Author Topic: A Cowl WAG - I promise it's new  (Read 11054 times)

Offline Kindler

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Re: A Cowl WAG - I promise it's new
« Reply #30 on: September 08, 2017, 01:43:29 PM »
I don't think Luccio or anyone else had to be compromised for the location of Camp Kaboom, or the previous Warden safehouses that Ebenezer mentions at the end of Proven Guilty, to be leaked. When Eb says that only a few people knew about it, he's simply wrong: he forgot about Peabody, the secretary who was managing all of the documentation for the ongoing war effort. Everything has a paper trail, and Peabody's role was maintaining it for the Council.

If you walk into any business, the person who knows more than anyone else is the CEO's secretary, even more than the CEO realizes. That's pretty much Peabody's job.

Also, I'm not sure Cowl's voice is evidence of much. My reading of the odd vibrations and warble to it was that he was deliberately disguising it with magic. I could be wrong, though.

Anyone know what the origin of the only spell we hear him use is? Dorosh? That might be a big clue; its language origin would probably at least eliminate a nationality or three. It sounds Central European to me.


Offline Snark Knight

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Re: A Cowl WAG - I promise it's new
« Reply #31 on: September 08, 2017, 02:40:44 PM »
I never thought of Cowl as having a German accent or really any kind of accent.  The only clue Cowl might be German is he knew the difference between Shubert's music Erlkönig and Goethe's poem, which provide the words used in the song.  However, you don't have to be Austrian or German to know who those two people were.  Harry has any affinity for classical music so he's heard of Franz Shubert and probably went to concerts where his music was played.  Whether he's read much poetry or anything by Goethe is something we have no way of knowing, but I wouldn't be surprised if Harry is much better read than the average college graduate because he doesn't have a TV, radio or the internet.

I'm pretty sure Cowl's reference to Goethe was a quip jumping from Erlkonig to his even more famous work, the play Faust - as in, Cowl was alluding to having made a Faustian bargain himself, but it went over Harry's head at the time.

I doubt he has to be German to be familiar with those works though. Pretty much any wizard of European origin and sufficient age would presumably have been exposed to the range of classical music and literature. Most of the elderly, conventional Council types seem to make a point of flaunting that they're upper class - it probably would have been considered terribly vulgar not to educate their apprentices on culture as well as magic.

Cowl doesn't like "the bad man Kemmler".

That, again, falls under saying one thing in front of Kumori and another later when she's not listening. At Murphy's house, when she's inside searching for Bob and Cowl is talking to Harry outside, he makes it pretty clear that he has plenty of history with Kemmler and the other apprentices. He says knocking the power out while Grevane and Corpsetaker fought each other was par for the course - him doing the serious technical magic while they bickered - and that it was also normal that they'd present one face of smiling and getting along for the greater glory of Kemmler while planning to eliminate each other when the chance came.

He might not have been exactly an apprentice like the others. He might even have serious misgivings about Kemmler himself. But when he doesn't have to worry about shaking Kumori's delusion that he's in it for some greater good, he's quite free about admitting an association with Kemmler and company that goes beyond "nothing but disdain".

Offline Rasins

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Re: A Cowl WAG - I promise it's new
« Reply #32 on: September 08, 2017, 03:59:07 PM »
I'm pretty sure Cowl's reference to Goethe was a quip jumping from Erlkonig to his even more famous work, the play Faust - as in, Cowl was alluding to having made a Faustian bargain himself, but it went over Harry's head at the time.

I doubt he has to be German to be familiar with those works though. Pretty much any wizard of European origin and sufficient age would presumably have been exposed to the range of classical music and literature. Most of the elderly, conventional Council types seem to make a point of flaunting that they're upper class - it probably would have been considered terribly vulgar not to educate their apprentices on culture as well as magic.

That, again, falls under saying one thing in front of Kumori and another later when she's not listening. At Murphy's house, when she's inside searching for Bob and Cowl is talking to Harry outside, he makes it pretty clear that he has plenty of history with Kemmler and the other apprentices. He says knocking the power out while Grevane and Corpsetaker fought each other was par for the course - him doing the serious technical magic while they bickered - and that it was also normal that they'd present one face of smiling and getting along for the greater glory of Kemmler while planning to eliminate each other when the chance came.

He might not have been exactly an apprentice like the others. He might even have serious misgivings about Kemmler himself. But when he doesn't have to worry about shaking Kumori's delusion that he's in it for some greater good, he's quite free about admitting an association with Kemmler and company that goes beyond "nothing but disdain".

I'm thinking that he was NOT an apprentice of Kemmler.  I think he knew Kemmler, not necessarily friends, but knew him.  What's more, if Cowl is Simon, then it's entirely possible, as a senior member of the council, he'd have access to all the records about and by Kemmler that the council collected.

The only thing against Simon, to me, is Cowls apparent desire for the council to fall.
At times I wish I had a clone, but then I realize, I could never live with that a-hole.

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Offline KurtinStGeorge

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Re: A Cowl WAG - I promise it's new
« Reply #33 on: September 09, 2017, 01:41:44 AM »
I think it would make for a better story for Cowl to be someone that Harry has heard about or seen than for it to be some unknown magic-user that has been around for 100+ years and was never foreshadowed.

I agree with you.  I wish Harry had met a few more people on the Council in the books; I mean characters that have been fleshed out a bit, not just names like Klaus the Toy Maker, so we had more suspects and they would be people we might identify with and make this mystery matter more to the reader.  If it turns out that Cowl is Simon, Ebenezer will be upset, but it won't have any emotional impact on me.
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Offline kazimmoinuddin

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Re: A Cowl WAG - I promise it's new
« Reply #34 on: September 09, 2017, 09:08:06 PM »
Since cowl is so mysterious I wonder if Harry will pretend to be him at some point.
k moinuddin