Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Adam (00:00)
Pain is a fire. And that is the energy we'll be bringing you here today on a very special episode of Recorded Neutral Territory. Brian, I can't do it. I can't do it anymore. We're so excited to talk to you guys about 12 months. Is there anything else you want to say before we get started?

Brian (00:17)
In the immortal words of everyone's favorite Dresden, pew pew pew.

Adam (00:22)
Kazinga.

Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to Recorded to Neutral Territory, where the spoilers finally go all the way through 12 months. I'm Adam Ruzzo, and with me, as always, is a child lining up for their first day at a supernatural school for gifted children, it's Brian O'Reilly.

Brian (00:48)
I'm so happy to be waiting at platform nine and three quarters for... ⁓ Did that man's face just turn into a muzzle and is he eating a corpse? Chicago's horrible!

Adam (01:00)
Don't worry about it, the Wardens will take care of It's there like horrors, just, you know, go talk to your pen pal from St. Mark's.

Brian (01:03)
What's a- what?

Adam (01:07)
But in the meantime, let's talk about 12 months, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, this is going to be a spoiler-filled episode, so please don't listen to it unless you are ready to learn more about what happens in that book and our speculations about what will happen in future books based on the new lore that we learned about in this book. We did just have a...

patron episode, a bonus episode where we talked about a lot of our favorite parts and plot details of 12 months. That is exclusively for patrons, but today we're talking about the more important stuff, the lore stuff, and we're going to start with the smaller stuff and ramp our way up to the larger stuff. So first, let's start with

Brian, Toot Toot is now three feet tall. How on earth is he hiding from people anymore?

Brian (01:52)
It's gotta be the case that just all pixies actually veil themselves most of the time, right? That's just gotta be the case.

Adam (01:58)
I think

so too, because they always have, they always sort of described as like having that blinking light thing, but they must turn that off when they don't want to be seen by mortals, or maybe it's something that can only be seen by non-mortals or something like that. But man, three feet tall is crazy. Obviously a lot of people called this a while back when he first started getting bigger, and I think we're pretty close to the point where something specific is going to happen.

He can't just keep being what he is.

Brian (02:29)
I doubt it'll happen in Mirror Mirror, but I imagine the book after that, something's got to give with Harry and the pixies. Like they need to either become sort of formally some thing in the Winter Court, or they need to become their own thing separate from the Winter Court. It can't keep being this weird hybrid joke, you know? It needs to at some point be...

Adam (02:37)
Agreed.

Brian (02:56)
something that we can sort of have a measure of as we get towards the bat.

Adam (03:01)
Yeah, not only that, physical changes, but if you've read Little Things, you know that Toot is actually having a hard time connecting with his other Dewdrop fairy friends, even the ones in the guard, because he now understands and thinks about death, specifically in relation to Murphy, right? He's like, my, yeah, the Zah Lord is still sad about the death of his woman.

And to like internal monologue, I can't talk about that with the other fairies because they don't understand, right? So he's starting, even back when we first met him, he was like Harry said, yeah, they forget two seconds after they tell you what they're gonna do, right? They just like they have the brain of a goldfish or whatever. But throughout the series,

Toot has become more and more reliable over longer and longer periods of time. So even before we got to that reference in Little Things, he has clearly been mentally shifting towards, or at least away from, the sort of absent-minded dewdrop fairy situation.

Brian (04:07)
Yeah, I think it is certainly clear that Jim has a plan in mind for where he's gonna bring Toot and the shoe's gotta drop soon or it's not gonna have a chance to.

Adam (04:19)
Yeah.

All right. The next thing we want to cover real quick. Bob is a failed experiment, Brian. If that's the case, what was the original goal? If he's a failure, what was Etienne the Enchanter trying to do?

Brian (04:33)
Well, he's a failure from the perspective of Basil. So, you know, that could just mean that Bob has a mind of his own, frankly. I mean, it could mean any number of things.

Adam (04:38)
That's true.

yeah,

that's an interesting interpretation. He was supposed to just be like a essentially computer search that had no personality and he's a failure because it turned out he absorbs the personality of the person that he's working for. I could see that because Basil kind of

I was also happy to like, the first few times I read the word, I was like, is it Basil? Is it Basil? No, it's a name. It must be Basil, right? And then eventually when they started revealing the other ones, time and cinnamon, I'm like, it is Basil. I threw this one in here. We didn't prep for this, Brian, because Daniel in the chat asked,

Brian (05:15)
Yeah.

Adam (05:22)
Does Maggie know Thomas is her uncle? And if so, or even if not, does she know he's a vampire?

Brian (05:30)
so I don't think she knows that he is a vampire she might know that he

You know, he can do stuff that he has abilities that most humans don't. And don't think that I, and this is where I'm really unsure. I don't think that she knows that Thomas is her uncle because I think Harry is keeping that so close to the chest that he won't tell her until she is old enough to understand the gravity of that secret.

Adam (05:38)
Right.

That was my interpretation, yeah. He would not risk telling her because then she might accidentally say it when somebody's around, like his Uncle Thomas coming over and then, you know, not Ebenezer, but Carlos or something is in earshot and he goes, wait, what? ⁓

Brian (06:09)
Right.

Or she

says it to Bonnie and then Bonnie has no filter and you know, right.

Adam (06:19)
Exactly, exactly. that's,

I 100 % agree that those are the case, but you know, the only argument against that is like she cared that Thomas didn't come to see her and that's something that you expect from potentially family, but the other answer to that is maybe she just like, he's the only other adult that made friends with her besides Molly and the Carpenters. And so she did care that he did. I made him pancakes and then my heart Anyway.

Let's move on. The Brotherhood of St. Brigid. Now, I did have to look this up, because I am not a computer like Bob, but St. Brigid is a classical Irish saint, along with Patrick and Columba,

Brian (06:47)
Yeah.

Adam (07:01)
I think you had a hypothesis about the brotherhood of St. Bridget, and specifically St. Bridget herself within the context of the Dresdenverse.

Brian (07:10)
Yes, so there's a bit of an academic debate over whether or not St. Brigid is a historical person. some people think that she is, and there are good arguments to believe that she is.

And it might be that she is, but it is also possible that St. Brigid is a conflation of the Irish goddess Brigid from the pagan period. Brigid is one of the big Irish goddesses. She's sort of weirdly absent otherwise from the Christianization of Irish myths that happen. Like Kukulain and Finn McCool, they sort of...

Adam (07:33)
Hmm.

Brian (07:47)
work as folktales because they've been altered in their sort demigod status maybe in a post-Christian Ireland, Bridget sort of doesn't exist in that way unless there's this saint or you know the Shi in Ireland they're no longer gods they're these people of the mounds the the Ao Shi who are sort of these this echo of this you know pagan belief in gods that's how we get fairies.

right? at least one interpretation anthropologically of how we get theories. So if Bridget, Saint Bridget, is the goddess Bridget, that goddess is associated with fire and Beltane, the festival of sort of springtime and summer. And exactly.

Adam (08:37)
⁓ so that sounds like the Seelie Court.

Brian (08:41)
So it's very possible that that is in fact the name for Mother Summer that is sort of most strongly associated with the creation of the Fey Courts. Just like people guessed that a Scottish winter hag, the Ceilige or Beora, I think might be the other name, is sort of the progenitor of the mother winter figure that

Adam (09:08)
Yeah, they

both have multiple names that they had attributed to themselves, almost like different mantles that they had worn over time.

Brian (09:14)
Yeah, they're definitely in a, like, I mean, she's got the iron teeth of Baba Yaga. So Mother Winter is definitely wearing that one for sure. But it's just possible they're taking from lots of places. And if Bridget is a name for Mother Summer, well then the brotherhood of St. Brigid might be in a way Summer's answer to Winter bringing the White Court under its aegis. That the Summer Court is actually

Adam (09:18)
Right.

Mm.

Brian (09:43)
stepping up its co-option of some mortal organizations in order to balance the increased presence of winter in mortal affairs.

Adam (09:54)
Yeah, and as Michael said, quote, the Brotherhood of St. Brigid, it's a bit of an ad hoc organization formed when there is need to battle rampant darkness, unquote. So that also kind of suggests a more summary connection. Usually the rampant darkness in the Dresden Files world is something more associated with winter.

Brian (10:16)
And we're not trying to say necessarily that it's sort of like Father Forthill is dumb and he doesn't know he's working for Mother Summer. It's a little bit of the white god is to a certain extent allowing Summer to act through some of his agents maybe because of the special circumstances.

Adam (10:34)
Yeah,

and as you had pointed out, Harry is getting pretty big power ups as the winter night and glomping on the white court in its entirety to winter, which suggests something must balance that. The summer has to get some other group to join them as a result. We're gonna speculate about that too when we get there. Now, what's next for the Brotherhood of St. Brigid

now a new sort of minor power in the city that's kind of taking the place of what the Alphas used to do.

Brian (11:10)
I mean, just on a larger scale, right? There's more of them. They're sort of using greater firepower. I mean, they can't transform into wolves, but they have assault rifles. So they're definitely, at least in Chicago, while the city is in a state of disarray, going to be a fairly significant organization. And, you know, we haven't seen really in 12 months,

Adam (11:14)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Brian (11:37)
the paranet come into its own in any meaningful sense? And maybe it just won't. But we've got a lot of hints of parallel organizations that are all trying to do the same thing. The Brotherhood of St. Brigid, the Paranet, they're all sort of pushing back against supernatural predators so that people who were clued in but not... ⁓

of white council status or anything, have some protection against the, you know, depredations of the winter corn or ghouls or whatever. So at some point it would be logical for these groups to start working together more closely and to band together in a more meaningful way. We just haven't seen it

Adam (12:20)
Yeah,

and the other thing that occurred to me while reading about them is in the book, I believe Daniel refers to himself as Brother Captain, and I just couldn't stop hearing that in every 40K game I've ever played.

Brian (12:36)
I mean, it's interesting because it's explicitly a religious almost frame of reference. It sounds like a crusading order, like the Knights Templar or the Teutonic Knights or something like that. Precisely. but that's very interesting because that's normally not an organization that you portray very positively in modern media. So.

Adam (12:43)
Yeah.

And I'm sure that's where the 40k lore took those kinds of, you know,

That's true, that's true. So

this is like Jim's twist on it in the same way that you have his twist on paladins and other things in here. This is his twist on a crusading organization, especially one led by a carpenter is probably going to be not a terrible one.

Brian (13:15)
Well,

that's the interesting thing. Are we going to see other chapters that are maybe not as, you that are led by people like Carl as opposed to people like Daniel? That'll be an interesting thing to look forward.

Adam (13:25)
Yeah, that is an interesting question.

I was wondering mostly like, okay, did they just pop up for this book and like now that the city's put back together again and the police are going to get a better and better hold on things, are they going to just go away? No, I'm pretty sure that they are still going to just be in the periphery and Jim's gonna maybe tap them when he needs that kind of a group to show up, maybe for an impromptu rescue when Harry needs them or...

to do something else. There's a million things that he could use that group for in the future, even as like a potential antagonist against Harry as needed. So there's a lot of possibilities.

Brian (14:06)
It's a lot

of work characterizing Daniel Carpenter if you're not going to use him for something in the future.

Adam (14:10)
Mm-hmm.

