So let's say Nemesis takes over the president. Cool good show likely does all sorts of harm using the powers of the president. Then the term of office ends and unless he manages a coup Nemesis is now has one of his slots stuck in someone that used to be president.
We know that Molly cannot be possessed full stop, because exaltation already fully occupies the space in / near her soul that could normally be possessed. It stands to reason that other manifestations of her soul, if lesser ones, also cannot be possessed.
Yeah, but as I mention in that other post being immune to one tool isn't the same as being immune to all of them.
Peeling open a Molly clone's brain and stealing all her knowledge would be about as difficult as it would be for any untrained talent with 9 willpower. This whole arc happened precisely because Nemesis isn't a one trick pony and knows how to get what it wants without doing everything with its direct abilities.
A half decent whamp of any house could make this sort of effort a breeze if they can get such a clone away from us without some ability to reply from a distance on our part.
So let's say Nemesis takes over the president. Cool good show likely does all sorts of harm using the powers of the president. Then the term of office ends and unless he manages a coup Nemesis is now has one of his slots stuck in someone that used to be president.
I get what you were going for but the damage he could do in 4 years as president is millions of times more than almost anyone I can think of. Not even going on crafting policies that are actively detrimental to the state of the world, He could just back awful of policies that get hundreds and thousands of people killed all the time anyway 4 years of that is worth almost anyone I can imagine. If he could fill his slot with the President, he definitely should. Even if he's stuck with the president for another 30 40 50 years the damage you can do in four is incomprehensible.
1) That's an effect of being near massive number of Outsiders at the borders of Creation, where laws of reality might be different
2) Harry is not pure mortal. If nothing else, he's a winter knight at the time of this quote. I.e. also a winter fae. It's quite possible that Outsiders are affecting him through Winter's mantle.
3) We don't know if in canon Starborn status grants protection from Outsiders. Power over, yes, that has been stated. Protection against? That's not the same thing at all.
4) The effect is very different from "I near-instantly possess you and get to control your body"
5) I don't see how existence of Starborn among mortals indicates anything about their resistance to Outsider possession
There's a simple explanation for instant possession of Cat Sith that doesn't require Outsiders to be able to instantly take over anyone, and doesn't break the setting. He Who Walks Behind controlled Maeve at that point, didn't he? Maeve was Winter Lady, with the power over winter fae. It's quite possible that this power, not Outsider abilities were used to get Cat Sith.
1) I dont see any evidence for that.
Sharkface did much the same thing to Harry when they were leading the Wild Hunt.
Outsiders do that shit, apparently, if they are buff enough.
2)Harry is pure mortal. Thats the point of the books in general, and the Winter Knight in particular.
He wears the Mantle, the Mantle does not wear him.
And that was not his first experience with Outsiders either.
3) Yes we do, actually.
Thats why Sharkface tried to recruit Dresden when he thought the Outsiders had won in Cold Days, instead of simply killing him where he stood.
The chanting on the barge rolled upward an octave, gaining frenzied volume. Outsiders thrashed through the water, pushing the barge, surging ahead of it to push pulverized chunks of ice out of its way, their howls and weird clicks and ululations like their own horrible music. Other Outsiders came rushing toward me, on the shore—only to smash uselessly against the glowing barrier of Demonreach's curtain wall. They couldn't get to me. Which seemed fair enough, because I couldn't seem to get to them, either. I'd slowed them down, cost them maybe a couple of minutes, and that was all.
The water near me stirred and then a Sharkface rose up out of it as if on an elevator, slow, his mouth tilted up into a small smile. He stood there on the water perhaps five feet away from me. His eyeless face looked smug.
"Warden," he said.
"Asshat," I replied. That only made his smile wider. "The battle is over. You have failed. But you need not be destroyed this day." "You're kidding," I said. "You're trying to recruit me?" "The offer is made," the Walker said. "We always appreciate new talent." "I'm no one's puppet," I said. The Walker actually barked out a short laugh. "At what point have you been anything else?"
