Sorry this is late.
This is really reaching. We come to that conclusion immediately because we know the answer. For all Molly knows manipulate means bribery, disinformation campaigns, and blackmail. None of which qualify as possession. You might as well just directly ask about Meave if you're going to inject that much OOC knowledge into our question formulation.
I politely disagree.
This is not a human nationstate in question, it is the Winter Court, made up of Fae who while scheming and fractious, are bound to a purpose as a Court, and cannot lie. The Enemy is not another nationstate jostling for geopolitical advantage, its an existential threat with which no communication or diplomacy exists.
The usual means of exerting influence do not apply.
No Winter Fae has a paramour outside the Outer Gates, or has a bank account in the notCaymans taking Outsider bucks.
The Outsiders dont have an OutsiderKGB running an Outsider agitprop campaign in Winter.
The policy-setting elements of the Winter Court are under no illusions about what their enemy wants
In this AU, Mab literally came to power due to Outsider attempts to destroy the Courts and the world via some dude.
Its within living memory for many members of the Courts.
And Molly has spent months in discussion with Bob updating some of her knowledge on the modern Winter Court.
She knows this.
If Winter is making moves that advantage the Enemy or advance its goals, the likeliest option is infiltration forcing/influencing people in positions of power to make decisions against their own interests and those of their Court.
Only after you rule that out do you look for non-Court elements who have influence on Court policy.
This.
As you yourself pointed out, one vamp knowing something doesn't mean all of them do. Even then the more overt we are the more this sort of thing moves from inferred secret to common knowledge.
A huge number of DF supernaturals are gimmick bosses, this is the sort of detail they're basically trained from birth to pick up on.Right now most data points are ambiguous, showing we can use tap water is a significant slip.
While there's always room for caution, a situation where we literally are too afraid to use an ability at need for fear of its discovery is frankly counterproductive.
And we have multiple ways of mitigating this going forward anyway, from equipment to Sorcery to Charms
Unless they're clearly powerful supernaturals in an important meeting. Lara isn't going to think like a high schooler seeing someone sneak back into class. She's also clearly digging into us and is capable of examining old data in new contexts.
Even if she did is that really the impression we want to give? That we screwed up using a toilet so hard we came back out looking like we had a bath?
-Powerful supernatural
humans.
Like Dresden or any one of the more powerful members of the Senior Council, who may be strategic threats but still are human with human foibles. Or even members of her own White Court, like her father, or brother, or herself.
-Even if she thought that said water was linked to magic?
It is quite a jump to assume that her conclusion is likely to be that this person is using water to buff herself instead of half a dozen other magical uses.
You know, like Scrying and Divination and Sending Messages, which is often done in classically done in pools of water.
Summoning, even, if dealing with water elementals.
-Yes, actually. Mortal. Human.
Fallible.
There are advantages to being viewed as approachable, capable of mistakes; other people who you might have to work with dont automatically assume that offense given might be deliberate, and will crosscheck instead of making assumptions.
In my opinion.
Remember that we dont actually want to be a cipher.
We want to clearly communicate our intentions, redlines, and some of our capabilities.
While its tempting to want to know everything and everyone else to know nothing, its neither desirable nor practical.
That was very much intentional. Not that Molly thinks of herself as a god, even in the little g sense, but there is no reason not to keep your adversary guessing in social combat and say what you will about the Whites they are good at this, as seen by the fact that they managed to turn this around on Molly by making her doubt her own position vis a vis Thomas, enough so for Lara to also draw her own conclusions. Molly was going for 'implacable juggernaut' with that image and it cracked a little when Lara made her metaphorically blink.
Huh.
Fair enough.
We are the only person around with what's essentially an unrestricted Intellectus who is not bound by magic / law / major R rules in how they can act. Bob absolutely warned us that Mab will kill us if she learns of the crown and, for one, I kinda understand why.
-We dont actually know that IC. Its not an unrestricted Intellectus; the Crown has its own limits.
-Furthermore, we know OOC thats not actually true.
At the very least, we know about Anduriel, Master of Shadows and his partner Nicodemus Archleone, Kris Kringle's intelligence network, the Archive's Intellectus, and the Gatekeeper's apparent ability to see potential futures. And that's in addition to the oracular spirits we see Dresden call up in the books like Ulsharavas, or how older wizards apparently have precognition.
Molly's in a very select group. She's not entirely unprecedented.
-I am pretty sure that Bob did not say that.
He told us some powerful people will make us targets if it becomes known, he didn't call Mab by name.
Furthermore, there's no way for him to know Mab's mind. He cant generalize from his own experience to ours.
Suggestions that Mab is going to jump to homicide have no supporting evidence for them.
