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The Dresden Files => DF Spoilers => Topic started by: SerScot on July 18, 2018, 09:06:35 PM
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Mab said only she was stronger than Lea in “her winter”. Is the Winter Lady not prt of “her (Mab’s) Winter”?
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In terms of strength, probably. Though the Winter Lady probably has more authority than Lea.
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In terms of strength, probably. Though the Winter Lady probably has more authority than Lea.
IIRC, JB has said that powerful Sidhe rarely throw down in such a way that raw power matters much anyway. It's usually much more subtle. Which means Molly is probably at a big disadvantage in dealing with Lea, if only because of experience, regardless of relative raw power.
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Mab said only she was stronger than Lea in “her winter”. Is the Winter Lady not prt of “her (Mab’s) Winter”?
It's tough to say because strength, and power to the Sidhe could mean either raw power, or power in the forms of favors owed. In either case I think that Leah is stronger than the Winter Lady. She can act in Mab's place, the Lady doesn't seem to be able to do that or Mab wouldn't have required the aid of Nicodemus before she had Leah.
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Well, Maeve hasn't been the Lady for as long as Mab was Queen, so there may not have been one at all. Or, this may have possibly predated Mab being Queen. OR she may not yet have trusted Lea, as she didn't yet have the chain of obligations to control her.
OR
The duties of each queen are disparate enough that one may not necessarily be able to act as another in all ways. For example (maybe/probably) the Lady might not have been able to have sex with the Winter Knight the way Mab did.
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I think I remember Lea saying that she recently acquired significant power in the winter court, upsetting the balance. I don't recall exactly the situation, but didn't Mab act to balance the scales and disinfect (heh) Lea? If that's correct then the situation where Lea is stronger than the Winter Lady is no longer.
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I think I remember Lea saying that she recently acquired significant power in the winter court, upsetting the balance. I don't recall exactly the situation, but didn't Mab act to balance the scales and disinfect (heh) Lea? If that's correct then the situation where Lea is stronger than the Winter Lady is no longer.
The only thing with this is, iirc Mab describes Lea as 'second only to me in power' in Changes. After she's been cured. I could be misremembering that.
What I think is important to consider is how long Lea has been doing this, how many favours and bargains she is owed, and how much power she must have amassed as Mab's second in command. Compared to Maeve who squandered her powers and neglected her role, yeah Lea is definitely stronger.
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The only thing with this is, iirc Mab describes Lea as 'second only to me in power' in Changes. After she's been cured. I could be misremembering that.
What I think is important to consider is how long Lea has been doing this, how many favours and bargains she is owed, and how much power she must have amassed as Mab's second in command. Compared to Maeve who squandered her powers and neglected her role, yeah Lea is definitely stronger.
She was also strong enough to recognize her infection and fight it long enough to enable her to run to Mab for aid.
All things Aurora did not manage, she died confused.
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She was also strong enough to recognize her infection and fight it long enough to enable her to run to Mab for aid.
All things Aurora did not manage, she died confused.
I don't know if that is so clear, Aurora, yes, but Lea, no.. I think Mab realized that Lea was infected, took away the Knife and put her on ice..
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Mab said only she was stronger than Lea in “her winter”. Is the Winter Lady not prt of “her (Mab’s) Winter”?
"Indeed," she said. "And your godmother, your teacher and guide, is the most vicious creature of Mab's Court, more than Maeve's equal, second in strength only to Mab herself."
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I don't know if that is so clear, Aurora, yes, but Lea, no.. I think Mab realized that Lea was infected, took away the Knife and put her on ice..
From Changes:
“Shame, child, is for those who fail to live up to the ideal of what they believe they should be.” She waved her hand. “It was shame that drove me to my queen, to beseech her aid.”
She was ashamed she could not handle the infection herself.
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"Indeed," she said. "And your godmother, your teacher and guide, is the most vicious creature of Mab's Court, more than Maeve's equal, second in strength only to Mab herself."
