Was Nemesis in Storm Front?

[groinkick]

When Dresden was using his Sight on Victor Sells home he changed....  Here is a glimpse of it:

"I prepared to destroy the lake house, the Shadowman, and any of the pathetic underlings he had with him.  With such power, I could cast my defiance at the Council itself, the gathering of white-bearded old fools without foresight, without imagination, without vision.  The Council, and that pathetic watchdog, Morgan, had no idea of the true depths of my strength.  The energy was all there, gleeful within my anger, ready to reach out and reduce to ashes all that I hated and feared."

Someone (his mom?) intervened and snapped Harry from this.  I believed that this was either Harry's own taint from the black magic he'd used in the past, or the corruption of the place.  However now I'm wondering if it was Nemesis...  Nemesis doesn't seem to force people to do things, but to use their own feelings, and twisting the person into wanting to act a certain way.  Also part of Harry snapping out of it was him saying his full Name similarly to how he used it against Before. 

[Snark Knight]

Unless the WOJ that the first Nemesis character seen directly 'on stage' appeared in GP was a misdirect, I kind of doubt Sells was personally infected, and I don't see why a pool of Nemesis would be hanging around his house if he wasn't infested himself.

[forumghost]

I don't think so, I think that Nemesis is a lot more limited then We've been allowed to see so far, and can't just spread around willy-nilly.

The most likely answer to me is exactly what you said- the negative energy of the place itself combined with the marks already on Harry's soul caused him to get drunk on the dark side fpr a second before recovering himself.

Which explains a lot about how the bad-guys in the DF act, really.

[Griffyn612]

My guess is that the outsider contagion was present in all of the books, and Nemesis might be able to peak in and influence those people, but we didn't see anyone possessed by Nemesis.

For that matter, I don't know that we saw a Nemesis possession until Summer Knight, when Lea was already under the influence.

[jonas]

I've never been able to decide how I felt on that one. On the one hand dark magic and Nemesis are certainly connected, on the other I see no real reasoning why Nemesis would step in to protect Harry here from being influenced by the seething mass of dark magic around sells house. How, cosmologically, that might be enabled or reasoned out or why She'd care. I'm more of an opinion it was his mother, but the two are not mutually exclusive necessarily.... I mean If Morgana's Atheme has a main line connection to N and Margaret is the spiritual successor to the Le Fay name, then I could see her being the influential person mirroring the original and ergo connected similar to Molly's connection to the WL position. But that still wouldn't explain a lot about the situation.

[groinkick]

I've never been able to decide how I felt on that one. On the one hand dark magic and Nemesis are certainly connected, on the other I see no real reasoning why Nemesis would step in to protect Harry

I wasn't saying that Nemesis protected him.  I was saying that Nemesis was trying to get Harry to go bad, burn the home to ashes with everyone in it, and to become a warlock.

[peregrine]

Was it Lea who connected Sells, the FBI agents and riling up the ghosts(?) as sharing an origin?

I figure that Nemesis was behind them, if not shown "on screen."  Agents of Nemesis tainting Sells and Denton etc...  And that probably we saw the process happening at the party in GP.

Right now it's hard to tell because we don't really know how much direct influence Nemesis has and how much "thought" it has or if it just feeds certain desires and ideas someone already has.

[groinkick]

Was it Lea who connected Sells, the FBI agents and riling up the ghosts(?) as sharing an origin?

That's the impression I got

[Griffyn612]

Was it Lea who connected Sells, the FBI agents and riling up the ghosts(?) as sharing an origin?

I figure that Nemesis was behind them, if not shown "on screen."  Agents of Nemesis tainting Sells and Denton etc...  And that probably we saw the process happening at the party in GP.

Right now it's hard to tell because we don't really know how much direct influence Nemesis has and how much "thought" it has or if it just feeds certain desires and ideas someone already has.

No, it was Lily in Cold Days in the botanical garden meeting. 

