| 1 | Wild Mass Guesses about the [[Literature/TheDresdenFiles Dresdenverse]]: its history, its power-blocs, how magic works, etc: |
| 2 | [[WMG:Outsiders are a machine intelligence]] |
| 3 | During "Cold Days," Cat Sith was infected with Nemesis. When Dresden called Nemesis out, it's response? "A pity. I would have been more useful to them as an active, covert asset," and then, "Further conversation is not useful to our design." |
| 4 | |
| 5 | Sounds pretty robotic, doesn't it? |
| 6 | |
| 7 | Now, this could simply mean that 'Nemesis' is the machine intelligence, but remember what Harry told Thomas: "As near as we can tell, they all work together." This means that while Nemesis is likely a machine intelligence, it is apparently in synchronized communication with the rest of the Outsiders. Even if the other Outsiders are not Nemesis, they are intimately connected with Nemesis, and it to them. Further, keep in mind that for all of them to work together, there would have to be no conflicting decisions. They would all think as one, decide as one, and work as one. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | This could mean that we're dealing with a solely-machine intelligence, or perhaps a Borg-style hive-mind cybornetic construct, maybe not designed from iron and silicon and using electronic pathways, but still a large-scale, single-minded intellect with machine-style thought processes. |
| 10 | * Sort-of: it's all but stated that low-level Outsiders are bio-magical equivalent of this. It gets more complicated with Walkers, since we know little of their actual place in Outside hierarchy and whether or not they were among the initial Old Ones or constructed later, but they certainly showed ability to be the guiding intelligence(s) of the hive-mind when need arises. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | [[WMG:Outsiders are alien fae]] |
| 13 | We know that there are a number of cosmic powers in the Dresdenverse, the White God and the archangels being chief examples. However, the rest of the mythical characters in the Nevernever seem to be much more closely tied to Earth and humanity. The Fae Queens' power grows and vanes with the seasons and gods gain new attributes and personae depending on humanity's views on them. Where do Outsiders fit into this picture? Well, they are aliens. Literally. |
| 14 | Outsiders are to some ancient alien species from the other end of the universe as what Fae are to humanity. Said aliens cannot get to us because of those pesky laws of physics, but those rules do not apply to the Nevernever, so their supernatural entities can. The war against the outsiders is actually nothing more than an interstellar war! |
| 15 | * Mostly Jossed. The Outsiders are not only from beyond Dresden's universe, but from beyond his entire multiverse. Though there are other multiverses in Reality, the Outsiders canonically come from the Outside, as in Outside Reality. Though there might be a "mortal" species that exists(and I use the term loosely) Outside that the Outsiders are based upon... |
| 16 | * Both are jossed: some of their comments imply that they ruled this world before their lords were banished Outside and/or imprisoned (like at Demonreach). Then said lords engineered a tool to get back what they perceive as their rightful property - rank-and-file Outsiders. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | [[WMG:The Dresdenverse is a gigantic MMO for Elder Gods]] |
| 19 | The world is a giant artificial construct ran by the White God (which explains why he seems to care so much for our insignificant blue-green planet). The fae are the regulators, the underlying math in the system, thus explaining why they cannot lie on their own power and are riddled with compulsions (2+2 can never be five in an equation unless someone is fudging the results). The gods are the powerful plot-critical [=NPCs=] and raid-bosses. The outsiders are trolls who were banned from the servers and are trying to get back in and Nemesis is an asshole hacker from the Cthulhuian version of 4chan (so like regular 4chan but with a tentacle-compatible UI) who tries to get them in for the lulz. The outers gates are a literal firewall and Rashid's job is to ensure no trolls get in and to keep the ad-bots away. In other words, he is the universe's Captcha. Finally, the White God is the admin, his angels and archangels are the programming staff, the Knights of the Cross are the in-game moderators, the Fallen and the Denarians are beta-testers trying to break the system in order to test for stability and Harry is just a hapless NPC who gets all the spotlight because one one of the four chief programmers, Uriel, took a liking to him and inserted him into all the big world-events and [=DLCs=] for fun. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | [[WMG:Demonreach's counterpoint in the [=NeverNever=] is Tartarus.]] |
| 22 | Simply stated Demonreach is a huge prison keeping the worst of the worst supernatural offenders locked away. As Hades himself stated in Skin Game, he too is the keeper of a underground nation-prison. What part of Hades realm is known for keeping the worst of the worst from Greek mythology locked up without a key? Hmmmm.... |
| 23 | * Bonus points if this allows Harry to visit and "chat" with Hades at a later date. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | [[WMG:The Oblivion War was started by Rashid, or an earlier Gatekeeper, and uses non-Wizards because Wizards would break the Seventh Law of Magic simply by getting involved]] |
| 26 | The forces of Winter at the Gates hold back the Outsiders' main assault while the Venatori deal with any trying to sneak into this universe via summoning or belief. |
| 27 | * Alternately, there ''is'' no real "Oblivion War". Rather, the Venatori are being used by one faction or another to attack rival supernatural 'players', regardless of whether or not they're preserving knowledge of ancient godlings. This faction is using the notion of Oblivion to ensure that their cats-paws keep their activities completely secret. |
| 28 | * Or the Oblivion War is real but, [[PoorCommunicationKills partly due to security and partly because almost no one knows this,]] [[NiceJobBreakingItHero they didn't realize that the faeries are the army holding the outsiders back.]] |
| 29 | |
| 30 | [[WMG:Nelson Lenhardt or Rosanna Marcella will return to seek vengeance on Molly]] |
| 31 | In the film Iron Man 3, we see how Tony Stark's flippant rudeness and outright cruelty to a then insignificant Aldritch Killian caused Killian to develop an obsession with proving himself and with avenging himself on Tony. Similarly, in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, we see how Kirk's disregard of Khan, a character who was just another villain-of-the-week, led to Khan's overwhelming thirst for revenge and an obsession to prove himself superior to the manThe films are about how seemingly insignificant past mistakes can come back to bite you in the ass in a big way, and how supposedly small insignificant nusiances can sometimes grow to become dangerous, life-threatening adversaries. Similarly, both nelson and rosanna were just side characters in the novel of Proven Guilty. Is it possible that one, or both, of these characters will return to seek vengeance on Molly? After all, we see that Molly often makes really poor decisions out of a desire to help people, decisions which no doubt have had far reaching consequences. Perhaps this bad decision will come back to haunt her in a HUGE way, as she is forced to confront the very real damage her poor decisions have made, just as Harry did during Ghost Story. It's not like there aren't anyone interested in recruiting revenge-obsessed young men and women eager for the power. For example, Tessa from the Denarians is ALL about that. Also, Leanansidhe helped Harry get back at Justin [=DuMorne=]. |
| 32 | * [[spoiler:Unless one of them somehow winds up as the Summer Knight or the new ruler of a vampire Court or something, it's unlikely they could lay a finger on Molly now that she's the Winter Lady.]] Also, given that Murphy got demoted and lost her influence over the Splattercon!!! investigation, it's likely that Nelson ''did'' get blamed for the rampage: he was the only suspect in the first attack, lacks an alibi for the later ones, and went batshit insane by the end of the novel. So he's most likely institutionalized and/or in prison. |
| 33 | * Who says that anyone ever actually let Nelson or Rosie in on the fact that their mental wounds were Molly's fault? They weren't clued in ''before'' she messed with their heads, so telling them about magic when they're trying to recover mentally isn't exactly going to help them regain their grasp of reality. |
| 34 | |
| 35 | [[WMG:Red Court members are the basis of the chupacabra legends.]] |
| 36 | You're hungry, you're stuck in a village where the people are locked in their houses and protected by threshold law, and the only animals around are dogs, large cattle (sometimes), and goats. It's not very nourishing, magically, but wouldn't you tear into a goat or (if possible) a calf or two and drink as much of their blood as possible if you were a Red Court vampire in this situation? |
| 37 | |
| 38 | [[WMG:The ''entire series'' is all Morgan's fault.]] |
| 39 | ''Cold Days'' reveals that [[spoiler:the Outsiders, and Nemesis with them, have been making a major push to invade Reality-as-we-know-it]], and practically ''all'' of Harry's problems, from Justin to the Vampire War to the Black Council to faerie politics, stem from this fact, either directly or indirectly. We have every reason to believe that [[spoiler:the naagloshii are agents or allies of the Outsiders in the mortal world]]. When Morgan defeated one of them by luring it onto a nuclear test site to get atomized, he inadvertently alerted [[spoiler:the Outsiders]] to just how advanced and deadly mundane human weaponry had become. This spurred [[spoiler:Nemesis]] to take action ''now'', while the other supernatural power-blocks were still naive about such weaponry, and can be surprised by vanilla-human technology in the hands of [[spoiler:Outsider]] minions. (Also before we Muggles can come up with anything too lethal for ''them'' to cope with.) |
| 40 | |
| 41 | [[WMG:The Fellowship of St. Giles continues to operate after ''Changes''.]] |
| 42 | While the destruction of the Red Court may have killed all of their half-vampire members who were old enough to age to death, and freed many of the young ones to return to their old lives as mortal humans, others who survived and had already lost everyone they loved to the Reds may have stuck around to continue battling the other Vampire Courts out of vengeance and/or principle. While they'd have lost their enhanced strength and endurance as half-Reds, they would retain their training and experience as covert monster-slayers even as mortals. Also, it's implied that other types of supernaturally-touched outcasts and refugees were also affiliated with the Fellowship, possibly half-trolls like Meryl or others who'd benefit from their guidance in suppressing destructive/predatory/inhuman impulses. |
| 43 | * Good idea. Aside from helping Changelings, I expect a large part of their work now may (hillariously enough) become being matchmakers: the best way to defeat the White Court is to have its younger members fall in love before they fully turn, and so let the court go peacefully extinct. |
| 44 | * Jossed. [[spoiler:The Fellowship falls apart after the destruction of the Red Court, in large part because much of their leadership was comprised of half-vampires who aged to death when their vampire half was slain.]] |
| 45 | ** [[spoiler:Technically, we only know that the branch of the Fellowship ''which Ascher hung out'' with got wiped out. There may still be remnants elsewhere that she didn't know personally.]] |
| 46 | *** [[spoiler:The Paranet Papers, which are considered semi-canon in regards to references in the Dresden Files universe, confirms that while the Fellowship as a whole is extinct, more than a few of the members of the fellowship that survived the bloodline curse do still exist and try help, though it's mostly from an advisory and information standpoint now]] |
| 47 | [[WMG:Some time around the end of ''Grave Peril'', an agreement that Chicago would act as a neutral ground either broke down or expired.]] |
| 48 | Chicago is a major mortal population center, with a huge confluence of ley lines, notable political pull, lots of money going around, and excellent [=NeverNever=] Ways. Yet, at the start of the series, these are the major supernatural denizens of the city: |
| 49 | * Only two Wizards in it (or, in fact, anywhere in the Midwest as far as we can tell) - one who probably came there precisely because it was far from the rest of the Council, and one who followed him to try and cut his head off. |
| 50 | ** Well, don't forget, it's been stated that there are only a few hundred Wardens total. We don't know how many ''wizards'' there are in the Midwest, just how many ''wardens'' there are. |
| 51 | * A mansion owned by the Raith family which is seldom occupied (recall: Laura runs her operations there, but when Lord Raith called the shots, she traveled a lot, and it was a surprise reveal for him to show up in Chicago at all), |
| 52 | ** Given that Lara is still maintaining the illusion that Lord Raith is in charge, it's likely that ''he'' is continuing to move. If Lara joined him, it'd be a pretty clear sign that ''something'' is up. |
| 53 | * A minor Red Court presence which has not even become an official Court yet. |
| 54 | ** Bianca was a noble, and that was her court. It's a pretty major plot point in Changes. |
| 55 | *** ''WRONG''. Bianca becoming a noble (and getting her court officially recognized) is a major plot point in ''Grave Peril''. Until then, she's just a random spawn of Ortega. |
| 56 | * A Knight Of The Cross, often out of town on his travels (and it cannot be that most people avoided the city out fearing Michael - he shows up all over the place, and his home and family were said to be secret to the community at large). |
| 57 | * Toot-Toot. |
| 58 | ** There lots of Dew Drop Faeries, even if the early books. Toot is just the one that ''Harry knows''. |
| 59 | A few books later, the White Court is based out of the city, Summer and Winter routinely pay it more focus than anywhere else, Denarians make two different plays for power there, The Heirs Of Kemmler fight their last battle over Darkhallow, etc. Why the sudden change? Some sort of agreement either ended, or was considered ended by Harry's often violent actions in Chicago. |
