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Messages - g33k

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1
DF Spoilers / Re: RNT: How Does Air Magic Interact With Physics?
« on: Yesterday at 02:55:36 AM »
Quote from: Talby16 on June 10, 2025, 12:59:51 AM
I never thought of Air Magic being the method of conveying his speech to everyone in the Council. I assumed it was some form of sanctioned mind magic.
It's per WoJ.
The transcription is reported as:
Quote
Basically the air magic folks are, uhh, they can do, depending on how much magical muscle they have, alot of things with wind. But they are also really good at communication type stuff. The Merlin is a fantastic air mage. And that's kind of the basis of his 'I can communicate with everybody at the speed of thought now everyone shut up and lets get this plan together'. And that's where that kinda comes from for him.

Reportedly from this AMA (video) recorded at a bookstore in Seattle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDJDn-ggqOo
(but I'm taking the reported quotation at face value:  the vid is almost 2H long, and I didn't listen through to find the precise quote)

2
DF Spoilers / Re: Ghost Story--two things
« on: Yesterday at 02:39:47 AM »
Quote from: Mira on Yesterday at 01:11:36 AM
If Papa Raith thought it would work, he could have sacrificed one of them at any time, especially Thomas.

I'd need to re-read that whole scene.
It may have been quite a while before he "learned" about this; and it may only have been a "potential" method that "might" work, but I think he was pretty desperate, and would take even a long-shot chance.

But also:  Raith Père was working with Outsider magic.  So this may have been information fed to him by them, with dubious correctness.
 

3
DF Spoilers / Re: Two plus two is Starborn
« on: June 12, 2025, 11:49:59 PM »
Quote from: Talby16 on June 10, 2025, 01:10:34 AM
We know that infection is not simple. Otherwise, why did the White Court vector (whatever it was) not go after Lara? They got to Justine and theoretically should have been a step closer to getting Lara. As far as we know, Lara is free from infection. It is not as simple as person to person because then Justine should have been able to infect Lara while serving as her personal assistant. I assume that at some point we will learn the whole story. My guess is that Harry/Lara will capture Justine and in the process of trying to cure her interrogate her to learn more and fill in some of the gaps in their knowledge.
...
I'll suggest that Nemesis hasn't taken Lara because it doesn't want Lara.

It wants Justine.

It wants the lover of the Starborn's brother -- Harry is (was) protective of Justine.  He saw her as fragile, helpless, and vitally-important to his only blood-relative.  That made Harry ripe for manipulation by Justine.

But Lara?  Please.  An apex-predator, direct threat/foe to Dresden, known manipulator.  Harry is maximally on-guard.  Lara has almost no value in this context.

Quote from: Talby16 on June 10, 2025, 01:10:34 AM
...
We know the infection happened about the time that Justine started working for Lara. Therefore, sometime after Blood Rites...
No:  we only have the word of Nemesis that that's when it happened!
And... um... Nemesis probably isn't the most reliable informant; just sayin'

Quote from: Talby16 on June 10, 2025, 01:10:34 AM
... We know from the Marcone story that Justine was sent as Mab's envoy to other accorded nations...
I think you mean Lara's envoy!  But yeah, about that:  Justine's revelation as Nemfected actually resolved an issue that had been nagging at me from that story...

Justine was too reliable, too focused, too competent -- in fact, hypercompetent -- in the scene with Marcone.  The Justine that Harry saw was only ever "focused" when she was with Thomas (and then focused mostly upon Thomas).  The Harry-visible Justine seemed incapable of the trip to Corb, or Marcone, let alone performing the negotiations she did.

We've never had the slightest hint that Justine might have the kind of training she'd need to perform at that level.  But if it was Nemesis acting?  Yeah, that tracks.  100%

4
DF Spoilers / Re: Does anyone think Harry isn’t the original Merlin?
« on: June 12, 2025, 11:18:53 PM »
Quote from: LordDresden2 on May 20, 2025, 08:26:36 PM
Yeah, but if Merlin left any blood descendants at all, by now there would almost certainly be Merlinian blood in half the population.

Genealogy is funny that way...

Not all bloodlines do; some don't reproduce well, they just... dwindle, and end.

I'm pretty sure the Archive bloodline has major mojo associated that ensures there's always one daughter -- but never more than one -- to receive the Archive itself when the prior holder dies.

I'd be unsurprised to learn that there was some weirdness around Merlin's bloodline; but it could equally-well be some working where the OG Merlin made sure that literally everybody in the world was his descendant (maybe his blood had some uber-Starborn world-protection properties... or maybe he was just terribly egocentric that way); or maybe he ensured that he had no descendants, because his bloodline was too dangerous.

I don't think we've seen either canonical in-universe nor WoJ on the matter; only that Eb (and thus Harry) are in the Merlin's Master-to-Apprentice teaching lineage.

