The Law

[seanham]

I would think only beings with Intellectus would be aware of Demonreach and what exactly it is. Very few beings have a comprehensive Intellectus, we have seen only three, mothers Winter, Summer and Uriel. I doubt even Anduriel can see into Demonreach, but it gives him a nice warm vibe.

The bad vibe it gives is attractive to bad guys in the same way that warehouse keeps getting used for murder, or like Chichen Itsa. If they knew what it was they wouldn’t go near it, it’s a trap.

All good points, however, somehow Eb, Rashid, and The Merlin know about the island and at least part of its true purpose. On page 495 of Turn Coat, the following important bits are written as part of Eb's journal. With this in mind, I would add these senior council members, Vadderung, and all/most of the members of the Gray Council to the list of individuals who know Deamonreache's true purpose (second quote, Cold Days page 249). I would assume all or most of these additions would know because they all have connections to the original Merlin.

seems clear that he had no idea of the island's original purpose. ... The Merlin has demanded that we put the boy under surveillance at once ... Rashid says that warning him about the island would be pointless ... And of all the wizards I know, he's among the three or four I'd be willing to see take up that particular mantle

I'm aware of how important it is that the island be well managed. Most of the people who came to your party in Mexico are.

[g33k]

... Even Wardens may only have travelled there by the Way, indeed Kemmler most likely only ever did so. Unless he got a fix on its position via longitude and latitude, all that is known is that it is an island on a body of water. You can’t get a fix on it via magic. You would physically have to search for it, or in Harry’s case just stumble over it. When Kemmler got booted out as Warden it may be that Fistful of Warlocks was actually Kemmler trying to physically locate Demonreach in the real world. Which is difficult, even with 21st C tech ...

" ... an island on a body of fresh water ... "

That narrows it considerably!
 
Latitude is trivially-easy to approximate, just by eyeball.
Given that you can travel via Ways, longitude is similarly-easy to get a rough approximation.

With age-of-sail tech, you can get a very very precise fix.

And while LTW may be the premier shapeshifter in the Council, it's not unique to him; so a wizard could get there via known Ways, then fly or swim to shore.

The White Council -- if they cared to know it -- has known the location of the Island for centuries.

[Mira]

The White Council -- if they cared to know it -- has known the location of the Island for centuries.

And since there had been a lighthouse and settlement there at one time, so had ordinary vanilla humans.  If it isn't on any charts it is because there is an agreement that the island shouldn't be found.  And yes while it is an island in the middle of a fresh water lake, the Great Lakes get their name for a reason.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

Senior Council would know of the island and would realise once there where ‘there’ was, especially if the Gatekeeper turns up separately without a means of transport. Harry inadvertently blew one of the White Council’s major secrets. Wizards love secrets.

Again if the Gatekeeper organised it to keep it off maps and charts then this made it difficult for Kemmler to find it, you would have to come into line of sight to find it and the cannery would put someone off looking for an uninhabited island.

[vincentric]

But the senior Council and most of the Wardens after Kemmler had tp know about the island and it's physical location. How could they effectively stop him from going someplace if they didn't know where the place was?

Even if they were brought in by Way, Age of Sail tech could give them a reliable longitude and latitude and that's centuries old.

Yeah, wizards love secrets but somehow the evil opposition always has better sources of information to get their plans rolling. Their "need to know" pool is bigger otherwise you have confused minions running around wasting resources and time.

Jim is very into trope of only telling the heroes what they need to know at the last possible minute. It works well with Harry because he has to follow the plot and there are always pure altruists like the Knights but how many would say before crisis 3 or 4, "F' this, I need full disclosure to prepare properly and Y'know survive. Either trust me, pay me really, really well with money and favors or solve this next crisis on your own. That includes alerting me before we go to supernatural DefCon4." Three or four times with the mushroom treatment can turn even your staunchest allies against you, see Ramirez, Carlos. And that's the pool of people that you now have to monitor constantly to safeguard the existence of the island, especially if there is no active Warden and the defenses are on standby, which they were from SF to the climax of CD.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

Because they were after Kemmler, not the island. If they tried to bushwhack on the island the wardens and the Senior council would have lost. Earth Magic immediately cancelled and turned against the practitioners, Alfred coming out and killing at will, several Naagloshii freed to feed on as many wardens as they wish.

If Kemmler ever got back to the island as warden, game over. They couldn’t get him out, so my guess they lured him out on a pretext, slammed the door on him via the ways and then thought they could apprehend him at their leisure.

Getting longitude and latitude means taking the tools and acquiring the knowledge to do so, and having the impetus to do so. I kind of feel Kemmler got caught with his pants down, he hadn’t prepared for being sacked so hadn’t planned a route back in the mortal world, but so were the Wardens unprepared, not realising how powerful Kemmler had become, but Kemmler wasn’t powerful enough to fight through Arctis Tor and defeat a Mab lockdown.

[vincentric]

So Kemmler was smart enough to become the Warden, to amass the knowledge to perform the Darkhallow, to form a small army disciples and to cause two World Wars as cover, didn't think to get a real world fix on his ultimate bolt hole in all the time he was Warden? He didn't think to perform a simple tracking spell to some item or landmark he'd left on the island through the veils which do not affect him because he's the Warden? He was never able to reach  the North American Great Lakes region and triangulate with his sense of the island's location? He never spent one night on the island looking at the stars and getting a general fix? Because the wardens are out 24/7/365 for 70-80 years keeping him and all his disciples from exploring the area? Even the ones they don't know about?

Extremely convoluted theory of the Dresdenverse's history versus or simple plot reveal that reveals unintended and unplanned plot holes. I'm in the KISS school myself.

