Denarians and/or Circle in Storm Front?

[morriswalters]

There is what we know about Marcone versus what Sells could know.  We have access to special knowledge.  And of course Marcone wanted to communicate as well.

[Mira]

There is what we know about Marcone versus what Sells could know.  We have access to special knowledge.  And of course Marcone wanted to communicate as well.

Actually we don't.   We know according to his wife that Victor was a decent enough husband and father, then he was fired from his job and it changed him.  He began to check out books about
magic at the library and it went down hill from there.  None of that surprised Harry, that in his anger, desperation he could turn to the dark arts, lots of sorcerers according to him start out that way.   Someone obviously got a hold of him during that time and guided him.   My bet is that it would be
someone like Cowl.. 

Keep in mind that during all of this time it has been about divide and conquer..  Going forward to
Summer Knight,  why try to frame Mab for the Summer Knight's murder?  Answer,  while the courts are rivals,  Both courts are united in how they view the enemy.   The murders in Storm Front stirred the pot fracturing what normally would basically ignore one another.

[Kindler]

My take on Storm Front is that it was all about getting Three Eye onto the market for some purpose. That's what I think the Circle/Black Council/Whatever really wanted.

So they guide Sells down the path to Criminal Prosperity by helping him start up this magical meth lab, right? That's the Circle's real goal. Marcone becomes a problem for Sells, and he gets enough power to "handle him" on his own, either through further research and experimentation or just by getting a hookup from the Circle. But he needs Marcone's hair or something, else he'd have just offed him from the start. That's why he was paying off what's his face, the guy who got Harry's hair who bit the dust in the original Velvet Room courtesy of Cujo Hendricks. It just so happened that Harry got in the way and was a more immediate threat, and so was prioritized over Marcone. I fully expect Sells to have gotten to Marcone during the following storm if Harry hadn't stopped him. In fact, it might've been during that SAME storm if it lasted long enough.

But yeah, I think the Circle wanted something to happen with the Three Eye. I just don't know what that something is.

[g33k]

Are you suggesting Bianca's employee was the real target there? I thought she was collateral damage of attacking Marcone's lieutenant - Sells' whole turf war was with Marcone.

The 'two-fer' being deliberate would have required careful timing to strike just as they were intimate enough to get both with one use of the curse. I kind of doubt Sells would have been up to prepping the curse ritual and spying through shadows on them to time it that closely...

In terms of the plot, the killing was a message.  I can reach you anywhere, at any moment.  And you use the tools that you are good with.  In this case magic and ritual.  So a message directed at Marcone.  And he would have known what it was.  Much as everyone knows what bodies hanging off overpasses in Mexico is communicating.

I'm not buying the "collateral damage" theory.  This isn't a random spell that would've hit everyone in the room, or everyone in the bed... etc...  Every victim is a target; it rips out specific hearts, not "any heart in the right spot."

We know the Ramps have the big-ritual heart-ripper (they used it in Changes) and we know from Vadderung that it's basically the same spell -- of the same origin -- as what Sells used.  That says to me that the origin (of both) is the Black Council.

But there's more than one thing going on, and they may not -- in fact, probably were not -- all coming from the same people pulling strings.

There's the overt criminal turf-war, Sells-v-Marcone.  I think Sells is his own agency here -- Big Man doing some dick-waving, gonna challenge Marcone.

Another turf-war, Raith-v-Bianca (because the Ramp was operating in the Whamp's "sex" domain).  Raith figures the Sells/Marcone thing as his cover, letting him "pull the strings."

There's a magical turf-war, a new player in town staking a claim:  the magical drug, but also the heart-ripper, the lightning-fuel, etc.  On the one hand, that's Sells again, more dick-waving; but at a deeper level, that's whoever is backing Sells, supplying him with his rituals & formulae &c.

Ultimately, as noted, the Heart-Ripper comes from the Black Council.  They may well have nudged Raith into motion; I figure Papa Raith for a BC asset, maybe even a member of the BC's Senior Council / Inner Circle / whatever... probably not quite that high, and likely an "external" asset, not actually a part of the Circle.

Then there's the secondary/reactive effects -- the "turf wars" were ACTIONS, and we all know those lead to REACTIONS...

For our purposes, getting Harry involved was a key reaction.  Who wanted Harry in this thing?  Whoever was feeding the high-level magic to Sells was probably doing so (at least in part) to get Harry involved (unless that specific person was a cut-out, being manipulated by someone ELSE who wanted Harry involved (and how many layers deep into THAT recursion do we care to delve?)).

But Harry's involvement was pretty inevitable in a magical kerfuffle of this scope.  There's no way he could have not noticed (and being who he is, no way he wouldn't get involved).  This in turn implies either someone who knows Harry very well indeed, or someone with extensive intelligence-resources and a good profile of Harry; more on that below.

