666 years and what follows - The Cycle

[Yuillegan]

666 Years
So we have the 666 years - every time this happens apparently a certain conjunction happens that puts a magical spotlight on the earth. Any human born in that light has the potential to wield power over the Outsiders. Whether there is a ritual (i'd guess a sort of baptism) required to prepare or lock in the power. The fact it happened on Halloween also seems significant - considering that's one of the few conjunctions that makes immortals mortal (when on earth).

Ebeneezer doesn't explain all the rules but he does say it means Harry can touch them and banish them without being tainted. He is immune. He can even physically hit them and it *somehow* will still actually hurt the being - even if they normally can't feel pain. I would say he even might be able to kill them. I suspect it's related to thaumaturgy (something Harry has always been good at) and the intention that comes with magic. Free will and all that.

But Ebeneezer says the event only lasts a few hours, and it's already happened (hence Harry). Which is interesting considering the previous time it happened, the Black Plague showed up (also when Nicodemus and Tessa last worked together prior to the series).

The Cycle
What this tells us is that following the events of the 666 years conjunction, another event immediately follows. I don't know how many years it takes but Harry was born on 31st of October 1975 (give or take a year or two). So 1975 - 666 gives us the year 1309. This is approximately the birth of the last Starborn. Current candidates include Nicodemus, Mavra, Dracula (not Drakul) and potentially Kincaid. Ancient Mai is actually too young sadly. Funnily enough, potentially Bob (depending on how old you think he is...it's inconsistent) and I know he is a spirit but hey, maybe he came from the head of a starborn.

Anyway, the Black Plague kicks off in Europe around 1346. So 37 odd years later something should happen right?

Wrong. Because the actual timeline of the plague (at least historically) is much older. It goes like this.

3500-3000BC: Neolithic Decline. The plague is potentially the cause of this event.
541-750BC: The "First" Plague pandemic spreads from Egypt to the Mediterranean. Rome suffers the Plague of Justinian (considered to be the same plague). The curiously may also tie into the deaths of the first born in Egypt.
1346-1840: The "Second" plague pandemic may have spread from China due to Mongol destruction. The Black Death kicks off in 1346 to 1353 as is considered the worst pandemic in human history. The fire of London seems to end it the worst of it...but it continues to kill about a billion people from 1347-1665.
1866-1960s: The "Third" plague pandemic (may also have originated in China), results in 2 million deaths there, and then 20 million in India. In the 1940s antibiotics drugs are developed which dramatically reduce the death rate.

It continues until the current day but mostly people only die due to lack of treatment.

So because of the broad stretches of history that the various plagues cover we have to look at the big events.

1. The proto-plague that resulted in Neolithic decline ~3316
2. Plague of Justinian ~652
3. Black Death 1346
4. The Second Plague ~1866

But also around 0-5BC Jesus is born. Funnily enough, under a star....He is crucified approximately 33AD. A big event in the Dresdenverse where apparently many balances of power were reset and the Denarians and the Knights first show up. Possibly Nicodemus also running around. This also plays into the Cycle.

So it seems to me that a final conjunction must occur, a planetary alignment that allows for the re-balancing of the board. I suspect, just like Halloween, it's the only time where things can really change. Hence why everyone is so eager to take advantage of it. However, I also suspect that it also allows the Outsiders to gain some advantage and hence it is also an extremely destructive time. Which is also why so many of those who know are grabbing as much power as they can to defend themselves.

The question then is why hasn't whatever is going to happen yet, happened?

My WAG is that because we don't always have an exact rotation around the Sun or even on our own axis, the math is out. So almost no one is *exactly* sure of when this conjunction will happen but they know it's any day now and are getting their ducks in a row.

[vultur]

So 1975 - 666 gives us the year 1309. This is approximately the birth of the last Starborn. Current candidates include Nicodemus, Mavra, Dracula (not Drakul) and potentially Kincaid. Ancient Mai is actually too young sadly. Funnily enough, potentially Bob (depending on how old you think he is...it's inconsistent) and I know he is a spirit but hey, maybe he came from the head of a starborn.

