[X] Let her do it, you are curious to see what it looks like
As much as it pains me to not embrace Molly's primordial toddlerhood by eating strange extradimensional entities she found on the ground, Mab has dibs on this as long as she can actually chew properly.
I didn't actually think you could do that to Outsiders even on Halloween, but if she can we might as well keep our secrets.
Also figure out a way to launder Nemesis' secrets. Getting paid to be a bastard about this sort of thing is a delicious way to be a good guy infernal.
So should we try to arrange house calls for the other nemesis victims soon? I'd like to build up some more minor favors to spend in place of the big ones now that we've broken the ice on this.
Nemesis won't make it easy naturally, but the pay would probably be pretty good and we might not end up with our taste of outsider calamari this time around. Worth the effort.
Maybe we could double dip and go hunting via the red court connection? Nemesis has got to be playing around there, so we could get the white council to fund our road trip digging them up and sell nemesis scalps to Mab.
Not worth as much as saving her own people, but cleaning stuff that slipped in under her watch is still technically a valuable service to her. If not Winter, I'm sure someone else would like the same service for similar reasons.
So should we try to arrange house calls for the other nemesis victims soon? I'd like to build up some more minor favors to spend in place of the big ones now that we've broken the ice on this.
It almost sounds like discarded immortality taking on a life of its own which makes a twisted sort of sense.
Immortality cannot die, otherwise it's just being very hard to kill and while an immortal being might be able to remove their own immortality perhaps that immortality never stopped being a part of that being.
Is it a mortal person the heart was abandoned for? Or perhaps the mortal world?
I half-wonder if the Charioteer is something defined by opposition, although we didn't see it in reverse it seems to have shaped Nemesis into a tool of opposition and reflection regardless.
So... How much successes would we need to subvert Nemesis? We would need to find its old owner, which likely became the first Mantle here, or something akin to it, and somehow reintegrate it back as the Heart.
… fair point. Though getting them back to interrogate about what nemesis was up to isn't without value, and removing them the normal way doesn't allow for that. We're the cheapest option for removal that leaves something behind.
Really this might be the only reason to even think about implying MiM exists to Mab. Getting rid of nemesis is great, being able to reduce it either permanently or in some way it needs to heal rather than consolidate from is better.
Sharing information of any kind makes me unhappy, especially with Mab of all people, so I'm on the fence if this is a good idea. It is however a value proposition worth at least passing thought.
She'll probably deal square with us out of practicality, but only for that, and she's no less complicated a character than she was before this started. Being so unambiguously helpful to Winter for anything other than directly screwing Outsiders would be iffy on multiple practical and ethical levels.
On that note, this is the time to do some thinking on Summer. We made a splash, if we aren't careful then we could get some friction with the other side, and once we get pulled in whatever dynamic we have will probably stick like some sort of daemon child of glitter and herpes.
So do we try to avoid/defuse it as it goes, or build something specific?
It almost sounds like discarded immortality taking on a life of its own which makes a twisted sort of sense.
Immortality cannot die, otherwise it's just being very hard to kill and while an immortal being might be able to remove their own immortality perhaps that immortality never stopped being a part of that being.
Is it a mortal person the heart was abandoned for? Or perhaps the mortal world?
I half-wonder if the Charioteer is something defined by opposition, although we didn't see it in reverse it seems to have shaped Nemesis into a tool of opposition and reflection regardless.
Given the 3e Rakasha lore that immortality thing makes a disturbing amount of sense.
look at the immortality section for them:
Only two means exist for a raksha to murder others of his kind in the Wyld: to gain ownership of an individual's Heart and to destroy it, or to commit murder with a weapon of cold iron. However, when a Creation-born slays one of the raksha, the raksha is slain. If she steals a raksha's possessions, they now belong to her. If she causes a raksha to fall in love with her, that raksha is truly in love, and may not discard the emotion on a whim. Likewise, raksha in Creation must deal with the consequences of their own actions.
Powerful raksha (possessing Heart 2+) may calcify differently, congealing into tombs for themselves. These commonly take the form of strange, slightly fae objects or structures—a statue, a tree, a small pond or well, a pillar of compacted salt, or even a tiny cottage. Such remnants are known to the few savants who are aware of the phenomenon as reliquaries.
More tinfoil hat theory than anything else, but I wonder what would happen if a truly major unshaped fell into inescapable love with something in the mortal world, and then deliberately killed themselves in a way meant to leave something behind to protect them.
A tree, a cottage*, or perhaps a Gate?
What if Nemesis is the shadow of the Outer Gates, and that's why it's allowed to trespass where others can't?
I half-wonder if the Charioteer is something defined by opposition, although we didn't see it in reverse it seems to have shaped Nemesis into a tool of opposition and reflection regardless
Jesus Christ would not be the best example. Him dying was a direct choice not because of the crucifixion.
