Law Breaking Vs Black Magic [Spoilers for everything]

[robertltux]

Thomas:
Thomas have dual souls. I suspect that doing black magic, the really tainting kind, will reduce his ability to control his demon half.

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.

The hinge here with Thomas is he can walk points along the line from "nibble on request" to "want more Toe-mas" to "I only wear silk and velvet because im a Playtoy" to "Music Of the Night" to "gee i think i broke her" so as long as he goes only to Bunneh he should be stay more or less human.  I do think that Justine has tracked down a number of Bunnehs to keep him fed.

[Serack]

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.

First the (unverified) WoJ on WCV wizards:

Unverified WoJ from the 2011 Naperville signing:
'Are there White Court vampire wizards?'
Yes, there are. Thomas is middle-of-the-road in power and [ed: think I'm remembering this correctly] the strongest don't get as strong as mortal wizards [/ed], but they can pull off some strong tricks with their Hunger.

We also have this WoJ:

2) Wizards were a hell of a lot more rare in centuries past.  Their numbers have increased along with the world population, but back then a given country was lucky if it had produced a single wizard-level talent more than about one generation in three.

Ok, with those 2 quotes out of the way, I'd say we have few WCV wizards because wizards are rare, and with only so many WCV's out there, WCV wizards are even rarer.

And my hypothesis on why WCV wizards likely don't get as powerful as mortal wizards is a kind of, "my cup is already full" type thing, where the Mortal vessel already has this demonic power that is stretching the amount of power a Mortal vessel can bear, and then if they are a wizard on top of that, they can't fit much wizard power into the room that is left.

Another way of looking at it is when you have a video game that has particular "pure" archetype classes, and hybrids between them, the hybrids do not do the individual tasks as well as a "pure" class because they have to share their net stats with the other abilties they have... I'm not sure I expressed that well.  So I will give an example from Old School Everquest.

Warrior class:  Best tank in the game.  This means that when something attacks him, he doesn't get hurt much, and he can dish out a pretty good mellee can of whoop-ass.

Priest Class:  Best healer in the game.  Has some spells that hurt undead bad.  Has some innefficient spells that can hurt anyone.

Paladin Class:  Hybrid between Warrior and Priest.  Tied for 2nd best tank in the game.  He can handle himself pretty well in a fight, but can't dish out as big a can of whoop-ass, and won't last quite as long, but he's still pretty dang tough.  He also can heal, but a priest 20 levels (out of 50 total) lower than he is, could probably do a better job at it.  He has spells that can hurt undead too but not quite as powerfuly as the Priest.  He also gets a unique, super slow refresh ability that can instantly heal someone to full health.

The WCV wizard is the hybrid.  He's not quite as good at wizarding as the fully mortal Wizard, but he can make up for it with some of his WCV tricks.

[huangjimmy108]

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 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.


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.

In PG, Murphy admits feeling tainted when she shot agent benton during FM. If this tainted feeling is more then just a feeling, it means that killing a mortal with or without magic carries a cosmic penalty by itself.

It does make sense in a way. Killing a mortal with free wil break their free wil, that mortal cannot choose anymore. Because breaking free wil = evil in the DV, penalty must be levied, magic or no magic.

Using magic to cause a death unintentionally carry a bigger penalty. If it is intentional the penalty is bigger and the penalty for using magic to directly and knowingly to cause a mortal's death is bigger still.

Molly the rag lady do the killing in such an indirect way that the victim still have a choice to act. The glamor she uses still allow her target to choose differently, limited those choices may be. I think her penalty for those acts is probably not much bigger than what Murphy expirience. She does do it more than once though, so the cumulative effect may be quite considerable.

As for kemmler and other worlocks. The point of my previous post is to empahsize that human's free wil is not so easily eradicated. It is not so easy to completely corrupt a human to the point that the human is not human anymore.

I suspect that any acts of compassion and kindness may strengthen the mortal's free wil and soul, much like having fun and doing good deeds suppose to rejuvenate Harry's soul more quickly after using soulfire. In Theory, constant and long term acts of free wil to avoid and resist temptation might strengthen a person wil to the point that he or she could control or maybe even banish the darkness in their soul. Turning that person into a saint. This , in my theory, applies to Harry, Molly and Thomas. Hell, perhaps even for Nicodemous.

[123456789blaaa]

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.

This?:

I sat in the backseat with my eyes closed and thought about what I'd learned. Kumori had saved the gunshot victim's life. If everything Lamar had said was accurate, it meant that she had gone out of her way to do it. And whatever she'd done, it had been an extremely difficult working to leave a mystic impression as intense as it did. That might explain why Kumori had done very little during the altercation with Cowl. I had expected her to be nearly as strong as her partner, but when she tried to take the book from me, her power hadn't been stronger than my own muscles and limbs.