| 60 | * Most of these changes and events are related directly to ''three'' specific events. 1) Harry being in Chicago. (Second Denarian action, most of the actions by the Fae after Summer Knight) 2) Marcone being in Chicago, (the first time the Denarians showed up, chasing the Shroud, which Marone had had stolen. The Heirs of Kemmler showing up, which was because a minion of Marcone's had found his last book and hidden it in Chicago. 3) The Weakening of the Barrier between the real world and the [=NeverNever=] by the Black Council, which caused the Summer and Winter Courts to show up since they were able to move a portion of their courts to the real world. |
| 61 | ** And the second of those factors (Marcone) is probably only a factor ''because'' of the first. Until he had his face-to-face confrontation with Harry in ''Storm Front'', Marcone probably wasn't even sure that magic was for real: he'd heard rumors about it, and probably about Bianca's nature and SI's previous run-ins with monsters, but he had to ''see'' Dresden tossing evocations around to be entirely convinced. If Harry'd never given him that demonstration that there are hidden forces at work in his Verse, he'd probably never have expected the Shroud to be any more than an historical knickknack. |
| 62 | ** So, without Harry and Marcone, the entire world would just totally ignore this huge ley line nexus? If anything, this is evidence that Harry and Marcone unknowingly broke the truce that kept Chicago off-limits, not that no such agreement ever existed. |
| 63 | *** Of course, if such an agreement existed, don't you think ''someone would have mentioned it by now?'' I mean, I don't know about you, but some major, important truce that existed that affected the ''entire supernatural community'' might be well-known enough that the White Council - and thus Harry - would know about it. I mean, these kind of agreements don't exactly work if some random supernatural schmoe like Harry can accidentally break and thus invalidate them through ignorance. |
| 64 | *** In fact, Ortega '''does''' offer to have Chicago declared "neutral territory" for the purposes of the Council/Court conflict, provided Harry defeats him during their duel from ''Death Masks''. Harry's reaction suggests that affording the city such status is an entirely new idea to him, not something that had once applied and only needed to be re-established. |
| 65 | * Don't forget that the reason so much stuff happens in Chicago is that it is a major merging point of ley lines. Most such locations are apparently heavily guarded, like Edinburgh. The major stuff around the Winter and Summer Courts happens there for that exact reason, the Shroud ends up there because its a transport hub, the Darkhallow takes place there because its a ley line hub, the whole issue with the Denarians and the Archive happened there precisely because of Marcone and Harry's presence, and the White Court operates there because there's a lot of money, communication, and transportation passing through. |
| 66 | ** ''Why isn't this hub guarded or claimed?'' |
| 67 | *** If it really is that powerful then nobody will want to let anyone else take solo control. The minute one group tried to stake a claim, all the others would gang up on them to maintain their own shares of the pie. Trying that kind of power grab would be an invitation to war. |
| 68 | ** Possibly it ''was'' guarded centuries ago, by Native American powers that once held sway in the region. With the suppression of indigenous cultural beliefs by European and Judeo-Christian traditions, possibly with a little help from the Oblivion War, these powers faded away and left the site open to a power-grab, which is precisely what the Red Court was attempting when Bianca was promoted to their nobility (remember her speech?). Sure, it took a few generations for one of the power-blocs to make the attempt, but that's not surprising when you consider the lifespans and/or immortality of the contenders. |
| 69 | * It might be that instead of there being a truce that was broken, it's simply a forgotten safety ban. Imagine that instead of everyone agreeing that there needed to be some place everyone could talk, everyone agreed that the area was simply too dangerous for the supernatural world to inhabit. Over the years it just so happens that the world has forgotten what a powerful place it was and the influx of vanilla mortals puts the supernaturals at ease. It could be that Demonreach once extended much farther than that one little island, but the water has since risen and cut off the source. |
| 70 | * Or it could be that ''every major nexus in the world'' has been subject to similar incursions by the supernatural, of late: we just don't hear about them, because those locations' resident wizards are just as proud, overworked, and/or suspicious of the Council as Harry, so don't have the time or inclination to bitch about their troubles where Harry will hear of it. |
| 71 | |
| 72 | [[WMG:Climate Change is being caused by a shift in battle in favor of [[spoiler:the Outsiders]]]] |
| 73 | Desden tells the audience early on that climate change is a product of the changing tides of the war between the Summer and Winter courts. We then learn in Cold Days that [[spoiler:the bulk of Winter's forces is occupied keeping Outsiders, well, Outside, and Summer exists to keep Winter in check and prevent them from abusing the massive armies required for this task.]] Given Climate Change, we know that, over the past couple of centuries in general and the past few decades in particular, its clear that ''something'' is tilting the balance of power in the Summer-Winter conflict in favor of Summer, or at least more in favor than it has been. [[spoiler:Obviously, it's that the war with the Outsiders isn't going very well at the moment, forcing Winter to divert forces away from their border with Summer and to the border with Outside.]] |
| 74 | |
| 75 | [[WMG:All Outsiders were once human]] |
| 76 | * This is why the Almighty rarely involves himself directly with Outsiders (they're the product of free will) and why they're so dead-set on destroying reality. They're people who become so bitter/self-involved/evil they give up their humanity entirely, become monsters, and try to destroy everything they feel made their life miserable before--namely, everything. |
| 77 | ** Cold Days reiterates that the Outsiders are old - Real old. Since the beginning of time old. And definitely older then humans. That, and its quite explicit that the reason Outsiders are so terrifying is that they are not of our universe. |
| 78 | |
| 79 | [[WMG:The Denarians are/were Outsiders]] |
| 80 | The Denarians are fallen angels. Mac was long [=WMGed=] to be related to the divine. The anathema was long hypothesized to be like the Denarians, only maybe with Lucifer or something. The anatheme of Lea's behaved like a Denarian, but was an Outside that can spread like a disease to many. "Parasite" is a term used to describe Nemesis, but in Ghost Story a Parasite is keeping Harry's body working. Why would Demonreach, and especially Mab, work to save the life of a person they know is compromised, agree to keep it a secret from Harry, and then send him into his first assignment against its fellow conspirators/agents? Unless it is a different parasite, Lash, who is stated would have a presence in Ghost Stories? Low level infection by Outsiders is increased chaos and such, sounds like Harry as he was beginning to succumb to Lashiel. |
| 81 | |
| 82 | The Denarians are/were Outsiders, and Lashiel's Shadow, Lash, giving Harry immunity to Nemesis by being a parasite already "infecting" him would be just in line with his stupidly high dumb luck stat. |
| 83 | |
| 84 | * Jossed by ''Skin Game'': [[spoiler:The parasite has nothing to do with Outsiders, and it's hinted that Nicodemus is just as leery of the coming Outsider/Nemesis incursion as everyone else.]] |
| 85 | |
| 86 | [[WMG:Mortals are immune to Nemesis]] |
| 87 | If it could infect mortals, then we could assume that at least one of the human villains were infected. And since it can infect something as powerful as Cat Sith over a matter of hours, it should have spread a lot faster, even to Rashid and the Merlin. Since it evidently hasn't, or Harry would already be doomed, then it must not be able to affect mortals so easily, possibly at all.\ |
| 88 | The Black Council, then, may not be working for Nemesis. They may have engineered it, or simply be voluntary Outsider collaborators. The human villains in other books weren't controlled by Nemesis, they were either mind controlled, or much more believably, [[HumansAreBastards they made their own choices]]. |
| 89 | * So I'm guessing you missed the part where Lily told Harry that his first three major cases, all of whom were mortals, were infected by Nemesis. |
| 90 | ** And how did Lily know this, again? |
| 91 | *** Also, the Shadowman and the Nightmare weren't pure mortals, they were both magic-users, and Denton only became vulnerable to Nemesis when he was using the Hexenwulfen belt. It's possible that opening yourself to magic also opens you to this sort of influence. |
| 92 | ** Who cares where Lily found out about it? Harry SAW Nemesis. Remember when he Soulgazed Denton and saw how his soul had been plastered and painted with disgusting black filth? |
| 93 | *** That couldn't have been Nemesis. That was just the influence of black magic, pure and simple. Harry says that Rashid's reaction to remembering looking at Nemesis with his Sight was a lot like when Harry used his Sight on Shagnasty. Harry soulgazed Denton (which is a derivative of the Sight) and DIDN'T get debilitated and nauseous. It couldn't have been Nemesis. |
| 94 | *** The Shadowman's house was likewise stained to Harry's Sight, possibly because Sells wasn't very precise at magic and his Nemesis-sullied magical energies had soaked into the premises. |
| 95 | ** It seems there's more than one kind of "infected" by Nemesis. Cat Sith was a puppet with no personality; but Maeve still had her individuality. ''How'' Nemesis infects humans may simply be different. |
| 96 | ** Maeve was cooperating with Nemesis willingly. She wanted it. Cat Sith was taken against his will, so Nemesis had to overpower his personality before it could control him, which was why he was turned into a puppet. |
| 97 | *** It's not that different from conventional mind-control, for which there can be fine thralls who actually don't realize they're under the influence, rough thralls who stand around like zombies, or Renfields who are like rabid dogs. Cat Sith fought against the influence enough that making him a malkish Renfield was Nemesis's only option. |
| 98 | * Near as it seems, Nemesis functions by giving free will. Immortals like Maeve don't have that, but mortals do. It stands to reason that mortals must be immune to Nemesis. |
| 99 | ** We don't know that Nemesis granted Maeve free will, only that it granted her the ability to lie. It certainly ''didn't'' give Cat Sith free will; rather, it subjugated whatever self-determination the malk already had. |
| 100 | * Jossed as of Peace Talks/Battle Ground with [[spoiler:Justine.]] Cat-Sith was forcibly infected by HWWBefore, who most likely could overpower most of Cat's defenses. As to the source of the Nemesis - it's [[spoiler:He Who Walks Beside]]. |
| 101 | |
| 102 | [[WMG:Black Magic corruption is really Nemesis.]] |
| 103 | The White Council are mistaken about black magic, in that it doesn't ''directly'' corrupt its users: rather, it renders them susceptible to Nemesis infection. The Council's practice of immediately executing black magic's practitioners means they've never taken the time to study what actually goes on when people succumb to it, so they have no idea that it's an external contamination. This might explain why Kumori doesn't seem nearly as heartless or twisted as other necromancers: she's ''already'' working for Cowl on the Black Council's behalf, so Nemesis has no need to infect her to use her for its own ends. |
| 104 | |
| 105 | [[WMG:Demonreach is the place on Earth that most closely corresponds with the Outer Gates in the [=NeverNever=].]] |
| 106 | * Rashid the Gatekeeper did seem to think the name was oddly appropriate. And Harry being able to invoke the island as a sanctum would correspond with his alluded-to ability to have authority over Outsiders. And the island does serve as the source of a very powerful and very dark ley line. And Ebenezer did write that Harry was one of the few he'd trust to oversee the place, although he also implied that a similar trust in Maggie was misplaced. |
| 107 | ** Demonreach is revealed in Cold Days to be a [[spoiler:prison for things more evil and powerful then anything we've seen so far. The ley lines flowing from Demonreach are just the prisoner's waste heat]]. Harry actually goes to the Outer Gates with Mother Summer, and it's implied that without help from a near God Like being, the trip is a long one, well outside the range of a [=NeverNever=] jump. |
| 108 | *** Or at least that its in a part of the [=NeverNever=] that doesn't correspond to the 'real world'. |
| 109 | [[WMG:Mother Winter's "walking stick" is the Blackstaff]] |
| 110 | I'm fairly certain the author mentioned the Blackstaff used to belong to someone else, who wants it back. Mother Winter can't travel around as easily because the Council has it now. |
| 111 | |
| 112 | How she lost it then? And did Mother Summer lose stick too. Idea- since Mother Winter, and possibly, MS was known as Literature/BabaYaga MS's walking stick could have skull with green fire at top. |
| 113 | * Not sure how this relates, but the Fairy Queens and possibly the whole court were once known as Hekate. Is she associated with any staffs? |
| 114 | |
| 115 | [[WMG:Humans wielding Soulfire (such as Harry) can grant Free Will to Spirits (such as Bob)]] |
| 116 | * Angels themselves are made of Soul[[{{Tradesnark}} ™]], but don't have Free Will. Spirits are basically a mind without a body or soul, as I understand it. The key to Free Will seems to be having both a soul and a mind, which only humans apparently do. Since it's fairly common for humans to exchange pieces of their souls, what if Soulfire allows Harry to give a piece of his soul away? Could he give Bob a soul? This may or may not extend to Faeries. |
| 117 | ** The main problem is the only instances of Harry apparently giving Free Will to Bob, or Lash, or anyone is distinctly before he ever got access to Soulfire. |
| 118 | *** I thought Bob still doesn't have free will, his nature is a reflection of people's impression of him. Lash was a shadow of an angel. It's possible that she was/is more vulnerable to soul exchange than Lasciel would have been, and she existed in Harry's mind, which probably made her "Human" enough to gain Free Will. |
