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The Dresden Files => DF Spoilers => Topic started by: groinkick on August 19, 2017, 05:25:36 AM
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Jim says that Faith (Little girl from his short story) will be the starting event that starts off the trilogy. How do you think she fits into things. Will she be Cowl's apprentice? Someone else? What do you think?
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Well we know that she'll be a Femme Fatale, and that her curiosity about magic was fermented at a young age being saved from a troll by a wizard.
Honestly I'm expecting another Molly situation where she tries to seduce Harry, before he realises he knew her when she was barely out of diapers.
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bit more info please
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Will she be Cowl's apprentice?
I like her for Kumori a lot better than Elaine. The only issue would be age. She was ten in "A Restoration of Faith" iirc. The timeline (http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,1592.0.html) places her age during DB at about 18, which would be awfully young for an accomplished apprentice. But I think there's some room for her to be older, because Murphy was a beat cop during the story. You don't become Lieutenant in 3 years.
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restoration of faith takes place 1 year after Dresden leaves his grandpa' s farm and moves to Chicago. at that tine Dresden is only 23 years old. Storm front takes place about 5 years later so Dresden is 28 years old at the start of the series. each book has been a snap shot of about 1 year in time so I am guessing faith to be in her mid 30s and Dresden to be in his mid 40s when the series ends and Jim butcher writes his three book trilogy to end the Dresden files.
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restoration of faith takes place 1 year after Dresden leaves his grandpa' s farm and moves to Chicago. at that tine Dresden is only 23 years old. Storm front takes place about 5 years later so Dresden is 28 years old at the start of the series. each book has been a snap shot of about 1 year in time so I am guessing faith to be in her mid 30s and Dresden to be in his mid 40s when the series ends and Jim butcher writes his three book trilogy to end the Dresden files.
Actually I believe Harry was only nineteen or twenty when he left Eb. He was 16 when he was sent to live with him under the Doom and stayed for three years.. Not sure if he traveled around a bit or just when he studied for license and went to work for Angel Detective Agency and settled in Chicago. If I remember correctly in Storm Front Harry is twenty five or six..
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I threw my hat in the ring for 'Faith Astor is Kumori' last year. It is the only one that I think fits what we know-that Kumori's identity will hurt Harry, and that Faith will bring a case to Harry that touches off the BAT. What could be a more fitting spark for the Apocalypse than a late-twenties/early-thirties Faith Astor, a full fledged Femme Fatale, walks into Harry's office and reveals her identity as Kumori-and offers to spill the beans in the Accords equivalent of turning state's evidence on the BC/Circle, in return for protection and the chance to walk free.
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Actually I believe Harry was only nineteen or twenty when he left Eb. He was 16 when he was sent to live with him under the Doom and stayed for three years.. Not sure if he traveled around a bit or just when he studied for license and went to work for Angel Detective Agency and settled in Chicago. If I remember correctly in Storm Front Harry is twenty five or six..
Yep, I think it was confirmed in a WoJ that Harry was about 25 or 26 in SF.
He was 16 when he went to Eb, stayed there for 3 years, travelled around almost a year then went to Chicago. So he was about 20 when he became Nick's apprentice. The apprenticeship lasted 3 years, then he got his own office. Which he had for 2 or 3 years in SF.
Lets assume Restoration of Faith happened during the first year he was with Nick. Faith was 10. So she was about 15 in SF. That's about the age that magic can manifest. Assuming Cowl was the one who corrupted Victor Sells, he might have been around Chicago and met Faith. Cowl would only have taken her as an apprentice (rather than just corrupting her and see what flew up as he did with Sells) if she had real potential and was ready to take the left-hand path. Lets assume she was.
She was at Bianca's party with Cowl. Age 17. Not impossible.
In Dead Beat she would have been 20 or 21. That's also not impossible. The only one who saw part of her face was Lamar, the paramedic. He said she was white. Nothing about her looking a particular age.
Cowl and Kumori talked in English, even when they might not have wanted Harry to understand them. An older wizard might have picked up a language or two that was not so commonly understood all over the place.
Kumori's belief that Necromancy might be used for good is rather naive. Also fits a young person who got trained by a bad guy. And she was the one who tried to not kill Harry several times. Could be because he saved her once and introduced her to the world of magic in the first place.
The only complicated bit of magic we knew she did was the resurrection of Marcone's man in Dead Beat. Which was a bit stupid to do because she exhausted herself in a critical situation to save a criminal. A more experienced wizard would have had other priorities. This also indicates that she can't have understood the consequences of the Darkhallow - the guy she saved would probably have died anyway.