But the Kemmler Alumni Association was in town with some vicious competition in mind. Why would Kumori have expended her strength for a stranger, rather than saving it for battling rival necromancers? Could the shooting victim have been important to her plans in some way?

It didn't track. The victim was just one more thug for the outfit, and he certainly wasn't going to be doing anything useful from his bed in intensive care.

I had to consider the possibility that she'd been trying to do the right thing: using her power to help someone in dire need.

The thought made me uncomfortable as hell. I knew that the necromancers I'd met were deadly dangerous, and that if I wanted to survive a conflict with them, I would have to be ready to hit them fast and hard and without any doubts. That's easy when the enemy is a frothing, psychotic monster. But Kumori's apparently humanitarian act changed things. It made her a person, and people are a hell of a lot harder for me to think about killing.

Even worse, if she'd been acting altruistically, it would mean that the dark energy the necromancers seemed to favor might not be something wholly, inherently evil. It had been used to preserve life, just as the magic I knew could be used either to protect or to destroy.

I'd always considered the line between black magic and white to be sharp and clear. But if that dark power could be employed in whatever fashion its wielder chose, that made it no different from my own. Dammit. Investigation was supposed to make me certain of what needed to be done. It was not supposed to confuse me even more.

When I opened my eyes, thick clouds had covered the sun and painted the whole world in shades of grey.

So it's more like he finds that things may be greyer than he thought rather than "Necromancy=not inherently evil".

On the other hand, later on we also get this quote:

Maybe that wasn't the point. Maybe this was one of those things in which the effort meant more than the outcome. I mean, if there was a chance, even a tiny, teeny chance that Kumori was right, and that the world could be so radically changed, wouldn't I be obliged to try? Even if I never reached the goal, never finished the quest, wouldn't the attempt to vanquish death itself be a worthy pursuit?

Wow.

This question was a big one. Way bigger than me.

I shook my head and told Kumori, "I don't know about that. What I know is that I've seen the fruits of that kind of path. I saw Cowl try to murder me when I got in his way. I've seen what Grevane and the Corpsetaker have done. I've heard about the suffering and misery Kemmler caused—and is still causing today, thanks to his stupid book.

"I don't know about something as big as trying to murder death. But I know that you can tell a tree from what kind of fruit falls off it. And the necromancy tree doesn't drop anything that isn't rotten." "Ours is a calling," Kumori said, her voice flat. "A noble road."

"I might be willing to believe you if so much of that road wasn't paved in the corpses of innocents." I saw her head shake slowly beneath the hood. "You sound like them. The Council. You do not understand."

"Or maybe I'm just not quite arrogant enough to start rearranging the universe on the assumption that I know better than God how long life should last. And there's a downside to what you're saying, too. How about trying to topple the regime of an immortal Napoleon, or Attila, or Chairman Mao? You could as easily preserve the monsters as the intellectual all-stars. It can be horribly abused, and that makes it dangerous."

I faced her down for a long and silent second. Then she let out a sigh and said, "I think we have exhausted the possibilities of this conversation."

Now I know you probably think Harry is mistaken and close-minded here but I'd say that Necromancy=evil is what Jim is going for. There is the Mother Winter-Kumori-Death connection for one thing.

[huangjimmy108]

About Necromancy:

I believe there is a WoJ that states good and evil in the DV is determine by how much that act violate free wil.

By that parameter, necromancy by itself is not evil. Unfortunately, when your magic is the kind that works between life and death, the most obvious way to apply it is to kill someone and try to raise them. The killing part is evil without a doubt, the raising part though is somewhat questionable. I think that so long as the necromancy working does not tamper with mortal souls with free wil, it is relatively neutral on the good and evil scale.

Mortimer plays with ghost and he is quite sane. Harry eats Kravos's ghost and he doesn't seem to suffer any ill effects. Raising an animal is also safe, because animal does not have free wil.

One thing, necromancy is extremely dangerous. Though necromancy by itself may not be evil, I, personally, will question the motive of someone who persues this particular diciplin of magic. Why the hell do someone studies necromancy if he or she is not trying to kill someone?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

So it's more like he finds that things may be greyer than he thought rather than "Necromancy=not inherently evil".

The line in your first quote "if that dark power could be employed in whatever fashion its wielder chose, that made it no different from my own" strikes me as fairly definitive on that point.

Now I know you probably think Harry is mistaken and close-minded here but I'd say that Necromancy=evil is what Jim is going for.