| 119 | ** Dead Beat has Bob ''deciding'' to side with Harry at the end, despite being, at the time, property of Cowl. Lash, likewise, is gone from the picture and makes her big sacrifice before Harry gets Soulfire (and is speculated to be the ''reason'' he has Soulfire in the first place). |
| 120 | *** It's probable that Cowl setting Bob down and preparing to ascend to demigodhood left Bob without an owner, therefore Harry was able to "reclaim" him. It's kind of ambiguous. Lash, on the other hand, wasn't a true angel, and may have been susceptible to change in a way that Lasciel would never have been. Also kind of ambiguous. |
| 121 | ** Bob and Lash have ''NAMES.'' Names have power. It's stated in ''Skin Game'' that by ''calling'' Lasciel Lash, he gave her a distinct identity. Bob is distinct from the "random spirit of intellect that served Kemmler-same being, but also different. Which also raises an interesting question about Alfred Demonreach... |
| 122 | |
| 123 | [[WMG:A death curse doesn't necessarily need to be a ''curse'']] |
| 124 | * This is primarily just idle speculation, but a death curse is, effectively, a wizard gathering up what's left of the energy keeping them alive and using it for one last powerful spell. They die in the process, and most times we see one used or discussed it's generally to get back at some enemy of the dying wizard (generally whoever's put them in the position of being close enough to death for it to be a viable action). It may be possible to do ''any'' sort of magic with it, though. Perhaps power and/or knowledge could be passed on to another (in fact, a variation on this could be an explanation for beings like the Archive), or otherwise-impossible enchantments could be laid on objects or people. If a dying wizard thought the best way to get the result they wanted was to, say, dump a ton of magical power into Harry (or, on the other side, one of his enemies), it could result in a massive power-up (either giving him the strength to overcome whatever deity he's facing at the moment or turning a foe into a much bigger threat). Or it could be used - by a wizard with enough power to throw into their death curse - to free [[spoiler:Harry from his position as Winter Knight.]] |
| 125 | ** [[spoiler:Not too likely; Winter Knights are intended to be deployed against mortals as well as others, and have presumably been used to knock off wizards before, so Mab's probably already confronted and taken precautions against that possibility. "LOSE POWER!" isn't much harder for a bitter, dying person to holler than "DIE ALONE!", after all.]] |
| 126 | ** Sub-WMG; A death "spell" can be used to grant wizard powers to someone. |
| 127 | ** Alternatively, a wizard could create a working far beyond their normal skill to do pretty much anything and then [[ThanatosGambit power it with their own death]]. Note that death curses seem to break the normal 'magic can't think' rule, which is why 'Die Alone' was possible as a curse. |
| 128 | *** Also, since Harry has Soulfire now, he could use a working based on a soulfire 'death curse' to AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: what other magic would let you channel your entire soul and magic through a spell in a controlled manner? |
| 129 | |
| 130 | [[WMG:Raith is pronounced "Writhe"]] |
| 131 | * StealthPun. As in, "writhing around in ecstasy". |
| 132 | ** Doubt it. Lara having a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith ("In this house? What else?") kinda spoils that. |
| 133 | |
| 134 | [[WMG:Kemmler is responsible for World War 2]] |
| 135 | In ''Ghost Story'' [[spoiler:Evil Bob]] dresses as a Nazi, has his realm in the shape of the German defenses of the beaches at D-Day and commands legions of werewolf Nazi soldiers. Since [[spoiler:Bob]] is a reflection of the person who owns him, Kemmler had a strong connection to the Nazis. He did much more than just reanimate mass graves in eastern Europe as we're told in ''Dead Beat'' ....that was just "Phase 2" of his plan to create an invincible army to bring about the ZombieApocalypse. The first was to use magic to give a few human dictators mind control powers and occult knowledge so that they could generate a sufficient body count... |
| 136 | ** This one is less Wild Mass Guessing and more Reasonably Plausible Conjecture... |
| 137 | |
| 138 | [[WMG:The [=NeverNever=] is [[FlatWorld flat]].]] |
| 139 | Every part of the nearby, relatively normal area where the Faeries live is positioned more or less relative to their respective parts of the earth, FromACertainPointOfView, but it's canon that different parts of the [=NeverNever=] are usually much closer to and/or possibly further from each other than their relative earth locations. Ergo, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that the entire of the [=NeverNever=] is more or less flat, and the ''physical'' as well as metaphorical edges just trail off into the wild zones. If your head starts hurting as soon as you understand this, if you ever do understand it, that's a good sign because [[MindScrew that's how the [=NeverNever=] tends to work]]. |
| 140 | * More likely it's form is pure MindScrew, where things are as far away from each other as they want. |
| 141 | |
| 142 | [[WMG:The Fomor have stone skin.]] |
| 143 | It's mentioned that they're part-elf, but there's also an off-hand mention that they're lizard-like. Brown or lichenated stone skin cracking into a surface of small, loosely connected plates can look like scales, and fictional representations of the Fomor ''do'' tend to have them made of stone as often as not. If they also have their fleshy bits showing, with the more physical, Fomor-blooded ones being mostly-stone [[TheBrute brutes]] and the more elven ones crossing the BishonenLine into a barely-stone form (no matter which type end up more magically powerful, though a subversion of MonstrosityEqualsWeakness would be interesting), that would be pretty cool in my opinion. |
| 144 | * Have we even ''seen'' a Dresdenverse elf up close in the novels yet? We've seen Sidhe, but they're not the same species of fae; for all we know, elves in this Verse might already be scaly or stone-like. |
| 145 | * What we've seen of the fomor actually makes them sound more like Deep Ones and fish people then anything else, though given their predilection for fleshwarping magics that may just be because they live underwater. |
| 146 | |
| 147 | [[WMG:All wizards, not just Harry, are Scions.]] |
| 148 | Kincaid says he is 'as human as Harry is,' and it's never explained at all why Wizards have the power they do. It doesn't make sense that it's just out of the blue, and it's stated that wizards tend to reproduce wizards. Wizards are scions of some kind of unnamed divine/magical creature, and their unique bloodline gives them the ability to use magic. Also, Kincaid has lived for quite a long time, and he doesn't seem to actually age at all. This would likely mean that, if this theory is true, the scion blood in wizards - while diluted over the ages - is responsible for their ability to recover and their extended lifespan. |
| 149 | * Wizardry is just a talent at using magic; any mortal can ''use'' magic, its just that talented humans are naturally far better at doing so. Mortals with little magical talent and enough time and instruction (i.e. anyone with one of the ''denarii'') can be very powerful, they just need a lot more work at it. |
| 150 | ** Case in point, Thomas has ''no'' magical talent--but he can still do Harry's tracking spell as a ritual. He can't make one as strong as Harry, or as quickly, and it seems Thomas's version is strictly to find Harry in particular, but he can still pull it off. He looks it as a learned skillset, same as fixing a car or working a computer. |
| 151 | ** Moreover, Butters was able to create a protective circle after having it demonstrated and explained to him ''once''. This, from a guy who'd only recently begun to accept that magic was for real. |
| 152 | ** Its been explained that everyone MIGHT be able to use magic but only wizards can sense magic, so a muggle trying to use magic is like a blind person trying to paint (which, incidentally, they can do rather well sometimes). |
| 153 | |
| 154 | [[WMG:The effect that nuclear explosions have on the corresponding place in the [=NeverNever=] to ground Zero is to cement what little reality they have in place, at least for a time.]] |
| 155 | In ''Grave Peril'', Dresden uses a bag of powder that includes depleted uranium to counteract the ghost's unreality and get any bits of it that get struck by the powder stuck in the real world. I was wondering about what sort of backlash there might be on the other side of a just-closed portal to the [=NeverNever=] if a nuclear weapon went off (such as, for example, Morgan vs. the Elder skinwalker), and a slight disturbance from the explosion or a burst of change in the local geography just didn't seem right, and while absolutely no backlash would fit with the mythos, it wouldn't fit with [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome the tone of the Dresden Files]]. Thinking back to the depleted uranium powder, it is possible that a nuclear explosion (or at least one using uranium or transuranic materials) would actually have enough of a ''negative'' backlash on the local [=NeverNever=], assuming there was a sufficient link between it and the blast site (such as a just-closed portal), to temporarily make it ''less'' shifting, the area and duration likely being based on the strength of the local connection to the real world and the size and strength of the bomb. I have a hunch that "real stuff" could have something to do with the Ways, but probably not.\ |
| 156 | Then again, I could be going entirely the wrong way with this, and it not only has no effect on the [=NeverNever=] but could make the place a den for Radiation Gnomes and turn the thing it landed on into a half-melted, nuclear-fire-spitting version of itself that will [[ChekhovsGun show up later in the series, if only through hearsay]]. You never can tell with this series. |
| 157 | * It probably depends on the degree of integration to the [=NeverNever=] you're talking about. Some parts, especially in say Grave Peril, correspond closely to the real world, and thus would probably show the effects of a nuke, or at least it's devastation. At the same time though, much of the [=NeverNever=] has little-to-no correspondence with the real world, and even the parts that ''do'' correspond often seem to be out of sync with the real world time-wise. |
| 158 | * I think that a nuclear explosion and it's destruction (not to mention it's status in the collective consciousness as the Ultimate Weapon) would change the connection between the [=NeverNever=] and the real world. Just as the FBI headquarters and a hunting store link to the Erlking's Halls, a nuclear testing site would lead to the testing grounds of ancient magical superweapons. Or, in the case of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki sites, to the places where those weapons were employed. |
| 159 | * The uranium wasn't useful because it was radioactive, it was useful because it was HEAVY. |
| 160 | ** Actually, it was useful because it was a rare earth metal. That makes it refined essence of elemental earth, useful for binding things of spirit to the physical world. Its the same way salt (as in salt of the earth) burned air furies in ''Literature/CodexAlera''. |
| 161 | *** Depleted Uranium works for Harry's Ghost Dust because Harry BELIEVES that it's disproportionately heavy. Another Practicioner could get the same result from lead or gold. Remember, Mort's Ghost Dust wasn't likely to have any ingredients he felt were unsafe. But a nuclear device doesn't distribute it's constituents with belief or intent, so they probably won't have any effect at all on the [=NeverNever=]. |
| 162 | |
| 163 | [[WMG:...When a child younger than a certain point gains the shadow of a Fallen (or the fallen itself), the two become inextricably linked after a different point, once enough time has passed.]] |
| 164 | Had Michael's son gotten the denarius on him, he'd have become a demonic version of Jesus (with the God part of the deal one or two rungs lower, of course). Whether he'd be an AntiChrist or not depends on the individual Fallen, of course. |
| 165 | * I don't believe that. Despite how it worked in Shezza's fanfiction, if that was the case then far more of the Denarians would be/have been taken as kids. |
| 166 | ** I hadn't seen the FanficRecs page until checking what "Shezza's fanfiction" was about, or the work itself, so that was just coincidence. But I was really going more with the "it hasn't happened because no one's tried before" point, since it was a DesperationAttack and they had previously only given the coins to people who were old enough for a decent amount of magic to have awakened in them (regardless of whether they actually had powers). |
| 167 | *** As Harry and multiple other characters point out several times, there was nothing desperate about it. Nicodemus is a ChessMaster. He knew that there were two outcomes there. Harry picks up the coin, or Little Harry picks up the coin. Either way, he's (theoretically) gotten a powerful agent. |
| 168 | *** Except that Lasciel was, in that book, stated to be typically opposed to Nicodemus - or at least not subservient to him. It seems more likely that his play was to corrupt and undermine an opponent who'd given him some trouble - ideally Harry Sr., but I imagine getting at Michael through Harry Jr. would have been a perfectly satisfying outcome. Or, perhaps it's simply "Now I'll be rid of her, '''finally'''", not much caring as to whether the coin was picked up by either of them - because he'd be rid of, more or less, an enemy either way. Lasciel's coin is buried by Harry Sr., Harry Jr. picks up the coin and Harry Sr. gets Sayna and the coin joins the other captured coins, or Sr. picks up Jr. and gets Sayna and the coin joins the other captured coins. And in any case he no longer has to worry about giving Cassius a coin, and thus doesn't invite Lasciel into his ranks. Not so much desperate as a good way to avoid a possible problem. |
| 169 | * This doesn't seem to apply to Dierdre, who has Denarian parents. Presumably they gave her a coin when she was very young, yet aside from the usual body-morphing any blackened denarius would provide, it doesn't seem to have turned her into anything worse than an incestuous human psycho-bitch. |
| 170 | |