“A disease. A parasite. A poison. Sir Knight, you must have seen it. You must have seen the contagion spreading. It has been before your eyes for years. It is a kind of spiritual malady. A mental plague. An infection slowly spreading across the earth. It changes that which ought not change. It destroys a father’s love for his family by twisting it into maniacal ambition. It distorts and corrupts the good intentions of agents of mortal law into violence and death. It erodes the sensible fear that keeps a weakly talented sorcerer from reaching out for more power, no matter how terrible the cost."
“Victor Sells the Shadowman. Agent Denton and the Hexenwolves. Leonid Kravos the Nightmare. My first three major cases.”
“Yes. Each of them was tainted by the contagion. It destroyed them.”
“Fourth case. Aurora. A champion of peace and healing who set out to send the natural world into havoc.”
“I saw what it did to her. I didn’t know what was happening to my friend, but I saw it changing her. Twisting her day by day. I loved Aurora like a sister, Sir Knight. But in the end, even I could see what she had become.”

My take is that Lily was right, and that Maeve hadn't fed her a lot of misinformation.  But that doesn't mean that Lily or the rest fully understand Nemesis.

My guess is that there's a corruption that can and is spreading through humanity that weakens the Super-Ego and leaves its victims with a boosted Id (sound familiar?).  That's what has corrupted the mortals, and Nemesis can use it as a doorway to whisper into the minds of the corrupted.

But I also think Nemesis isn't as powerful as most people seem to think.  I think Nemesis is the third Walker (Beside) and I like to speculate that Nemesis can only infect/possess three beings at a time; specifically those that lack the free will to prevent it.  Once mortals go far enough, they can be possessed by Outsiders, but that's not really what we've seen so far.

[groinkick]

My opinion is Nemesis IS the corruption.  It sounds much like Hastur from Lovecraft

"Hastur (The Unspeakable One, Him Who Is Not to be Named, Assatur, Xastur, H'aaztre, or Kaiwan) is an entity of the Cthulhu Mythos. "

Hastur's main weapon is to instill insanity in it's victims minds.  The people often create a symbol that they show to other people, and supposedly anyone who sees the symbol is capable of being influenced by Hastur.


I do agree that it's not all powerful.  It may be similar to being connected to a Coin.  Most people seem to succumb, but if the will is there they can refuse it.

[Fcrate]

Was it Lea who connected Sells, the FBI agents and riling up the ghosts(?) as sharing an origin?

I figure that Nemesis was behind them, if not shown "on screen."  Agents of Nemesis tainting Sells and Denton etc...  And that probably we saw the process happening at the party in GP.

Right now it's hard to tell because we don't really know how much direct influence Nemesis has and how much "thought" it has or if it just feeds certain desires and ideas someone already has.

I'm not sure who exactly, but Lily, Harry himself and Rashid have listed Victor sells as one of the oddities happening lately.
I think that groinkick is correct. Upstart sorcerer who had access to more power and training than he should have, it's either Nemesis's work directly, or one of the circle. Which is more of the same.

[forumghost]

I think that Sells was being helped by the Red Court myself.

He used the same spell as they used in Changes for his murders, plus his attacks were aimed at Marcone (who was at the time competing for turf with Bianca IIRC).

Whether this was part of Nemesis's plans, just a general push for more chaos, or something that the Ramps came up with themselves might be up for debate

[Mira]

  Maybe not in person, but those who are working towards the same ends..

[raidem]

This spread of Nemesis across the earth reminds me of the dissonance cast against Demonreach.  Let me juxtapose some of the passages.

“A disease. A parasite. A poison. Sir Knight, you must have seen it. You must have seen the contagion spreading. It has been before your eyes for years. It is a kind of spiritual malady. A mental plague. An infection slowly spreading across the earth. It changes that which ought not change. It destroys a father’s love for his family by twisting it into maniacal ambition. It distorts and corrupts the good intentions of agents of mortal law into violence and death. It erodes the sensible fear that keeps a weakly talented sorcerer from reaching out for more power, no matter how terrible the cost."
“Victor Sells the Shadowman. Agent Denton and the Hexenwolves. Leonid Kravos the Nightmare. My first three major cases.”
“Yes. Each of them was tainted by the contagion. It destroyed them.”
“Fourth case. Aurora. A champion of peace and healing who set out to send the natural world into havoc.”
“I saw what it did to her. I didn’t know what was happening to my friend, but I saw it changing her. Twisting her day by day. I loved Aurora like a sister, Sir Knight. But in the end, even I could see what she had become.”