Marcone and Bianca were likely to react, given that both their people were murdered & both of them take that sort of thing as threats.  Marcone finally elected  his "reaction" simply be letting Harry be his stalking-horse to handle the Shadowman situation, while Marcone himself waited to take advantage of whatever the outcome.  Bianca, as we know, ALSO let Harry be her proxy against Sells (but also began laying plans against Harry himself).

Sells seems likely to have been sending the threat to Marcone... but not so much threatening Bianca (which as noted seems to imply Raith).

And I'm going back to Harry's original theorizing, that the killer(s) were involved with the victims, which implies that Sells knew both of them.  Maybe it was as simple as Sells being one of Jennifer Stanton's "Johns," and he got obsessive / jealous.  Alternatively, maybe Sells had a partner -- Sells got Tommy via hating Marcone, and the partner got Jennifer via hating Bianca.  You recall what Harry said:  this magic needed the caster to hate really intensely, to believe whole-heartedly in the outcome.

But the real hate we know of in this situation?  It's Helen Beckitt's hatred of Marcone.  She was only Sells' "flunky" on the magical side of things, but she hated Marcone with the kind of passion that could easily encompass murder.

So I'm guessing that minor-talent Hatin' Helen got pointed at strong-but-untrained Victor by somebody.  That may or may not be the person who was giving Sells the sophisticated rituals & formulae.

I bet Mab is involved, somehow, making a move to groom her Winter Knight.  I'm nominating her to have pointed the Beckitts at Sells, so Helen's hate could fuel & focus the heart-ripper.  That "feels like" a Mab-move, the kind of secret she'd know (about Marcone shooting her daughter, and her resulting hatred), the kind of manipulation that puts Helen & and BlackCouncil-catspaw Victor into one anothers' orbits.

This STILL leaves a question of who hated Bianca (or Jennifer) enough; I don't have a good theory here, alas.

# # #
 
New let's get back to "getting Harry involved."  As I said above, someone had to know Harry himself, his reactions.  Either personal knowledge, or a good profile.

Of personal knowledge, we have Eb and Elaine (and maybe Justin, if one of the "Justin Survived, or came back" theories is true).  I don't think Eb got Harry involved -- the mess was TOO messy, to many likely ways for Harry to get killed, and I'm pretty sure Eb wants Harry to live.  Elaine... maybe.  I think she's too junior an operator, at this point; but her information could have been used by Aurora, or by Nemesis.  If Nemesis knew of a Starborn wizard, I could see "likely to get killed" as a good motivation.  But I... kind of think that's it, on "personal knowledge."  At the beginning of Storm Front, it looks like Harry was a bit of an antisocial magic-nerd:  going to work, then "socializing" with Bob in his la-BOR-a-tor-y, and no other life.

But... having a profile on "Dresden, Harry (Wizard(WC). Starborn(?)" ...?

Egads... who DOESN'T have a file???

We know the Whamp's keep such files; Lara gloated about the file on Ramirez, for example.  I assume therefore that the Ramps kept such files, too (their extensive record-keeping was a repeated element in Changes, where they raided not one but TWO Ramp datacenters!!!).  Vadderung had a file (of course).  The White Council, and their Wardens, and presumably the Black Council.  Mab (and likely Titania) -- not "files" as such, but extensive information they knew.  Ivy -- Harry's own writing, plus anything any mortal wrote about Harry.

As noted above, my bet is on Mab.  Possibly detecting that the Black Council was moving to address "the Dresden Problem," and acting preemptively herself.

[g33k]

My take on Storm Front is that it was all about getting Three Eye onto the market for some purpose. That's what I think the Circle/Black Council/Whatever really wanted.

So they guide Sells down the path to Criminal Prosperity by helping him start up this magical meth lab, right? That's the Circle's real goal. Marcone becomes a problem for Sells, and he gets enough power to "handle him" on his own, either through further research and experimentation or just by getting a hookup from the Circle. But he needs Marcone's hair or something, else he'd have just offed him from the start. That's why he was paying off what's his face, the guy who got Harry's hair who bit the dust in the original Velvet Room courtesy of Cujo Hendricks. It just so happened that Harry got in the way and was a more immediate threat, and so was prioritized over Marcone. I fully expect Sells to have gotten to Marcone during the following storm if Harry hadn't stopped him. In fact, it might've been during that SAME storm if it lasted long enough.

But yeah, I think the Circle wanted something to happen with the Three Eye. I just don't know what that something is.

I'm not at all clear that the Circle actually wanted ThreeEye to be a success.

I mean... you may be right!  On the face of it, it looks like an awfully silly thing to do, if they DIDN'T want it to succeed.

On the other hand, maybe they counted on somebody to take down Victor, stop the drug... Harry, Bianca, Marcone, Raith... Sells was operating out of his league.  He had raw power, but very-minimal training, and little info on the wider supernatural community.  It was inevitable that someone would end him.   The BC could eventually have just killed him themselves, if nobody else managed it.

