Dresden had the time to alert Blackstaff McCoy; McCoy and Ramirez had the time to search his quarters and find corroborating physical evidence, so it wasnt just Dresden's accusation. He had zero prior warning that they were coming after him; the trial was for Morgan, before Dresden pulled the Uno Reverse card and blindsided Peabody.
And the man still had an Outsider to deploy, even when taken by surprise.
Harry told him as the trial was about to go forward, and it was the first point they had a chance to validate it for the council. Which for some stupid reason they did in front of the accused.
The particularly problematic part was that they discovered the depth of his subversion on the spot and weren't prepared for him that day.
That is a whole different kettle of fish than making him subject to an investigation itself that can stretch over a longer period of time and can at least attempt to engage at a time of their choosing instead of his.
I don't see a meaningful alternative even if the white council operation doesn't go perfectly, simply because there's zero chance in hell that our hunting down a wizard who isn't openly an enemy of theirs will have a positive result. If it works and they believe us they'll be upset that we dug into their business and made unilateral decisions about their members. If it fails or there's any confusion about his crimes we run the risk of it getting actively hostile on top of that.
We aren't god queen of the wizards, we can't cut them out of their own business and expect anything positive out of it.
The locus you are standing on right now. It leads to the Wicked City, the same way there are places near the arctic circle that lead into Arctis Tor say, such points of contact with the deep Spirit World are rare, but they are not unheard of.
I thought it was our Gate that brought us here independent of any other factors. Right.. I think we went over this earlier it's a door not a portal.
Changing my vote again then.
[X] Lilly, sure the Summer Court were doing this as a favor to you but you are sure they will appreciate
[X] The Local Wu of the Jade Court. Nergui claims they are not the most welcoming, but they will respect power at least and he is willing to do this one last thing for you
Like the QM said.
This spot wasnt chosen at random by the Gate, and someone local with an interest in making sure that Mikaboshi doesnt reuse it needs to be in the know.
We can have Harry talk to the White Council, and information will get to those who have need to know.
But frankly, the White Council does not have the manpower to do shit about this in normal times, let alone while fighting a War.
Plus, there's the risk of baddies who want to contact the Wicked City getting ahold of it.
But Nergui is offering to introduce us to the local Wu, who also have an interest in keeping Mikaboshi out of their general surroundings.
Like the QM said.
This spot wasnt chosen at random by the Gate, and someone local with an interest in making sure that Mikaboshi doesnt reuse it needs to be in the know.
We can have Harry talk to the White Council, and information will get to those who have need to know.
But frankly, the White Council does not have the manpower to do shit about this in normal times, let alone while fighting a War.
Plus, there's the risk of baddies who want to contact the Wicked City getting ahold of it.
But Nergui is offering to introduce us to the local Wu, who also have an interest in keeping Mikaboshi out of their general surroundings.
They do have an interest in the political end of this though, we don't have a lot of allies who can cover our masquerade breaches for us. They're going to end up involved in the fallout from this and run their own investigation out of concern anyway, so why not save everyone some time and make give them a heads up?
What we did will eventually become known to all interested, relevant parties. That's unavoidable. But by telling anyone about it now, we hasten the spread of that information unnecessarily. The longer it takes to become common knowledge, relatively speaking, the more time we have to get other shit done before having to deal with repercussions.
Harry told him as the trial was about to go forward, and it was the first point they had a chance to validate it for the council. Which for some stupid reason they did in front of the accused.
The particularly problematic part was that they discovered the depth of his subversion on the spot and weren't prepared for him that day.
That is a whole different kettle of fish than making him subject to an investigation itself that can stretch over a longer period of time and can at least attempt to engage at a time of their choosing instead of his.
I don't see a meaningful alternative even if the white council operation doesn't go perfectly, simply because there's zero chance in hell that our hunting down a wizard who isn't openly an enemy of theirs will have a positive result. If it works and they believe us they'll be upset that we dug into their business and made unilateral decisions about their members. If it fails or there's any confusion about his crimes we run the risk of it getting actively hostile on top of that.
We aren't god queen of the wizards, we can't cut them out of their own business and expect anything positive out of it.
1) Wizards apparently have the right to a trial.
Thats why Morgan didnt get shot in the field and was taken into custody.
2) It still comes down to the fact that two combat wizards other than Dresden had more than an hour's advance warning, and were in the same hall, but still allowed Peabody time and space to act.
Given the feats of reaction time we have seen from both Ramirez and McCoy?