5
DF Spoilers / Re: Ghost Story--two things--Three?
« on: June 12, 2025, 11:11:21 PM »
Quote from: Mira on June 12, 2025, 07:12:43 PM
Since it was Margaret's death curse that caused Papa Raith not to feed, I don't think it makes any difference whether Harry is alive or dead or only mostly dead, Papa Raith won't be able to feed.

IIRC, Papa thought that sacrificing Harry and/or Thomas was the way to escape Margaret's curse.

I presume he had some reason to think so... and he may even have been correct (or may not have been; I don't think anyone but Jim understands the Dresdenverse magical metaphysics well enough to know).

However, Harry's semideath -- years later, outside of Raith's careful ritual prep, and metaphysically as Harry's self-sacrifice (made for love) -- almost certainly wouldn't have fulfilled Raith's needs in this regard.
 

6
DF Spoilers / Re: Thomas
« on: June 09, 2025, 03:28:20 AM »
Quote from: Dina on June 08, 2025, 06:51:23 PM
... I think the Hunger won but it could be reverted... 

Say rather, the Hunger is in the leadmight now.
It hasn't "won."

Thomas still sees Harry as a trusted ally, still loves Harry (and Justine).

7
DF Spoilers / Re: Thomas
« on: June 08, 2025, 05:11:28 AM »
Quote from: Mira on June 07, 2025, 02:25:46 AM
... Thomas confesses to Harry that he began to enjoy it. ...
Satiating a hunger always feels good; that's a fundamental feedback loop of survival.

We mostly don't notice our breathing.  But if you hold your breath until it's uncomfortable, that first breath feels amazing.  The nice cool drink when hot & thirsty.  The meal after building an appetite.

Of course Thomas enjoyed it!

Furthermore, the Naagloshi made sure that "enjoying it" was all he could do, that Thomas-the-man was weak and desperate and in pain, unable to muster the focus & willpower needed to stave off the Hunger; unable to feel remorse... until after the fact.  Over and over:  torment, relief, remorse, torment (note that's remarkably-similar to how Mab broke Lloyd Slate).

That's Thomas' reality, as a predator.  It feels good.  And he needs to be able to handle that.

8
DF Spoilers / Re: Turncoat
« on: June 08, 2025, 04:59:46 AM »
Quote from: Tinfoil hat on June 06, 2025, 06:54:54 AM
1. Eb was right
So far all indication are that Eb was right. Look at the kid Molly bent to help him stop doing drugs. The kid was was torn apart. He fought against the programming. The girl was ok because she had agreed to the changes her programming gave her. According to the rules of the verse you cant force someone to do something they don't want to do no matter how harmless it seems without  that harming them.
This even accounts for free will. Which is important in this verse.  ...

No, "all the indications" are that many branches of black magic -- and in particular, mind-control magic -- are less-developed among theWCouncil wizards than they are among the BCouncil wizards.

I'm suggesting that Eb -- like all the other WC folks who haven't been exploring that branch of magic -- are simply behind that particular magictech curve.  Like... the top speed for a car in 1925 is dramatically lower than  the top speed for a car in 2025.

Peabody (and other BC wizards) might very-well know formulations that exceed what Eb (and other WC wizards) believe to be possible when it comes to mind-control magic.  How far it's possible to bend somebody, etc.

Also remember the BC may be bringing Outsider magic to bear; it has subtlety to sometimes exceed even the Gatekeeper, and power to overwhelm even battle-champion Ebenezer.

9
DF Spoilers / Re: Ghost Story--two things
« on: June 08, 2025, 04:02:57 AM »
GS took me a while to come to grips with it, but I did so by about 1/3 - 1/2 way through, and enjoyed the rest (and all of each re-read) very much.

Quote from: EBRIEN on June 07, 2025, 01:43:59 AM
  2nd--Harry as the Winter Knight. As a spirit, should Harry have been able to draw upon Winter? I mean, he was able to capitalize on his magical memories and use them as weapons...shouldn't he have been able to do the same with Winter? (And maybe even more so and to a more dramatic effect?) 

I think Winter -- or at least the Winter Knight -- is very physical, very embodied, very animal.
Winter has very little traction with a ghost/soul.

10
DF Spoilers / Re: Turncoat
« on: June 06, 2025, 12:38:42 AM »
Thank you for all the quotes you provided here!
Quote from: Talby16 on May 19, 2025, 02:24:50 AM
The body switch made Luccio more susceptible to the ink than a wizard of her age should be.
 A few quotes from the book (all are from the paperback version and all italics are my emohasis)...
 From pages 128 to 129:
from pages 518 to 519
from pages 526 to 527
 Luccio is older than Morgan and Eb said in the first quote that Morgan could not have been forced to kill against his will. Luccio was more susceptible because of the body switch and the resulting younger mind. Peabody was able to have a greater influence on her with his ink...
And yet, none of those quotes (nor anything else I recall Ebenezer ever addressing directly) actually states that the bodyswap made Luccio more susceptible to the influence of the inks, and to Peabody's magic.

