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The Dresden Files => DF Spoilers => Topic started by: groinkick on July 20, 2018, 07:07:53 PM
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Jim said this about Mab with regards to bringing Leah to Arctis tor. To me this implies it wasn't the best thing to do, she error'd. There was the attack, could more damage have been done than originally shown? Is that damage still relevant? If she did error it means it will come back in future books. How do you think it will come crashing down?
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Depends what was meant. The thing is we don't really know exactly what happened at Arctis Tor before Harry and Co got there. That creates an issue, a big one. Because we don't actually know the attack got beaten off. maybe they got in and got what they wanted and got out. But if so what did they leave with, (or destroy). Without that info we really don't know enough.
In fact i'm inclined to say that since the Denarian involved got away clean it probably did succeed. Molly could tear a Denarian apart with the Lady's Mantle. What Mab could do if she put her mind to it probably isn't worth thinking about. And thats the problem. There's just no way any of the attackers would have survived if they'd been beaten off by Mab. And Mab was he only Winter survivor not imprisoned or late to the party like the fetches. That suggests to me they got what they where after. But what was it, we all assumed it was Lea they were after but it could well be that lea simply provided the pretext for the attack and was never the real objective, just an obvious excuse either for Mab's benefit or possibly for some of the help along for the ride.
Hell the entire point might have been to turn Mab and the Denarians against each other. I just finished re-reading small favour and the kind of things they could do with Ivy are all short term gains, mass fear and panic and confusion. That's more tessa's style, maybe nasciel suggested it to tessa and she talked Nic into it. Because let's be fair here, whatever the Denarians faults they don't want the outsiders to win, but pitting them against Mab removes any possibility of them helping in the future. Thats a big deal. Stripping Mab of a potential ally would be more than worth giving up Lea from the outsiders PoV.
Then again maybe it was somthing more physical. Maybe Mab has a weapon vault full of scary stuff and they wanted somthing from it. One of my personal theories is that the fae queens could also be the horsemen, (or rather horsewomen), of the apocalypse, presumably if so they have special swords for the occasion.
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Or maybe Mab has simple overestimated herself, or underestimated Nemesis, and Lea isn't as 'cured' as she seems, and Nemesis still has a sleeper agent just waiting for the right moment...
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Is this in any context? Cause one thing we've already established is it likely got to Maeve through Lea, and I've always assumed because of how Nicodemus referred to that action, in Smf to mean it actively escaped into Maeve from Lea.
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It was the only place where she could cure Lea.. It was the right thing to do.. As for Maeve, Mab blinded herself to what was going on with her, perhaps it was the humanity left in her, a mother's heart, it also made her vulnerable..
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Well wasn't Maeve already infected when Leah was at Arctis Tor?
Or maybe Mab has simple overestimated herself, or underestimated Nemesis, and Lea isn't as 'cured' as she seems, and Nemesis still has a sleeper agent just waiting for the right moment...
Didn't Leah tell Harry that it could still reach her so she had to fight it or words to that effect?
Is this in any context?
It's not a brand new quote. He's said it a few times but I just thought about it and started the topic. I think they were generic questions about what happened at Arctis Tor and Jim said that. In each case he answered "Mab thought she was doing the right thing"... To me the emphasis was on "thought".
It was the only place where she could cure Lea.. It was the right thing to do..
The right thing to do may have been to destroy Leah..... There may not be an actual cure, only a way to slow it down, or stop it for a little while.
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Jim said this about Mab with regards to bringing Leah to Arctis tor. To me this implies it wasn't the best thing to do, she error'd. There was the attack, could more damage have been done than originally shown? Is that damage still relevant? If she did error it means it will come back in future books. How do you think it will come crashing down?
Arctis Tor is Mab's seat of power, it may be the only place where Lea could have been safely restrained. The raid itself may have been an effort to free Lea. Certainly Lea felt that Dresden could free her, once he got to where she was constrained, even though it seems she couldn't free herself. Maybe Mab didn't expect to be attacked at her seat of power. Since it pinned her at the borders of Winter.
Maybe one day JB will actually tell us. If he does will somebody hire an ectomancer to let me know, since I'm old and decrepit and am not counting on seeing the end game? ;)Well wasn't Maeve already infected when Leah was at Arctis Tor?
Didn't Leah tell Harry that it could still reach her so she had to fight it or words to that effect?
Mab speaks through Cat Sith in Small Favor because she is angry that the Winter Lady was infected. As of Changes she uses Lea to speak, so she is still angry . The Winter Lady may well have been infected at the time of Summer Knight, but certainly by Proven Guilty, I think I can cite that timeline if someone believes it wrong.
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I mean in SK Maeve kinda pulls Harry's butt out of the fire and allows him to foil Aurora, so presumably she wasn't taken then.
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I mean in SK Maeve kinda pulls Harry's butt out of the fire and allows him to foil Aurora, so presumably she wasn't taken then.
