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The Dresden Files => DF Spoilers => Topic started by: Con on November 21, 2021, 03:08:04 AM
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So am rereading Proven Guity and there's a Lash quote thats always bothered me.
"I mean no insult by it but you should know that your ability to comprehend your environment is very strongly defined by your belief in a number of illusions. Time. Truth. Love. That kind of thing. It isn't your fault of course- but it does impose limits upon your ability to percieve and understand some matters."
... "To do so you would have to release your hold on mortality"
... She sighed. "Again you only have a partial understanding. But in the interest of expediency, yes. You would have to cease living"
So what do you think Dresdens new understanding would be now that he's died or atleast 'ceased living' for awhile?
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So am rereading Proven Guity and there's a Lash quote thats always bothered me.
So what do you think Dresdens new understanding would be now that he's died or atleast 'ceased living' for awhile?
I always thought that passage was Lasciel attempting one more time to get Harry to take up the coin. Notice she refers to time, truth, and love as illusions, while Harry stubbornly clings to them, and ironically that is what causes her to fall in love with him and changes her shadow to Lash. To cease to believe in those things is to become cynical, and it's the cynical that take up a coin. I don't think dying or near death changed his outlook on time, truth, or love, but the loss of Murphy may have.
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The quote isn’t to foreshadow death but quite the opposite, to renounce his mortality and become immortal.
Harry has this option, he could perform a Darkhallow, like Cowl intended or make or take a Mantle granting immortality such as with Kringle. Harry taking up the coin would be a BIG move in that direction. Denarians are not immortal, but Lash could certainly show Harry how to become one, making him the perfect partner.
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The quote isn’t to foreshadow death but quite the opposite, to renounce his mortality and become immortal.
Harry has this option, he could perform a Darkhallow, like Cowl intended or make or take a Mantle granting immortality such as with Kringle. Harry taking up the coin would be a BIG move in that direction. Denarians are not immortal, but Lash could certainly show Harry how to become one, making him the perfect partner.
I think Denarians are pretty much immortal as long as they hold the coin, at least Nic seems to be he is a couple of thousand years old or more, and there is evidence that others are also that old.
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The average Denarian isn’t immortal, enough physical damage will kill them, Nick has the backup of the Noose to prevent. Quite a few drowned when the Shed Aquarium broke. Immortals can only be killed on Halloween, or at a special place designed in accordance with any Mantle. Otherwise you risk breaking reality (Reality is weaker at Halloween, so I have changed my mind somewhat as to whether the Eye could have killed an immortal, the answeris yes, but it will also kill the universe.
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The average Denarian isn’t immortal, enough physical damage will kill them, Nick has the backup of the Noose to prevent. Quite a few drowned when the Shed Aquarium broke. Immortals can only be killed on Halloween, or at a special place designed in accordance with any Mantle. Otherwise you risk breaking reality (Reality is weaker at Halloween, so I have changed my mind somewhat as to whether the Eye could have killed an immortal, the answeris yes, but it will also kill the universe.
Nic's wife doesn't have a noose, and she is as old as Nic. The Elves of The Lord of the Rings, were essentially immortal, however they still could be killed in battle or by other means. I think the same goes for Denarians, unless killed by a Holy Sword or some other means, they are immortal. As long as they hold a coin they do not age nor do they sicken.
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You are confusing not aging with immortality, and they are separate things. Many of the Fae don’t age, but only a small number are immortal. Thus Harry kills various Gruff’s, but I suspect only the Eldest was immortal.
The Coins stop aging and repair a degree of physical damage but you can kill a Denarian, just using pure mundane physical force, you cannot do so with the Winter Lady, you might at best disperse her forcing to take time to reintegrate unless you do so at Halloween or at the Stone Table, a designed killing place. The Eye perhaps because it weakens reality might kill an immortal, but by that time that is the least of your worries. Yourreality may have completely turned in Gazpacho Soup at that point.
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You are confusing not aging with immortality, and they are separate things.
No, I am not, though do not underestimate the importance of the not aging part. There is a famous
Greek myth about a goddess who fell in love with a handsome young mortal man. She applied to Zeus to make this man immortal so they could be together always. He granted her wish, except she left out the part about not aging. The man grew older, and older, and older, not dying but shriveling and drying up, where upon the goddess turned him into a grasshopper.. Immorality does one no good unless one doesn't age.
And yes, the coins can stop aging, Nic looks pretty good for a two thousand year old man. The first thing Cassius lamented about after he gave up his coin and became an ordinary man again, was his body began to age to his "true" age.
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Just before Mab gives the order to Kill Molly she says that she is immortal but not eternal.
