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how can thw scarecrow be an outsider when it says in the book it has served Mab since before Haarry's (or mortals) time
We have multiple theories for that one:
5- the Oberon connection. It has liitle to do with Molly, and everything to do with harry
5- Molly is the once and future king. Mab has forseen this. It's Molly's destiny to wield ammorichus in battle against the outsiders.
quote author=TheCuriousFan link=topic=32166.msg1401233#msg1401233 date=1336229704]
We know that if you throw enough magic at an Outsider, even they will be affected, the Summer Fire could have just been enough magic to get around it, it was enough to destroy the Winter wellspring.
let me nail this one to the door if I may,b ecause I beleive we can disprove ' cpt kudzu had outsider help ' quite nicely.
the argument seems to be he is magic imune, but not summer fire imune, and this makes him an outsider. The problem is, there is no eveidence that strong sidhe magic hurts outsiders, and some that it does not:
1- Lea could not take on HWWB, but harry could, and he did not need to use summer fire to do so; his ordinary magic was more than enough. So its not sidhe magic, its outsider bane magic that hurts outsiders.
therefore, ahrry's ordianry fire should have hurt CK if he was outsider, and the summer fire not. Sinc ethe opposite is true, i deduce that CK wa sprotected by winter magic.
2. Lord Raith was still breathing in BR. Now, I believe that Lea loved Maggie, as much as a sidhe can. LR killed Maggie, and Lea did not seek revenge? Eb mentioned he treid to kill LR several times but failed, I suspect lea did as well.
now, on to the other point:
Jim says that she sacrificed the fetches, and CK in particular. That means CK was hers, all allong.
(of course, it also says that Mab had Molly brought in, that she won the battle of AT, That things happened that she did not quite predict, but it still worked out, and oh yes Mab may be in love with Harry. )
(before people scream about the dagger causing Mab's madness, let me point out that: we have woj that the dagger hurt her, and the reason she cant talk is she's pissed. And it was maeve that sugested she has fallen in love with harry, and then we have lea's comments about love causing madness.)
The problem with the "ocean of cold, cold power" quote is that it's equally interpretable as "outsider immunity" and "ancient winter fae immunity." We already know the Scarecrow is an ancient, powerful, Winter fae, so that seems the simpler explanation.
I reached out through the cane for Lord Raith-
And felt nothing. Not just empty air and drifting dust, but nothing. A cold and somehow hungry emptiness that filled the space where he should have been. I'd felt something like it before, when I'd been near a mote of one of the deadliest substances that any world of flesh or spirit had ever known. My power, my magic, the flowing spirit of life, just vanished into it without getting near Raith.
I couldn't touch him. The void around him was so absolute, I knew without needing to doubt that there was nothing in my arsenal of arcane skills that could affect him
My post quoted at the start of the thread makes the distinction between resistance and immunity, and I hold to that logic; we see resistance from beings old and strong enough to bull through magic, and immunity from Lord R that is specifically identified by Harry as Outsider-backed, and the description of the fetch fits the latter.
"Fuego!" I barked as I released the energy. Fire in a column the size of my clenched fist flashed out at Grum and splashed against his chest.
It didn't slow him down, not by a second. His skin didn't burn-his hair didn't even singe. The fire of my magic spilled over him and did absolutely nothing.
There are still a number of questions about PG that I've never seen any good discussion of, much less answers for. Who goes back and locks up Pell's theater for him while he's in the hospital?
I caught my breath a little, and asked, “Anything at Pell’s theater?”
Murphy nodded and crossed the room to pick up two of the candles. “A lot of nothing. Place was locked up tight. Chains on the front doors, and the back door was locked. Sign on the door said they were closed until further notice.”
I grunted. “You’d think Pell would be wild to have the place open, if the convention was providing a significant amount of his income—even if he was in a hospital bed. Hell, especially if he was in a hospital bed.”
“Unless he doesn’t have anyone he trusts to run it for him.”
“But he does have someone he trusts enough to lock it up?” I said. “That doesn’t track. Pell sure as hell didn’t lock up after he was attacked.”
Murphy frowned, but she didn’t disagree with me. “I tried to call him to ask him about it, but the nurse said he was sleeping.”
Edit: Alternate Theory:
Lea sent the phages after Molly. We know from as early as Grave Peril that Lea wants Molly; she asks Michael Carpenter for his eldest child. She's high up in Winter and might reasonably be able to command fetches, as Mab's handmaiden and highest servitor.
The "Attack" on Arctis Tor was actually Lea with the Athame (and the Black Council?) attempting to rebel against Mab. Sure, that happened at least more than a year before (prior to Dead Beat, since Lea's imprisoned then) , but what's time in the NeverNever? Mab conquered the attack all on her ownsome, so no probs.
Oh, she's blackmailing Harry in one sense or another from the moment she forces that letter opener through his hand.
snatching Molly so that she can try to trade her for the Winter Knight job.
Why then would it not look like a fetch under glamour-breaking ointmentovision ?
Thats the piece i doubt the most. We have woj the fetches were sacrificed, and a very small sacrifice for mab. So hes not outsider anything.