That's a very

good point too. So yeah, I could definitely see that. All right, let's talk about Will and the other power ups, by which I mean we really only have one potential additional observable evidence and that's Fitz. So specifically, Will is described, basically points out to Harry that he can heal way faster than he used to be able to do. And he says that that has started since the battle, like,

that something in the battle has juiced up his ability to use his power. And Fitz obviously mentioned his non-ectomancy power became available during the battle. What's your explanation for this? What happened

Brian (14:55)
So I think it's important to note that not only does Will have this additional healing factor, he is basically because he's clearly stronger in his human form. He does combat training with the Winter Knight. Harry is like a world record powerlifter at this point, kind of by accident. So the fact that Will can hang with him and just...

Adam (15:16)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (15:20)
you know, take blows from a guy who, first of all, just in normal, without considering any power-ups, is just a 6'9 dude who works out religiously and not even get bruises and, you know, heal them instantly. But also that it's the winter night and he can hold his own against him as a sparring partner definitely means that in some...

Adam (15:28)
Yeah.

That's true. He's gotta be faster and

stronger even than he used to be when he was just doing his regular human training.

Brian (15:46)
Right, so Will has in some way become a little bit less of a Dresden Files werewolf and a little bit more of a classic wolfman. He has some additional strength and durability that is outside of just his ability to turn into a wolf. Now, that's interesting, I think the reason why Jim actually brings that into the book is so...

It doesn't seem as...

convenient that Fitz also gets a power-up from the battle.

Adam (16:22)
Okay. And he also has, you know, once he's introduced this little thing, he can then introduce other characters in the future that got powered up during the battle for plot conveniences here and there. But how did all this work? I'm kind of thinking something about Mab pushing everyone combined with the magical potential energy in the air probably allowed it to

unlock everyone's maximum magical potential. But does that mean that we also maybe have people that didn't have powers before and maybe now they just are low level practitioners?

Brian (17:00)
So I think that's really interesting because one possibility is that the amount of power floating around in the air and the ability to connect more easily to the Never Never means if you had that connection already, the door is a little wider for you. if you during the battle reached out for more power, it's not that you can get all of that now, but you widened your own access permanently. ⁓

That's one possibility, and I think that's the explanation that sort of makes the most sense in the universe. However, it could be that all humans, because when you dream you visit the Never Never, have some connection to this power, so we could just have an explosion of minor practitioners in Chicago. And more importantly, if it was something that was easily to do unconsciously, it might be the case that

Adam (17:38)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (17:53)
like several members of the Ordo Lebes are now near white council level talents or something.

Adam (18:00)
I

mean, we're about to talk about Bock and that group and the barbed wire spell. Maybe that group couldn't have pulled it off before Battleground.

Brian (18:11)
As far as we know, Bock didn't have talent in any sense. So, might be a little bit a retcon that Bock has a certain level of talent, but I think it might be Jim.

sprinkling in exactly that notion that you're talking about, all of the members of that circle can throw around this curse now because the battle happened in Chicago.

Adam (18:40)
Yeah,

and we know it didn't really universally impact everyone because Mort doesn't mention that, I'm also able to do all this stuff. I think that would be an obvious point to say, or maybe, maybe he can, maybe he's now White Council material, but he doesn't wanna tell anybody. That's also possible and in character. yeah, and.

To that end, do we then ask ourselves, hey, did Harry also get an upgrade? And by the end of this book, you gotta say, maybe he did, because he does some crazy stuff in this book that you don't know for sure wasn't something he could have done prior to Battleground. Now, the other explanation for that is that, like when he was training Molly, he

refines the fundamentals while training fits. And maybe that has something to do with how strong he is by the end of this book as well. It could be a little both.

Brian (19:38)
And I would suspect that as a rule, if you were a practitioner in Chicago during the battle, you did not get any stronger. But I think that if you tried to fight and reached out for power to do so,

and reached out for power that you didn't know you had or didn't really have, there was at least a chance that you gained some permanent access to that power. So a lot of people probably attempted things like that. A few of them probably survived. And for those people, it is a fact that they have more access to those magical energies now.

Adam (20:03)
Mm-hmm.

That would, yeah.

Yeah,

that makes sense too. if Bock and his group gained anything from it, maybe it was because they were working together to try to strengthen defensive wards around a house that they were hiding in, like one of the the Paranet strong points that they were talking about. We know that Max was one of those points, but they had other points throughout the city that had been reinforced and strengthened with the

barn raising of wards and maybe they were in there just concentrating on keeping those wards up while the huntsman tried to break down it or something and that was when they were exposed to that kind of a power up.

Brian (20:50)
and

We don't necessarily know if it was Bock who grew in power. Like I said, don't think him having talent is mentioned. But maybe it's just that member of the Ordo Lebes, I don't remember her name, who is a part of the circle. And she is more talented now and is the one who's really fueling the spells or something. You know, we just, don't know enough about that group. We don't really get an inside look at them. But certainly could one or two of the people in that circle be more powerful than they were before the battle?

Adam (20:55)
Right.

Brian (21:21)
they did something during it? Certainly.

Adam (21:24)
Yeah, absolutely. let's talk about Bock and how disappointed I am in him. But ⁓ specifically, the barbed wire spell, Brian, Harry calls it a curse. We were just talking about that like two weeks ago and we finally get the answer. calls it a curse. There it is. Answer for we spent, what, 20 minutes trying to figure that Now we know the answer.

Brian (21:44)
my gosh, just

like all of our- and the whole thing about, you know, does he need to manipulate it physically? Well, apparently sort of, but you know-

Adam (21:52)
Yeah, yeah, we,

it's okay. What if, what would Harry do if he was ⁓ a, you know, a later version? No, he would basically do the same thing. He would rip it out with his hands made out of will.

Brian (22:01)
Now, it does seem like he handled things a little bit differently this time around, and he didn't need to throw it outside, they threw it into that holy fire, which seemed a lot smarter.

Adam (22:05)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (22:12)
He definitely had a better handle on how to safely remove the spell without endangering which may be from just greater knowledge, but I might also be because his approach did seem to be somewhat different when he was removing the spell. He seemed to be able to do it in a more careful manner.

Adam (22:36)
Yeah, and he had the aid of being in the church, which they specifically called out as like providing some kind of surcease or some kind temporary treatment to those suffering under it. So that certainly helped him out a little bit. But I gotta ask you, Brian, how did Bock get his hand on Kravos's Book of Shadows? I believe Harry was the last one who had it.

Brian (23:00)
So when you originally asked this question in our pre-show, I was really confused because I thought Harry read the book at the police station when Stallings gave it to him and left it with Stallings. And in that case, ⁓ it was in police evidence and, know, somebody, right. But does seem that Harry brought the book home. So a couple of things could have happened. One is just that there was a second book.

Adam (23:18)
Anybody could have gotten it, yeah.

Brian (23:28)
Another possibility is that Harry kept it and after his house burned down, whoever went through his basement sold off a lot of his paraphernalia. Or it could be the case that at some point during grave peril, the book was actually pilfered from Harry's place.

by the nightmare or something in some scene that we don't get. I don't think that's very likely, but I suppose there's a possibility that somebody sought out the book and took it from Harry's house.

Adam (23:56)
Yeah.

Yeah, there

was, this, in 12 months, Harry speculates that there was a cultist apprentice of Kravos that they missed and that that person wrote down something and that's where this book came from. The other option is, you know, we have a pretty solid guess that Mavrah and Bianca were the ones that taught Kravos this spell and maybe they taught somebody else who wrote it down.

Brian (24:28)
Sure, it's also possible that this isn't even Kravo's Book of Shadows at all. It's just a different one that contains the same spell and is bound in the same way because, as you're saying, Bianca and Mavra planted a bunch of seeds with a bunch of little sorcerers and this is just the latest one to germinate. ⁓

Adam (24:47)
And you know,

I hate to say it, but I did get an interesting parallel in my head because what happened here, the Ordolebes and Bock, they found this book, they found this spell and in the book it said, this inconveniences. And Harry's like, yeah, inconveniences them into a fricking death coma. Like, what are you talking about? And Brian, if that isn't what happens in

Harry Potter number four enemies is exactly what I was thinking of. And wow, I don't know if Jim was doing that on purpose or if it's just a useful trope, but that seems to be an interesting parallel. So the disappointing thing here is that we don't want Bock to be the bad guy. We like Bock, right? But obviously this is what happened. I am really happy with how this turned out though.

Brian (25:16)
Four enemies, yeah.

Adam (25:42)
But what do you think about the way that Harry handled this with the wardens? Are they gonna come back to Chicago and try this again if they ever detect black magic?

Brian (25:55)
Well, most interesting thing about the confrontation with the Whartons is Molly, which I suppose we should talk about briefly. But to answer that first question, I think that if anyone ever sensed anything like this again,

the wardens would come and attempt to take care of it and Harry would be in trouble for sticking his neck out and he would also be very disappointed in the people who were casting the curse. I think though that we've seen already that Bock is a overly defensive person.

He bans Harry from his bookstore for really no good reason. I I understand that he breaks a lot of stuff, but it's not Harry's fault fundamentally. it just seems that that's kind of up box alley. We don't want him to be that kind of person, but he is. think that the simultaneous Harry threatening them and also Molly pulling out basically

Adam (26:34)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Brian (26:58)
all the stops to get everybody to stand in line was really really cool. I think it's all veiled threats and illusions from her in that scene, but they're so good even Harry can't tell to what extent she's being perfectly straight.

Adam (27:15)
Right, because we know that fairy queens can't lie, I think the accords that she pulls out and like, hey, you're violating someone else's territory, and like, yeah, but we do that all the time. It's like not a good excuse. But now, I mean, Harry's explanation of like, everybody just lets the wardens do their thing, because nobody wants a warlock in their territory, right? So that makes perfect sense to me, but.

Brian (27:30)
Right.

Adam (27:43)
Molly being able to say, yeah, but you need form XYZ to come here officially. And I'm enforcing that particular clause right now. it was perfect. And the way she does it definitely felt like channeling Maeve, right? She was, I mean, I believe the way it was described is she looked a little crazy eyed and things like that.

Brian (28:03)
Well, I love the thing about the shadows of the goblin bodyguards in the alleyway. That's a real either, and Harry's not sure. Is she bringing around goblin bodyguards everywhere?

Adam (28:07)
Mm-hmm.

I mean, that's her rag lady move, right?

Brian (28:16)
That's exactly what it reminded me of. That this is Molly using illusion in a way that's so convincing that it even takes Harian because she's learned so much about how to be intimidating so that she doesn't have to be violent.

Adam (28:34)
Yes,

and that's kind of what she mentions in one of their conversations here. Like Harry said, you if you had to deal with people trying to, you know, test you. And she's like, not since this. And it could have been the name of a person on Alaska. That's right. You know what? I've never seen that written down, because I only listen to the audio book of it. So that's cold case, is what they're talking about then, right? Okay.

Brian (28:45)
not since on Alaska. No, no. She says... Right.

Yes, exactly.

Adam (28:57)
Yes, I understand now. So, unalaska, was such a weird spelling of that.

Brian (29:03)
It's the sort of only spelling of that, but I will say looking at it on paper, I had the exact same reaction, which I was like, what does that say? And then I'm sitting there sounding it out. ⁓ that's just what Alaska looks like when the first letter is not a capital. Right brain. Yeah, we got it. Una Alaska? Yeah. But great thing about that scene is that it also shows that Ilyana is not.

just a headcase. She can believe that discretion is the better part of valor. She is willing to try to live to fight another day.

