Law Breaking Vs Black Magic [Spoilers for everything]

[Serack]

So I have seen plenty of topics discussing Black Magic, breaking the Laws of Magic, and the ramifications of Harry's killing beings other than humans (both on a large scale like when he wiped out the Rampires, and in instances like when he shattered those Sidhe near the beginning of Cold Days) and decided to hammer together a topic discussing my thoughts on the subject.

First lets try to define some things:

The Laws of Magic:

• The White Council's 7 Laws of magic
  • Bah, if you need them listed out, look them up here
• The universal principles of how magic works... things like:
  • Mortal magic has gradually shifting side effects (currently murpheonic field)
  • Running water dissipates magic
  • Sunrise dissipates magic
  • "Black Magic" corrupts the mind

Black Magic:
I look at black magic as having various (not necessarily exclusive or redundant) definitions depending on the perspective of the definer.

Definition 1:
Black Magic is any (mortal?) magic that breaks the White Council's 7 Laws of Magic.

Definition 2:
Black Magic is any magic that warps (corrupts) the mind of the magic wielder.^WoJ#2

Why do I go through the trouble of pointing out two separate definitions?  Because Jim has explicitly said "The Laws of Magic don't necessarily match up to the actual universal guidelines to how the universal power known as "magic" behaves."^WoJ#3  However, the first definition is important because it is concrete and has concrete well defined consequences.  Break em and you get your head lopped off with few extenuating exceptions.

Grey Magic
Grey magic would be any magic that skirts around the [crumbling] edges of the White Council's 7 Laws and might or might not have some mind warping consequences.

Now for the Theorizing

Some thoughts on Magic:
Jim has made several comments about how the upper bounds of magic are about rewriting reality.^WoJ#6&#7 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 that all [wizardly?] magic is about the wizard wielding his will to rewrite reality to conform to his idea of what it should be.  (This is something I have used as a foundation for other theorizing.)

Reality Pushes Back
In other words, if you use your will/mind as an applied force to change reality, reality will exert an equal and opposite force upon your will/mind that could be changing it as well.

My thoughts on this idea of reality pushing back come from multiple inspirations.  One of the most poignant is how Harry insists to Lash that if she has been changing him, she pretty much has to have changed in return.^xrt#X 

Even more fundamental is the nature of the "murpheonic field."  Or at least why it exists from my theorizing PoV.  As a wizard develops his ability to shape reality according to his will, he is coming into direct conflict with the fact that humanity has been doing a pretty dang good job of defining just exactly how reality is supposed to work, and as a result is accomplishing all these really cool technological things.  But because the wizard is a member of humanity, and is breaking these hard and fast "rules" that this cool technology is based off of, his magic interferes with it and makes it likely to fail. 

You could even say that the wizard's mind has been warped by his continued use of magic to reshape reality, until the parts of reality that utilize highly specialized physical laws that his magic flies in the face of [I.E. technology] become highly unreliable to him. 

So taking this paradigm and applying it to "dark magic" we can see there can certainly be other ways that using your will to do something particularly nasty like overwriting the will of another human being could warp your own will too.  Maybe next time you come across a situation, you won't even think of other possible solutions that don't involve overwriting the will of someone because your own will has become too twisted.  You might even be unable to chose otherwise due to having lost what gives a "mortal" free will in the first place.  Reality has pushed back.

By the way I am a HUGE fan of LCDarkwood's (A DFRPG Dev, and mod of the associated section of the boards) DFRPG oriented post "The First Law of Magic In-Play: Semi-Official Advice."  Here's a particularly juicy morsel.  (spoilerized to collapse it so it takes up less real estate.) 

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Corruption Isn't Always About Evil

We have a tendency to look at the Laws as things that turn ordinary, nice wizards into MFing Kemmler. So, it's understandable that some players are going to have an issue with the idea of being a Lawbreaker, because they don't really want their character to be an Evil Jackass.

But all we really know, as a baseline, is that breaking the Laws fundamentally changes you somehow. There's a lot of room to decide how you're going to express that change. That's why you don't have to, if you don't want to, worry about intent too much - good intentions can cause corruption just as much as bad ones.

Let's look at another Joe Wizard. This is a young dude, just getting started, who fries a mugger in self-defense because he's afraid. First Law violation, period dot.