Ah maybe I was misremembering in that case. I thought there was a mention of this when Mab was permitting Lea to go with the group to Chichen Itza.
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Ah maybe I was misremembering in that case. I thought there was a mention of this when Mab was permitting Lea to go with the group to Chichen Itza.
Strictly speaking viscious is not the same as powerful but maybe in winter it is.
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Strictly speaking viscious is not the same as powerful but maybe in winter it is.
Yeah but the second part of that quote is "second in strength only to Mab herself."
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Yeah but the second part of that quote is "second in strength only to Mab herself."
That should cover it. Obviously Mother Winter is not included here in Mab's Winter.
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That should cover it. Obviously Mother Winter is not included here in Mab's Winter.
yeah it is curious how it's worded. Maybe because the Mothers are more limited in what they are allowed to do vs what Mab is allowed to do? The Mothers are so weighed down by their sheer power they are more like forces of nature than people who can take action.
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Thank you I forgot that quote
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I also wondered if Mab’s reference to “her Winter” memt that their were sub courts to the full Winter Court?
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I also wondered if Mab’s reference to “her Winter” memt that their were sub courts to the full Winter Court?
The Lady's court at Arctis Minor does seem to be a separate sub-court to Mab's in Cold Days. Mab might have had some degree of sentiment compelling her to use an intermediate to put down her daughter, but the Redcap and the rest of Maeve's flunkies must have had some measure of law or protocol protecting them from being killed as soon as Mab realized they were into treachery against Winter.
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Oh, Lea is definitely stronger than the Ladies. It's mentioned several times, and also look at her performance in Changes (she kills two Lords of Outer Night with one spell, though admittedly by surprise -- and gives Harry and Susan really powerful magical items) versus the frankly pathetic performance the Faerie Ladies have demonstrated on-page... we see 3 of them die, 2 to massively inferior opponents (Aurora to Harry + pixies, Maeve to Murphy). Sure, Maeve was on Halloween, but Lea would just have shielded herself or dodged the bullet or frozen Murphy in ice or something... she's confident enough in her ability to defend herself that she lets Molly try to stab her with iron in "Bombshells" and casually blocks it (and she's not immortal... she specifically says that Molly would have killed her...)
Lily does some pretty impressive stuff, admittedly, but it's really not THAT much beyond what we've seen Harry do ... her wave-of-fire spell in CD probably involves a lot less energy than Harry's Winter Knight freeze-the-lake effect in CD, and likely is comparable to Harry's lake-freezing "twenty-story column of fire hot enough to vaporize ten-gauge steel" all the way back in WN, which is just him moving energy around with standard wizard magic, no Winter or Hell/Soulfire or other boosts involved. Her follow-up sun-ball spell is pretty impressive, admittedly, but it seems like a faster-cast version of Harry's "little ball of sunshine", not something on a whole different level... And more importantly, Harry is totally without gear and running out of energy in that fight. If Harry had been anywhere near full power, he'd have taken Lily down before she ever got a chance to put together the sun-ball spell; just blocked the wave-of-fire and then struck back.
yeah it is curious how it's worded. Maybe because the Mothers are more limited in what they are allowed to do vs what Mab is allowed to do? The Mothers are so weighed down by their sheer power they are more like forces of nature than people who can take action.
I think the Mothers are kind of... outside everything else. There's a WOJ that the Erlking is Wyldfae, not subject to Mab or Titania, but he has "origins in the Summer-side of the cycle of seasons" and is beholden to Mother Summer (but pretty much everything in Faerie is...)
I'm not sure they are even Fae in the strict sense, Mother Winter has iron teeth after all.
I also wondered if Mab’s reference to “her Winter” memt that their were sub courts to the full Winter Court?
Possibly it's excluding beings like Kringle and any other Winter-affiliated or Winter-leaning Wyldfae.