| 171 | [[WMG:If Cowl and Kumori succeed in abolishing death, we'd all be screwed.]] |
| 172 | Aside from the obvious problems, such as what happens if you're crushed to a pulp and ''can't die'', there's the question of "where does all the power come from?" When Harry casts Fuego, the energy comes from the environment. All other spells are the same way, and Harry repeatedly remarks how draining spellcasting can be. This magic is also responsible for how long wizards can live for. Now, imagine that everyone is tapping into this well forever. |
| 173 | ** Abolishing death didn't work out to well when Webcomic/{{minus}} [[http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus119.html tried it, either.]] |
| 174 | ** Yeah, I forgot about overpopulation. |
| 175 | ** Harry points out a few downsides himself, actually. |
| 176 | ** He just scratched the surface. Forget human overpopulation, what about all the animals and plants and fungi and bacteria and protists? |
| 177 | ** Now, what if they gave everyone ResurrectiveImmortality instead? Or set things up so you reincarnate with all your memories. |
| 178 | * Regarding being screwed if Kumori and Cowl get their way: it's entirely possible that Kumori has been ''promised'' that her work for the Circle will abolish death forever, but that whoever promised her this (Nemesis?) neglected to mention how. After all, if the Outsiders annihilate every living thing in the universe, death ''will'' be ended forever, because nothing will be left that can die... |
| 179 | |
| 180 | [[WMG:The three major houses of the White Court are directly opposed to the three Swords.]] |
| 181 | Fidelacchius, Esperacchius, Amoracchius: Faith, Hope, and Love, "[[http://bible.cc/1_corinthians/13-13.htm and the greatest of these is Love]]." And the three biggest Houses feed on despair, fear, and lust, with the Raiths being the most powerful. It's not a perfect set of opposites, but if Raiths are repelled by true love, it makes sense for faith and hope to be the others' banes. All of which means that if Thomas gets ''any'' one of the swords, it should be Amoracchius. |
| 182 | * Update: and the Dresden Files RPG hints that "truly selfless Hope and Courage" could be just as deadly, but there's a lack of experimental data to prove it. I was close. :) |
| 183 | * At one point during ''Changes'', Harry fights off a Red Court vampire using his necklace, saying that the Red Court is the most vulnerable to objects of faith. |
| 184 | * It was stated explicitly, I think in White Knight, that the each of the three houses of the White Court are harmed by the opposite of the emotion they feed on. Love for the Raiths, courage for the Malvora, and hope for the Skavis. |
| 185 | * The RPG books suggest that there are White Court vampires that feed on wrath, so a Sword of Peace might appear/be created in time for the apocalyptic trilogy. Of course, the RPG books also suggest a Blue Court of vampires and an Autumn Court of the fae, so take it with a grain of salt. |
| 186 | ** There probably can't be a Sword of Peace, because there are only three holy Nails to go around. Possibly the Spear of Destiny would be opposed to Wrath-feeding Whites. |
| 187 | ** The benign side of Wrath isn't Peace, it's Passion. At least, that's what Harry points out to Lash in ''White Night'', and she doesn't dispute this argument. |
| 188 | ** Besides, Sword of Peace? A bit conflicted of nature there... |
| 189 | *** Si vis pacem, para bellum. |
| 190 | |
| 191 | [[WMG:As in an above guess, the Fallen are Fallen because they refused to follow one of God's orders...]] |
| 192 | ...And that order was to love, which angels can't do. Some of the angels twisted the instruction, such as Uriel's infatuation with humanity and (possibly) The Other Michael's lust for battle, but a few just said "no way, Yahweh" and got kicked out. In the mean time, Lash has come to know and care for Harry to the point that she would and did sacrifice herself willingly to save Harry, and what is the word for emotionally and intellectually caring about another person's life above your own? Some say "love". Ergo, in doing what she did, having lived in Harry for so long and seen humanity and himself through his own eyes and mind, respectively, Lash may have not only redeemed herself, but also became more than a "normal" angel... she became a human who simply doesn't have a body or brain to hold her. |
| 193 | ** There is a key mistake in your theory. The Archangels Michael and Uriel are never stated or implied to be Fallen. So angels can love. Lash indicated the Fallen fell because they did not like following orders or the form of morality demanded angels follow. |
| 194 | *** Except that the theory states that Michael and Uriel (and presumably others) found a way to follow the letter of the order to love, even if not the spirit - and the supernatural world operates on ExactWords. Basically, they found a way to love their duty whilst the Fallen did not find a way (or didn't care to find one) to comply with the letter of the command. Fits the way the setting operates, at least, if we assume that the capacity to love one's duty was always in the nature of the angels of the White God - or some special circumstance made their natures more fluid. |
| 195 | |
| 196 | [[WMG:Angels, fallen or not, claiming not to have free will is bullshit.]] |
| 197 | * If Angels don't have free will, how on earth did a bunch of them say 'No' and then start a rebellion. That requires free will, after all. The Angels may not ''realize'' they have free will, much like Lash's Shadow didn't seem to clue into it, but they do. |
| 198 | ** Roleplaying Game explains it. Demons do not have 'free will' either. They cannot act against their nature. While they could refuse to serve and fall, that just means they are just as enslaved, but now they can do nothing BUT rebel. |
| 199 | *** But if they have the power to say 'No, I wont do that', then they're already acting against their nature. What's to stop a demon who now can do nothing but rebel from rebelling against that and acting neutral? I understand that as an RPG mechanic it works that way, and that from the angels/demons perspective that way, but as a Human Being with Free Will, that sounds an awful lot like a nice excuse for not using your free will, rather than not having it. |
| 200 | ** Maybe angels have no free will, but ''God'' does. He creates them to fulfill certain roles, which they are locked into. When He changes His mind about what they should be doing, some allow Him to alter their assignments accordingly, but others are so committed to their initial tasks that they rebel rather than be changed. |
| 201 | ** The nature of a supernatural creature seems to be bound up in their name - it's possible that their names were changed to allow for the change in nature, and that this didn't work out so well in some cases. |
| 202 | *** It's more they have Intellectus on the effects of choices; especially their own choices. If you know immediately the result of your actions; and most of the possible reactions; then there really isn't any choice at all...unless you go full dark/crazy and forsake EVERYTHING. |
| 203 | |
| 204 | [[WMG:There's an upcoming outsider invasion and ''half the factions knew for the entire series'']] |
| 205 | So, Harry's capacity to burn straight through outsider magic immunity would be really important to anyone wanting to do anything at all relating to outsiders. And a whole lot of people have been variously gunning for or trying to recruit Harry. Here's a partial list: |
| 206 | * The Black Council has tried to kill Harry indirectly in like half the books, but Cowl and Kumori try to recruit him. Possibly some dissension in the ranks or a temporary change of plans that's later reversed. |
| 207 | * The Red Court tries to kill him in Grave Peril, recruit (or kill) him in Death Masks, and later kill him. The level of overlap with the Black Council is unknown. |
| 208 | * The White Court tries to kill him for only semi-related reasons. Later, Black Council elements try to kill him. |
| 209 | * The Denarians try to recruit him, with killing him as plan B. |
| 210 | * Demons attempt to recruit him directly. |
| 211 | * Rashid is uncertain of his loyalty and exceptionally worried about him. |
| 212 | * Mab is ''really insistent'' on recruiting him instead of shopping around the halls of powerful people in need of ''even more'' power, which includes the entire senior council. |
| 213 | * Team Heaven and subsidiaries attempt to recruit him, but that might be just or at least partially because they're generally nice people. |
| 214 | Basically, the theory runs like this: Somehow, all the above people are aware a whole bunch of outsiders are incoming. All of them want him around to a) Kill said whole bunch of outsiders, or b) bind them to their will. Both would rather kill him than have him do the opposite and either make the situation even worse or totally derail their evil plan. Their choice of tactics depends on which they believe more likely, Rashid and Mab are in camp A, the rest are in camp B. |
| 215 | * ''Cold Days'' confirms that [[spoiler:an Outsider incursion is indeed underway and always has been since forever. but a major push has started a few years back, and one of Winter's major responsibilities is to provide defense for the Outer Gates, which means Harry's outsiderbane nature is probably part of what made him such an attractive Knight]]. |
| 216 | ** Bear in mind that the Black Court are essentially reanimated corpses. To them, killing Harry is also a power play to put them on their side. |
| 217 | * Jossed on a technicality: more like "almost all powerful faction". Actually confirmed by ''Peace Talks/Battle Ground'': [[spoiler:starborn are born (sorry) every 666 years, and there's some unspecified calamity (as in "everyone is too scared to elaborate") associated with this too. Since the only known trait of the starborn is their link to Outsiders and power over, apparently they're born several decades before a major incursion, which is also confirmed o be starting.]] |
| 218 | |
| 219 | [[WMG:Ferrovax's status]] |
| 220 | * Jim has said that Ferro is one of the only entities that could actually take down Mab. Now, obviously he's going to have a lot of raw power at his disposal, but what if it's more than that? Jim is a big fan of {{Meaningful Name}}s, and there's something in Ferrovax's that counts. ''Ferro'', which looks like Ferrum, the Latin word for "iron". In the Dresdenverse, Dragons are "semi-divine beings who were once given authority over various portions of the mortal universe, and who were responsible for their orderly procession." What if part of Ferrovax's "portfolio," for lack of a better word, is iron? He might be the reason that iron is the Bane to Faeries. |
| 221 | ** Take the idea more widely: Its shown that every aspect of the Universe has an 'avatar' of some sort. Fairies represent magic, Angels represent God's will (Or 'Soul'), and so on. Dragons are the avatars of the physical world all together, and Ferrovax isn't Mab's equivalent, but is on par with the Mothers. |
| 222 | Doubt it. Butcher stated that Ferrovax is Mab's equal-and even then, if they fought, it would be less one side gets defeated and more both continue existing |
| 223 | ** That part is just because they're both immortals. If they threw down under circumstances where they could be hurt, like on Halloween or on a battlefield created for the purpose, it would be different. |
| 224 | ** Maybe Ferrovax, and other evil dragons, are like the Skinwalker: Semi-divine beings who were warped because they betrayed their purpose. |
| 225 | |
| 226 | [[WMG:The Red Court is already alive again.]] |
| 227 | The magic used to destroy the Red Court by definition excluded those who weren't complete members (full vampires) at the time, meaning there are an unknown but significant number of people with the capacity to turn at any point in the future. It's implausible that at least one of them wasn't an agent of the Red Court or Black Council (who ought to have an interest in founding a new version of the former, with enough changes to its methods of operation). And while people in this series can have significant arrogance-derived blind spots, the sheer numbers who had to have been aware of the planned familicide, over the period of time said plans were in effect, almost demand somebody had to have seen the possibilities and made contingency plans. They're certainly crippled for now, and have good reason to abandon their former strongholds, resources, and mode of operation, but there's really no good reason to think they've been eradicated. |
| 228 | * It's explicitly mentioned that anyone who was infected, but not fully turned, was turned back into a normal human. For this to work, there'd have to have been someone who was infected after Susan fully turned and before she died (so, in the window of about 30 seconds, tops?) Going by the RPG's rules, anyone who wanted protection from the spell would have needed to create a spell of ''even greater power'', and have it set up and executed before the ritual was finished, which is not a level of preparedness that you take to defend against an ''extremely'' remote possibility that depends on at least a dozen ''extremely'' unlikely events to happen.\ |
| 229 | So there might be one infected left, who would simultaneously be the most and least lucky creature on the face of the planet. |
| 230 | * It's mentioned in ''Ghost Story'' that there are several of them left, either ones in magically protected areas (presumably the force of the spell is diluted a bit by being spread out over thousands of targets rather than the expected ''two'') or the youngest of them, depending on how exactly the spell was set up. It could be that it missed all those infected in the several years after Susan's initial infection, or those who were turned by vampires who turned after Susan was infected (Who would probably not be permitted to make new ones, but maybe they did anyway). Either would leave a small number of extremely feeble Reds left. This still leaves them in even worse shape than the Black Court though, and unlikely to recover any significant influence in the foreseeable future. |
| 231 | ** It isn't when someone was infected that's important, but when they crossed over into being a ''full'' Red Court vampire. Susan was infected several years ago, and there would definitely have been a number of vampires created since then, but she was still considered "the youngest" when she was killed, because she had only ''just'' been converted ''fully''. |
| 232 | ** It's mentioned in ''Ghost Story'' that there ''might possibly'' be some of them left, not that there actually ''were''. |