Adam (29:34)
Mm-hmm.

It helps that the older wardens on her team kind of suggest that she back down. It does make me wonder why she's leading the team with these older wardens, except that she must have combat experience during the war too, right? Because we know, for those of you that weren't aware, if you reread...

quad A wizardry from Brief Cases. It's a short story where Harry's in front of a class of baby wardens providing life experience and using the four A's of wardening. And she is named there, Illyana, and that's one of the reasons that he remembers her and he calls her by name when she shows up. He doesn't have to be introduced.

Brian (30:26)
I think that to a large extent, a lot of the older wardens are assigned to sort of the strike team at Edinburgh. You know, they're the standing army of the White Council and they are garrisoned together. And

Adam (30:36)
Hmm.

Brian (30:44)
⁓ Ilyana's job is regional commander of Chicago. She's got Harry's old gig. So they're sort of there to enforce her will as the regional commander, even though they have a lot of seniority over her, mostly because the older wardens don't really want to be the regional commander of Chicago for a lot of reasons.

Adam (30:48)
Right, that's true.

No. And the White Council wants

the most battle-hardened available as quick reinforcements for major situations. They don't want them tied down as the warden of a specific area like that. That makes sense to me. Illyana's job would be like Harry's job was, investigate and call for backup if you need it. And that's not something you want your heaviest hitters, like you don't want to put Ebenezer in that job.

Brian (31:33)
Right,

precisely. And it just so happens to be the case that whether this was always true or It does seem to be the case that Morgan may have been a regional commander of somewhere in North America or some kind of.

Adam (31:48)
Maybe, or maybe

he was like not a regional commander, ⁓ a like man-to-man commander. Like his job was literally Dresden for a while. But yeah, after that, I don't know if he was still keeping tabs on him after Stormfront in the same capacity as he was then.

Brian (32:07)
point is that regardless of exactly what Morgan's job was, after a few years of the war with the Red Court, the amount of battle-hardened wardens left dropped precipitously.

Adam (32:22)
Yeah.

Brian (32:23)
So it makes a lot of sense at this point to let the kids handle the regional command posts and keep the older, more experienced wardens where they can all sort of travel as a group to the needed location for reinforcement. So that's probably why Ilyana or someone like her would get the job and then she got it specifically as we talked about in the Patreon show, probably because Lucio simultaneously

Adam (32:28)
Mm hmm.

Brian (32:53)
wanted to send someone to Chicago who would be a hard-ass to Harry in case he did go to the dark side, but also who Harry could maybe teach a little nuance to because obviously Illyana has a very black-and-white view of black magic and it's not really compatible with reality.

Adam (33:18)
Yeah,

I mean even in that second time she shows up, she's certain that if she touches Dresden, she's gonna sense black magic and then it'll be all over and she's gonna be proven right and vindicated and then when she doesn't, she's stunned. She's like, she didn't consider this possibility. But then still you have to wonder, okay, say you sensed black magic on him and he knew that's what you were doing.

What happens next, Ilyana? You didn't think that all the way through. The warlock that is your better in experience and power can now jump you knowing that you know his secret. Hmm, maybe not the best plan. She does have to learn a little bit more there. Now.

Brian (34:02)
I

also think Illyana might just not actually know the extent to which she's outclassed.

Adam (34:08)
Yeah, she might not

believe, like she thinks it's all exaggerations for the new person or he can't be that bad, whatever.

Brian (34:14)
maybe was not apprenticed to someone like Ebenezer. Like, Harry has known since day one the sort of outer limits and capabilities of magic. Illyana might not realize that the winter night could literally turn her into an icicle in a second.

Adam (34:18)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

now that brings me back to what do we expect of their sort of engagements in the future? I do think she'll return, again, Mirror Mirror is such a weird book because we know Harry is leaving for a good chunk of it to go into an alternate reality. So it's very hard to predict what will be in that book. But I think in a future book, she will continue to show up and it might just be.

Jim like, hey, I need a side story to go along with this main story. Let's have some more black magic show up in Chicago and get something going on between Harry and Illyana again and see what brews, right? That is definitely somewhere she could fit in as one of those B stories that take place that get in Harry's way, but are still important to Harry and he still has to drag his ass to save somebody in that story while waiting to go on his duel with Ortega or whatever.

Brian (35:22)
Well, part of the reason I was speculating that we might see other minor practitioners who have had a power-up since the battle is to give Illyana something to do.

Adam (35:32)
⁓ and

another way for her to interact with Dresden, yeah.

Brian (35:35)
And I wouldn't be surprised if actually at some point Illyana and Dresden end up working together to take care of some Chicago sorcerer and that's sort of the turning point for her to realize, I don't know why we kicked Dresden out of the council, but he's really not such a bad guy.

Adam (35:42)
Yeah.

Yeah, I could

definitely see that where he finds out about more black magic happening in his town. Maybe somebody tips him off. Maybe he stumbles upon it himself. Maybe Bob comes back and says, hey, know, the black magic detectors are going off crazy in the castle. It must be right down the block or whatever. And then Harry just calls up them and says, yeah, I've investigated this. It's bad. going to have to come do your thing. And they're like, what do you mean? Don't you protect, know, Illyana says, don't you protect warlocks?

What kind of trap is this? And he's like, no, no, And of course, it has to be as bad as like that Korean kid, right? In order for Harry to say, this is unredeemable, irredeemable, nothing we can do here. And she then has to reconcile that. That would be a very cool sort of story to tell.

Brian (36:28)
Right.

Yeah, or it's a situation where Harry calls Carlos because, hey, I found a sorcerer who is, you know, heading up a cult, something similar to, Fitz's old master, Ordo Cravos or something. And, you know, I want somebody to give me a hand taking it down. And rather than showing up, Carlos just sends Illyana because it's her territory. And he's like, you guys have to develop a working relationship, Harry. Sorry.

Adam (36:49)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I

could definitely see that. Okay, so ⁓ let's move on. Illyana, very interesting new development. I wanna see how she develops. Hopefully she's not gonna stay as one dimensional as Morgan did for so long. We didn't, mean Morgan never really became two dimensional until Turncoat and he really became three dimensional when you read that micro fiction. And that's like such a little amount to give him three dimensions. So.

Brian (37:16)
She's very flat.

Well,

I agree on the one hand, but on the other hand, Morgan in, I think it's proven guilty, yeah, proven guilty when he seems to be very hesitant.

Adam (37:44)
That's Mm-hmm.

Brian (37:44)
about killing Molly. That is

a big step forward. And in Deadbeat, when we see, ⁓ he's got a thing for Lucio, you know, in that scene, it's a very slow build. And Morgan is a very sort of one note character for a while, but Jim adds depth to him basically every time we see him after the first couple books. Illyana does not have that much time.

Adam (37:53)
Mmm. That's fair.

Yes.

Brian (38:11)
to

have depth added to her. So hopefully Jim fleshes out her character quickly or we just don't see very much of her.

Adam (38:17)
Yeah, she kind of did her point here for this is to act as a bit of sort of antagonist for Dresden in the middle of the book when there's nobody else really antagonizing him. Carlos isn't, Ebenezer doesn't even really. Moving on though, Murphy's Shade shows up here and I thought it was written really interestingly. When she first shows up, you don't even know that it's her for sure. Like I speculated on it and then later on,

It's confirmed, but I thought it was really brilliant how Jim had Murphy's shade have enough self-awareness to know that it was not Murphy, that it was not her, that it's a copy of her, and to force Dresden to acknowledge that while talking to him, and you came up with a hypothesis of maybe why that is.

Brian (39:12)
Right, I think this has to be true because it sort of is the only thing that works with the rest of the world building that Jim has done. We know that for spirits like Agatha Hagglethorn, who we're dealing with right now in Grave Peril, not only do they not know that they're dead, they don't think of themselves as being distinct from the person who left the shade, even though Harry makes it clear that they are. So...

Is Murphy's shade different just because Murphy was so cool? Well, maybe. Or maybe when we later find out that Fitz and Mort have sort of had their thumb on the scale, noticed what Harry has been doing, and have been trying to help him out, the way they did that was as ectomancers to call up the shade and...

you know, in the same way that Sir Stuart knows that he's a ghost, tell Murphy's shade what the actual sort of reality of the situation is.

Adam (40:07)
Mm-hmm.

And that seems to be one of the things that Mort does professionally. He doesn't get paid for it, I don't think, but he seems to think like in the same way that Dresden's like, I've got power, I should use it. I think Mort really idealized and admired that about Dresden. And the one thing he can do is put spirits to rest. He can kind of give spirits therapy until they finally move on to whatever's next or dissipate or whatever. And we know that he did that

for a lot of spirits and the ones he couldn't do that for, like the Lectors and the other sort of crazy spirits that were around his house in Ghost Story, those ones he kept with him so they wouldn't cause anybody any trouble. So we already know he does sort of spirit therapy, so it makes sense that he would do that for Murphy. We know that she showed up to him at some point, probably before she showed up.

to Dresden and he called her up because Mort mentions it very early on when Fitz comes over and then later admits, yeah, I did that because I knew Murphy's shade was around and I wanted to keep tabs on you because sometimes the living can kind of, hold onto them for too long and keep them here. And that was such a cool scene where Mort shows up with beers at the end when he finally learns that Harry's let go. I could totally see her like getting, Harry saying goodbye, she leaves.

She winds up going over to Mort's and saying goodbye to him and explaining that Harry's finally letting her go. then Mort just shows up the next day, like, congrats, buddy. That was just such a touching moment.

Brian (41:49)
It was great and it was also great because it is a continual evolution of Mort's character. The Mort that we leave at the end of Ghost Story is not a heroic figure in the same sense that Dresden is, but he is a hero. He's been doing all of this work to keep the city safe. He takes it very seriously and he's using his power for good. And in this way, he's engaging with Dresden, not just as a

Adam (42:08)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (42:19)
But as somebody who has a specialty that you know can do things that Harry Doesn't ask him to do and can sort of have his own agency in shaping the future and how does he do it? He does it in a way to keep Harry sane Which is really you know, I think just a wonderful what does Harry do for Mort in grave peril? He sets him back on the path to regaining his power

what does Mort do for Harry? He helps him on the path to regaining his happiness. Exactly.

Adam (42:53)
Yeah, and therefore his power, right?

He misfires against the ghouls in a situation where he absolutely shouldn't. And by the end of the book, he's Oz. He's doing all kinds of crazy stuff.

Brian (43:05)
Well,

and it's an incredible bookend because when is the last time we see Harry use a pocketful of sunshine? Stormfront, but the point is that that's the Bianca bookend is the last time we see him use the pocketful of sunshine, and the only time he's able to do it since then is after he makes it through this crucible.

Adam (43:11)
Yes, in Stormfront, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

100%. So when you said that, that Fitz and Mort are probably talking to her, reminding her, convincing her that she is not Murphy and that that's the best way to help him disengage and stop holding onto her is to make sure she doesn't tolerate him referring to the shade as the person and keep forcing him to say,

her not you when talking to Murphy's Shade. That I think was a very important part and the idea that Fitz and Mort did that to help her see that and help her help Drez in that way, I'm totally on board. That's in my head, whole time.

Brian (43:57)
Mm-hmm.