"You can forget it," I said. "I'm not working for you." "Then a truce," Sharkface said. "We do not need you to fight our battles for us. But if you stand aside, we will accord you respect and leave you in peace. You and those you love. Take them to a safe, quiet place. Stay there. You will not be molested."
"My boss might not go along with this plan," I said.
"After tonight, Mab will no longer be a concern to anyone." I was going to say something badass and cool but . . .
Take the people I love somewhere. Take Maggie. Somewhere safe. Somewhere without mad Queens or insane Sidhe. And just get out of this entire thankless, painful, hideous business. Wizarding just isn't what it used to be. Not so many years ago, I'd think it was a busy week if someone asked me to locate a lost dog or a wedding ring. It had been horribly boring. I'd had lots and lots of free time. I hadn't been rich, but I'd gotten to buy plenty of books to read, and I'd never gone hungry. And no one had tried to kill me, or asked me to make a horrible choice. Not once.
Starborn appear to be of value to both sides. And apparently you cant just take them if they resist.
4) Only in that Dresden got a roll to resist.
5) If mortals were immune or even resistant to Outsiders, you'd see them used a lot more in Outsider-facing incidents.
Whatever you think of Mab, she doesnt miss a trick in doing her job.
6)I dont think so.
Winter Lady Maeve does not countermand Queen Mab in her own court, not when Mab already gave Cat Sith orders.
Any attempt to do so would be promptly ignored.
All the world's governments have a lot of people in them and most of those people do not see eye to eye. It is not as simple as Nemesis taking over as many people as it wants as deeply as it wants, if it were it would skip the government part and take over the world We Are Legion Style.
So there is a resource limitation and it cannot willingly evacuate a host even in the face of being exorcised as far as Molly can tell. This would imply that Nemesis has to be quite careful with who it takes over, especially when it comes to things like politicians since their power is so transitive on the level it operates on.
Also, I suspect there are Rules about how much they can mess with mortals inside Creation without getting Heaven to act.
Given as Uriel says his formal portfolio is Free Will, and the protection thereof.
The Gov is aware of the supernatural just not every branch of it and they also know of the White Council who has Rashid who we know can detect Nemesis. The president may or may not be trusted with knowledge of Nemesis but I can see a few ways the WC could have them checked for such things. That's just one possible explanation like Uju said if Uriel is a factor those sort of targets may give him too much leeway for Nemesis to deal with. At least with mortals since only they get a Free Will card because reasons.
Yeah, but as I mention in that other post being immune to one tool isn't the same as being immune to all of them.
Peeling open a Molly clone's brain and stealing all her knowledge would be about as difficult as it would be for any untrained talent with 9 willpower. This whole arc happened precisely because Nemesis isn't a one trick pony and knows how to get what it wants without doing everything with its direct abilities.
A half decent whamp of any house could make this sort of effort a breeze if they can get such a clone away from us without some ability to reply from a distance on our part.
1) CCC is Clone!Molly's friend here, and arguably DPE, if magically enhanced interrogation counts as social interaction
2) Clone Molly would still have melee 5, which isn't nothing (do favored abilities carry over as passive effects?)
Note, I favor using clones mostly in our kingdom, but that isn't the only use they have.
1) I dont see any evidence for that.
Sharkface did much the same thing to Harry when they were leading the Wild Hunt.
Outsiders do that shit, apparently, if they are buff enough.
2)Harry is pure mortal. Thats the point of the books in general, and the Winter Knight in particular.
He wears the Mantle, the Mantle does not wear him.
And that was not his first experience with Outsiders either.
3) Yes we do, actually.
Thats why Sharkface tried to recruit Dresden when he thought the Outsiders had won in Cold Days, instead of simply killing him where he stood.