The only thing that makes sense to me in that whole affair is that all of the Senior Council, and almost all of the Wardens, were under more mental influence, and in some cases outright control, than they realized.
3)Peabody has literally subverted most of the people who would be doing such an investigation in the first place.
Up to and including the literal commander of the Wardens. Including McCoy himself.
And he's senior enough that you cant do such an investigation without tipping him off; the man is the secretary to the Senior Council, and handles the vast bulk of the White Council's wartime logistics. And thats not counting all the other admin staff who have his mind control shit in their heads.
It would be like trying to have the FBI investigate the head of FBI counterintelligence for espionage without tipping him off.
4) No, thats not a concern. Non-wizards have long had this sort of issue.
You just have to be important enough to be taken seriously.
A lot of wizards used to be saints, members of religious orders, with said influence. We know that Odin trained the Merlin, and was again a member of the Grey Council that intervened at Chitchen Itza. The current White Council HQ used to belong to the Sidhe. The Blackstaff comes from Winter. Listens to Wind was trained by the Bigfoot River Shoulders.
Mab even intervened in White Council politics in Summer Knight. Openly.
And Michael showed up in time to materially affect Molly's trial in original canon of Proven Guilty.
5)Besides, we literally let them into Sanctuary to take a look.
They would expect us to be taking a good hard look at them in return.
They do have an interest in the political end of this though, we don't have a lot of allies who can cover our masquerade breaches for us. They're going to end up involved in the fallout from this and run their own investigation out of concern anyway, so why not save everyone some time and make give them a heads up?
Thats unnecessary.
There's less hard evidence here than when Dresden rode a zombie T-rex through downtown Chicago and armies of undead fought running battles in Chicago two Halloweens ago, leaving multiple dead bodies and property damage in the aftermath.
Less than when the Splattercon Massacre happened last year.
Less than when some asshole sent an army of hobs into Union station in Chicago to ambush the Archive and her arriving train, and Dresden had to fight a twenty foot, five ton gruff in the main train station concourse.
There's no cheap smartphones here in the Third World in 2007; the prevalent smartphone then was the Blackberry, and that was both expensive-ish, and not very high res. And this is a slum, even poorer than average.
The Iphone was just announced this January, and Android only comes out in 2008.
No security cameras, no dead bodies, no significant property damage. Just hearsay from maybe 200 people. There's more people than that at some UFO sightings.
No coverup necessary.
In the absence of hard evidence, its just going to be a mass hallucination that was the result of freak weather.
The LoC has no business here, and no influence here.
This is where you remember the Archive's warning about not talking too much, even to your friends.
So... time to invest in Apple? Or maybe time for Molly to make her own smartphone brand and capture that market! Monopolies are only bad if you aren't the one having them, after all
Why?I cannot see how any of this would affect their path going forward.
They have the proximate people responsible in Basilisk. Any further communication can be done at leisure if we for any reason find it necessary.
There is absolutely no reason to call the Library from Dhaka, Bangladesh, to tell them that we went to Yomi Wan to stage a reprisal strike on a Yama King with a Summer superweapon. Especially since we didnt go to Yomi Wan to stage a reprisal strike; our primary goal was to retrieve Joe Magarac, and the reprisal was a bonus.
And I will, once again, point you at what the Archive said about providing information to allies.
Sometimes, people do not need, or want, to know some things officially. Like the fact that the eighteen year old high school senior has the access to requisition a Fae superweapon at short notice.
So... time to invest in Apple? Or maybe time for Molly to make her own smartphone brand and capture that market! Monopolies are only bad if you aren't the one having them, after all
1) Wizards apparently have the right to a trial.
Thats why Morgan didnt get shot in the field and was taken into custody.
2) It still comes down to the fact that two combat wizards other than Dresden had more than an hour's advance warning, and were in the same hall, but still allowed Peabody time and space to act.
Given the feats of reaction time we have seen from both Ramirez and McCoy?
The only thing that makes sense to me in that whole affair is that all of the Senior Council, and almost all of the Wardens, were under more mental influence, and in some cases outright control, than they realized.
3)Peabody has literally subverted most of the people who would be doing such an investigation in the first place.
Up to and including the literal commander of the Wardens. Including McCoy himself.
And he's senior enough that you cant do such an investigation without tipping him off; the man is the secretary to the Senior Council, and handles the vast bulk of the White Council's wartime logistics. And thats not counting all the other admin staff who have his mind control shit in their heads.
It would be like trying to have the FBI investigate the head of FBI counterintelligence for espionage without tipping him off.