But what if we decide the aspect is "Crippling, Massive Guilt"? 'Cause clearly, Joe's not a bad guy, right? No one expects he's going to go from magical self-defense to setting kittens on fire just to listen to them shriek.

However, what could happen is that his guilt keeps him from using his magic, even when its arguably necessary. Even when it could help people and prevent harm. Even when an innocent is being held up by the throat by a loup-garou, and he could save that person, but God, what if something goes wrong? What if he misses? What if he kills another innocent? Better that they die by the loup-garou's hand than his, right? Better he doesn't have it on his conscience, right?

And soon, this Joe Wizard finds himself utterly incapable of risk and sacrifice. His decisions become inherently selfish, all centered around keeping him, at all costs, from having to deal with that guilt again.

How is that not a kind of corruption?

So, keep in mind that you don't have to characterize this process as a descent into blistering, making-soup-with-babies sadism. Anything that people can feel can be taken too far and become destructive.

The White Council's 7 Laws had a focused goal.
Ok, so now I've gone through a whole lot of trouble to discuss the mind warping influence of magic without focusing on the Council's "Laws" much.  Jim has discussed how the White Council /exists/ to limit the power of wizards, and that the Laws are intended to restrain wizards from doing too much harm.^{WoJ's #4 & #5}  Considering all the times Harry has pointed out that some bit of magic that is shadowed by the laws skirts them by his magic not being applied to a mortal, I'd like to specify/posit that the Laws are focused on restraining wizards from doing too much harm to humanity.

The Council likely did a pretty good job of distilling down to 7 Laws, the things a wizards shalt not do at risk of becoming a monster bent on harming humanity (or reality itself, and thus humanity).  But the writers were fallible, and if you are going to limit yourself to 7 Laws, then what you are going to be accomplishing with those 7 Laws is going to be rather narrow.  There will be things that fall outside them that can have significant effects on a wizard's psyche.  And there probably could be individual actions that fall within them that wouldn't eventually result in the wizard bringing humanity to its knees in agony.  The things that fall outside of the 7 Laws are almost surely not going to put humanity at risk the way the things that are covered by them would though. 

Vs a Mortal Matters

Ok so basically 5 of the 7 Laws of Magic seem to be:  Don't do X to a mortal.  Up to this point I've mostly just examined how magic as a whole has repercussions, and that the Council's laws try to keep wizards from performing magic that has repercussions that are bad for humanity.  This is examining something more specific.  Is it possible that performing these acts against a human might actually have more significant affects on a wizard beyond just the paradigm of, "well it doesn't hurt humanity"?

Assuming the answer is yes, then I can think of two reasons why, the 2nd reinforcing the first. 

1) Wizards are card carrying members of Humanity
In short, if a practitioner is human, and is using his magic to rewrite reality to break a law that protects other humans, reality revokes his member of humanity card and he becomes a monster.*  Do it against a non mortal?  Well he might become a monster to that race (see Harry's attitude vs Gouls in White Knight and Backup), but he's still a human monster.  This is sort of a reality enforced version of the Golden Rule where "others" is "mortals like you," but the consequences aren't necessarily that it is "done unto you" but that you lose what makes you a free willed mortal.

Note that the revoking of the humanity card concept only goes so far, because it doesn't necessarily make this black magic wielding monster fair game for wardens to blast away with magic. (Jim says the council still used mundane methods to off Kemmler.  Lots of them.^{WoJ #2})

2) Mortal Will has Metaphysical Mass
I like how this term fits well with the whole "Reality Pushes Back" concept.  There have been lots of WoJ's about the significance of free will.  So many that I have a rather large subsection of the "WoJ compilation" dedicated to it.  WoJ#8 is particularly poignant and discusses how mortal free will is what makes the world around them through their choices (sounds a bit like my ideas on how mortal magic works dunnit?). 

So it probably isn't a coincidence that most of the Laws of Magic that condemn certain acts against mortals are against using magic to somehow abrogate the mortal's free will (in the first law's case, by snuffing the mortal's life out).  Breaking them against a non mortal probably doesn't have the same level of "push back from reality," because the wizard isn't pushing up against the metaphysical mass of a mortal's free will.

