Speaking of small-scale Darkhallow... Wasn't that sort of what Kemmler did? He bound spirits to himself to increase his power. That's why it took the entire council to stop him. Corpsetaker sort of did the same.

The Darkhallow was a ritual that was going to do that a fuckton more effectively.

 

I could be talking out of my ass, but is it possible that Cowl is the alt-reality Dresden, that used a low-yield Darkhallow?

 

I dunno, did we ever actually find out how Kemmler got so powerful? I don't remember if it was ever stated outright. I feel like he probably didn't pull off a full darkhallow, otherwise I kinda doubt that the Council would've been able to put him down.

 

Oh no, he didn't. But he did what Corpsetaker did, consume spirits for power. It was probably slow and cumbersome, but it still made him very very powerful. Enough so that the entire Council had to gank his fed ass.

The Darkhallow was an improvement on whatever magic let him consume spirits.

 

According to Mab he went around eating spirits for power, the Darkhallow is just a larger scale version of what he was doing already.

 

Unlikely. as the Mirror Universe (tm) Harry made a different choice in Grave Peril, not in Changes, at which point he would not be in the Changes situation because divergence.

 

That doesn't necessarily mean he could never use the Darkhallow.

After all, that one choice would have led to many other different choices. Whose to say that one of those couldn't be using the Darkhallow at some point?

 

The thing is that even if Dresden knows how to do it, he would never ever get away with it. Besides, both Mab and Lasciel are far, far less despicable options and I'm sure there are other unexplored options he'd pick before that.

 

In Changes, Harry didn't care about "getting away" with what he did as long as he can get Maggie away and safe first before facing the music.

I agree that I think that IF Cowl is Mirror Universe Harry (I'm going through the series again right now, and am on Proven Guilty), that he might have done a smaller Darkhallow (maybe the theory in this thread of perpetrating it where he doesn't eat any humans?)

We'll see after White Night how I feel about the Cowl theory though.

Honestly I just don't want Cowl to be Mirror!Harry, because I'd rather they be separate characters.

 

Eh. Even if he'd done the Darkhallow there, Maggie would've died too. If he'd done it elsewhere, the Council would've known and killed him before he'd gotten anywhere.

 

This isn't really a question but an observation I wanted to share:

As far as we know Nemesis came from the Athame from Bianca's party. I was rereading Summer Knight and when Harry first meets Maeve she humiliates Slate because he brought her a knife that wasn't the 'right one'. It puts some timeline stuff in for when she was infected and shows she was actively searching to be infected.

Any thoughts with this or am I being a fanny?

 

She might not have known what it was at all, except a source of power. Lea didn't know.

 

Should have finished the reread before posting, it was a dagger with Elaines burnt blood on it.

 

How many other wizards that we know about started as 'thugs' like Harry? Are there inherent advantages to being a thug or being naturally precise?

 

We don't know for sure, but I sure got that impression of McCoy. Hell maybe even Morgan in a way, very strong and good at fighting, the fist of the white council.

Compare them to the Merlin and Anastasia who are strong but in a different way, the scalpel to the broad sword.

 

The Merlin and McCoy were both brute types with hot tempers, according to Jim. They didn't get on so well in their youth, either.

 

When the Knights of the Cross are given missions from God (or an Archangel or their sword), do they ever die as a result? Am I wrong in thinking that God doesn't send them on missions where they get seriously injured and that they only ever get injured when they take a personal mission, no matter how worthy the cause?

 

They die often, I'd say. The swords don't make them win. They just even the playing field.

 

This. In Small Favor, iirc, Michael felt like helping Harry was his last mission and they both thought him dieing was a very real possibility.

 

Nicodemus claims in Skin Game that the average Knight serves for about three days - not necessarily because they're killed, but because they're often chosen to wield the blade for a specific purpose (think Murphy in Changes). It seems reasonable to assume that some of them do get killed though.

More specifically, Shiro might have been dying anyway when he comes to Chicago, but he dies the death he does because of the choices he makes on that mission. So yeah. Just because they're on a mission from God doesn't make them invulnerable.