We infer it, from the 1-2-punch of Morgan telling us of Luccio's guilt and from Ebenezer says.

Quote from: Talby16 on May 19, 2025, 02:24:50 AM
... I doubt that Peabody could force an older wizard, including the Senior Council, to accompany him to the island. That goes far beyond the nudging Eb mentioned. If a Senior Council member was present on the island, I believe they had to be there of there own will as a co-conspirator, not because they were forced to by Peabody. Both Eb and Harry believe that it was Cristos on the island with Peabody, but we know that they could be wrong.

So, here's some other thoughts; alternative hypotheses.

#1 - Ebenezer is just wrong.  We know that the Council has largely forbidden the exploration of mind-magic, but Peabody & his ilk clearly have not.  Corpsetaker had remarked on how out-of-date Harry's training was, and I think we should take it for granted that Eb gave the best mental-defense training that he could, to his grandson.  But what if Black Council researchers had found ways to bend even Senior-Council level minds, without breaking them?

#2 - Luccio is Black Council.  This is a dark theory, but -- what if Luccio killed LaFortier not because of Peabody's mind-control, but because she's a full-on BC agent?  What if "Peabody made me do it" is just her cover-story?  Consider this:  of all the people in Edinburgh who could have discovered her... who's the one person who would cover for her, take the fall, but also have the skills & power to escape the WC, and the initiative to loop-in Dresden?  How "convenient" for her, that that one person was the one who found her there with the bloody dagger.

#3 - An overt, brutal, full-control takeover may not be possible, or may be prohibitive.  But repeated nudges, year after year?  That exactly what sets habits and patterns in place, which can become self-sustaining:  "You are what you do."  Small incremental changes, that are let to sit and "naturalize" in place... which in turn can form a new baseline, from which you make further incremental changes, set new habits and patterns.

And it's not like the Council was a bastion of loving-kindness, trust, and openness; there were innumerable doubts and grudges and suspicions to exploit, bad inclinations that pre-existed, that didn't so much need a "nudge" to be go badly, as just gently suppressing the inhibitions that might have stopped that bad decision.

How many years was Peabody inking the Council?

11
DF Spoilers / Re: Thomas
« on: June 05, 2025, 11:17:33 PM »
Quote from: Mira on June 03, 2025, 05:19:15 PM
... Or his talent was never allowed to show itself and develop ...

No, the Whamps' spellcasting &c is only Paranet-caliber magic, sub-WhiteCouncil stuff.  They can use it in conjunction with their Hunger to pull off some pretty potent tricks (presumably in the realm of mind-magic).

Now -- in addition to that -- his father may have "discouraged" Thomas from exploring his magic.  It's a reasonable theory, for sure!

12
DF Spoilers / Re: Two plus two is Starborn
« on: June 05, 2025, 10:46:54 PM »
Quote from: peterwiggin94 on May 22, 2025, 06:02:10 PM
... First, we know that Justine was Nemfected and had to be infected by someone ...

Actually, we don't know Justine "had to be infected by someone."  We have no viable nor exhaustive list of Nemvectors; person-to-person spread may not even be one of them!  IIRC, we don't know of any person-to-person transfers.  Lea got Nemfected by Morgana's Athame (not by a "person" but by a "cursed item"), and I think that's the only Nemfection whose provenance we know precisely (tho there's plenty of WAGs about others).

Quote from: peterwiggin94 on May 22, 2025, 06:02:10 PM
... Maeve being Nemfected a strong possibility given that she almost blew up Demonreach and that was the explicit goal of Nemesis in Battle Ground. She was also the very first target of the Starborn Winter Knight. 
No, we 100% know for sure that Maeve was Nemfected; that's why Mab ordered her killed.  We know it came from Lea, though not precisely how.

Maeve wanted to beat Mab, to outmaneuver her and take away what she valued.  Nemesis gave Maeve some degree of free will, and choice; much more than other Fae.  Unlike all the others, Maeve could lie (not just mislead & misdirect and slice the truth so fine it was almost invisible, but blatantly and knowingly speak an un-truth); Maeve's dying words were, "two plus two is five" (which, when you think about it, is really rather pathetic:  a trivial little nothingburger lie, petty braggadocio... but also 100% proof that she had Something Big enabling her to violate one of the fundamentals of Faerie).

Lea "spread it to Maeve" (Mab's own words) somehow... but Lea still had the Athame, so could easily have been the proximate source of Maeve's Nemfection, as well as Lea's!

= = =

How did Aurora get Nemfected?  We have WAGs, but canon is unclear on anything beyond that it happened.