| 233 | ** Even if the survivors start breeding as fast as they can, the court as a whole will still have lost most of it's power. At some point it was mentioned that the power of the red court (mind control, freakier healing and fleshmask powers, etc) was spread throughout all the vampires from their progenitor. But now all the Lords of the Outer Night are dead, and that power has been stripped out of the pool so to speak. All the new young vampires who survived have for the court is the juice they have on their own. |
| 234 | |
| 235 | [[WMG:The previous Archives (Ivy's mother and grandmother) were murdered.]] |
| 236 | Ivy's grandmother was killed in a freak automobile accident, passing the position of the Archive to her seventeen year old daughter, who committed suicide after Ivy was born thus passing the position of the Archive to a newborn Ivy. Sounds like an unfortunate series of coincidences, right? Yeah, right. There's no such thing such as coincidences in the Dresden Files universe. |
| 237 | |
| 238 | The Archive is an immensely powerful magical being. So much that Ivy, a twelve year old, managed to defeat a bunch of Denarians without breaking a sweat. How, then couldn't her grandmother protect herself from an automobile accident? I know that magic can't solve everything, but still, Ivy's grandmother should be able to protect herself. You'd think that a being as important as the Archive would be heavily protected like Ivy, who has Kincaid as a bodyguard. Keep in mind that some of the so-called accidents are cover-ups for something supernatural. For that matter, it would be pretty easy for a warlock to use thaumaturgy to cause an accident without anyone being the wiser. |
| 239 | |
| 240 | Ivy's mother committed suicide. Really? Suicide is a premeditated act, not something you do on a whim. I don't know about you, but if I were the White Council, I'd go through some preventive measures to prevent someone as important and vital such as the Archive to do harm to herself. Shouldn't they do something to prevent her from killing herself? Of course, there are ways for someone to arrange murder while making it look like suicide. In-universe example: Elaine nearly killed herself out of despair in White Night because of a Skavis White Court vampire. She had already slitted her wrists and everything. If Harry didn't use the telepathic link between them to get rid of the Skavis's influence Elaine would have died. Hell, it would be easy for someone to use mind-control on her to spotlight her despair, like what Molly explained in Turn Coat. |
| 241 | |
| 242 | By killing the two previous Archives and passing the position to Ivy, it compromises her supposed neutrality. Ivy, for all her maturity and knowledge, is still a child. Children aren't exactly known for their rationality, after all. The main reason why Nicodemus and Tessa's plan in Small Favor worked was because they took advantage of her age and feelings. They threatened Kincaid, the father she never had, and Harry, the person who gave her another name other than just 'The Archive'. Both were the only people who treated her as a human being, and that's why Nick and the Nickleheads managed to capture her. It wouldn't have worked if Ivy was older, or if the Archive had already formed a personality of her own before receiving the position. It's not that far of a stretch to think that it's a part of someone's plan. |
| 243 | |
| 244 | * The Council does not have access to the location of the Archive at all times, nor would the Archive appreciate people spying on her family. Also, if the Archive decided to kill herself, what exactly is the Council going to do to stop her? She is a Signatory to the Accords, a faction all her own, and at least as powerful as a lesser Faerie Queen. They do not have the authority to tell her what to do nor do they have the raw power to do so, especially if they're trying to stop someone who could just Death Curse herself to death. I do think Ivy's grandmother's accident was suspicious, but her mom was a depressed teen that got overwhelmed. If I recall correctly, Ivy actually states she knows her mom killed herself, and she knows everything that the previous Archives knew (meaning she knows the thought processes that went into her mom deciding to kill herself). |
| 245 | |
| 246 | * I don't really see how being the Archive makes one immune to automobile accidents. The Archive is pretty powerful magically, but she's still human. She could defend herself from nearly anything she knew was coming, but if she's got hurt, she'd die as easily as anyone else. A random car crash is pretty much impossible to predict ahead of time, and so impossible to defend against. It would probably be easier for the Archive to see an assassination attempt coming than a freak accident. |
| 247 | |
| 248 | * As for suicide, you're operating under a false premise. Suicides actually ''are'' done impulsively, "on a whim," much more often than they are the result of long-term planning. A great many survivors of suicide don't make a repeat attempt, are ''glad'' that they survived, and go on to live long, happy lives. |
| 249 | |
| 250 | [[WMG:The Red Court and Black Court have a common magical ancestor, as may the White Court and Jade Court.]] |
| 251 | It's quite probable that the Red and Black courts are simply blood feeders that happen to be called vampires and have {{Animal Motif}}s and a weakness to sunlight, and the White and Jade courts simply feed off of spiritual assets and happen to be called vampires by English-speaking magi, but it's worth saying. |
| 252 | * Maybe the origin has something to do with Drakul? |
| 253 | |
| 254 | [[WMG:One if the uses of the Stone Table in modern times is keeping all the extra power that would otherwise have been lost when a Summer or Winter Knight who was also a magic-user is [[DeadlyEuphemism retired]].]] |
| 255 | The Knight power would normally be the only thing to go directly to the nearest Court official, but if a Knight is killed on the Table when their master is in control of it, all of the rest of the power that the Knight [[IncrediblyLamePun brings to the table]] is sent along with it. |
| 256 | |
| 257 | [[WMG:The Outer Gates were completely trashed before the start of the series]] |
| 258 | Rashid and possibly other senior council members are keeping it quiet, but people can summon Outsiders as easily as anything else and without alerting the Gatekeeper now. It explains where all the Outsiders running around came from. If you count the spiders and super-ghouls as Outsider serfs, that makes a few hundred onscreen, and the ones that ambush retreating Warden heavy assault teams are definately Outsiders and quite numerous. The super-ghouls are kind of strange, really nasty, and associated with a confirmed Outsider, making them likely canidates for the Outsider RedShirtArmy, while the spiders are creepy, powerful enough to actually be a valid assassination attempt against Senior Council members, and worked for the Black Council. |
| 259 | * [[spoiler:''Cold Days'' shows that the Outer Gates are still standing but are under attack, and [[TheCorruption something]] has already slipped through...]] |
| 260 | |
| 261 | [[WMG:The only real Law of Magic is number 7, the one about messing with the Outer Gates]] |
| 262 | All other types of Black Magic weaken the Outer Gates in some way or another, which allows one or more Outsiders to influence whoever is using the Black Magic, hence the corrupting and addictive properties of Black Magic in the Dresdenverse. Due to his vaguely-alluded to ability to pwn Outsiders, Harry would be immune to these effects, like he seems to be from the following examples from the books: |
| 263 | * Though we haven't heard much of Harry's early time with Ebenezer, he didn't seem to display any of the mind-altering side effects that should come with killing a person. The one notable instance is when he talks about how he was being harassed by a group of teenagers, and instead of feeling an urge to call up a firestorm and burn them for their insolence, he considers the notion and then laughs at the thought of it. |
| 264 | ** As for Ebenezer, to my understanding the Blackstaff itself acts as a buffer for the effects of breaking the laws. |
| 265 | * In ''Grave Peril'', Harry killed a few innocent humans. Though they were either dying or were about to be Turned into vampires, he noted that some of them were still moving and he burnt them to a crisp. After this, instead of feeling high on power (as one does after using Black Magic), he was sick with guilt. |
| 266 | ** This was probably because, IIRC, he didn't ''intend'' to burn them, he was trying to torch the vampires. He only realize what he'd done afterwards. The main reason Black Magic is so addictive is because you can't do anything with magic unless you believe it is right (so if you break, say, the First Law it means you believe that killing with magic is right and good). For that reason, accidental killing probably doesn't generate the addictive effects. |
| 267 | *** This might be related to the protective power of the Blackstaff -- that it's actually the ''office'', and not the artifact, that's important. Because, by taking up the position, the wizard is affirming that they're ''exactly'' the kind of person who would kill with magic -- under specific circumstances, with permission, and for the right cause -- there isn't any backlash to doing so in the future. (There probably would be if they went on an unsanctioned murder spree.) Alternatively, it could be a sort of LegacyCharacter. ''Ebenezer'' doesn't kill with magic; ''the Blackstaff'' does. The fact that Ebenezer is reluctantly taking on the role of the Blackstaff doesn't necessarily mean it stains his own soul. |
| 268 | * Word of God says that Justin chose Harry and Elaine because they both have power over Outsiders, so Elaine would have the same immunity to Black Magic as Harry if this theory is correct. In ''Summer Knight'', Elaine floods the Walmart with Mind Fog, which Harry says violates a law of Magic. So Elaine just used Black Magic to invade the minds of a couple dozen patrons, but afterward retains enough of her morality to risk her life to help Harry save the world. |
| 269 | ** Molly broke a law without turning into a slavering monster. If lawbreaking were as mind-altering as you suggest, taking a warlock as apprentice wouldn't be an option, because only people with Outsider-killing abilities would be able to draw back from the abyss. Lawbreaking is a slippery slope, sure, but it doesn't automatically flip the Eeevil lever to the "on" position. |
| 270 | *** Molly broke a Law twice, and even then in the soulgaze Harry saw the potential for her to go into full supervillain mode. Elaine broke that same law dozens of times in one sitting with the mind fog, and Word of God says that once of her foci stores up a memory of her own to force into someone's head in order to temporarily paralyze them, which means one of her main magical tools revolves around breaking a law of magic, yet she does not appear to be evil. |
| 271 | *** A lot of mind magic is apparently a "grey area" that the Council has decided to apply a very wide ban to because it's so dangerous. Addictive black magic and things that break the Council's rules are not necessarily 100% in line with each other. In one book Harry removes someone's memory of traumatic magic and sends them to sleep, both of which do involve influencing their mind, but notes that even the Council accepts this use of magic. |
| 272 | *** Very good point about the laws not being perfect. |
| 273 | * The one thing that all the laws have in common is that they're all willful violations of the natural order of things. The enumeration of the laws corresponds to the magnitude of the violation. Murder, transfiguration, knowing and changing another's thoughts, mucking with life and death, violating causality and breaching the bounds of Reality itself to deal with the things on the other side. The further you go, the more damage you do to yourself and the universe. Ultimately, this probably does serve the interests of the Outsiders, as they are opposed to the very concept of our reality. |
| 274 | ** If murder inherently weakened the Outer Gates, they'd probably have fallen long ago. You don't need magic to kill people, after all. |
| 275 | *** They're the '''Laws of Magic''' so only magical murders count. While all of the black magic of all the warlocks of history hasn't been enough to bring the Gates down, it probably hasn't helped. |
| 276 | *** Still don't buy it. Killing people might be '''wrong''' in the moral sense, but it's not necessarily ''against the fundamental laws of nature'' in the same way that, say, warping a person's body or mind into something different would be. Humans' bad habit of killing is merely one of the nastier aspects of ''human'' nature, not something that violates our inherent qualities as a species: just ask Tera West. |
| 277 | *** Killing someone using '''the energies of life itself''' however, is ''against the fundamental laws of nature''. It's like turning on a light bulb to make a room darker. That shouldn't be possible. It's a perversion of the way things should be. (Note that there does seem to be "dark magic" in the series that seems to come from a source other than the life energy of the cosmos, but that it comes from "Outside", so using it to kill is already breaking another law of magic.) |
| 278 | *** As Dresden has explained several times, killing someone with magic is even worse than an ordinary murder because its a perversion of the nature of magic. Magic is the force of life and creation in the universe. Its meant to be used for healing, protection, creation, and knowledge. Using that power to kill someone, or warp their mind and body, distorts something beautiful into a grotesque weapon. I think Dresden compared it to bludgeoning someone to death with a Monet painting at one point. |
| 279 | *** It's worth pointing out that this is how ''Harry himself'' thinks of magic; others (the ones the RPG calls "focused practitioners", for one) seem to have a more limited view of magic as a force not much more mystical than gravity. He actually mentions how he can tell Ascher views her magic as basically just a means of lighting things on fire. It makes sense that people who have learned (or decided) to see magic as a transcendental force of creation might react differently to using it than those who think of it as a glorified kind of physics. |
