The Ghouls vs. The Forest People

That was in Bigfoot on Campus.

Promote climate change perhaps?  Put her in conflict with Mab, maybe?  By that if she can get around easier, Mother Winter might overrule Mab, and that might not be good..  Here is a thought, it was Mab who originally stole or arranged for Mother Winter's walking stick to be stolen in the first place.  It was part of a power grab, and somehow handed it off to the White Council to deflect suspicion from herself..

I think the division of power and jurisdiction is pretty ingrained between the Queens. They'd pretty much have to be nemfected to try to circumvent the proper boundaries between them.

I doubt it. The Council is filthy rich and cowardly, much better to hire disposable assassins. Sure, it's Harry Dresden they're going after, so any one assassin won't be cheap, but still.

Yeah, killing him at least semi-publicly (in the sense that most of the Council members are aware they did it) would probably be too controversial. Eb is the only one who could kill him with magic, and while the engagement will probably push him to consider it, I don't think he would. I'm not sure any of the Wardens Langtry would trust to follow an order to kill Harry in secret without using magic have the competency with guns or bombs to stand a near certain chance of success.

Hiring someone in Kincaid or Grey's orbit to do it for them makes a lot more sense for Langtry and his faction. Someone with a footing in mortal organized crime hits would be a bonus, because even if they fail, Marcone would be the instant number one suspect for the paymaster behind it.

Or if they're willing to get their hands dirtier, Shagnasty or the Genoskwa would probably go after Harry for a bent quarter and a copy of whatever intelligence the Wardens have on his defenses to make the job easier for them.


I'd also expect attempts on his life from at least some of:
- factions of the White Court that don't want the engagement to proceed
- possibly Marcone for real
- King Corb
- Outsiders and their cultists. If Harry's confidence that he can adapt binding and banishing cornerhounds to exorcising Nemesis isn't misplaced, that's a threat to them.

Cowl has been at the game a while - long enough to have a history with the other Kemmlerite disciples. If you think he was sandbagging as Beckitt, why? That couldn't have been Cowl's actual birth identity - the cops arresting someone who seems mid-30's to 40's but has an ID with a birthdate far enough back to account for Cowl's acquaintance with Kemmler and the other heirs would have raised some eyebrows. The Beckitt identity was a nobody on the supernatural who's - who radar, so sandbagging as the assistant to an inferior like Sells seems like a lot of trouble to go to for faking the death of an alias identity that nobody cares about anyway.

And if Helen Beckitt had even a fraction of Kumori's skill and power, she hardly would have needed to mess around with feeding intel to the Denarians to hurt Marcone, after seducing her way into his confidence. She could have had her revenge directly in an effectively unlimited number of satisfyingly horrible ways.

Plus, Cowl and Kumori were swanning around Bianca's party well before the timeline for Mr. Beckitt's death and Mrs. Beckitt's parole.

If Cowl was anything to the plot of SF, it makes much more sense that he was the theorized unseen tutor who was setting Sells up with dribs and drabs of training to use him as a cat's paw. Cowl or Lord Raith (or both, if they were allies in The Circle) are the best candidates for that.

The weird part is that from what we know of Namshiel, jolly cooperation is not part of his usual MO.

In Small Favor, he was one of the Denarians that liked to dominate his hosts completely. And yet post-Battle Ground we find out that he's apparently just some Magic Nerd that is willing to play partners with Marcone and make jokes in the middle of a battle?

Could be the Fallen itself and/or the previous host were N-fected. That accounts for just about any erratic behaviour.

Could be he's pissed after Tessa and Rosanna maybe framed him for Arctis Tor and definitely pickpocketed the back of coins off of him and left him to lose his host and go to coin jail, and he decided he needs of a partnership role with Marcone if he's going to get even with the others who treat their hosts as a partner.

He might have chosen Harry once. That trust is broken now.

Plus, assuming Ebenezar knows it's Mother Winter's staff, bequeathing it to someone beholden to obey an order from her to return her stolen property would be the end of the Blackstaff as an office of the council. And he believes that office needs to exist.

Furthermore, if he has any affection left for Harry, he'd know that passing the staff outside the Council would get him immediately marked for death to retrieve it.

So yeah, all of this is pretty evil at face value. And I generally assumed they were the bad guys. But IF they are trying to stop hell on earth than really anything is justifiable.

I think they've convinced the hosts that they allow to maintain some semblance of independence, like Nic and Deirdre, of that principle. The Fallen may even believe it themselves (though I suspect there are almost as many different beliefs and reasons for falling as there are fallen, so perhaps I should say some of them might believe it).

The issue is, what if there's a less destructive way to avoid the outsider victory and empty night?

I wouldn't be at all surprised if how to deal with the Outsiders is one of the central disputes in DV cosmology between TWG and the Fallen. The 'good' side is willing to take a substantial risk of losing in pursuit of a win with minimal damage to creation. The Fallen think TWG is recklessly risking everything on a long shot because He is too sentimental about breaking his creations. They instead embrace a scorched earth policy, where good odds of saving a badly damaged something are better than poor odds of saving almost everything. I'd further guess that opinions on whether the stupid primates are worth risking their own immortal butts for are a significant factor in where each angel comes down on that question.

Harry just told Mab those were the conditions. She never actually agreed to anything he said. Neither through words nor through gestures or eye-blinking.
Meaning she can tell him to do anything she wants.

Yeah, that's the bigger danger to him. With the original three favors, he was smart enough to include the right to turn down job requests that would fulfil one of them. With the Knight gig, she never actually accepted his terms against killing loved ones.

Of course, if she ordered "kill Molly" for no good reason, he's more likely to say "Nah" and choose to die for insubordination.