 Somehow I don't think that Jim fleshed out such detail in the 11th of a 20 book outline when he was turning in the Dresden Files as a school project.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

Because people overlook the bleeding obvious, Wizards are arrogant and Kemmler personally has to get close enough to the island to lock on. The wardens job was to prevent that. Then Kemmler locked onto a new plan, the Darkhallow which did not require use of the prison and its inmates. We can presume in Warlocks he was searching for Demonreach. He was then back in Europe to start WW1, presumably a new Scheme, and after that WW2.

[morriswalters]

You would have to assume that Merlin was an idiot to buy into this. He builds a prison with a fail safe that would take out Chicago and the environs, yet ignores the possibility of someone like Kemmler. I can't eat that apple. It's full of worms.

For navigation purposes finding an island on Lake Michigan is relatively easy.  By the early 1700's the first settlements were on the Lake. Not to mention that the Lake is pretty big and practically unmissable.

[g33k]

I think folks are overlooking something, here.

Wizards love secrets.  "It's like crack cocaine for them" is IIRC an exact WoJ quote.

Jim has also stated (paraphrased this time) that the Senior Council has all the information to easily figure out the shadowy "Black Council" plot against them, but that much of that info is snippets in different wizards' heads; they are keeping so many secrets that they cannot see the forest for their own personal trees.

Now, consider one Harry Dresden:  wizard, snarkmeister, and generally disrespectful jerk (from the WC pov) and ALSO possibly / likely (depending on the wizard making the call) a warlock.

I'm pretty sure the Gatekeeper knows quite a lot about the island & the prison.  I bet LTW does, too.  I am pretty sure the Senior Council, as a whole, does not know very much about the island; just that it exists and is a ley-line nexus of dark energy.  That's enough to make it dangerous.

Because if they did, the prospect of a possible/probable warlock in charge of it wouldn't be Defcon4, it'd be Defcon5 and an all-out effort to kill Dresden.

Remember how many of the SC came to Demonreach when Harry arranged his "parlor scene" / confrontation?  On the island, the Warden is a credible threat against Mab herself.  Those councilors -- senior as they are -- would fall like ninepins.  If they knew what Demonreach was, what it could do, they wouldn't have put themselves there when they had such doubts about Harry.

QED:  the "senior council" -- as a body -- doesn't know what the island really is, what it can really do.  Only a few of the individual wizards have any idea... and they're busy smoking their own crack-pipes, not sharing with the others.

(n.b. they don't have to really understand the island to know it as a major locus of dark energy, which -- if claimed by a dark wizard like Kemmler, as a sanctum -- could vastly magnify power.  They barely managed to take him down, with an entire ocean between the island and the warden!  It's obvious he'd be unassailable in any major power-sanctum.  Exact knowledge not needed.)
 

[vincentric]

Because people overlook the bleeding obvious, Wizards are arrogant and Kemmler personally has to get close enough to the island to lock on. The wardens job was to prevent that. Then Kemmler locked onto a new plan, the Darkhallow which did not require use of the prison and its inmates. We can presume in Warlocks he was searching for Demonreach. He was then back in Europe to start WW1, presumably a new Scheme, and after that WW2.

And in order to do that, the wardens need to be somewhat in the vicinity of the island. Just knowing where the others are stationed would let a navigation savvy wizard (or warlock infiltrator) have enough info to find the place. I'm not saying that it's common knowledge just that a) It's absurd to think that Kemmler didn't know the geographical location and b) The security assigned to the place is too lax and c) If the White Council has fallen to the place where secrets are hampering rather than aiding their stated mission to protect the mortal world, they need a top to bottom reorganization and restructuring.

[g33k]

... c) If the White Council has fallen to the place where secrets are hampering rather than aiding their stated mission to protect the mortal world, they need a top to bottom reorganization and restructuring.

I think that's a given.  One way or another, we've been seeing this over and over again.
 

[Snark Knight]

I just reread that scene, Mab's reaction was approval of Harry humbling Marcone in front of everyone, because it was with a sarcastic tone that he called him, "Sir."  Mab was clearly supporting Harry all through that though she didn't say much, she didn't have to, but she seemed to enjoy Harry getting the best of Marcone.

I was thinking of:

Mab's eyebrow went up so far that it threatened the line of her skull. Then she said, as if to Marcone, "Much is explained."

She was backing Harry about claiming the castle because, as she pointed out later, sowing doubt about the whereabouts of the Eye even though everyone thinks he /probably/ has it is even better than advertising it.

But I don't think her reaction to the hint about Marcone holding Namshiel's coin reads as feigned. What purpose would faking it serve? She may have suspected, but this landed as confirmation for her.

[Snark Knight]

Remember how many of the SC came to Demonreach when Harry arranged his "parlor scene" / confrontation?  On the island, the Warden is a credible threat against Mab herself.  Those councilors -- senior as they are -- would fall like ninepins.  If they knew what Demonreach was, what it could do, they wouldn't have put themselves there when they had such doubts about Harry.

QED:  the "senior council" -- as a body -- doesn't know what the island really is, what it can really do.  Only a few of the individual wizards have any idea... and they're busy smoking their own crack-pipes, not sharing with the others.

Plus Ancient Mai talked about it like she didn't realize why the island was "unpleasant".

From his notes and Vadderung's "Most of the people", I think Eb was in the know as to what the island is.  LtW possibly also. But Rashid may not have shared with them that Harry had taken up the Warden mantle before they came to the island. Even those in the know probably expected Alfred to be "asleep".

[g33k]

...  And yes while it is an island in the middle of a fresh water lake, the Great Lakes get their name for a reason.

And yet a wizard in 1776 could take a Way to the island, shoot the stars with a sextant, and go "Right then, I'm in the southern reaches of Lake Michigan."  If they were really good at it, they could reliably mark the location on a map.

If they cared to know, the information is trivially-easy to get.