*WoJ makes a big deal that magic in the Dresden Verse is not mystic or sentient, but rather something "which obeyed certain universal laws that governed its interaction with reality."  I don't want to imply with the asterisked sentence that "reality" is behaving like something sentient here.

[Serack]

WoJ and canon excerpts will go in first "response"

The spoiler code serves just to condense this huge block of text so that it is easier to scroll down to any response below.  I still have some excerpts to type out I think.

Word of Jim Quotes:

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WoJ #1

  Likewise, you are attracted by a smell of pie, that's normal.  But, someone manipulates the timestream to guarantee that pie isn't the nice fresh cherry pie it was supposed to be, that's just wrong!   Heh, pies aside, my focus is on the controlling of the free will of another person, not on just changes in the environment using magic. 

Man.  The existential morality of using PIE to shape the course of reality.  GOOD or EVIL?  That's . . . one of those discussions I never really thought I'd listen in on.

"Actually, Molly's intentions when she broke that particular law twisted her."  Here's where I think you hit the nail on the head Lightsabre.  It's the intentions of the caster that matter.  Time Travel, Nercomancy, and Mind Control are all tools that can be used to do *bad* things.  I'm fairly sure what we see in the laws of magic is a sort of wizard gun control, trying to limit the existence of these problematic classes of spells.

But if the substance of the consequences of the act itself does not have its own inherent quality of good or evil, then how can the /intentions/ behind it determine a similar quality?  "Really, I was only trying to provide a better quality of life for my family and my employees.  It wasn't my intention to destroy that particular species of flower in the rain forest that cures cancer."  "I was just trying to give those Injuns some blankets.  It wasn't my intention to expose them to smallpox and wipe out hundreds of thousands of innocent people."  "I just wanted to get that book finished while working two jobs and finishing a brutal semester of grad school.  It wasn't my intention to screw up the name of Bianca's personal assistant whose death had motivated her to go all power hungry to get revenge on Harry."

There's some old chestnut about good itentions serving as base level gradiant on an expressway that goes somewhere, but I can't remember the specifics right now.    While I agree that the /intentions/ of the person taking action are not without significance, they carry far less weight than the /consequences/ of that action. 

"I meant to shoot him in the leg and wound him, not hit the femoral artery and kill him, so I should not be considered guilty of murder," is not something that stands up in a court of law /or/ in any serious moral or ethical evaluation.  You had the weapon.  You knew it was potentially lethal, even if you did attempt to use it in a less than fully lethal fashion.  (Or if you DIDN'T know that, you were a freaking idiot playing with people's lives, something really no less excuseable.)  But you chose to employ the weapon anyway.  The consequences of those actions are /yours/, your doing, regardless of how innocent your intentions may have been.

Similarly, if you meant to drill that ^@#%er through the eyes, if you had every intention of murdering him outright, but you shot him in the hand and he survived with minor injuries, again the consequences overshadow your intentions.  You might have made a stupid or morally queestionable choice, but it isn't like anyone *died* or anything.  He's fine (at least in the long term), you're fine, and there are fewer repercussions--regardless of your hideous intentions.

The exercise of power and the necessity to consider the fallout from your actions isn't something limited to wizards and gods.  Fictional people like Harry and Molly just provide more colorful examples.

As for violating the laws of magic themselves turning you good or evil, well.    There's something to be said on either side of the argument, in the strictest sense, though one side of the argument is definitely less incorrect than the other.  But it's going to take me several more books to lay it out, so there's no sense in ruining the fun.

Jim

WoJ #2

They murdered[Kemler], with magic.
They broke the laws. Are they all tainted?

Technically, they didn't actually kill him with magic.  They rendered him helpless with magic and then found other ways to execute him.  (Swords are the usual.  For Kemmler, they also used guns, axes, shovels, ropes, a flamethrower, and a number of other extremes.)  It's a semantic difference, in some ways, but an important technical distinction in others.

Note also the killing law only applies to Humans.
You can kill as many faeries as you want with magic.

Bingo.  It hardly seems fair, does it?

The Laws of Magic don't necessarily match up to the actual universal guidelines to how the universal power known as "magic" behaves.

The consequences for breaking the Laws of Magic don't all come from people wearing grey cloaks.

And none of it necessarily has anything to do with what is Right or Wrong.