So speaking of practitioners who help Harry out or who have had more power than him, Ebenezer did not have a huge part in the story, but I was really glad that Jim made sure to give him an appearance because we absolutely could not, after peace talks, leave off any mention of Ebenezer for another book.

The first thing we should probably address is just Harry and Ebenezer's relationship, which they have Thanksgiving dinner together, right? I mean, it seems pretty fixed. Do you think that it actually is back to a pre-Peace Talk state, Adam? Or do you think that there's something simmering under the surface that's not going to come up until Thomas is back as he now is?

Adam (44:57)
It feels to me like he had a moment of important decision. This is going by his words. I'm assuming he's being sincere to Dresden. By Ebenezer's words, yes. I'm assuming that he is being sincere and that he did finally decide to let Dresden make his own choices, specifically about how Maggie is to be, you know, brought up and where.

Brian (45:07)
I have an easter's worth, so yeah.

Adam (45:23)
and whether she'd be exposed to Thomas or whatever. Basically, Harry said, she's my girl, I make the calls, not you. And he says, that is as it should be. I'm just accustomed to meddling, right? He makes it as his excuses, but says that I won't do it anymore. I think that's real. I think that's sincere. I think he still shows up to try to counsel Harry against it, but I don't think...

he will be imposing his will the way he did at the end of peace talks when they have the big knockdown drag out and he's like, well, I'll force you to do it.

Brian (45:58)
Right, you don't think he's going to try to stop the wedding in a physical sense, but he might show up. Yeah.

Adam (46:03)
No, that was the, we're gonna talk about that. That was my prediction.

And well, we didn't actually see the wedding yet, but it was very wrong. He did, everything in this book went in a more idealistic way, which was very satisfying to me having read 17 books of Dresden getting his ass kicked both spiritually and physically by Jim to have one book where like everything goes his way more or less.

And so I didn't mind Ebenezer and him patching up the relationship that way. It felt earned if only because Dresden deserves a little happiness now.

Brian (46:40)
So the other thing that you brought up when we were talking about Ebenezer was that he mentions cornerhounds in this book as the reason he had that failsafe on his staff in Peace Talks, implying that they've been menacing him pretty severely in the run-up to Peace Talks. Why did you think that was so interesting?

Adam (47:04)
Yeah, he says, even me, I have contingency defenses. I never thought you'd push me hard enough to activate. I've been dealing with corner hounds for several years now. They like to come when I'm asleep. I need reflex level even the field, unquote. Okay, A, that's crazy. They come at him when he's asleep on the farm where he has all of his wards and defenses and everything?

Brian (47:21)
Yeah.

Adam (47:28)
That's crazy, he has to like, ⁓ they've made it past all the wards and defenses while I'm asleep and I have to have a reflex spell ready to blast them when I wake up and they're in my face. Wow, okay, that's very scary. But the other thing that people have been speculating about is that Harry refers to them as the Hounds of Tindalos in Peace Talks anybody who knows their Lovecraft knows that the Hounds are specifically.

stated to be going after time travelers. And Brian, what is it the black staff allows one to do?

Brian (48:02)
break the laws, of course.

Adam (48:03)
including

the one against time travel. So it's entirely possible that at some point Ebenezer did break the law of time travel, and that's why the hounds are coming after him. On the other hand, he's also one of the biggest hitters in the entire White Council, clearly on the side that's against the outside. And so it would kinda make sense for the outsiders to try and whack him.

Brian (48:27)
And we can think of a couple places where it would have made sense for Ebenezer to bend time. One is changes, obviously. The Grey Council shows up to Chichen Itza just in the nick of time. ⁓ right. Yeah, sure. Another possibility is that in one of the earlier books, like Proven Guilty, perhaps, part of the shenanigans that are unexplained is

Adam (48:35)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Brian (48:55)
Ebenezer messing with time to help out Harry. So it's possible that either of those things led to Cornerhounds being, you know, sort of on his case for years.

Adam (48:58)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and I think that's also true. It was kind of a revelation when he said that the Cornerhounds have been harassing him for years now because it felt to me like in peace talks that Harry and he only barely overcame the whole pack. Maybe the whole pack has not all been sent against him in the past. I don't know what it takes to get them through into the mortal world in the first place.

Presumably the outsiders had help, right? You can't open the gates to the outside without somebody on this side letting something in. Was that Cowell? Was it Lord Wraith? Will we ever know? Who knows? Who's to say? But somebody opened the way for those cornerhounds to get into the world in peace talks, and somebody's doing it for years now to help them go after Ebenezer. And I really wanna know who it is.

Brian (49:59)
Yeah, or maybe when somebody does time travel, the Hounds of Sindalos are able to use that to get into our reality. That's the whole, that's why they go after time travelers. Yeah.

Adam (50:07)
possible.

That's why time travel is forbidden. It could be.

⁓

Brian (50:14)
And

it's possible that the reason why Ebenezer has been able to survive them in the past is that when you've got a ton of wards on your farm in the Ozarks, yeah, the whole pack can't come after you. But every once in a while when you haven't done the enchantments and, you know, strengthened them enough, one of them...

Adam (50:33)
Or you've built stuff that

kills 12 of them and the last one gets through, yeah. So moving on to another relationship that's been patched up is Harry and Carlos seem pretty buddy-buddy in this one, which did seem to surprise a bunch of people. Did that surprise you, Brian?

Brian (50:39)
Exactly.

Not really at all. I was a little bit confused as to why that was so surprising. Now look, let's lay out the reasons why their relationship was strained. First, we have cold case, the situation with Molly. Carlos doesn't know, maybe suspects what Harry knows about that as winter night.

Also, Harry in peace talks is a whole big curmudgeon about cooperating properly with the warden security team that Carlos is running. Does Carlos know that Harry puts the spell on him to distract everyone in peace talks? Maybe. then, of course, Harry gets kicked out of the council ultimately and Carlos has to put him on notice that he is, essentially considered a warlock.

Alright, all of that boils down to Harry is the winter knight. And that's a problem for Carlos. He works for Mab. That's a problem for Carlos. So as soon as Carlos is assured of the fact that Harry is not fully under Mab's thrall,

Adam (51:51)
Mm.

Brian (52:02)
that he's still making decisions as Harry Dresden with the same motivations that he's always had. I mean, what reason does he have to not trust Harry again?

Adam (52:13)
Yeah, and I think there's also, and this is reasonable assumption and a reasonable take on peace talks and battlegrounds is that Carlos is giving Harry one last chance to extend his trust or else Carlos is going to stop trusting Harry and will believe that he went over to the monsters. Another way to interpret that is Carlos,

hasn't lost trust in Harry, this isn't an ultimatum about Carlos's belief. No matter what Harry does in peace talks, trust him or not, Carlos is not losing that trust as long as Harry's actions still prove that he is the person Carlos thinks he is, exactly like what you were saying. reason Carlos is giving him these sort of ultimatums in that period is he doesn't want other wizards.

to lose trust in Harry. And he said this multiple times, like, Harry, just tell us where your friends, we wanna help, and we need to be able to trust you. And when he's saying we, he means these other jokers that aren't me need to be able to trust you. I do trust you until you prove otherwise.

At the end of Battleground, when Carlos comes to give Harry the message that he's been kicked out of the White Council, Harry narrates that Carlos' voice sounded ragged, like he'd been yelling, or screaming, I think is the word that has been used. And boy, what else would he be screaming about if he wasn't defending Harry to the other wizards right before they made the final vote and he had to go? I mean, he says,

that the senior counsel gave the order to execute him and then had it suspended. Maybe Carlos was convincing them to suspend it and put the doom on him in lieu of giving the execution order, right? Maybe he did win that battle and that's why he was screaming.

Brian (54:11)
And that's certainly possible. Or it could be as simple as, no, Carlos was exactly communicating, if you don't come clean with me now, I'm never gonna trust you again. And then what happened? A lot of stuff that's way bigger than any of Carlos's personal feelings about whether Harry's being a good friend, right?

Adam (54:27)
Hmm

Mm-hmm.

Brian (54:33)
Ethniu declares war on basically the entire supernatural community and Carlos fights side by side with Dresden to stop that incursion.

Adam (54:46)
Right, the majority

of the things you'll remember where Carlos is like not trusting Harry, it all takes place before Ethnio shows up.

Brian (54:55)
Right, and what also happens in Battleground? sees the rest of his friends killed in front of him And Harry survives that encounter with him and promises that they're gonna get the people who did this. And you know what? Maybe Carlos doesn't trust Harry the way he used to. Maybe Carlos wouldn't.

Adam (55:08)
and saves his life.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (55:21)
just on Harry's say so do something that countermanded the authority of Lucio or somebody else on the council. Maybe he no longer feels like he can be Harry's partner in crime.

But does he think that Harry is fundamentally fighting against the same things that Carlos believes wizards should fight against? Yeah, he's got to. He literally just saw the guy do that. I mean, if actions speak louder than words, he's seen all the actions.

Adam (55:53)
Yeah,

and we've speculated in the past that Michael might have decided that the difference between Harry, evil overlord, and Harry, winter night, taking out Ethniu, you know, fighting the good fight, is Michael's friendship, and so he extended that friendship. That could be a calculus that Carlos had to deal with after Ethniu, is, holy crap, this guy now,

took out a Titan and has it under his control. So he better be trustworthy and I better reinforce that trust as best I can because if I'm wrong, we're screwed anyway. And it doesn't matter how much I don't trust him at that point.

Brian (56:39)
And what else have we never seen? The interactions that Carlos has with other wizards that know Harry. Maybe Carlos didn't trust him. And then at one point McCoy is saying to Carlos, listen Ramirez, Dresden might be an asshole and he might not confide in people and he might this and he might that, but

You better believe it, that if I thought he'd gone over to, you know, be Mab's thug, I'd kill him yesterday.

Adam (57:14)
Yeah, and I think Lucio could have that conversation too. I think she knows him well enough and she gets enough reports that she has determined that he's not that different. We haven't seen her in a long time, but I think she might play that part. Okay, so we gotta move on. There's more to talk about with Carlos. Like, what's next between them? They're batched up. I can't wait to see them go kick some drag cool ass. Anyway.

Brian (57:17)
Exactly. Yes.

Adam (57:38)
The Svartalves let's talk about the Svartalves. I saw someone on Reddit bring this up and summarize it really well, so I'm just gonna use what they wrote. Morgoth the Dark Elder points out a small contradiction that is brought up here. Etri says when talking to Harry that if Thomas had been under Nemesis's influence, he basically says, I know the being of which you speak, if it had been inside and controlling Thomas, we would know.

It would have set off our defenses. that is at odds with what we've learned before, is that even Mav and the gatekeeper cannot tell for certain if Nemesis is inside a being. So how do we square that circle, It seems like there's only a couple options.

Morgoth

the Dark Elder said, okay, here's the possibilities. They do have a way of for sure detecting Nemesis, but they don't share it. B, they have a way and they do share it, but it has some kind of prerequisite that makes it unusable outside of their home or something to that effect. C, they're lying about a surefire way. I don't think C is likely when it comes to the Svar'd Elves. And D, they think they have a way but are mistaken. And I think you brought up E,

they do have a way and they do share it, maybe they help build the outer gates, I like the idea that they have some way, but it's limited to maybe a specific place or something, which makes it much less valuable to try to detect nemesis. you're gonna get every potential nemesis brought to...

Ettrees, I don't think he's gonna go for that. So it's not really usable at that point.