| 280 | *** Given that the First Law fairly specifically only covers humans killing other humans with magic, it may simply be a codified form of ApeShallNeverKillApe. Or alternatively evidence that [[HumansAreSpecial humans are indeed objectively special]] in the setting, what with having the whole "soul" and "free will" thing going for them... |
| 281 | |
| 282 | [[WMG:The recurring theme naming of "Margaret" is meaningful.]] |
| 283 | Harry's mother is named Margaret. Out of tribute to her, Susan named their daughter Maggie, short for Margaret. Harry's apprentice/potential-sorta-maybe love interest is Molly, which can also be a pet name for Margaret. Even Mab can be a pet name for quite a few things, including Margaret. There's likely more here than coincidence, if four women who feature very prominently in his life all share the common name. |
| 284 | * Molly is a pet name for Margaret. In ''Proven Guilty'', Michael calls Molly by her full, given name, which is Margaret Katherine Amanda Carpenter. |
| 285 | ** Hmm. As a Catholic girl, ''Amanda'' is quite possibly the name she took in her Confirmation. St. Amanda of Jerusalem is the patron saint of drawing; it's also the feminized form of ''Amand'' and St. Amand is the patron of brewers and vinters. Amanda shows up again as well, with Amanda Beckett. |
| 286 | * According to The Other Wiki two possible origin/meanings for the name Margaret are "pearl" or "daughter of light." Not that the latter would be significant in the Dresdenverse... |
| 287 | * Some versions of the Ballad of Tam Lin use the name Margaret for the woman who wins Tam Lin away from the Faerie Queen who had captured him. |
| 288 | |
| 289 | [[WMG:There are no time travelers in Dresden Files]] |
| 290 | Because it's too damn dangerous. The [=NeverNever=] is too morphic and have too many supernatural nasties that will IMMEDIATELY pounce on you if you try it, while trying to do so in the mortal realms find out that it's very hard to be where you want when you want, and usually end up getting spaced because the planet is on the other side of the solar system. And the solar system itself moved. As did the galaxy. And the galactic cluster. And the galactic supercluster. |
| 291 | * If it's just suicidal, why would the Council forbid it? |
| 292 | ** Two ways of looking at it. 99% suicidal, odds are the 1% that manage to survive will either be batshit crazy and/or insanely strong. Now you have a crazy, strong, crazy strong psycho in the time stream. 100% suicidal, for eachh would be dark arts dablers that thinks it is possible because of the law and get themselves killed it is one less dark arts dabler messing around with the other laws that are feasible. |
| 293 | * ''Cold Days'' Josses this big time [[spoiler:Merlin used time travel to create Deamonreach]] |
| 294 | * Doesn't mean the [[ClockRoaches Hounds of]] [[CthuluMythos Tindalos]] won't start hunting you if you screw up though. |
| 295 | |
| 296 | [[WMG:Harry's Outsider Influence is Partly Based on Ebenezar's Postion.]] |
| 297 | Lash said that there needed to be a confluence of events for Harry to be able to push the Outsiders around. One of those events is probably being born to the line of a Blackstaff, who could break the seventh law. |
| 298 | ** Nope, Elaine isn't a descendant of Ebenezar. [[KissingCousins Presumably, anyway]]. |
| 299 | |
| 300 | [[WMG:There is some sort of connection between the White Court and the Swords of the Cross.]] |
| 301 | White Court vamps feed upon unbalanced negative emotions--Lust, Fear, and Despair--and are burned by pure expressions of their healthy positive opposites--Love in the case of House Raith, and presumably Courage and Hope in the case of Malvora and Skavis. But Courage is conceptually very close to ''Faith'', and that gives us the three cardinal virtues of Christianity, after which the Swords of the Cross--Amoracchius, Fidelacchius, and Esperacchius--are named. That has to come into play somehow. |
| 302 | |
| 303 | [[WMG:The series is Harry's writings in the wizards' journals that Ebenezer has.]] |
| 304 | It's already been hinted at that Harry might someday inherit the journals. It would also explain why the series is written in a first person narrative. Since the writing style fits Dresden's personality, it would make a lot of sense. |
| 305 | * Better yet: The novels are written when he's under a form of self-hypnosis that accesses perfect recall of events, much like how his flashbacks in ''Ghost Story'' brought up details he didn't consciously remember from his youth. That's why their narration gives the impression that each book is recorded immediately after the events it describes, not umpteen years later as a senior wizard's memoirs: he's recounting his adventures as he digs through his old memories and re-lives them. |
| 306 | ** That sounds almost exactly like the framing device for the Mists of Avalon series, where Merlin is telling his life story as he lived it using his magic. |
| 307 | ** The narration does sometimes sound like they are written long after the events of the books. For example in Battle Ground he says that he doesn't remember everything about the chaos in Chicago, but that the image of a bloody crib gave him nightmares for years.. |
| 308 | |
| 309 | [[WMG:Outsiders are completely exempt from most rules about magic]] |
| 310 | Nemesis has show that they can override the fundamental nature of supernatural beings, and it's clear that magic doesn't work on them. Furthermore, they seemed to be able to operate pretty effectively underwater, and He-Who-Walks-Before managed to remain in the mortal realm through a sunset. So it seems that the Outsiders don't have to bow to most of the rules other beings do. One in particular could very well be that they can kill immortals wherever and whenever. Otherwise assaulting the Outer Gates would be pretty much pointless. Now, this does lead to the question of why they attacked Demonreach on Halloween, but it should be pointed out that they were using mortal proxies for the actual offensive rituals and Maeve was the one who ended up actually shooting an immortal. It seems unlikely they could effectively threaten reality if most of the entities truly critical to the natural order ''can't die''. |
| 311 | * It makes sense since they're from outside reality. But, just to note, its staying in reality through sunrise that's a big deal, not sunset. |
| 312 | ** Doing magic underwater is not a big deal. Only running water grounds out magic. |
| 313 | ** Not even ''all'' magic, either: the Fomor lord from "Even Hand" isn't impaired by Marcone's sprinkler defense-system in the slightest. |
| 314 | * Both sunrise and sunset interfere with magic, although it's true that a given entity/spell might only be susceptible to one of them. However, the lake ''definitely'' counts for grounding out magic; that was a serious problem in the fight with the Redcap. |
| 315 | |
| 316 | [[WMG:Iron has power over Fae because of its atomic stability.]] |
| 317 | We know that ghost dust's power derives from the fact that the heavy metals inside it symbolize reality and solidity, so we know that objects with those magical properties can have power over denizens of the [=NeverNever=]. Furthermore, iron is ''the'' single most stable element on the nuclear level-it has a stronger nuclear binding force, and thus a more stable and solid nucleus, than any other element. Isn't it possible that this physical property carries over into its magical properties, and that it is iron's magical solidity that makes it able to harm fae so severely? |
| 318 | * Iron is not particularly stable; if it was, it wouldn't rust so easily. The most stable elements are the noble gasses, on the far right of the periodic table. They each have a complete set of electrons in their outer shells. Iron is one of many transition metals, with gaps in the electron shell which readily bind to the electrons of other atoms. |
| 319 | * "Nuclear" != "chemical". "Stability" in one sense does not carry over to the other. |
| 320 | |
| 321 | [[WMG:The WalkingTechbane ability of wizards is because they draw magical power from physical forces.]] |
| 322 | A lot of physics involves the conversion of energy from one form to another. Kinetic force to heat (friction). Heat energy to kinetic force (steam power). Chemical energy to light (phosphorescence). Suppose will, emotion, and magic are simply more forms of energy that are accessible through a specific chemical process? Perhaps one that takes place in the mind of a caster (which produces the feedback that allows them to perceive magic)? |
| 323 | |
| 324 | Now, expand on this: perhaps the earliest human casters were very inefficient in their use of magic, drawing energy from everywhere they could get it? This might have gross effects on the energy balance and physical rules of their environment, causing things like curdling milk and the differing colors of candle flames. As time continued, their improved efficiency resulted in less draw of energy from the environment, resulting in less of the classic effects over time but having more effect on the perceptions of people around them. |
| 325 | |
| 326 | Suddenly, along comes the industrial revolution. Steam power, mechanical forces, and other scientific applications of physical forces change the way work gets done. Originally, technology was inefficient, requiring a lot of power to be produced in order to get the desired amount of work from machinery. Because of this inefficiency, the (by this time more efficient) casters' draw on the ambient energy of technology (heat from steam power, kinetic from clockwork, electricity from crude generators or power grids) would not have much effect, because technology needs a lot of energy before they can even have an effect. |
| 327 | |
| 328 | Then, the efficiency of technology starts improving. Transistors don't need as much power as tubes, and microchips require a fraction of the power that transistors do. Miniaturization decreases the space in which energy has to play, further improving efficiency, reducing the amount of energy needed to accomplish work. |
| 329 | |
| 330 | As technological efficiency improves, the effect of casters' draw from natural energy becomes more apparent once again. An electric circuit (using electrical energy) has minor blackouts or surges in various locations, causing leads to burn out. Transmission systems (using kinetic energy) suffer from too much drag or too much force at various points, causing gears to lose teeth. Credit card strips (using electromagnetic energy) becomes demagnetized because of the magical draw on them. |
| 331 | |
| 332 | In the end, this might just mean that there is a link between magic and science, and that there might be a way to solve the WalkingTechbane problem. |
| 333 | |
| 334 | [[WMG:The WalkingTechbane status of wizards is at least partly [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve psychosomatic]].]] |
| 335 | It's not that magic in and of itself interferes with technology at all. It's that it's very strongly tied to the belief of its practicioner...and so wizards who reflexively ''believe'' that their magic should have some sort of adverse side effect unconsciously use it to impose just that belief on their immediate environment. And the more often they see it happen, the more convinced they naturally become... |
| 336 | * Evidence for this includes Harry's belief that OlderIsBetter when it comes to reliability, especially his favouring revolvers over semi-automatic pistols. Revolvers might be largely immune to jamming, but mechanically simpler than a semi-automatic pistol they most certainly are not; with the way Harry's magic seems to screw up technology [[note]]basically accelerating entropy, closer to WalkingWasteland for inorganic matter only than WalkingTechbane[[/note]] his .38 would probably need major specialist attention from a gunsmith early and often enough that people would start asking questions and he'd be better off with something from the famously NighIndestructible Glock line. But Harry doesn't seem to know that much about the mechanics of firearms, and makes the common mistake of assuming that older = simpler = more reliable. |
| 337 | |
| 338 | [[WMG:The WalkingTechbane phenomenon results from Muggle presumptions about how magic works.]] |
| 339 | It's not the subconscious belief of the wizard that makes them a WalkingTechbane, but the collective belief of ''humanity in general'' that Man Was Not Meant To Mess With such forces, or possess such power as wizards do. Creatures like fey or monsters are ''supposed'' to be supernatural, so are exempt from such restrictions, but mortal humans having such abilities runs counter to Nature as it's generally understood by Muggles. |
| 340 | |
| 341 | Among other things, this would account for the way wizards' side-effects have changed over the course of history. In ancient times, magic was thought of as something which fey or nature spirits had exclusive rights to, so wizardry has the same side effects (e.g. spoiled milk) that hostile fairies traditionally made happen out of mischief. Later, when monotheism had taken hold over most of the world, magic was considered the work of the Devil, and wizards developed "witch marks" because most people assumed (wrongly) that they'd be marked by evil. |
| 342 | |
| 343 | The current techbane phenomenon dates back to UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, when the advent of rocketry, jet planes, mass mechanized warfare, and ''especially'' nuclear weapons elevated physics from academic obscurity to the most awesome force known to Man. Magic, by its very nature, flagrantly violates the laws of physics, as understood (more or less) by the majority of the world's population: a violation which most people would assume have negative consequences. Hence, anything invented ''since'' [=WWII=] that's based on advanced physics - indeed, anything that someone from the 1940s would've considered "high-tech" in general - malfunctions in the presence of human-cast magic, which tampers with the very laws such devices depend on. |
| 344 | |
| 345 | Much is made of Belief as a parallel and/or connected form of power to general magic (it empowers Michael, possibly the Shroud of Turin, and can drive off Red Court vampires). Wizards have a level of energy around them as part of their magic-usage, and Belief shapes what it effects and/or what it does not effect. Since plenty of science fiction and fantasy in the past century made strong and clear usage of "science versus magic" effects, it became part of the popular consciousness, driving wizards' ambient energy fields to express themselves that way. |
| 346 | * TL:DR Wizards in the Dresden Files have a WalkingTechbane effect because fiction has made people believe that wizards have that effect. |
