I searched and searched, can't find ANYthing on this topic (Except that maybe the Winter Queens were also known as The Morrigan, but maybe I found out what it's made out of...

"BLACKTHORN
Blackthorn is a winter tree. Its white flowers are seen even before the leaves in the spring. It is black barked with vicious thorns and grows in dense thickets. The wood is used in the cudgel shillelagh and Blasting Stick. Its thorns are used to pierce waxen images. Blackthorn indicates strong action of fate or outside influences that must be obeyed. "

EDIT: More and more interesting...
"Straif Drai'on Draenenwen Blackthorn - "Tree of Punishment and Strife" Peasant. Staves of Magickal Power. Draoi (Wizard), Drai" (Druid). Power in Visible and Invisible Worlds. Use to overcome resistance to One's will. Sorcha (bright colored) or purple-black."

Even if that stuff somehow isn't connected to the Blackstaff-- which I doubt, after reading it-- that's still some of the coolest mythology info I've seen. Nice.

I think that the Blackstaff/Walking Cane might not actually be Mother Winter's, in a "she made it/it's part of her" way. Maybe the Staff is more like the wild hunt. Earlking usually is the leader of the wildhunt, because he is the strongest hunter around. But he can be replaced, as shown. Now I think the same might apply to the Staff, and it would explain, why Mother Winter is not simply getting it back. She was bested, and she can't. Like a "no take backs" rule or something. Even the Earlking asked nicely, if he could have his wild hunt back.

That's an interesting idea. It seems to me that a rule like that would only come into play if Mother Winter lost the staff fair and square, though, like in a game of some kind. Or a bet. Seems like the kind of thing Merlin might have done, since we know he won the Edinburgh headquarters in a bet with a Faerie lord. And Harry did provide a practical demonstration early on in Cold Days that the Sidhe can hardly ever manage to keep from playing games.

Thought of a few more questions for the Q&As:

1) Harry has claimed Demonreach as his "sanctum" with the sanctum invocation. A sanctum is a person's own, private place, their own personal sanctuary. We already know most of the practical effects of sanctum spells, but I'm wondering if there are side-effects which might be similar to claiming a place as one's home. With that in mind, could Demonreach, without Harry living there, begin to develop a threshold? Could Harry hang wards on the place even without a threshold? If Harry did start living there, would the entire island begin to develop a threshold, covering the same area that's covered by the Demonreach genius loci?

2) Lea has apparently followed Harry for his entire life, protecting him from attacks coming through from the Nevernever. Given that he has lived in several places, does this mean that Lea is able to change where a place on Earth links to in the Nevernever, so that each of his homes were linked up to her killing ground? Or has Lea simply been following him around, claiming all of the places Harry's homes connect to in the Nevernever as her own, and then creating new grounds at those places? Will Lea be able to do this if Harry decides to live on Demonreach?

3) If someone is the subject of a bargain between a fae and someone else, does that person(the subject) have any rights under Faerie law? Do they have the right to know the terms of the bargain which concerns them?


I figure the answer to the last one is "no, of course not," but it seems like there could be a chance. Fae don't always seem to advertise the rules of their behavior, but they do still follow rules, like the one where a fae has to do something if they say three times that they were meant to do it.

I'm still unclear on how that rule differs from them not being able to tell a lie, unless the difference is that fae aren't usually bound by what may happen in the future. The saying-something-three-times thing could mean that, if they say they ought to do something three times, then they are bound to do everything in their power to actually do it. Otherwise, maybe they can write the statement off as being unable to control the future or something. Which I guess could be another question:


4) How does the fae rule about saying something three times differ from the rule against saying something that isn't true? Doesn't the rule against lying also prevent a fae from saying they will do something and then not doing it?

Actually we have a bit of a conundrum regarding faith and the Rampires.
We have 
in Grave Peril
vs
in Changes.

No, I think it makes sense. It's just that, while Red Court vamps are one of the groups which are strongly affected by implements of faith, Blampires are even more strongly affected by them. Red Court can be hurt and turned away by them at a distance, but Blampires can be fried by them even at a distance. At least, that's how it seemed to me in Grave Peril and Blood Rites. Which makes a kind of sense: Red Court are unnatural, soulless monsters; Black Court are even more unnatural, soulless, undead monsters. Red Court have a kind of magic flowing through them, maintaining their presence on the mortal plane; Black Court have a kind of magic flowing through them, which they not only need to maintain their presence on Earth, but also to simply animate their own bodies. They rely on it more than the Red Court does, so if something like faith magic interferes with it, they go poof faster.

Which is not to say that the Red Court isn't harmed by faith magic more easily than most beings of the Nevernever-- which, apparently, they are. It's just that Blampires have it even worse. But then, Blampires are also much more powerful, too.

When did Harry first start having /significant/ headaches?  SmF?

He had them in SmF, yes, but the headaches in SmF didn't start until after he got kicked in the face and had his nose broken. The book didn't open up with him having headaches. Turn Coat did open up that way, though, mentioning that the headaches had been continuing for the past several months. But I think it's important to note that there seems to have been something like a year and a half between SmF and TC-- SmF takes place in November of 8 ASF and TC takes place in the summer of 10 ASF-- so "the past several months" wouldn't seem to come close to covering that amount of time.  This, to me, suggests that the headaches in TC are unrelated to the headaches in SmF.

At a guess, the sequence of events seems to have been: the SmF headaches got better, Harry's nose healed, and a year or so passed. Then, several months before Turn Coat, Harry started getting headaches again, migraines, with no apparent cause. Many people, myself included, believe these were probably the Ice Cream Headaches of Paradox.

And great format, of course, Serack. 

Looking at even just the bare structure of it that's been outlined so far in the first post, I feel like this is one of those times when the cross-connections are so many that we almost need a three-dimensional model to make sense of them all. Or four-dimensional, really, representing not just the cross-connections but also the changes between the connections over time. If we had more details, we might be able to find the major vectors, like determining the spread of viruses across the world in those "outbreak" movies.

I haven't seen the WoJ talking about Harry's skill at evocation, so I'm just guessing here, but I'd bet that a statement like that would need to be qualified with, "for his age" or "of his generation." I can see Harry being considered very good at evocation for someone of his age, but not for, say, a wizard who's 150 years old and has been a Warden for 100 years of that time. It seems like any Warden who's 150 years old or so is going to be way better at evocation than Harry is, just by dent of skill gained through an extra 100 years of experience.