Brian (59:16)
Well, I think that that sort of makes sense because, you know, maybe they have a way that is linked to their specific threshold and it's about

what happens when a being acting against its nature crosses that threshold. It doesn't leave part of itself behind or it does leave part of itself behind or something like that. You know, they use how a threshold works in order to test whether something is infected and maybe it's not a hundred percent, a hundred percent certain and that's why the gatekeeper can say, well, there's no way of knowing for sure. But I think

brought up at him, well that might only be true when Nemesis is trying to sort of pass through unnoticed. Maybe when Nemesis has taken over and hijacked somebody and is, you know, having them do things that directly further the aims of he who walks beside, that is detectable by certain instruments. And the Svarna elves, if Thomas was possessed when he was trying to assassinate us, we would know because that we can detect.

Adam (1:00:25)
Yeah, I think that's also a very strong possibility of what he meant, right? If Thomas was acting against his nature because he was being possessed by this thing, it would need greater control over him, and at that point, it's detectable. But if it's hiding in someone and subtly influencing or just listening and gathering intel, then it's...

undetectable in that circumstance. And then of course Harry corrects him in that conversation, says, no, no, Thomas wasn't infected, but someone he loves was, and they were manipulating him by threatening to kill his wife and unborn child. And then the rest of the conversation obviously happens. Now, as far as the resolution with the Svarad Alves, how did you like that? I've seen mixed responses to that sort of answer.

of Thomas's child is going to them. Like, was that possible the whole time? And Harry just needed to say that to Etri, like as an option? Could Etri have suggested that? Or was there something that changed from the conversation with Etri to the point where that is what happens?

Brian (1:01:31)
I mean, Mab definitely put her thumb on the scale.

that's part of what that boon was for. She is the head of the Anselia Accords. She can tell Ettri, no, under the laws, this would balance the scales. And Ettri can believe that and take that to the bank and take it to his people and say, Queen Mab has decreed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, without looking weak or making his nation seem weak. They are just being good signatories to the Accords. So I think that it did take Mab's participation

sort

of give everyone a fig leaf that allowed them to retreat from that situation and to sort of say that that would balance the scales. But also it makes perfect sense from a fey point of view. You know, we've seen the fey take children in this story. We know that's a thing that they do. The smart elves maybe don't.

as a rule, so they needed it suggested to them. It's not normally what they would think of as a balancing mechanism, but it literally is a life for a life. They get a immortal, powerful creature on their side, presumably.

in exchange for losing Ostri who is, in terms of being a bodyguard, the same thing. The child is sort of a were guild in that it is as valuable as that man at arms. So I think it does work for balancing the scales, and it also works as a punishment for Thomas, which is, I think, something that was also necessary for the Svart Alves, but...

they couldn't know that it would be a sufficient punishment without Mab's assurances.

Adam (1:03:17)
Yeah,

and the other thing that I put together here, and this is just, I don't know there's a lot of evidence for this explanation, but my take is that during the conversation with Etri earlier in the book, if Harry had suggested, if Thomas gives up his unborn child? I think the answer would have been no. Because Etri basically says, if you can prove that Nemesis was directly involved in this, then...

I can convince my people to not seek the death penalty for Thomas. That appeared to be the only way that they would do that. Now, what I think happened is similar in that Mab intervened. But I think what Mab did is she went to Etri and said, Nemesis was involved. Look, I have Justine, his girl, and you can use your tests if you want. Nemesis is there.

Brian (1:04:09)
And also, I

literally cannot lie.

Adam (1:04:10)
And also I literally cannot lie,

exactly right. And so behind the scenes, Etri was provided with the evidence he required, which took Thomas off of the is required list. And so they were able to then seek other ways of solving this more diplomatically. And you still though, can't just go to everybody in your court and say, it's okay guys.

Mab assured me that this super secret enemy that none of you know about was responsible, right? He needs something else that he can feed them. And that's where the child idea comes into play. It can pacify everybody and hide the fact that this is really Mab and Etri going, know Nemesis is really the threat here and it wasn't Thomas. So they can come to an accord and he has cover for his people by taking the child.

for all the reasons that you just said, you know, a life for a life, that's their code, and now they have a replacement bodyguard, and it's a punishment for Thomas. Like all of those things provide the cover, but the real answer is that it wouldn't have been possible without Mab saying, Nemesis did it.

Brian (1:05:23)
and I think that the that resolution is over in the sense that the the actual issue of why Thomas had to hide away is solved. We see him walking around as a free man at the end of the book. But I don't think this is the last we're going to hear of this situation. Obviously, Justine does not appear to be back in town yet. And

Adam (1:05:37)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:05:49)
At some point, this child is no longer going to be an infant and is going to need to be taught by Thomas about its white-court heritage. And all of these things probably are going to come up at some point.

Adam (1:05:54)
Mm-hmm.

There might be a situation where Thomas has to greet his son as a ward of the Sphardalves. He's going there for some diplomatic thing with Harry.

and he has to hide the fact that he knows the kid is his son and he can't say anything, that would be gut wrenching. That sounds like the kind of thing Jim would do, but I don't think we'll see any on purpose interactions with that kid anymore.

Brian (1:06:28)
Yeah, that's certainly possible. It depends, I think, to a large extent as to whether we see the Svartalvs again. And I'm interested in seeing how Jim does navigate it, because it's a huge potential emotional minefield for Thomas. But it's also, you know, he sort of set up this fact about Justine now. You can never tell her this would shatter her mentally.

Adam (1:06:34)
Right.

Yes.

Brian (1:06:54)
You I'm not hoping that we see that proven correct, but it's a little bit of a checkoff, Scott.

Adam (1:07:01)
That's true, that's unfortunate. yeah, I mean, how are you gonna explain a year missing from her memory? ⁓ yeah, you were captured by an evil sorcerer and he stole your memory. ⁓ What happened during that year? ⁓ know, Ethniu attacked and ⁓ also there were these peace timeline, but.

Brian (1:07:21)
and it's presumably

not just a year, right? Because Nemesis has been influencing her probably since cold days?

Adam (1:07:30)
Yeah, but I wonder

if it's been subtle enough that she doesn't necessarily know until Battleground or Peace Talks rather, when it has to go, you know, obvious mode when...

Brian (1:07:43)
Well, certainly

least the beginning of her pregnancy was also taken I guess that's about a year fully.

Adam (1:07:50)
Yes, I think that's, and so she can't know that she has a kid. Like that's also heart wrenching in a sense, but right.

Brian (1:07:52)
Yeah, that's true. That's true.

But it is the entire year, which is, yeah.

Adam (1:07:59)
All right, we gotta move on. Let's talk about the castle and all of its accoutrement, including gargoyles, sorry, spice goyles, Knights of the Bean, Bob, and all of its power and everything like that. Now, the first thing I wanna point out is that Harry specifically appears to believe that Marcon had

already taken up Namcheel's coin as early as Ghost Story because he says, he had a fallen angel whose province is magic advising him when he did, unquote. That is, when he brought the castle over. So sometime between changes and Ghost Story is definitely, Marconcheel, however you want to say is what Harry

And I think what Daniel said in the chat during our pre-show is that Harry getting shot in changes and presumed dead is the trigger that causes Marcon to say, well, I better dig that coin out and use it now.

Brian (1:08:53)
And I think that's certainly possible. I think it could have happened before then as well. Marcon is not somebody who sits on potential power-ups for very long. He's the kind of person who makes deals that he thinks are in his favor. So he might have taken up the coin shortly after small favor. We can't know one way or another. But I think it's pretty obvious that when Marcon had the castle brought over...

he must have been working with even if he asked guard what castle to bring and even if Odin knew that this you know like okay you you want to build a magically defensible stronghold, Marcon? Okay I'll ask my boss Odin what you should do and then Odin said okay you should take this castle and

Odin's not sitting there and supervising the reconstruction. And Gard probably doesn't have the capability to.

Adam (1:09:48)
No.

No, her

magic is rune based, right? Every time we've seen her do magic, it has something to do with sort runic, either tiles or something that's carved into her ax that she activates. It seems like Valkyrie magic works differently than the way that wizard magic does.

Brian (1:10:11)
So, even if he didn't get the idea to move the castle over from Namcheel, you have to expect that he must have taken up the coin if only to help rebuild it. And that if he hadn't done that, it would be obviously wrong in certain ways, because no one would have had the expertise to do anything but guess how all the pieces fit together.

Adam (1:10:23)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So that's what it comes down to. I think Harry's right. You think Harry's right. Definitely by ghost story. He's got Thorne and Namcheel in him, which is a pretty interesting piece of information. We don't know how much earlier it was. The earliest it could be is small favor, right? So sometimes between small favor and the end of changes. All right. Moving on though, I do want to bring up one little thing that I've seen people talk about and they're like, well in the good people, which is the story that a micro fiction about Molly basically

racing Santa Claus on Christmas Day. In The Good People, she remarks about how the gargoyles are chasing off the winter fae that are delivering presents. And then Harry doesn't officially get those gargoyles until February. But I would only point out that he notices something flying above him several times before February.

and that suggests that they were already there protecting. So I don't think that's a discrepancy the way that people are pointing it out. I think that makes perfect sense to me. They are protecting him and his castle on Christmas Day, even without him knowing it.

Brian (1:11:43)
I think we also, as a community, sort of need to differentiate between the micro-fictions that Jim is setting out to give us lore information and the ones that are kind of nice bits of characterization. Like, if something in Vignette was contradicted by something in a book somewhere, I think we can just follow the book continuity.

Adam (1:11:54)
Hmm.

Brian (1:12:08)
Vignette is not important in terms of its lore information. It's

Adam (1:12:12)
Right, but goodbye

seems very purposeful, right? That's the one where, Vignette by the way, if you're not familiar, Vignette is the one which is basically Harry and Bob arguing over what to put in his classified ad, which it's only a couple paragraphs long. And goodbye is the one where basically Ivy fires Kincaid after like learning that he is going to try to murder Dresden and.

Ivy convinces him to shoot Dresden in the chest, not the head. That seems very purposeful by Jim. you're right, that little one-off thing about, his gargoyles are there, doesn't seem as super important.

Brian (1:12:50)
Right, I think we can take the Morgan Microfiction Journal to the bank. Everything in that Jim gave us as, is a lore thing I want you guys to have so that you can understand.

Adam (1:12:55)
Yes.

Yes.

Brian (1:13:04)
The, you know, racing Santa story is about characterizing Molly and helping us understand the winter court and how those relationships feel. It's not supposed to be giving us specific names and dates and weights and measures. So I don't think we should take that very seriously as a discrepancy. It's just not that meaningful, guys.

Adam (1:13:18)
Yeah, I can get behind that.

Yeah, so moving on,

Harry now has a serious threshold that he's never had before with major wards to back it up.

Brian (1:13:32)
Adam, does the threshold require that those people are living in the castle, or does the castle just come with a threshold?

Adam (1:13:41)
I mean, the way that it was written, it suggests that the threshold is stronger because they are living there. You have multiple family units that are, you know, living and pulling themselves through a difficult time. And from what we've sort of learned is that a happy, healthy family unit...

creates the strongest threshold, especially if it's happy, healthy family units through multiple generations like Murphy's house was. And we also know that like a lone bachelor and his dog doesn't have a very strong threshold. Now Harry has his dog, his cat, his Bob, his gargoyles, his Maggie, most importantly, cause now we're talking about family again directly and.

all these other families living in that place as well. I think all of those things combined make this a stronger threshold than normal. I don't know that the castle comes with its own threshold. I think the wards are much, stronger and they're building off of a stronger threshold as well.