The thing is:  if they really wanted to make ThreeEye a success, they should have launched it somewhere else.  Somewhere without a ruthless crime-lord possessing startling self-discipline and a flair for strategic thinking; somewhere away from one of Papa Raith's chateaux; somewhere far from a powerful wizard with a WhiteKnight complex, like Harry Dresden.  Somewhere without a resident Knight of the Cross!!!  Build their base in small farming towns, in rural places, etc.  If for some reason they want it in Chicago, then start it in all the areas AROUND Chicago, and let it filter into town... maybe even just cut a deal to distribute through Marcone!  That's the way to get it going, if spreading the drug was a goal in itself.

[morriswalters]

What led you to the conclusion that I meant there was anything random about it? Sells may have used sympathetic magic and targeted the lust event in that hotel room. It was how he powered his ritual. All this happened over Bianca's head, or behind her back. Or she came up with the idea. Take your pick. And who knows what Jim was thinking.

[Bad Alias]

That's why he was paying off what's his face, the guy who got Harry's hair who bit the dust in the original Velvet Room courtesy of Cujo Hendricks. ...

But yeah, I think the Circle wanted something to happen with the Three Eye. I just don't know what that something is.

"Gimpy" Lawrence.

I think whoever supplied Sells with Three Eye and the Heart Spell likely had multiple agendas. I'm convinced someone was testing out the Heart Spell for down the road that ended up being used in Changes, whether that was the original goal, something close to it, or something completely different. The Three Eye might just have been "payment" to Sells, but I don't think so. Hell, it could just be a plan of starting a bunch of practitioners down the black magic path to sow chaos or develop possible alias. Any who die sorted themselves out of the potential ally pool.

That's the way to get it going, if spreading the drug was a goal in itself.

It could be that they underestimated Marcone. The supernatural factions usually underestimate mortals ability to accept the supernatural and deal with it.

Jennifer Stanton (Sell's sister-in-law) was the target because she was going to tell Tommy Tom (Marcone's man) who Sells was (Marcone's rival). Tommy Tom may have been specifically targeted because of this, or the "splash" got him.

I don't think someone was trying to get Harry involved with Sells. It was Harry's first big case, so there probably aren't a lot of players who new Harry's character and skill well enough to know how it would play out. One of the themes of the books is that Harry's opponents underestimate, or at least misread, him.

[Mira]

We know the Ramps have the big-ritual heart-ripper (they used it in Changes) and we know from Vadderung that it's basically the same spell -- of the same origin -- as what Sells used.  That says to me that the origin (of both) is the Black Council.

That isn't a unique spell though,  anyone with enough power and knowledge can use it if they use the dark arts.  That is why Harry became suspect, he had the knowledge and enough juice to deploy it without the turbocharging his spell with a sex orgy, electrical storm, and a frog demon.  The heart
ripping spell was deployed by an amateur with just enough knowledge to be dangerous and who was used.  Marcone comes into the equation because of the Beckitts, they might have been brought in
and agree to run the sex part because of a promise of gaining revenge eventually for their daughter.
 
by someone else in the same league or higher than Harry.

[Kindler]

I'm not at all clear that the Circle actually wanted ThreeEye to be a success.

I mean... you may be right!  On the face of it, it looks like an awfully silly thing to do, if they DIDN'T want it to succeed.

On the other hand, maybe they counted on somebody to take down Victor, stop the drug... Harry, Bianca, Marcone, Raith... Sells was operating out of his league.  He had raw power, but very-minimal training, and little info on the wider supernatural community.  It was inevitable that someone would end him.   The BC could eventually have just killed him themselves, if nobody else managed it.

The thing is:  if they really wanted to make ThreeEye a success, they should have launched it somewhere else.  Somewhere without a ruthless crime-lord possessing startling self-discipline and a flair for strategic thinking; somewhere away from one of Papa Raith's chateaux; somewhere far from a powerful wizard with a WhiteKnight complex, like Harry Dresden.  Somewhere without a resident Knight of the Cross!!!  Build their base in small farming towns, in rural places, etc.  If for some reason they want it in Chicago, then start it in all the areas AROUND Chicago, and let it filter into town... maybe even just cut a deal to distribute through Marcone!  That's the way to get it going, if spreading the drug was a goal in itself.

I think it only happened in Chicago because that's where everything seems to happen. Which, considering what we know about the Circle, is actually a pretty good idea.

Most of the established Supernatural Powers consider North America the boonies. The White Council had, what, five Wardens stationed in the US? Harry, Ramirez, Wild Bill, the other one who reported to Harry, and then maybe one or two who reported to Carlos? The Red Court didn't seem to have a huge presence there, either; Bianca's elevation to Margravine (I think that was the title she was given in Grave Peril, please correct me if I'm wrong) was a really big deal, and it's not like she was running Chicago. She ran a brothel.