), but if Mab didn't intended Harry to pour fire in the well, and didn't want him to kill the Scarecrow, then why did she took Molly in the first place?
- she allways planned for ahrry to do somethign which would get winters attention, and draw her troops in, leaving summer free to attack the reds. That is why she put the erlking in charge, sinc eshe knew he wanted harry bad. the exact method (summer fire) may have been a surprise, but not the result
Also, as a minor quibble, I'm not specifically arguing that the Denarians attacking Arctis Tor were working for Titania, merely that the point of their attack is to aid Harry and team's entry; Titania is one option for that, but given the WoJ about how much Mab would be willing to sacrifice for her goals, I can equally well see them working for Mab directly.
Also, the thought of a knnneurovore is really kind of intimidating.
We know Lea gets the athame in GP. We know she is carrying it in SK. We know that Mab is carrying it in DB and has at that point had to contain Lea. We know that as of PG Mab seems erratic and Lea is clearly completely Upminster*. It seems a reasonable working hypothesis that the athame is a vector for crazyness.
We also know the athame comes from Cowl. So it seems a reasonable working hypothesis that the power it conveys is Outsider-based.
We know Aurora's nuts in SK. We also know we have not seen Titania on stage yet and it would be surprising were there not a reason for this.
[As I see it, the options for what's going on with Summer are
a) whoever is behind the athame has their hooks in Summer too
b) Summer has gone looking for a non-Faerie power source to keep the balance against Winter having the athame and picked a different dark and nasty one. The Denarians seem a reasonable choice here.]
Big outstanding question here; if the athame drove Lea mad, enough that Mab had to forcibly subdue her, why on Earth is Mab carrying it around rather than burying it in a deep dark hole ?
The explanation that seems to make most sense to me is, because she has no choice. Because Lea, under the influence of the athame, has made some sort of commitments which Mab, in binding Lea, is bound to fulfil. As she explains in DB she has to in the case of Lea's godmotherly commitments to Harry.
The Gatekeeper:
The mystery of PG really starts with the Gatekeeper and his cryptic warning to Harry about "Black Magic" in Chicago. Bob comes up with the interpretation that the Gatekeeper cannot give any more information because it will lead to paradoxeggedon - i.e. that even more black magic is potentially coming to Chicago and this warning is the best the Gatekeeper can do.
But when you think about it, other than Molly's mind-control stuff, is there any other Black Magic going on in Chicago? What exactly is the Gatekeeper trying to prevent? Initially, Harry thinks that the psychic mauling of Pell (the theater owner) is black magic, but this turns out to merely be a Fetch. Somehow, this feels more "animalistic" to me rather than "evil". Is the blackout that the Fetch induced any more "black magic" than the Myrk that the Hobs bring during SmF?
The other (and to me, more plausible) explanation is of course that the Gatekeeper is foreseeing Molly's greased (by the mind control she's already attempted) slide into black magic, and is getting Harry to prevent that.
Which leads me to my next point...
Black Council actions in PG:
Talk to anyone about BC activity in Proven Guilty and they'll immediately think about the attack on Arctis Tor. It was swift, powerful, and it very clearly implied that there were forces at work that had their own agenda. However, two things always bothered me:
1) The frontal assault
The BC is a group that has consistently worked from the shadows and through layers of cats-paws. Why would they conduct a full-scale frontal assault on one of the most powerful creatures in the DV in her place of power (i.e. we've seen that Erlking thought he had a chance against her should she be summoned to his domain)? Furthermore, we have the WoJ that any assault by the like of Namshiel would not only be defeated, but utterly crushed. Sanya excepted, why would any intelligent creature (and nigh-immortals count, certainly once they are at least a century old) pursue such a futile course of action? This smacks as either desperation (i.e. Harry), or temporary insanity (i.e. Harry).
I've seen the various theories that they had some hold or bargain over Mab, or that maybe this was a strike to remove the Athame from Mab's possession (heck, I made that one myself at some point), but then this never really explained why Harry needed to come to Arctis Tor - the real attack was already defeated.
2) BC in Chicago:
Fact is, we have circumstantial evidence of Black Council activity in Chicago during PG:
- Madrigal is a known cats-paw for the BC. Someone invited him over a year before the convention started. Speculation is that he covering for **something**
- Sandra Marlin is the one who gets Molly thinking about using magical fear to stop a drug addiction. She also used to work at a homeless shelter (Marva warning bells here). If we believe the RPG as cannon, she also disappeared shortly after the events of PG.
The answer struck me that the whole PG story might just have been an attempt to "turn" Molly.
Consider that:
- We've already seen that the general BC mode of operation is to give powerful-but-dangerous black magic tools to various people and let them run loose:
- Victor Sells
- Hexunwulf FBI
- Kravos
...you might also include the Athame, the device from Love Hurts, and possibly even the Word of Kemmler itself.
Now we have Molly, who unlike Victor Sells, actually has the power to make the White Council, and she's rebellious enough to be touched by darkness. All one needs to do is to nudge her in the right direction and give her a bit a of power and she could make a scary diversion from whatever you're trying to actually accomplish. For extra points:
- If Marva is on the BC, corrupting the daughter of the guy who "killed your children" is certainly a bonus.