Which exist.  It's finding where they start or stop existing that's the hard part.

Jim

PS--"sinister" as in "bend sinister" or "bar sinister" is a general term originally meaning "left," and not "evil."  However, there's some overlap in traditional magickal terms, with references to the "left hand path" or black magic, and so on.  Left handed people were often viewed with suspicion during the middle ages.  In Islamic belief, the left hand is considered to be unclean.  For that matter, the entire concept of "right" is tied in with the negative connotations to "left."

And I agree.  Harry has some sinister leanings.

WoJ #3 (bolding mine)

On this topic, just summarizing a few posts which hit upon key points:

Practically speaking, most of magic is in the mind.

Use of black magic warps your mind.

Corpsetaker had taken a LOT of bodies.  Luccio's switched one time.

Luccio was a victim in the transfer, not the one controlling it (and taking advantage of it).

Oh, and I'll add one for myself:  Corpsetaker wasn't what anyone would characterize as a conscientious housekeeper.  Mwoo hah.

Jim

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WoJ#4

What kind of laws govern the use of magic in the world?
The White Council enforces Seven Laws of Magic.  They are basically a list of "Thow Shalt Nots," and their purpose is to enforce these laws and prevent wizards from using their abilities to abuse people.  These are supposed to be laws that are restraining wizards from using their powers to do too much harm.  And to enforce the laws they have a group of wizards who are known as Wardens, and the Wardens are sort of the White Council's interior police.  If you break one of the laws, it's the Wardens who are the ones who drag you off for a trial and generally if you're not killed resisting arrest, you're killed pretty much after you show up for trial... Right to a speedy trial and an even speedier execution. 

WoJ #5

1) The White Council /exists/ in order to limit the power of wizards.  These days, it's mostly about keeping wizards out of the black magic--but in the past, it was also to keep wizards out of politics.  They would show up as advisers, rarely (most "court wizards" were charlatans or underpowered schmucks), but the Council itself was very much against getting involved in things.

That's mainly because if the Council threw its weight in anywhere, it was all but guaranteeing a civil war among its own members.  (Remember, it's very Euro-centric.)

The original Merlin learned a lesson about wizards involving themselves in politics.  They already have too much power to use wisely, from his point of view.

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WoJ #6

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

WoJ #7

Very few characters in the books are [crazy]. 

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

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large subsection of the "WoJ compilation" dedicated to it

WoJ#8

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.

Canon Excerpts:

Excerpt on Lash's changes on Harry necessitating a change to Lash needed...

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Xrt #
Quote from Eb about the enforcement of the Laws (BR?)  (I don't have my nook on me at the moment)

Other Excerpts pertinant to the killing of non humans
Xrt #

"Scratch one ghoul.  My brother hates the creatures with a passion so pure that it's almost holy."

Xrt #

"Think they'll rat out their buddy?"
"If they think it'll save their lives?" I asked.  In a heartbeat.  Maybe less."
"Weasels," Ramirez muttered.
"They are what they are, man," I said.  "There's no use in hating them for it.  Just be glad we can use it to advantage.  Let's go."
[snip]scene where Harry finds that a ghoul killed 2 16 year old's eating parts of the little girl and gets rather upset about it (understatement)[/snip]
The quality of mercy was not Harry.
[/snip]
"Never," I told it.  "Never again."
Then I threw it down the shaft.
[/snip]
"Sixteen, Carlos," I said.  "Sixteen.  It had them for less than eight minutes."
[snip]An enraged Harry kicks one ghoul away to warn others not to pull these shenagans on his watch again and sets up a death trap for the other involving orange juce and desert ants[/snip]
moments later, Ramirez said, "What happened to not hating them?"
"Things change."

[Serack]

I've basically incorporated the below collapsed in spoilers post into the OP, but it was originally written after I posted the OP.

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Vs a Mortal Matters

Ok so basically 5 of the 7 Laws of Magic seem to be:  Don't do X to a mortal.  Up to this point I've mostly just examined how magic as a whole has repercussions, and that the Council's laws try to keep wizards from performing magic that has repercussions that are bad for humanity.  This is examining something more specific.  Is it possible that performing these acts against a human might actually have more significant affects on a wizard beyond just the paradigm of, "well it doesn't hurt humanity"?