The chanting on the barge rolled upward an octave, gaining frenzied volume. Outsiders thrashed through the water, pushing the barge, surging ahead of it to push pulverized chunks of ice out of its way, their howls and weird clicks and ululations like their own horrible music. Other Outsiders came rushing toward me, on the shore—only to smash uselessly against the glowing barrier of Demonreach's curtain wall. They couldn't get to me. Which seemed fair enough, because I couldn't seem to get to them, either. I'd slowed them down, cost them maybe a couple of minutes, and that was all.
The water near me stirred and then a Sharkface rose up out of it as if on an elevator, slow, his mouth tilted up into a small smile. He stood there on the water perhaps five feet away from me. His eyeless face looked smug.
"Warden," he said.
"Asshat," I replied. That only made his smile wider. "The battle is over. You have failed. But you need not be destroyed this day." "You're kidding," I said. "You're trying to recruit me?" "The offer is made," the Walker said. "We always appreciate new talent." "I'm no one's puppet," I said. The Walker actually barked out a short laugh. "At what point have you been anything else?"
"You can forget it," I said. "I'm not working for you." "Then a truce," Sharkface said. "We do not need you to fight our battles for us. But if you stand aside, we will accord you respect and leave you in peace. You and those you love. Take them to a safe, quiet place. Stay there. You will not be molested."
"My boss might not go along with this plan," I said.
"After tonight, Mab will no longer be a concern to anyone." I was going to say something badass and cool but . . .
Take the people I love somewhere. Take Maggie. Somewhere safe. Somewhere without mad Queens or insane Sidhe. And just get out of this entire thankless, painful, hideous business. Wizarding just isn't what it used to be. Not so many years ago, I'd think it was a busy week if someone asked me to locate a lost dog or a wedding ring. It had been horribly boring. I'd had lots and lots of free time. I hadn't been rich, but I'd gotten to buy plenty of books to read, and I'd never gone hungry. And no one had tried to kill me, or asked me to make a horrible choice. Not once.
Starborn appear to be of value to both sides. And apparently you cant just take them if they resist.
4) Only in that Dresden got a roll to resist.
5) If mortals were immune or even resistant to Outsiders, you'd see them used a lot more in Outsider-facing incidents.
Whatever you think of Mab, she doesnt miss a trick in doing her job.
6)I dont think so.
Winter Lady Maeve does not countermand Queen Mab in her own court, not when Mab already gave Cat Sith orders.
Any attempt to do so would be promptly ignored.
Also, I suspect there are Rules about how much they can mess with mortals inside Creation without getting Heaven to act.
Given as Uriel says his formal portfolio is Free Will, and the protection thereof.
2) the mantle does affect Harry's mind on multiple occasions
3) nothing in your quote says anything about Harry's starborn status b3ing relevant.
5) Immune or resistant to assumed ability of instant possession, not to direct attacks. It's quite possible that fae are better at handling attacks and magic, and mortals are better at resisting control.
6) Maeve's orders need not have conflicted with Mab's in order to open Cat Sith to possession. The point is, Maeve had authority over the Cat Sith. It's reasonable to think that a super effective attack of the kind we haven't seen otherwise in the series piggybacked on this authority somehow.
7) Your last argument, about messing with free will - do fae even have it?
OOC: OK, international diplomacy is a go. Tiffany will be joining you for this one since she has some experience and she is not about to let you hang out to try
It occurs to me that we haven't been making nearly enough use of Arawn as a source of advice on this rulership stuff. Yes, he's out of date and has to play telephone through Lydia ... but he was literally a king.
The Gov is aware of the supernatural just not every branch of it and they also know of the White Council who has Rashid who we know can detect Nemesis. The president may or may not be trusted with knowledge of Nemesis but I can see a few ways the WC could have them checked for such things. That's just one possible explanation like Uju said if Uriel is a factor those sort of targets may give him too much leeway for Nemesis to deal with. At least with mortals since only they get a Free Will card because reasons.
Also worth noting that it's strategy only changed recently for the quest's purposes.