| 347 | |
| 348 | [[WMG:The Jade Court are [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiangshi Jiangshi]]]] |
| 349 | They're East Asian vampires, this seems like a pretty obvious conclusion. Bonus WMG: The Jade Court will actually appear some time in the future, or atleast get more than a sentence's worth of decription (unlikely, I know). |
| 350 | |
| 351 | [[WMG:The Laws of Magic are a self-fulfilling prophecy]] |
| 352 | Breaking the Laws of Magic doesn't inherently shift someone's personality towards evil; that's just a piece of propoganda the White Council made up. However, belief has power in the Dresdenverse, so once enough wizards ''believe'' that breaking the Laws has a corrupting influence, that's what ends up happening. |
| 353 | * Most of the warlocks are specifically stated to have never heard of the laws before breaking them, like Molly and the Korean kid who got the sword in Proven Guilty. |
| 354 | |
| 355 | [[WMG:Black Court vampires are shades possessing their own corpses, not the original person transformed.]] |
| 356 | Normally, when an unwilling mortal suffers from a drastic physical transformation, their psyches take a terrible beating. Many Red Court vampires go mad when they change over fully, and the Second Law forbids transforming people because even if the target survives, it cripples them in both mind and body. Even purely-mental tampering tends to inflict emotional trauma on its subject that can take months or years to heal, and any conversion that affects the body, mind, ''and'' life essence ought, by rights, to reduce even the sanest individual to permanent gibbering madness. |
| 357 | |
| 358 | Risen victims of the Black Court, however, appear to be fully coherent, calculating, and (barring contrary orders from their masters) deliberate in their actions, even if they'd only arisen ''a few minutes'' ago. They are also, without exception, evil to the core, and aside from an occasional twinge of envy (e.g. One-Ear's taunting of Lara in ''Blood Rites''), don't seem to care in the slightest about their own increasingly-horrific appearance. They're perfectly adjusted to being monsters, and acting as such, from the instant their cooling bodies resume moving. While it's possible that an ''occasional'' victim's psychic trauma might cause them to embrace their new condition out of madness, having ''every'' Black Court "newborn" succumb fully to an identical delusion, irregardless of the victim's previous moral code or notion of what vampires are like, seems implausible. |
| 359 | |
| 360 | However, there's one way that Black Court "recruits" could all exhibit such traits, without succumbing to insanity from transformation-trauma: if they're not actually the original people, but the ''shades'' of those people taking up occupancy of the person's corpse. Because BC vampires are genuinely ''dead'', not merely infected like the Reds, their victims create shades of themselves which possess the same memories, habits, and grudges as themselves. Like shades, they ''believe'' they're the same person -- hence, Drulinda's retained vendetta against her [=LARP=]mates in "It's My Birthday, Too" -- but they really aren't, and like ''insane'' shades, they retain a facade of their original personalities, even as their original selves' human morals and preferences are supplanted by the cravings and callousness that typifies the Black Court. How better to explain this similarity, and lack of transformation-induced insanity, than if they ''are'' shades, equipped with a predator's instincts and possessing their own corpses? Bound into their one-time bodies, they are created anew as monsters, not crafted from the mutilated souls of the converted. |
| 361 | |
| 362 | Small wonder that Mavra, working in concert with Bianca, could concoct a plan to raise up the Nightmare as an entity more powerful and deadly and divorced from humanity than Leonid Kravos could ever have hoped to become, in life: she's a product of the same sort of process, herself. Small wonder, too, that she forced Harry to search for ''The Word Of Kemmler'' rather than look for it herself: she's necromancy-savvy enough to have realized she's a shade, and might get sucked right out of her corpse and eaten if she came anywhere ''near'' the Darkhallow. As for the ''original'' Mavra's soul, it caught the train out of the mortal plane centuries ago, and would most likely be sickened by what her shade-ridden corpse has been up to, since then. |
| 363 | |
| 364 | [[WMG:The Swords of the Cross aren't granted to people of royal blood, but to the descendants of previous Knights.]] |
| 365 | Harry assumes that because Shiro, Sanya and Michael all had royal ancestry, that this is what the Swords' bearers need too. However, the fact that Sir Stuart identified ''Esperacchius'' as Durandal - the blade which, in legend, Charlemagne once owned and bequeathed to his great paladin Roland - suggests that it could be the descendants of previous Knights, royal or otherwise, that the Swords are gravitating towards in these, the potential "end times" of the setting. The fact that some of those previous Knights happened to have become kings merely shows that their courage and heroism had earned them prestige. |
| 366 | |
| 367 | [[WMG:Meaningful Fairy Pseudonyms are a must]] |
| 368 | "Meditrina was a Roman goddess of wine," "And the bassarids were another name for the handmaidens of Dionysus." |
| 369 | It is noted more tha once that Fair Folk is subject to spoiling their nature by using meaningful names. |
| 370 | The one distinguishing trait of all Fairies, however, is their inability to lie - they can use ambigous wording and conceal information, but not outright tell a lie. |
| 371 | And so, when asked "What is your name?" their nature forces them to either tell their real names, or any possible substitute that will do as an imitation of the name: their titles, names in different mythologies, shortened forms, shout-outs, and so on. |
| 372 | |
| 373 | [[WMG:Walking Tech Bane wizard status is soul-inflicted]] |
| 374 | Sorting out the ideas: Human wizards destroy advanced machines on contact and without it. Fairies don't have any trouble of this kind. As of Ghost Story, ghosts are shown to be able to crash cars by messing with them. |
| 375 | Those ghosts were formerly normal humans. Ghosts are made of Soul fusing with Spirit upon death. Harry was a Soul separated from his body. Which means, it's normal for a separate Soul to mess with electronics andor machinery. |
| 376 | However, wizards possess this ability while in their physical body, which might mean their soul is more powerful of just simply BIGGER. Which doesn't contradict Butters' "force field or something" hypothesis. |
| 377 | No more "exploding TVsets on sight while in ghost form" might be attributed to either ghost being a shadow of the body's former glory, or a ghost controlling itself better - I mean, a ghost should control his precise movement like a body it doesn't have to be able to walk or touch something, but you don't think what your soul is doing while you are still alive and physical. |
| 378 | And as an added bonus, if we count a God as really existing in dresdenverse, having created humans, the only beings who have free will, they might possibly be the only beings with souls. Meaning fairie have no souls and thus don't oppress electronic fields with them. Or, as a possibility of mortal>fairie transformation suggests, fairie Mantles' powers suppress human soul, making possible the use of cell phones and such. |
| 379 | * Actually, Harry was a unique case, being a ghost with a soul. Normally ghosts/shades are just imprints of a person left behind after they died while the soul moves on to whatever afterlife there is in the Dresdenverse. Since these shades, made entirely of spirit and ectoplasm, could also interact with electronics and cars, it is safe to assume souls have nothing to do with this whole issue. |
| 380 | |
| 381 | [[WMG:Concerning God and Jesus]] |
| 382 | Powerful beings like fairies and angels have intellectus-type knowledge, knowing everything without reason and never forgetting, and a non-linear perception of time. As Demonreach shows, their powers are limited by their territory or field of knowledge. |
| 383 | Bob can remember anything he saw while serving wizards, including the position of every item in the room. |
| 384 | Lasciel knows everything she used to know as an angel and everything her mortal partners used to know. |
| 385 | Demonreach knows every bit of information concerning the island and maybe the prison under it. |
| 386 | So, God, who is both omniscient and said (in Warrior, iIrc) to view situation from all positions at once, might be summarized as a millenia- if not millions-year old Intellect Spirit, bound with Planet Earth, or maybe some proto-matter that Earth originated from, whose longevity allowed him to become powerful enough to create life and, when said life became sapient, to influence it and become even more powerful because of their knowledge of him possibly existing - even Harry doesn't have faith in god, but thinks of him as existing. Sanya doesn't believe angels are actually angels, but acknowledges their existance, if only partially. |
| 387 | Toot-toot is constantly growing in every way. As far as I remember Butcher, knowledge and popularity are basically power for spirits. |
| 388 | So, sanya might be right about God being one more supernatural entity, not exactly different from others they meet, just older. And angels are spirits born from him, as Parasite(codename Athena) was born from Lash. |
| 389 | |
| 390 | And just how protoAthena was born from Harry and Lash, Jesus was born from God and Mary. Or something. Because in Harry's case the child is a spirit, having both parents' knowledge (maybe), but Jesus was human.. mostly. And possibly had his father's knowledge, too, which explains how he could do the miracles he is mentioned to do. |
| 391 | Maybe having a body, just like having wizard powers, is passed down from mother to child: a human mother has a human child. a spirit mother has a spirit child. Or simply because Harry's not female, he can't be pregnant in a more literal way. |
| 392 | And, from a certain perspective, protoAthena can be seen as a small antiCh..Reverse-Jesus. |
| 393 | |
| 394 | [[WMG:Tam Lin and Jenny Greenteeth]] |
| 395 | Mab has acknowledged Tam Lin was a former Winter Knight (and he seems to be the only mortal she holds any real regard for, but I'm not yet sure of the implications of that so a [=WMG=] on that subject will have to wait). In any case, the Tale of Tam Lin is one in which Tam Lin is in the thrall of the Queen of Faerie, but a mortal woman who loves him pulls him from his horse at midnight on Halloween. He is shapeshifted several times, but he is finally turned into a torch and the girl throws him down a well, at which point he is free of his obligations to the Queen and may go back to living as a mortal. |
| 396 | |
| 397 | What are interesting to me are these details Three: |
| 398 | # The girl had to take him on Halloween night, which is acknowledged as the night when masks are worn and taken off, and power may be given and taken. |
| 399 | # The procession of horses the girl had to take Tam Lin off of sounds distinctly like the Wild Hunt. |
| 400 | # The girl's name is Jenny and she wears a green mantle, which Tam Lin asks her to cover him with to protect him from the Queen. |
| 401 | |
| 402 | My interpretation of the story is this: |
| 403 | * On Halloween, power may be taken forcibly and permanently from immortals or the scions of immortals without their consent and consumed and added to one's own power. |
| 404 | * Tam Lin tricks the girl, Jenny of the Green Mantle, is tricked into taking the Winter Knight away from Mab on the only night of the year when doing so can make him permanently human again. In doing so, she takes up the mantle of the Winter Knight for herself. |
| 405 | * The girl covers Tam Lin with her green mantle to hide him from the queen. Having taken his mantle and given him hers, they have now switched places, and come the morning, that switch becomes permanent. That girl is now the Winter Knight. |
| 406 | * The girl is pregnant with Tam Lin's child. Whoever that child is, he or she is now born into the Winter Court of Faerie, the child of two Winter Knights. They become someone significant. |
| 407 | * I also suspect some connection to Jenny Greenteeth (though this part of the prediction is somewhat further afield than the rest of the [=WMG=]). |
| 408 | * This means that there exists some loophole by which a mortal can take the mantle of a Knight without killing them, and that's how Tam Lin escaped. Harry can therefore exploit that same loophole to get out of his Knighthood. |
| 409 | ** However, this means that Tam Lin isn't a very nice guy (like he's worn the mantle of the Winter Knight for a long time or something), to trick an innocent girl into sacrificing herself so he can skate out on a promise he made to a High Sidhe (Maybe Mab is so impressed with him because he did it so flawlessly?). |
| 410 | ** Someone has to take Harry's place if he wants out. He's going to have to wrestle with the morality of having someone else take the job instead of him. |
| 411 | |
| 412 | * One thing to note is that the Dresdenverse might operate on the theory that the legend of Tam Lin, as we know it, is actually *not* the true story. Rather Tam Lin could be a variant on the older story of 'Thomas the Rhymer' - which has a rather different ending where the protagonist ultimately chooses to return to 'elfland' and is never seen again. |
| 413 | * The name of the woman who rescues Tam Lin from the Faerie Queen varies from version to version. Janet is quite common, as is ''Margaret''. The forms in which he turns vary quite a bit, too, with many modern performances using the version in which, after holding tight to a wolf, a burning fire ("she held him tight, and feared him not, til he grew iron cold"), an adder or snake, and/or a bear, they finally turn him into a naked knight, at which point Janet wraps him in her green kirtle (in some "her mantle green"), and it's at that point she knows she's won him. |
| 414 | ** Interesting note, saying that a woman "got on a gown of green" or was “as green as any grass" was a euphemism for her being pregnant. A majority of the versions Child collected have Janet/Margaret/Katherine pregnant during the rescue, often giving birth the next morning! |
| 415 | ** Now that Sarissa is the Summer Lady, perhaps that is the "mantle of green" that will wrap around Harry and save him from the Winter Faerie Queen? |
| 416 | |
