To me, the Tam Lin angle might also be a warping of Winter's purpose.
Winter pays a tithe in blood to hold the Outer Gates against hellish beings who would destroy reality. Not much of a stretch from there to 'Winter pays a tithe in blood against hell', and one step further to 'Winter pays a tithe in blood to hell' (because 'obviously' Faeries can't be the ones holding Satan at bay, that must be TWG/Angels).
However, as Mira points out, Heaven and Mab do have coinciding interests. Although I do wonder if Hell occasionally also has coinciding interests with Mab as well. Notice how respectful and neutral she is to Anduriel in Cold Days compared to how she sees Nicodemus.
Mab is anything but stupid, however it was Skin Game not Cold Days. Mab was playing chess, she knows what Anduriel can do, so was playing things very close to the vest. Let's not forget that after this visit she and Harry went to Vadderung to set up the double cross. So yeah, Mab can respect the powers of a fallen angel, that is just smart, it doesn't mean she works with or has ever worked with the forces of Hell.
My mistake, my mind was elsewhere while I was writing and I had been working late. Skin Games is correct. But just to be clear, she actually HAS worked with Anduriel in the past - quite specifically when she needed to be in two places at once when she took over the Outer Gates management and Anduriel and Nick stood in. Hence the whole reason Harry is on loan in Skin Games, Mab is repaying her surface debt to Anduriel (and of course ultimately her real debt to Nicodemus - revenge). And Con is right, back then she didn't have Lea to stand in.
And who knows what Mab does or doesn't do. We have only seen a small part of her world. I suspect she would work with any being that furthered her goals.
In fact I've been thinking, it is being called his Grace, but in fact Uriel himself went on that mission in the body of Michael, there is that scene where Michael confronts Nic and what is coming out of his mouth doesn't seem to be coming from Michael.. No, it was coming directly from Uriel.
... back then she didn't have Lea to stand in...Say rather, Lea wasn't yet up to the job; she was still Mab's right hand, but Mab was new and hadn't yet grown into all the powers of her mantle, and Lea similarly hadn't expanded to the powers of being the Queen's right hand, as opposed to the merely the Lady's right hand.
... Mab was originally Winter Lady, and Lea was her Jenny Greenteeth. She was her sidekick and handmaiden. And so when Mab got promoted Lea did too ...(https://wordof.jim-butcher.com/index.php/word-of-jim-woj-compilation/woj-on-the-fae/)
... Let's not forget that after this visit she and Harry went to Vadderung to set up the double cross ...Actually, the double-cross was planned from long before that point.
Considering Uriel was walking around the Carpenter's place at the time, I don't see how he was in Michael's body.It's called "bilocation" -- being in two (or more) places at once -- and it's a widely embraced idea in multiple religions, folklores, etc. I'm sure that Jim knows of it.
The concept of bilocation has appeared in early Greek philosophy,[2] shamanism,[3] paganism,[4] folklore,[3] occultism, magic,[5] the paranormal,[6] Hinduism (as one of the siddhis),[7] spiritualism, Theosophy,[8] the New Age[9] and mysticism in general,[10] as well as Christian mysticism[11] and Jewish mysticism.[12](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation#History)
It's called "bilocation" -- being in two (or more) places at once -- and it's a widely embraced idea in multiple religions, folklores, etc. I'm sure that Jim knows of it. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation#History)
Yes, but there's no evidence angels can do that in the Dresdenverse.
Actually, the double-cross was planned from long before that point.
The whole thing with Marcone setting up a supernaturals' vault, to be a doorway into Hades' realm (with Hades the first investor): that was setting up the (eventual) double-cross.
Going to Vadderung? That was just the loop of the plot needed for Harry to trust whatever agent the plotters were using (Goodman Grey in this case). Mab could equally have made that call, maybe even Marcone; but Harry wouldn't have been as ready to trust any agent that either one recommended.
Vadderung has the role of "the guy Harry can trust" in the long con being run against the plots of the bad guys (and as he's still a relative pawn, the long con is running against Harry too).
Considering Uriel was walking around the Carpenter's place at the time, I don't see how he was in Michael's body.
Uriel, I thought. You sneaky bastard. But you weren't telling me anything I didn't already suspect"
Read pages 304 through 306 of Skin Game and you will see what I mean.. It ends with Harry saying
The italics are Jim's.QuoteUriel, I thought. You sneaky bastard. But you weren't telling me anything I didn't already suspect.
Uriel is an archangel, so just because a mortal body in his guise remained at the Carpenter house, doesn't mean it was really him.. It could have been Michael in a different guise.. I know it is very tin hat, but read those pages, it just got me wondering..
Uriel is an archangel, so just because a mortal body in his guise remained at the Carpenter house, doesn't mean it was really him.. It could have been Michael in a different guise.. I know it is very tin hat, but read those pages, it just got me wondering..