Assuming the answer is yes, then I can think of two reasons why, the 2nd reinforcing the first. 

1) Wizards are card carrying members of Humanity
In short, if a practitioner is human, and is using his magic to rewrite reality to break a law that protects other humans, reality revokes his member of humanity card and he becomes a monster.*  Do it against a non mortal?  Well he might become a monster to that race, but he's still a human monster.  This is sort of a reality enforced version of the Golden Rule where "others" is "mortals like you," but the consequences aren't necessarily that it is "done unto you" but that you lose what makes you a free willed mortal.

Note that the revoking of the humanity card concept only goes so far, because it doesn't necessarily make this black magic wielding monster fair game for wardens to blast away with magic. (Jim says the council still used mundane methods to off Kemmler.  Lots of them.^{WoJ #2})

2) Mortal Will has Metaphysical Mass
I like how this term fits well with the whole "Reality Pushes Back" concept.  There have been lots of WoJ's about the significance of free will.  So many that I have a rather large subsection of the "WoJ compilation" dedicated to it.  WoJ#8 quoted above is particularly poignant and discusses how mortal free will is what makes the world around them through their choices. 

So it probably isn't a coincidence that most of the Laws of Magic that condemn certain acts against mortals are against using magic to somehow abrogate the mortal's free will (in the first law's case, by snuffing the mortal's life out).  Breaking them against a non mortal probably doesn't have the same level of "push back from reality," because the wizard isn't pushing up against the metaphysical mass of a mortal's free will.

*WoJ makes a big deal that magic in the Dresden Verse is not mystic or sentient, but rather something "which obeyed certain universal laws that governed its interaction with reality."  I don't want to imply with the asterisked sentence that "reality" is behaving like something sentient here.

[Tami Seven]

Your thread, it makes me wonder about something.  Don't know if there has been a WoJ on this or anything like that.

If Thomas (as the best example of someone in the grey area between human and non-human) does magic, uses magic to harm another or otherwise violate one of the 7 laws, would he experience the same cosmic backlash as, say, Harry would?

The council has passed judgment on non-Wizards, human practitioners, and other low-level magic users before.  Thomas,  however, is not under their jurisdiction. I think that is commonly accepted as true.

But this is not really about the White Council as much as it us about the other aspect of Black Magic.

When Thomas does magic, he does experience a mild murphionic effect, as seen in Backup when he discussed the effect his magic has on his cell phone, which might be stronger if his magic was stronger. Something usually associated with human magic users. He is human enough to create that kind of effect. Is he, or someone like him, human enough to experience the cosmic/psychological backlash that can make someone a 'warlock'?

If so, then this could, potentially, open up a whole new can of worms for the White Council. If not, then does Thomas and other WCV (or other Non-humans, if there are any, in similar situation) have a built in 'Blackstaff effect' that keeps them from the negative repercussions of using magic to harm others?

[hassman]

I agree with your sentiment. 

There is a significant difference between:
using an illusion to get someone to kill each other (Molly)
using a firestorm to burn down a building causing human deaths (Harry)
using a spell to remove the life from people (Eb)

There are three axes to look at these instances.
Intent consequences are to your conscience. enough deaths break you or turn you into a sociopath.
Morality consequences are to your soul/karma.  Depending on your view, consequences are after your death.
Black Magic.  consequences are unclear, but addiction and insanity seem likely. When Eb used direct death magic, black crap appeared on his arms and was eventually sucked into the staff.  I believe that this was not from the use of the staff, but from the use of direct death magic.  The staff allows the bearer to remove the taint.

The laws of magic deal with all three, but I surmise that they were written for #3.  I further surmise that using death magic will turn you into a warlock similar to the boy executed, with nothing human left.  My question is that is this a function of humans or a function of magic?

[Serack]

Your thread, it makes me wonder about something.  Don't know if there has been a WoJ on this or anything like that.

If Thomas (as the best example of someone in the grey area between human and non-human) does magic, uses magic to harm another or otherwise violate one of the 7 laws, would he experience the same cosmic backlash as, say, Harry would?

*points out that Jim makes a big deal that such a backlash would not be remotely mystic or sentient, but rather something "which obeyed certain universal laws that governed its interaction with reality."*  Not that your wording implies otherwise, but I want to keep that point firm, because I might not have done enough to emphasize that in my posts.