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Well, I can see Lea being stronger than Maeve, when it was said that she was the strongest second only to Mab. Second in strength may not mean just raw power, it could mean political influence. Let's face it, Maeve had been next to useless for that last hundred and fifty years or so.. However, she may not be stronger than Molly who was a powerful wizard before she became Winter Lady..
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I was just about to say that. Molly has her wizard power in addition to her Lady power.
However, while Maeve was neglecting her duties for 150 years, she still had a large retinue built up and more practice in the fae arena. Plus, Molly's skills lie in more subtle and delicate areas, not necessarily ones of power and strength. So it could go either way.
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Oh, Lea is definitely stronger than the Ladies. It's mentioned several times, and also look at her performance in Changes (she kills two Lords of Outer Night with one spell, though admittedly by surprise -- and gives Harry and Susan really powerful magical items) versus the frankly pathetic performance the Faerie Ladies have demonstrated on-page... we see 3 of them die, 2 to massively inferior opponents (Aurora to Harry + pixies, Maeve to Murphy). Sure, Maeve was on Halloween, but Lea would just have shielded herself or dodged the bullet or frozen Murphy in ice or something... she's confident enough in her ability to defend herself that she lets Molly try to stab her with iron in "Bombshells" and casually blocks it (and she's not immortal... she specifically says that Molly would have killed her...)
Lily does some pretty impressive stuff, admittedly, but it's really not THAT much beyond what we've seen Harry do ... her wave-of-fire spell in CD probably involves a lot less energy than Harry's Winter Knight freeze-the-lake effect in CD, and likely is comparable to Harry's lake-freezing "twenty-story column of fire hot enough to vaporize ten-gauge steel" all the way back in WN, which is just him moving energy around with standard wizard magic, no Winter or Hell/Soulfire or other boosts involved. Her follow-up sun-ball spell is pretty impressive, admittedly, but it seems like a faster-cast version of Harry's "little ball of sunshine", not something on a whole different level... And more importantly, Harry is totally without gear and running out of energy in that fight. If Harry had been anywhere near full power, he'd have taken Lily down before she ever got a chance to put together the sun-ball spell; just blocked the wave-of-fire and then struck back.
I think the Mothers are kind of... outside everything else. There's a WOJ that the Erlking is Wyldfae, not subject to Mab or Titania, but he has "origins in the Summer-side of the cycle of seasons" and is beholden to Mother Summer (but pretty much everything in Faerie is...)
I'm not sure they are even Fae in the strict sense, Mother Winter has iron teeth after all.
Possibly it's excluding beings like Kringle and any other Winter-affiliated or Winter-leaning Wyldfae.
We see Molly pull a vastly larger version of the lake freezing spell at the start of Cold Case. Harry doesn't even come close to that. Also Lily's spell is far hotter than almost anything we've seen dresden do in the books. I think some of his Hellfire empowered stuff might come close, but it had the same instantaneous obliteration effect on Fix's sword that The Denarian Hellfire empowered circle had on the Denarian's thrown into it. Over most of a hilltop. Compared to Molly's Cold Case freezing spell the level of power involved was pretty modest, but it was still shockingly high by any previous standard we've seen. You hit an apartment block with Lily's spell and it won't set it on fire like Harry would, it will turn it into straight up vapour, it and everything in it will just disintegrate like it was hit by a star trek phaser.
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Ughh, hit post too soon. That said i still suspect Lea is more powerful, but there's no hard evidence of it. On the other hand it may well be that the Lady is more combat focused.
Another thing to remember, Molly is only that powerful when drawing on the mantle. Thats fine for a lot of things, but she can't apparently use it to empower her illusion magic in any way and she's still limited complexity wise in what she can do. She doesn't really do anymore without drawing on the Winter Mantle than we've seen her do before she got it. Which actually makes the fact in Skin Game that she's been holding of mental attacks from the best of the Winter fae in her dreams for months really impressive, thats plan old mortal "Harry Dresden is way more powerful than me" Molly kicking serious fae but with just immense control of a limited amount of power.