4) No, thats not a concern. Non-wizards have long had this sort of issue.
You just have to be important enough to be taken seriously.
A lot of wizards used to be saints, members of religious orders, with said influence. We know that Odin trained the Merlin, and was again a member of the Grey Council that intervened at Chitchen Itza. The current White Council HQ used to belong to the Sidhe. The Blackstaff comes from Winter. Listens to Wind was trained by the Bigfoot River Shoulders.
Mab even intervened in White Council politics in Summer Knight. Openly.
And Michael showed up in time to materially affect Molly's trial in original canon of Proven Guilty.
5)Besides, we literally let them into Sanctuary to take a look.
They would expect us to be taking a good hard look at them in return.
1) Presumably they aren't complete idiots, and don't treat the right to a trial as a right to go down fighting.
2) That seems more plot hole than anything else, and even then there's room to work in. Peabody set off his pawns and the senior council had to deal with brainwashed subordinates they don't want to hurt and may have trouble defending themselves from stuff like the mistfiend.
If the influence was that extensive and irrecoverable beyond immediate surprise it would have caused a lot more trouble than it ultimately did.
3) We should ask follow up questions then to learn what he's doing and pass it all along to McCoy so he can be ready to do something like that. He doesn't have perfect control or awareness, that's why he had to be subtle another it.
4) I'm not sure what the relevance of this is. There is a difference between politically interacting with the council as a whole, making deals with the individual members, and taking hostile actions against them.
Are we talking past each other or something? My understanding of your position is effectively that we should cut them out because they're too compromised to work with. Especially since we're not willing to share the source of our information to prompt immediate action.
Which functionally means that we have to assassinate or imprison a wizard in good standing serving a critical wartime role and retroactively justify it with the evidence we find on the body/prisoner. This is fundamentally different than arguing a case in their court, trading knowledge with wizards, or a close historic ally being brought into their politics.
No polity on earth is going to be cool with that.
My preferred approach is giving McCoy all the information he needs to see the scope of the problem. I think he has the ability to reasonably solve this, one way or the other, but we can be on standby if there's something he wants our help with. Even if it goes as poorly as it did in canon from a purely practical perspective it's better that it go down that way without harming our diplomatic standing in a way that's toxic to future collaboration.
5) Taking a look isn't the problem, heading up an effort to capture or kill their members on our own authority is. If the council found some sort of stow away pulling shit in our hell for example I'd be grateful for a warning and any assistance they offered, but if they tried to resolve it themselves and present the result to us justification I'd be unhappy about it.
Thats unnecessary.
There's less hard evidence here than when Dresden rode a zombie T-rex through downtown Chicago and armies of undead fought running battles in Chicago two Halloweens ago, leaving multiple dead bodies and property damage in the aftermath.
None of the magic here was mortal, there's a certain lack of free hexes thrown around for any technology that was in the area, even if there isn't a smart phone in every pocket. Beyond that there's also value in having someone with connections push the cover up in such a way that we don't see the local government mucking around looking for problems in an area that's going to see a bit of supernatural turbulence due to what happened today.
That aside, it's better politics to tell them sooner rather than later. It's one of those signals that you consider working with them important.
It was supposed to be somewhat difficult to get into, that's why we couldn't just hop into Joe's room with CCG, and why the hells don't just invade with all the ease of the fey.
That is less of a place and more of an ambiance: sadism in the guise of science, technology perverted to twist minds and break bodies and it tends to be very transient, only the height of an experiment or some other kind of blinding success heavy with hubris would do.
It was supposed to be somewhat difficult to get into, that's why we couldn't just hop into Joe's room with CCG, and why the hells don't just invade with all the ease of the fey.
Kind of confused now. We got out of it with CCG just fine and it took us to this place that apparently could work as a potential entrance. It kind of looks like we could've just used the Crown to find this spot then cross over. Rather than take the dark road.
Not to Joe's cage specifically but the Wicked City.
The locus you are standing on right now. It leads to the Wicked City, the same way there are places near the arctic circle that lead into Arctis Tor say, such points of contact with the deep Spirit World are rare, but they are not unheard of.
Kind of confused now. We got out of it with CCG just fine and it took us to this place that apparently could work as a potential entrance. It kind of looks like we could've just used the Crown to find this spot then cross over. Rather than take the dark road.
Not to Joe's cage specifically but the Wicked City.