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Regarding Kumori, I would like to see a time hopping team so I've suggested awhile back that Maggie Sr. perhaps is Kumori, one that TT'ed into future or cross dimensions, etc in concert with Cowl.
We do have WOJ light via forumite questioner at a convention that Maggie Sr. broke many of the laws of magic, so why not the time one as well. Or something like it. I had asked the forumite to ask Jim about time travel, Maggie Sr, the possibility to travel forward in time, etc. One other thing that I remember from the forumite is that TT'ing into the future is more problematic than TT'ing into the past but it can be done.
Also note, the forumite had the impression from Jim that there wasn't anything there with regards to Maggie Sr. == Kumori. But, who knows.
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I'll be surprised if we encounter Maggie Sr again, outside of some kind of flashback. Kumori's actions don't suggest any kind of family connection with Harry at all.
Faith Astor, I like that idea.
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It is my hope that Faith is herself, whatever that is by the time we meet her again be it good or bad.
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It is my hope that Faith is herself, whatever that is by the time we meet her again be it good or bad.
Do you mean not Kumori, or not under the influence of some other power?
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Do you mean not Kumori, or not under the influence of some other power?
She can be under the influence of another power, but I don't want her to be Kumori.. Let Kumori be Kumori and Cowl be Cowl.
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I thought Faith was supposed to be the client?
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I thought Faith was supposed to be the client?
She can be the client and still be under the influence of another power.
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She can be under the influence of another power, but I don't want her to be Kumori.. Let Kumori be Kumori and Cowl be Cowl.
We already know Kumori and Cowl aren't just Kumori and Cowl. WOJ Dresden know's Kumori. Though I don't think it's Faith cause Dresden wouldn't be too devastated by that news and because Kumori was in Grave Peril which would have made Faith 14 or 15 at the time she was working with the enemies of the Man who saved her life and introduced her to magic.
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Running with the fact that Apocalypse=Revelation, what if the issue is that an otherwise unsupervised Faith has become a practitioner, but run afoul of the "official" government anti-magic forces, the Librarians. Thus pitting Harry against the US Government in a wildly escalating confrontation that ends with battleships...
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Based on the timeline, Faith Astor would have been around 19 during Grave Peril, which is plenty of time to complete an apprenticeship or come close enough to accompany a master to a formal event. And yes it would hurt Harry, thanks to his overdeveloped sense of responsibility. His saving Faith also exposed her to the world of magic, and if she is Kumori that means that a Wizard level talent, one he had encountered personally, developed under his nose, in his town, then either followed a similar path to Molly-exploring her powers on her own instead of approaching him, then falling in with the wrong crowd-or was discovered and cultivated by dark powers and he never tripped to it. Either way, Harry would view it as a personal failure.
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Based on the timeline, Faith Astor would have been around 19 during Grave Peril, which is plenty of time to complete an apprenticeship or come close enough to accompany a master to a formal event. And yes it would hurt Harry, thanks to his overdeveloped sense of responsibility. His saving Faith also exposed her to the world of magic, and if she is Kumori that means that a Wizard level talent, one he had encountered personally, developed under his nose, in his town, then either followed a similar path to Molly-exploring her powers on her own instead of approaching him, then falling in with the wrong crowd-or was discovered and cultivated by dark powers and he never tripped to it. Either way, Harry would view it as a personal failure.
13-14 as of Grave Peril; 15 max. She was born 12-13 years before Storm Front, and GP was a little over a year after that. Old enough to manifest magic and be an apprentice, but probably not old enough to have finished enough of her full growth to seem like an adult in robes. But I could be wrong, kids are maturing faster and faster these days (something about hormones in the food supply?)
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Don't forget that it looks like Cowl might have his own demesene in the never-never. Time may pass there more quickly than in Chicago. Therefore, if Faith is Kumori, she could easily be more years old than her driver's license would say.
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Don't forget that it looks like Cowl might have his own demesene in the never-never. Time may pass there more quickly than in Chicago. Therefore, if Faith is Kumori, she could easily be more years old than her driver's license would say.
That's true, but a rabbit hole Im not willing to indulge just yet, as it yields a suspect pool that is too large to be useful. At that point Kumori can be older or younger than normal Time would indicate, meaning she can be nearly anyone Past or Present. She could be Joan of Arc as easily as she could be Faith or a Murphy or Carpenter or almost anyone you could name.
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That's true, but a rabbit hole Im not willing to indulge just yet, as it yields a suspect pool that is too large to be useful. At that point Kumori can be older or younger than normal Time would indicate, meaning she can be nearly anyone Past or Present. She could be Joan of Arc as easily as she could be Faith or a Murphy or Carpenter or almost anyone you could name.