He said "It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost" from Jhon 19:30
It's a very different situation than a temporary grace-less angel.
That doesnt say choice, it says acknowledgement.
Part of enduring and sharing the human experience was supposed to be you dont get to decide when you die.
At least, thats how I learned it in sunday school.
Hmm.
Worth noting that without an active Winter Knight around, it both means that Maeve cant attempt to subvert them, but it also means that, say, Mother Winter won't simply lose patience/temper and tell the Knight to remove Maeve.
If it wasn't that Lloyd Slate was imprisoned back before Mab discovered the Nemesis infection, I would be suspecting that it was deliberate.
I mean, do you really want to use that analogy? Jesus got resurrected, and was clearly a part of Holy Trinity at all times, rather than becoming it after death. In exalted term that was Primordial YHWH sending his humaniform jouten to Earth in order to enact certain rituals, which included body death, but not soul death.
Yes, actually, the analogy works pretty well. According to Christian Doctrine, Jesus was both fully God and fully Man while he was mortal, and could have chosen to change his circumstances at any time. He just didn't, because sharing the same experience as a mortal was the point.
Similarly, Uriel explicitly remained an Archangel even after giving away his Grace, and could have taken it back without requiring external permission.
No.
Christian doctrine of the Trinity in no way maps onto Christ being a jouten-alike; a jouten is a subsoul, while Christian doctrine insists that Christ is co-equal with other members of the Trinity.
I think you are going entirely too far in trying to define Butcher's White God as a Primordial; they dont translate.
I mean all those, and actually more, applied to Nemesis inside Maeve. Lash is contained by the Rules at least somewhat, unlike Nemesis, so the chances of her being able to do mental harm to Harry are lower than Nemesis's to Maeve. Lash is almost guaranteed to be physically weaker than Nemesis, so we have a better chance of fighting her. And Lash has lower chances of being able to talk to Lasciel than Nemesis has of talking with, well, greater He-Who-Walks-Beside - the latter is a hivemind, after all.
My point is, I see meta reason, but in-story, since we exorcised Nemesis from Maeve, the consistent thing would be to organize an ambush on Harry, and exorcise Lash from him. Possibly use Mab as a backup to Michael to put Lash down reliably. Fairly sure that Mab could take Lash, whatever Lash is - an imprint on Harry's mind or Lasciel's subsoul.
1)This is not true.
Nemesis is explicitly constrained by rules, just that some of them(some, not all) are different from the rules that apply to other spirits. I mean, Nemesis and every other Walker we see onscreen can be compelled to name themselves.
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2)No that is not true either.
Go back and read Dead Beat and Proven Guilty again, specifically the points where Lash straight up makes Dresden see shit that isn't there. Lash could get him killed, if that was her intent or mission. It isn't.
By comparison, we have never seen Nemesis actively attempt to kill a host in canon.
Put it in situations where it might get killed as part of the tasks given, sure.
But not suicide. It might be able to do so, but we've never seen it happen.
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3)We dont actually know how Angel-Shadow communications work.
Some of the evidence of his fight with Lasciel/Hannah Ascher in Skin Game was that Lasciel knew how he fought, from the inside out, which wouldn't be possible unless she was getting a feed from Lash somehow.
Ascher let out a snarl of frustration and hurled another sphere. Her thinking was obvious-if she could keep pouring fire onto me and force me to hold up shield after shield against it, eventually she could either burn through it or exhaust my ability to keep holding it up. I'd have taken that fight against a lot of practitioners: There are relatively few wizards on the White Council who can stay with me in terms of pure magical horsepower. But while there are plenty of wizards who could wear themselves out pounding on my shields, I had a pretty solid intuition that Ascher could keep throwing fire until I was a gasping heap on the ground, especially with Lasciel's knowledge and experience backing her up. Worse, Lasciel knew me, inside and out. Or at least, she had known me. So it was time to use a few tricks I'd developed since we'd parted ways.
In the past, I'd worn rings designed to store a little excess kinetic energy every time I moved my arm. Then I could let loose the saved energy all in one place to pretty devastating effect when I really needed to do it. I hadn't had the resources I needed to make new rings, but I'd carved the same spell in my new wizard's staff.
Seventy-seven times.
It wasn't as handy as my layered rings had been-instead of being broken up into multiple units, the energy of the spell was all stored in one reservoir, so I only had the one shot.
But it was a doozy.
Now Dresden can be wrong. But that's his impression, and I dont see any evidence to the contrary.
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QM said to drop the subject of the nature of Lash for the moment, so thats as far as I can talk about it in good conscience.
It's almost certain that Mab would seclude her for reeducation for some time. After that? Lots of social against her to reform her. I am fairly sure this event would shake her, a lot.
The example of canon suggests that Mab has limited ability to give Maeve orders outside specific circumstances.