The council has passed judgment on non-Wizards, human practitioners, and other low-level magic users before.  Thomas,  however, is not under their jurisdiction. I think that is commonly accepted as true.

But this is not really about the White Council as much as it us about the other aspect of Black Magic.

When Thomas does magic, he does experience a mild murphionic effect, as seen in Backup when he discussed the effect his magic has on his cell phone, which might be stronger if his magic was stronger. Something usually associated with human magic users. He is human enough to create that kind of effect. Is he, or someone like him, human enough to experience the cosmic/psychological backlash that can make someone a 'warlock'?

If so, then this could, potentially, open up a whole new can of worms for the White Council. If not, then does Thomas and other WCV (or other Non-humans, if there are any, in similar situation) have a built in 'Blackstaff effect' that keeps them from the negative repercussions of using magic to harm others?

Although in Backup Thomas introduces himself with, "and I'm a monster," Jim has said that unless a Wampire is really vamping out, they are hardly affected by a threshold because they are too mortal.  In Thomas' case not only is he a typically grey area wampire, but he tries reeeealy hard to hold onto his humanity, and I think this really matters when addressing your question.  This ties into my first possible reason why "Black Magic" vs Mortals matters."  If Thomas already had given into/embraced his hunger, he could already be so far twisted by it that some black magic would not make much difference.  Think Madeline. 

[Serack]

I agree with your sentiment. 

There is a significant difference between:
using an illusion to get someone to kill each other (Molly)
using a firestorm to burn down a building causing human deaths (Harry)
using a spell to remove the life from people (Eb)

There are three axes to look at these instances.
Intent consequences are to your conscience. enough deaths break you or turn you into a sociopath.
Morality consequences are to your soul/karma.  Depending on your view, consequences are after your death.
Black Magic.  consequences are unclear, but addiction and insanity seem likely. When Eb used direct death magic, black crap appeared on his arms and was eventually sucked into the staff.  I believe that this was not from the use of the staff, but from the use of direct death magic.  The staff allows the bearer to remove the taint.

The laws of magic deal with all three, but I surmise that they were written for #3.  I further surmise that using death magic will turn you into a warlock similar to the boy executed, with nothing human left.  My question is that is this a function of humans or a function of magic?

I wana say it's a function of a human using magic on a human.  Magic is rewriting reality, and since magic is the tool you chose to use, will/mind gets reshaped by what you did to reality with it.  The "Tinkers" in The Wheel of Time liked to point out that the tree harms the ax when it is used to cut one down.

(on a far far different note, why the &*#$ does English spell ax without an e but battleaxe has an e at the end.  Oh well, spelling will always frustrate me.)

[hassman]

(on a far far different note, why the &*#$ does English spell ax without an e but battleaxe has an e at the end.  Oh well, spelling will always frustrate me.)

English spells it either way Ax or Axe.  Most people use Ax because they are lazy.

[Tami Seven]

*points out that Jim makes a big deal that such a backlash would not be remotely mystic or sentient, but rather something "which obeyed certain universal laws that governed its interaction with reality."*  Not that your wording implies otherwise, but I want to keep that point firm, because I might not have done enough to emphasize that in my posts.

Although in Backup Thomas introduces himself with, "and I'm a monster," Jim has said that unless a Wampire is really vamping out, they are hardly affected by a threshold because they are too mortal.  In Thomas' case not only is he a typically grey area wampire, but he tries reeeealy hard to hold onto his humanity, and I think this really matters when addressing your question.  This ties into my first possible reason why "Black Magic" vs Mortals matters."  If Thomas already had given into/embraced his hunger, he could already be so far twisted by it that some black magic would not make much difference.  Think Madeline.

Even from beyond the grave, I think Margaret LeFay is still challenging the Seven Laws. Should any Wizard go after him with magic, Thomas may prove to be a test case, a way to see if there are inherent flaws in the Laws and their applications. Can you be tainted by using Magic against someone not considered to be human?

Still, I see an element of belief in this. If a Wizard strongly believes that someone isn't human, even if they are, there may not be any psychological ramifications of using magic against them.

If Harry didn't see that the being hidden behind the veil of the wild hunt was human, the one he attacked, it would not impact his psychology. His perception of himself as a user of Black Magic.

