Making magic stick against Outsiders [series spoilers]

[Serack]

So I’ve made a couple posts touching on this material in other people’s topics lately, but I thought I might try to tie it all together in a dedicated topic with my patent pending formatting.  (don’t worry the license is open for all to use if you want to duplicate the formatting )^-Serack

This is my take on why it's hard to get magic to stick on Outsiders unless you have a couple few centuries of experience with magic, and where the story is going to allow Harry to do it (or should that be “how the story allows Harry to do it”).

Jim has made several comments about how the upper bounds of magic are about rewriting reality.^WoJ#1&#2 This combined with the frequent in text comments about a wizard not being able to work a particular piece of magic unless he truly believes that the world should be that way make me think of all wizardly magic being about the wizard wielding his will to rewrite reality to conform to his idea of what it should be. 

Now one of the significant things about Outsiders, is that according to the books, they aren’t part of our reality!^XRT#1 It is my opinion that the whole objective for their assault of our reality is to subsume it and invoke their own upon it.  Possibly as “Empty Night.”  So when a mortal wizard tries to hurl magic at an Outsider, they are hurling their own revision of reality against another being whose very existence is its own assertion of a new foreign reality into our own.  To accomplish this, you must either have centuries of practice at asserting your reality through magic, or have some undefined “Starborn” property apparently.

Now I'm not quite sure how being "starborn" makes you better at asserting your reality (edit:  Although I do try to examine this more closely in reply #5), but it has been my hypothesis that Harry's experiences in GS certainly do.  Excerpt #2 below seems to me to be a very key part of what Harry experienced in GS that IMO will be significant in shaping how he identifies with his magic in the future.  In fact, Excerpt #4 is a passage from the next book CD where he seems to utilize this very lesson to an extreme that allows him to rewrite reality to his will vs the will of a primal force on par with “Let there be light!”^XRT#3

Sounds to me like Harry is getting pretty dang effective at using his will to shape reality to what he wants it to be.  Which will be KEY to his fighting the outsiders.  In fact in Excerpt #5 we see how Harry countered the major Outsider psychic attack near the end of CD and yet again, Harry hurls his experiences and life into a foundation for a spell of his will that asserts his reality over the one the Outsider is imposing upon him.


Word of Jim quotes (hidden in spoiler code to condense the massive block of text)

(click to show/hide)

WoJ#1

What are the upper levels of magic?
There are none, if the person has enough juice.  If someone was strong enough, they could completely rewrite reality.

WoJ#2

about the vector of power, ot was in a thread a few weeks ago, but is most likely buried under pages of stuff, I believe it was in TC chapt 1. Prolly best way is to look up what Jim has posted. He also confirmed that Mab is injured not crazy.

Very few characters in the books are. 

Then again, "crazy" is generally considered to be a lack of connection with reality--and a lot of characters in the Dresden Files can MAKE reality.  They might have a seriously skewed idea of the way reality should be, but if they can make it happen then they aren't crazy, per se.

Jim

Book Excerpt quotes

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Excerpt#1 (bolding mine)

"...It's not from our world"
"It's extraterrestrial?"
"You do not understand, Miss Rodriguez," Ortega said quietly.  "Mordite is not from this galaxy, or this universe.  It is not of our reality."
...I nodded.  "It's from Outside."

Excerpt #2 (bolding mine)

    I gripped the wooden grain of my staff, recalling the feelings that had surged through me when I had summoned and bound the Lecters.  I called on my memories one more time.  [snip]long passage detailing memories both mundane and significant[/snip], and a thousand other things --  little things, minor things, desperately important things.
    You know.  Life.
    Then I did something fairly nutty, as I gathered the memory for what I was to attempt.  I just uttered the spell in plain, old English.  The energy seared through my thoughts in a way that would have been damaging to a living wizard, maybe fatal.  It seemed appropriate to use here, and I released whatever power I had left, clothing it in garments of memory, as I murmured the most basic of ideas, the foundation of words and of reality.
    "Be."
    My universe shook.