Not at all. It seems fairly obvious to me that what Jim is going for there is that plans that involve killing innocents are evil, and then that following your own judgement regardless of the consequences is evil. (This latter from Harry I do take as irony.) Nothing in there specifiies that it's the mechanism you use to do those evil things that makes them bad; Harry would be just as disapproving of a mundane dictator with utopian fantasies that involved killing lots of innocent people, I reckon.

[Tami Seven]

The line in your first quote "if that dark power could be employed in whatever fashion its wielder chose, that made it no different from my own" strikes me as fairly definitive on that point.

Not at all. It seems fairly obvious to me that what Jim is going for there is that plans that involve killing innocents are evil, and then that following your own judgement regardless of the consequences is evil. (This latter from Harry I do take as irony.) Nothing in there specifiies that it's the mechanism you use to do those evil things that makes them bad; Harry would be just as disapproving of a mundane dictator with utopian fantasies that involved killing lots of innocent people, I reckon.

Non-evil, extenuating circumstances can exist to justify 'breaking' each of the laws. In theory. But just because you are convinced that you have to kill Hitler with magic to save millions of lives, doesn't mean you won't be tainted by it, doesn't mean that it's not "Black Magic".

Kumori was idealistic in her desire to use Necromancy to 'end death'. Harry pointed out to her, rightly so, that there are so many ways what she desired could turn wrong. That she was still harming innocents and sacrificing lives for a goal that, as well intentioned as she thought she was, as much as she tried to justify her actions, would still be twisted to evil.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Non-evil, extenuating circumstances can exist to justify 'breaking' each of the laws. In theory. But just because you are convinced that you have to kill Hitler with magic to save millions of lives, doesn't mean you won't be tainted by it, doesn't mean that it's not "Black Magic".

I'm not disagreeing with that point.  At all.

I am saying that the evidence of the first passage the Count quoted looks to me like using necromancy to actively save a life - the random gangster whose soul Kumori did something to so that it didn't leave his body and the hospital had a chance to get him back to a point where he could live - is not an inherently evil act, and Harry is realising and acknowledging that.

In DB, we see Grevane using necromancy in a crimes-against-individual-humans way - reanimating zombies left right and centre - and we do not see Cowl or Kumori do so; and my overall feeling from the book is that on the whole Harry finds Grevane to feel far fouler and more corrupt than Cowl and Kumori.

[Tami Seven]

I'm not disagreeing with that point.  At all.

I am saying that the evidence of the first passage the Count quoted looks to me like using necromancy to actively save a life - the random gangster whose soul Kumori did something to so that it didn't leave his body and the hospital had a chance to get him back to a point where he could live - is not an inherently evil act, and Harry is realising and acknowledging that.

In DB, we see Grevane using necromancy in a crimes-against-individual-humans way - reanimating zombies left right and centre - and we do not see Cowl or Kumori do so; and my overall feeling from the book is that on the whole Harry finds Grevane to feel far fouler and more corrupt than Cowl and Kumori.

Corpstaker, too. But yeah, Cowl is dangerous but was not quite as blatantly evil as the other two. At least not until the ritual. That doesn't mean he's a nice person who isn't tainted.

[Xandarth]

In DB, we see Grevane using necromancy in a crimes-against-individual-humans way - reanimating zombies left right and centre - and we do not see Cowl or Kumori do so; and my overall feeling from the book is that on the whole Harry finds Grevane to feel far fouler and more corrupt than Cowl and Kumori.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. Grevane's behaviour shows he's gone further down the path of the warlock which, as I understand it, is that using black magic to achieve your desires makes you more likely to use black magic to achieve your desires in future to the point that eventually you won't see any other method of doing so.

Most of the warlocks (or potential warlocks) in the series have major control issues. Their desire to control or possess the things they want often make them irrational in their attempts to reassert their control when they think they have lost it or in their attempts to gain possession of things / people they want.

The young warlock Harry saw executed was a classic example. He starts off mind controlling a family member to avoid some punishment or to get something he wants. Then he does it more and more until every single person in his social circle is a puppet under his control. But then we find out he had one of them murdered. On the face of it this makes little sense until you factor in that mind controlling people causes permanent brain damage. It's likely the murdered family member became unable to obey his instructions any more and the loss of control over the situation led to him having them killed in a fit of rage.

Grevane and Corpsetaker both seem well down the same path. Corpsetakers fear of death and Grevane's need to control the people around him are pathological, whereas Kumori seems still to be at the justification level of warlockdom where she tries to convince herself she can stop any time and only does it when she really needs to. She's probably at a similar stage along the process that Molly is at.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Corpstaker, too. But yeah, Cowl is dangerous but was not quite as blatantly evil as the other two. At least not until the ritual. That doesn't mean he's a nice person who isn't tainted.

He isn't tainted to the extent that it messes up his mind and judgement, in the way that, say, the Korean kid at the start of PG blatantly is.

