I tracked him and his father until the time of Malcolm’s death. To this day, I’m not sure who killed him. I suppose it’s possible that Malcolm’s death was natural, but given this child’s ongoing misfortune it seems clear to me that he has been marked with an Adversary from the moment of his birth.
Malcolm died while I was on mission elsewhere. I arrived less than ten hours after the child went into the foster care system, and someone made him vanish. Magically, physically, bureaucratically. There was no trace of him, and I searched for years.
That bastard Justin DuMorne got to him before I could.
Perhaps I have been too hard on him. Perhaps I really have become paranoid and mad. Perhaps I have wronged a good man. But there is too much at stake to take that chance. The thought of allowing a Destroyer to be birthed among us when I could have stopped it is too heavy to bear.
but given this child’s ongoing misfortune it seems clear to me that he has been marked with an Adversary from the moment of his birth.The phrasing could have been made clearer but it is what it is. And of course the Adversary in this case is HWWB. This is established in Storm Front.
Subject and predicate. The phrasing could have been made clearer but it is what it is. And of course the Adversary in this case is HWWB. This is established in Storm Front.
Who knows what Jim is up to. But Harry was marked for something prior to conception. Jim's been banging the drum on this since the series started. That's the whole point of the Morgan microfiction. Harry was bred like a horse.
IE, there's nothing obviously unnatural about Malcolm's death by itself, but all the other things going on around Harry automatically makes it suspicious.Unless you take Chauncy at his word, he claimed that Malcolm as well as Margaret were murdered.. Harry couldn't get any further with that without giving up another one of his names.
You ever get the feeling that Morgan was never the brightest penny in the sack?
Unless you take Chauncy at his word, he claimed that Malcolm as well as Margaret were murdered.. Harry couldn't get any further with that without giving up another one of his names.
Oh, I agree Malcolm's death wasn't natural; what I meant is that it looked natural (superficially), and Morgan only thought it wasn't because so many other things were going on around Harry (i.e. not because the cause of death was itself obviously unnatural).
That's why Morgan couldn't really be sure.
Morgan busied himself trying to take Harry out at every turn ...
It's a test. Morgan soulgazed Harry and knows that his first-law violation (killing Justin) gave him a magical anger management problem. If Harry isn't careful about it, his anger problem will grow and he really will be a warlock. And Morgan means to be there when it happens, because he's seen what happens next and he'll blame himself for all the victims he couldn't save.
I rather think this, combined with Turn Coat, points to someone trying to setup Morgan to execute Harry without understanding that Morgan's rigidity wasn't mental, it was moral- he would literally be damned before betraying his principles and loyalties. Morgan was the one ultimately responsible for the Doom being revoked. At the end, he concluded Harry was no warlock but was stupidly reckless at times (which Harry would probably concede)
Or, well, I think more accurately he wasn't good at thinking outside the box. Morgan wasn't dumb, but he was a straight-line A-to-B thinker... like most of the older wizards, it seems.
Morgan wasn’t an investigator, he was an enforcer, when he needed an investigator, he went to Harry.
And he still did ignore Harry's warning about the Summer/Winter issue in SK; I don't think that's explainable as just testing Harry.
That's a good point. I have no excuse for him there.
Re: not an investigator, I'm not sure we have any basis to judge that. He's one of the Council's top wardens, not a member of the Brute Squad. In Storm Front, his plan to hold on to Harry through the storm and see if that stopped the killing was a pretty good out-of-the-box plan. It only looked stupid to us because we knew Harry was telling the truth about being the next target.
You're looking at it from our (Harry's) perspective and with our knowledge. Yes, it would have gone horribly wrong, but Morgan had no reason to believe that. (Harry's claim that he was the next target came *after* he heard Morgan's plan, so it was a particularly convenient thing to say...)
Compare to Harry's clever plan in Proven Guilty -- the one that sends the Fetch right past all of the Carpenter residence's protections to whisk Molly off to Arctis Tor.
That's about as spectacularly wrong as a plan can go. It went that wrong because Harry didn't have enough information. Same with Morgan's plan in Storm Front. It was a good plan that would have gone spectacularly wrong because Morgan didn't have enough information.
Compare to Harry's clever plan in Proven Guilty -- the one that sends the Fetch right past all of the Carpenter residence's protections to whisk Molly off to Arctis Tor.The fetches didn't get sent past the defenses, Molly let them in. The plan worked to perfection. It just wasn't the perfection he was thinking about. But Mab helped him out.
