If they didnt fail, there wouldnt be much of a series, would there?And you will notice that all those plots failed. Now did they fail with the help of mysterious ways or not is something that can never be certain. But I would not discount the possibly.
Further more no one else is certain either. Which goes a long way towards discouraging attempts.
Point of correction:A curse can't touch us, so the only remaining target's would be a Knight's family.
It's not our duty to protect those, someone is already on the job.
Kinda is.It's not our duty to protect those, someone is already on the job.
Oh sure. Against us.I'm not so sure about that.
Sympathy magic can be blocked and weakened by thresholds and wards. We see Harry hide from entropy curses and the like targeted the same way.
The ritual in changes was so ridiculously powerful precisely because they wanted to kill McCoy through his wards and lesser spells, like the one Helen and her husband were using to explode hearts, would have pinged off the side.
Heaven has Rules, and while Uriel et al are riding the opposition hard? They make no absolute guarantees.Heaven isn't an insurance company, and Uriel is rules lawyering as hard as he can on behalf of the knights.
Those Fetches didn't get smote, but Harry was basically an Uriel plot in that case. None of them had a good time from the point they messed with the Carpenters onward.
Those other AoE plots also didn't get to the point of actually hitting the Carpenters. I would be surprised if the result wasn't the family miraculously surviving. The idea that Heaven would just go "Sorry, acts of incidental malice aren't covered in the company health plan" is ridiculous.
@DragonParadox what grade of splendor could Lily's tears power?
It looks like things are a little different here than canon. In Proven Guilty, Charity was close enough to her mother to trust her with the other children when her and Harry were dealing with Molly.
^^^It looks like things are a little different here than canon. In Proven Guilty, Charity was close enough to her mother to trust her with the other children when her and Harry were dealing with Molly.
Chapter 27.Death Masks said:We did, and as I came in, Forthill set a Louisville Slugger baseball bat down in the corner. I raised my eyebrows, traded a look with Susan, and then put my staff and Shiro's cane beside the bat. We followed Forthill into the kitchen.
"Where's Charity?" I asked.
"Taking the children to her mother's house," Forthill said. "She should be back soon."
I let out a breath of relief. "Anna Valmont?"
"Guest room. Sleeping."
"I need to call Martin," Susan said. "Excuse me." She stepped aside into the small study.
"Coffee, doughnut?" Father Forthill asked.
I sat down at the table. "Father, you've never been closer to converting me."
No, I meant Chapter 42 of Proven Guilty.
Your quote just shows that it wasn't a one time thing.Proven Guilty said:"Yes? Is everyone alright?" Charity asked.
"As far as I know," I told her. "Where are the other kids?"
"My mother took them home."
"Any word from Michael? "
She shook her head.
Yes, but it can't put a marker on us to help the spirit find us.A curse can absolutely do something like sic a spirit or something similar on us.
My point was that claiming sympathetic magic can't be countered or blocked is wrong, because we know of multiple ways to do just that from canon.Oh sure. Against us.
It does nothing against the collateral damage of such a thing.
I think of it like our being on one branch of a tree; we can stop anything coming up that one branch where Molly is standing, but the other branches are probably beyond her.
She would need to go down to the figurative tree roots to block it.
That was the result of a Mundane crazy who failed.Heaven would absolutely do that.
In fact, Heaven did do that; see Father Douglas buckling Alicia into a bomb vest in order to try to get Dresden to hand over Amoracchius and Fidelacchius. Had nothing to do with the kid, or the Carpenters for that matter; Michael was officially retired.
"What was it like growing up in Boston?" you ask after a moment, curious about a part of your mother's life she had never spoken about before. Much different from the stories Dad would tell about growing up with Grandma Grandpa Uncle Pete and Aunt Sally you would guess and not just from what you know of the story's end.
"Lonely," the word slips without a moment's thought. "I was an only child, my father James, James Hamilton Jr., was always busy with this company or that, he was, maybe still is what's called an activist investor, someone who takes over companies to make them run better and then sells at a profit. My mother Regina Hamilton nee Winthrop no doubt still is a socialite and philanthropist. I grew up in the city in a condo by the Old Harbor. Mother would complain about how cramped it was sometimes, personally I found it all intimidatingly large and and shinny. I spent a lot more time around tutors and au pairs..." she cuts herself off. "God, I had not thought out that word in years, nannies basically, foreign ones supposedly so I would learn French and Italian, but really it was just snobbery pure and simple."
She huffs, startled, but obviously amused at the comparison. "As it turns out this isn't the eighteen hundreds when 'the help' stays on the manor, people move out, they move on. When you are talking about the most recommended staff they tend to specialize by age group as well. I wasn't... no one mistreated me, in some ways I was a remarkably sheltered child. I think the first time anyone raised their voice at me in anger I was ten and doing remarkably bad at tennis. That was the other thing, father believed in structured time, in efficiently, after all that is what he did for a living. After school studies, socializing, sports, clubs everything in its place, even the car ride to and fro was accounted for. Thinking back on it now I'm surprised I didn't rebel try to break out of it all sooner, but it is... hard to separate that from what came afterwards. I think it is just that I did not find it that remarkable at the time."
