I hope people who voted for social resolution are satisfied with your new minion. I fully understand how upbringing and social circle influence a person, but does it excuse them? I don't think so.
No you dont. You really, really dont.
Gotta love super-perception.
As an infernal who's pet projects are all about trying to lift people out of the darkness, we'll continue encountering the occasions where we discovered that seemingly innocent minion X did something super-fucked up. I kind of expected Jade dogs to be the first "oh, wait, these aren't actually good people" incident, but somehow we avoided focusing on the fact that they must have eaten a bunch of people.
^^^
I doubt they ran down and ate people, just because of how dangerous it would have been for a pack of ghouls with no patron to try that in a major city. And the majority of members are young enough outcasts from human society that actively hunting people probably triggers taboos.
But I certainly wouldnt be surprised if human carrion was just another source of meat on the menu if found.
And the old ghouls who used to work for Bianca almost certainly ate human meat as part of the old Red Court base's means of disposing of inconvenient bodies.
There is great difference between bunch of supernatural predators that live in the Undertown and a willing member of organization that aims to infiltrate institutions of society to create farms and hunting grounds. As there is difference between mugger and those who run a human trafficking operation. Do ghouls have a choice to abstain from their Hunger in Dresden files? The White Court vampires do, and it is not Inari Raith situation, our new friend knows what she was going to do.
No there isnt.
Else we would be beating down Marcone's door right now to stab him and everyone in his organization to death.
Do you understand that almost every crime (we are not talking about criminals who are mentally ill) happens because of economical and cultural reasons? Does indoctrination really absolve a person from guilt, if their will is not impaired by physical or psychological violence?
I invite you to ponder the problem of 1970s Cambodia. Or 1990s Sierra Leone.
Or post-apartheid South Africa.
I still think we should have killed the elder. Whats the fuck the point of being a heroes if we let fucking human trafficking fucks just ply their trade. Do i need to repeat the pithy line about evil winning when a good (wo)man does nothing. We are doinh nothing right now.
There are pragmatic and ethical reasons why this should never have been on the table.
The smart thing, a lot of the time is to know when to do nothing.
They've been mentioned at length at this point. Often by me.
I know about exploitation and alienation, but does it mean that modern people from West cannot persecute literal murderers because their lifestyle was based on exploitation of other nations? The thesis seems absurd. And our new friend lives in Chicago, you know. Every criminal, even privileged ones have economical and cultural reasons for their behaviour, does it mean that they do not bear responsibility?
You really dont want to go there.
I mean, by the Seven Laws of the setting, Molly was due to have her head cut off for mind-bending two of her friends.
Sure, she had good reasons, but the law is the law right?
Her ducking that sentence is largely a political determination, not because she was thought not to be likely to reoffend.
In that vein, Dresden killed a man with magic at 16.
Sure it was self defense/defense of others, but the law is the law, right?
His grandfather pulled strings to keep him alive.
Judge not, so you be not judged.
As a kid from a devout Catholic home who went to many, many years of Sunday School, with a parent and priest who actually walk the walk, that message isnt actually new to Molly. Neither is the concept of redemption.
And it has particular personal resonance for the girl who injured her best friend and drove her ex at least temporarily insane by sticking magical fingers in their noggins. Good intentions, sure, but you know what the route to hell is paved with.
Does anyone think discussing the subject with Greene may open ourselves or our minions to legal risk?
No. She has no witnesses as to the content of our discussion.
I don't know if the slang is universal, but I know a Molly as a Molotov Cocktail, so that nickname is taken.
Molly is also slang for the illicit drug ecstasy.
More broadly, I think its worth a general reminder that this setting has a lot more nuance than a lot of players appear to have noticed or give it credit for. Sure there are apparent absolute evils, like the Outsiders who want to destroy Reality, and apparent absolute goods like the angels and their boss.
Everyone else is shades of gray.
The fae defend the Outer Gates and keep the Outsiders outside. The Whampires are a core part of the Oblivion War, and their burning a favor for a medevac is why Molly survived Changes in canon. Marcone's mafia keeps lesser organized supernatural predators out of Chicago. Mavra the Black Court vampire gave Dresden a headstart on preventing Cowl et al from murdering hundreds of thousands of people and destroying the White Council in Dead Beat.
There's a reason that the Knights of the Cross always offer forgiveness, and a chance to stop whatever behavior drew their attention
Even to Denarians. Especially to Denarians; Quintus Cassius, after a thousand plus years of murder and mayhem, notably got to walk away by giving up his Coin, even though his insincerity was seemingly obvious.
He only died because he insisted on coming back.
■■■
I mean, to go through some random names:
===
Ebenezar McCoy, Senior Council and Blackstaff, is by his own testimony, responsible for the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa.
That killed between 36,000(official death toll) and 120,000(unofficial estimate) people.
That's direct deaths, not counting knockon effects on agricultural harvests and food availability.
The current Blackstaff has killed more human beings than most vampires.
===
Sanya Ivanovich, Knight of the Cross and wielder of the Sword Esperacchius, was a Denarian. Willing, not by mistake.
He was recruited at the age of 16, and he was in the life for Five. Years.
He was the boyfriend of Lartessa's 2IC. His Fallen was Magog.
His personal bodycount in that period probably rivals or exceeds some old vampires just in the number of dead, because Magog was characterized as a bloodyhanded brute, even for a Fallen.
And his recruiter was deliberately grooming him to desensitize him.
The archangel Michael personally delivered Esperacchius to him a couple days after he quit.
===
Helen Beckitt, current member of the Ordo Lebes, along with her husband were the financial backers and magical assistants for the black magic sorcerer Victor Sells in Storm Front.
They bankrolled the mass production of the occult drug Three Eye which was used to flood the streets of Chicago during that period, fuelling a crime wave, and destroying the lives and sanities of people who used a drug that opened your Sight as a hallucinogen. She assisted Sells in his occult murder of at least three people.
Her actions got people killed, and ruined lives in new and interesting ways. Because she wanted revenge on Marcone.
Today she's a
brothel madam health club manager, trying to keep her girls alive and healthy.
====
Odin was, well, Odin. He trained the Merlin, and allegedly taught the Scandis how to resist a racist, genocidal faction of Yetis.
His pantheon used to help defend the Outer Gates. Today he's Santa Claus, and an advocate of human independence.
He's helped Dresden seemingly unprompted.
But he is still Odin One Eye. A cursory look at the stories in his mythology will remind you of the oceans of blood he has spilled or caused to have spilled when he ran the Norse pantheon, and even today he hires out valkyries to people like a Chicago crime lord and the Queen of the White Court.
===
There are ongoing themes of unintended consequences and redemption running through much of the series.
You can just tell that Butcher is a Lord of the Rings fan, just based on the number of times that someone who is to all intents and purposes a hostile turns out to be critical in foiling some plot by something worse.
Basically, shit is complex. By authorial design.
Engaging with the themes of the setting requires nuance. Not reflexive homicide based on what someone may or may not have done before you met them.