So am rereading Proven Guity and there's a Lash quote thats always bothered me.
So what do you think Dresdens new understanding would be now that he's died or atleast 'ceased living' for awhile?
The quote the quote shows that Jim took philosophy at some point in his education. You see the world in the way that you evolved to see it, not in the way it is. You're a brain in a vat and you filter the universe into something you can use. Harry for a moment got to see the world through another filter. When he died he peeled back one layer of the onion and saw a different way to experience the universe. As a spirit.
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Just before Mab gives the order to Kill Molly she says that she is immortal but not eternal.The quote the quote shows that Jim took philosophy at some point in his education. You see the world in the way that you evolved to see it, not in the way it is. You're a brain in a vat and you filter the universe into something you can use. Harry for a moment got to see the world through another filter. When he died he peeled back one layer of the onion and saw a different way to experience the universe. As a spirit.
Yes, but seeing the world as a spirit didn't alter time, love, or truth. You'd think time would have been altered, but it wasn't really, there was a beginning and an end to his "time" as a spirit. And since he really wasn't dead,dead, that experience was an illusion, don't think that was what Lasciel was getting at.
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We have very different takeaways from Ghost Story. What was the endpoint of all the Ghosts?
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We have very different takeaways from Ghost Story. What was the endpoint of all the Ghosts?
The point is, Harry was never a ghost, Bob confirms that during his walk about. We saw and yet we didn't see the end point, for some it was a train trip south.. For the likes of Captain Murphy, they stay in-between, I don't know if you'd call that Purgatory or not, but working for Uriel, some stay as ghosts on earth, and others move on to Final Judgement. That is where Harry thought he was going when he was sent back. Or enigmatically, Uriel quotes Buckaroo Banzai, paraphrasing now, "where ever you go, here you are..."
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I think we have to differentiate between the Denarian consciousness and the vessel. Example - Lasciel appears to be immortal - but Ascher appears to be dead. When her body presumably died, Lasciel goes back into the coin until she is evoked. The bearers of the coin do not age or sicken, but they can be killed. Say Marcone starts his car, and it sets off 100 pounds of C4. He's puree, dead... but Namshiel was merely sent back to the coin.
Maybe Denarians CAN die. But I kinda think TWG wants to keep their roster at 30. So probably not.
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I think we have to differentiate between the Denarian consciousness and the vessel. Example - Lasciel appears to be immortal - but Ascher appears to be dead. When her body presumably died, Lasciel goes back into the coin until she is evoked. The bearers of the coin do not age or sicken, but they can be killed. Say Marcone starts his car, and it sets off 100 pounds of C4. He's puree, dead... but Namshiel was merely sent back to the coin.
Maybe Denarians CAN die. But I kinda think TWG wants to keep their roster at 30. So probably not.
The Fallen were angels at one time, they are eternally trapped in the coins, but they do not die.. If Marcone got squished and burned up in a car wreck, the coin would merely bounce out of the wreck and wait for some poor smuck to pick it up.
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I wouldn't say the denarians will be in the coins for eternity. After all, they spent a lot of eternity out of them. They only went in recently. The whole coin thing may be a blip for them. WoJ does imply the coin being destroyed would release the fallen, which would be bad. It sounds almost impossible to do.
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Yes, but seeing the world as a spirit didn't alter time, love, or truth. You'd think time would have been altered, but it wasn't really, there was a beginning and an end to his "time" as a spirit. And since he really wasn't dead,dead, that experience was an illusion, don't think that was what Lasciel was getting at.
I think the time travel book will involve going through the spirit realm. Like, Harry will astrally project back to the past and have to make him self a physical body like when he was a ghost. We've also seen Lash and Bob slow down and adjust the flow of time. Mr. Sunshine showed him many things after he almost died at the end of ghost story, and there he may have been truly outside of time. It is quite possible that in a spirit sense time is an illusion. Love is considered an illusion by the Fallen, that is them bringing their own bias to the statement. God would strongly disagree, I suspect. This might be the fundamental disagreement between them...
I've been thinking about Harry making himself a body from the spirit realm, about necromancy, and about the apparent WoJ that the einjhar are necromancy using soulfire. Harry made himself an ectoplasmic body when he was "dead." That sure seems like necromancy, but as I recall he had a heartbeat, etc. He wasn't a zombie or a ghost at that point. There was none of the talk of using "dark energy" or anything like that at the time that would have been associated with necromancy. I assume just like any other spell, his body would have fallen apart at dawn, but would it have fallen if he had used soulfire in the mix? If he was running around in just his soul and his spells were using his essence, was everything he cast pretty much using soulfire?