Re-reading White Night, where Elaine turns up "copying Harry" -- doing the P.I. do-gooder gig in LA, yellow-pages listing under "Wizard," etc.

As some here may recall, I like her (a lot) as the Nemesis-vector into Summer (Nemfecting Aurora; having been Nemfected herself under the tutelage (and mind-control magic) of Outsider-summoning Justin DuMorne).

This isn't, I hope, I thread where we re-argue that old case, except if it becomes relevant to other issues.

I'd like to look at other Elaine-y things...

To begin with, I had forgotten how long she was on her own, after Justin died (or faked his death in the firestorm Harry conveniently provided; or whatever).  A year, more or less.

Which gives me a significant WTF moment, really.

Harry never succumbed to DuMorne's mental domination.  After the fight, Harry moved more-or-less directly into McCoy's grounded, ethical, teaching -- the why of magic, rather than merely how.

Elaine got fully dominated, her will enslaved.  Enough-so to actively help Justin capture Harry (although he broke free).  But when Harry came back, he burned down her home and killed her father-figure (who had just betrayed her, which she knew at some level); and it likely seemed to her like Harry tried to kill her, too.

We know how much mental-domination screws-up the minds of the victims, even without all the added trauma of that incident!  Then she was on her own -- recovering from all that shit -- for a year.

Elaine Mallory should be way, way, way more screwed-up than she is!  So... why isn't she?

Offhand:  one answer might be the deal she made with Summer, who's really good at the whole living/healing/growing side of things, probably even in matters of the psyche.  She might have bargained for her sanity, her mental composure; or Summer may have healed her for reasons of their own.

Any other/alternative theories?  Refinements of mine?

Honestly, "she just got better on her own" doesn't really satisfy; not unless she's genuinely Starborn, and has some inherent uber-recovery (more than normal wizards) against that stuff.  Which, I guess, is possible; but has very little corroborating evidence (compared e.g. to a Summerfae involvement).

Next up:  the ever-popular "Elaine=Kumori" theory.  It's a pretty minor bit of evidence, but in DB Kumori is wielding a magic-item consisting of a "mesh," and in WN Elaine is wielding a "fishing net;" coincidence, or a wizard working bigger and more-elaborate iterations on a theme?

Third, the topic of "where (from whom) did Elaine get further training; and what training did she get?"

Once again, "from the Summerfae" is an easy answer to part (a) -- we know Eldest Gruff is a pretty badass wizard.  As to part (b) ... healing/growth/etc magic would be very-Summery, and Elaine is notable there (as is Kumori, of course!).  In a faerie court, she'd have learned all manner of deception, both magical and psychological.  What else?

But... what about the year beforehand (presuming we can trust her claim there)?  Did she have any tutor/mentor?  Did she study or improve, magically?  Or was it a "time passed; she endured" sort of year?

Then there's the 3ish Dresden'verse years between SK and DB, plus 2ish more to WN.  Did Lily "inherit" Elaine's debt with the Mantle?  Or -- given the possible anti-Mantle "Destroy creation" agenda of Aurora's Nemfected plan -- did Mother Summer nullify all Aurora's "heritable assets," set Elaine free?  What did Elaine do, in this time?  Just become "LA Harry" -- Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, only with grace & style, and really sexy?

Let's compare Harry, what he had, how he got there.

He had Ebenezers' lessons, practical grounding, etc.  Likely some texts/references from him, too.  And Harry had Bob.  That's a freaking LOT of resources a budding wizard wants/needs; Bob is actually way MORE than most ever get!

Did Elaine get corresponding stuff -- tutelage, tomes, etc -- from Summer??!?
How the heck is she such a near-peer of Harry's?

Immortals can be killed on Halloween, as per the Big Reveal in CD by Bob.
He cites it -- his knowledge of it -- as the source of his fear of Mab.

But... how secret can that info be, really?  It's a basic "fact of the universe."  It is likely something that a really clever theoretician (such as Butters) could work out, with enough understanding of the magical Laws of the Dresdenverse (I'm not saying Butters does know it; I'm unclear how much he got into the deep fundamentals with Bob, given that he was ALSO busy with his occult-Batman project).

And there are so damned many of these Immortals.  Hundreds, maybe even thousands (across the whole world and many cultures).  Nemesis certainly winkled the info out of either/both of Aurora & Maeve, and other powerful mortals may have tricked or seduced or coerced the info out of other Immortals.  Then there's Odin.  He likes it this way:  the spice of the risk, the hunt, the game; the odds are awfully-high, honestly, that Odin has told more than one mortal this secret.  And given how damned many of the Immortals do come out to "play" on Halloween, they too seem to find the "game" worth playing.