“Merlin didn’t build the prison five times,” Bob said. “He built it once. In five different times. All at the same time.” I felt my brows knit. “Uh. He was in the same place, doing the same thing, in five different times at once?” “Exactly.” “That does not make any sense,” I said. “Look, a mortal jail is built in three dimensions, right? Merlin built this one in four, and probably in several more, though you can’t really tell whether or not he built it in a given dimension until you go there and measure it, and the act of measuring it will change it, but the point is: This is really advanced stuff.” I sighed. “Yeah. I’m getting that. But what’s wrong?”

The shot zoomed out, rising up to give a top-down view of the island, which became a blurry shape. A familiar five-pointed star blazed itself across the surface of the lake, its lines so long that the pentagon shape at its center enfolded the island entirely. Within the pentagon, a second pentacle formed, like the first one drawn in the manner to preserve and protect. The camera tightened in, and I saw that the second pentagon enfolded the entire hilltop where the cottage and ruined tower lay. The camera tightened more, and I saw more pentacles drawn, this time not flat but at dozens of intersecting angles, their centers encircling the dozen tunnels full of evil beings beneath the island. “These,” Bob said, “represent the original enchantments on the island. This is vastly simplified, of course, but the basic star-and-circle architecture is the same as the work you do, Harry.” Then the design blurred and increased, growing denser and more delicate and more brilliant in power, until something twinged in my brain and I had to look away from the diagram. “Yeah, sorry about that, boss. This is meant to represent the entanglement of the spells being delivered at different times.”

“No wonder it was so complicated,” I muttered. “And it’s even worse than this,” Bob said. “I’m filtering it down for you. And here’s the problem.” I forced myself to look back at the projection, and saw those millions upon millions of spells resonating with one another, spreading and interlocking into an impenetrable barrier. It was, I thought, somehow like watching crystals grow. The spells powering the actual construction of it hadn’t been, alone, too much stronger than some of the work I had done—but when they’d been interconnected with their counterparts across time, they’d fed upon one another, created a perfect resonance of energy that had become something infinitely greater than the sum of its parts. Then I saw the dissonance appear. Bob had chosen to show it as a sullen red light that began to pulse lightly at the westernmost edges of the great design. It began as something faint, but then, like an oncoming headache, started to throb into something larger and more noticeable. Where scarlet and blue light touched, there were ugly flares of energy—flares that I had been sensing ever since I’d gotten to the island. Before long, that scarlet pulse had spread to half the island, and then, abruptly, the screen went white. Text at the bottom read, NOVEMBER 1. “By tomorrow,” I said. “Super. But I still don’t see what is wrong, Bob.” “Energy hits it,” Bob said. “A directed burst of energy, a whole lot of it. It unravels the whole containment spell Merlin laid down and triggers the fail-safe.” “FIRE,” rumbled Demonreach. “I figured that one out, thanks,” I said. “But nothing has actually happened to the spells yet?”
“Nope,” said Bob. “That tension that’s building? It’s . . . Well, think of it as cause and effect, only backward.” “Huh?” “What the island is experiencing now is the echo of the moment that burst of energy strikes it,” Bob said. “Only instead of the echo happening after, it’s happening first.” I stopped and thought. “You’re telling me that the reason the island is about to blow up is . . . because it’s about to blow up?” Bob sighed. “Someone hits the island with energy, Harry. But they’ve figured out how Merlin put this place together. They aren’t attacking it in three dimensions. They’re attacking in four. They’re sending power through time as well as through space.” “So . . . I have to stop them from attacking the island tomorrow?” “No,” Bob said, exasperated. “You have to stop them from attacking whenever it is that they actually attack.”

[raidem]

What I argue is that Nemesis, or more of it, was (or was meant to have been more fully) inserted into the world via the attack on Demonreach.  There may have been similar attacks at other times on Demonreach. One of these times the Gatekeeper may have participated in and in that event more of, or Nemesis crept into our reality.  And, Demonreach holds a grudge that a mistake Gatekeeper made, allowed it.

So I'm saying that Nemesis spread is similar or comes from same energy as the attack projected on Demonreach that allows the dissonance.  The Nemesis spread on Earth is analogous to the dissonance spread on Demonreach.  It is as if somewhere in reality, Demonreach may have fell or was weakened by the power used against it.

If the Knights or more specifically HWWB servers the Lord of Slowest Terror, Nemesis may be some sort of projection of his body, influence into our world.