It reads to me like maybe Uriel preloaded a Message for Michael to deliver, but to be honest, I'm not sure exactly what Harry meant there.
... I guess it comes down to how one defines what an angel's "Grace" really is. It isn't exactly a mantle that can be transferred from one body to another ...
Except: evidently it is.
That's the prima facie reading of the text.
I suspect it's a bit more complicated than most mantles, but evidence says that "Divine Grace" in the Dresdenverse is in fact a special form of "mantle."
This, in fact, is answered in the conclusion isn't it? When Nicodemus's followers are stripped from him. And just because Uriel loaned Michael his grace doesn't mean he can't speak through him. You've now seen what happens when you strip the Arch from the Archangel.
“So he couldn’t change you,” I said. “And he couldn’t change the world around you, at least not of his own will. But he could change himself. So he gave you his power in order to make your body function the way it used to. That way it isn’t his will that’s using the power. It’s yours.” The throbbing had begun to recede, slowly, and I looked up. “It’s way more than you needed, but it’s the only unit he had to work with. It’s as if . . . he loaned you his giant passenger jet because you needed a reading light.” I eyed the angel. “Right?”
Uriel nodded and said, “Close enough.”
Butcher, Jim. Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files (pp. 252-253). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
“What happens to you, while I . . . borrow your jet?” Michael asked.
“Transubstantiation,” Uriel said. He gestured with his bloodied fingers.
Butters finally chimed in. “Holy. Crap. He’s mortal?”
“And he can die,” I said quietly.
Butcher, Jim. Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files (p. 253). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
there is a giant (and updated)statue of the winter ladies in Hades. if that is not enough of a link to hell for you i don't know what is. Also there was on statue for summerExcept that Hades is not hell. The link between the courts and the old gods is well known.
Except that Hades is not hell. The link between the courts and the old gods is well known.
More like what happens when you strip the Archangel from Archangel:Archangel from archangel is zero, not human. I don't dispute your conclusion, but it is one of several points where Jim goes off the rails to put a light saber in Butter's hands.
He loaned him his entire power. No cool angel tricks at all. He's mortal:
I mean one of the most confusing Fae plots there is in the books- which is saying something- is Mab and Titania opposing each other while the Denarians are running around in Small Favour. The Book also has direct Archangel power confirmation that Lucifer himself was acting in alliance with the Denarians. So there is atleast one significant occaision Mab and Lucifer. Fae and Hell. Working together.Uriel probably has a guest room at Arctis Tor. You rarely see Mab without tripping over Uriel. He starts the plot rolling in PG by moving Michael.
Uriel probably has a guest room at Arctis Tor. You rarely see Mab without tripping over Uriel. He starts the plot rolling in PG by moving Michael.
Right, Hades is the god, parts of his kingdom is hell by our standards, those that need punishment suffer it eternally.The Greek underworld -- Hades' realm (sometimes the realm itself is also called "Hades") is unrelated to the Christian "Hell."
The Greek underworld -- Hades' realm (sometimes the realm itself is also called "Hades") is unrelated to the Christian "Hell."
Lucifer/Satan, and the Denarians, are no part of that realm, nor it of them.
I mean one of the most confusing Fae plots there is in the books- which is saying something- is Mab and Titania opposing each other while the Denarians are running around in Small Favour...
... The Book also has direct Archangel power confirmation that Lucifer himself was acting in alliance with the Denarians ...Lucifer and the Denarians are all Fallen Angels. WoJ says Lucifer doesn't like or trust those particular Fallen, and (at least part of) the reason they're in the Coins is to keep them away from Lucifer and unable to plot effectively against him. But at the end of the day, they're all Fallen Angels; that's their "side."
... So there is atleast one significant occaision Mab and Lucifer. Fae and Hell. Working together.No...
True, it is unrelated but as I said ...
<heh>
I think you and I are essentially in agreement, and simply talking past the specific details of one anothers' specific points.
I shook my head. "I called you less than an hour ago. If it wasn't a setup then how did you find me?"Small Favor is consequences. The point is to kill Harry and Marcone. Titania hates Harry and Marcone saved him. Since Slate is on ice Titania knows that Harry will be appointed emissary because, well, that's what Mab does. And he's fair game once Mab names him. Thus the attack in the yard at Michael's. Pick your poison on how Mab knew about the Archive. Maybe the method used to snatch Marcone, certainly a lot of work just to pick off a mortal. Combined with Gard forcing the appointment of the Archive. And Mab can see possible futures, as can the Mother's and Rashid.
"He didn't," said Gard. "I did." She looked over her shoulder at Marcone and frowned. "This is a mistake. It was his fate to die in that alley."