Brian (1:14:42)
And I think that that's really interesting because we know from Grave Peril that more using his home as a business has effectively eroded its threshold.

Adam (1:14:51)
Mm-hmm. Which meant that Marcon using

it as the brighter future society probably also meant it didn't have a very good threshold. But we know Bob had trouble getting in there, so.

Brian (1:15:02)
Right, so there seems to be something odd about the castle and how it sort of pulls the threshold energy into its defenses or it might just be that like Demonreach it doesn't need a threshold for certain things. It can just be a barrier to the Negloshi because that's how the spells and the thing are configured. But it does seem like this is giving us a really good reason for Harry to continue having other families living under his roof.

Adam (1:15:15)
Yeah.

Brian (1:15:31)
it strengthens his threshold. And that's not something that Harry's going to consciously decide, but it seems to be giving us sort of a narrative way that the castle needs to remain, this bastion not just for Dresden, but for others, which makes me wonder when the other shoe is gonna drop in terms of getting the money to keep running it.

Adam (1:15:57)
Yeah,

that was definitely a thing where it's like, no, ⁓ gonna run out in next spring or summer and we're about to hit next spring or summer, so we're gonna have to figure out what happens in the next book. Now, there's a couple other things about the castle. I just wanna breeze over, because we've got a lot of other things we wanna talk about. Obviously now he has the Spice Goyles as a security system. That makes me wonder, what else can these earth spirits do? Are they just?

Physical guardians that are able to do they have any other spells other than melding into the ground? I don't know well, that'll be an interesting thing to find out in the future How many Knights of the Bean are working in there? What's Harry gonna do with them? His castle can bend ley lines in order to siphon power for Harry to channel is a huge power up for him. I really want to talk about what could possibly be happening with that, but

We have a lot of other more impressing things that happen in this book that I want to get to. So we'll definitely want to talk about his castle at some point in the future, but for now, let's move on to a much bigger topic, Brian. Drakul shows up...

for the second time in this series, in this book, and boy, is he just as scary and ridiculously confident as he was in the previous one.

Brian (1:17:12)
my god, just this guy is... He's nothing we've ever seen anywhere else in the series.

Adam (1:17:20)
I would argue that FaroVax

is about similar.

Brian (1:17:23)
Well, isn't that interesting? So we'll get into that in a second, but let's just lay this out for Drakul in this book. You guys know the arc of the story. know, Drakul simultaneously seems to be a major antagonist because he kills all of Dresden's friends in battlegrounds, but he also is helping Dresden out. He keeps...

Adam (1:17:25)
Hahaha!

Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:17:48)
Dresden from getting caught by surprise in the attack at the end of the book. So, you know, what's his deal? Whose side is he on anyway? Okay. So in order to investigate that, we have to ask a lot of questions about who is Drakul really and what are his motivations. There is a historical Drakul.

Dracula is a historical figure Vlad Tepes III I think is Vlad Dracula He is a voivode of Wallachia when that area is being contested by the Ottoman Empire and the Christian kingdoms of Europe and

Adam (1:18:15)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:18:26)
Drakul is Dracula's father and he is awarded a membership and I think the Order of the Dragon, which is where the name comes from. Drakul is a Romanian, ⁓ a Latin-based language, a romance language. It's a Romanian word that means either dragon or devil. Okay.

So one possibility is that Drakul is just like the historical counterpart, several hundred years old and was a star born or something and essentially lived that person's life and has just had this That really doesn't seem to be the case. Drakul seems to be a much older and much more powerful figure than...

Adam (1:19:09)
Right.

Yeah, Mab says I

would not go to war with Mab.

Brian (1:19:20)
Yes.

Right. So, alright. Then why's he got the name Drakul? I mean, that name means either dragon or devil. So, when you say the only person who seems to act like this is Farrowvax... Well, that's interesting because we know there's one other dragon around who we haven't met.

Adam (1:19:40)
Yeah, unnamed, I believe.

Brian (1:19:42)
The other possibility...

is that this is the freaking Prince of Darkness, man!

Adam (1:19:48)
Dun

dun dun!

Brian (1:19:50)
Which would work because he does seem to have a lot of darkness themed powers. He throws Chandler bodily into effectively an oubliette of blackness. This is very light and dark Lucifer might mean light bringer, but usually as a fallen angel.

The devil is, you know, considered to be something of the dark. very charming and handsome and, you know, sort of all those things that are associated with the And we know from Jim that Drakul is something inhuman, in human form. So could be a dragon or a devil or something. And Kincaid, who used to work for him, has the nickname...

Adam (1:20:20)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:20:39)
The Hellhound. So some sort of association with Hell could certainly, be the reason Drakul is exactly what he is.

Adam (1:20:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, now I would push back a little bit about the Lucifer connection. like, that sounds really interesting, but if it were true, I would have expected way more connections with the Denarians in that case. we haven't, like nowhere in any of the Denarian books is Drakul even mentioned. so it seems very unlikely, it would feel very,

Brian (1:21:04)
Absolutely.

Adam (1:21:15)
for that to be a connection that's here. The other thing is like the black court is connected to him somehow, not the Denarians. That's a little odd. So the idea that he is a dragon maybe trapped in his human form is a really interesting one because I think Jim has basically said that he's some kind of an immortal being trapped in a mortal body. Like maybe something from the Never Never Like a Dragon maybe.

And so that's kind of where I'd be closest to guessing. I believe the other one that resonated with me is somebody suspecting that he's like the last survivor of a universe that the outsiders did destroy. And he came to this universe as like he was a star born from that universe. And that's why he's a star born in this universe. That is another one that I thought sounded really cool. Again, pure speculation, not really anything there to support it, but

I like both of those, the dragon one and that one more than the Lucifer one.

Brian (1:22:15)
And I think that we have to just keep in mind the idea that Drakul could be just an ancient human in the sense of he was maybe the first starborn in this universe. And he has been essentially holding down that mantle since he's the eldest starborn effectively. And he's been holding down that mantle since literally time immemorial.

Adam (1:22:24)
Mm-hmm.

Maybe.

Brian (1:22:44)
And he is not something inhuman inhuman form in the sense of he started out as something that wasn't a human. But Drakul, as a has become something that is fundamentally not human anymore. And he only retains that human form as a consequence of having been born.

Adam (1:23:08)
Yeah, that's also possible. And the other one that I considered is maybe he's just a guy that completed an ascension ritual. Some kind of ascension ritual. Doesn't have to be the Dark Hallow, it's some kind of ascension ritual, right? Like we've also seen the example in Welcome to the Jungle where the hag was trying to complete an entirely different ascension ritual. Something that pulls a huge amount of power in you and makes you immortal more or less. So.

Brian (1:23:18)
did the Dark Hallow, right? But something like that.

Adam (1:23:35)
That's also a possibility in my head is that he is somebody that just got an ascension ritual happen. We know that that happened several times in the olden days. That's how a lot of like the Greek and Roman and Norse gods came to be is various ascension rituals. I think that is explicitly mentioned in Welcome to the Jungle where this hag is trying to recreate an ascension ritual that her former goddess had done and she's trying to like take her place or something. So.

One thing I wanna take it back to the book here, Brian, is Drakul being sincere through this whole book when he shows up at the party and says, ⁓ hey, Dresden, I hope that you understand killing your friends, it wasn't personal, it was just business, and I hope you're a big enough person to see that and we can still get along fine. Of course, that's not the case.

But later when he says, sincerely hope you enjoy your evening, giving them a warning. I mean, all of this stuff, is he being sincere throughout this book? What's your take?

Brian (1:24:41)
Okay, not to be pedantic, even though that's basically what the show is about.

Adam (1:24:46)
Yeah.

Brian (1:24:47)
What do you mean by sincere?

Adam (1:24:48)
I mean, when he speaks, is he doing manipulation in so far as, you know, he doesn't mean what he says, but he's trying to convince somebody else that he does mean, is he using any kind of deception?

Brian (1:24:59)
See,

the reason why I ask what do mean by sincere is because I think like with fairies, two things can be true simultaneously. Where Drakul does mean everything he says, but he also means other things that aren't necessarily obvious when you look at what he says.

Adam (1:25:09)
Okay. ⁓

Brian (1:25:19)
So when he gives Dresden his card saying, if anybody wants to take a shot at me, here's my address. I'll be waiting.

Adam (1:25:28)
Yeah, and by that, by the

way, he's inviting the entire, he's not saying you and your friend Ramirez, he's saying anybody from your team that wants to try.

Brian (1:25:37)
Yeah, if the entire

senior council wants to try to cast a ritual spell to take me out, here's my fucking address, give it your best shot.

Adam (1:25:44)
Exactly, that's why the balls

on this guy, So think what that suggests is that he doesn't need deceit and deception. can be 100 % honest and still get his way else that's happening is so small and he doesn't care about it. It seems like the only thing he does care about is

whatever this cycle is bringing. That's the only thing that he cares about.

Brian (1:26:12)
So

this is where I think that the question becomes a little complicated. Because I think that everything he says is true in the sense that he's not lying. Drakul is having And this stuff doesn't really matter to him.

and he's sort of seen it all before and fundamentally, you know, he considers 1897 like it was yesterday and the slaughter of the black court to be kind of a fun prank that someone pulled on him once. Like, that really is how he thinks about it because he's just got this much larger

Adam (1:26:40)
Yeah, that's crazy.

Brian (1:26:48)
There is a big question in this series that Drakul's existence almost certainly orbits around as a Where do you stand in relation to the outsiders? And the answers are either you're trying to stop them or you're trying to help or take the third option, you're trying to, yeah, manipulate the chaos of the outsiders being around to get what you want.

Adam (1:26:58)
Yes.

The opportunist, yeah.

Brian (1:27:12)
Drakul could be literally any of those. But I think that whatever he's doing some degree of manipulation with regards to what his larger plan is in relation to that. And part of the reason why Mab might not be able or willing to go to war with him and why the senior council won't take him out even if they have his address,

is that he's not on team outside. Which makes sense as a starboard, he's not actually trying to destroy reality. And maybe Mab and the senior council kinda all think they need him.

Adam (1:27:46)
I can agree with that.

Yeah.

Brian (1:27:53)
And that would be scary as hell.

Adam (1:27:56)
But.

Brian (1:27:55)
But if

he was working with the outsiders to destroy reality, presumably Mabb wouldn't have the luxury of that

Adam (1:28:02)
Right,

exactly. That's true, that's true. If he was working with team outside, she would be working against him, full stop. wouldn't let him sign her accords, right? That seems counterproductive, I think. So yeah, it's really hard to guess what his goals are, but they seem to revolve around the cycle. And that's why I kinda like your idea that like, there is some kind of

competition or something that narrows it down to one star born at the end that gets all the power to help defeat the outsiders. And he's been like the undefeated champion for the last 17 cycles or whatever, however long it needs to be. That is a good possibility. And that's why he's, well, the field is good this year, know, kind of ⁓ like treating everything as a game, essentially. So.