In any kind of combat setting thats still going to make Molly hell on earth for the bad guys in a way Harry can't even think of matching. But there's probably a lot of non-combat applications of raw power that she's going to struggle with.
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Molly's wizard powers doesn't necessarily carryover and in fact I'd think it doesn't? Wizard magic is mortal. Faerie magic is not. Similarly, if a wizard were turned a vampire, they don't carry their mortal magic... their SKILLS do have some strong correlation from what we've been told but it is fundamentally different.
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Molly's wizard powers doesn't necessarily carryover and in fact I'd think it doesn't? Wizard magic is mortal. Faerie magic is not. Similarly, if a wizard were turned a vampire, they don't carry their mortal magic... their SKILLS do have some strong correlation from what we've been told but it is fundamentally different.
Mortal magic and Sidhe magic are basically the same thing, they both come from life unlike vampire magic. You probably get the immortality if you can gather enough power. Wizard healing is already one step up.
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Molly's wizard powers doesn't necessarily carryover and in fact I'd think it doesn't? Wizard magic is mortal. Faerie magic is not. Similarly, if a wizard were turned a vampire, they don't carry their mortal magic... their SKILLS do have some strong correlation from what we've been told but it is fundamentally different.
Hmmm, hard to tell, she's very explicitly not drawing on the mantle, (she draws on it for a second afterward to kick the doors in), though when she gets the boom box and one woman rave going and she's using the same wands she used as a mortal. It may be tied into weather or not you have a soul, that doesn't instantly go away per WoJ.
To be fair now i've napped a little it's also not clear whether or not JB ran the math on the trick he had molly pull at the start of Cold Case. The math for me come sup in the 400Kt+ range, (400 is the absolute minimum, it could go up depending on factors).
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I also wondered if Mab’s reference to “her Winter” memt that their were sub courts to the full Winter Court?
More likely different, older versions... if Arctis Tor and Jotenheim are one and the same, then their winter was not hers for sure.
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Hmmm, hard to tell, she's very explicitly not drawing on the mantle, (she draws on it for a second afterward to kick the doors in), though when she gets the boom box and one woman rave going and she's using the same wands she used as a mortal. It may be tied into weather or not you have a soul, that doesn't instantly go away per WoJ.
Uriel would probably say it doesn't go away at all. Remember, "You ARE a soul. You HAVE a body."
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Uriel would probably say it doesn't go away at all. Remember, "You ARE a soul. You HAVE a body."
Yeah, but Jim (who knows better than Uriel) has said that it's possible to lose your soul even without turning into something other than human, if you're terrible enough. So it probably does get whittled down bit by bit.
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Yeah, but Jim (who knows better than Uriel) has said that it's possible to lose your soul even without turning into something other than human, if you're terrible enough. So it probably does get whittled down bit by bit.
Except that soul is a fuzzy word and loosing your soul can simply mean turning into something totally different, usually something bad, and loosing all that defined you.
The resulting person would still have a soul but not something recognizable as your soul. And it would be damned anyway.
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Yeah, but as I recall, he was talking about someone being soulless. Humans having no soul, as related to soulgazing.
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Yeah, but as I recall, he was talking about someone being soulless. Humans having no soul, as related to soulgazing.
Pondering the context of what Jim said, and Molly "losing" her soul. What he may be talking about here is you transforming into something else.. Mind, body, and soul. When you start off as a little baby you have a perfect soul, but if you go down the wrong path your soul may become tainted, scarred, and nothing like it started out as. So perhaps the context of Molly losing her soul has more to do with her becoming Maeve, a completely different person where the person who was Molly does not exist any longer.
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Given that Bob said that Harry could literally use up his soul with soulfire if he wasn't careful, I'm thinking it's more of a pure loss than transformation. Possibly that becoming fae means losing the ability to replenish a soul (hugging, having teppanyaki, sex, etc...) so that over time, the wear and tear just grinds it down to nothing.
