Are Wardens considered full Wizards of the White Council by default? How does promotion into the Council work exactly?

For example, in Summer Knight, Ebenezar mentions that Harry is the youngest member of the Council, in his late twenties. Yet, we know that about three years later in Dead Beat -- assuming the DF timeline is correct -- Ramirez is a Warden and only 20 years old. And later on in White Night, the Trailman Twins were in a Warden boot camp, but only 16 years old. All that seems awfully young compared to Harry.

I understand that with the War and the Red Court strike in Dead Beat, younger and younger Wardens are being recruited, but are they also considered full Wizards of the Council, with voting privileges and all that? Or are the Wardens treated as a separate division of the Council, where you can be a Warden, but not a full Wizard?

 

Ramirez was a full wizard of the Council. The Trailman twins were still apprentices, as were all the kids at the camp. A couple of years down the line, they might have been bumped up to wardens.

Wardens are probably well respected, though there have been suggestions that there are rifts between the older wizards and the younger, the older wardens and the younger wardens, among other things.

 

I believe Wizards remember soulgazes with perfect clarity, right? (The DF Rpg classified soulgazes as a highly specific application of the Sight and the theory/worldbuilding in those books were signed off by Butcher) If that's true, do non-Wizard participants of a soulgaze recall them with perfect clarity as well? Does Marcone still remember his impressions of Harry's soul? Same with Michael?

 

Usng the RPG books, soulgazing is a specific use of the Sight. In Storm Front, the three-eye drug gave mortals the Sight and some went mad because of the images they could not forget. To me, this implies that when a mortal somehow uses the Sight (whether through potion or getting caught in a soulgaze), they get all the consequences from it as well. Which in this case means that they won't forget it.

Related question: beings with a soul have Free Will and as such, they are capable of changing their nature. Would it be possible for your nature to change over time in such a way that you would be considered a new being and that it therefore would be possible for you to soulgaze beings you have soulgazed before?

 

Yeah. Nicodemus's shadow tries to grab Dresden, at which point the sword cancels things out. However that power is explicitly that of the three swords. During the Mavra vs Michael encounter, Michael did not have his sword.

Odds are that if Michael had possessed his sword at the time, Mavra would not have risked coming anywhere close.

Pretty sure Butcher said its possible in theory, but ordinary changes don't cut it. Think a greedy billionaire having a near-death experience, giving all his money to charity and deciding to become a buddhist monk and spending the rest of his life in some monastery. Basically a change so great that you practically become a different person.

 

Michael himself tells Harry he is wrong for thinking the most important part of sword of faith is sword. Valid enough a point, though.

 

On the matter of Black Court Vampires and speed--keep in mind that Jim often makes it so that the villains don't effectively use what they have at their disposal, even--perhaps especially--the smart ones. Why? Well, if they did, Harry would die. Would have died a long, long time ago, in fact.

 

This is something that's been on my mind for a while. The choice for a coin could be reasoned one way or another, but I'm less interested in that.

The Darkhallow is listed as a way for Harry to gain power enough to rescue Maggie. The Darkhallow can't be completed in it's fullness (Full Ascension) except on Halloween night, when morality and immortality are at the most malleable. The thread's already talked through drawing in all life, the negative energy, and the multiple supernatural events that preceded it. Tie in the wild hunt and you've got the whole deal- but what would Harry do?

There's possibility of finding a smaller city or town, but that still has the problem of killing off all those people. So if what we need to complete a Darkhallow is a sizable amount of power that has a negative energy, could Harry head over to Deamonreach and start up the Darkhallow?

 

I think anything other than human souls wouldn't be compatible with him.

 

The Earlking isn't human. I wonder if he was just for calling up the hunter spirits, and would be passed over in the Rite.

 

Maybe. But at that point they could just kill the Erlking and do.. whatever. Eat the mantle.

 

The ecological disaster bit makes me think that he wouldn't go after a city for fuel but rather a bunch of non-human stuff.

 

We know that there's an ecological disaster involved with the Darkhallow, but is death of humans required? I always just read it as a side effect: it creates a "life vacuum," if you will, and that kills the surrounding life. Is there any reason he couldn't open a Way to, say, the Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean and perform it there? All he'd kill then is a bunch of birds and fish.

 

While true, you have to keep in mind that there has to be something there for the Darkhallow to consume or all you're doing is announcing to the universe that you have the capacity to make yourself a minor deity without actually becoming one and therefore making yourself target #1 on everyone's hitlist.

 

So go to a remote place like the Kerguelen Islands, call up something like Sue so you have necromantic energy to keep from killing you, call up the Wild Hunt and the Erlking, and then do the Darkhallow. No people around, and you jump from strong Wizard-level to mid-level diety. Rinse and repeat when you've got another minor deity to eat. Is there something I'm missing here?

 

Mostly that unless you go from wherever you are to Mab-tier, you're gonna get ganked in very short order, which is why Cowl hasn't done exactly what you suggest or any of the thousand other alternatives that people keep coming up with to get around the actual cost of the ritual.

 

Essentially this. Mab isn't open to new players, and she's more or less the only game in town. Unless you're strong enough to beat her or hold your own, you can't play. She has a devastating mix of being imbued with enough freedom of action and enough power to set the tune that everyone else dances to.

 

IIRC, necromancy depends on location and metaphysical impact.

The necromancers all came to chicago with low class undead and later on raised badass zombies. And I'm pretty sure Harry mentions any other place, any other time he wouldn't have been able to raise Sue.
Humans are also more important than animals. Bob mentions it to Butters when he's asking all those questions on magical theory.

All in all, I think it's not surprised Cowl didn't try in some nowhere island. He wouldn't have succeeded. The Wild Hunt wouldn't have come (since they wouldn't come to hunt nothing), nowhere near enough souls to devour for power.

 

If I'm remembering it right, the Darkhallow requires a large number of ghosts around to use as fuel. So it needs as many ghosts as possible to ensure that the wannabe necrogod is getting all the bang from his undead buck that he can. That means it not only needs lots of people around, it needs lots of people to have been living there for a long time.

The area of the Great Lakes has been inhabited for thousands of years, and Chicago is one of the biggest cities in the US, with a relatively high murder rate too. That added to the turbulence in the barrier between Earth and the Nevernever made it the perfect spot for a Darkhallow.

 

Also, it's not like the darkhallow only has 1 level of effectiveness. If there's nothing with power around when you preform it, it won't boost you as high. The Chicago Darkhallow was going to make someone a God because it had a lot of stuff going for it, lots of active ghosts at a time when they were most powerful, a faerie lead horde (ritual) lead by a Mantled faerie of significant power, and lots of humans to feed the ritual (approximately 2.5- 2.8 million). If you go out and kill a bunch of mundane bird and fish, you're not getting that much power.

On a similar note, one does not 'simply raise Sue'. Dresden talks at length about how bad of an idea it is to raise Sue because it is hard, and he's lucky that the barrier between the earth and nevernever is so thing and yadda yadda yadda. Also, at the very least, he'd have to get Sue's skeleton to the island, which would be a pain in the ass.