Excerpt #3 (bolding mine)

Mother Winter was holding me down with pure, stark will.  The leaders of the Red Court had been ancient creatures with a smilar power, but that had been a vague, smothering blanket that had made it impossible to move or act, a purely mental effort.
    This felt like something similar, but far more focused more developed, as if thought had somehow crystallized into tangibility.  My wrists and ankles wouldn't move because Mother Winter's will said that was how reality worked.  It was like magic -- but magic took a seed, a kernel of will and built up a framework of other energies around that seed.  It took intense pratice and focus to make that happen, but at the end of the day anyone's will was only part of the spell, alloyed with other energy into something else.
    What held me down now as pure, undiluted will -- the same kind of will that I suspected had backed up events presaged by phrases like "Let there be light."

Excerpt #4 (bolding mine)

I stopped pressing at my bindings with my limbs and started to use my mind instead.  I didn't try to push them away, or break them, or slip free of them.  I simply willed them not to be.  I envisioned that my limbs would feel like coming free, and focused on that reality, summoning up my total concentration on that goal, that ideal, that fact.
     And then I crossed my fingers and reached into me, into the place where a covert archangel had granted me access to one of the primal forces of the universe, an energy called soulfire. [/snip] I gathered up soulfire, used it to infuse my raw will, and cast the resulting compound against my bonds.
     [/snip]
     And in this case, in this moment, I somehow knew exactly what soulfire did.  It converted me, my core, everything that made me who I was, into energy, into light.  When I turned my joined will and the blazing core of my being together, I wasn't supercharging a magical spell.  I wasn't cleverly finding a weak point in an enchantment.  I wasn't using my knowledge of magic to exploit what my enemy was doing.
     I was casting everything I had done, everything I believed, everything I had chosen -- everything I was -- against the will of an ancient being of darkness, terror, and malice, a fundamental power of the world. 
     And the bonds and the will of Mother Winter could not constrain me. 

Excerpt #5  (Bolding mine)

And I then drew a deep breath.  This was not how my life would end.  This was not reality.  I was Harry Dresden, Wizard of the White Council, Knight of winter.  [snip] lots of stuff about all the things Harry had accomplished and pissed off and such [/snip]
And I would be damned if I was going to roll over for some punk Outsider and his psychic haymaker.
The words first.  Damned near everything begins with the words.
"I am," I breathed, and suddenly the ice was clear of my mouth.
"I am Harry..." I panted, and the pain redoubled.
And I laughed.  As if some freak who had never loved enough to know loss could tell me about pain.
" I AM HARRY BLACKSTONE COPPERFIELD DRESDEN!" I roared. 
[snip]a couple pages till the end of the mental battle, some of it about how insignificant he was compared to the power of the Walker[/snip]
So I looked up at that face and I laughed.  I laughed scorn and defiance at the vast, swirling power, and it didn't just feel good.  It felt right. 
[snip]Harry hurls his defiance and the psychic attack is overcome, and Erlking says:[/snip]
"Well-done, starborn!"

Edit:  OH NOES, I accidentaly deleted this post attempting to edit one of the replies.  I managed to save the text, but not much of the formatting.  I'll have to fix it later You rock TCF and Elegast!^-Serack

[Phariah]

ya it seems like Harry's time as a ghost was a major learning experience for him. he learned some of exerting his control over his surroundings like what was pointed out in the excerpt. so ya not only his starborn but his training in GS helps.

[Serack]

I'm going to work on tying in the other 2 or 3 times Harry has countered an Outsider later

[Elegast]

Interesting.

But how does it fit with the date of birth criteria?

[Tami Seven]

Interesting.

But how does it fit with the date of birth criteria?

Lash said Circumstances of his birth, more so than just the date IIRC. We can't consider the year as significant,  not yet anyway, since even JB is having a hard time deciding on his year of birth. We do know his date of birth, who his parents were, possibly even approximate time of birth if my own theory holds based on events in BR and how Maggie died either while giving birth or just after.

We don't yet know for certain what other Circumstances may have played into this, but I believe that there must have been others.

[Serack]

Interesting.

But how does it fit with the date of birth criteria?

Good question.  I'm not certain but I'll try to evaluate that separately.

Excerpt #1 is a quote of Lash at the end of WN in the Deeps where she appears to have given us some information about how Harry came to be potentially a “Starborn.

Now for some reason that reminds me of some of the stuff Bob told Harry about how Halloween is significant in making everybody in the Mortal realm Mortal. ^XRT#2 Complex confluence of events seems a lot like Bob’s “conjunction.”