No, because, IIRC, per WOJ, Harry knows Kumori. Pretty sure Harry doesn't know Joan. :)
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No, because, IIRC, per WOJ, Harry knows Kumori. Pretty sure Harry doesn't know Joan. :)
Ah, well that's news to me but that would certainly limit the suspect pool dramatically. The only data points I knew of was confirmation that Kumori was not Murphy (based on height and aura), that Kumori has the aura of a fellow heavyweight practitioner.
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Just speculating, but by DB, I put Kumori as a warden-level person between the age of 30 to 100 and I put Cowl as a SC-level person well over the age of 100. How this applies to Faith, I am uncertain.
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WOJ Dresden know's Kumori.
Link please?
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Damn I was sure there was a WOJ on it somewhere but it might just be hearsay I've heard somewhere. Serack might be able to find it if it does exist, but I've been Ctrl Finding various written woj and cowl and kumori threads for the past half hour and can't find it.
Sorry guys.
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Just speculating, but by DB, I put Kumori as a warden-level person between the age of 30 to 100 and I put Cowl as a SC-level person well over the age of 100. How this applies to Faith, I am uncertain.
That's what I thought too for a long time and I suppose it's also Harry's conclusion. But it's not necessarily true. Kumori could be a lot younger than we think. The only serious bit of magic we know she performed was the resurrection of that gangster. And we don't know how demanding or complicated that actually was. I suppose that assumption about Kumori's age and competence stemmed from Cowl's generally snobbish attitude, we don't think he'd bother with someone who isn't able to lift heavy weight yet. The thing is though that someone already established might not be as malleable as a real apprentice. And they could think about how it is not right that they're not being treated as an equal or even harbor ambitions to replace the boss.
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I always put Kumori's talent on being on level with what Molly's would have been if she had been in Dead Beat like she was meant to be.
Proven Guilty was supposed to be first. The thematic storylines are all messed up because Molly isn't in it, but then again we wouldn't have Ramirez if she had been, or atleast not as such a prominent character.
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WOJ described Kumori in DB as having an aura that is an "utterly obvious one of a fellow heavyweight" so Im confident she's Council Level, and reasonably placed in the Power department, if not necessarily the bruiser Harry is.
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WOJ described Kumori in DB as having an aura that is an "utterly obvious one of a fellow heavyweight" so Im confident she's Council Level, and reasonably placed in the Power department, if not necessarily the bruiser Harry is.
And don't forget that Molly is actually stronger than Harry in some ways.
She doesn't have the brute force that Harry does, but she can get things done where Harry couldn't.
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And don't forget that Molly is actually stronger than Harry in some ways.
She doesn't have the brute force that Harry does, but she can get things done where Harry couldn't.
More Dangerous, more arguably Formidable, but not actually Stronger (pre-CD, anyway)
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More Dangerous, more arguably Formidable, but not actually Stronger (pre-CD, anyway)
All a matter of perspective.
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All a matter of perspective.
No, it's really not, that's what Im saying. Strength vs Weakness in magic is an objective, quantifiable thing. Molly cannot summon the same amount of raw magical Power that Harry can, any more than Luccio can; it's magical weightlifting and Harry's max weight simply beats Molly's. That is not a relative thing, or a matter of perspective. What is relative is whether one or the other is more Dangerous, More Formidable, or any such measure of the /usefulness/ of magic. Being the Stronger Fighter doesnt make you the Better Fighter, but you are still the Stronger Fighter.
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Here's another way to put it. The 6'6" body builder is obviously stronger than the 5'9" aikido master. The aikido master will still throw the body builder around with ease. Skill will beat raw strength let's call it 4 out of 5 times.
Harry may be magically stronger, but if he ever throws down with Luccio for instance, I'm putting my money on Ana.
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And don't forget that Molly is actually stronger than Harry in some ways.
She doesn't have the brute force that Harry does, but she can get things done where Harry couldn't.
Does he consider her a heavy weight though? Cause both calls are made on his perspective, but I didn't think he'd given her that much credit. More skilled perhaps, but nobody ever accused Bruce Lee of being a heavy weight contender lol.
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Not only will faith will be important, but that ring that Harry gave will be important or key somehow.
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Not only will faith will be important, but that ring that Harry gave will be important or key somehow.
That's a good point. Remember, Harry notes that nobody had ever clocked his force ring until Kumori told him to take it off during their half-hour truce powwow. Faith would definitely check to see if he had a magic ring. Hmm.
But come on, we all know that Kumori is actually little Jenny Sells all grown up and trying to fix the world after her father ruined her life. (/sarcasm).