[Serack]

Even from beyond the grave, I think Margaret LeFay is still challenging the Seven Laws. Should any Wizard go after him with magic, Thomas may prove to be a test case, a way to see if there are inherent flaws in the Laws and their applications. Can you be tainted by using Magic against someone not considered to be human?

Still, I see an element of belief in this. If a Wizard strongly believes that someone isn't human, even if they are, there may not be any psychological ramifications of using magic against them.

If Harry didn't see that the being hidden behind the veil of the wild hunt was human, the one he attacked, it would not impact his psychology. His perception of himself as a user of Black Magic.

Let me take this analogy a bit further and say Rodreguez uses his magic to disencorporate (like he did to the bullets in WN with his gauntlet) a building that he has every reason to believe is empty, and never ever finds out that it actually had a mortal in it.  His magic directly shreaded a mortal and he never knows.

The "Wizards are card carrying members of humanity" portion of my reasoning for "Vs a Mortal Matters" would not kick in because he didn't chose to do it, however, the "Mortal Will has Metaphysical Mass" portion would still matter.  It is concievable that because a mortal will was snuffed out by magic, the metaphysical ramifications of a free will being snuffed out by magic could affect this wizard.  I can see the mechanics for this working being much like if a wizard gives his word by his magic that he would return something to someone before they die, Fed-Exes it to the person and never hears from them again because they had a heart attack before it was shipped.

[KevinSig]

Kinda feels like this thread & the one about people going crazy, because of magic are somewhat related.

I do wonder if the term Black Magic is just generally applied, but the effects are different.

I mean, I'd think the Black Magic backlash for messing with somebody else's head, might be different than outright killing them.  Same goes for messing with the time stream & making undead.

Sure, Harry got away with making a Sue dino zombie, on a technicality.  But so far, we haven't been told he received a mental backlash from this.  If he doesn't get such a backlash from an animal, what's to say that making a zombie does anything different.  (I know Cowl was pretty loopy, but it might not have come directly from the Zombie spells.)

So, it raises the question if all that's labeled Black Magic causes specific backlash, or if its just all generally considered illegal, but only certain types of spells have effects on the user.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

English spells it either way Ax or Axe.  Most people use Ax because they are lazy.

I understood the first to be the US spelling and the second the UK English spelling, for what that may be worth.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Sure, Harry got away with making a Sue dino zombie, on a technicality.  But so far, we haven't been told he received a mental backlash from this.  If he doesn't get such a backlash from an animal, what's to say that making a zombie does anything different.  (I know Cowl was pretty loopy, but it might not have come directly from the Zombie spells.)

So, it raises the question if all that's labeled Black Magic causes specific backlash, or if its just all generally considered illegal, but only certain types of spells have effects on the user.

I think part of the point of DB is that Harry's rules-lawyering about Sue succeeds because of the point of the law against necromancy actually being "do not commit crimes against dead people" rather than "this force is inherently Evil", there is the bit (I think it's chapter 19 of DB, I posted the quote a few weeks back but am not finding it now) where he realised that Kumori using necromancy to save the life of the gangster who got shot was a good act and that he had previously been wrong about necromancy being an inherently evil force.

[huangjimmy108]

Molly:
I think it is safe to assume that Molly manage to escape the cosmic taint of black magic while acting as the rag lady. The kind of taint that the Loa spirit sees in Harry's aura during DM.

Her problem is most likely the same as any soldier after a long and extremely grusome war campaign.

Kemmler:
It have to be noted that despite how corrupt Kemmler is, he still have free wil. Kemmler is still human.

It appears that free wil cannot be so easily snuff out. I believe that redemption is still possible for kemmler if he really wanted it, otherwise Harry, Molly and any dinarian have no hope of salvation. According to Michael even Nicodemos can choose the path of redemption.

Which probably explains why the white council have to use not magical means to execute kemmler and other worlocks. Those worlocks may be beyond the WC's power  to rehabilitate, doesn't mean that their free wil is completely gone.

Had kemmler completed the Darkhallow, he will become a god. Maybe at that point, killing kemmler will be consider the same as killing a vampire because he is no longer human at all.