Nicodemus definitely wasn't born in 1309... he's something like 2000 years old. He could be Starborn from three cycles ago, ~24 BC, though. The Crucifixion was 29 to 33 AD so Nico would have been in his 50s at the time.

Rashid is quite possibly Starborn from two cycles ago, 643 AD.

Vlad III Dracula (Vlad the Impaler) was born 1431, so too late to be Starborn. Mavra too, since Vlad created the Black Court... someone born in 1309 would have been dead of old age before the Black Court existed to turn them vampire.

Wrong. Because the actual timeline of the plague (at least historically) is much older. It goes like this.

At the time Death Masks was written, the Plague of Justinian wasn't known to have been the same disease as the Black Death. (Wikipedia claims that was discovered/confirmed by DNA in 2013.) And the Neolithic suggestion is even newer (and I don't think anything like proven). So I'm not sure that can be taken as true for the Dresdenverse.

But also around 0-5BC Jesus is born.

Yeah - which doesn't really fit the timeline. The Starborn event should have been ~24 BC.

[Yuillegan]

Apologies if that wasn't clear. I wasn't saying Nicodemus was born in 1309...just that he could well have been a Starborn as at least one or more where around the time of Christ.

Rashid fits the old profile which we assumed was one every 1000 years. It doesn't fit is having one running around 1000 years before Dresden anymore. Which Jim said was when the last time was once...but he has sort of contradicted himself with the whole 666 thing.

If it's every 666 years then it would be someone born in the late 600s, if it's every thousand years then it's the late 900s. Funnily enough Abdul Alhazred was running around in the 700s and as we know Rashid killed him. So it's possible that Rashid is well over a thousand years old. Closer to 1300 years.

Perhaps there isn't one EVERY 666 years, just the possibility of one. Maybe the last one really was Rashid.

That's Vlad's official birthdate. Could well be older. Mavra was about 600 years old when Harry first met it. I doubt she was the oldest. And the whole Vlad created the Black Court unfortunately is still in dispute. Jim hasn't yet cleared up that point. Because he also says the Black Court have been around since the dawn of man and the Dracula joined them.

True, but Jim might have used the plague (which is fairly well known) anyway. It wouldn't have taken a whole lot of digging.

My math puts the starborn birth actually 23 years after 0. However, I think my theory about things not always being exact accounts for the errors.

[Second Aristh]

What if nobody can actually keep track of the timing?  Time is a tricky thing in the NN, and there are beings there powerful enough to alter its flow. 

If your countdown clock is always ticking down, and say it wanders throughout the NN, who's to say when exactly it's gonna hit 0?

[Yuillegan]

Except that everyone seems to know it's about to happen, and Jim has said for those in the know it feels like the 2 minute warning has gone.

I agree though that it must be difficult to beings who have varying concepts of time.

[vultur]

Apologies if that wasn't clear. I wasn't saying Nicodemus was born in 1309...just that he could well have been a Starborn as at least one or more where around the time of Christ.

yeah - it's quite possible. If he was one of the first "generation" of Denarians he'd be right about the right age (middle aged at the time of the Crucifixion).

It doesn't fit is having one running around 1000 years before Dresden anymore. Which Jim said was when the last time was once...but he has sort of contradicted himself with the whole 666 thing.

It's not necessarily contradictory - a Starborn could have been born in the 600s and active in the 1000s. Ancient Mai is something like 400 years old, and the Gatekeeper is way older (probably by skipping time).

Perhaps there isn't one EVERY 666 years, just the possibility of one. Maybe the last one really was Rashid.

Possible. Or maybe Starborn who aren't wizards can't really do much with it so the fact that they are starborn is just kind of trivia. Or maybe the Starborn in the 14th century got killed early.

True, but Jim might have used the plague (which is fairly well known) anyway. It wouldn't have taken a whole lot of digging.

Oh, the Plague of Justinian itself was fairly well known, but it wasn't known/confirmed to have been the same disease as the Black Death until pretty recently. So given when Death Masks was published, I think it's still possible for the Dresdenverse that plague was invented from scratch in the 14th century by the Denarians.