This reminds me, it can't be coincidence that Harry was born on Halloween.

The two other things we know about Starborn, are that apparently Elaine either is one, or has the potential to be one,^WoJ#1 and a more recent WoJ about the Winter Lady that preceded Maeve not fairing so well the last time one was mucking about.^WoJ#2   Which means that the last starborn was less than 1,000 years ago, and probably more than 200.  (Off topic:  For some reason, I suspect this is another reference to Tam Lin)

Ok so now I’ve done my best to build up all the information we have thus far about Starborn I want to provide some information about Mortals and free will and stuff. 

The thing is, we have WoJ that using free will mortals make the world around them through the choices they make.  The forces of the universe, these cosmic forces are always balanced against one another, and mortals are the ones who can tilt that see-saw one way or another with their actions. ^WoJ#3

Now this seems to be very reflective of some of the things that have been said about Harry being a fulcrum.  Starting with the Cassandra's Tears prophecy in Grave Peril,^XRT#3 and going all the way to the recent meeting between Vadderung and Harry at the end of CD. ^XRT#3 (with several others in between)  So it is my guess that whatever it is about Mortals that makes their free will, and the resultant choices "make the world" around them, Harry as a Starborn, is that much more potent with it. 

That is, Harry as a starborn, is a distilation of the free will and choice power that causes mortals to shape reality around them.  Somehow, his parents made sure that the circumstances of his birth resulted in this.

By the way I would tie this to Harry's propensity to Naming too.


Word of Jim Quotes (hidden in spoiler code to condense the massive wall of text)

(click to show/hide)

Word of Jim #1

2010 Lee’s Summit signing
Q:  Is Elaine another candidate to wield power over Outsiders (the way Harry supposedly is)?
A:  Yes.  There’s a reason Justin picked the two of them. (Editor's note:  The original asker posted this clarification)

…I asked him the question
The full question was if he had stated in the past, during an interview, that Elaine also was a candidate to have the potential to wield power over Outsiders.  His longer answer was yes, he had said that before, that Harry and Elaine are just a few months apart age wise so for all intensive purposes the same age.  He then told me that was one of the reasons that Justin had picked both of them to adopt, it wasn't just random kids with power.  The key word in my question and his answer was potential.

Word of Jim #2 (Bolding mine)

You said the Winter, rather, Knights’ mantles change fairly often? How often do the Ladies’, Queens’ and Mothers’ mantles change?

Uh, the Ladies, Queens and Mothers, their mantles change very, very, very rarely in general. I mean, Mab’s been there for better than 1,000 years. And Maeve’s been there….there was a Winter Lady before Maeve, uh, in Mab’s time. And she didn’t fare so well the last time a Starborn was running around.

Word of Jim #3 (Bolding mine)

There is a rather long discussion as to what constitutes free will as an element in the back end of this book (Ghost Story).  Is what is presented and discussed as a concept, your own philosophy?  How did that come about, the idea that free will is making your choices based upon truth.
Right, and in the Dresden Files universe it's a vital component.  It's what divides mortals, human beings, from everybody else.  Is that we're the ones that have elements of both good and evil inside us, we're the ones who get to chose what to do.  And because that's who we are, we make the world around us through those choices.  The forces of the universe, these cosmic forces are always balanced against one another, and we're the ones who can tilt that see-saw one way or another with our actions.  I think that is largely true in real life, but it is certainly a very fun, dramatic use of the concept of free will for writing with.  It's very important in general, and that's why Harry, as he's gotten more mature, he's striven so much harder to make sure that other people have a choice, you know, he's not trying to make choices for people any more, he's trying to make sure that they know what's going on, and can make an informed choice.

Excerpt Quotes

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Excerpt #1

"the circumstances of your birth -- because of why you were born, Harry.  Your mother found the strength to escape Lord Raith for a reason."
[/snip]
"There was a complex confluence of events, of energies, of circumstances that would have given a child born under them the potential to wield power over Outsiders."