It wants the gates open, getting humans to nuke things to death might help with that, but any resources it puts that way are ones it can't put into messing with the direct groups of interest.
Subverting the defenses like it did isn't an easy thing. Trying it while also poking the mortal powers or after it's put everyone on alert by burning earth down wouldn't necessarily help more than it hurts. Given how well it did I'm inclined to think it wasn't a bad call for nemesis to make.
Its priorities have changed, so it might start putting more effort into things like this.
1) CCC is Clone!Molly's friend here, and arguably DPE, if magically enhanced interrogation counts as social interaction
2) Clone Molly would still have melee 5, which isn't nothing (do favored abilities carry over as passive effects?)
Note, I favor using clones mostly in our kingdom, but that isn't the only use they have.
The limitation is that they get no supernatural powers, with DP leaving a carve out for passives. I don't think that's the same as cost free things, it was given in the context of our mental defense against intimacy changes.
No idea on favored abilities. My gut response is probably not because they're supposed to be Molly if she weren't an exalt.
None of this matters because it's still working off a mortal baseline.
Here's how I'm envisioning this going down:
1) Nemesis has agents like Sandra plot out a smash and grab.
2) It gets someone as least as good at mind magic as a mid grade whamp.
3) Nab clone. Sleeping spell, whamp come hither, bashing damage to unconsciousness, alchemical roofies, whatever.
4) Flee town, potential concurrent with the next step
5) Never let her wake up, directly invade her mind with magic and take what you want. If necessary keep casting till her willpower pool is gone.
Before anyone says "we'll notice and react" see Broken Seeker, or our trip this arc. There are multiple times where we couldn't have made it back before everything was over already if we got the notice at all. Simply timing a pair of plots so we have to choose between one and the other would be beneficial to it.
No passive ability we have would make a notable difference, and even heavy escort wouldn't necessarily deter them for a prize this significant.
This isn't a trivial task, but it isn't a backbreaking one either.
Which is why we need something that changes the game before it's a good idea to let them out of areas we control access to.
Yeah, but as I mention in that other post being immune to one tool isn't the same as being immune to all of them.
Peeling open a Molly clone's brain and stealing all her knowledge would be about as difficult as it would be for any untrained talent with 9 willpower. This whole arc happened precisely because Nemesis isn't a one trick pony and knows how to get what it wants without doing everything with its direct abilities.
A half decent whamp of any house could make this sort of effort a breeze if they can get such a clone away from us without some ability to reply from a distance on our part.
This digression barely makes a difference.
Like I said, thats why Inner Devils Unchained exists.
It allows us to make the beneficiaries fomorachs, with fomor powers, which opens up the option of werewolf Gifts, and there are explicit options for that sort of threat. No need for custom charms.
2) the mantle does affect Harry's mind on multiple occasions
3) nothing in your quote says anything about Harry's starborn status b3ing relevant.
5) Immune or resistant to assumed ability of instant possession, not to direct attacks. It's quite possible that fae are better at handling attacks and magic, and mortals are better at resisting control.
6) Maeve's orders need not have conflicted with Mab's in order to open Cat Sith to possession. The point is, Maeve had authority over the Cat Sith. It's reasonable to think that a super effective attack of the kind we haven't seen otherwise in the series piggybacked on this authority somehow.
7) Your last argument, about messing with free will - do fae even have it?
2)The Mantle affects his mind, it does not control it.
Like an intrusive thought, or the disinhibition of some drugs.
3)That was implicit in the offer.
He wasnt making it to anyone else, and Molly was both in the same area, and a pretty significant magical power in her own right, if not in the same way as Dresden.
5)And she would use them as ranged troops instead. Or as defensive troops from behind fortifications.
Like I said, Mab doesnt miss a trick.
7) I was talking about mortals in that reply to the QM.
As per your question?