I do think that Kumori is someone we've seen in the main series, actually, not one of the short stories, someone who's shown up on the page of the novels. Really reaching here, but what about a resurrected Kim Delaney? A wide-eyed idealist with a track record of messing with stuff that's way too powerful for her is brought back from a terrible death by Necromancer Cowl, then apprenticed and taught that all death could be conquered with enough power. Sure, I could see it. Almost certainly not the case, of course, but with necromancy involved, it's hard to eliminate too many people.
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Does he consider her a heavy weight though? Cause both calls are made on his perspective, but I didn't think he'd given her that much credit. More skilled perhaps, but nobody ever accused Bruce Lee of being a heavy weight contender lol.
Doesn't matter. Harry can, and has been shown to be wrong in the books.
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But come on, we all know that Kumori is actually little Jenny Sells all grown up and trying to fix the world after her father ruined her life. (/sarcasm)
Why the sarcasm? She could be Jenny Sells, couldn't she?
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Why the sarcasm? She could be Jenny Sells, couldn't she?
I don't think so. She'd be too young, I think. IIRC, she was about 10 in SF. She'd only have been about 15 in Dead Beat, barring time travel of course.
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Couldn't Kumori have been 15 in Dead Beat? Some 15-year-olds are biologically adult.
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Some monsters can be affected by faith, even harmed. The ring Harry gave her glowed due to faith in magic, so after years of use, it could be deadly in the right circumstances.
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Some monsters can be affected by faith, even harmed. The ring Harry gave her glowed due to faith in magic, so after years of use, it could be deadly in the right circumstances.
Holy, i'd forgotten that ring...
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Doesn't matter. Harry can, and has been shown to be wrong in the books.
Being wrong and having sensed something entirely wrong are two different things. He's been wrong on facts and deductions. You can't say his senses are so skewed he reads Molly as a skilled lightweight one day and a heavy hitter of council proportions the next. That's non germaine to being right or wrong, it's based solely on empirical evidence which is always a matter of perception. This would be paramount to saying he's wrong about a comparison in height to another person because later he changes said comparison from himself to another person in relativity. I can't even begin to... There's just something there that just doesn't translate well into sanity..
Does matter.
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Why the sarcasm? She could be Jenny Sells, couldn't she?
Mostly sarcastic about my false tone of certainty. I think it's super unlikely that Jenny Sells is Kumori, but there's just nothing that really supports the idea. Plus she'd have to be old enough in Grave Peril to accompany Cowl to the party, and I had her pegged at, like, ten during Storm Front.
My overall point in the post was that there is so little information about Kumori that the suspect pool isn't usefully small. We basically know she's tall enough to hold a knife to Dresden's throat (as has been pointed out in most threads), that she's idealistic, particularly about magic, that she knows necromancy (at least enough necromancy to temporarily halt death), and that Dresden knows her. That pretty much eliminates Murphy and hardly anyone else. And, like I said, with necromancy being a relatively unknown quantity (what are the functional limits? Could someone be resurrected from the dead, like Kemmler evidently was? Does Cowl know how to do that?) you might not even be able to write off dead characters.
She's really only present for... what, three speaking scenes, total? "Priscilla" in White Night tricked Dresden for longer than that. How do we know it's even a woman? Maybe the reveal is that Kumori is actually... Ebenezar (*cue musical sting*). Not really, of course; it's just that there are so many precedents for unorthodox disguises, like "Priscilla," not to mention illusion magic, faerie glamour, and even platform shoes that make even physical descriptions fallible.
Brainwashing is a thing—see Elaine. Cowl definitely has the juice to pull it off if Justin did. Can you even tell if her idealism is her own? Does she even remember being Kumori, or is her memory being tampered with like Dresden's was in Small Favor? Might very well be a persona that Cowl just activates whenever he needs a flunky, and there's precedent for the kind of mental domination it'd require. Hell, the Darkhallow might have had enough of a magical backlash that Cowl's mental hold on her was broken, which is why she's not seen with him next time he shows up.
Then people like to toss around time travel, and that just completely obliterates any names you might otherwise eliminate—Margaret the Elder, Maggie Dresden, and so on. One of the reasons I hope time travel isn't really confirmed to be a thing that Dresden can do is because then every hanging thread can be answered with it. Who's Cowl? Harry from the future. Who tried to run Harry off the road in Proven Guilty? Harry from the future. Who fixed Little Chicago? Mouse from the future, after finishing college and becoming the first Pupper President (he'd have my vote).
Not to say Mr. Butcher couldn't do it well, because I think he can, but it would play merry hell with pretty much any hanging plots and is a pretty messy way of making everything neat, if that makes any sense.
