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Messages - Snark Knight

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1
Cinder Spires Spoilers / Re: Olympian Affair (Spoilers All)
« on: December 01, 2023, 12:53:36 AM »
I'm pretty sure the fantheory(theories) linking Alera and/or Dresden and/or CS has been explicitly denied by Jim. 

Ish. He said something like a denial but it could have been read as a sarcastic "oh, I'd neeever have a common thread running between my series". 

2
Cinder Spires Spoilers / Re: Olympian Affair (Spoilers All)
« on: November 12, 2023, 03:50:53 AM »
Olympia, Kentucky, probably? It fits the map, but unlike the other locations, it's tiny and unremarkable today.

I haven't looked up the real-world geology of the areas spires seem to map to, but it's possible they're placed not so much for existing population centers as for what's suitable ground for effectively a two mile artificial mountain.  Even with a lot of interior hollow spaces, that's an enormous weight to put on the underlying ground - it probably needs particular bedrock geology to not lean, or simply flip.

It also seems some of the life support infrastructure runs off of existing etheric currents.  They're probably sited partly based on where there are suitable nexuses to power the spires. If this is indeed the far future of the dresdenverse earth, maybe those started off as leyline nexuses.

Actually, the pale green airship crystals in CS seem to get a very similar description to the Demonreach prison crystals.  Maybe the "Merciful builders" were wizards who eventually understood exactly how Demonreach was made.

3
DF Spoilers / Re: Is Mab autistic?
« on: November 12, 2023, 03:31:36 AM »
Another thought I had:  maybe one of the side-effects of the WQ-Mantle might push the bearer towards autism-like behaviors.

I think that more likely the case.  The Queen mantles are almost a set of programming, augmenting and in many cases driving or even compelling the host's mental processes.  Look at how Molly said she'd have no choice but take the personal debt Harry was incurring getting her help with the decoy construct to fool Ebenezar fully seriously.  She meant, literally, no choice.

4
Cinder Spires Spoilers / Re: Olympian Affair (Spoilers All)
« on: November 10, 2023, 02:56:07 AM »
Makes you wonder what happened to whittle down the Spire's to those half dozen powers.

I mean, with neighbours like that, it might be a smart move to forego trade, paint your spire grey, and play like you're just part of the fog. Hope the rest forget about you, and shoot down anything that randomly wanders too close.

5
Cinder Spires Spoilers / Re: Olympian Affair (Spoilers All)
« on: November 10, 2023, 02:53:26 AM »
I like that Chicago was a headquarters for good in the Dresden files and is now the main source of antagonists here. Nice symmetry.

I haven't finished the new book yet, but does anything in it actually rule out the possibility that the Cinder Spires is the far future of the Dresdenverse?  Bob has always said the rules of magic drift over time, and the price practitioners pay that's currently the tech bane used to be different in the past. Maybe it's their sanity in the far future under the rules of the CS era.

Maybe Aurora are the baddies as a result of Marcone's long-term legacy.

6
Cinder Spires Spoilers / Re: Olympian Affair (Spoilers All)
« on: November 08, 2023, 01:26:44 AM »
That map wasn't what I'd pictured.  Weird that Albion is so British-influenced when the positioning looks like it's actually named for being on the site of Albany NY. 

Jereezi = New Jersey
Atlanta = actually Atlanta
Aurora = just about Chicago?
Dalos = Dallas
Pike = Pike's Peak CO?

Not sure about Olympia, Dependence or Kissam

Also weird that Dependence would have been a colony spire of Albion, on the other side of Auroran airspace.  Real questionable move to put a lightly defended outpost on the far side of the enemy capital.

7
DF Spoilers / Re: So What Happened to the Athame?
« on: October 19, 2023, 01:16:55 AM »
Demonreach can release different parts of a thing, whilst it may deleterious to remove a Lady’s Mantle to the Lady, it could disinfect the Athame like an autoclave. There is a very good reason Mab hasn’t asked for this.
She would have to ask a favour of Harry as Warden as the Winter Knight could not. Pride.

