Law Breaking Vs Black Magic [Spoilers for everything]

[wizard nelson]

Ok so I'll admit mostly this conversation is over my head ATM, but two things. 1 I feel intent is a sieve or filter when using black magic, even if it doesn't prevent corruption. That I feel is why WOJ its significant the wardens wear grey cloaks. 2 Sometimes in the series it specifies that Black Magic draws from a source all its own, it apparently being the same fuelling necromancy. I was thinking of Bobs description of bianca after she disperses Harry's fire strike. If Magic is life Black Magic is death/entropy? The negatives of existence.

[Carl]

Yeah i'm having trouble keeping track of all this so i'll throw my own thoughts in here on the bits i am following.

1. We've seen with the warlock at the start of PG that certain types of magic do affect people, we've got a number of other such mind altering quotes as i recall too from various sources.

2. We know from a WoJ that the results matter far more than the intent.

3. We've no information on non-magic violation's, but i'm guessing they don't have the same effect.

Anyway my theory on what's happening here:

1. Magic is on some level a cosmic force, when you use it to achieve something you create a link between yourself and everything affected by what you've just done.

2. Whilst it's not clear why it's the case, affecting mortal's with magic seems to have effects that aren't present with non-mortal's. Almost certainly connected to the whole violation of free will. Presumably some kind of counterbalance to offset what's just happened. Using a cosmic force to violate free will is a sort of cosmic no-no, which seems to fit in with Uriel's actions in GS actually. Angel's, Fallen or otherwise, seem to work everything off cosmic forces, (i.e. their soulfire), and that allowed Uriel to take corrective action. In that case it was a sort of non-involuntary balancing but it could be where a cosmic force is used by a free-willed person the response is automatic. Alternatively as immortal's, Angels and the like are immune to the feedback thus meaning someone like Uriel has to step in, (and he's got less direct feedback methods he can use as a result of being sentient rather than being a form of newtons third law).

3. I think why the effect twists minds is sort of what Terry Prattchet via Vimes will often talk about, when someone kills and their sufficiently mentally unbalanced already the act of that first kill makes them feel like they have power of life and death, they feel like "a god" as Vimes put's it. So they do it again and each time they become more and more detached from reality seeing people more and more as just things to be destroyed if they get in their way. You'll hear similar things from psycholinguists about real world serial killer a lot of the time. In IRL though this only happens with unstable personalities.

I think what happens in the DF'verse with magic is that the feedback is forcibly changing how you view things. If you do something that treats a free willed being in a certain way, (intentionally or otherwise), it feedbacks to make you see free willed beings in a different way in accordance with whatever just happened.

[ReaderAt2046]

One point that might be relevant regarding the First Law. It's a fairly well-known fact that humans have an instinctive block against killing other humans. This used to be a huge problem for armies, as a lot of soldiers would "freeze" when they needed to kill under extreme stress. So what the army started doing was taking people and retraining their instincts, putting them under extreme stress and making them "kill" dummies and practice targets again and again and again, until their reaction under stress was not "mercy!" but "kill!". I've begun to suspect that breaking the First Law does much the same thing, except much faster.

As the analogy above suggests, I don't believe that this necessarily makes the wizard evil (and I don't think the White Council does either, as suggested by the Doom of Damocles), but it does make him dangerous. Possibly dangerous heroic (like any good soldier), but still dangerous.

[Serack]

One point that might be relevant regarding the First Law. It's a fairly well-known fact that humans have an instinctive block against killing other humans. This used to be a huge problem for armies, as a lot of soldiers would "freeze" when they needed to kill under extreme stress. So what the army started doing was taking people and retraining their instincts, putting them under extreme stress and making them "kill" dummies and practice targets again and again and again, until their reaction under stress was not "mercy!" but "kill!". I've begun to suspect that breaking the First Law does much the same thing, except much faster.

As the analogy above suggests, I don't believe that this necessarily makes the wizard evil (and I don't think the White Council does either, as suggested by the Doom of Damocles), but it does make him dangerous. Possibly dangerous heroic (like any good soldier), but still dangerous.

Basic Training RBT (Rifle Bayonet Training) flashback

Army Drill Sargeant:  What makes the green grass grow?

Recruits:  Blood Blood Blood!  Blood makes the green grass grow!

Army Drill Sargeant:  What makes the grass grow green?

Recruits:  Guts Guts Guts!  Guts make the grass grow green!

Drill Sargeant:  Pivot!

Recruits:  Kill!

Drill Sargeant:  Pivot!

Recruits:  Kill!

Repeat ad nauseum

[Carl]

One point that might be relevant regarding the First Law. It's a fairly well-known fact that humans have an instinctive block against killing other humans. This used to be a huge problem for armies, as a lot of soldiers would "freeze" when they needed to kill under extreme stress. So what the army started doing was taking people and retraining their instincts, putting them under extreme stress and making them "kill" dummies and practice targets again and again and again, until their reaction under stress was not "mercy!" but "kill!". I've begun to suspect that breaking the First Law does much the same thing, except much faster.

As the analogy above suggests, I don't believe that this necessarily makes the wizard evil (and I don't think the White Council does either, as suggested by the Doom of Damocles), but it does make him dangerous. Possibly dangerous heroic (like any good soldier), but still dangerous.

This was what i was trying to say, (rather inelegantly), with point 3. The magic causes a feedback effect which changes the mental outlook of the magic user, much the same way military training does for soldiers.

@Serack: Reminds me of that marching song from TP's Night Watch, wonder if that was intentional on TP's part.

[Serack]

@Serack: Reminds me of that marching song from TP's Night Watch, wonder if that was intentional on TP's part.

Maybe.

That wasn't a marching song but something we were required to shout when prompted while doing "RBT" training drills (esentially swinging around an M-16 with a bayonet afixed)

The US military calls "marching songs" "cadences" and I have a topic dedicated to those here

Probably the only cadence that was more bloodthirsty and inuring to violence than the things we had to scream during RBT drills was a cadence I don't remember much of other than the line "Napalm sticks to kids"