Thomas:
Thomas have dual souls. I suspect that doing black magic, the really tainting kind, will reduce his ability to control his demon half. Complete and utter corruption of Thomas's mortal free wil due to black magic usage would probably produce the same result as if the Rampire ritual in CY had succeeded. Thomas will be gone and only his demon half remains.

It is also have to be noted that a whampire's mind whammy, especially the wraith family brand is sort of seduction. In other words, their power entice a human, not compell them. As long as a whampire limits the intensity of his or her mind powers, it might not broken their preys free wil at all.

Of course, feeding too deeply, deep enough to put a mark on the prey's soul or even killing the prey entirely broke free wil. Doing so will cause adiction and more and more dependence upon the demon portion of a whampire's soul.

This would explain why a whampire's first feeding have to be lethal. It have to create that vital breach of free wil in order to entrench the demon half in a newbe whampire. This will also explains why Thomas cannot return to his previous feeding patern after the nagloshi is done with him. The adiction have run too deep due to repeat full feeding.

[Tami Seven]

Molly:
I think it is safe to assume that Molly manage to escape the cosmic taint of black magic while acting as the rag lady. The kind of taint that the Loa spirit sees in Harry's aura during DM.

Her problem is most likely the same as any soldier after a long and extremely grusome war campaign.

Molly's tainted just as Harry is. But like Harry, she has other factors to counter balance the taint. Her upbringing in a very religious family, her relationship with Harry and what he taught her, and her own sense of right and wrong. And now the taint might not be so much an issue as the mantle of the WL. Depends on which corrupting force is stronger and if she is stronger than both.

Kemmler:
It have to be noted that despite how corrupt Kemmler is, he still have free wil. Kemmler is still human.

It appears that free wil cannot be so easily snuff out. I believe that redemption is still possible for kemmler if he really wanted it, otherwise Harry, Molly and any dinarian have no hope of salvation. According to Michael even Nicodemos can choose the path of redemption.

Which probably explains why the white council have to use not magical means to execute kemmler and other worlocks. Those worlocks may be beyond the WC's power  to rehabilitate, doesn't mean that their free wil is completely gone.

Had kemmler completed the Darkhallow, he will become a god. Maybe at that point, killing kemmler will be consider the same as killing a vampire because he is no longer human at all.

Kemmler was a prime example of why the Wardens were created.  He was the bad one, the one that broke the Laws and delved into Dark Magic with both eyes open.

The Wardens swords are their protection against Black Magic, a way for them to dispatch a Warlock without being tainted themselves.

Thomas:
Thomas have dual souls. I suspect that doing black magic, the really tainting kind, will reduce his ability to control his demon half. Complete and utter corruption of Thomas's mortal free wil due to black magic usage would probably produce the same result as if the Rampire ritual in CY had succeeded. Thomas will be gone and only his demon half remains.

It is also have to be noted that a whampire's mind whammy, especially the wraith family brand is sort of seduction. In other words, their power entice a human, not compell them. As long as a whampire limits the intensity of his or her mind powers, it might not broken their preys free wil at all.

Of course, feeding too deeply, deep enough to put a mark on the prey's soul or even killing the prey entirely broke free wil. Doing so will cause adiction and more and more dependence upon the demon portion of a whampire's soul.

This would explain why a whampire's first feeding have to be lethal. It have to create that vital breach of free wil in order to entrench the demon half in a newbe whampire. This will also explains why Thomas cannot return to his previous feeding patern after the nagloshi is done with him. The adiction have run too deep due to repeat full feeding.

First point of correction, Thomas (and other WCV) don't have two souls. They have a demon parasite attached to their soul. Does the demon have a soul of its' own? Most demons probably don't.

Would Thomas using Black Magic be affected by the Taint? That is the question I asked, but you do have a good point. If Thomas' mortal soul was corrupted by the taint of Black Magic it might very well give his demon the opening it needs to take nearly full control. The Thomas we know would be gone for good.

Perhaps one of the reasons why there are so few WCV Wizards (JB once said there were some, but I have yet to see any of them). The risk of being tempted to do Black Magic, the risk of being tainted by it, might be too big a price. Even the darkest of WCV hold onto their mortal souls to some degree. They all know that if the demon did take over completely, it would be worse than what happened to Thomas in TC. They would be nothing more than predatory, feral animals. Not mindless, but not civilized in any way and certainly not themselves.