Plus the aforementioned many Immortals -- maybe one (or several) of them (thus far offstage) have their own reasons for "spilling the beans" to one or more mortals.  As one example:  it could be a Power-Play:  if you have a cult-following of True Believers, getting 99% of them killed to get a few incredibly-powered-up might be a really-worthwhile bargain.

All in all... I don't actually think the "secret" was as much of a secret as Bob made it out to be.

Either based on key-words (e.g. maybe I don't want to see anything with "Twelve Months" starting  the day before it's released, until I finish the book and go re-enable) or upon user-name (e.g. I keep getting lured into flame-wars every time I start replying to Posty McPostington), or any other criteria?

Over in the "... first few books" thread, I wrote:

I suspect Justin was mostly his own agent, seeking his own power (but working with other parties (often as a "junior" (often a very junior) ally).  But I think I'll spin that into another thread, so as not to drift this one too much...  Justin (& his agenda) is part of Harry's (still very mysterious & unexplained) origin-story, not merely a "first few books" topic!

Herewith, the "Justin & his agency" thread ...

Harry's understanding is, Justin was simply a Warden-gone-bad.  A warlock who was seeking personal power, who grabbed Kemmler's skull as a personal power-up, dropped off-radar, then grabbed a couple of promising proto-wizards to enthrall as core of his own Brute Squad.  And summoned Outsiders because (a) why not? (b) "Dark Wizard, Harry, as dark as they come"

Which may be true, as far as it goes... but I don't think it goes far enough.

To begin with:  the odds of Justin "happening" to end up with a couple of possible/probable Starborn wizards seems vanishingly small.  Did he specifically target them?  Was he guided to them by a 3rd party, maybe not even knowing their "provenance" & significance?  Or...?

Next:  how was Harry hidden, in the orphanage... hidden even from wizards?  Morgan was looking for him; Dollars to diamonds that Eb was, too!  Remember:  these are top-tier Wardens; but Wardens aren't just "enforcers," they are also magical investigators.   Was Justin part of hiding Harry (Morgan implies so, in the "Journal" microfiction)?  If Justin wasn't... how did Justin find Harry?  Eb, after all, had blood-of-his-blood as needed to use in a tracking spell!
   
My theory (ok, "theories..." or WAGs if you will):

• Yes, Justin was a warlock, a former Warden turned to Black Magic.  If nothing else, the enthrallment is proof: that kind of mental-domination magic is automatically a death sentence, and (per WoJ) inherently self-corruptive.
• Harry was hidden by the Leanansidhe, as part of her "protect Harry" / "Faerie Godmother" deal with Margaret LeFay (n.b. we later saw Morgan invoke his "Summer Esquire" pin to get a period of being similarly un-findable); I have a further WAG that Mab was already involved:  she knew something BAT-y was coming up, and wanted a Wizard & Starborn as her Knight (bcuz srsly, ppl -- u wanna say Mab's Handmaiden wasn't doing Mab's will in theses portentous matters??!?  Mab, the most conniving & long-range-planning actor we know (running neck&neck with Odin).
• It then follows from #2 that it was Lea (proxyMab) who helped DuMorne find Harry.  (Training as a wizard would absolutely be "protecting Harry" as per her deal; and it would later let her fulfill the other FG trope:  showing up to "rescue" Harry from DuMorne!  Still unclear is if they were "working together" all along, or if Lea just reached out to Justin when it was time for Harry to move on); even more mysterious, in all this:  what was Elaine's pre-Justin origin-story??!? (noting that Harry went Winter & Elaine went Summer).
• Going back to Harry's origin -- as a Starborn, a planned birth -- we had Margaret planning this far in advance (including the infamous party where she tried to lure the Blackstaff into the plan (and where Ramp Duchess Ortega spotted the Ebenezer/Margaret family dynamic)).

So, then:  Let's go even further back.  Back to Margaret LeFay, pre-Raith.  She is walking the Ways, well-known to Faerie-kind.  Including known to Lea, and to Mab.

It is Mab herself who plants the seed of the idea with Margaret LeFay; the seed that is to become Harry Dresden:  the idea that a Starborn Wizard is a good path to power.  Mab works via Lea as proxy.  Lea is instructed to -- subtly -- put herself into Margaret's path, to encounter her often enough to strike up a relationship, to begin a series of bargains and deals.  Eventually -- when the starborn seed bears fruit -- to become the child's Faerie Godmother.

It was Mab all along.

Lea (& Mab) keep an eye on Harry & Malcom.  Eventually, Lea kills Malcom (we have WoJ that something Lea did will make Harry want to kill her), and takes Harry away to an orphanage; likely it's Mab herself keeping him veiled from all other surveillance or tracking.