Excerpt #2

    "Right then!" Bob said.  "The only way to kill an immortal is at certain specific places."
    "And you know one?  Where?'
    "Hah, already you're making a human assumption.  There are more than three dimensions, Harry.  Not all places are in space.  Some of them are places in time.  They're called conjunctions."
    "I know about conjunctions, Bob," I said, annoyed.  "When stars and planets align.  You can use them to support heavy-duty magic sometimes."
    "That's one way to measure a conjunction." said the skull.  "But stars and planets are ultimately just measuring stakes used to describe a position in time.  And that's one way to use a conjunction, but they do other things, too."
    "I nodded thoughtfully.  "And there's a conjunction when immortals are vulnerable?"
    "Give the man a cookie; he's got the idea.  Every year."
    When is it?"
    "On Halloween night, of course."
    I slammed on the brakes and pulled the car to the side of the road.  "Say that again?"
    "Halloween," Bob said, his voice turning sober.  "It's when the world of the dead is closest to the mortal world.  Everyone -- everything -- standing in this world is mortal on Halloween."
[/snip]
    "Halloween is when they feed," Bob said.  "Or... or refuel.  Or run free.  It's all sort of the same thing, and I'm only conveying a small part of it.  Halloween night is when the locked stasis of immortality becomes malleable.  They take in energy -- and it's when they can add new power to their mantle.  Mostly they steal tiny bits of it from other immortals."

Excerpt #3

"And I see you at the middle of it all.  You're the beginning, the end of it.  You're the one who can make the path go different ways."

Excerpt #4

excerpt pending

[TheCuriousFan]

Fixed some of your formatting.

Pre-Changes version is in spoiler tag below as a backup in case I screw something up.

(click to show/hide)

So I’ve made a couple posts touching on this material in other people’s topics lately, but I thought I might try to tie it all together in a dedicated topic with my patent pending formatting.  (don’t worry the license is open for all to use if you want to duplicate the formatting )^-Serack

Edit:  OH NOES, I accidentaly deleted this post attempting to edit one of the replies.  I managed to save the text, but not much of the formatting.  I'll have to fix it later ^-Serack

This is my take on why it's hard to get magic to stick on Outsiders unless you have a couple few centuries of experience with magic, and where the story is going to allow Harry to do it (or should that be “how the story allows Harry to do it”).

Jim has made several comments about how the upper bounds of magic are about rewriting reality.WoJ#1&#2  This combined with the frequent in text comments about a wizard not being able to work a particular piece of magic unless he truly believes that the world should be that way make me think of all wizardly magic being about the wizard wielding his will to rewrite reality to conform to his idea of what it should be. 

Now one of the significant things about Outsiders, is that according to the books, they aren’t part of our reality!XRT#1  It is my opinion that the whole objective for their assault of our reality is to subsume it and invoke their own upon it.  Possibly as “Empty Night.”  So when a mortal wizard tries to hurl magic at an Outsider, they are hurling their own revision of reality against another being whose very existence is its own assertion of a new foreign reality into our own.  To accomplish this, you must either have centuries of practice at asserting your reality through magic, or have some undefined “Starborn” property apparently.

Now I'm not quite sure how being "starborn" makes you better at asserting your reality (edit:  Although I do try to examine this more closely in reply #5), but it has been my hypothesis that Harry's experiences in GS certainly do.  Excerpt #2 below seems to me to be a very key part of what Harry experienced in GS that IMO will be significant in shaping how he identifies with his magic in the future.  In fact, Excerpt #4 is a passage from the next book CD where he seems to utilize this very lesson to an extreme that allows him to rewrite reality to his will vs the will of a primal force on par with “Let there be light!”XRT#3

Sounds to me like Harry is getting pretty dang effective at using his will to shape reality to what he wants it to be.  Which will be KEY to his fighting the outsiders.  In fact in Excerpt #5 we see how Harry countered the major Outsider psychic attack near the end of CD and yet again, Harry hurls his experiences and life into a foundation for a spell of his will that asserts his reality over the one the Outsider is imposing upon him.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WoJ#1
WoJ#2
Quote from: jimbutcher on March 04, 2009, 05:46:48 PM
Quote from: Joefoe on March 04, 2009, 05:03:54 PM
about the vector of power, ot was in a thread a few weeks ago, but is most likely buried under pages of stuff, I believe it was in TC chapt 1. Prolly best way is to look up what Jim has posted. He also confirmed that Mab is injured not crazy.

