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The Dresden Files => DF Spoilers => Topic started by: wardenferry419 on November 07, 2017, 11:37:53 PM
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Who hired Shagnasty?
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my best guess is Peabody, but my caveat is how'd he have the power to do it. I'd thought that Peabody is the one who lost control of the situation, but maybe it was his boss... the other person at the portal.
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I was leaning towards Madeline or her phone contact in Egypt? She left Raith manor before shaggy got there.
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Though, the phone contact and the portal person could be the same person.
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Wojl has it that something big called in a grudge owed by shagnasty to it.
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Well, Madeline was small potatoes, so not her, but someone she reported to then.
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Cowl.
Cowl is Peabody's handler, like it was Madrigal's handler.
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Are we sure someone hired him? Or was he just taking advantage of Morgan's disgrace to hunt him down. It might have been simple enough for anyone of the black council to sent him word once Morgan escaped. I suspect a lot of people would have known that Morgan killed a skinwalker. I do not recall the skinwalker working closely with anyone else - and he would have been more effective if he had.
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A grudge related to nuking another shagnasty?
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Jim did suggest that Shaggy was returning a favor going after Morgan.
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A grudge related to nuking another shagnasty?
You nuke ONE GUY and everyone gets all bothered about it and won't just let it go.
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Maybe Shagnasties have a buddy system.
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I'm picturing Summer camp in the pool ...
TWEEEEEEEET! (the whistle blows) BUDDY CHECK!!
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Shagnasty looking around, seeing a mushroom cloud in the distance, and saying, "I told him not to go chasing after stray wizards."
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Someone suggested in an old thread that perhaps Shagnasty was the skinwalker that Morgan nuked. He survived it, and over time was able to reform. However, it would provide a strong reason for him to be pissed off at Morgan.
It was also suggested that Shagnasty's attack on Raith manor was to help Madelaine escape. That is, she heard about Harry and Luccio visiting, and made a phone call asking for help.
APG
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I don't know about surviving the nuke. But, the attack on Raith's manor as diversion is a good possibility.
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If I remember correctly, Morgan initially thinks that the skinwalker started tracking him when he went through Arizona or Nevada during his flight from the Wardens. He seems to think that the skinwalker is chasing him because he is wounded thus easy prey and to add a wizards power to his own.
Harry on the other hand leans towards the Shaggy is working for someone answer. He mentions the Shaggy was a diversion for Madeline to escape theory to someone (I think). Lara or Murphy maybe? I'm going to have to do a reread at some point soon.
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It was probably Lara or Luccio. They wer both there during the attack.
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It was probably Lara or Luccio. They wer both there during the attack.
You think Shaggy was working for Lara or Luccio? Or targeting/distracting them?
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You think Shaggy was working for Lara or Luccio? Or targeting/distracting them?
I think distracting Harry/Lara so Madeline could get away.
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Someone suggested in an old thread that perhaps Shagnasty was the skinwalker that Morgan nuked. He survived it, and over time was able to reform. However, it would provide a strong reason for him to be pissed off at Morgan.
It was also suggested that Shagnasty's attack on Raith manor was to help Madelaine escape. That is, she heard about Harry and Luccio visiting, and made a phone call asking for help.
APG
Due to the lack of memory on the Naag's part i'd disagree... but it's entirely possible one of his kids inherited his power upon his immortal death I suppose.. which reminds me of Grey...
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Cowl.
Cowl is Peabody's handler, like it was Madrigal's handler.
So why was he interested in collecting copies of Die Lied der Erlking if he was in the same 'cell' of the Circle as Peabody and actively running him as an agent? Why not just ask him?
Just trying to deny the book to the other Heirs of Kemmler doesn't necessarily make sense, because his strategy was that it doesn't have to be him that summons the Hunt; he just wanted to highjack the ritual at the end.
As for whether the skinwalker Morgan lured into the atomic test was Shaggy, I have to agree that the fact it treated Morgan as essentially just a job to do rather than a personal vendetta suggests otherwise.
Six of them being locked up in the Well certainly weighs in favour of interpreting skinwalkers as among the beings who can reform after physical destruction, but it's possible previous Wardens who tangled with them simply found it easier to imprison them than put together sufficient energy to overwhelm their defenses by brute force. If the latter possibility is correct, that might actually be the difference between the "minimum security" central area and the peripheral tunnels.
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You think Shaggy was working for Lara or Luccio? Or targeting/distracting them?
I think Lara or Luccio was the one that Harry was discussing a theory with about Shagnasty and his motives for being at Raith Manor.