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Yeah the WoJ wasn't particularly subtle on the point. He was very explicit that you could lose it outright. But for Molly it's a slow process that can be resisted to varying degrees. Basically probability says she's going to lose it eventually, but she can theoretically prevent it for effectively forever.
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Given that Bob said that Harry could literally use up his soul with soulfire if he wasn't careful, I'm thinking it's more of a pure loss than transformation. Possibly that becoming fae means losing the ability to replenish a soul (hugging, having teppanyaki, sex, etc...) so that over time, the wear and tear just grinds it down to nothing.
Yeah the WoJ wasn't particularly subtle on the point. He was very explicit that you could lose it outright. But for Molly it's a slow process that can be resisted to varying degrees. Basically probability says she's going to lose it eventually, but she can theoretically prevent it for effectively forever.
Well if both of these things are accurate then the only conclusion is the Soul is of Creation, love. Only that goes on, and anything else fades away. If a person extinguishes all love within themselves they will be dust in the wind.
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Yeah, but as I recall, he was talking about someone being soulless. Humans having no soul, as related to soulgazing.
Wondered about that. If doing evil makes you loose your soul then what is hell for? Is not loosing your soul preferable to having it tortured for eternity? Or if you are your soul then what are you when you loose it?
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Wondered about that. If doing evil makes you loose your soul then what is hell for? Is not loosing your soul preferable to having it tortured for eternity? Or if you are your soul then what are you when you loose it?
Maybe your soul is like the key to Heaven. You lose it and you may still exist, just somewhere else.
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Maybe your soul is like the key to Heaven. You lose it and you may still exist, just somewhere else.
Grevane still had a soul, He did a soul gaze with Butters. I do not think he went to heaven.
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Wondered about that. If doing evil makes you loose your soul then what is hell for? Is not loosing your soul preferable to having it tortured for eternity? Or if you are your soul then what are you when you loose it?
Might wanna go back and rad the last couple of chapters of Small Favour again. Bob specifically talks about how lost bits grow back when talking to Harry about soulfire usage.
From the WoJ losing your soul is a whole other different level of evil than normal evil. Normal evil is people like Marcone or Hendriks. Losing your soul evil is probably Kemmelar up.
Sort of the difference between a normal serial killer and Adolf Hitler.
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Might wanna go back and rad the last couple of chapters of Small Favour again. Bob specifically talks about how lost bits grow back when talking to Harry about soulfire usage.
From the WoJ losing your soul is a whole other different level of evil than normal evil. Normal evil is people like Marcone or Hendriks. Losing your soul evil is probably Kemmelar up.
Sort of the difference between a normal serial killer and Adolf Hitler.
So Grevane goes to hell and is tortured for eternity and Kemmler just loses his soul and that is it? Seems the lesson for Grevane is simple, he should have been more evil. Of course that is exactly what he tried to do.
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So Grevane goes to hell and is tortured for eternity and Kemmler just loses his soul and that is it? Seems the lesson for Grevane is simple, he should have been more evil. Of course that is exactly what he tried to do.
What makes you think that A. Grevane has a soul? If the evidence is a soulgaze I don't think that counts because a soulgaze may just be accurate in a figurative way but not in a literal sense. And B. How do you know there wasn't a tiny piece of soul that remained that was able to earn him redemption, and he didn't end up in hell? And C. how do we know what hell is like in the Dresdenverse?
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What makes you think that A. Grevane has a soul? If the evidence is a soulgaze I don't think that counts because a soulgaze may just be accurate in a figurative way but not in a literal sense.
A soulgaze is one thing but we also have Uriel's satisfaction when Corpstaker takes the southbound train. Why would that be satisfying if Corpstaker had no soul and it did not go to hell?
And B. How do you know there wasn't a tiny piece of soul that remained that was able to earn him redemption, and he didn't end up in hell?
Because when you are dead free will and chances for redemption are over. According to Heaven's most cited spokesman.
And C. how do we know what hell is like in the Dresdenverse?