The fetches didn't get sent past the defenses, Molly let them in. The plan worked to perfection. It just wasn't the perfection he was thinking about. But Mab helped him out.???
Side note. The Morgan in Storm Front is not the Morgan in the microfiction. He is a closely related Morgan from a parallel universe close to ours. ;)
Timing is everything, who arranged for Morgan to be away on a mission when Malcolm died, and young Harry dropped off the radar screen? Morgan says he arrived on scene less then ten hours later and Harry had already disappeared. Really? No records anywhere of what happened to six year old Harry? What is weird about that is as a Warden of the White Council, you'd think that Morgan would know some pull to get access to those records. Someone on the Senior Council or even Luccio would have political connections of that kind.
What I want to know is whether Luccio will ever show what Morgan wrote down to Harry. Harry may need the clues in Warden Morgan's journal to figure out who the traitor is. Also, LTW personally investigated Simon's fortress at Archangel. Seeing as River Shoulders told Harry that LTW is near the end of his road, if Injun Joe learned anything interesting investigating the Red Court's attack on Simon's personal HQ, it's about the time he shares that knowledge with someone else, maybe Harry. I'll be very interested in any conversations Harry and LTW have in Battle Ground. Finally, after reading Morgan's final journal entry; assuming she did read it, Captain Luccio should also be putting pieces together and wondering about the unlikely coincidence of having to send Morgan on a mission, when he could have stopped young Harry from being disappeared. However, if it was Simon who gave Luccio her marching orders, and she believes Simon really was killed by the Red Court, then to Luccio coincidence might make sense.Or Peabody was doing his thing with the ink even back when Harry was a child, but not on as great a scale as he was when Harry found him out. He may have messed with Simon's mind or more likely Luccio's mind, the orders for the mission were given so Morgan would be elsewhere when Malcolm died. La Fortier may have figured this out, thus he had to be eliminated, so did Luccio and Morgan. So they were set up, her mind controlled to murder La Fortier, and Morgan to discover and take the fall for it.
Pietrovich was a great friend of Eb’s, AND he was duMornes Master. Everyone you need to keep Harry ‘protected’, and away from Malcolm except it didn’t.
???It was sarcasm. Jim has retconned Morgan. The Morgan of the microfiction is Morgan version 2, the new and improved Morgan. It breaks things, particularly in terms of motivation.
It was sarcasm. Jim has retconned Morgan. The Morgan of the microfiction is Morgan version 2, the new and improved Morgan. It breaks things, particularly in terms of motivation.
"Because I knew," he whispered. He lifted his right hand, and I gripped it hard. "I knew that you knew how it felt to be an innocent man hounded by the Wardens." It was the closest he'd ever come to saying that he'd been wrong about me.
Because Morgan is going to appear in the next book (not half a book), and he needs to justify what is going to be some of his interaction with Harry, especially if alt Morgan follows him home.
Alt Morgan coming to our Harry’s timeline makes sense, Journal indicates that he knows Harry has the potential to be a destroyer, and if Alt Harry is a destroyer he knows his time-line is doomed. Alt-Luccio is likely dead, the White Council damaged beyond repair in the Red Court War, and Alt Morgan can make good on his promise to alt-Margaret.
So if Morgan knew all along that Harry was innocent, why all the fricking testing and making his life a horror?
I wonder if the White Council would consider Morgan apparently coming back to life as a breach of the Fifth Law? It may depend on whether he comes willingly or not.
The other thing that never made sense to me is Morgan, the Warden's Warden, would make promises to Margaret on any level.
I think Harry will get the chance to resurrect one person by bringing them over to this timeline, and Harry may decide Morgan is the one he resurrects in this fashion because he may be the one the timeline needs most,...
I wonder if the White Council would consider Morgan apparently coming back to life as a breach of the Fifth Law? It may depend on whether he comes willingly or not.
Well, they don't seem to have been bothered by Harry coming back to life.
The 5th Law is specifically about necromancy.
We don't have the entire conversation between Margaret and Warden Morgan. Perhaps there are qualifiers to that promise that make it more inline with the Warden Morgan we knew from the novels. I doubt Morgan promised to protect an adult Harry from the consequences of his own decisions. I suspect the promise was to protect the child Harry from someone like Justin getting a hold of Harry and using him from their own purposes.
