At some point we really need to come to an accommodation with these guys. Despite the fact that they've been profoundly dickish so far I still think having a group of actual humans to at least somewhat represent the interests of the common man is valuable. Especially considering the array of monsters that make up the major supernatural powers.
1)They are compromised.
They keep being led around by the nose in this case, from the staged Dresden murder scene to this place.
And either they havent noticed or they dont care.
2)They are untrustworthy as a corporate organization.
They tried to blackmail a person they knew to be innocent into working for them on trumped up charges.
There's undoubtedly good agents, but frankly we lack the time or resources to vet them.
3)Everybody else has tried to keep the mortals out.
I am distinctly averse to assuming that every other mortal and entity in the supernatural world is an idiot who does not see the obvious benefits of getting government backing.
4)The last time the US natsec apparatus tried to get involved in the supernatural, the Knights of the Cross had to do cleanup.
Thats not a recommendation.
I've read most of the books in Charles Stross' Laundry series. I remember the Black Chamber.
I dont want to find out if some bright spark decides that staging a Darkhallow in a Third World city is acceptable, or that summoning an Outer God for foreign policy advantage is worthwhile.
Figure mantles are more like artifacts than spirits in most cases. Similar to Exaltations.
If you believe Dresden and Winter Lady Molly, they're more like spirits than artifacts.
They have their own inbuilt instincts and defenses.
Like the Winter Lady Mantle blue-balling Molly despite ramping her libido all the way up.
Given that Harry described the Mantle of the Winter Knight almost like an external thing that was empowering his worst instincts you could make the argument that that they are separate enough for that... but I think that may be more of a Harry Dresden thing than a mantle thing. He has this thing where he represses what he sees as the darker part of himself enough to make a Victorian moralist proud.
Seriously I do not think most humans have a mirror universe Evil Me inside their heads
Yeah, Dresden is something of an unreliable observer.
Then again, Dresden is one of only two persons we've had a PoV of who has hosted external entities inside his own head and carried a Mantle. He might actually know what he's talking about when he describes them a
Plus, the whole Lash saga suggests he might have a nonstandard mental topology.
Admittedly, Winter Lady Molly doesnt have convos with a mirror Molly.
But her whole experience with Carlos up in Alaska in the Cold Case short story suggests that Dresden is correct about the Mantle at least being an external thing empowering some of her more primal instincts and impulses, and with autonomy of its own.
Would Gard's muggle-repelling ward necessarily work against the FBI agents? It:
Yes it will.
When we were planning Cindy's rescue, one of the options was to call in the cops on the tattoo parlor and then use the muggle ward to get rid of them. Gard knows her shit; if she says it will work on mortals, it will work on mortals.
Especially arrogant of Katrina given that one of the weaknesses of her abilities is being overwhelmed by many opponents. Action economy is powerful and our opponents aren't yet at the point where bullets aren't a threat. And they can knock us out of time freeze when it happens so a character with a more important action doesn't have to waste time.
So I think that we have here an opportunity to gain useful allies in the upcoming fight, not just deny whatever our enemies were hoping for. This is an acknowledged weakness of our opponent.
1)She's a necromancer. What exactly are all these mooks going to do if she dumps a swarm of spectres on them like Corpsetaker did to us a few hours ago? How many of them wont panic fire and hit other people? Or are confident they can resist ghost possession? Or even just ordinary attack?
There are no broadspectrum antighost weapons at night, and bullets do diddly.
Hell, even if she just pulls a Grevane and drops a dozen zombies on them out of the blue, they die. Dresdenverse zombies dont really care about headshots; you need to dismember them. And when raised by a seriousface necromancer, they're bloody terrifying. Grevane's zombies were tearing down steel doors and sprinting fast enough to catch up with a VW Beetle.
2)We know they are compromised. How high, we dont know. This is the second time in two days we've seen bullshit from them. First it was "Dresden" disposing of Greene's body and the video conveniently showing up in their hands. Now all of a sudden they are showing up at a necromancer ritual site that we had trouble finding.
It took the combined bullshit of an Exalt and a White Council wizard to run this ritual site down.
Yet we get here and find a group of FBI agents fumbling in the dark? How did they know to be here?
That screams they are being manipulated.
i think that even outside the narrow focus of this specific situation, I think we need to talk about and decide on how we should approach mundane institutions trying to get a handle on the supernatural. While this specific FBI operation might not be on the up and up, the natural desire of a working government to fulfill its social contract with its citizens and be able to protect them from predations of the supernatural is not something I am willing to condemn. People shouldn't be bitten by red court vampires, and those who are should be provided with medical treatment and monitoring. White court vampires should at the very least be regulated. Cops should have means to deal with warlocks.
So, do we stand on the side of preserving the masquerade and declare that it is within our authority to protect mortals, or do we stand on the side of empowering mundane authorities, if only vetted ones? Do we, for example, start helping Special Investigations and issuing them hellphones and other special equipment?
The track record of mortal governments does not inspire confidence, and widespread hysteria in the public can do a lot more damage than even the supernatural predators here are largely responsible for.
There's a reason even the Catholic Church is mostly hands off.
I'm definitly on the side of keeping mundane institutions out of the supernatural world.
Not in the sense of keeping up the Masquerade, everyone can know of our glory, but in the sense of not helping them interfere.
People who try to influence the supernatural without going all-in and becoming members of said world deserve whatever they get.
^^^
Everybody, even the vanilla mortals who you would think would benefit from backup like the Venators, have scrupulously tried to keep mortal governments and populations out of the supernatural.
Even the Catholic Church has largely tried to minimise it, because last time it apparently did a lot more harm than good.
That strongly points at institutional knowledge that its a bad idea in general. For almost everyone.
Besides, the White Council has some contacts at very high levels.
High enough levels for Rashid to essentially resolve Dresden's legal issues from being declared dead to showing up alive around two years later.
At the street level, individuals inform individuals. We see everyone from police to judges in the know.
It took years before Dresden trusted Murphy enough to bring her all the way in, and Murphy tried to throw Dresden in jail multiple times in the first two books.