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So why was he interested in collecting copies of Die Lied der Erlking if he was in the same 'cell' of the Circle as Peabody and actively running him as an agent? Why not just ask him?
Just trying to deny the book to the other Heirs of Kemmler doesn't necessarily make sense, because his strategy was that it doesn't have to be him that summons the Hunt; he just wanted to highjack the ritual at the end.
I think that only makes sense if the whole thing is a ruse; Cowl and Mavra had the Erlking book all along, they release it into the wild and get the word spread, and hooray, the White Council and the other Kemmlerites start wiping each other out over it.
As for whether the skinwalker Morgan lured into the atomic test was Shaggy, I have to agree that the fact it treated Morgan as essentially just a job to do rather than a personal vendetta suggests otherwise.
I don't know about that, revenge being a dish best served cold and all; not going into a cackling gloating frenzy over getting to hunt Morgan down could just indicate that the thing is competent.
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I don't know about that, revenge being a dish best served cold and all; not going into a cackling gloating frenzy over getting to hunt Morgan down could just indicate that the thing is competent.
the counter argument would be that based on how the nagalosshi treated Thomas would indicate that he would threaten and gloat and make it personal.
Dresden pissed him off so he went out of his way to mentally destroy thomas and bragged about it to Dresden,
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I think that only makes sense if the whole thing is a ruse; Cowl and Mavra had the Erlking book all along, they release it into the wild and get the word spread, and hooray, the White Council and the other Kemmlerites start wiping each other out over it.
If Cowl and Mavra were working together all along, how come Cowl hasn't just completed the Darkhallow somewhere other than Chicago by now? He's got all the pieces required.
Come to think of it, that's really a glaring question even if he isn't working with Mavra. He probably knows the Erlking summoning anyway from whatever copies he and Kumori tracked down prior to DB, and he had Bob long enough to get the Darkhallow instructions from him.
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Who hired Shagnasty?
Time travelling Dresden hired him. In the future, Dresden and the Nagloshi are in a buddy cop type story around book 19 with a working title of Shaggy and Harry Get A Trim.
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If Cowl and Mavra were working together all along, how come Cowl hasn't just completed the Darkhallow somewhere other than Chicago by now?
I do not think he has all the ingredients. When Harry explains to Butters why the Darkhallow happened in Chicago specifically, he comes up with a whole bunch of necessary components, including the ancient Native American zombies summoned from the exhibition in the Field Museum (not easy to replicate), the old ghosts following the Erlking, and the way the boundary between Earth and the NN has been torn up in the Chicago area. (Which is done in GP, either directly by Mavra or by Bianca under Mavra's tuition - iirc the black barbed-wire magic is never pinned down specifically to one or other of them, but either way it is a thing Mavra is doing as set-up that far back. I suspect that is also why the Stone Table manifests in Chicago in SK.)
Come to think of it, that's really a glaring question even if he isn't working with Mavra. He probably knows the Erlking summoning anyway from whatever copies he and Kumori tracked down prior to DB, and he had Bob long enough to get the Darkhallow instructions from him.
One more piece of evidence that the object of the exercise is not to actually complete the Darkhallow at all, IMO. Just use the prospect of completing it to lure a bunch of people into doing things that serve Cowl and Mavra's greater ends.
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Time travelling Dresden hired him. In the future, Dresden and the Nagloshi are in a buddy cop type story around book 19 with a working title of Shaggy and Harry Get A Trim.
Nah, the buddy cop story will be Uriel and Kemmler.
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I think a Toot and Lacuna story would be fun, weird, but fun.
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I think a Toot and Lacuna story would be fun, weird, but fun.
Lacuna has been recalled for a short time to gather a night's worth of teeth. She has to do this because it is her purpose and if she doesn't, she's like Spok when he has to mate.
Lacuna gets her assignments and realizes she needs help and only Toot-toot is available.
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I do not think he has all the ingredients. When Harry explains to Butters why the Darkhallow happened in Chicago specifically, he comes up with a whole bunch of necessary components, including the ancient Native American zombies summoned from the exhibition in the Field Museum (not easy to replicate), the old ghosts following the Erlking, and the way the boundary between Earth and the NN has been torn up in the Chicago area. (Which is done in GP, either directly by Mavra or by Bianca under Mavra's tuition - iirc the black barbed-wire magic is never pinned down specifically to one or other of them, but either way it is a thing Mavra is doing as set-up that far back. I suspect that is also why the Stone Table manifests in Chicago in SK.)