Remember that Morgan was still officially viewed as a traitor by the White Council at the time of his death. So how is the conversation between Harry and the Senior Council going to go; I mean how is Harry going to explain it, after they see Morgan seemingly return from the dead? I think it's going to read like a Monty Python sketch or the Abbott and Costello "Who's on First?" sketch.
Remember that Morgan was still officially viewed as a traitor by the White Council at the time of his death. So how is the conversation between Harry and the Senior Council going to go; I mean how is Harry going to explain it, after they see Morgan seemingly return from the dead? I think it's going to read like a Monty Python sketch or the Abbott and Costello "Who's on First?" sketch.
Harry may give them no choice, I think we are coming to the time the GateKeeper foresaw where Harry challenges the Senior Council (for real) about how they have been acting, executing Warlocks (when Demonreach is available), the actions of the Black Staff in breaking the Laws of Magic, the failure to protect and nurture the magical have nots and most of all the failure to address the Black Council.
The fear was that the White Council would split as Wizards might pick the Black Council as a putative winner, however a Harry based win against the Titan (and the Black Council) will see these fairweather wizards back Harry, as well as the majority of the Wardens and younger wizards, Harry may well have a coalition which can force change. We may also see several members of the Senior Council ‘retired’ in BG, not just the older three in Chicago, but Ancient Mai as well. We may only see a gullible Christos Merlin and GateKeeper left.
You missed Martha Liberties broken leg.
Mab would love him to be the Black Staff, and Mother Winter would love Mab to have been less soft and sentimental with Harry. Accepting the Black Staff back would be in keeping with Mother Winter forcing Mab to live with the consequences of her soft treatment of Harry, an unruly and headstrong Knight. Harry is Mab’s punishment.
Not sure Harry would pick up the Black Staff, consequences without guilt are not his sort of thing, and he believes in the 7 laws
Not sure Harry would pick up the Black Staff, consequences without guilt are not his sort of thing, and he believes in the 7 laws and would rather be creative about doing what he needs to do without breaking them.
Besides if he returns Mother Winters walking stick, she owes him a huge favour, perhaps healing/curing Thomas?. The Mothers provided a cure for Susan remember, the unravelling, when Harry couldn’t. A bit of foreshadowing as Harry has once again a loved one in peril from their vampire half.
Mab would love him to be the Black Staff, and Mother Winter would love Mab to have been less soft and sentimental with Harry. Accepting the Black Staff back would be in keeping with Mother Winter forcing Mab to live with the consequences of her soft treatment of Harry, an unruly and headstrong Knight. Harry is Mab’s punishment.
I've long wondered the following:
1) If Mother Winter is so nasty because she's not protected from black magic backlash, hence the stick.
2) If the Blackstaff can cure existing corruption- so pull out from Harry the taint of killing DuMorne. Harry would probably be down with that.
MW is an Immortal and therefore much more immutable than that. Since she's not a mortal with free will, she can't act against her nature anyway, so corruption wouldn't be possible/relevant in any case.Not to put too fine a point on it...but Maeve was Immortal, and so was Aurora. Mab even was considered by Titania as a viable candidate for nemfection (although no one bothered to consider whether Titania was/is). While they may be different things of course (black magic corruption and nemfection), no Immortal is truly immutable. I think that's rather the point Mother Summer was making about whether Harry could resist his mantle. It's also the point Vadderung was making about not being what he was ("change comes hard to Immortals"). They don't get a lot of choice in the matter, but not necessarily zero either. I think that's a big deal.
IE - any use of dark magic would be in line with her nature, and so at most would make her more of what she is ... but she's already 100% committed to being what she is, not conflicted like a mortal. This is why Fae don't hex tech by accident, etc.
Curing existing corruption... who knows. We really don't know the mechanics behind the Blackstaff. I tend to think not, but who knows?
I think the tendrils we see in Changes are more feeding off Eb's life energy than removing the black magic, as he seems to be fighting against them.
Not to put too fine a point on it...but Maeve was Immortal, and so was Aurora.
I think that's rather the point Mother Summer was making about whether Harry could resist his mantle.
I think the corruption caused by black magic is more like radiation sickness - get hit with too much and it changes you.
However, I propose that it wasn't feeding at all and most people have misinterpreted the scene. It seems more likely to me that the Blackstaff was attempting to make Ebeneezer more like it. It wants to be used, as often and violently as possible.
Not into black magic, but into the dark powers of winter - which I will say again are really not that different from black magic (just more of an icy theme).