everyone has some magic in DF, and I don't recall him ever really doing anything impressive.
The thing with Maeve is just another demonstration of authority games; the queens can't kill each other directly, they have to use the knight.
From what we see of Dresden almost all his serious supernatural winter stuff were a result of him drawing on the mantle like he did hellfire to do wizard things. The strength enhancements for example were just his body's limiters being turned off.
Authority == Asskicking is a thing, but the point of the knights is to use mortal free will and not another big supernatural gun. If anything it's an indication that the knights aren't supposed to have fey biggatons built in.
You don't have any real evidence of this theory.
1)Yes, everyone has at least a little magic.
But Fix was throwing around enough fire that even dodging the bolt would still scorch Dresden with the bloom according to Harry. Getting plugged into a Fae Mantle is a pretty big deal magically.
2) Thats not true. Butters made theories, but the onscreen feats say they werent true.
Nothing about your bodies limiters being turned off would let you jump fifty feet from a four step run-up, or shrug off getting hit in the lower back with a tree trunk wielded by a twelve foot tall, one-ton Rawhead, or to fracture the sternum of a half-Red with a snap-kick, or match the strength of the Red King, or outrun Binder's goons that onscreen were doing 30 miles an hour.
3)No, thats only part of it.
The Ladies have always had members of their Court that have at least as much freedom acting in the real world, from changelings to mortals who made deals to phobophages like the fetches.
Knights are way more than that.
Selling them to powerful people isn't exactly leaving them stuck in stones for random kids to draw.
If we want to fully exploit this ability we're going to need to accept the risks of doing business.
I am not worried about random kids.
Im worried about Denarians and Yama Kings and Walkers and their ilk, people with the power and potentially skill to reshape items made of the power of prehistory.
And the ambition to do so.
You are looking at it wrong, reversing the motivation and result. It's not "an order for 12 vampire livers". From Molly's perspective it's "Wanted dead" list of monsters, where payment is not money, but splendors made from proofs of kill.
I dont think I am.
There's been an ongoing war for the last four years, and it lasts another six that I can recall.
There's been no bounty boards for wizards or vampires by the opposing faction. The only time a bounty was posted was when the White Council were hunting Morgan, and that hasnt happened. Might not happen.
And like I pointed out, no living vampire elder is unaffiliated.
We dont need to aggro Drakul just yet. Or some touchy arhat in the East.
Any proliefaration is dangerous. The only way to avoid it, is not to do any, and to just not do anything, really. And you are inventing the ability to make them wholecloth, and, I think, rather overestimating the danger. In order to get access to the ability to make them, we bought a 5 dot celestial-tier charm. That's the cost of entry to the ability to make something like this. The resource cost of actually doing so is greater still, at least for high level stuff. To go beyond 3 dots, you have to start sacrificing incarna-tier creatures and/or destroying major Dragon Nests (which are seldom, if ever, unprotected).
The beings who could do this are in short supply, and us giving out splendors doesn't meaningfully increase their danger level. I mean, could Odin do something bad with a splendor? Probably, yes. But Odin is dangerous anyway.
Like I pointed out earlier? People incapable of making something from scratch can plausibly modify and upgrade it.
There's a difference between careful dissemination of limited numbers where necessary, and the highest bidder, cash on the barrelhead attitude that you appear to be proposing here.
Because what you are proposing seems to me like running a nuclear demolitions device bazaar.
Not all fae have weakness to iron. Some (many) of them certainly do. Donning a mantle of winter/summer has been demonstrated to convey such weakness in several cases (Dresden, Molly, I think, in canon, Lily too, if I understand correctly, Maeve for certain - she mentioned this in this thread). This means that there is high chance that absolute protection against iron poisoning would be worth quite a bit for quite a number of fae, and beings who became fae.
Also, as I understand it, Bob never had a mantle.
No, I disagree.
Eldest Ankou is not a Winter Court Mantle, its a mantle of a race/species/faction that swore vassalage to Winter around a thousand years ago. The Ankou are Welsh/Breton psychopomps who swore to Winter, but are not fae. They werent part of the faction that became Winter. Mathews should have no issue with iron; Arawn didnt.
Indeed, if iron protected against the Ankou, necromancers wouldnt have had to worry quite so much about him.
And the fact that he took Kattrin's steel sword suggests its not an issue for him.
Nor is his daughter a changeling.
And you are not convincing at all, sorry. He's not worth the effort, and Mab is not stupid to give him away if he had vital intelligence. On the character level, we have multiple other better options. On intelligence level, we have far better ways of getting said intelligence. Ones that can't be traced back to us at all, and can remain a secret.
Is Mab going to hand over the Winter Knight to a foreign power for anything that we might be doing for her? If she does, then she has clearly been infected by Nemesis.
With the Winter Mantle? No.
Without the Winter Mantle? Im pretty sure that Mab would trade a depowered Lloyd Slate for the Leanansidhe without a thought. Worth remembering that in canon, it took her another five years to get Lea fixed and ready for continued duty.
The only reason we're even discussing it as an option is because of what we did/can do.
