This is not terminology. If it was, she would have spoken of Chi and Ying-Yang. But she listed those among other examples of names. She is talking about essence. This stuff:
Somewhere somehow Ancient Mai has at least remnants of ancient lore.
Its terminology.
Mage the Ascension uses Quintessence, which literally means Fifth Essence, to describe the same thing that other splats call Chi, Sekhem, Gnosis, and Glamor.
My line of thinking is that the thing is still there and can't go anywhere else without going through Cleveland first. The whole end of that encounter seemed pretty clear that it was just putting the genie back in the bottle.
It needs to die or reform before it emerges again.
For one thing, its not imprisoned
in Cleveland; Cleveland just had enough people of the right Finnish ancestry to attempt to open a hole to its prison.
For another, its been imprisoned since pre-history and never managed a prisonbreak.
For a third, it's linked somehow to the Finnish pantheons and people; the primordial Finnish hero/god Valmainonen that allegedly imprisoned it is his son in some versions of Finnish myth. We dont know the second and third order consequences of opening its prison to kill it. Or even how difficult such a thing would be.
The current solution appears to have worked fine for millenia.
This is clearly a case of leave well alone IMO.
Faces of Truth
11th of December 2006 A.D.
COMMENTARY
Interesting.
Bao Zhong doesnt have more than a passing paragraph in Blood and Silk, so there isnt much
I suppose we could use this conversation as a Crown focus to learn what the White Council knows about Bao Zhong
Which would presumably give us access to what Elder Mai knows/believes about Bao Zhong.
As for arhats?
We could go to the Library and ask for access to the akuma we handed over to them. And ask some questions.
OR we could call in that favor and go talk to Tuzi and the shen of Chinatown about what arhats are.
Yep as far as she knows all the Nevernever is made of ectoplasm, or rather it decays into that when brought into reality. This is something she knows is odd, but every other sign Wu Mei sees reads 'Yomi Wan'.
I dont buy it. If they are spending so much time looking at weapons in the Brass Courts?
Then they have to be of the impression that it wont simply evaporate like ectoplasm when sunlight hits it in the real world. And Dresden saw Izzy and Alec leave with physical stuff.
And while the Merlin wouldnt have mentioned everything Molly discussed with him, Molly pulling out working technology at Mac's place in the daytime would have been noted as well.
If you guys want to change her mind you can write in an attempt to do so
Im not really seeing why.
We literally have artifacts of Yomi Wan (the sword, the Essence jewel, the Will's body) that demonstrate that not all parts of Yomi Wan are made of ectoplasm.
And the senior members of the White Council will know that there are parts of Yomi Wan that are as physical as everywhere else.
To the more cautious around us - why can't / shouldn't we say to her (and/or Ancient Mai): "Your conclusion is wrong. I don't know what it is exactly, but mine is the power that predates Yomi hells and current iteration of the universe. Archangel Uriel confirms this, even if he is vague about what it is exactly." What is the danger to us here?
I am generally loathe to namedrop really heavy hitters.
I am especially loath to do so when we are asking said people to take our word for it with no supporting evidence. Especially since we dont have Michael here vouchsafing something as ridiculous as "Met an archangel"
Also, the senior members of the White Council know that all of the NeverNever is not made of ectoplasm
Even Dresden knows this; we see him react to mordite/deathstone in Death Masks.
Actually - there's one big flaw in her reasoning that she should know about. Matter in our Courts is not made of ectoplasm. Dresden took samples with him that I assume he shared with the Council. @DragonParadox could you comment on this? If I understood correctly, normally afterlives are part of the NeverNever and their matter is ectoplasm / not eartly matter. Ours, however, is as real as the world is, if not more so.
For one thing, given the canon for how Yomi Wan was formed, there are parts of Yomi Wan that are going to be physical.
Just like there are parts of the NeverNever that used to be part of the physical world. Remember the village we stumbled across on the Way to Monoc's base that apparently came from somewhere in Germany?
For another, we have canonically seen wizards stabilize ectoplasm under certain conditions; McCoy did it in Peace Talks if I recall correctly. We dont know all the rules of how things work in the NeverNever.
For a third, she clearly knows this.
Else there would be no point of looking over the weapons of the Brass Courts if they were all going to melt in the sunlight of the physical world.
That's not the sort of intellectus we claimed.
That particular ability is almost always about or in relation to something, which is why the crown is so weird and broken.
What we claimed was intellectus in relation to how certain workings of our soul world operate.
Also worth noting:
There is no guarantee that the Merlin, or Ancient Mai, would share everything they know with lower-ranked wizards
See how Wu Min's master barely mentioned Bao Zhong's history to her.
Or how McCoy didnt really share any details of his first encounter with Molly with all the Wardens.