It must be bad because Chauncy is there and we are happy because Harry's mother escaped him.
And Hell's Bells there is a rich mythology about it and in the dresdenverse all mythology is true unless specifically denied.
The devil is a real person and we have seen the fallen. You don't want to spend time with them let alone all the time there is.
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A soulgaze is one thing but we also have Uriel's satisfaction when Corpstaker takes the southbound train. Why would that be satisfying if Corpstaker had no soul and it did not go to hell?Because when you are dead free will and chances for redemption are over. According to Heaven's most cited spokesman.It must be bad because Chauncy is there and we are happy because Harry's mother escaped him.
And Hell's Bells there is a rich mythology about it and in the dresdenverse all mythology is true unless specifically denied.
The devil is a real person and we have seen the fallen. You don't want to spend time with them let alone all the time there is.
Well then what we have is something inconsistent, or very complex system from Jim. His statements about losing your soul vs suffering eternal punishment don't jive. Not existing sounds preferable to eternal punishment, and being more evil getting a lighter sentence doesn't seem right.
Losing your soul may mean automatic hell maybe? That doesn't sound right either though for someone like Molly. Again either an inconsistent idea, or something more complex. Would be a great thing if someone could lay it out like this for Jim and get a less confusing response.
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Mmmm, *insert metatheory here*
I think that people whom go to hell/heaven are specifically people who buy into that system, even on a negative affirmation of knowing your probably going to hell. But judgement by someone is inevitable. An it's likely all affirmative judges within reality, like Hades, Mab, St Peter(if i'm recalling correctly the heavenly doorman) are all sustitutes for the cosmic inside vs outside judge, 'the adversary'. I think it's fate to go through your own personal gateway(as seen in Thomas) to be judged in a mirror of your life. It's why I believe the angel of death in GS to be Susan, covered in the tattoo's ink blotch that defined her fight to keep herself for so long.
In this way ll inside judges and afterlifes are meant simply to keep balance vs nonexistence/outside. It's why they exist in the NN, a technical part of reality.
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Did a Bing search for Jim Butcher Soul, hoping to get lucky.. Dunno if this applies to the Dresdenverse but it is pretty awesome
“Every soul is special. They’re all beautiful. They’re all far more significant than anyone on this rock realizes. I think when people are at their best, they’re acting in accordance with their soul. The ones who have gone bad don’t have bad souls. They’ve just given up on keeping in touch with them.” - Jim Butcher
This felt appropriate
(https://doowansnewsandevents.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/soul-flight.jpg)
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Also Lily's spell is far hotter than almost anything we've seen dresden do in the books. I think some of his Hellfire empowered stuff might come close, but it had the same instantaneous obliteration effect on Fix's sword
Larger, yes, but not hotter. Harry says his lake-freezing fire-column spell in WN is "hot enough to vaporize ten-gauge steel" (and there was no Hellfire in that spell, just energy gathered from the environment via regular wizard magic). Harry doesn't throw around fire magic on that scale very often at all, but it is within his capabilities.
I think he also describes a fire spell in Changes as being as hot as the sun or something, but there was Soulfire in that.
That spell is more powerful than anything we see Harry do before he's Winter Knight (afterwards, I think the warehouse-lifting-iceberg in CD is comparable or stronger) but it's not on a whole other level.
I was just about to say that. Molly has her wizard power in addition to her Lady power.
I don't think her wizard power is all that meaningful on this scale in "raw power" terms.
However, Molly's core talents of illusion and subtle magic work really, really well with the way the Sidhe tend to do things. Give her enough time to really learn how to adapt her existing skills/talents to her new power, and she'll be incredibly, terrifyingly capable. But that will be because of her skill/talent rather than just raw power.
(Luccio says in SmF that even before her body swap, she had less raw power than Harry. But she was far more capable.)
Yeah, but Jim (who knows better than Uriel) has said that it's possible to lose your soul even without turning into something other than human, if you're terrible enough. So it probably does get whittled down bit by bit.