True, or that was part of the plan all along.
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True, or that was part of the plan all along.
Nemesis: "mwahaha, excllent! Now the one person that can potentially prevent me from checkmating this game and conquering reality is free to do so! Good job my agents!"
Like, that only works if you assume either A) Nemesis is thicker then reinforced concrete or B) Actively trying to fail at it's job.
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Nemesis: "mwahaha, excllent! Now the one person that can potentially prevent me from checkmating this game and conquering reality is free to do so! Good job my agents!"
Like, that only works if you assume either A) Nemesis is thicker then reinforced concrete or B) Actively trying to fail at it's job.
Or Nemesis did not think Harry was a serious threat anyway.
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Nemesis: "mwahaha, excllent! Now the one person that can potentially prevent me from checkmating this game and conquering reality is free to do so! Good job my agents!"
Like, that only works if you assume either A) Nemesis is thicker then reinforced concrete or B) Actively trying to fail at it's job.
Or C. Nemesis needs a certain Starborn to be alive for future plans.
Dresden was pretty confident that He Who Walks Before could have killed him in the past but felt he was being tested in some way. Cowl could have probably killed Harry but didn't. The Fallen Coin wanted Dresden specifically for some reason, and not another wizard. Mab see's him as an enemy, Titania is afraid of what he can do... Dresden is important in some way and it's reasonable to assume that Nemesis see's him the same way.
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Depends what was meant. The thing is we don't really know exactly what happened at Arctis Tor before Harry and Co got there. That creates an issue, a big one. Because we don't actually know the attack got beaten off. maybe they got in and got what they wanted and got out. But if so what did they leave with, (or destroy). Without that info we really don't know enough.
Didn't Harry and company find a winter army already in place when they launched their own attack? Maybe that's what beat them off.
Or maybe they wanted to free Lea before she was cured, and failed, because they needed Summer Fire, and they didn't have it handy.
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Nemesis: "mwahaha, excllent! Now the one person that can potentially prevent me from checkmating this game and conquering reality is free to do so! Good job my agents!"
Like, that only works if you assume either A) Nemesis is thicker then reinforced concrete or B) Actively trying to fail at it's job.
Or the point was to remove Aurora and replace her with a less experienced Summer Lady. The question is what was the goal? To have a war between the Queens or to destroy the well? If Mab can plan for multiple paths to success, then one might assume that Nemesis could do so as well. So a failure in one leads to the other.
And why does there need to be something taken from Winter in the attack at Arctis Tor? If the ways could be made hazardous to the White Council, isn't that, in itself, sufficient reason? The Reds would have then had the advantage of safe travel, while the White Council would not.
Or it could be some other way entirely and I have been drinking my own Kool Aid. /shrug?
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Well I think the problem might be that Mab placed a Nemesis infected agent within Winter's Wellspring. It is true that it helped cure Lea but it may also be true that it left a taint that might end up coming back to bite her.
I think it is something that can work both ways though. If Nemesis could somehow taint and get an advantage via Wellspring, there may be a back door way back to it via the Wellspring too.
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Or the point was to remove Aurora and replace her with a less experienced Summer Lady. The question is what was the goal? To have a war between the Queens or to destroy the well? If Mab can plan for multiple paths to success, then one might assume that Nemesis could do so as well. So a failure in one leads to the other.
I mean, I'm sure that there were multiple goals but...
If we assume that Maeve was already Nemesis'd then that means that, by having her simply not intervene to save Harry:
1) Aurora Succeeds in throwing all reality into Chaos
2) Titania (who hadn't cottoned on yet) fulfills her duty and drags Mab into hell, probably dying in the process.
3) Aurora and Maeve (who are both supposedly Nemesis'd) become The Queens.
4) Outsiders win for all time.
So either Nemesis gave up a Guaranteed win now for a 'maybe' win later, or maybe... Maeve wasn't gotten to yet?
Well I think the problem might be that Mab placed a Nemesis infected agent within Winter's Wellspring. It is true that it helped cure Lea but it may also be true that it left a taint that might end up coming back to bite her.
I think it is something that can work both ways though. If Nemesis could somehow taint and get an advantage via Wellspring, there may be a back door way back to it via the Wellspring too.
That's possible I suppose, but Jim has noted that there are upper limits to what Nemesis can mess with (No Angels for example).
So fucking with the wellspring may be beyond it.
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I mean, I'm sure that there were multiple goals but...
One goal, multiple paths. And in the Dresdenverse there are no guaranteed wins. Not for Mab or Nemesis. Or Harry. However you are probably right.
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The right thing to do may have been to destroy Leah..... There may not be an actual cure, only a way to slow it down, or stop it for a little while.
Let's not forget that Mab also encased herself in ice, precaution against the infection or did she feel symptoms herself at the time.
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Let's not forget that Mab also encased herself in ice, precaution against the infection or did she feel symptoms herself at the time.
