I seem to recall it being considered insulting, and its not about telling the truth as such. And it was Grimalkin where he asked thrice. Harry does try to ask Maeve directly too, but she just states that the information is too valuable and offers an honest answer in exchange for Harrys first born. ultimately Maeve gives no answer, because Harry thinks Maeve is too weak to have done the job and just leaves.

So Mab could easily state a fact like "You can kill immortals on halloween" with no problems. She could even say that phrase 3 times with no problems.

But if Mab was forced to say something like "I will kill an immortal on halloween" three times, then she would actually be bound and forced to do just that, even if no actual bargain had taken place.

 

It's mentioned in Cold Days that the Queens and Mothers are less able to speak a plain truth than the Ladies or regular Fae. Harry speculates that the Mothers are outright incapable of giving a straight answer to a question, which is why Mother Summer opts to show him the Outer Gates and let him draw his own conclusions, rather than just tell him straight up what's happening.

 

No, there are plenty of things on Demonreach that aren't immortal, which was brought up a number of times. Hell, the Skinwalker Harry saw we know can be killed, thanks to Morgan.

As for the Parasite, in Chapter Seventeen of Cold Days, Demonreach said it had bargained with the Parasite, in exchange for Harry's life.

Note that the parasite has sort of been trying to escape, it's just been kept subdued. DR has been keeping it subdued, but has been less and less able to do so; it's part of why Harry was forced to remain on Demonreach.

Did you not read the SG preview stuff? Mab won't let him.

Mab threatened Harry with it. Harry brought up that he didn't fear dying for what he believed in and she kept with the threat. So it's probably a good threat.

Uh, why bother? Just put him to sleep. Or take off his earring.

Um...you really need to reread the SG preview. Harry thought he could challange Mab, yes--he wasn't sure he could succeed and Mab was willing to risk it. Also, two Ladies held Demonreach back, so...

Um, no, that's not what happened. By the point Harry got slapped, he'd already realized he had no choice.

No--there a difference between telling the truth and giving a straight answer. Mab has to do the former. Per Cold Days:

 

Actually, no. Skinwalkers are immortal in the same way the Faerie Queens are; they can be killed, but given time they will reform and be just the same as they were beforehand, if a bit worse off from having some power stolen.

So the Skinwalker that Morgan killed could potentially have reformed by now.

 

No, this is expressly not true. The Skinwalkers are powerful beings, but they aren't Immortal and have never been stated to be. As a point of fact:

Shame on you for forgetting the only way to be sure. Shame.

 

Nope, because that was said before Harry became aware of how Immortality truly works. The only things in Demonreach are things that can't be killed the traditional way; you have to either find something that makes them vulnerable (like the Swords of the Cross) or get them on Hallowe'en. Otherwise they'd have just been killed instead of imprisoned.

On top of that, the Banefire that would have gone off if a prison break had actually occurred would have destroyed the bodies of everything in the prison. That's mostly what it's there for. It would have destroyed a good part of the Continental United States and Canada. It wouldn't have been enough.

 

False, for several reasons:

1) Harry did not know about Immortals at that point--it seems like a rather odd assumption to assume that Morgan doesn't.

2) The entire point of the Banefire is to kill the things in Demonreach as a last resort to keep them from running free. It was noted that there are immortals in there and that even that fail-safe would only keep them down for a little while, but the entire point is to kill most of them.

3) The reason things get imprisoned in Demonreach instead of killed is fairly simple. Demonreach is an enormously powerful structure with a huge uber-summoning circle built in and a dropshot to the prison box. You can drag some huge motherfucker there and kick them into the slammer instead of, you know, having to fight them. It's not because they can't be killed--on Halloween, even the immortals can be killed--it's that actually getting from theory to practice is a huge pain in the ass there. Possible to kill =/= easy to kill.

4) Odin flat-out said the fail-safe would kill pretty much everyone in that containment. Triggered on Halloween, it may have even gotten all of them.

 

Skinwalkers can't be capital I Immortals. Immortals are static; unless at a Conjunction (in time like Halloween or space like the Stone Table) they can't really change. They can't gain new power; they can't loose old. One of the main things Immortals do at Halloween is go around stealing bits of power from each other; they do it at Halloween because its the only time they can.

Skinwalkers, by contrast, can gain new power whenever they kill something.

 

In fairness, there is at least one exception to this, in the Stone Table, but that's more bending the rules. Blood spilt on it flows into it and it then gives that power to the Court, etc. However, at the most basic level, they're getting power in a way beyond most immortals.

But yes, the very way Skinwalker's work excludes them from Immortality.

 

Ryuugi. Please stop being insufferable. This is a discussion, not a competition, and you're acting like book 1 Hermione at the moment.

As for the Skinwalkers, Bob described them as "Semi-divine immortals". Additionally, isn't there a bit of a difference between an immortal and a primal spirit or whatever?