"What is the point of having free will if one cannot occasionally spit in the eye of destiny?" Marcone asked.
"There will be consequences," she insisted.
Small Favor begins in Dead Beat when Marcone has Gard rescue Harry. Gard warned Marcone that there would be consequences. Small Favor is consequences. The point is to kill Harry and Marcone. Titania hates Harry and Marcone saved him. Since Slate is on ice Titania knows that Harry will be appointed emissary because, well, that's what Mab does. And he's fair game once Mab names him. Thus the attack in the yard at Michael's. Pick your poison on how Mab knew about the Archive. Maybe the method used to snatch Marcone, certainly a lot of work just to pick off a mortal. Combined with Gard forcing the appointment of the Archive. And Mab can see possible futures, as can the Mother's and Rashid.That makes sense. What's with all the spring analogies? ;)
To understand Summer and Winter consider two springs compressed together. As long as the forces are balanced the springs are safe. Let them go out of balance and bad things happen. And if you agree with this Mab's behavior in PG makes more sense.
"Freeholding lord," I said. "It means he's entitled to rights under the Accords—like rights of challenge when someone kills his employees. It means that if a supernatural power tries to move in on him, he'll have an opportunity to fight it and actually win."Once Nic grabs Marcone and Mab declares Harry to be her Emissary, he is a target.
“This is another point of contention between you and Titania.”The put simply is a mild understatement. Harry was going to die and Marcone saved him. Once he became a Freeholding Lord he was screwed. Nic is just taking advantage of the situation to snatch the Archive. As a minor note, this I believe, is the only time we see Anduriel manifest.
“When one Court moves, the other perforce moves with it,” Mab said.
I croaked, “Titania wants Marcone dead?”
“Put simply,” she replied. “And her Emissary will continue to seek your death. Only by finding and saving the Baron’s life will you preserve your own.”
And among the Fallen was one with much to answer for to me, personally, for its attack upon my home.”
“The Black Council attack on Arctis Tor,” I said. “One of them used Hellfire.”
Mab showed me her snow-white teeth. “The Watchman and I,” Grimalkin mewled for her, “had a common enemy this day. The enemy could not be allowed to gain the power represented by the child Archive.”
I frowned and thought of the silver hand that had batted the fallen angel and his master sorceries around as if he’d been a stuffed practice dummy. “Thorned Namshiel.”
Mab’s eyes flashed with sudden, cold fury and frost literally formed over every surface of the chapel, including upon my own eyelashes.
... For all you PG fans the definitive evidence that the BC struck at Arctis Tor. And that it was Thorned Namshiel...Thank you for the specific quotes!
... I would argue that Nic only attacked Marcone because he was likely the weakest Signatory in order to test the Accords - he could’ve attacked Marcone a couple of years earlier & gotten away with it scot free since no one else cared about Marcone the Chicago gangster.No, he attacked Marcone because of the nearly-inevitable fall of the dominoes: Marcone -> Gard -> Harry -> Ivy.
Thank you for the specific quotes!De nada. Unless Jim chooses to share we can't know for certain. So if your interpretation works for you it's all good.
I still assert that we only know that a Denarian was in the attack, not the BC. Mab may just have ignored Harry's nonsensical babbling about a "black council," or presumed it was specifically limited to the forces in the Denarian-led assault. Mab's silence on the topic doesn't really PROVE the BC, or that the BC is anything other than "mortal wizards who do Nemesis' bidding," etc...
Also, Mab's reaction to T.N.'s name doesn't show that Harry was right; it could as easily be showing she's pissed at Harry for still being so stupidly blind...
The Hobs were there to kill the Archive. Everybody else was collateral damage. And Ivy isn't the Archive, the spirit inside Ivy is the Archive. And that spirit isn't human.
2.
1. Ivy is human and thus protected against the winter court whether she has access to the archive or not - and I don't think the Hobs had the means to attack the Archive construct separate from its access point through Ivy. Her free will as a human is what makes the Archive so dangerous and scary. Though I suppose the idea of the Archive having free will might be a red herring and her decision making is changing because Ivy is nfected like Maeve was...
It's in the text. I don't know what to say other than that.
It's in the text. I don't know what to say other than that.
Most people who consider the idea aren't willing to agree to be a good, traditional host for, let's say, a group of Black Court vampires, and don't want to get caught up as a mediator in a dispute between the major powers. They don't want to make themselves the targets of possible challenges, either, so not many of them even try it." I rubbed at my jaw. "And no one who is just a vanilla human being has tried it. Marcone is breaking new ground."
“Why?” I demanded. “Why did you want the Denarians stopped? Why send the hobs to kill the Archive? Why recruit me to save the Archive and Marcone in the event that the hobs failed?”