My math puts the starborn birth actually 23 years after 0. However, I think my theory about things not always being exact accounts for the errors.

It would be counting back from Harry's birth (~1975) not from today. That's why I got a date about 45 years earlier.

[Bad Alias]

Mavra is a practitioner. She may have been a practitioner before she was turned, so she could easily have been born early enough.

[Grifter]

I don't think Eb would have said "once in every six hundred and sixty-six years" if it weren't just that. Why be exact with you know it's wrong?

I think the Starborn alignment happens every 666 years.  Maybe it fluctuates within the year, but not by years.  Months at most, which would allow for the confusion over Elaine.

[BrainFireBob]

I don't think Eb would have said "once in every six hundred and sixty-six years" if it weren't just that. Why be exact with you know it's wrong?

I think the Starborn alignment happens every 666 years.  Maybe it fluctuates within the year, but not by years.  Months at most, which would allow for the confusion over Elaine.

That's not that exact. The Romans had to add a variable number of days to their calendar to sync it.

In recorded history, we're talking what, 4-5 cycles? It might be very precise- and lame- 666 years, 6 months, 6 days, in the sixth hour, just no one has caught that yet.

[Grifter]

That's not that exact. The Romans had to add a variable number of days to their calendar to sync it.

In recorded history, we're talking what, 4-5 cycles? It might be very precise- and lame- 666 years, 6 months, 6 days, in the sixth hour, just no one has caught that yet.

Sure, but you're still talking about a variation of months between alignments, and a collective variation of 3.5 years across all of recorded history (4,820 years or so).

So it's not like it could easily fudge from 23 BC to 0 AD (or even 4-6 BC, as some theorize for timing on TWC's birth year).

[Conspiracy Theorist]

Your cast of possible Starborn doesn’t include Etienne the Enchanter, who was Bob’s first master and made the sanctum he lives in , and who lived in the Middle Ages making him a candidate for 1309 and would give Bob handy info on the Starborn Schtick (seriously someone must have messed with Harry’s mind not to make him inquire about this) which would be very useful for Justin if he was hunting Starborn.

[morriswalters]

Observations of the night sky with fairly primitives tools can give some fairly exact times, and Eb owns a telescope.  Maybe some kind of planetary or stellar alignment thing or a supernova.

[jb3435]

1 thing you all need to consider that was kinda mentioned about the Romans balancing their calendar, and that is that the calendars have changed over time. Currently there is the world-wide New Year and the Chinese New Year just to name one example. Its not as simple to take 2020 and subtract 2000 years and get year 20. Yeah it'll probably be close, but not exact so that could account for some of the minor errors.

[vultur]

1 thing you all need to consider that was kinda mentioned about the Romans balancing their calendar, and that is that the calendars have changed over time.

Sure, but not nearly enough to account for a 20 year gap. Especially not in the last 2000 years - the Julian calendar was instituted by Julius Caesar and I think even in Russia (one of the last to change to the Gregorian calendar) it was less than a month change.

So that's still not going to allow for Jesus to be Starborn.

I don't really think that makes sense anyway honestly. I think the Defenders of Reality* vs Outsiders conflict is kind of operating on a different level from the Heaven vs Hell conflict, and Starborn are basically part of the former, not the latter.

*currently that's Winter (with a little help from the White Council in the form of the Gatekeeper), but it has been different beings in the past...

I mean, Uriel is many orders of magnitude stronger than Mab, he could destroy galaxies. If it was part of his job, he could just vaporize the entire Outsider army beyond the Gates with a thought, no Winter needed.... but that's not his job. His job is about Souls/Free Will and the whole spectrum of the multiverse, the Faerie are more about Reality (and Nature) of a specific universe.

[Conspiracy Theorist]

It is clear there are multiple long term conflicts which are ongoing, the Outsiders, Heaven v Hell and the Oblivion War, and it is quite possible for someone to be a participant in more than one of them at the same time.

Jesus isn’t Starborn he was literally part of the White God, that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a Starborn involved, if they are Wizards who are long lived and cheat.