| 417 | * When they first meet in the woods, Janet, often as part of a dare or in defiance of a ban, goes to pluck flowers and is chastised by Tam Lin for doing so without his permission. When she says she doesn't need his permission, he proceeds to, ah, proceed without permission, as well. Yet, afterwards, Janet sees him as her TrueLove and is ready to do anything to save him. Oh, yes, and in a fair number of versions, he is referred to as ''Thomas''. Perhaps we're applying the song to the wrong brother? Thomas[=/=]Tam Lin rides upon a ''white'' horse, he ravishes the bold young woman and she falls in love with him despite getting her pregnant outside of marriage, and it's through her love of him that he is saved from the supernatural power that had control of him. |
| 418 | |
| 419 | |
| 420 | [[WMG:[=WCVs=] can only impregnate someone whom they are not feeding from.]] |
| 421 | * So we need a reason why, despite having sex with all and sundry, the Raith vampires are not popping out kids left and right. A fairly logical guess would be that if the vampire is feeding from someone while they have sex with them (which Raiths will do the vast bulk of the time), then the spiritual violence inherent in the act of feeding renders the creation of a new life all but impossible. As a bonus, this would act as an additional level of natural selection for the White Court, as those vamps who can control the Hunger would be the ones to bear children, and in turn would presumably train those children to control the Hunger. |
| 422 | ** Be very careful here. If "spiritual violence" were enough to prevent pregnancy, then rape victims would never get pregnant from their rapes, and we (should) all know that ''that'' isn't true. But it's a myth that was used by rapists to avoid justice —"See, it wasn't rape, she's pregnant so it must have been consensual!" The energy drain, yes, that would be more than enough to prevent a new life from taking hold, so let's focus on that, and not get into UnfortunateImplications territory! |
| 423 | ** Thomas does say that the spiritual energy of sex is extremely powerful, because it's what's needed to generate a new soul. If one of the participants is a feeding White, that necessary energy is getting consumed rather than applied to the soul-creating purpose. As Dresdenverse humans ''are'' souls that happen to have a corporeal housing, any offspring conceived in such a fashion would be an inert brain-dead body at best, or more likely a miscarriage. |
| 424 | |
| 425 | [[WMG:[[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} Nurgle]] is what happens when a being like Mother Summer is corrupted by Outsiders]] |
| 426 | We already know she loves all living things, including her pet plagues. If an entity like Nemesis gets to someone like her, it just makes her lose perspective. |
| 427 | |
| 428 | [[WMG:The Dresdenverse version of Creator/GamesWorkshop created their version of Heinrich Kemmler from stories of the real thing.]] |
| 429 | Dresden has explicitly mentioned Games Workshop in the novels, and Kemmler is basically identical between the version in Warhammer and the version in the Dresden Files. Whatever designer came up with him for Warhammer might have heard rumours, even if he wasn't fully in the know. |
| 430 | * Or maybe Li Xian used to play wargames to keep his mind off his stomach between missions for Corpsetaker, and name-dropped his boss's old boss where somebody from Games Workshop could hear him. |
| 431 | |
| 432 | [[WMG:Butcher designed the general plot of the books around TarotMotifs]] |
| 433 | The Major Arcana in tarot, specifically their numerical order, represent a metaphorical journey of an individual through life. This is also known as the "TheFool's Journey" (sorry Harry). Each books of the series, or an important event in it, is symbolically related to each Arcana. |
| 434 | |
| 435 | Note: Originally, ''Literature/ProvenGuilty'' was supposed to go before ''Literature/DeadBeat'', but the author was [[ExecutiveMeddling requested by the publishers]] that the seventh book of the series, the first hardbound release, to feature something [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome truly awesome]] ([[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1248964599329.jpg You know what]]) and Butcher decided to swap these two books around. |
| 436 | |
| 437 | [numlist:0] |
| 438 | # '''The Fool''': ''Literature/{{Storm Front|DresdenFiles}}''. TheFool represent beginnings and infinity possibilities. The start of the TheHerosJourney. |
| 439 | # '''The Magician''': ''Literature/FoolMoon''. The Magician represents action and initiative, but also immaturity. Like a mage who has just awakened to his/her power and lacks the wisdom to use it properly. Like the Alphas, Agent Denton and his people and especially [[TheScully Murphy]]. |
| 440 | # '''The High Priestess''': ''Literature/GravePeril''. The High Priestess represents inner knowledge, contemplation and intuition. Figuring out yourself and doing things for your own reasons. Of course, this can backfire spectacularly. Like [[GoingForTheBigScoop Susan]] deciding to attend to the Bianca's masquerade and Harry taking up the vampires' challenge and starting the war. |
| 441 | # '''The Empress''': ''Literature/SummerKnight''. Mab appears. 'Nuff said. |
| 442 | # '''The Emperor''': ''Literature/DeathMasks''. Nicodemus appears. Ortega makes his move. Confrontation of wills all-around. Made even literal during the duel. |
| 443 | # '''The Hierophant''': ''Literature/BloodRites''. The Hierophant is a tricky card to interpret. Etymologically, the hierophant a religious guide, very much like a priest, but more generically it represents the knowledge of one's place in the world and the responsibilities that go with it. In this book Harry discovers that Thomas is his brother and learns more about their mother. Together they confront the consequences of the past, finishing the work left by Margaret [=LeFay=] and defeating Lord Raith. Harry also gets a sneak peek of the [[EldritchAbomination Walkers]], who will become a key focus of his duties in later on. |
| 444 | # '''The Lovers''': ''Literature/ProvenGuilty''. Besides the obvious meaning, The Lovers represent choice. The conscious exercise of free will, the individual's consciousness finally surfaced. This is best exemplified with Molly, who leaves her parents' home to stand on her own and whose good and bad decisions move most of the book's plot. Probably the most important representation of this is the scene where Molly has to decide whether to go before the White Council to be judged by them with Harry stressing the importance of making her own choice. Nevertheless, Molly's crush on Harry does play a big part in her decisions, so there's that too. |
| 445 | # '''The Chariot''': ''Literature/DeadBeat''. The Chariot is the victory of the individual, but only a momentary one. Also, you can't get more literal about this than riding the Zombie T. rex into battle. |
| 446 | # '''Justice''': ''Literature/WhiteNight''. Pretty self-explanatory. Harry and Ramirez seeking to balance the scales by facing the White Court vampires that attacked small-time partitioners in peacetime. It also applies to Lash (not Lasciel), who forever redeemed herself in Harry's eyes by doing the right thing and paying the ultimate price. |
| 447 | # '''The Hermit''': ''Literature/SmallFavor''. The Hermit represents self-discovery in a sense more profound than the High Priestess does, but also represents the isolation required to achieve it. In this book Harry discovers Soulfire, the power of creation born from his own soul, but suffers great distrust by his allies (not totally unwarranted, but still). Ivy and Marcone also found themselves isolated in a more literal sense, an experience that will surely shape their actions in the future, as ''Literature/SkinGame'' proved in Marcone's case. |
| 448 | # '''Wheel of Fortune''': ''Literature/TurnCoat''. The Wheel of Fortune represents fate and the opportunities that comes with it. Especially chances outside of anyone's control. Here Harry gambles big and wins big. Not totally because of his own skill, but not entirely because of luck either. |
| 449 | # '''Strength''': ''Literature/{{Changes}}''. Strength symbolizes power with reason, power with a purpose other than itself. In this book Harry pulls out ''all'' the stops to save his daughter. The card's reversed meaning (misapplied power or lack of self-control) also plays a part here, with Harry failing to consider the long-term consequences his actions would have in his single-mindedness to save Maggie. |
| 450 | # '''The Hanged Man''': ''Literature/GhostStory''. The Hanged Man represents self-sacrifice in the face of disaster. It symbolizes altruism and the chance of renewal, but it can also means the uncertainty that comes with dark times. After Harry's death, most of his allies step into his shoes to protect Chicago at a huge personal cost but feeling they're losing more battles than they win. In the end, Harry's ghost sacrifices himself to help them. |
| 451 | # '''Death''': ''Literature/ColdDays''. Death is a transitional card. The old ends, the new begins. "The Queens are dead. Long live the Queens". Also, most of the series-encompassing reveals happen here, resetting the board for new possibilities. |
| 452 | # '''Temperance''': ''Literature/SkinGame''. Temperance is the balancing of opposites, like Harry working with Nicodemus for a good cause, but it especially applies to Harry coming to terms with his actions from previous books. |
| 453 | # '''The Devil''': ''Literature/PeaceTalks''. (Unpublished as of this writing) The Devil is another tricky one. This card represent temptations and the enslavement to worldly affairs, but also symbolizes access to what is hidden, the secret and occult. My guess is that Harry's problems with his Mantle with come to a head in this book and another big reveal will occur. The Devil can also represent a scapegoat, so it's likely that Harry will have to account for things that aren't entirely his fault. |
| 454 | * (Post-publication) Several developments along these lines. A major plot driver was Thomas being caught attacking Etri for unclear reasons, and Harry being compelled to rescue him for reasons he couldn't explain to anyone else. This story also deals heavily with the {{Realpolitik}} of the magical world, with the various magical nations coming together to draw up new borders in the wake of the destruction of the Red Court. |
| 455 | # '''The Tower''': ''[[Literature/TheDresdenFilesMirrorMirror Mirror, Mirror]]''. (Unpublished as of this writing) Total and utter clusterf*ck. I mean, ''way'' more then the usual. The status quo goes down the drain or somehow becomes irrelevant. TimeTravel or AlternateUniverse may or may not explain this. |
| 456 | * After ''Literature/BattleGround2020'' is published, this turns out to fit. Major battle with thousands of casualties, the Masquerade is essentially broken in and around Chicago, Murphy is ''dead'', Thomas imprisoned in Demonreach, Harry and Ebenezar's relationship is broken again, and Harry has been expelled from the White Council. |
| 457 | # '''The Star''' |
| 458 | # '''The Moon''' |
| 459 | # '''The Sun''' |
| 460 | # '''Judgment''' |
| 461 | # '''The World''' |
| 462 | [/numlist] |
| 463 | * Jossed in that ''Mirror Mirror'' will not be the book immediately after ''Peace Talks,'' but ''Literature/BattleGround2020'' will probably end up being just as much of a clusterf*ck anyway. The status quo has already started to go down the drain as of the end of ''Peace Talks''. |
| 464 | |
| 465 | [[WMG:Magical senses in humans come from exposure to magic at a young age.]] |
| 466 | * This would explain why human magic is ''usually'' but not ''always'' passed down along maternal lines. We know that human talents radiate trace levels of magic at all times, and that this magic can cause minor effects on the surroundings (the Murphyonic field, witch's marks, etc). So spending enough time in close enough proximity to a magical human, especially when you are very young and your mind and body are still developing, might be enough to alter your nature ever so slightly and make you sensitive to magic. Now, the mother is the one who literally carries the baby in her body for nine months, generally the one who nurses and otherwise cares for it after it's born, and even beyond that the mother tends to do most of the caring for young children. So the mother is the one who is far more likely to spend enough time in close proximity for this background radiation to affect the child. But there will be some cases where the father also spends enough time in close proximity to his children, so if he has magic it will bestow it on them. |
| 467 | ** Take for example the case of Charity. She still had traces of her magic when she got pregnant with Molly, so Molly was exposed to magic and developed the talent (possibly with a little judicious divine aid). But by the time the rest of the kids came along, Charity had fully set aside her power, and no longer radiated magic. |
| 468 | |
| 469 | [[WMG:Wizards' long life spans and slow regeneration are due to their exposure to magic itself.]] |
| 470 | * Harry comments practically once a book that wizards can live for three or four centuries if they are not killed first. Butters also finds out that wizards have a very low-level healing factor - one that works at the same ''speed'' as mortals, but ''keeps working'' until all traces of the injury fade away. Harry also often describes magic as the "force of creation/life itself", and has described the process of casting a spell as taking in magical energy from one's surroundings and channeling it to cast the spell. It is possible, even likely, that the very process of absorbing magic from the world bolsters their healing in this way, which in turn extends their lifespans. |
| 471 | |
| 472 | [[WMG: House Skavis of the White Court has their grubby mitts all over the travel industry.]] |
| 473 | * We know that the lust-eating Raiths have control over the porn industry, and there's implication that the phobophagic Malvora have some control over horror movies (with Madrigal, a phobophage despite being in House Raith, posing as horror film director Darby Crane), the despair-eating Skavis have some control over the travel industry. After all, what's a better way to make someone miserable than setting up what seems to be the perfect vacation, only to have a billion different things go wrong, from delayed flights, bad weather, food poisoning, horrible hotel rooms... the list goes on. |
| 474 | |
| 475 | |
| 476 |
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