If we're talking about the same WoJ (the one that talks about "growing mold on your conscience"), I think that means "lose your soul" in the sense of damnation/turning evil, not turning into a being with a radically different kind of spirit.
To be fair now i've napped a little it's also not clear whether or not JB ran the math on the trick he had molly pull at the start of Cold Case.
I'd think not, since Molly compares the energy required to "military grade munitions"; I don't think she means nuclear weapons from the way it's phrased.
The math for me come sup in the 400Kt+ range,
Well, it's described as ten feet deep, half a mile around (has to be more or less a half circle since the boat is only twenty yards from shore). So that's about pi * (800 meters * 800 meters) / 2 (for a half circle) = very close to 1 million square meters of area.
It's 10 feet/3 meters deep so that's about 3 million cubic meters of ice.
The density of ice is about 900 kg per cubic meter, so that's about 2.7 billion kg (2.7 million metric tons or about 3 million US tons) of water frozen.
The water in the Alaskan seas is likely fairly close to freezing already, but the absolute minimum energy removed to freeze water (if it's already at freezing point) is the heat of fusion, 333 Joules/gram. 2.7 billion kg is 2.7 trillion grams, so 899 trillion joules (899 terajoules). That's the equivalent of roughly 215 kilotons of TNT (1 ton of TNT = 4.184 gigajoules).
That's fairly close to your 400 KT given how rough this is.
On the other hand, we don't know how drawing on Winter Ice works energy-wise. If it just involves freezing stuff by dumping the heat into the Nevernever, the effect might be more like opening a bunch of micro-portals to the NN (which can't really be calculated in physics terms) rather than actually handling all that energy directly the way Harry does with regular wizard magic.
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Hot as the sun is vague, which is good for the story line as it leaves room for the imagination. But it isn't very meaningful. Plasma cutters can be much hotter than the surface of the sun. And ten gauge steel is thin. When Molly freezes that ice what we can know is that she didn't dump the heat in a column of fire. Maybe she removed the salt, which might have made the ocean a super cooled liquid. Instant ice. Harry is a power guy. Maybe Molly works smarter, not harder. And she is obviously smarter than me. ;D
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Larger, yes, but not hotter. Harry says his lake-freezing fire-column spell in WN is "hot enough to vaporize ten-gauge steel" (and there was no Hellfire in that spell, just energy gathered from the environment via regular wizard magic). Harry doesn't throw around fire magic on that scale very often at all, but it is within his capabilities.
I think he also describes a fire spell in Changes as being as hot as the sun or something, but there was Soulfire in that.
That spell is more powerful than anything we see Harry do before he's Winter Knight (afterwards, I think the warehouse-lifting-iceberg in CD is comparable or stronger) but it's not on a whole other level.
I don't think her wizard power is all that meaningful on this scale in "raw power" terms.
However, Molly's core talents of illusion and subtle magic work really, really well with the way the Sidhe tend to do things. Give her enough time to really learn how to adapt her existing skills/talents to her new power, and she'll be incredibly, terrifyingly capable. But that will be because of her skill/talent rather than just raw power.
(Luccio says in SmF that even before her body swap, she had less raw power than Harry. But she was far more capable.)
If we're talking about the same WoJ (the one that talks about "growing mold on your conscience"), I think that means "lose your soul" in the sense of damnation/turning evil, not turning into a being with a radically different kind of spirit.
I'd think not, since Molly compares the energy required to "military grade munitions"; I don't think she means nuclear weapons from the way it's phrased.
Well, it's described as ten feet deep, half a mile around (has to be more or less a half circle since the boat is only twenty yards from shore). So that's about pi * (800 meters * 800 meters) / 2 (for a half circle) = very close to 1 million square meters of area.
It's 10 feet/3 meters deep so that's about 3 million cubic meters of ice.
The density of ice is about 900 kg per cubic meter, so that's about 2.7 billion kg (2.7 million metric tons or about 3 million US tons) of water frozen.