Fae explicitly are part-mortal according to Butcher(yes, ALL fae), something thats corroborated IC by Mother Summer, but we dont know how that works in canon because he's never gone into detail.
They dont have mortal free will, but they do have some sort of free will.
Bob used to be Winter. Talvi Inverno used to be Finnish, then joined Kemmler, and is now Winter. Fortunato who leads Wanderland used to serve the Erlking, and we see some of his Wyldfae were Winter.
Toot-Toot and the Za-Lord's Guard, and later the Za-Lord's Militia, are wyldfae that chose to serve Dresden.
And during the Calling, when the Courts prepare for war, the Wyldfae get urges to decide to declare for one court or another.
Some go Winter, some go Summer, some ignore it.
All are choices.
Like I said, thats why Inner Devils Unchained exists.
It allows us to make the beneficiaries fomorachs, with fomor powers, which opens up the option of werewolf Gifts, and there are explicit options for that sort of threat. No need for custom charms
We explicitly aren't allowed to design them, so I'm skeptical about getting anything particularly useful for this purpose.
Let's outline a little sample plot.
Suppose we have a college Molly taking classes at Harvard. Nemesis has people watching her, and starts making note of her habits.
One day while she's walking to lunch on a public street a van swerves off the road and hits her doing 15-25 mph, dealing lethal damage and probably breaking some limbs.
Four guy pop out, grapple her, and drag her into the back with a pair of whamps before taking off. In the process they dose her with something strong, possibly alchemically enhanced.
The whamps in the back go to work, forcing more drugs on the clone while spamming dominate/dementation together. The clone could try to cast; but they're wounded, drugged, and under mental assault on top of being physically held down. Only so many actions available a turn.
They tear off from the scene, hopefully with multiple people calling the police, and make a break for some prepared spot. The pawns are disposable, so the point isn't to let them escape or even keep the clone. Just subdue her long enough to get inside her head so nemesis can indirectly view her memories.
Which is just one potential approach that's difficult to counter on a practical level.
Fomor powers would help, but we're talking 1-2 powers and a flaw.
This discussion has been going on for almost two years now. And I personally don't see a way out other than a direct answer from the GM. Or creating a homebrew version of the charm that costs more, but does not allow clones to be a mindraped or be able to link enemy magic to Molly
As you can see from the Amethyst Hand bakemono that we just deployed, its a rule whose spirit we dont really care for.
Not the first thing we're ignoring in this quest. Unlikely to be the last.
And for good reason.
A requirement that implicitly requires that the QM hand design each and every individual fomor that the playerbase has to use is asinine on its face, and imposes so much of a workload on the QM that it would make you not use the charm ever.
Not to mention there is no such requirement for the Mages that Solars can Awaken, OR the vampires and Risen that Abyssals can create.
A HMP'd burner phone with a cyberdevil is the sort of tripwire that makes that particular plot unworkable. Fathomless Poison Haven (2-dots, 8xp) gives immunity to poisons and damage from liquids(drowning, choking, whatever) for (successes)days at a time per application, and is a charm that is designed to apply to other people as well as the Exalt..
Not to mention, a Molly clone with her current base stats is Strength 4, Dexterity 4, Melee 5, Willpower 9 even without anything else.You arent grabbing her with a mundane squad. Maybe if you get her to come along because hostages.
And a reasonable amount of caution, like deploying them only in Chicago and Sanctuary, defangs most of that threat.
Not that a grab is impossible, mind. Anyone can be got, as both Ivy and Dresden will attest.
But they're not doing the driveby grab with disposable minions strat, they're bringing supernaturals and getting into a fight where they're probably gonna have to kill the clone.
Plus, by the time Molly has Black Mirror Incarnation, anyone will have problems telling which is Molly and which are her clones when she isnt actively burning power.
And thats just going with your assumptions that we have a base mortal clone Molly with literally no prep or resources.
Give her a 3-dot Arcana as a knockoff Venom suit or Blue Beetle scarab and she becomes a nasty surprise.