This but there were others who were very afraid of being attacked in the sky so they chose to go the yin road. For me, the two had equal possibilities of meetings and I preferred the plane, but well, that was not the vote that won.
1) Presumably they aren't complete idiots, and don't treat the right to a trial as a right to go down fighting.
2) That seems more plot hole than anything else, and even then there's room to work in. Peabody set off his pawns and the senior council had to deal with brainwashed subordinates they don't want to hurt and may have trouble defending themselves from stuff like the mistfiend.
If the influence was that extensive and irrecoverable beyond immediate surprise it would have caused a lot more trouble than it ultimately did.
3) We should ask follow up questions then to learn what he's doing and pass it all along to McCoy so he can be ready to do something like that. He doesn't have perfect control or awareness, that's why he had to be subtle another it.
4) I'm not sure what the relevance of this is. There is a difference between politically interacting with the council as a whole, making deals with the individual members, and taking hostile actions against them.
Are we talking past each other or something? My understanding of your position is effectively that we should cut them out because they're too compromised to work with. Especially since we're not willing to share the source of our information to prompt immediate action.
Which functionally means that we have to assassinate or imprison a wizard in good standing serving a critical wartime role and retroactively justify it with the evidence we find on the body/prisoner. This is fundamentally different than arguing a case in their court, trading knowledge with wizards, or a close historic ally being brought into their politics.
No polity on earth is going to be cool with that.
My preferred approach is giving McCoy all the information he needs to see the scope of the problem. I think he has the ability to reasonably solve this, one way or the other, but we can be on standby if there's something he wants our help with. Even if it goes as poorly as it did in canon from a purely practical perspective it's better that it go down that way without harming our diplomatic standing in a way that's toxic to future collaboration.
5) Taking a look isn't the problem, heading up an effort to capture or kill their members on our own authority is. If the council found some sort of stow away pulling shit in our hell for example I'd be grateful for a warning and any assistance they offered, but if they tried to resolve it themselves and present the result to us justification I'd be unhappy about it.
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2) I dont really agree. We've seen Ramirez react to Whampires superspeeding their way through a duel.
We've seen Ebenezar react to Cornerhounds.
That Peabody had the time to do this:
Listens-to-Wind's mouth opened in sudden surprise and understanding. He looked down at his ink-stained fingertips, and then up at Peabody. Peabody may not have seen the man turn into a grizzly, but he was bright enough to know that Injun Joe was getting set to adjust another relative ass-to-ears ratio. The little secretary took one look around the room, and then at my dog. The expression went out of his face.
"The end," he said, calmly and clearly, "is nigh." And then he flung his spare pot of ink onto the floor, shattering the glass.
Mouse let out a whuffing bark of warning, and knocked Molly backward off of the bench as a dark cloud rose up away from the smashed bottle, swelling with supernatural speed, tendrils reaching out in all directions. One of them caught a Warden who had leapt forward, toward Peabody.
It encircled his chest and then closed. Everything the slender thread of mist touched turned instantly to a fine black ash, slicing through him as efficiently as an electric knife through deli meat. The two pieces of the former Warden fell to the floor with wet, heavy thumps.
I'd seen almost exactly the same thing happen once before, years ago.
"Get back!" I screamed. "It's mordite!"
Then the lights went out, and the room exploded into screams and chaos.
With multiple Senior Council members looking at him, along with hundreds of other wizards?
And not one person immobilized him, or caught the bottle, or took any of half a dozen other actions?
Spells mind-fuckery to my eyes.
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3)We dont have followup questions because we dont have foci.
We dont have foci because we dont have information on him; he's not a public figure, even among wizards.In canon, Molly Carpenter saw his picture and didnt know who he was after several years as an apprentice.
Handling this issue is going to require dedicated AP, both to get information on him, and to figure out what his threat is.
Probably multiple AP. I suspect we're going to have to do parallel construction from the ground up.
Possibly by looking back at White Council military disasters and backtracking from there.
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4) There is significant overlap here; supernatural politics in the Dresdenverse is a lot more personal than it is IRL.
The whole concept of non-interference in the politics of another nationstate is a modern invention, and not really something that supernatural nationstates appear to care particularly much about. See precisely how Lara Raith came to power. Or the whole Red King - Arianna Ortega politics subplot in Changes.
With the Council? Knight of the Cross Michael Carpenter's appearance in Proven Guilty was timed by the WG faction to materially affect internal White Council politics. Mab timed her choice of Dresden as Winter Emissary to materially alter the trajectory of then-internal deliberations of the Council.