Very few characters in the books are. 

Then again, "crazy" is generally considered to be a lack of connection with reality--and a lot of characters in the Dresden Files can MAKE reality.  They might have a seriously skewed idea of the way reality should be, but if they can make it happen then they aren't crazy, per se.

Jim

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpt#1
Quote from: DM Ch 29
"...It's not from our world"
"It's extraterrestrial?"
"You do not understand, Miss Rodriguez," Ortega said quietly.  "Mordite is not from this galaxy, or this universe.  It is not of our reality."
...I nodded.  "It's from Outside."

Excerpt #2
Quote from: GS chapter 47
    I gripped the wooden grain of my staff, recalling the feelings that had surged through me when I had summoned and bound the Lecters.  I called on my memories one more time.  [snip]long passage of memories both mundane and significant[/snip], and a thousand other things --  little things, minor things, desperately important things.
    You know.  Life.
    Then I did something fairly nutty, as I gathered the memory for what I was to attempt.  I just uttered the spell in plain, old English.  The energy seared through my thoughts in a way that would have been damaging to a living wizard, maybe fatal.  It seemed appropriate to use here, and I released whatever power I had left, clothing it in garments of memory, as I murmured the most basic of ideas, the foundation of words and of reality.
    "Be."
    My universe shook.
Excerpt #3
Quote from: CD Chapter 31
    Mother Winter was holding me down with pure, stark will.  The leaders of the Red Court had been ancient creatures with a smilar power, but that had been a vague, smothering blanket that had made it impossible to move or act, a purely mental effort.
    This felt like something similar, but far more focused more developed, as if thought had somehow crystallized into tangibility.  My wrists and ankles wouldn't move because Mother Winter's will said that was how reality worked.  It was like magic -- but magic took a seed, a kernel of will and built up a framework of other energies around that seed.  It took intense pratice and focus to make that happen, but at the end of the day anyone's will was only part of the spell, alloyed with other energy into something else.
    What held me down now as pure, undiluted iwll -- the same kind of will that I suspected had backed up events presaged by phrases like "Let there be light."
Excerpt #4
Quote from: CD chapter 32
     I stopped pressing at my bindings with my limbs and started to use my mind instead.  I didn't try to push them away, or break them, or slip free of them.  I simply willed them not to be.  I envisioned that my limbs would feel like coming free, and focused on that reality, summoning up my total concentration on that goal, that ideal, that fact.
     And then I crossed my fingers and reached into me, into the place where a covert archangel had granted me access to one of the primal forces of the universe, an energy called soulfire. [/snip] I gathered up soulfire, used it to infuse my raw will, and cast the resulting compound against my bonds.
     [/snip]
     And in this case, in this moment, I somehow knew exactly what soulfire did.  It converted me, my core, everything that made me who I was, into energy, into light.  When I turned my joined will and the blazing core of my being together, I wasn't supercharging a magical spell.  I wasn't cleverly finding a weak point in an enchantment.  I wasn't using my knowledge of magic to exploit what my enemy was doing.
     I was casting everything I had done, everything I believed, everything I had chosen -- everything I was -- against the will of an ancient being of darkness, terror, and malice, a fundamental power of the world. 
     And the bonds and the will of Mother Winter could not constrain me. 
Excerpt #5 (Bolding mine)
Quote from: CD Ch 43
And I then drew a deep breath.  This was not how my life would end.  This was not reality.  I was Harry Dresden, Wizard of the White Council, Knight of winter.  [snip] lots of stuff about all the things Harry had accomplished and pissed off and such [/snip]
And I would be damned if I was going to roll over for some punk Outsider and his psychic haymaker.
The words first.  Damned near everything begins with the words.
"I am," I breathed, and suddenly the ice was clear of my mouth.
"I am Harry..." I panted, and the pain redoubled.
And I laughed.  As if some freak who had never loved enough to know loss could tell me about pain.
" I AM HARRY BLACKSTONE COPPERFIELD DRESDEN!" I roared. 
[snip]a couple pages till the end of the mental battle, some of it about how insignificant he was compared to the power of the Walker[/snip]
So I looked up at that face and I laughed.  I laughed scorn and defiance at the vast, swirling power, and it didn't just feel good.  It felt right. 
[snip]Harry hurls his defiance and the psychic attack is overcome, and Erlking says:[/snip]
"Well-done, starborn!"