And If you have Fomorach!Molly running around as a miniature version of Molly Prime with the fomor powers Exoskeleton and Bestial Mutation active and a Body-Horror Blade in her hand, physical shit gets bloody quick even before Gifts enter the fray.
You are mistaken, by the way.
*checks W20 Book of the Wyrm*
Enticers have 3 Fomor powers.
Flesh Packs have 3-4 Powers
Freakfeet have 5 Powers
Gorehounds have 4 Powers
Hollow Men have 8 Powers
Normalites have 4 Powers
Shadowfiends have 5 Powers
Sons of Typhon have 4 Powers
Toads have 2 Powers
Bloodworms have 6 Powers + vampiric Disciplines
Draugr have 1 Power + vampiric Disciplines
Ferectoi have a minimum of 5 Powers.
Fomarchs must have at least the Bestial Mutation power, must be able to hide their powers, and are at least as powerful as Ferectoi. There is no specified limit for how many you can choose to slap on one, just good sense and game balance.
BTW, Werewolf The Apocalypse: The Possessed details character progression for Fomori characters who are not meant to be merely mooks for your PCs to chew through. Alongside other spirit-possessed characters. And more benign examples of possessions, IIRC.
Although progressing every Fomori Mollyclone as a PC presents a different complication.
And for good reason.
A requirement that implicitly requires that the QM hand design each and every individual fomor that the playerbase has to use is asinine on its face, and imposes so much of a workload on the QM that it would make you not use the charm ever.
So is min-maxed super fomor. I need to dig up the quote, but the intended use for those charms is to make circus rejects as lackeys and colorful minions - not werewolf equivalent super bruisers.
A HMP'd burner phone with a cyberdevil is the sort of tripwire that makes that particular plot unworkable. Fathomless Poison Haven (2-dots, 8xp) gives immunity to poisons and damage from liquids(drowning, choking, whatever) for (successes)days at a time per application, and is a charm that is designed to apply to other people as well as the Exalt..
Burner phone doesn't do anything unless we're available to strike and can get to where they are immediately. Say if they got attacked while we were doing something else, or just at an inconvenient spot. Remember that one time it took us an hour to get back to Chicago, even knowing we were on a lethally serious time table?
As to that charm; only works on liquid poisons. Pills and various inhaled substances are fair game. So is magic.
I opened that example by hitting her with a car for a reason. At those speeds death is unlikely, but serious injury isn't. I'd like to see the melee check for fighting with a broken spine, hip, or collar bone. While facing multi-attacker penalties, because the clones are not exalts.
Maybe you can squeeze that much juice out of a fomor by exploiting all of white wolf's worst decision making, but if you make a fomor that can handle what Molly did on our first encounter with the Gorfel you've gone too far.
The intended use is something like those berserkers at best.
Chicago isn't safe enough in my book, but if you'd read my posts you'd notice that I wasn't arguing against getting the charm at all, but with the idea of leaving multiple clones in the wind on earth.
I'm not sure how you're squaring your prior argument about archmage field agents and nemesis failing to credibly threaten this. I don't agree with that position either, but I think we'd both accept the point that dramatically less force than that is needed to make this work. I'm pretty confident any reasonable fomor design can be beaten by surprise using cheap muscle, but either way this would obviously be a priority for nemesis.
It's simply too valuable, and too good a bit of narrative reversal, for it to do anything else.
Kinda surprised that you, the information security guy, are so blithely sanguine about leaving a copy of everything Molly knows behind the equivalent of a restroom stall privacy lock.
I mean really, cell phone and some enhancements will make it work? What was your position on telling Murphy anything about anything again?
Murphy specifically has had people enter her head at least two times in the series so far without her having any ability to gainsay it.
The Nigntmare walked into her office wearing Dresden's face and mindscrewed her in Grave Peril.
Papa Raith mindwhammied her trivially in Blood Rites.
Later on, a maenad canonically whammies her in Last Call.