Brian (1:28:53)
Well, and it's

possible that it's not just a competition between Starboard. It might be the case that the Starboard as a whole have to prevent the outsiders from getting in every cycle. But then after they do that, whatever person is the Starboard who's left,

Adam (1:29:08)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:29:19)
is able to change something or control something or do something with regards to reality. So Drakul doesn't want to take out somebody like Harry because in the beginning of this whole situation Harry's going to be on his team sort of regardless of what Harry wants. But then at the end of this situation he might have to take Harry out.

Adam (1:29:33)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:29:40)
So his measuring of the field could be a double-edged sword where he's trying to ascertain the strength of his eventual allies while at the same time figuring out how he's gonna eventually backstab them. There's a...

Adam (1:29:51)
Yep, and why

this castle attack was like, well, if he's not strong enough to survive this, then I don't think I want him fighting alongside me. And if he is, then he gets rid of, you know, some of my lackeys that are less than competent.

Brian (1:30:08)
And it might make sense as to why Drakul is so cavalier about the Black Court's destruction if fundamentally he's on team pro-universe because it seems like all of the vampire courts have something to do with outsiders. It's very possible that the reason why we're told that Dracula was a disappointment

Adam (1:30:27)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:30:35)
is because his dad's a star born and he ended up dabbling beyond the outer gates.

Adam (1:30:41)
Hmm.

Brian (1:30:42)
And the Black Court are effectively, from Drakul's perspective, a bunch of demons on a leash where he can sort of keep his eye on them, but fundamentally they're almost more trouble than they're worth because they're inherently aligned with the outside in some way. So sacrificing a bunch of their elders is sort of working with whatever he's trying to achieve ultimately. And he needs to keep so fairly fresh ones around.

because he can sort of control them and use them to get you know make progress towards his ends which don't involve the outsiders taking Obviously this is all wild speculation but the point is that in the wake of this book we've gotten completely rocked by a one-two from where on the one side he seemed to be working with Ethniu

Adam (1:31:23)
Yeah.

Brian (1:31:37)
killing Warden's left and right and about to do a big necromantic ritual. But on the other hand, he seems to not want to try to kill the star-born winter night Warden of Demonreach. And those things seem incompatible unless Drakul has some much, much larger game with regards to the ultimate confrontation of the series.

Adam (1:32:05)
Yeah,

I can't disagree. It's hard to square that circle, but that sounds like the best way to do it. speaking... Yes, mac at rnt.fm. All right, let's move on to the castle attack. Now, there's a fundamental question here that came up when I was reading is, okay, how...

Brian (1:32:11)
So give us your fan theories. Give us your fan theories. Anyway.

Adam (1:32:24)
is Lord Wraith slipping out from Lara's control because he's been under her control for 10-ish years now since Blood Rites. It's been at least 10 years, I think.

Brian (1:32:35)
I mean,

do we wanna get into this? Do we really wanna get into this, Adam?

Adam (1:32:40)
Yes.

Brian (1:32:41)
Okay, I mean, how does he get put under Lara's control?

Adam (1:32:45)
but she uses her power to subdue his will.

Brian (1:32:48)
Yeah, okay,

that's a really, you know, bolderized way of saying what she does, right? Like, how does Lara get her father under her control?

Adam (1:32:57)
she kind of addicts/enslaves

him using her power.

Brian (1:33:00)
And her power is sex. Let's be really clear here. Lara is a succubus and she succubizes him to be under her control. ⁓ And listen, I mean, I say something that's a little gross. Turnabout is fair play.

Adam (1:33:02)
Yes. Yes.

Brian (1:33:16)
He is a really bad guy who is apparently doing the exact same thing to his own family in a way that is truly horrifying and gross and is like one of the, Jim doesn't really talk about this very much because it's awful, but that's what Lord Wraith was doing. Lara seems to have become a way nicer person in the last ten years. So she's probably not quite so keen to keep reinforcing her control in that manner.

Adam (1:33:29)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Brian (1:33:45)
So that's why he's slipping out of her control. She thinks that she's put him in his place and now he knows what the pecking order is and she doesn't have to keep victimizing him in this way. And he, when he sees her no longer doing that, says, aha, she is weak and I can capitalize on this.

Adam (1:34:05)
Yeah, and he's

to play the part very effectively to where he's lulling her into a false insecurity. Now, all of this makes Lara look a little bit stupid because she's supposed to be this incredibly cunning,

Brian (1:34:10)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:34:19)
character that is really good at underhanded stuff and that's why she's the queen of the underhanded vampires, right? So that makes it a difficult pill to swallow because it really undermines her character a lot, but

Brian (1:34:31)
But I don't really think it does.

I mean, it's not stupid for Lara to say at some point, look, this is the way things are, and I'm going to give you the chance to go along with this, and I'm going to stop doing this to you. And that would be some, that's like the kind of thing that Harry would do, right? So.

Adam (1:34:51)
Right?

Brian (1:34:53)
if Lara is being influenced by people like Harry and Thomas to behave in a more humane way, it's not the, you know, being idealistic and being stupid are different things.

If you're being idealistic, you might fully understand the risks that you're taking, but you think that they are worth it because of what you were trying to achieve. So I don't think it makes sense to say that Lara is being stupid with regards to her father. She might just not want to take some steps that, you know, she thinks are bad. Because the other option, right, is to kill him. And the big issue with that is, technically, if she does that...

she doesn't just become the undisputed ruler of the white court. She was never elected. So as soon as she pulls that lever, there's a power vacuum and there's infighting.

Adam (1:35:37)
Right.

Yeah, and I think the time to do that would have been during White Night or during the aftermath because the other two families had their upper management just lopped right off. So if you were going to kill him, do it during that period of chaos, reassert control before the new Malvora head.

Brian (1:35:57)
Right.

Adam (1:36:09)
and can challenge you properly. Now, maybe there wasn't an opportunity. mean, Jim can write it however he wants, but that was, I'm actually, I gotta tell you, I was surprised that Lara didn't have him killed once it became an open secret that he was her puppet. know, it's one, because my understanding was that bought her a lot of credibility is that she was able to puppet him for so long.

and keep it a secret, and then once people finally started to figure it out, at that point, he's no longer valuable and you just kill him, right? I think though, and we were speculating this about this on the Patreon episode, that she has slowly become a less ruthless, more compassionate person. Even before this book, she spent some 10 years.

finally trying to figure out who she was when she wasn't under her father's thumb. And I think she couldn't pull the trigger on it, not even to hire somebody else to do it with a cat's paw the way you're supposed to or whatever. I think she had some, misgivings about it being moral or ethical to do so. And so just kept the status quo and maybe like you were talking about, got a little lax as a result.

Brian (1:37:27)
And I think there's also an extent to which it was a big for her to be able to control the court through him that added to her credibility and secured her position. But if she then killed what's that Something went So it might be the case that...

Adam (1:37:46)
yeah. True enough.

Brian (1:37:49)
it was sort of always going to be a bit of a delicate balance after it became an open secret that if she took direct action to remove him, that would be seen as very inartful and a sign of weakness. So the on...

Adam (1:38:04)
And yeah, and if she gets a cat's

paw to do it outside the family, that is a huge diplomatic problem, because now she has to strike back or else appear weak. So yeah, I mean, there's definitely complications for sure. The way that she described she spends two hours dealing with difficult or impossible decisions and the rest of the day dealing with the ramifications of those decisions that have come before. That sounds like the kind of thing the leader

the cunning vampires that are always looking for a sneaky approach would have to deal with. Now, there is one other option and that's Lord Wraith has help. Somebody else is managing, like if he is normally ordered and forced by whatever power she has over him to stay in his room unless she's there to oversee and like control what he's doing or whatever, somebody's figured out how to sneak messages to him.

Brian (1:38:44)
Right.

Adam (1:38:58)
and coordinate stuff and figure out what he wants them to do outside of her control. that one also, I mean, it could very well be a combination of both, the one you're talking about and the one I'm talking about. So.

Brian (1:39:10)
Well,

I think that's very likely because we can almost certainly take to the bank that Lord Wraith was a member of the Black Council. I think that is pretty much set in stone as close as we can, you know, we're never gonna probably have a membership roster. The two names that we can be most assured are part of the group are Cowell and Lord Wraith. ⁓

Adam (1:39:18)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:39:32)
So who might be helping him? Well, Cal. Because if Lord Wraith does get out from Lara's thumb, then... Well, Cal's back in control of the White Court. Which is what he was trying to do in White Knight in the first place.

Adam (1:39:44)
Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Okay, moving on a little bit here. So the castle attack is there, Lord Wraith his cap to Dresden, but before all that even happens, Drakul warns Dresden.

Brian (1:39:55)
And what's coming to me now might be the fact that Mavrah is simultaneously a Black council adjacent and a double agent for Drakul.

Adam (1:40:09)
Mmm.

Brian (1:40:10)
So Mavra knows of this attack and was brought on to this attack because she's theoretically in league with whatever people Lord Wraith is working with and etc. But really Mavra is Drakul's most loyal servant. She got him the word of Kemmler and that's why they were doing that whole necromantic ritual in battleground in the first place. You know that's her whole thing. And she told Drakul, hey

Adam (1:40:33)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:40:39)
they're gonna try to whack Dresden and Drakul simply wants Dresden to survive because he thinks he's gonna be able to use him so he tipped him and it wasn't even a if he dies you know it was a if I tip him off he will survive and I'll tip him off

Adam (1:40:47)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think

that's true too. Now, one thing I do wanna mention about the castle, we talked, by the way, a lot about the castle attack in the Patreon episode. There's not a lot of lore stuff here we didn't really already talk about, but one thing I do wanna point out is that when it comes to Black Court vampires, when Jim wants them to die, by God, he crushes them to death. Of all the different things in Stoker's book, steak through the heart, garlic,

chopping off their head. You know what does it most of the time? Crushed to death. The turkey in Blood Rites, the super gravity in It's My Birthday 2, the anvil in Battleground, and the castel stones here in 12 Months. It's a pattern, Brian. He really wants these black court to get squished.

Brian (1:41:42)
I just can't wait until he drops Mount Rushmore on one of them in the future. We get gradually larger and larger things to squash them with, yes. I mean, he sets one on fire in Blood Rites, but I think that Jim really prefers the bug approach to Black Ward vampires. They must be squashed.

Adam (1:41:47)
The scale just keeps going up. ⁓

Seems like it. I'm doing my

part. All right, Mab stuff and the wedding. This is a big one. We see a lot of Mab in this book and to untrained eye, trained eye? Maybe it's a trained eye. To my eye, Mab acts quite differently. At the very least, like her speech patterns change wildly in this book

The character from Peace Talks slash Battleground that I know only appears a couple of times. Everyone else when Mab shows up feels a little bit different in one way or another. Did you get that impression?

Brian (1:42:44)
No. that's where I'm gonna ask you, what do you mean she's acting so

Adam (1:42:50)
So

the Mab in Peace Talks and Battlegrounds doesn't use a huge amount of formal language. The Mab here in several cases uses the thys and the thou's and sometimes that makes sense like when she's meeting Dresden and he's formally requesting his boon or his reward or something, but she also like mounts him in his bed after he delivers.

Lara and the White Court, which seemed very out of character. Now, she was like super happy about the fact that he'd finally delivered what she wanted him to deliver, but it still seemed way out of character for the Mab, who is normally this like force of nature to be feared, instead like just straddling him and like being this weird like.

sexual aggression predator in that moment. That's just not something I normally associate with that character that we've seen before. Obviously when he became the Winter Knight, that was a thing, but since then haven't really seen her sexualizing him in any way necessarily. So those are the kinds of things I'm thinking about. And then of course the way that she like goes kind of crazy eating the bread with his blood on it. Just several periods where the way she talked and the way she presented herself

felt very different.