Then they "permit" DuMorne to find Harry.  Maybe they even work a "bargain," where DuMorne gives them something (what?) in return for being told where to get a wizardling child of great potential.  As noted above -- at this point, they WANT Harry being given wizard training.  Hard, brutal training, of the sort Winter approves.

It was Mab all along.

AND it was ... Odin!
Because if you think that wily old wolf didn't see all the same signs that Mab saw... well, think again.  Also, Odin has seen several of the Starborn cycles... he may even have planted the idea with Mab, as she did with Margaret; 0r maybe they concocted it together.

Fast-forward'ing again, to Justin.  Mab (or Lea) gets Harry into Justin's hands.  Justin likely has little to no idea how much high-level planning, for decades at least, has gone into this moment.  He may not even know he's got a Starborn 'prentice.

He thinks he's just pursuing his own power, his own best interests.
That just makes him more amenable to being manipulated as a pawn of much-greater powers.

What if the White Council is operating in reverse of the way it's "supposed to be"?

What if someone, somehow, erased WC's the "institutional knowledge" and reconstituted it in its modern form?
(Maybe some "temporary measure" was put in place to handle some "temporary" situation, but then those who *like* the power they gained "arranged" for the change to continue, and eventually be made permanent... I dunno)

How "should" it be, under this theory?

Basically -- serving the Warden of Demonreach.

That's right, the Warden.  Don't you think it's odd that the same title applies to the WC's enforcement-arm as to the guy in charge of the island?  I'm going to allege that -- at this moment -- Harry Dresden is the legitimate head of the WC's "Wardens," exactly the same way a Sheriff is in charge of all the deputies.  It's just that the White Council (and the Wardens themselves) have forgotten.

I posit that the ENTIRE White Council exists primarily as support-services for the Wardens.  The Wardens are, essentially, the "military branch" of the WC, but (as any military historian can tell you) it takes about 10:1 logistics & support personnel to maintain each soldier in the field.

As I eyeball this, it looks to me like the entire White Council is, roughly, sized to be the non-frontline portion -- the support staff -- for the Wardens.

###

Let's take a step back, and look at Merlin -- O.G. Merlin, not the current (or any) holder of the title.

We know Merlin founded the White Council.  And we know Merlin created the Prison on the island (now called Demonreach).  Ponder those two a moment.  And consider importance of what happens on/under Demonreach.

If (as I suggest above) the Warden isn't a coincidental title with regard to "the Wardens" (or vice versa, if you prefer the other order) it follows that "the Wardens" are an accessory organizion of the Warden, and of Demonreach.  And then the various non-combatant wizards attached to "the Wardens" are... well... support staff.
 
But somehow, somewhere, somewhen, things got reversed.

The White Council got turned inside-out.


(OK, I admit that I myself don't find this WAG wholly convincing.  I'm dubious Jim Butcher would write the setting such that the ONLY wizards' org was "supposed to be" a vast military magico-industrial complex supporting a doomsday prison... and those are the good guys!...  But I find the string of coincidences (outlined above) a bit too coincidental.)
 

... is it?

Is it a cellphone, that is?

Or is it some "sufficiently advanced" magic (lookin' atchu, svartalves!), indistinguishable from technology?  Molly is still mortal, even with the Winter Mantle (at least, so far...) so she still has a mortal-wizard impact on tech (albeit much less than Harry's).  The "fact" that she has a cellphone is anomalous, but even before becoming the Winter Lady she was working deals at a VERY high supernatural levels.

The svartalves could easily create a little enchanted communication-and-information device that looks and acts much like a cellphone.  They could probably even create an interface into the mortal cell-net, a "server-room" they control, where their own devices communicate with Svartalven-hardened cellular infrastructure (and thence, once it's all safely-mundane signals, with the un-hardened mortal-built cellular infrastructure)...  "SvartalNet(tm)"

Veils, we know, are not Harry's strong-suit.
He got a lot better -- made himself get better -- because he needed to train Grasshopper.  But it's still not a strength of his.

Magic items, however, ARE something he does particularly-well.  So... I bet he could make a powerful veil by way of an item.

I figure he makes it out of the "scrubs" that crime-scene techs wear, who are tasked to "leave no detectable trace."  Outline of the notion designed by Butters (during his time crafting items with Bob).  Dresden could write or paint on the fabric, in lieu of the carvings and dyeing he did on staff & duster.  The advantage over most wizards' work is that it also blocks leaving physical traces that forensics could find (most wizards have no idea how comprehensive and how subtle modern science has gotten).

And Dresden's "ninja wizard suit" ends up being nerdy as fuck, instead of cool & sexy, so completely on-brand.