I'm curious, we hear about a wizards "death curse" alot in the series, to the point that Dresden thought he could use it as an insurance policy against kinkaid, but we've never once heard it brought up when the white council does their little execution act.

Whats to stop these black magic infested little devils from calling up a curse on the guy holding the sword so that they die with them?

 

IIRC the wizard has to know that he is about to die. So since they seem to keep the prisoners under a hood they can't see that they are about to be executed. That's my take on it at least.

 

I thought the hood was more to disguise the councils identity so they wouldn't know who to strike, but even then they would only need to specify the curse on whoever was about to kill them (without being name specific.)

I don't know as to the idea of them not knowing they were going to be killed, I'm fairly sure the magical community knows white council+hood+discussing any 'guilt' equals death .

 

Maybe the hood protects a person who is executing convicted. You don't know who killed you, you can't cast your Death Curse on them.

 

If that was the case than whenever a wizard was attacked the attacker would just wear a cloak and a mask to cover his face. And kill the wizard without fearing his death curse.

 

Actually, that's a pretty foolish argument. The point that guy tried to make was that you must SEE your executioner to hit him with a Death Curse. The hood makes it impossible for the victim to see the executioner, or even know which direction he's in. So I guess that's why they can't cast it.

 

Why should it be limited to sight? If you can hear or touch your opponent than the curse should be just as effective. Last time I checked they could hear through the hoods.

 

I wonder if a non-human - one who uses his hearing or sense of smell as his major sense - could target a death spell while blindfolded. Think about it. Each individual's scent is unique. You could target with effectively NO risk of error.

 

What if the human was born blind, or blinded while very young, possibly while pre-verbal? That would force a child to lean heavily on his other senses. Although I have *no* idea how to teach a Dresden-style wizard who has no visual context...

 

Actually, I kind of figure the guys who are executed are the inexperienced new guys who've just come into their powers and don't know what they're doing. You can't cast a death curse if you don't know what it is, etc.

 

I doubt its even possible to learn magic in such a scenario. As far as the books go, you need to visualize your spell to focus, besides of course knowing what you're doing. If a kid is blinded young, or blind from birth, he can't visualize.

 

Yea, I think so too, for the most part, but they have threatened to execute Dresden on occasion, and obviously he knows what a death curse is, and I'm sure at least some of these inexperienced guys learned about it from somewhere.


Maybe there's something about the warden's swords that prevents the warlock from using a death curse when he's killed by it.

 

That might actually be the case, considering that those swords have enchantments that can unravel some pretty strong magic.

 

Is "unraveling" the same thing as "blocking," in this 'verse?

 

A Death Curse is basically a highly-flexible spell using the huge resevoir of life-magic inside a wizard.

For person-affecting curses like Cassius' Death Curse 'Die Alone' or how Aurora would be 'safe' from Harry's Death Curse simply by leaving eyeshot/Faerie I think you need to be able to see or sense the person.

Another form of the Death Curse, seen in Summer Knight, was from the Russian Council member, his Death Curse took out a huge number of Red Court, most of which I'm assuming he couldn't see. This gives evidence that a Death Curse along the lines of 'Sunburst' or 'Large explosion' is possible.

For executions, the sack would prevent the first kind of Death Curse and if they tried an explosion I believe it would fizzle out the second it touched a Warden's sword. And there is always the fact that the majority of Warlocks don't have the learning to pull off a Death Curse. At least before the 'Circle' showed up...

EDIT: @Banner: 'Blocking' would be like a sword being deflected by a shield. 'Unraveling' is more like the sword disintegrating the second it makes contact with the shield.

 

As far as I can recall, one's "Death Curse" is just a spell--perhaps using all of your "soul" to power it. It can be used for anything, not just for causing harm (though this is unconfirmed, of course). There hasn't been any real limits specified by Butcher (as is his habit.. damnit), but we've seen and heard of a variety of them, one being from the Denarian Quintus Cassius cast upon Harry Dresden (which seems to have a more esoteric, seeing as how he simply said "Die Alone", and we can't really know if there was more to it than that), another from Margaret Dresden cast upon Lord Raith which made him unable to feed. Both were cast in different situations--Cassius' on Dresden when he was right by him, and Margaret's upon Raith when he was far away as she was giving birth to Harry. In fact, it may be that you aren't able to do a "long distance" one without knowing a part of someone's name or something to that effect.

Anyway, I think we might all be thinking too deeply on this: there is always a Senior Council member at these executions, right? Maybe even multiple of them? Maybe they're able to counter Death Curses, or maybe, because the whole place is usually inside a close circle it helps them do it.

We just don't have enough information currently to know, most likely because we aren't supposed to.

 

We've never seen the Council execute a fully trained Wizard, so we have no idea what kind of safeguards they can take to block it. The Death Curse does seem to follow the normal rules of Dresden Magic. Margaret Dresden obviously was familiar and close enough to Raith to cast such long range spells on him. Dresden has monologued before that you have to know your death is coming. I would guess that you can't actually suicide and cast your Death Curse - someone else has to do the deed and you have to time it right. Dresden stated that he wouldn't be able to get Kincaid if he shot him with a sniper rifle or similar. Also Dresden has said the same thing about long range spells. If someone else manages to get your hair or blood they can send a ritual curse after you.

The more I think about it the more this seems like the perfect job for the Blackstaff - a powerful Warlock that must be assassinated at long range or via stealth to avoid the Death Curse.

The Council and the Wardens can handle easy things like chopping off the heads of half-trained teenagers that knew almost nothing of magic before the Grey Cloaks kicked in their door.

 

I guess that it is different for every wizard.
It comes down how strong you are (even the death curse of weak wizards is dangerous, because it can feed on all magic avaidable, but imagine a death curse of a really powerful wizard!)
-weaker wizards-needs more focus like sight, contact, name etc.
-strong wizard-can be more "open" and doesn´t need so much focus
(the russian wizard probably went for all out and blow with his magic everything up...like a bomb and his magic was the TNT, the death curse the trigger)

How close you are to your killer (emotionally), if you had a kid with him and hung around him for over sixth years, that should count for something...

The wizard needs to know that he is about to die, for the timing

I think someone like the Merlin could curse someone on the other side of the world without really knowing him, but how much wizards are that powerful?

The sword-idea is pretty good, would certainly explain the style of execution and maybe you can curse your killer without knowing him, but to direct your curse to someone else you have to know/see him/her or have some other kind of connection...that would explain the hood,
to keep the Council members save, they don´t kill the wizard, but could still be a target...