Winter and Summer didn't really have an established presence there at the time yet; Aurora and Maeve had recently moved in during Summer Knight (I forget the exact timeline, but it was within a year or so of the start of SK).

The only truly major player in the area at the time that the Supernatural Powers would really care about was the White Court, and they didn't seem interested in the local drug trade. They're barely present in the story until Blood Rites.

And Harry hadn't exactly gotten himself his reputation for White Knighting yet. Storm Front is his first truly big case (well, it's treated that way in the text; I haven't read the comics, so I'm not sure if there's a major event that takes place before SF). He was a potential warlock that the Outsiders had some kind of interest in; if anything, I'd think that the Circle would want Harry on their side, and would view his presence as a potential upside, but represent relatively minor risk.

So at the time in Chicago, you've got: Bianca's Velvet Room; Chateau Raith; Marcone; Chicago PD; Harry Dresden, Broke-Ass Wizard. That's a far cry from what would be there even a few books later (expanded White Court presence and influence, Winter and Summer presences, a Black Court scourge, the Chicago Alliance, the Alphas, a supernaturally savvy Marcone + Monoc Security contractors (VIKINGS), and Harry Dresden, Terror Hero, Warden of Demonreach and the White Council, Winter Knight, pseudo-Denarian, He of the Gross Left Hand, Friend of Mouse, Bane of Bad Guys and Personal Hygiene). There's also Michael, of course.

But anyway, I don't see how the Circle could have thought that Marcone would be important enough to even care about. The only answer to things like that is Time Travel or Prophecy, and at that point almost every mystery can be answered similarly. My personal WAG about Marcone in SF/Fool Moon is that Odin saw the potential for Marcone to become a player after Storm Front and arranged for the belts to be delivered to Denton's Pack as a test. I don't think it's an accident that the next time we see Marcone after Fool Moon, he's working with Gard.

But in Storm Front? Nah. I don't think any of the supernatural powers, including the Circle/Black Council even gave mob outfits like Marcone's a second thought.

I sometimes think that they were flooding the streets with Three Eye as a way to find something. More specifically, someone who would react to the drug in a specific way.

[Mira]

But in Storm Front? Nah. I don't think any of the supernatural powers, including the Circle/Black Council even gave mob outfits like Marcone's a second thought.

I sometimes think that they were flooding the streets with Three Eye as a way to find something. More specifically, someone who would react to the drug in a specific way.

I think there is more to it than that,  remember the kid strung out on Three Eye who told Harry stuff
that only HWB would know?  The question is what and how skilled an author Jim is in tying all these loose ends together by the BAT..

[Bad Alias]

That isn't a unique spell though,  anyone with enough power and knowledge can use it if they use the dark arts.  That is why Harry became suspect, he had the knowledge and enough juice to deploy it without the turbocharging his spell with a sex orgy, electrical storm, and a frog demon.

Both Harry and Morgan think it wouldn't be possible for Harry to pull off the spell without harnessing the storms.

[Gigglestomp]

I think the circle gave it to him and specifically it was given to him by their agent The White King under orders from Kimmler (My theoretical leader for the circle). The ritual is the reds ancient ritual and also the one TWK used on Margaret.

[Bad Alias]

The heart spell and the entropy curse are different spells.

[g33k]

... I think whoever supplied Sells with Three Eye and the Heart Spell likely had multiple agendas. 

Agreed... And I agree strongly enough to think there were several distict actors behind the Sells situation.

... I don't think someone was trying to get Harry involved with Sells. It was Harry's first big case, so there probably aren't a lot of players who new Harry's character and skill well enough to know how it would play out...

Except we are beginning to see that people DO know Harry.  Apparently the whole "Starborn" thing is known in the upper tiers of supernaturals, and it's beyond belief the DuMorne might have not ONE but TWO potential Starborn apprentices.
Harry wasn't a known entity to the low-level foes he THOUGHT he was facing, but they were never shaping policy any more than raw recruits do on a battlefield.

Consider Nicodemus "tempus fugit" Archleon, for whom an imminent deadline is looming, but never the near-term plot Harry is fighting... Time is always pressing, for Nic, but it's coming in a few years, after building for centuries.  Consider Lasciel, whose Shadow, when she finally joins team Dresden, outlines a major Starborn info-dump... Indicating, to me, substantial Denarian plans laid around a Starborn.

Sells?
Kravos?
Bianca?
Nobodies.
Paws, each and every one of them, whose cat doesn't let them know what the Right Paw is doing, nor what they may face in Harry Dresden.

[Snark Knight]

No, what I am saying is Victor was used as a hit man by someone because he didn't know either party.

Sells' three-eye ring had been pushing on Marcone's conventional drugs business territory for a while before, though.