The Dresden Files

The Archive is the closest thing to DF's truly original monster

I thought the use of Sue was fairly original, but is that just a case of me having small reference pools?

Likewise with Butcher's making use of Judas's noose and the silver Denaerians(Sp?) at all were unexpected to me when they first showed up in the series, but not too farfetched after the Swords of the Cross first showed up.

Edited by Unlikelyauthor2 on Jan 5th 2019 at 12:34:14 PM

Original as in not from an established mythology or religion. The Swords has some precedent in the Holy Lance, which is said to have a nail from the Crucifixion in it. The noose and coins are public domain artifacts. The Archive, however, is story-original, even if it is story-connected to greek oracles.

And everything around Nemesis and the Outsiders, of course.

Nah, Outsiders is blatantly Lovecraft by way of D&D. It's in the name.

Edited by SCMof2814 on Jan 9th 2019 at 7:50:51 PM

Neither Lovecraft nor D&D is a religion or mythology, though.

No Jack Chick, calling D&D Satanist doesn't count.

Ehhhhh. No explicit references to anything in the Lovecraft mythos, and for all that they're supposed to be otherworldly and red-flag-drop-all-enmities tier, they don't seem like such a huge deal so far (yeah yeah, Starborn cancels out their magic immunity, but it still results in some pretty weaksauce uber-antagonists).

Eh, the one in the Molly Novella is Cthulhu in all but name. They even blame Lovecraft for his popularity.

HPL is the influence behind the Formorians and why they look, act, and sound like Deep Ones.

The Necronomicon is also canonical.

Going a off-topic, something crossed my mind today. With the way magic doesn't play nice with tech like computers, there's a logical place Butcher hasn't gone, to my knowledge, yet. Dark wizards being hired for industrial sabotage. Just get them on a factory floor and the machines go haywire. Or get them near a modern elevator with a target person on it, and watch them plummet to their deaths.

I could see Harry having to deal with a case or two like that.

I wonder though, do the Wardens bother with wizards who use magic for petty theft or for-hire property destruction? There aren't any Laws of Magic against that, after all, and the Wardens generally seem like they're spread so thin and faced with so many horrific foes, they'd probably consider stuff like that not worth their time.

In the latter case, thats Black Magic and either gets you Wardened or the sort of psycho you really don't want to hire.

You could also have someone do the latter without them even knowing it, though. Find a low-level practitioner who needs some ready cash, ask them to go to a specific location and perform a particular spell on some pretence, and the elevator malfunctions due to the spell without them even realizing it.

And if the individual doing the hiring isn’t a magic-user themself, the Wardens have no jurisdiction over them.

Edited by Galadriel on Jan 12th 2019 at 11:30:11 AM

Harry has a conversation with Luccio about that later in the series, and the definitive answer seems to be 'No, provided they do not come close to breaking the Laws or stepping on the toes of the Accords'. We are also left with the impression that the answer would still be a very deliberate 'No' even if the Wardens had nothing better to do.

Sounds like a good way to dispose of minor talents you want to get rid of.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Jan 12th 2019 at 2:31:16 PM

A comment on Morgan mixed with a bit of RL Politics, I think might be relevant.

Morgan was a cop, and he was a bastard. He was a goddamn bastard who spent so much time fighting criminals that he stopped see people and started seeing potential problems that needed to be taken care of. He was so self-assured of his righteousness and given too much power to act on that by a system made corrupt by its own decrepit age and outdated ideals.

And there are far, far worse things that he can be credited with preventing, monsters for whom he was responsible for putting down.

My biggest problem with the series remains the fact that, in a Grey-and-Grey Morality setting, the laws of magic are Black-and-White Morality—except without the white. If you break the laws of magic, you are wrong. Period. You will stain your soul with your wrongness, become addicting to committing more wrongs, and ultimately devolve into a monster that needs to be put down.

It's a plot device used to justify a bunch of gray morality (such as Morgan) as "necessary," and it's annoying.

IIRC in one of the books Luccio states that the Laws aren't meant to be a guidline for morality, they're meant to act as a check on the Council's power.

Though also, given how dangerous we now know the Outsiders are, there's at least one law that is absolutely justified.

I would argue that given the potential can of worms that it can open up and the potentially catastrophic consequences I think the Sixth Law is probably a good idea as well.

I seem to remember it was mentioned in Turn Coat that the Wardens keep an active file on Binder because he actively toes the letter of the Laws. Morally speaking, using his conjured servants as leg breakers is horrible, but he hasn't given the Council a (legal) pretence to decapitate him.

Given Binder’s behaviour in Turn Coat (especially his threat towards Murphy), I was a little disturbed by how chill all the protagonists were with him in Skin Game. They were basically treating him as an ally by the end.

I mean, he went to a literal "Hell" with him and he didn't betray them and sell them out. That and he has apparently crazy high +CHA

Technicaly he didn´t Binder was waiting outside while the others went to "hell"

He wasn't possessed by a demon, which helped his case

I personally think that viewing the Laws of Magic as inserting black and white morality into a grey setting is not the right way of looking at it. The latter three Laws are less moral guidelines and more "don't stick your dick in the nuclear reactor" directives, and while the first four can match up to a moral code (and indeed, Harry largely based his own off of it, thanks to Ebenezer, and I'm sure the irony isn't lost on either), they aren't an objective moral last word either. Second through fourth laws (don't transform others, don't intrude in others' minds, don't dominate others' minds) I'd say are the closest to an inarguable moral stance, and even then it's not as clear cut as that. Molly's use of mental magic to keep her pregnant friend from her heroin addiction is treated as a wrong thing done for the right reasons, leading into a slippery slope, but if the act itself wasn't corrupting as with all the Law breaks it's very arguable that a trained professional (as opposed to a terrified, arrogant novice) could be used for good. Luccio outright says as much, the Laws and the Council aren't there to govern the morality of wizards or enforce their ways of life upon them, just keeping them from breaking the Laws because doing so turns people into ticking time bombs.

And I mean, Harry and all the Wardens hardly have a qualm against killing, and while Harry in particular holds his belief that killing with magic holds a moral quality distinct from a sword or gun, this is far from a universal view (as seen through Molly and Thomas' viewpoints). Necromancy does not seem to involve the actual souls or beings of the deceased humans in any major way, so the moral component is arguably no deeper than not desecrating the dead. And the last two, see: dick in reactor. In short, I don't think the Laws of Magic are intended as a moral bottom line to the grey areas in the series, just an in-universe mechanic that affects the ways characters behave (most notably, it narratively keeps Harry from just blasting every human enemy to pieces and solving every case by mind reading the culprits). Harry himself does largely base his moral code off of them, and like many things in the series (anyone up for a debate on sexism? ) it's hard to separate his voice from Butcher's or authorial intent in general, but I think there's more than enough evidence to conclude that the Laws aren't meant to be morally objective.

Yeah, when I was talking about wizards incidentally harming others, I wasn't meaning they'd go aiming spells directly at tech. They don't generally need to. Dresden almost never goes into a high tech area because he knows, even without doing magic in the room, that his presence can fry hardware. And even if the Council says they won't go after somebody like that, Dresden's not bound to them to the extent that he can't take up cases they wouldn't touch. At this point I don't think he's doing much PI work anymore, but if he was, all he'd need was a client with some knowledge of magic asking him for help. Bonus points if the client's some hot female secretary, given how the series goes.