Intentions mean nothing without capability.
Promising to tell her the truth here puts not just her own life at risk, which is her prerogative, but other people, which is not her right to risk.
Murphy has ridiculous willpower and has seen some shit; the woman is a certified heroic mortal I'd bet on over a fomor any day of the week.
Clone!Molly is pretty likely to be less impressive than Karin is*, and the fomor package shouldn't make a huge difference in the places that matter under this level of opposition.
* At the very least her awareness and perception scores are probably high enough to credibly avoid ambushes without related cheating.
Marconi is going to have to subordinate himself to us or get out of town. He no longer has any status as a necessary lesser evil everything useful he does Molly can easily have her people fill in the role.
We will know once we get the charm. My suspicion is that in general exceptional mortals will make more exceptional fomor somehow, but the even the baseline should be as good as ghouls are.
Incidentally, once we do have the clone charm there are a few things we're all but contractually obligated to do with it before the actually useful parts.
I'm speaking, of course, about screwing with Dresden.
Invite him to our lab and just have multiple bodies working in the background, work up some excuse to being hanging out with Tiffany and talking to Bob at the same time so he can walk from one room we're in to another we're also in, show up to meet him somewhere as our own "Oops! All Blondes" power ranger team, that sort of thing.
Then there's Charity. I'm torn between getting the whole family at once, or cluing in Molly's siblings so they can pretend there's nothing unusual going on when Molly comes down for breakfast four times in a row.
As other people have mentioned, IDU doesn't do that. The only mortal-buffing charms that we get which allow us to control their builds are the training charms like Chirality Prohibition Index, which would be useless for the clones (since it caps at our own stats, which they already have).
Edit: I wonder if our clones are sufficiently not-us to be valid VEE targets. Almost certainly not, but it could be interesting.
As other people have mentioned, IDU doesn't do that. The only mortal-buffing charms that we get which allow us to control their builds are the training charms like Chirality Prohibition Index, which would be useless for the clones (since it caps at our own stats, which they already have).
Edit: I wonder if our clones are sufficiently not-us to be valid VEE targets. Almost certainly not, but it could be interesting.
The clones are you enough that you cannot use VEE on them, but Lash can buff them as she could any mortal. This does allow you to make multiple pacts with her if you like since every clone has her own store of Faith that she can use.
2)The Mantle affects his mind, it does not control it.
Like an intrusive thought, or the disinhibition of some drugs.
3)That was implicit in the offer.
He wasnt making it to anyone else, and Molly was both in the same area, and a pretty significant magical power in her own right, if not in the same way as Dresden.
5)And she would use them as ranged troops instead. Or as defensive troops from behind fortifications.
Like I said, Mab doesnt miss a trick.
7) I was talking about mortals in that reply to the QM.
As per your question?
Fae explicitly are part-mortal according to Butcher(yes, ALL fae), something thats corroborated IC by Mother Summer, but we dont know how that works in canon because he's never gone into detail.
They dont have mortal free will, but they do have some sort of free will.
Bob used to be Winter. Talvi Inverno used to be Finnish, then joined Kemmler, and is now Winter. Fortunato who leads Wanderland used to serve the Erlking, and we see some of his Wyldfae were Winter.
Toot-Toot and the Za-Lord's Guard, and later the Za-Lord's Militia, are wyldfae that chose to serve Dresden.
And during the Calling, when the Courts prepare for war, the Wyldfae get urges to decide to declare for one court or another.
Some go Winter, some go Summer, some ignore it.
All are choices.
The main point here is that "Nemesis and / or other outsiders can instantly take over anyone, with just a briefest of contacts" breaks the setting. Just as a simple example, Leanansidhe would never have been able to surrender herself to Mab after being subtly infected if this was so. At least she would have been forced to commit suicide to deprive Mab of an agent.
The evidence we have for such instant takeovers is very few, and can be explained by exigent circumstances.