Lily timed her award of the Order of the Oak Leaf to Dresden specifically to manipulate White Council politics at the time.
Odin outright subverts the then-stated policy of the White Council by joining the Gray Council to help some wizards wage less-restricted warfare against the Red Court as necessary.
Furthermore, McCoy may have been a Warden, but he isnt a counterintelligence specialist, he's a hitman.
Hes not got a particularly great track record of covert investigation in canon either; he lost track of his daughter, then his second grandson, and he never figured out that Thomas was his either until Dresden told him.
The Council has long suspected traitors since the fall of Archangel at the beginning of the war, and essentially had it confirmed with the events of Dead Beat and Proven Guilty a year and half ago, but he didnt turn up anything.
He's also been the subject of five years of mind-altering fuckery by this same dude we are after, ever since he joined the Senior Council when Petrovich died.
You can see his reaction when Dresden told him:
He snorted.
"I've got a theory about something."
"Oh?"
I told him.
Ebenezar's face darkened, sentence by sentence. He turned his hands palm up and looked down at them. They were broad, strong, seamed, and callused with work—and they were steady. There were scabs on one palm, where he had fallen to the ground during last night's melee. Ink stained some of his fingertips.
There's a reason why after the assassination of Aleron LaFortier, Morgan went to Dresden the private investigator and not to the Blackstaff. Dresden actually has a record of successful investigative work.
The Senior Council member who is actually called out OOC as good at information gathering? Martha Liberty.
What kind of magic does Martha Liberty specialize in?
We dont know her, have never met her IC. Shes shown up less than half a dozen times in canon.
And unfortunately, being good at information gathering doesnt necessarily make you good at covert counterintelligence.
There's also Rashid, but he has precog or some sort of time fuckery.
And he has restrictions about how he can/is allowed to act as a consequence.
=====
5) I dont at all agree.
The White Council claims theoretical jurisdiction over any and all mortal magic concerns; if we paid any serious respect to that shit, Cauldron would have been off-limits from the start.
Also, do remember that Corpsetaker was a White Council wizard. I think Kemmler was; dude was literally Warden of Demonreach. Grevane certainly was; Luccio thought so, at least.
Kattrin was a Valkyrie of Odin.
There's a Godzilla threshold that when breached turns your problem to everyone's problem. And Peabody has breached it.
If only due to his presumed involvement in the events of Dead Beat, where intelligence leaks embroiled the White Council in a series of military disasters while a bunch of Kemmlerites tried to sacrifice Chicago for gains.
We'll likely have to bring Harry and/or Ramirez along to provide a fig leaf of cover, but this isnt something to leave to the compromised victims of the perpetrator we are hunting.
We both have to neutralize the dude, AND ensure that his plots are neutralized. Leaving several hundred wizards with psychic rootkits in their heads is not great. Right now, we dont even know that he's a mind controller. And if its necessary to gank the dude instead of turning him in, we have the social to do damage control afterwards.
Better than letting him continue as is, with a Nephandi senior mage with access to the world's most powerful mages and most exhaustive magical tomes in the world.
Or almost as bad, let him get away with the knowledge in his head.
None of the magic here was mortal, there's a certain lack of free hexes thrown around for any technology that was in the area, even if there isn't a smart phone in every pocket. Beyond that there's also value in having someone with connections push the cover up in such a way that we don't see the local government mucking around looking for problems in an area that's going to see a bit of supernatural turbulence due to what happened today.
That aside, it's better politics to tell them sooner rather than later. It's one of those signals that you consider working with them important.
Construction site in no-name slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh in January 2007.
None of those things exist here.
Hell, there might not even be electrical power; only 47% of the country's population had access to electricity in 2007.
There's no need for a coverup, and trying one here will actually draw attention to something thats likely to get the "mass hallucination" label. Sometimes the best action is nothing.
It was supposed to be somewhat difficult to get into, that's why we couldn't just hop into Joe's room with CCG, and why the hells don't just invade with all the ease of the fey.
I assume that this is technically usable as a border, but that using it is very difficult by normal means. Hell, even by ours.
If opening CCG here took us to anywhere in 5 levels of Joe's cage we would have gone about this a completely different way.
The locus you are standing on right now. It leads to the Wicked City, the same way there are places near the arctic circle that lead into Arctis Tor say, such points of contact with the deep Spirit World are rare, but they are not unheard of.
When we were planning this field trip, we were given an option to step directly into the Wicked City.
We didnt choose it then.
I suspect this was it, or close by.