Cause otherwise it'd be possible to let everyone go at Halloween and set off the banefire. Boom. Dead. I suppose Merlin might not have known of the Halloween rule. Perhaps killing the things inside was what Nemesis wanted all along.

Which is interesting. Is there something in there that threatens it?

I'm also kinda curious how on earth they dragged all of those things down there in the first place. A naglooshi I can see someone of Merlin's calibre beating and, with help, perhaps even detaining. But those are little punks compared to the rest.

 

Well, considering Merlin was so powerful that the White Council named their ruling position after him, I think it's a safe assumption that he was capable of handling quite a lot.

 

Its not enough to just kill them. Many of them probably have "mantles" like the Winter knight and queens do. Lily for example was Immortal, and she was killed on halloween so she did die. However her mantle, the mantle of summer lady moved on to Sarissa.

This would presumably have happened here too. The specific gods and nightmares would have been destroyed, but their power/mantles would have sought out new vessels. I figure thats not true for all of them, but probably enough of them that its not worth to loose that many mantles to the world to seek out new and free hosts.

As such, total imprisonment is actually a better option than death, since there does not seem to be a way to destroy the mantle itself (it does not die with the owner). Except maybe through the whole Oblivion War thing. If mortals forget a god or equivalent entity, then maybe its mantle is lost.

Odds are Merlin knew all of this, including about the oblivion war. Its interesting that by keeping the gods in stasis like that, Merlin made it a lot easier for them to be forgotten. So Merlins imprisonment approach may be the only way to truly and irreversibly destroy the greatest of the prisoners.

 

Probably true.

 

That is an interesting definition of being a hero. Personally I don´t believe that you have to lose everything to become a hero (Alexander the Great for example is a hero who didn´t lose everything.. he simply did something nobody else thought possible.) For me it is the enormity of their deeds that defines a hero.

The thing with Murphy is that, like Jon said, she is getting old and that her connection to the rest of humanity is pretty thin. Like you said she has no entanglements but that also means she has nothing that keeps her human. She spends most her time training with the spirits of viking warriors, lives in a "castle" with limited outside contact and it doesn´t seem like she has any remaining human friends. Michael had his family, Sanya the experience of being possessed by a Fallen Angel to keep them on humanities side and Murphy has nothing like that.
Her lack of entanglements seem to me like a disadvantage.


And I think that her getting a sword wouldn´t be good for the story. It would look like that Butcher looked at her, saw that she was the only one without a special power, looked around and saw the swords and decided to give her that.

You said it yourself, she is the only Vanilla human left in the whole cast and while I dislike her I am unsure if I want to lose that perspective.

 

How so? I've been polite, baring a few moments, and I don't really see how I've been competitive. It's simply that you've been incorrect about just about everything.

1) That was before CD.

2) That was lower-case immortal.

3) Morgan would have know about Immortals and he claimed to have killed it and in fact emphasized that they could be killed.

Well. There is the minor catch that the Banefire would kill everyone in, what was it? A pretty huge area. And, of course, it'd break the island so nothing else could be locked away.

Hm. At the very least you'd figure that the lack of the Island might be worth it on it's own. I can't remember exactly how much it'd destroy but it was some huge area and that would have major consequences for the infrastructure of it's enemies. It might also get rid of anyone it doesn't like in there, or perhaps there were some Outsiders in there who'd be released. They don't seem to follow the same rules, as HWWBefore was blown up on Halloween and just left.

I figured that was probably what the uber-summoning circle was for. Call them up to Demonreach and you have Merlin's power plus the Islands power plus it's defenses.

 

He probably means that attitude... combined with the fact that nearly every second post is you describing why we are wrong and you the prophet of truth.

We get it that you feel different about a lot of things than we do but it seems impossible for to accept a different opinion.

 

That particular bit was tongue in cheek, like the previous time:

Though, in this regard, I do feel the need to point out that I've actually be quoting and citing stuff to support my arguments. So it's not so much that I'm a harbinger of truth as a harbinger of what was written in the books. So, no, I don't accept opinions that are contradictory with what was stated in the discussed material.

(Just to be a dick, I will however point out that he was, in fact, wrong about everything in the post that was replying to. In fact, you are all teh wrongz.)

 

I kinda agree with Ryuugi here, but I also think the argument's gone too far.

Just accept that you guys have differing opinions and move on.

 

Never! This is the internet!

 

I'm not denying that you've got a good grasp of canon. That said, you're assuming a great deal. Yes, the skinwalker's gain of power (though we've only got Morgan's word for that one) makes it not fit into the description of Immortal Bob gave.

That doesn't actually mean it isn't immortal in the same sense. It makes it less likely, but you keep drawing conclusions when in reality we can't be sure.

What's even more pointless is to argue about being right when the opposition says they "feel" that what Murphy did was wrong. Do you see?

So yeah, what Innomine said. We should move on to something else. Like... can you think of anything epic in particular that'd be stuck at Demonreach?