One more piece of evidence that the object of the exercise is not to actually complete the Darkhallow at all, IMO. Just use the prospect of completing it to lure a bunch of people into doing things that serve Cowl and Mavra's greater ends.
If they are teamed up though, Mavra could easily have duplicated torturing some ghosts somewhere else to stir up the veil. Collecting enough ancient hunter artifacts / remains would be time-consuming, but either of them is more than capable of raiding a couple lesser museums and combining their hauls.
It certainly seems like Cowl or team Cowl + Mavra aren't too interested in actually completing a Darkhallow. Yet Cowl sure seemed right ready to go through with it once Grevane and Corpsetaker were dead...
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I doubt highly that Mavra is interested in the DH happening. Seems like it feeds on Necro energy, which I suspect is what is keeping her going.
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Yet Cowl sure seemed right ready to go through with it once Grevane and Corpsetaker were dead...
Convincing Harry of that is a good way to stop Harry digging any further into what's really going on there, though.
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from what we learned in cold days the darkhallow might have to be done on Halloween
and most importantly the white council would send everyone who could throw a spell to try and stop it when they learned, and they probably would learn because you have to destabilize the barrier between life and death with very heavy use of black magic. The whole city was brought to a state of panic and chaos and that cant be kept secret.
remember the kemmlerites had to make a deal with the red court to launch multiple insanely big attacks that kept the white council off their backs.
even kemmler himself couldn't pull it off because the white council knows if the darkhallow succeeds they will all die soon after
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I've always attributed Cowl's reasoning that it must be done is because he's from a timeline where it was done. Harry's action to stop it was quite Willfull considering.
Per this and another convo, I just realized if things had gone down at Bianca's how they intended, Harry's ghost would likely be one of those consumed during the hallow. Maybe nothing, but interesting to think about.
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and most importantly the white council would send everyone who could throw a spell to try and stop it when they learned, and they probably would learn because you have to destabilize the barrier between life and death with very heavy use of black magic.
No sign they did that during or after GP, though. The Council's ability to realise people are doing black magic seems limited to looking at the after-effects.
The whole city was brought to a state of panic and chaos and that cant be kept secret.
I've never found the amount of "people in the DV don't believe in magic even when there is lots of evidence because people these days are rationalist" the books rely on to work for me; if nothing else, there is a non-trivial audience in the real world for any number of ways of looking at the world that would love to find evidence for magic.
remember the kemmlerites had to make a deal with the red court to launch multiple insanely big attacks that kept the white council off their backs.
That is a way of looking at it, certainly. I don't find it a particularly convincing one because being able to almost, but not quite, keep the Council entirely off their backs would seem rather suspicious to me.
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While I find the general disbelief in the painfully obvious displays of magic to be a difficult pill to swallow; it is one of the building blocks of the Dresdenverse.
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Harry's explaination that most people don't WANT to know about the supernatural, because it terrifies them, is completely plausible, in my humble opinion.
Just look at our history.
Many Germans and Japanese didn't believe in the concentration camps.
Many still believe the Earth is flat.
And let's not talk about the moon landing.
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Many still believe the Earth is flat.
That's the one that's actually making a comeback. I watched an hour-long YouTube video explaining why the Earth was actually flat, with perfectly reasoned arguments that essentially boiled down to "This is a millennia-old conspiracy to con the world into believing something, because..." I've yet to see anyone provide any way anyone could profit from perpetuating the Grand Lie, other than selling globes. And, honestly, what's the margin on those?
Anyway, there are plenty of people who would be totally stoked to find out that magic is real, even with all the terror. I don't know anyone who doesn't have a ghost story, or something similar. I've seen some stuff I can't explain. Personally, I'm reasonably certain that the majority of the population, at least in America, would happily believe that the supernatural exists. It would be too interesting, and, honestly, who wouldn't love watching scientists scramble to explain it?
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They would happily believe the supernatural exists until it bites.
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It all depends on the delivery. Most folks don't want to believe in anything THEY can't do. If someone can do Magic, well then why can't I do magic?
I mean everyone is going to be a sports-star when they are young, right?
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Harry's explaination that most people don't WANT to know about the supernatural, because it terrifies them, is completely plausible, in my humble opinion.
What? Most of the world believes in magic called by another term: religion. The figures in those do all sorts of tricks and have magic powers. I think that if DV universe magic were true, people would be clamouring to believe. Magic isn’t real in the real universe and people have whole institutions and cultures built around it. In the DV universe, there’d be magic shops everywhere if the people were anything like humans.