For me, the frustrating thing is that Harry doesn't seem to care about Cowl and Kumori's identities nearly as much as we do, so we're never going to know until he runs into them and literally unmasks them.
Anyway, the overall point is just that there is not nearly enough information for me to make a real guess, so pretty much everything I say about Kumori is sarcastic—which isn't intended to diminish anyone else's ideas or take away anyone's fun, I promise.
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I am going to approach this question differently by asking a different question. WHY would JB have the story end with Faith.
* Part of it is symmetry of course -- the really short story with Faith was the first Dresden story. So having her play a role in the last story is symmetry.
* Part of this is that Dresden has a relationship with Faith -- a connection. That connection has to be important.
* Part of this is just a reward for us fans -- who obsessively read everything that JB writes. :)
Dresden does not need a connection to seek to save a victim, so the connection has to be more than a hook to draw Harry to his doom. This lead me to believe that the connection implies that Faith is a person of power in some respect, as that connection will matter at some critical point. Hence the theories that she is Kimori as that is really the only person of magical power that is identity unknown at this point that is not obviously too old. So this theory is the front runner in a one person race.
Personally I think we know too little to usefully speculate as I can throw out other possibilities that "could" happen -- although there is no real evidence for any of these so far in the story.
* Faith can become a Knight of the Sword --- with a name like "Faith" --come on!!!
* Faith can be a Fallen --- the dark mirror of the 1st idea.
* Faith can (although unlikely) be a changeling or other person with some supernatural connection. I say unlikely as past books have indicated that such people can be recognized by Dresden as such -- even if he cannot precisely identify their connection
* Faith can simply be the person that gives Dresden the right encouragement at the right time for one more try
* Faith can be an agent of the government agency that watches the supernatural and plays a key role in getting that agency involved
* Faith can simply be a memory --- a random news article that tells Dresden that this person is dead or a member of the UN or just married or whatever... and triggers a retrospective thought at the right time and place
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I wonder if she might try to trick, attack or harm Harry for some reason, it would fit with history with women.
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You forgot one thing many women try to do with Harry, seduce him.
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I like your idea of symmetry. In one of my time travel wags, I too have symmetry with a fully knowledgeable Murphy meeting up with Harry and faith at that bridge.
It can be one of two ways, straight up future informed Murphy or some alternate Murphy riding tag a long to meet Harry in that first encounter. This plays off of some time loop that Murphy gets to play in.
So in some ways, the restoration of faith would be closer to an end of a time loop, and the end of the story, but also the beginning of it.
Oh, and by the way I have a wag that Murphy=Mab at some point so it would be like Mab taking a peak at her first encounter with Harry.
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I could see her coming to Harry to help her kid, just as he helped her when she was a child. It all coming full circle.
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I am going to approach this question differently by asking a different question. WHY would JB have the story end with Faith.
* Part of it is symmetry of course -- the really short story with Faith was the first Dresden story. So having her play a role in the last story is symmetry.
* Part of this is that Dresden has a relationship with Faith -- a connection. That connection has to be important.
* Part of this is just a reward for us fans -- who obsessively read everything that JB writes. :)
Symmetry is doubtlessly a part of it.
And fanservice may play into it, but I think it'd be more like giving Harry a win. The girl he saved years ago returns, and Harry's overcome with emotion, because of course he is.
His connection with Faith was one he had made when he was a very, very different man. Since then he'd seen and fought werewolves, ghosts, vampires, Faerie Queens, weird, shaggoth-like creatures, ghouls, demons, Fallen, and more dark wizards than you could shake a stick at. He fell in love, twice, and... assisted the first's suicide in a horrifying act of murder and genocide. He died, and was forced to come to terms with what the world would be like without him. He had a daughter of his own, whom he had to pull out of the vipers' nest, and has a less-than-traditional relationship with her. He's been tempted by a Fallen, and now has to battle the base impulses of the Winter Knight.
And Faith has had a whole life we haven't heard about, whether inside or out of the Supernatural community.
In all, if they had soulgazed, I'm willing to bet they've changed so much that they'd be able to do it again.
When Faith arrives, I think Harry will have a momentary emotional break. He'll remember the man he used to be, and look at the way he is now, and he won't like it. And, honestly, I'm looking forward to that kind of introspection.
I don't know what her role is going to be. If she brings him a case (which, to me, means he's back working as a PI and no longer the Winter Knight), I don't expect her to be a person of power, just someone desperate who remembers the man who helped her once.
If she turns up as a body, then I will personally write Mr. Butcher a very angry letter that I'll never send.
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Names have power, faith a girl who believes in the power of magic and in Harry the wizard.