Brian (1:44:11)
Alright, let me pitch you this. Mab is perfectly consistent from her first appearance in Summer Night through months. And the way that you reconcile all of this is by understanding exactly what Mab is. Mab is a wizard who became effectively a god.

And her whole job is this very exhausting thing where much like Lara, for two hours a day, she makes decisions that determine even bigger the survival of the universe and the rest of the time she deals with the fallout of those decisions.

and most of everything Mab does is geared towards creating the persona that creates the least possible friction for her to do that job. But that persona has nothing to do with who Mab is or what she thinks or what she feels. It's entirely about efficacy. So Mab...

And when you're in the position to get to know her, when you're her BFF, Sarissa, goes to the movies with her, or when you're the winter knight who she relies on to do important tasks, you get to see the other side of her, who is fundamentally on some level still basically just a person who, despite the fact that she is ⁓

deeply affected by the probably thousand years she's held her acts in ways that are very human. Mab is so ecstatic when Harry brings the white court under her thumb that she wants to sleep with him. She wants to like, I mean, she's just

Adam (1:46:08)
Hahaha!

Brian (1:46:11)
She's just like, she's so excited. Now, you know, maybe a normal person, you you go out and have a nice dinner with and you, you know, she's the queen of air and darkness now. You gotta kind of take a different turn there. But when she uses all the...

These and vows and the archaic speech. Well, that's often acting That's how people think she should be so when you're making a formal request of her she does it and As we discussed in the patreon episode when she's doing the great theater

in in demon reach, she uses a lot of that language because she's trying to make this big, grand, slow thing so that Thomas has time to wake up and people can gradually stop her. She's sort of playing along and when she is, she uses that archaic speech. So if we stop treating Mab as just a force of nature,

Adam (1:46:48)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:47:11)
But consider that Mab is a person who has to be seen as a force of nature. I think actually she's perfectly consistent.

Adam (1:47:19)
So the other thing that occurred to me while you were kind of, because kind of what you're saying here is that she puts on whatever mask is going to be most effective at getting what she wants, right? And for a while, that mask was the demanding overlord that we saw in peace talks and battlegrounds that occasionally showed you some inner...

like when she says, I was mortal once, I think in cold days, right? Or no, I'm sorry, that was in Battleground, I'm But she does sort of reveal more of her mortal nature to Dresden specifically in cold days. ⁓ And again, sort of your argument is that's because that's the most effective way to get him to do what she wants. maybe that's changing here, or maybe that scene where he finally delivers

Brian (1:47:51)
No, that's, that's a battle.

Adam (1:48:13)
like her mask has slipped. She's like, you did it finally. I don't have to do all this stupid mask stuff anymore about this. You've done it. So that's certainly possible too.

Brian (1:48:23)
And think we see her mask slip in a couple other places. Like in skin game, I get the impression that there's a couple times where Mab literally can't just tell Dresden what the plan is.

Adam (1:48:35)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:48:36)
But she's just kind of sitting there rolling her eyes being like, come on dummy, can't you see that, like why would I like Nicodemus? He's such a jerk. my God, Harry, I can't believe you just think that like don't care about all the stuff this guy does. He messes with my turf, of course I don't like him. I think a lot of Mab's sort of dry sense of humor sometimes and her seeming...

Adam (1:48:46)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:49:03)
almost tendency to roll her eyes at Dresden is because she can't just say it. But the truth is that like fundamentally deep down as we've speculated Mab doesn't want people to get hurt more than is necessary for her to do her job.

Adam (1:49:22)
I think I agree with that too. The other possibility that I brought up on the Patreon show that I'm also kind of tied to is Mab specifically says that she has been putting herself back together from the damage that she in Battleground, right? I believe that's the scene where Harry uses her name properly with Will behind it when he accuses her

when he asks her if she purposefully got Murphy killed. And she says, will overlook.

because we know that you are hurting from the damage you took to your banner as we are also recovering from the damage we took to our banner or whatever. So that to me suggests that maybe part of this is the masks are slipping because she's not all there, you know, with the whole concept of your spirit is torn to pieces like we learn about in...

Grey Peril when Mickey's spirit is all torn up and Harry says it's like when somebody near close to you dies, it tears you up inside. Well, maybe that's similar to what happened to Mab when the people under her banner died while connected to her. Not only that, but obviously the direct shot from the Eye of Balor that she had to stop, like all kinds of things could have damaged her during that. And the result could be

She's a little bit less stable than normal and so she's not as cool, and collected as we've seen in the last several books. So that's kind of more my leaning is.

Brian (1:50:56)
Yeah, I think that all these things can work in concert, Mab is a little bit more human underneath it all than we've been led to believe. And because she's literally hurting as a human would, we get to see that a little bit more than we would otherwise. So I think all that works in concert, you know, Mab being more of a person.

means that Mab, when she's hurt, is more vulnerable. Which is also why she has to, at some points in the book, be very harsh, because she knows she's

Adam (1:51:33)
Yeah,

that makes sense to me too. Now, let's see. The next thing, just sort of something I wanna clear up because I've seen other people, I had this question too and I sort of answered it for myself to my own satisfaction, but Mab talks about Nemesis and says, you know, Nemesis, you are 13 down to 12 and now I will bring you down to 11, meaning when she extracts the Nemesis from Justine and puts it back into...

Medea's Bodkin, which I think we determined is another name for knife. Yeah, Morgana's Athame. Now, that of course leads to the question, okay, so if Leia was the 13 to 12, and this is 12 to 11, what about Maeve? And what about Cat Sith? And what about Aurora? And I don't know, this seems like there's only one real answer to that question.

Brian (1:52:03)
Morgana's athame, yeah.

So I can think of a couple different configurations, but the easiest one is just that Aurora and Cat Sith's pieces weren't recovered, and that Leah's was, because she was trapped in the ice and cured, and so will Justine's be. And Mav's was a separate piece, it's the piece that went into Justine in the first place. Is that what you were thinking?

Adam (1:52:49)
that's

possible. I kind of thought that killing a person is not enough to kill the piece inside them, right? That's sort of like the simplest answer. I didn't actually think about but it could be cold days is when Justine got infected by the piece that was in May, because I believe Justine was there on that island. So it's entirely possible that there's a proximity that's necessary and it was able to jump to her. I was also thinking of like,

Brian (1:52:54)
definitely, yeah, for certain.

She was on the island, yeah. ⁓

Adam (1:53:16)
maybe the way that he who walks beside works is all of these pieces are parts of a whole, like a hive mind type thing, right? Kind of makes sense. And if one host dies, well then the piece can like return back to one of the other places that it is infected. And then that thing can infect someone else. So those are the two possibilities there. Now.

Brian (1:53:35)
Yeah, I think that's definitely true, yes.

And I think we know that that's the case because that is how we explain what happened to Cat Sith, right? Maeve captures him. They got to you Sith, right? Maeve captures him and infects him with one of those pieces that has returned to her. I think the only real question is if the piece from...

Adam (1:53:51)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:54:03)
Medea's Bodkin Morgana's Atheme was in Leia, then what infected Maeve? And that's where I think, you know, maybe there was more than one piece of nemesis in the Bodkin, maybe all the pieces were in Morgana's Atheme. You know, we don't exactly know how that worked, but that's, think, the only thing that's confusing. You know, how was it that both Leia and Maeve were affected by different pieces if it was through the same artifact?

Adam (1:54:20)
Yeah?

Yeah, so the next thing I wanna jump to here when it has to do with Mab and Winter here is Mother Winter's line talking about Harry, quote, he comes of a line of thieves. I think he's got, she's gotta be referring to the Black Staff, right? Her walking stick. I mean, that's pretty clear there. But when she says line, I wonder if she's talking about bloodline, right? Harry to.

Brian (1:54:49)
Gotta be. Yeah.

Adam (1:54:59)
⁓ Ebenezer to, was Ebenezer the one that stole it from her? Maybe, or maybe it was much earlier than that and maybe Ebenezer's father, grandfather, grandmother, whatever, was actually the one that stole it. Or does this line mean a line of mentors to apprentices, right? Going down, going back in time, because we know that Ebenezer is of that line all the way back to the original Merlin, mentor to apprentice.

So maybe Merlin was the one that stole her staff and passed it down to his apprentices. That's entirely possible.

Brian (1:55:35)
Por que no los dos, Adam?

Adam (1:55:38)
Of

course, of course, okay.

Brian (1:55:41)
I mean,

we do know that ⁓ wizards usually seem to train their children. That seems to be the case. We know that Ebenezer trained Maggie, and then when Maggie wasn't around to train Harry, Ebenezer ended up doing that eventually too. So it could be that it's both. But I also think you might be on to something.

This does seem to suggest that Harry descends by blood from somebody who stole the black staff from Mother Winter. And I just want to throw out a couple possibilities for who that could be. One is, of course, Merlin. I think that makes a lot of sense. But Adam, do you remember who trained Merlin?

Adam (1:56:23)
No, my Arthurian lore is very bad and I'm trying to fix that.

Brian (1:56:26)
no no,

I don't mean in Arthurian lore. mean, as far as we know in the Dresden files, I believe it came up once that ⁓ Odin is rumored to have been Merlin's, the prisoner trade Merlin.

Adam (1:56:37)
⁓

Brian (1:56:41)
And I've always been of the opinion that Harry and Odin may be very distantly related. Odin might be the person who originally took the Blackstaff, and that's how he became the Ascended Hero God of the ⁓ Norse Germanic tribes. And ⁓ just the reason why I think this would make sense is it would provide a reason.

for Odin to take an interest in Harry, it would provide a reason why the bloodline curse was to be so big for the Red Court, because it was aimed at taking out Odin and why he showed up to Chichinitza to get rid of it. And it would also explain why Harry and Odin are both described constantly with the wolfish smile and as being really tall and lean and, you know, they sort of have these characteristics in common. So...

Adam (1:57:30)
Hmm.

Could be.

Brian (1:57:36)
I don't necessarily think that's true, but I think that that is definitely a possibility, and I just figured I'd flag it here if we're talking about, you know, where the lore is leading us.

Adam (1:57:47)
Yeah, I could

definitely see that as a possibility. I still like the idea that, like the master apprentice thing, I think is, I think it might be a bloodline is like a misdirect that Jim is doing. And that would be a fun way to have it turn out.

Brian (1:58:01)
And it could just refer to

wizards generally. He comes from a line like the wizard, yeah.

Adam (1:58:05)
Right, could return to, yeah, it could

refer to wizards generally, but I think it seems more specific.

Brian (1:58:11)
Geez Adam, I think we are setting a new record for episode length today. I hate to do this to you man, but I think I gotta tap out.

Adam (1:58:20)
No, we gotta talk talked about Justine. We haven't talked about Lara and all the white court history.

Brian (1:58:27)
Okay, how about this? We'll do the rest of it as a part two. Okay? Can we do a part two?

Adam (1:58:32)
Alright,

I guess that just means the listeners are gonna get another two

hours of us talking about twelve months. poor bastards.

Brian (1:58:39)
There can't possibly

be two more hours that we could spend talking about twelve months.