We have evidence that using the force of magic that Harry normally uses, which is repeatedly described as a positive and life-driven/aspected/oriented force, for killing or warping people's minds is corrupting and perverting and messes up the caster.

We also have evidence that necromancy is a fundamentally different force.  Harry notes this in GP when looking at the black barbed-wire spell.  It isn't life-aspected, if anything it's death-aspected.

Therefore we have no reason to lump both forces together under the heading of "black magic" and expect them both to work the same way in every detail.

[Tami Seven]

He isn't tainted to the extent that it messes up his mind and judgement, in the way that, say, the Korean kid at the start of PG blatantly is.

We have evidence that using the force of magic that Harry normally uses, which is repeatedly described as a positive and life-driven/aspected/oriented force, for killing or warping people's minds is corrupting and perverting and messes up the caster.

We also have evidence that necromancy is a fundamentally different force.  Harry notes this in GP when looking at the black barbed-wire spell.  It isn't life-aspected, if anything it's death-aspected.

Therefore we have no reason to lump both forces together under the heading of "black magic" and expect them both to work the same way in every detail.

Sooo...then there is Grey Magic?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Sooo...then there is Grey Magic?

I think calling necromancy "magic" at all invites this sort of confusion, in much the same way that lumping such disparate entities as White, Black and Red Courts together and categorising them as vampires does (if the relevant defining feature there is "feeds on people", why aren't ghouls considered a kind of vampire?); it's in character for the White Council, but I do think "bloody awful at taxonomy" is a trait we are meant to see the White Council historically as having, and a lot of the more detailed world-building stuff we pick up along the series is Harry learning that this detail or that of the DV is more complicated than White Council received wisdom has it.

[Serack]

"Or maybe I'm just not quite arrogant enough to start rearranging the universe on the assumption that I know better than God how long life should last. And there's a downside to what you're saying, too. How about trying to topple the regime of an immortal Napoleon, or Attila, or Chairman Mao? You could as easily preserve the monsters as the intellectual all-stars. It can be horribly abused, and that makes it dangerous."

Now I know you probably think Harry is mistaken and close-minded here but I'd say that Necromancy=evil is what Jim is going for. There is the Mother Winter-Kumori-Death connection for one thing.

Dude, that quote fits into this whole paradigm for me like a foot in a shoe. 

Now I know you probably think Harry is mistaken and close-minded here but I'd say that Necromancy=evil is what Jim is going for.

Not at all. It seems fairly obvious to me that what Jim is going for there is that plans that involve killing innocents are evil, and then that following your own judgement regardless of the consequences is evil. (This latter from Harry I do take as irony.) Nothing in there specifiies that it's the mechanism you use to do those evil things that makes them bad; Harry would be just as disapproving of a mundane dictator with utopian fantasies that involved killing lots of innocent people, I reckon.

Actually the 7 laws kinda do indicate that the mechanism matters.  And Harry's "ye shall know them by their fruits" paraphrase helps reinforce that they have the right idea.  Of course my whole point is that it isn't the laws themselves that make it black, but rather that it's black so they made a law against it, but it certainly is indicated (if not specified if you want to hide behind that term) that the mechanism matters.

I'm not disagreeing with that point.  At all.

I am saying that the evidence of the first passage the Count quoted looks to me like using necromancy to actively save a life - the random gangster whose soul Kumori did something to so that it didn't leave his body and the hospital had a chance to get him back to a point where he could live - is not an inherently evil act, and Harry is realising and acknowledging that.

I can see levels to the point that is being raised here that are quite profound.  It might not be inherently evil, however it is profoundly reality warping.  People die, their souls leave their body, the world continues turning... Except when some necromancer comes along and says, newp I don't want it to happen that way, and I'm going to rewrite reality so that this soul is forced to stay within this dead body and have it get revived.  Perhaps this isn't a bad thing, but it certainly is HUGE, and probably puts significant stress on the necromancer's humanity because they are playing "god" with mortal souls on a level that is disturbing and maybe even dangerous. 

Which is kinda Harry's point when he rejected her arguments.

HOWEVER, say Kumori does learn to defeat death, and manage to keep from going MFing Kemler bat-shit eating baby stew insane, reality might have given her enough feedback warping that she is no longer human and has transcended to become something else that is constrained in how it acts in other ways.  or something... I'm still playing with that idea in my head.

[peregrine]

I don't know that you can say that what Kumori did was necessarily keeping the soul bound to his dying body.  It seems to me that what she did was use her necromancy to stop the body from dying in the first place, so that the soul never left.  That the pain he was in was from having to deal with the physical damage, not  anything metaphysical from being bound to his now dead body.