"A few, there was one girl I partnered up for fencing a lot of the time Alexandra, Alex for short...." She stops to think, a look of sadness stealing across her face. "I can't remember her name last name anymore. She was very passionate about swords not just the foil, I think that is where I caught the bug from even if I didn't stick with swords in the end. I remember she was distantly related to the Tsars of Russia and thirteen year old me thought that was the coolest thing, so much better than stogy old Governor John Winthrop. I actually said that to my mother. To be honest I am not sure if it was out of spite or because I wanted to get some kind of reaction out of her."
"She said not to use the word cool, called it uncooth and said I had 'a better vocabulary than that'." Her had gone utterly flat. "That was he first time I stole money out of her purse for movie tickets. Two days later me and Alex skipped out on fencing, we went to see Grease. My parents pulled me out of fencing the next day. I never saw Alex again after that."
"Oh no, I don't thinks he ever noticed ten dollars were missing, it was because I didn't follow the scheduale. It was very inconsiderate, that is all she cared to say. So I started doing it more often, I got better at it, by the time I was sixteen she did not care as much, but I had far worse friends and I was doing more than going to the cinema, but then I had the episode and everything changed."
"It's a long, long time ago now sweetie, more than half my life," Mom says with a shake of the head and a smile, mostly though not entirely for your benefit. "It was at a retirement party for one of Father's friends, they had dragged me into it and I hated the idea so much I tried to pretend I was sick." She looks you up and down a moment, taking a deep breath before launching herself into the rest of the story. "Tried to make myself sick, took some pills and brandy, one of my friends said it would look like a stomach flu and I'd be fine in the morning. It didn't work out that way. I was nauseous, shaky, but nothing Mother, much less Father would accept as a reason a reason to excuse myself so I went. I don't remember anything of that night, but I was told later by the doctors that I hallucinated, something about a giant bat covered in blood. I hit a man in the head with a punch bowl and had to be dragged out of the room."
Mom is talking faster now, as bad as things had been before this is the part she really does not want to talk about. "I took what money I had managed to squirrel away, went right to a Salvation Army thrift store for a few changes to clothes and I tried to just live, make it to eighteen. I looked for a job as a tutor, of course that was never going to work, but what did I know? Finally managed to get a job waiting tables at a club in Roxbury, not that I was any good at it, I think the lady who owned it just felt bad for me. There was an attack... they blamed the Hell's Angels, wasn't that. I could see their faces, they weren't human. One of them reached for me. I jumped out though a window, a closed window but I didn't get hurt. By then I wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't. I thought the monsters had come after me, maybe I was right, maybe not. I was too scared to try again, didn't want other people to get hurt from being around me. Things got bad, then Gregor found me and they seemed to be looking up for a little while, he had answers or seemed to at least...."
This time the pause he longer and heavier. When you remind her that you know the rest Mom nods, relief in her eyes, as you hug her wordlessly. The two of you sit like that for maybe a full minute before she speaks again: "My parents are not terrible people, not good maybe, but there's much worse to be found out there, we both know that. If you talk to them or go meet them. Here—" she pulls out one of the paper she had set aside on the end table. "This is a list of everyone I remember from the family, as well as what addresses I could remember though after all this time some of them probably won't be good anymore. I'm sure you can figure them out on the computer."
To be fair, dropping in on them without prep could get us into drama we don't really need or want. I'd rather risk that than ignore them, but we can and should check first. If Molly's maternal grandparents are still assholes there's no reason to subject ourselves to them instead of just skipping to the rest of the family.I am curious, see really no reasons not to go at least see them.
Or "just" mundane abuse. If Charity has a niece or nephew going through what she did minus the magic powers I think it'd be IC for Molly to try helping them.I do agree with those pointing out that there is a possibility of Molly having a family member going through awakening the gift, and that us being there would be a good thing for them.
The tricky part would be finding people who wouldn't explode at the thought of not being able to immediately publish.
We should consider what Molly is going to study in general. Political science? Some manner of STEM (engineering?)? History / psychology / anthropology?Only tangentially related, but the Harvard stuff had me thinking about university stuff.
It'd be very interesting to nab some anthropologists from a major university if we can swing it. The type that do embedded work to study the shape of human culture.
They're the specialized in exactly the sort of stuff that would help the FCF and earth understand each other.
It'd also just be funny to do something like embed them with our equivalent of their department. Just imagine academics studying academics who are there to study academics.
The tricky part would be finding people who wouldn't explode at the thought of not being able to immediately publish.
But yes, one of the reasons I think we should go to Harvard is that it gives us access to Earthside recruits from both the faculty and students. Joining a sorority and setting it up to filter a never-ending stream of new talented teens to subvert seems like a grand idea.