Perhaps she doesn't want to owe Harry.  Perhaps it would be more dangerous to separate the athame from Nemesis, though.

Ejecting the knife of power from the prison and keeping Nemesis confined might allow it a shot at Alfred.

It also might not, but even uncertainty on the issue is an excellent reason not to try.

8
DF Spoilers / Re: The Halloween Conjunction -- how secret, *really*?
« on: July 28, 2023, 05:33:50 PM »
We know Namshiel helped secure the last Titan acting against the proscription of the WG and putting humanity at risk. Namshiel must have redeemed himself in part.

Redemption?  Or "the monsters don't like competition" once again?

9
Exponential population-growth & humanity's observe/experiment/improve rinse-lather-repeat treatment of the natural world really combined in ways that I suspect only the Denarians (and a very few others) had recognized would happen (I bet the Black Death was Anduriel's attempt to slow down humans!).

And likely more plagues besides.

The interesting question is, was that for simple mustache-twirling villainy, or a sense of purpose?  Such as, trying to constrain the population of possible Outsider-summoners?

10
DF Spoilers / Re: Rudy up on charges?
« on: May 29, 2023, 03:23:54 AM »
Which does not sound like Rudy at all

I don't think Rudy was the one making the plan. I think Rudy was the instrument in someone else's plan.

The passage seemed a lot like something was jamming Harry's ability to raise a shield, and possibly putting Rudy under some sort of suggestion, compulsion, or altered perceptions.

Though I'd lean more towards Fallen, or possibly Cowl, as more probable than Nemesis.  It understands humans better than most Outsiders, but killing Karrin to manipulate Harry into going all blood rage on Rudy is pretty deep to credit it with.

11
DF Spoilers / Re: Rudy up on charges?
« on: May 25, 2023, 12:17:16 PM »
At the same time if what you say is true, no witness, no body, nothing can be proved against Rudolph.  However Rudolph can charge Harry with battery and I guess even attempted murder, along with whatever he was going to charge both him and Murphy with at the beginning of Peace Talks. 

Theoretically, he could go after Harry for the near-fatal beating. But will he really want to put Harry on the stand, where he might start talking about the question of motive and trying a temporary insanity defense?  Rudy's better off just taking the beating and leaving Murphy officially considered just one of the thousands missing or dead in the attack on the city, where she doesn't attract attention. Even though nothing could be officially pinned on him without forensic evidence that it was a bullet from his service weapon, if other police believe it, it could do him reputational damage.

But he's now terrified of Harry, and almost guaranteed to step up looking for other ways to try to neutralize him.  Probably leaning in to building the other case against him over the bank heist, and looking for opportunities to hire hit men to try to eliminate him.  Being police, he has access to the file on Harry's shooting, so probably realizes that a sniper got really close to succeeding.  Which means Harry had probably better get to work on how to make fully-body bulletproofing enchantments on his clothing, sooner rather than later.

Harry probably isn't cold-blooded enough to go there, but now that he's engaged to Lara, it would be real easy to name-drop Rudy as someone with a lot to feel guilt and emotional turmoil over in front of a Skavis at one of her social functions.

12
DF Spoilers / Re: If E=K: A different way to look at this idea
« on: May 18, 2023, 11:35:02 PM »
but an Outsider trying to kill an apprentice wizard and that apprentice turning it back on the master and then killing that master wizard (a former warden) is exactly the kind of thing the Gatekeeper would get involved in and Jim would use that.

I don't doubt Harry's actions made a lot of noise ... but I don't think the Walker was making a serious shot at his life at that point. From the unclouded memory flashback in GS, it was pretty clearly trying to goad him into using magic for violence.  It got more than it was bargaining for with setting a gas pump on fire, but if it had wanted him dead, it could have done it easily.

