If two armies are fighting in a city and I kind of expect that city to be destroyed. The war in Ukraine makes that very clear.
It was the armies of Summer and Winter right? Not just the queens right?
Now I don't know if the Yomi kings can summon up an army of demons. Can they? Because if a few thousand demons are fighting in a city that city is likely toast.
Nobody said anything about two armies fighting.
Just that things got out of hand and the city vanished, implying it was a magic thing.
As far as the sources say, no armies were deployed.
The Yama Kings do send demons and akuma through.
They themselves are capable of showing up in the mortal world uninvited; Mikaboshi is explicitly called out as doing so with a frequency that unsettles other Yama Kings. And its said most of them only move with a small army of servitors.
But nothing is mentioned about their ability to send armies of conquest or retribution out into the mortal world.
They presumably rely on infiltrators for a reason.
Is that how it works? Not sure the mechanics for how our hell works as an afterlife.
It is how it canonically works for the Yama Kings.
Their power rests on external sources of power, from absorbing corrupted energy from death, pain and misery to torturing captive souls as a perverse perpetual energy machine. Mikaboshi canonically bootstrapped himself to Yama King status by geomancy: arranging for corrupt energy to flow to himself.
Outside their Hell the power of a Yama King fades rapidly. Inside their Hells, their authority is great but far from absolute; heavy hitters like Enma-O have rebels that defy him openly. Its also worth remembering that they only get a tiny fraction of the dead from the Far East; the vast majority move on.
They just dont willingly release anyone that falls into their clutches.
Thats not how the Fae Courts work.
The power of the Courts is essentially more or less constant.
Waxes and wanes with the seasons, but while they are connected to the mortal world, their magic power is not reliant on it.
PS
There are limits to what types of corrupted energy Yama Kings can easily absorb.
The Yama King Pika Don went to the Yin World to reap defiled energy from the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki immediately after WW2. He only absorbed a small amount before falling unconscious for decades.
Whether he's metabolizing the energy or is just poisoned is unknown.
The Yama Kings fight all the time and don't cooperate at all as far as I can tell.
Thats inaccurate.
The Yama Kings do fight and compete, but they cooperate all the damn time.
Their very first great act of defiance towards the August Personage was a joint venture where they ripped away a great chunk of spirit lands from the Yang Worlds and fused it with their home territories. That was the origin of Yomi Wan.
They repeated this by tearing chunks from the Yin World to grow Yomi.
The murder of Yen-Lo was also a cooperative campaign. The fall of Shau-Yar Han was a collective effort as well.
And thats just the named ones.
I disagree here. We are likely to have two questions. One should be spent on "the organization's true goals". That question does indicate the presence of inflitrators, because if the organization's bosses are subverted, the true goals of the organization would be different from the situation where there are no infiltrators. The second question should indeed be "the list of hostile organizations infiltrating the Library" or something like this.
To use an example:
The true goals of the White Council being self protection and the enforcement of the Laws of Magic wont tell you anything about infiltrators or traitors. List of hostile organizations tells you nothing about people working for themselves. You know, like Kemmler in his earlier days, or the Corpsetaker.
And we lack infinite focuses for organizations anyway.
Molly suspects Hyde was about to say Society of Jesus.
Huh. That would be a perception fail on someone's part.
I dont see why Hyde would think the Jesuits were a higher power with the authority to rule on magic stuff.
Or why Molly would think Von Trier would be hushing Hyde from mentioning the Jesuits inside a Catholic church.
They arent exactly a secret society.
I know Father Forthill is a member of the Ordo Malleus.
That's an interesting question.
We don't know how the metaphysics play here. Maybe the Yama Kings can bring demons into reality, but I suspect it's more likely that the demons would have to be summoned by mortal (or at least non-spirit) minions of the Yama Kings who already are in our world. In WoD the Yama Kings are all very interested in turning people, mortal, Wan-Kuei or other, into their Akuma to have agents in the mortal world.
They wouldn't need that if they could just send hundreds of Shikome or Rakshasa after any problem that catches their eye.
And in Dresden Files people also generally look for a summoner when there's demons around, rather then assuming they just came of their own accord.
The Yama Kings can personally come to the mortal world without invitation, and bring a retinue. They can send agents and subvert people. They cant bring armies of invasion, and they are vastly less powerful in the mortal world than the Powers of the Dresdenverse we see in canon.
Unlike someone like Mab, who can straight up end nations by sheer magical grunt.
Oh, and the YKs die if they are killed.
The central figures of the Fae Courts only die in particular locations like the Stone Table or on Halloween.
Mab isnt worrying about getting shanked by a mugger in Chicago.
By contrast, if you're buff enough or lucky enough to ambush and kill a Yama King, its dead and gone.
Either someone else takes its place, or other Yama Kings tear up its domain and absorb it. Some have explicitly been killed by, and I quote "agents from the Middle Kingdom".
Assuming it has a domain. Some Yama Kings dont.
little bit late but: holy fuck this is hilarious. And stupid. Particularly from someone who is a) a Catholic, b) daughter of a Knight of the Cross, c) friends with a Wizard of the White Council.
She's a teenager. An American teenager.
Not all that unexpected that she thinks two hundred years is a long time when she's thinking in mortal terms.
They're more like democracy-rules, suggesting cosmology is up for vote and a god is a sort of political party we can remove from power if it's polling badly.
