. who would want to bring that much stress on themselves?) Morris is incorrect in saying that Alfred was made Warden by the original Merlin. Alfred isn't the Warden. He is the interface, the guards, the monitoring systems, the punishment provider etc. He literally says so himself, and we've seen some of his limits. He doesn't have free will as he isn't mortal. He cannot choose to imprison or release a being. He can only act in accordance with the will of the Warden. That said, he clearly has some scope in how to operate within his limits...and so it probably a very good case study of certain types of immortals. I might have said angels but they seem to be a special case, same with gods.


--- Quote ---Here is what Morgan said about an intellectus, which Alfred/Demonreach/Island is; page 279 Turn Coat
The above is the crux as to why the island needs a Warden, though well equipped to defend itself, including the prison, it has a hard time recognizing when it is threatened.
--- End quote ---
 
Is that the case with Demonreach though? It knew the Outsiders were attacking it from the water in Cold Days. It also knew that it was being attacked through time as well. It's only "confusion" was in the case of the faeries which Dresden hypothesized as it being connected through nature to them...but Mab seems to indicate that Alfred had the option of defeating them and held back as a curtesy to Mab. Harry didn't tell Demonreach it was being attacked at all in Cold Days, if anything it was the reverse. Alfred is similar to current AI programs in that it's really just a bunch of predetermined responses to certain stimuli, and while capable of "learning" that doesn't mean it makes choices in the way most people seem them. There is a simplicity to it. Another way to look at it might be like asking the AI to capture specific computer viruses in a "vault". It can do as you ask, but it's up to the user (and initially the programmer) to decide what the AI recognizes as a virus in the first place.


--- Quote ---Oh I agree that the Higher Powers are playing four dimensional chess, and Harry indeed is one of the pieces.   If Harry were a mere pawn, I would agree that that would abrogate choice, but Harry has never been anyone's pawn.  Actually in his flexibly, he appears to play more like a Rook, very useful dangerous piece with plenty of choices of movement.
--- End quote ---
I mean...that's certainly a debated idea even in the series about whether Harry is a weapon wielded by others or not. Two of the Walkers suggested exactly that Harry was in fact a tool of others.
Harry certainly rebels at the idea of being anyone's pawn of course. But in some ways this makes him predictable in certain ways and therefore manipulatable. We've seen Harry realise over and over again that he plays into the plans of others, sometimes without realising it for years. I strongly suspect in some cases there are things he is so unaware of that he is still playing into others' plans for him. I agree he isn't a minor warrior anymore though. Vadderung as much as tells us this in Cold Days.


--- Quote ---But that is why the mantel of Warden is so dangerous, that leaves open the question, why hasn't a Warden done it before now?  Kemmler may have known the risks, but why would that stop such a dark wizard?  I don't think the fail safes built in have anything to do with morality, more of practicality.  Why establish a maximum security prison, if the Warden could let any one out for his own use and become just another monster?
--- End quote ---
As I said earlier, we don't know what the previous Warden's have or haven't done. We can safely assume they didn't blow up the Island or anything absurd but we have no idea what deals they might have struck with inmates, what knowledge they might have gained, what uses they might have put inmates to, what they might have released etc. Kemmler might have been mad but he doesn't seem like he was devoid of any survival instinct i.e. he didn't want to bite off more than he could chew. He wouldn't risk trying to control something that he could work out was beyond him...and he clearly was clever enough to have an accurate assessment of his abilities. By all accounts he was a genius at magic. The other thing was he might have only just figured out what he was going to do, maybe he even had plans that got interrupted. We just don't know.

To answer your question about why build a prison that the could allow any Warden to exploit it's inmates...is a bigger question than we should get into. But in terms of the Dresden Files, we already know the answer from Cold Days:

--- Quote ---“But can they get loose?”
 “NOT WITHOUT OUTSIDE INTERVENTION,” Demonreach said, “OR YOUR AUTHORIZATION.”
 “Meep,” I breathed. “Uh. You mean I could turn these things loose?”
 “YOU ARE THE WARDEN.”
 I swallowed. “Is it possible for me to communicate with them?”
 “YOU ARE THE WARDEN.”
...

I’d just been handed what amounted to a great big ugly weapon of mass destruction and potential havoc. To the various powers of the supernatural world, it wouldn’t matter that I would never use it. All that would matter was that I had it to use. Really, Officer, I know that’s a rocket launcher in my trunk, but I’m only holding it so that someone bad won’t use it. Really. Honest.
 The guys in the White Council who didn’t like me were going to turn purple and start frothing at the mouth when they found out. And every foe the White Council ever had would start looking at me like a gift from Heaven—someone with knowledge of the inner workings of the Council, with enormously concentrated personal power, who was almost certain to frighten the Council enough to make them suspect, isolate, and eventually move against him. That guy would be an awesome asset in any struggle against the wizards of the world.
 And boy, wouldn’t the White Council know it?
 Like I didn’t have enough recruiters aiming for me already.
 And hey, the very best part? I didn’t actually have a real, usable superweapon. I just had the key to a great big box full of pain and trouble for a whole lot of people.
 No wonder my grandfather had looked stunned when he’d seen what I had done with Demonreach. Or maybe less “stunned” than “horrified.”

--- End quote ---
Merlin built the prison alongside the White Council. It's implied (and occasionally discussed) that he basically was trying to get rid of the chaos in the world caused by wizards with unlimited power, faux-demigods really. He established a code of principles to guide wizards, an organization to train and unite and police wizards, and rather successfully managed to order the chaos of the old world. Does that mean everything is good? Of course not. But undoubtedly it was worse beforehand. Merlin clearly had his faults and he likely hoped that what he did would be enough. Doesn't mean it always was.


--- Quote ---One more thing, it may be a matter of Fae semantics verses mere mortals, but when Mab said that Harry could use Ethinu to do his bidding, she wasn't exactly right but nor was she totally wrong.  The Ley lines that run under the island come from the prison itself, the energy of them is what the monster/inmates are giving off.  In Turn Coat while Rashid warns Harry against tapping into their energy, he also says;
page 299
I take that to mean that while Harry isn't ready for it now, in the future he will have the knowledge and the strength to tap into the well without changing himself.  Is that what the Council is afraid of? That Harry will tap into the Ley Lines before he is ready and turn into a monster?
--- End quote ---
Mab wasn't totally wrong, but what she said is the equivalent of saying Harry could turn into a god. He could. Doesn't mean he shoudl or that it would turn out well.

As for the Ley Lines...I think that's only one small part of what they are afraid of. Rashid warned Harry because he doesn't want black magic to taint Harry. But it wasn't like Rashid was going to tell him to not release monsters etc. because that would reveal secrets that Harry wasn't ready for yet. Realistically, many on the Council have thought of Harry as a monster since day dot - some with good reason (which may or may not be to do with star born things, not to mention Du Morne). Mostly they are worried about Harry becoming a powerful monster, one that could take them on like Kemmler did. And they should be worried.

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