Was she in ice? I thought she was pretending to be a statue. Perhaps she did become Nemfected? I don't know. Jim said Nemesis isn't all powerful, Mab may be too powerful for It to control her.
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Well wasn't Maeve already infected when Leah was at Arctis Tor?
She must have been, because PG is when Maeve talks about Mab being crazy... in CD Harry and Fix talk about that as an example of Maeve lying.
Was she in ice? I thought she was pretending to be a statue. Perhaps she did become Nemfected? I don't know. Jim said Nemesis isn't all powerful, Mab may be too powerful for It to control her.
Whether Mab could be infected or not, I'm certain she wasn't, for at least two reasons:
- if she was, reality would be either destroyed or much more Outsider-ridden than it is
- if she was infected at the time of PG specifically, she wouldn't have been trying to cure Lea of Nemesis
It seems like Mab really should be "infect-able", as I'm not sure the power gap between Lea and Mab is that large, but OTOH if she is "infect-able", why did Lea mess with Maeve rather than going straight to Mab?
And Mab has the athame in DB. So maybe she really isn't vulnerable... who knows.
Maybe Mab is more powerful than I'm imagining... there is a WoJ that Mab vs the Erlking wouldn't even be much of a fight, but that the Erlking "could probably hand Molly her head" (IE - stronger than one of the Faerie Ladies). I tend to imagine Lea as closer to Mab than the Winter Lady in power, but could she win a fight vs the Erlking? Quite possibly not...
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I wouldn't really read too much into Mab having the athame. Almost certainly if she can cure Lea, she can purge the infection from the knife.
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I wouldn't really read too much into Mab having the athame. Almost certainly if she can cure Lea, she can purge the infection from the knife.
Perhaps, but it is interesting that after Dead Beat we no longer see her wearing it. Also if she was so aware of it's dangers why did it take her so long to suspect that her daughter may have become infected from it? True, Maeve had been acting batshit crazy for a while, but I think it took a now sane Lea to tell her who had had contact with the Knife before she realized.
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Perhaps, but it is interesting that after Dead Beat we no longer see her wearing it. Also if she was so aware of it's dangers why did it take her so long to suspect that her daughter may have become infected from it? True, Maeve had been acting batshit crazy for a while, but I think it took a now sane Lea to tell her who had had contact with the Knife before she realized.
that's an ad libbed statement. Mab found out during, iirc PG, because of how Maeve acted in the grand chess board wasn't pro winter. We've never heard of Lea telling Mab this.
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Perhaps, but it is interesting that after Dead Beat we no longer see her wearing it.
Wasn't it in a sheet of ice upon her hip? Perhaps this was a way of preventing Nemfection from spreading to her, and she was keeping it close to prevent anyone else from getting it back.
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Wasn't it in a sheet of ice upon her hip? Perhaps this was a way of preventing Nemfection from spreading to her, and she was keeping it close to prevent anyone else from getting it back.
I thought she was simply wearing it... and she was wearing it specifically when she showed up as "leah" for Harry I think? I think she wore it cause she had to with the equivalence factor of taking it/confining leah.
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In Dead Beat Mab knew that Lea had attempted to resist her power, but may not have known that the athame had been used to corrupt Lea. By the start of Proven Guilty she is aware that both Lea and Maeve are infected. And in Cold Days she tells Harry how both were infected.
We get a better look at how JB sees the infection working in Cold Days when he confronts Cat Sith on the barge at the island. In the passage Harry makes Cat Sith aware of his, I'll call it a rider. Sith struggles but loses and his personality is destroyed. From this I infer that Cat Sith did not know he was infected
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In Dead Beat Mab knew that Lea had attempted to resist her power, but may not have known that the athame had been used to corrupt Lea. By the start of Proven Guilty she is aware that both Lea and Maeve are infected. And in Cold Days she tells Harry how both were infected.
We get a better look at how JB sees the infection working in Cold Days when he confronts Cat Sith on the barge at the island. In the passage Harry makes Cat Sith aware of his, I'll call it a rider. Sith struggles but loses and his personality is destroyed. From this I infer that Cat Sith did not know he was infected
Aurora didn't know either. It has things in commen with mind magic. To be undetectable it must be subtle, in line with the existing personality. This means that it can not directly control actions. It can do so of course but then everything is less subtle and the meddling is more clear.
If the host becomes aware of it it can fight the infection and/or run for help. Unless you are crazy to begin with then you can ally with it.
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I thought she was simply wearing it... and she was wearing it specifically when she showed up as "leah" for Harry I think? I think she wore it cause she had to with the equivalence factor of taking it/confining leah.
I always thought it was a statement of power on Mab's part, she over came Lea's challenge. Lea wanted and accepted it because she thought it would help her defeat Mab for power.. I have always wondered if Lea wasn't infected before she accepted the knife... It could be that we and Mab got it all wrong, Lea may have infected the knife and not the other way around.