- If you are a Denarian (Namshiel?), then getting the magically-powered daughter of a Knight to take up a coin is certainly a bonus.
- Maybe Molly is special (I'll speculate more about this at the end)
As a last thought, consider the following:
If Harry hadn't stepped in and taken Molly to her parents, she would have gone with Nelson to greet "Darby Crane". Given who he really is and Molly's looks, don't you think he would have tried (and probably succeeded) to "shake hands" with her? If he did shake hands, isn't it a reasonable assumption that he would have realized her potential, given his ability to feed on fear and Molly's recent fear-inducing magic?
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.)
The real "attack" on Winter is via the means of the athame, warping Mab and Lea, and possibly also via the means of Lea being required to make bargains that are not for Winter's good (like swapping the athame for Amoracchius in the first place). The Scarecrow a) has power entirely outside the nature of any of the other Fetches, which Harry identifies at the end of PG as "Black Council" modus operandi and b) has Harry's power fade out when it somes to near, in ways much more similar to Lord Raith's Outsider-backed immunity in BR than to just being too strong for it (cf. Ursiel in DM, "Grum" in SK). This leads me to suspect the Scarecrow is an Outsider-plus-allies agent who has the run of Arctis Tor.
The frontal assault by some Denarian - supposedly Namshiel though Mab avoids confirming this directly and makes great effort to distract Harry when he suggests it - is a rescue mission. The whole point is to blow away enough goblins and trolls that Harry and company have a hope of getting into Arctis Tor.
Dear god. Are you a CIA analyst or something?Now some may doubt it, but remember: Mab needs a motive for kidnapping Molly, and according to a WOJ, the damage to the Winter Well was not planned. Here are Neurovore's arguments:
The Scarecrow is a "Black Council" agent - in this case a Circle agent.
Compare, Harry, p.476 of PG pb: "Consider all these things running around with more power than they should have had." With p.366 ibid "This thing was no fetch, no changer of form and image and illusion. There was no shadowy mask over an amorphous form, no glamour altering its appearance, which my salve would have enabled me to see through. This thing was a whole independent creature. Except maybe it was a fetch so old and strong... " (Emphasis mine.) The "old strong fetch" theory is not what one might call confirmed.
Compare also, p. 368 ibid, "A lance of flame as thick as my wrist lashed out from the tip of the rod - and died two feet away from it, the burning energy of the strike swallowed by an unfathomable ocean of cold cold power." That's not how entities toughing it out against Harry's fire from sheer resilience behave - see Grum in Reuel's apartment in SK, see Ursiel in DM. What it is reminiscent of is Lord Raith's immunity to magic. Which we are pretty certain is Outsider based, which leads back to the Circle again.
The Scarecrow is an entity that has been let into Arctis Tor by some agreement Mab is held to under duress. Mab's motivation in manipulating Harry is not only to get Summer to flatten the Reds, but also to be rid of the Scarecrow in a deniable way.
To play devil's advocate to myself, and expand from a line of reasoning JRBobC was suggesting in the other thread:
Suppose the Scarecrow is only an old strong fetch. Suppose Mab is willing to sacrifice it for the sake of getting Summer to flatten the Reds. Suppose the Circle have nothing directly to do with anything in PG. It holds together pretty much equally well, if you don't find the observations I make above convincing, and leaves the athame-vectored craziness as a separate piece of plotting entirely.
There is also the other element of how Harry got into Arctis Tor to consider in each case. There's nothing defending Arctis Tor but some fetches, because something, armed with Hellfire, took out a small army of goblins and a pack of trolls.
(Given that Harry knows Hellfire, I think we can rule out the Scarecrow's unfetchlike powers being Denarian-based, fwiw.)
Yeah. It sure looks that way from here, don't it.
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. What chain of events did that set in motion? What secondary effects came about because of it? Ultimately, Mab can always go to the Wyld and draw in more muscle to replace fallen thugs. If worst comes to worst, with just a few "seed" fae, she could rear up enough Changelings to repopulate her cadre within a human generation or two--nothing, to a being thousands of years old.
As far as she's concerned, everyone and everything is expendable, including herself, when it comes to adhering to her (seemingly irrational and inexplicable) priorities.
(And by the way--don't think Titania is much better. When push came to shove, she let her own daughter be murdered rather than upset the balance of the Faerie Courts. At least Mab is up front about it. Usually.)
Sacrifice her best troops? Mab would sacrifice every creature *in* Winter, every one she could bring from Summer, and every single mortal on planet Earth if that's what she thought was appropriate. And she wouldn't even need to add extra sugar to her cup of tea afterwards, much less lose sleep over it.
But no one does cold-blooded like the Queen of Winter. Mab's been in the business a long time, she's got a balance sheet, and she is *not* going to come out in the red--
--unless, of course, she really *has* stripped a gear, as Lily and Maeve believe. In which case there's a stark raving bonkers demigoddess whose powers are no longer being held in check by the Escher-esque code of Sidhe behavior. And that's all kinds of bad.
But hey. It's probably not that. I mean, not *everything* that happens can be the absolute worst possible possibility, right?
Jim
