Unsolved Mystery Book11 Shaggy snacks

[Rasins]

I think a Toot and Lacuna story would be fun, weird, but fun.

Lacuna has been recalled for a short time to gather a night's worth of teeth.  She has to do this because it is her purpose and if she doesn't, she's like Spok when he has to mate.

Lacuna gets her assignments and realizes she needs help and only Toot-toot is available.

[Snark Knight]

I do not think he has all the ingredients.  When Harry explains to Butters why the Darkhallow happened in Chicago specifically, he comes up with a whole bunch of necessary components, including the ancient Native American zombies summoned from the exhibition in the Field Museum (not easy to replicate), the old ghosts following the Erlking, and the way the boundary between Earth and the NN has been torn up in the Chicago area.  (Which is done in GP, either directly by Mavra or by Bianca under Mavra's tuition - iirc the black barbed-wire magic is never pinned down specifically to one or other of them, but either way it is a thing Mavra is doing as set-up that far back.  I suspect that is also why the Stone Table manifests in Chicago in SK.)

One more piece of evidence that the object of the exercise is not to actually complete the Darkhallow at all, IMO.  Just use the prospect of completing it to lure a bunch of people into doing things that serve Cowl and Mavra's greater ends.

If they are teamed up though, Mavra could easily have duplicated torturing some ghosts somewhere else to stir up the veil. Collecting enough ancient hunter artifacts / remains would be time-consuming, but either of them is more than capable of raiding a couple lesser museums and combining their hauls.

It certainly seems like Cowl or team Cowl + Mavra aren't too interested in actually completing a Darkhallow. Yet Cowl sure seemed right ready to go through with it once Grevane and Corpsetaker were dead...

[Rasins]

I doubt highly that Mavra is interested in the DH happening.  Seems like it feeds on Necro energy, which I suspect is what is keeping her going.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Yet Cowl sure seemed right ready to go through with it once Grevane and Corpsetaker were dead...

Convincing Harry of that is a good way to stop Harry digging any further into what's really going on there, though.

[Bacchus]

from what we learned in cold days the darkhallow might have to be done on Halloween

and most importantly the white council would send everyone who could throw a spell to try and stop it when they learned, and they probably would learn because you have to destabilize the barrier between life and death with very heavy use of black magic. The whole city was brought to a state of panic and chaos and that cant be kept secret.

remember the kemmlerites had to make a deal with the red court to launch multiple  insanely big attacks that kept the white council off their backs.
even kemmler himself couldn't pull it off because the white council knows if the darkhallow succeeds they will all die soon after

[jonas]

I've always attributed Cowl's reasoning that it must be done is because he's from a timeline where it was done. Harry's action to stop it was quite Willfull considering.

Per this and another convo, I just realized if things had gone down at Bianca's how they intended, Harry's ghost would likely be one of those consumed during the hallow. Maybe nothing, but interesting to think about.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

and most importantly the white council would send everyone who could throw a spell to try and stop it when they learned, and they probably would learn because you have to destabilize the barrier between life and death with very heavy use of black magic.

No sign they did that during or after GP, though.  The Council's ability to realise people are doing black magic seems limited to looking at the after-effects.

The whole city was brought to a state of panic and chaos and that cant be kept secret.

I've never found the amount of "people in the DV don't believe in magic even when there is lots of evidence because people these days are rationalist" the books rely on to work for me; if nothing else, there is a non-trivial audience in the real world for any number of ways of looking at the world that would love to find evidence for magic.

remember the kemmlerites had to make a deal with the red court to launch multiple insanely big attacks that kept the white council off their backs.

That is a way of looking at it, certainly.  I don't find it a particularly convincing one because being able to almost, but not quite, keep the Council entirely off their backs would seem rather suspicious to me.

[wardenferry419]

While I find the general disbelief in the painfully obvious displays of magic to be a difficult pill to swallow; it is one of the building blocks  of the Dresdenverse.

[Rasins]

Harry's explaination that most people don't WANT to know about the supernatural, because it terrifies them, is completely plausible, in my humble opinion.

Just look at our history. 

Many Germans and Japanese didn't believe in the concentration camps.
Many still believe the Earth is flat.
And let's not talk about the moon landing.

[Kindler]

Many still believe the Earth is flat.

That's the one that's actually making a comeback. I watched an hour-long YouTube video explaining why the Earth was actually flat, with perfectly reasoned arguments that essentially boiled down to "This is a millennia-old conspiracy to con the world into believing something, because..." I've yet to see anyone provide any way anyone could profit from perpetuating the Grand Lie, other than selling globes. And, honestly, what's the margin on those?

Anyway, there are plenty of people who would be totally stoked to find out that magic is real, even with all the terror. I don't know anyone who doesn't have a ghost story, or something similar. I've seen some stuff I can't explain. Personally, I'm reasonably certain that the majority of the population, at least in America, would happily believe that the supernatural exists. It would be too interesting, and, honestly, who wouldn't love watching scientists scramble to explain it?

[wardenferry419]

They would happily believe the supernatural exists until it bites.

[Rasins]

It all depends on the delivery.  Most folks don't want to believe in anything THEY can't do.  If someone can do Magic, well then why can't I do magic? 

I mean everyone is going to be a sports-star when they are young, right?

[Ananda]

Harry's explaination that most people don't WANT to know about the supernatural, because it terrifies them, is completely plausible, in my humble opinion.

What? Most of the world believes in magic called by another term: religion. The figures in those do all sorts of tricks and have magic powers. I think that if DV universe magic were true, people would be clamouring to believe. Magic isn’t real in the real universe and people have whole institutions and cultures built around it. In the DV universe, there’d be magic shops everywhere if the people were anything like humans.

[wardenferry419]

It all depends on the delivery.  Most folks don't want to believe in anything THEY can't do.  If someone can do Magic, well then why can't I do magic? 

I mean everyone is going to be a sports-star when they are young, right?

Nah, I wanted to be Stephen King.

[wardenferry419]

What? Most of the world believes in magic called by another term: religion. The figures in those do all sorts of tricks and have magic powers. I think that if DV universe magic were true, people would be clamouring to believe. Magic isn’t real in the real universe and people have whole institutions and cultures built around it. In the DV universe, there’d be magic shops everywhere if the people were anything like humans.

And most of them would be like that idiot pornstar in BR that thought she was great at magic that was coming fro somewhere else.