[TheCuriousFan]

And Elegast did the rest before I could get back to it. Thanks Elegast.

[knnn]

Two thoughts:

1) The WoJ says that Elaine and Harry were born a couple of months apart.  This weakens the argument that Halloween is a key component/

2) Lash's comments seem to indicate that "someone else" was manipulating things - i.e. giving Maggie the strength to leave Raith.  Maggie may have been aware that she was a pawn and likely became a willing participant in the plan, but she apparently wasn't the prime mover.

[kazimmoinuddin]

 Merlin was able to create ward to hold back ousiders and demons in the ways, during the rcv war, so i wonder if that is magic harry is capable of or having the affinity for.

[Serack]

Thanks guys!  Lil Serack climbed out of his crib for the first time yesterday, and my afternoon/evening was spent altering the crib into a day bed and procuring/installing a safety bar for it at Mrs. Serack's behest.  I'd already spent so much effort formatting it (and reply #5, which is where I introduced the unformatting of the OP) that I was not looking forward to reworking it again.

Two thoughts:

1) The WoJ says that Elaine and Harry were born a couple of months apart.  This weakens the argument that Halloween is a key component/

Or maybe they have different flavors/qualities of closely related confluences involved in their potential Starborn genesis?

2) Lash's comments seem to indicate that "someone else" was manipulating things - i.e. giving Maggie the strength to leave Raith.  Maggie may have been aware that she was a pawn and likely became a willing participant in the plan, but she apparently wasn't the prime mover.

Hmmm, the line is "Your mother found the strength to escape Lord Raith for a reason." (bolding mine, itallics the text's)  I don't think this is necessarily apparent, but it certainly seems possible, and even likely considering how Harry seems to have been manipulated.

Although I am going to say that Harry has been the prime mover of his fate with manipulation of varying degrees depending on the degree of mortality of the manipulator.  See in my paradigm for this topic, Harry's ability to be a fulcrum depends on his free will.  He had to chose to accept Mab's deal of 3 favors for his "eventual" riddance of Mab's influence.  He had to chose to be the Winter Knight.  He had to chose to go back to the mortal realm as a ghost.  And it is entirely likely that similar things happened to Margret.

The idea that the "strength" Margret found to escape Lord Raith was found externaly from herself seems quite viable though.

Edit:  Other than fleshing out the excerpt where Vadderung calls Harry a fulcrum again in CD, my next plans for this topic are to apply these thoughts to the other 2 or 3 times Harry has defied a Walker (the HWWB exposition in GS, the first encounter with HWWB4 in CD, and maybe the HWWB cameo in BR)

Edit: changed from HHWB/HHWB4 to HWWB/HWWB4, silly engineer can't spell.

[knnn]

WAG:

The memory scene in GS affords tangible evidence that HHWB was trying to shape Harry, preparing him for something.  To me, this is evidence that a starborn's power is a two-edged weapon.  What if HHWB is the prime mover behind Maggie leaving Lord Raith in the first place (and then Maggie pulled a double-cross or something)?

FWIW:

My current theory is that HHWB was trying to goad Harry to go back and kill Justin in a magic duel, thus opening him up to a corrupting influence.  Even if Black Magic corruption is not identical to Nemesis corruption, it's probably easier for Nemesis to infect someone who has already turned to the dark side.

[kazimmoinuddin]

 Wanna bet soul/hell fire magics are effective against outsiders? so denarians will be used to fight them. So a reason for harry to steal the coins from the church if need be. Also, it is known the sword have the power to counter them.
 The same for necromancy and black magic, so the black staff will be key in fighting them with out going batshit insane.

 If the sihda are the guardians of the universe, it makes sense their power can harm the outsiders, so both the knights of the courts will be important. While winter hold the gates, summer will deal with the forces of the infiltrators.

[Sully]

Pretty sure Denarians don't have soulfire.  And that most of them aren't wizards.  Which is kind of required to use soulfire.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

And that most of them aren't wizards.  Which is kind of required to use soulfire.

Do we know that enhancing wizardy-type spells is the only thing soulfire can be used for ?