Maggie Sr

[Rasins]

Okay, this is from the timeline ...

She runs away as soon as she can get away with it and takes up with bad sorts out of sheer rebellion.  "She made a couple of bad decisions, and . . . and then it was too late for her to go back."  One of her associates includes Justin DuMorne.

We know that DuMorne was a Warden.

According to McCoy, she was to be killed on sight by the Wardens.

So, how long was DuMorne no longer a Warden, or was he a "Bad cop", maybe on the take as a Warden before he got Harry?

[wardenferry419]

I would say that situation was very similar to Carlos "trying" to hunt down Molly.

[crazyut90]

I have a theory that Harry has never meet the real DuMorne!  That the person that came to fetch him was a Black Council member and that he knew about Harry because he was friends with Maggie Sr. and her crazy crowd.

[LordDresden2]

Okay, this is from the timeline ...

We know that DuMorne was a Warden.

According to McCoy, she was to be killed on sight by the Wardens.

So, how long was DuMorne no longer a Warden, or was he a "Bad cop", maybe on the take as a Warden before he got Harry?

This last seems likely enough.

Remember, he took Bob the Skull from Kemmler at some point.  Now it so happens that Bob the Skull is under a 'terminate on sight' order from the White Council, probably for good reasons from their POV (terminating Necro-bob is not self-evidently a bad idea).

Yet Justin apparently kept Bob hidden away instead.  That's not proof that he was off the rails back then, Harry hasn't terminate Bob either.  But the circumstances are also totally different.

It is suggestive, at the least.

[wardenferry419]

Yeah, Harry didn't find out the WC policy on Bob until around Book 10.

[Griffyn612]

Yeah, Harry didn't find out the WC policy on Bob until around Book 10.

I got the impression that he knew all along.  He buried Bob, and only came back for him after his time with Eb had concluded.  My guess is that Bob told him that much in the time between DuMorne's death and the Council showing up.

[wardenferry419]

Entirely possible but Harry was ignorant of Bob's range of power until Dead Beat.

[Griffyn612]

Entirely possible but Harry was ignorant of Bob's range of power until Dead Beat.

Sure, but that's because he never stopped to ask Bob details. He doesn't seem to have asked much about DuMorne, either.  But he knew to hide Bob from the Wardens, and wait to retrieve him until he was on his own.  And he knew after Dead Beat that Bob belonged to Kemmler.  So officially knowing they knew about Bob wasn't really news.  More like confirming what he'd already deduced.

[LordDresden2]

I got the impression that he knew all along.  He buried Bob, and only came back for him after his time with Eb had concluded.  My guess is that Bob told him that much in the time between DuMorne's death and the Council showing up.

That's possible, but there's nothing in the text to support it, and the 'feel' of the conversation with Luccio goes the other way.  Bob was always worried about Mab getting her hands on him, in the conversations with Harry, not the Wardens.

We don't know the details of how they met, JB has said Harry became Bob's master at 16, which is part of why Bob is as lecherous as he is, imprinting on a teenaged boy as his new master.  But how much Justin ever told him about Bob, or just what, we don't know, and I don't know if even Bob knows about the Council termination order.  It might well be part of the data he locked away when he no longer worked for Kemmler.

If Bob did know, at the very least I'd have expected some kind of comment from him on the subject when Harry arrived at Karrin's house in Dead Beat wearing a Warden cloak.

[Griffyn612]

That's possible, but there's nothing in the text to support it, and the 'feel' of the conversation with Luccio goes the other way.  Bob was always worried about Mab getting her hands on him, in the conversations with Harry, not the Wardens.

We don't know the details of how they met, JB has said Harry became Bob's master at 16, which is part of why Bob is as lecherous as he is, imprinting on a teenaged boy as his new master.  But how much Justin ever told him about Bob, or just what, we don't know, and I don't know if even Bob knows about the Council termination order.  It might well be part of the data he locked away when he no longer worked for Kemmler.

If Bob did know, at the very least I'd have expected some kind of comment from him on the subject when Harry arrived at Karrin's house in Dead Beat wearing a Warden cloak.

I'm not seeing where Harry learned anything new.

     The necromancer Kemmler had such a spirit in his service, a sort of miniature version of the Archive. Nowhere near as powerful, but it had been studying and learning beside wizards for generations, and the things it was capable of were appalling.” She shook her head.
     I took a sip of tea, because otherwise the gulp would have been suspicious. She was talking about Bob. And she was right about what Bob was capable of doing. When I’d unlocked the personality he’d taken on under some of his former owners, he’d nearly killed me.
     “The Wardens destroyed it, of course,” she said.
     No, they hadn’t. Justin DuMorne, former Warden, hadn’t destroyed the skull. He’d smuggled it from Kemmler’s lab and kept it in his own—until I’d burned him to death, and taken it from him in turn.

That seems to be the entirety of their Bob conversation.  There was no standing kill order with the Council because they believed it to be destroyed.  As far as they're concerned, Bob was dead for forty years.

[Mr. Death]

I could see Kemmler as a situation where a lot of people were deputized as Wardens, then took off the grey afterward.

I could also see a battle like that being traumatic enough that some Wardens would just outright retire.

So I can buy a couple ways DuMorne could've been a Warden at that point, then left the service.

We also don't know when Ebenezer found out about DuMorne's connection with Maggie Sr., or his general dastardliness. He doesn't say, "I knew at the time that Maggie had taken up with DuMorne, and it was well known that DuMorne was a bad guy at the time." In fact, a Senior Council member in Summer Knight is able to make the argument that Harry made up everything about DuMorne, so his being a bad guy isn't universally known or accepted.

Most likely, Ebenezer is talking about things he only learned long after the fact.

[Griffyn612]

I could see Kemmler as a situation where a lot of people were deputized as Wardens, then took off the grey afterward.

I could also see a battle like that being traumatic enough that some Wardens would just outright retire.

So I can buy a couple ways DuMorne could've been a Warden at that point, then left the service.

We also don't know when Ebenezer found out about DuMorne's connection with Maggie Sr., or his general dastardliness. He doesn't say, "I knew at the time that Maggie had taken up with DuMorne, and it was well known that DuMorne was a bad guy at the time." In fact, a Senior Council member in Summer Knight is able to make the argument that Harry made up everything about DuMorne, so his being a bad guy isn't universally known or accepted.

Most likely, Ebenezer is talking about things he only learned long after the fact.

Personally I think DuMorne was at that dinner party that Eb attended.  But there's no evidence for it.  I do think if he was, he might have already been a retired warden. 

[Snark Knight]

He doesn't seem to have asked much about DuMorne, either.  But he knew to hide Bob from the Wardens, and wait to retrieve him until he was on his own.

It occurs to me that when Bob told Harry to bury his the skull between killing Justin and being taken in for trial, he was taking an awful risk of being left buried indefinitely if the Wardens had just executed Harry. I wonder if he knew enough to predict Eb would step up, or it was just an act of desperation to go with a strong chance of being buried forever over a certainty of being destroyed if he was caught with Harry?

[Griffyn612]

It occurs to me that when Bob told Harry to bury his the skull between killing Justin and being taken in for trial, he was taking an awful risk of being left buried indefinitely if the Wardens had just executed Harry. I wonder if he knew enough to predict Eb would step up, or it was just an act of desperation to go with a strong chance of being buried forever over a certainty of being destroyed if he was caught with Harry?

Probably a gamble.  But someone randomly finding it is better odds than surviving the wardens.

[Mr. Death]

Bob's already hundreds of years old. He might not like being buried (he whines about it in the margins of the RPG book), but he can take it and it's preferable to the Wardens finding him and destroying him.