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It all depends on the delivery. Most folks don't want to believe in anything THEY can't do. If someone can do Magic, well then why can't I do magic?
I mean everyone is going to be a sports-star when they are young, right?
Nah, I wanted to be Stephen King.
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What? Most of the world believes in magic called by another term: religion. The figures in those do all sorts of tricks and have magic powers. I think that if DV universe magic were true, people would be clamouring to believe. Magic isn’t real in the real universe and people have whole institutions and cultures built around it. In the DV universe, there’d be magic shops everywhere if the people were anything like humans.
And most of them would be like that idiot pornstar in BR that thought she was great at magic that was coming fro somewhere else.
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And most of them would be like that idiot pornstar in BR that thought she was great at magic that was coming fro somewhere else.
Idiocy knows no borders and will be found wherever people congregate. If magic was real (as in the Dresdenverse) there would be severe repercussions because magic has consequences. Imagine all the idiots who try to summon something or want to jump ahead to the "cool stuff" like making fireballs without putting in the discipline and training first. As much as I would love to be a wizard, I do not want our society to discover magic (in the Dresdenverse form).
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Emotion-based power in the age of the offended. Not good.
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If I had access to magic, I would be the world's greatest criminal. I'd wind up full blackhat in a month.
And you'd never catch me.
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I would try to figure out a way to make modest money with minimal effort.
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Bank robbing would be a piece of cake. Put everyone in the bank to sleep from outside, hex the cameras, walk in, empty the drawers, walk out. Several thousand dollars for a few minutes of work. Hell, maybe you could even do a portal cut by opening a Way into the Nevernever that bisects the vault door, cutting it open with a rip in space. Rinse and repeat across the country; with access to the Nevernever, you could hit anywhere you wanted with ease.
I know Harry frequently says that a lot of practitioners use their talents to make a lot of money, but I don't know how they do that legitimately outside consulting for people who already know about magic.
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Bank robbing would be a piece of cake. Put everyone in the bank to sleep from outside, hex the cameras, walk in, empty the drawers, walk out. Several thousand dollars for a few minutes of work. Hell, maybe you could even do a portal cut by opening a Way into the Nevernever that bisects the vault door, cutting it open with a rip in space. Rinse and repeat across the country; with access to the Nevernever, you could hit anywhere you wanted with ease.
I know Harry frequently says that a lot of practitioners use their talents to make a lot of money, but I don't know how they do that legitimately outside consulting for people who already know about magic.
Except, if magic were real, there would be defense mechanisms against it. Unlike the DF universe, people would actually be all over the real magic and it would not be some underground thing. If magic were real in our world, our world would be dramatically different. What a horror show that would be.
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I would try to figure out a way to make modest money with minimal effort.
I suspect the biggest temptation to what counts as black magic in the DV for me would be getting my damned upstairs neighbours to quieten down.
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Been there and done that with the noisy upstairs neighbors. Still have some, but they are down the block, big difference.
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Except, if magic were real, there would be defense mechanisms against it. Unlike the DF universe, people would actually be all over the real magic and it would not be some underground thing. If magic were real in our world, our world would be dramatically different. What a horror show that would be.
I shifted context without telling anyone, because I occasionally assume that people on a forum can read my mind; in this hypothetical context, I'd have magic, but the people would be like those in the Dresden Files universe: blissfully (and willfully) uninformed.
I'm also pretty sure that the White Council wouldn't really care if I was robbing banks so long as I didn't break any of the laws or violate anyone's territory.
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Like the Fae, you would be following the letter of wizard law. Still got to deal with mortal law.
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Just hope there is no analogue to Murphy or Dresden in one of the towns you hit with your bank robber scheme.
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I suspect the biggest temptation to what counts as black magic in the DV for me would be getting my damned upstairs neighbours to quieten down.
Keep hexing their stereo until they stop buying new ones. Will solve most of the problems and will drive them crazy without the use of black magic.
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I shifted context without telling anyone, because I occasionally assume that people on a forum can read my mind; in this hypothetical context, I'd have magic, but the people would be like those in the Dresden Files universe: blissfully (and willfully) uninformed.
I'm also pretty sure that the White Council wouldn't really care if I was robbing banks so long as I didn't break any of the laws or violate anyone's territory.
In that case, I’ll join you. My power will be that of Perfect Hair. Wind, rain, snow ... nothing can mess it up. Tries to tousle my terrific tresses terminate in tragedy. My immaculate coiffure will dazzle, razzle and beguile allowing for the robbery of the bank all the while. It’s a ploy to get rich for this stylish bitch!