Now this is actually somewhat fascinating as an idea, and I'll need to take some time to think about it and how the merger would handle it. Mainly because you can't really
work divine magic in the DF-verse as far as I can remember. It's a different sort of thing...
Thank you!
Oh right. Yeah. Like once. Ever. Assume that their existence has not crossed Viserys' radar. I can't really change that without actually knowing more about them, and I don't have any sources on them which I trust beyond the statement that they exist.
@egoo is correct here, for reasons of-
Well, the above, yeah. Viserys has a huge amount of experience, but he's limited in how he can use it. And he also looks young. This is not a good thing.
Business as it was, pre-Fomor, had the Red Court routinely eating practitioners, and the Wardens stated to be struggling under the weight of numbers of new Talents awakening. As it stands now, the Fomor are gone, but only from North America. This means that they'll keep hitting everywhere else, and that the Council's primary focus is unlikely to shift from Eurasia. Which means, again, that things will return to the situation that existed before, but with far fewer Wardens available and now any Warlock coming out of the Paranet has
access to the Paranet. Organising the lesser practitioners was and remains a good idea. But it has its downsides too. And now that direct action has been shown to fail, things will take a turn for the more elusive, covert and in some ways, much nastier. The Paranet had one big threat to cluster up against. As others have said, that made their existence obvious. Which makes them a truly delicious target for someone like, I don't know, Cowl.
Who'd probably do it just to fuck over Dresden, with it serving his goals as a happy coincidence. And Viserys isn't saying this will happen immediately. He's saying that it's coming, and that the Council absolutely needs to do its self-appointed job or they're going to get hit with a sucker punch.
Now, on the matter of folks suggesting that Viserys make his own WC, with blackjack and hookers, I'd actually like to thank you. This chapter was going to to be...well, not liked, I suspected. In general, the thread doesn't like it when Viserys loses, even when he has every reason to do so. Perhaps I could have chosen my words more carefully in the passage, but as was pointed out to me, Langtry doesn't need a reason to be come across a self-righteous asshole. It's a good part of what he is. A 'make our own, with x and y' was actually the best I was hoping for, so...yeah. Thanks - as silly as that might sound.
To give a slight spoiler though, please do remember that pushes for the Paranet to be made stronger and more supported has been going for a while. And that Ana has now had most of three years to build up support in the Council. Regardless of what the Merlin might say here, there will be debate on the matter. And there...he might just find himself facing a lot more opposition than he thought.
More importantly, perhaps, Horde Thief isn't narratively designed to be a 'and then everything was fixed, and they left' type of series. There are entities out in the DF universe that would swallow Viserys and the Companions without breaking a sweat, after all. But more importantly, there's the simple concern of time. Viserys has an Empire to rule, a Long Night to prepare for. He doesn't have the time to spend months and years breaking down how the worlds interact, establishing networks, all of the slow stuff that's really needed to do much of what's being suggested. That isn't, though, saying that his presence isn't going to leave a considerable impact on the world after he's picked up. Or even that he won't come back, eventually.
Those events simply lie outwith the breadth of this story. Then again, I think I've got enough planned to keep you all happy with the final result. Arc 2 has quite a bit more to it to come, and sections of it I know will satisfy the 'fuck all y'all' sections of the quest gestalt.
Oh, and thanks to all for finding my typos, pointing out solutions or ideas, and in general being a wonderful and supportive community about this entire monolith of an omake series.
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