How did Cat Sith get Nemfected?  He was "taken" somehow (and just how TF do you "take" a critter like Cat Sith, who's competent & stealthy enough to remove elite sidhe warriors without neighboring elite sidhe warriors even noticing??!?), but we don't know the details of actually passing Nemesis to him.

etc.

Looping back to Justine, however...

My best bet is that her Nemfection happened somewhere in the White Court.  There is a LOT of Outsider influence / presence amongst the Whampires, and I'm betting it was "someone... or something" who Nemfected her there, with my first guess being something in the private "Starborn/Outsider Apocalypse" collection of Raith Père, after she began acting as Lara's personal assistant.  (On a slight tangent:  I further WAG that the substantive Outsider problems amongst the Whamps is Mab's "main" motivation in contracting a marriage between her Starborn-Wizard Winterknight, and White Princess Lara).

I don't discount @Mira's theory, though, that Justine was a deep plant:  Nemfected before we first met her, worming her way into Thomas' affections, in order to get to Harry.  This is my own 2nd-favorite theory.
 

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DF Spoilers / Re: RNT: How Does Air Magic Interact With Physics?
« on: June 05, 2025, 09:23:54 PM »
FWIW, Langtry is an Air mage; fundamentally, that's the magic he used to simul-speak everyone in the Council chamber (when Peabody cracked containment on the mistfiend).

IIRC, Bob has been described as an "airy spirit" and a "spirit of intellect" -- thoughts are tied in the Dresdenverse to the element of Air.

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DF Spoilers / Re: Children of the sun
« on: June 05, 2025, 06:30:41 PM »
IIRC there's some strong hints (maybe even a WoJ?) that there's an Alera / CinderSpires link, but less so for something as close to our "Modern World" as the Dresden'verse is.

But of course nothing's impossible, and WoJ says the Nevernever is virtually-limitless, and explicitly includes all sorts of fiction & fantasy places, e.g. Spiderman lives somewhere in the Nevernever, and Frodo in some NeveneverShire, &c.

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DF Spoilers / Re: RNT: What is The Enemy's Plan in Storm Front?
« on: June 05, 2025, 06:19:46 PM »
Quote from: Bridger on May 24, 2025, 03:36:48 PM
... While reading SF, there's no real indication that anything deeper is happening.  It just seems like the Shadowman found some old books and learned some intro black magic and used it to make Three-Eye.

Yet in later books we find out that there's a bigger force moving behind all of this...

This is a recurrent theme of the DF novels: later-series Harry, with more maturity & more power, swimming in deeper waters, has more information and a more-nuanced understanding (than earlier-series Harry).  When Harry first introduces her, Mab is "queen of the Evil faeries" and the archetype of all villainous malice.  Later, we learn she is on Team GoodGuy(tm)... just, one of the more cold-blooded members of the team.

Part of the fun of WAG'ing in the fandom is trying to figure out some of that -- spot the easter-eggs, unravel the clues, beat Harry in achieving that nuance!

Quote from: Bridger on May 24, 2025, 03:36:48 PM
Specifically: What is Nemesis' Plan in Storm Front?
... learned some intro black magic and used it to make Three-Eye.
Yet in later books we find out that there's a bigger force moving behind all of this.  Assume for the moment that Harry doesn't stop Victor.  What does this accomplish for Nemesis'  What's their end goal in "helping" the Shadowman here? 

Nemesis wants the Outsiders back "inside" Creation; that's the Big-Picture plan.

As to the specifics, I agree with @Talby16... it's this, I think:
Quote from: Talby16 on May 25, 2025, 03:27:49 AM
Precisely. Nemesis says in Battleground through Justine that apocalypse isn't an event, its a frame of mind. Flooding the streets with the Three Eye Drug would help lay the framework of that frame of mind in the populace. 

IIRC (I don't have the PT/BG texts on hand, to ^F thru) Ethniu voiced a similar sentiment.  She wanted the mortals aware of magic once again; and cowed by it.   Given that Three-Eye let mortals see magic, this is clearly one of the Nemesis/Outsider through-lines.

I think we should take this as part of that "apocalyptic state of mind:"  mortals who see the magic -- or at least believe it's there, even if they don't see it -- are expected to be more "apocalyptic."

And indeed, "magical foes, beyond mortal soldiers' ability to kill" looks very much like something that could prompt the battlefield use (for example) of nuclear weapons / WMD, which is another "apocalyptic" sort of mindset.  For those without Maximum Overkill weapons to hand, hopelessness and despair -- and desperate longing to have such weapons -- seem like common reactions to things like the Superghouls in the Raith Deeps, or Ethniu's personal combat prowess, or the realization that Winter comes to anywhere that Mab comes (potentially destroying a year's crops) &c.

"Apocalypse: the Mindset" would seem to follow naturally.

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