Feudal court, feudal politics; Mab is Queen, but nobles have rights.
The issues I have with not telling Harry are manifold:
1) It's too meta for me. Lash here is in different circumstances than she was in canon. We cannot rely on her being subverted. At the very least, I wouldn't, not without us applying exalted-grade social attacks to her consistently somehow. Harry has heroic willpower, but, as I said, the situation is different from canon.
2) If we are going by meta reasons, as long as we don't tell Harry about SRE, we can't use it to cure half-reds (it should apply), and reunite Harry with his daughter.
1)Lash here is in pretty much the same circumstances she was in canon.
Few of those affecting her situation personally as far as we know. Its only been four or five months since Proven Guilty.
Molly may have changed drastically, but a lot of the world hasn't caught up yet.
2)Which daughter?
Dresden had two in canon: Maggie with Susan Rodriguez, and Bonea with Lash.
I dont want to butterfly the other kid away either. I think she makes for a hilarious complication.
3)Sapphire Ritual has nothing to do with Dresden's first kid.
Susan could always have delivered Maggie to her father instead of having her fostered by a Mexican family; she deliberately didn't because she thought the child was safer not being known to be Harry's daughter, which is a position with some merit. Even though I dont agree with the decision.
I wonder how much of dresden files outsider lore is taken, how much abandoned, and how much is blended in with this cosmology. I figure a lot I'm not sure how much outsiders are dependent on fear here like canon though its never said how dependent they are in canon just that knowledge of them and fear of them empowers them.
So in summary: the Magician (who bore all five graces), tore out his heart and left it bleeding in the pursuit of a mortal love. The mortal is not specified to have any characteristics, and its noted that the magician strides through a garden of ambition without looking back. Upright The Magician traditionally in the Tarot represents the infinite power of will, the union of Heaven and Earth and grasping one's full potential to serve their future goal. Reversed they symbolize your greed and desires leading you, instead of the opposite. It's particularly interesting that the Magician tore out their heart, the symbol of willpower and identity, which is the core theme of the card. With the ambiguousness of his mortal love, it's my personal theory that the Magician was a Raksha who was seduced by Creation's narrative and left behind his self-identity to become some sort of gift to his love, the mortals. Or with the themes of ambition and not looking back, it might have been some sort of completion or ascension. Replacing his Heart with Mortality, thus granting them free-will?
It's also noted that the Heart of the Magician refers itself as the Hatred of All. With the probably immense power of it's greater-self, I further postulate based on the previous clues that the Magician was an emanation of one of the Shinma, perhaps that of the Cup or the Heart. With its epithet of liar, I would point towards Gilmani the liar
Another interesting thing is that the Magician card isn't correct. In most Tarot decks, the Magician holds a double-ended candle/magician's wand in the hand point up, has a halo of infinity above him and a snake belt that represents self-constraint and endless regeneration. This Magician doesn't. The candle/wand is meant to be the main symbol of the Magician's connection to Heaven and Earth. The halo and belt, along with the pure white robes and red cloak, are meant to emphasize their status as Power Incarnate. So whoever this Magician is, while they posses a union with the world as represented by their graces, they did not have divine, infinite power or self-constraint. Their status as too-young is interesting as well, but I don't know what it's supposed to represent.
Right now we have too little information to speculate on who the Chariot is, but I would agree with the other theories that they're probably another Outsider.
EDIT:
Though it should be noted that, like the Magician, the Chariot has divine symbolism woven into them. The canopy of six-pointed stars are a representation of divine will, the control of the black and white sphinxes through no whip or chain represent self-control through self-will. It's also noted in the chapter that the Chariot is a prince with vengeance crowned and has a smile of wicked delights. Maybe a fallen angel?
1)Lash here is in pretty much the same circumstances she was in canon.
Few of those affecting her situation personally as far as we know. Its only been four or five months since Proven Guilty.
Molly may have changed drastically, but a lot of the world hasn't caught up yet.
Lash here is in a very different situation, because Harry is in a different situation.
Harry is right next to something he doesn't understand, has no frame of reference for and more importantly Bob has no frame of reference for.
This gives Lash more of a lever for Harry to actually accept her input.
Lash here is in a very different situation, because Harry is in a different situation.
Harry is right next to something he doesn't understand, has no frame of reference for and more importantly Bob has no frame of reference for.
This gives Lash more of a lever for Harry to actually accept her input.
For that it's worth Molly has seen him talk to Lash several times since finding out about her (advantages of supernatural social skills including for perception).
It's an indoor ice rink Maeve took over for a party. It might be locked down for a bit, but it's a public place and the fey have no reason to be invested in it past this single use.
Amusing scenario: the Winter Court demolishes this place in an attempt to maintain as much secrecy as possible about this new useful-but-unfortunately-unique asset they just got working with them on their primary purpose