I'm also not even sure Justin was really the one who sent it, for that matter. I think Harry might have that assumption wrong.

13
DF Spoilers / Re: If E=K: A different way to look at this idea
« on: May 17, 2023, 02:47:23 AM »
There are a couple of ways around this objection.  First, for reasons we currently have no way of knowing about, Elaine might not have been the only wizard spending time with the Summer Court.  Elaine could have met Cowl in Summer and fallen under his influence there.  It's possible, but I don't think it's likely.  ...
The second and more logical way for Elaine to have met Cowl is before she went to Summer.  Cowl could hidden Elaine for a few days and either won Elaine over to his cause through persuasion or nemfected her and the implanted personality within Elaine convinced her to work with Cowl. 

Or the 1b possibility, Nemfected Aurora took Elaine with her on trips to the mortal earth and met with Cowl there, perhaps setting her up to be enthralled by him. Just because Harry searched for her after the fire doesn't mean he'd have noticed if she popped out of Faerie occasionally sometimes over the intervening years.  He did eventually give up sometime between the fire and Storm Front, assuming she'd died.

Personally though I think it somewhat more probable that Elaine was the vector Nemesis used to get to Aurora.  Most likely Cowl was supervising Justin's starborn plan and upon realizing Justin have been incinerated, beat the Wardens to the scene, tracked Elaine down, and took over where Justin left off with the enthrallment. Then he primed her to go to Summer asking asylum and carrying Nemesis with her.  I don't think Harry's tracking spells coming up empty is evidence against that - Cowl could almost certainly jam anything teenage Harry could do in that regard.  This possibility doesn't even strictly require her to be Kumori, although if Cowl is Simon's secret identity, their master-apprentice relationship helps explain him keeping close tabs perhaps better than just generally being two random associates with nothing more in common than Circle membership.

How much time did Harry have before the Wardens found him?  More specifically, exactly how long after Justin's death did the Wardens find Harry and why were they even looking for him or Justin at all?  Finally, whose idea was it to send the Wardens out in the first place?

We know he was free for long enough for Bob to tell him to bury the skull and come back for it later if he survived, lest the Wardens capture and destroy him.  He could have taught Harry some tracking spells at the time but they failed.  I'd guess he was on the lam for perhaps a matter of days, but likely not multiple weeks.

Simon investigating his apprentice' disappearance and calling in the Wardens also fits quite a bit of this.

14
DF Spoilers / Re: The White Council is kind of a Joke.
« on: May 14, 2023, 03:03:15 AM »
Follow this with Woj on who sent Shagnasty,"someone who considers him cheap muscle." We now know the Warden can unleash any being in DR under his own Will, as we learned with ethniu. Considering what he can call up, Shagnasty IS cheap muscle to him.

Given Harry seems to have essentially PTSD from his brush with the skinwalker, I'm not sure how a future version of Harry would end up loaning him out as cheap muscle to anybody. If there came a need to release something, I almost think he'd pick something objectively a bit worse instead, just because of his subjective anything-but-Naagloshii bias.

Mirror universe dark Harry probably wouldn't have the same qualms, though.

15
DF Spoilers / Re: Harry and the semi-immortal shapeshifter
« on: May 14, 2023, 02:55:31 AM »
As I have theorised it is actually more likely that he is able to undertake a sanctum invocation with a nascent genius loci of Chicago.

If there is a genius loci of Chicago, Namshiel could have given Marcone a substantial lead over Harry towards recognizing its existence and bonding with it - provided Namshiel doesn't fear making the host too powerful, in their relationship, anyway.

Bonding with a genius loci would go a long way towards explaining why Marcone was able to manifest his own Banner in BG, though.  Harry's was as a function of the Knight mantle.  I don't see why being a Denarian would grant Marcone the same, but being bonded to the spirit of the city would make for a stronger case.

That's not to say Harry might not be Marcone's successor to it at some point, but if you're right about such a genius loci existing, I suspect it's already spoken for at this point.

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