The water in the Alaskan seas is likely fairly close to freezing already, but the absolute minimum energy removed to freeze water (if it's already at freezing point) is the heat of fusion, 333 Joules/gram. 2.7 billion kg is 2.7 trillion grams, so 899 trillion joules (899 terajoules). That's the equivalent of roughly 215 kilotons of TNT (1 ton of TNT = 4.184 gigajoules).
That's fairly close to your 400 KT given how rough this is.
On the other hand, we don't know how drawing on Winter Ice works energy-wise. If it just involves freezing stuff by dumping the heat into the Nevernever, the effect might be more like opening a bunch of micro-portals to the NN (which can't really be calculated in physics terms) rather than actually handling all that energy directly the way Harry does with regular wizard magic.
It's not clear from where the shore is when Molly walks ashore though how contiguous the shoreline was. From the fact that Molly specifies in every direction i;d assume she was stepping onto a headland of some kind, (this also makes sense in that she clearly didn't freeze the towns harbour so she must have been at least half a mile from there). So i treated it as a full 360 degree. I also assumed Moly was specifying the volume of water frozen with ice expansion pushing somewhat past that and i dug up a value of 80 calories per gram for seawater which equates to 334.8MJ per cubic meter. 10ft is 3m so that means roughly 1GJ per square meter of surface ocean area which is about .225 tons of TNT equivalent.
I'm not convinced JB wasn't thinking in very low end nuke terms, he's shown a bit too much knowledge of the sciences involved for that. My bet from re-reading the WN scene is he was thinking purely heat capacity, which is around 2 orders of magnitude lower energy totals. Thats down around a tactical nuke rather than a full blown trident warhead. Which comes in close to what i remember calculating Lily's Cold Days fire wall at.
As far as Harry's fire goes. I wasn't saying he couldn't dump the necessary energy out. He clearly can but his focusing ability is poor, he's not normally capable of putting enough energy out inside the volume of one of his practical evocations to vaporise the end of Fix's sword, (without knowing exactly how much Fix's sword piece weighed it's hard to give an exact value, but probably a couple of MJ total energy required). The minimum energy density of the flame wave was roughly 67kj per cubic centimeter, but thats assuming it took a full second to pass over and Fix's sword absorbed 100% of the energy. The latter is probably a safe assumption what with magic being involved but without re-reading Cold Days in don't recall the wave being that slow moving. So i suspect the value is up somwhere in the few hundred KJ per CC range.
Now you'll note i used the term normally when talking about Harry's magic. I did that for a reason. i'd basically forgotten about this. But that had to do with the fact that when i said Harry's magic i was specifically referring to what he can do with his own direct personal power. The WN trick was a case of drawing on an external energy source. It still took a lot out of him but most of the energy came from the water not his magic which is a very different proposition to his day to day fire spells where he's throwing out fire purely from his personal will.
Also as the next person to post mentioned, (this kinda got held up for a few days half complete), 10 gauge steel isn't very thick, just 3.2mm and temperature isn't the same as energy.
Molly's little trick however, like Harry's warehouse refloating from Cold Days however was very clearly reaching down into the power of the mantle. And whilst the text with Molly didn't specify i'd expect it to work the same way as Harry where he was just outright projecting cold.
As an aside a quick bit of math says Harry's WN trick probably involved moving a bit over 5GJ of energy or about 1200kg's for TNT. Given the size he specifies that works out at an energy density of around 3kj per CC. Thats over 2 orders of magnitude below the minimum for Lily's and over a fraction of the area. Which is still nothing to sneeze at mind.
The idea of what Sarrissa or Molly could do, (even if we assume JB was thinking a couple of orders of magnitude smaller than the math says), if they focused the energy up tight is frankly freaking terrifying. The only thing man built thats ever come close to that kind of energy density is a Casaba Howitzer. Which is a shaped charge nuke, and i don't think one was ever built and tested on a large enough scale to actually match. Think about that for a moment.