Mab showed me her snow-white teeth. “The Watchman and I,” Grimalkin mewled for her, “had a common enemy this day. The enemy could not be allowed to gain the power represented by the child Archive.”Once the Archive inhabits the host the only way to lose it is to kill yourself. This is what Ivy's mother did.
1. Did the hobs actually kill anyone in the train station?
Not that I could blame him. Not all the remains I’d passed had been those of hobs.
Three security guards were down, one maybe ten feet from the stairs, the other two on the stairway itself. They had fallen separately in the darkness.
I’d passed several other bloodstains that had almost certainly been fatal to their donors, unless the falling water had made them look more extensive than they actually were. I’d never encountered hobs face-to-face before, but I knew enough about them to hope that whoever had spilled that blood was dead. Hobs had a habit of hauling victims back into their lightless tunnels.
Butcher, Jim. Small Favor (The Dresden Files, Book 10) (pp. 206-207). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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Re: Faeries tithe to Hell
« Reply #57 on: Today at 05:33:56 PM »
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Ivy isn't fully human and it's why the Council fears her. She also a Signatory of the Accords and according to canon,
@Bad AliasI think it's more that he forgets this rule or that thing he wrote/said. I imagine continuity is pretty hard because just about everything longer than 90 minutes (or that would be longer if made into a movie/tv series) is basically guaranteed to have some continuity problems.
It really doesn't matter if Ivy is human or not. You could just as easily make the argument that she made herself vulnerable by becoming a Signatory. However, she was appointed a neutral Emissary under Mab's accords, and then attacked by Mab. I've come to the conclusion that Jim just makes shit up and then tries to explain it away later, or hopes we forget the inconsistencies.
With the exception of the first attack, the rest were ordered by Maeve. Who was nemfected. However Mab had Pell's ass kicked. So yeah.
But to correct some minor stuff: the fetches aren't even /close/ to her strongest servitors. They're her couriers, harassers, spies and occasional assassins. Captain Kudzu was a being that was deemed more-or-less sufficient on the badassometer, but nothing to write home about. The fetches main use, to Mab, isn't as battlefield thugs. She's got /plenty/ of other things for that. Another mild correction: who says Mab /lost/ the battle at Arctis Tor, before Harry and Company arrived? At the end of the day, the Winter Queen was still in her fortress--but you didn't see anyone standing around assaulting the place, did ya. :) Also, it has probably occurred to more than one of you that if Mab was /really/ in trouble, she could have had the entire military might of Faerie back at the fortress in moments--exactly the way they *did* come back when Harry smacked the Winter Well with the fires of Summer.
(Which goes to show that while Mab may be canny to an inhuman degree, she isn't infallible. Just way closer to infallible than us.)
See above regarding "the question is *why*?"
Ask yourself why Mab had Molly brought in...
I think Jim relies on a suite of OCD readers (sometimes informally known as "beta readers") to help him with continuity & consistency issues.If you use free labor then you get what you pay for. That isn't to disrespect them, but it's hard to keep the overall view when you don't have access to the plot. Or when the data is spread over 9 books. Take this. About two lines and is pretty important.
“Maybe. In general, young people, especially adolescents, feel emotions much more intensely. The whole hormone thing. It can make them easier targets. Richer sources of energy.”@didymos
“Then why did it hit an old geezer like Pell first?”
@Bad Alias
It really doesn't matter if Ivy is human or not. You could just as easily make the argument that she made herself vulnerable by becoming a Signatory. However, she was appointed a neutral Emissary under Mab's accords, and then attacked by Mab. I've come to the conclusion that Jim just makes shit up and then tries to explain it away later, or hopes we forget the inconsistencies.
Oxygen and hydrogen are two separate and distinct elements. Under the right conditions they combine and form water. Water while containing both the original components is something altogether different when in that form. This describes Ivy.
I could have used another example which is perhaps closer to the danger Ivy poses and that is binary explosives. Safe separately, but hazardous when mixed for use.
If you use free labor then you get what you pay for. That isn't to disrespect them, but it's hard to keep the overall view when you don't have access to the plot. Or when the data is spread over 9 books ...
I think Jim has held off on specifically stating that because doing so would basically confirm Harry survives the series. It's not necessary for a first person perspective for it to have been a journal entry...
Crescent Blues: Do you have a specific destination for Harry? Do you know where he's going?
Jim Butcher: Very much so. I set out and was sure I knew where he was going in the beginning and while my perceptions of his world and the kind of things that he faces have changed, Harry is pretty much on course. If I get to do what I want, I'll get to do about twenty case books. And then at the end I'll do a big old apocalyptic trilogy because big old apocalyptic trilogies are fun.
Crescent Blues: Will Harry survive?
Jim Butcher: He will. You know, I don't see how he could possibly get through this whole thing alive. But then again there's all these heroes getting killed and coming back now so I may have to come up with something better than that…