I understand what you are seeing, but perhaps I can give you some figurative language that might help.

Think of aging as your body's response to the increasingly heavy weight of time weighing on your body. When you get something that freezes you in time--a Denarian coin, becoming a Rampire--then all of the additional weight keeps piling up, but it's prevented from actually affecting the body by this power. When the power is gone, all of that weight falls on them, instantly aging them as much as if they had not had the power. Or, if you assume accelerated aging like in the DV rather than instant, what was keeping the weight off is no longer supported, so the weight starts falling through, more and more of it piling on the person, until they die.

Now, that's obviously not a comprehensive theory, given that organisms grow into their prime before they begin weakening, but it might be illustrative to think of it in that manner.

Or Mrs. Mouse is the puppy that Harry didn't necessarily save.

Well, I don't know about Odin, but let's not forget the part when a possessed Murph called the Lords of Outer Night false gods, pretenders, and usurpers of truth. I figured their crimes against the Mayans included lying about being their gods.

Ah, excellent point, I had forgotten that at the time of my posting.

Belief Empowers Deities, not quite the same thing.  And thats just how it works for entities that have adopted those roles, like Odin or the Red King.  The WG was on the ground floor of Creation, by WOJ (as a corollary to the WOJ that says Uriel was the Senior VP of Creation)

Point of order: that's not precisely what the WoJ says.

The presence of an Archangel, essentially an executive VP of Creation, probably had something to do with it.

People confuse the indefinite article for the definite one and then over-inflate the significance.

But that's not my point. I saw absolutely nothing in the text to indicate that the Odin we met was not the original Odin, and unless I'm forgetting something, nothing to indicate that the Reds weren't the original Mayan gods besides a moment of speculation from Harry "Unreliable-Narrator" Dresden. If there was textual support for that, please remind me of where it is.

So, given that we (currently) have no proof that Odin is any less real than TWG beyond Judaism, Christianity, and Islam being so very much more popular, that implies that the various creation myths are all true too, Susanoo and the backs of turtles right along with the Let There Be Light. So why must TWG be the only one who created the universe? I suppose it's possible that whichever religion produces the strongest deity at the moment could be the "true" story of creation at that time, but frankly that's a little distasteful, at least to me.

And, finally--we know that belief can create power wholesale, ala the Shroud of Turin. Does it really seem impossible to you that in the DV, thousands and millions and billions of people all believing in a deity couldn't make it come into existence?

Possibly, but I'm not remembering any other supporting evidence for that model off the top of my head.

How about how Bob made Harry order him to unlock those memories in the first place?

Indeed, but he does seem to have a tendency to get into situations where looking for extra power is necessary despite his preferences.

Granted.

Which allusion ?

Lash telling Harry about the ingredients for the Darkhallow, I was slightly misremembering: DB, pb, p.373, Harry reports it to Butters and we don't see it directly. (I suspect there is something in there we need not to see, fwiw.). "The last several years have seen some serious magical turbulence around Chicago.  Kemmler's disciples can put the turbulence to work for them too." is the line I am reading as indicating that the boundary between our world and the NN is still in flux, and that that is being useful to Kemmlerites, and that that could have been planned by Mavra

If you mean the Unseelie Incursion of 199-something when Milwaukee vanished, I am pretty sure it's in SF but it's an aside of Harry's and I'm not at all sure where in the text; maybe we should ask one of our betas with searchable e-texts.

No, I remember the Unseelie Incursion one, that was discussed the first time Harry was describing Susan/Arcane in SF.

Ah, I see. Well, while it is certainly interesting enough that I'll be including it in my fanfic if it ever gets off the ground, I'm not completely convinced that it is canon. I had assumed previously that he was talking about all of the crap that kept going down in Chicago. But if you're right, and Mavra directly planned it that way, why make sure it's in Chicago? Because she knew that she'd have access to blackmail material on the local White Hat at just the right time? Though...I suppose you could argue that Mavra, working with Cowl, delayed the instigation of the Darkhallow until she had the blackmail material needed to get Harry involved...in order to create a situation in which the RC exposed themselves, in order to extend the war further...but how could they have known that Harry would manage to stop Cowl just in time? I'll buy that Cowl was sure that he could stop Grevane in time, but they counted on Harry recovering, breaking a Law of Magic so that he could survive to get close enough to the funnel to stop Cowl? It was really close--what was their backup plan if the Erlking had just killed Dresden right off or whatnot, pretend to fub it up at the last second?

Predicting that annoyed Faerie will exact payback does not seem to me to take very much effort, and as for the vampires making the decision to trespass on Faerie in the first place, I don't think that takes prediction so much as manipulation.  The Red Court sorcerous auxiliaries are, in this model, working with Cowl, and may well be able to sell the Reds on that being a safe thing to do if they expect to have a god-level protector imminently.

I meant more of what I said above, about how close Cowl got to god-mode.

I remain unconvinced that this is actually workable, though.  By what Harry says about gods in general in PG, most of them seem to have been actively exiled from Earth into the far NN; it would not surprise me if the process of transformation into deity was followed nigh-instantly by removal from the theatre of operations, and if Cowl knows this and the Reds do not.

So I ask again, why would Cowl play it so close if he was never intending to actually ascend? Barring any sort of time traveling theories, of course.

It's already clear that Harry won't be doing that before harry gives him the specific command to have those memories sleep with the fishes, though. 

Because nobody likes having a solid reason and confirmation that they won't have to do something that they are afraid to do?

Except that it took very specific and direct orders from Harry to bring those memories out in the first place. They're not something it appears that Bob does not have under control or has to worry about slipping out in the general run of things.

Yes, but presumably Harry has never told Bob "tell me everything that you can think of that could bring me more power" or "what do you know that would let me be powerful quickly?" I doubt that the black hats and psychopaths that Bob typically works for would let that possibility pass them by. And if you were going to ask why it hasn't happened before, then, I would respond that Justin was the only person who held Bob since Kemmler's final death, and presumably he had other plans for power, ones that involved Outsiders instead.

That model also works, I'm not arguing against that.  I am arguing that a) it is not the only model that works, and b) precisely how non-free will works and what Bob has in that context is really pretty murky sfaict so i am reluctant to base arguments too strongly on it.

Ah, I see. So what do you see as significant or long-term differences between our theories? If your answer is nothing, then I would suggest we drop this line of discussion.

He's very intelligent, knows a great deal about magic theory in general, and, depending on when Cowl asks him what, could well have any information he can gain from watching Grevane perform the Darkhallow to call on.  Even without that last, it does not stretch my suspension of disbelief that Bob would be smart enough to make up a plausible means for the Darkhallow out of whole cloth.

So then, when Bob told Harry in the beginning that without those memories he wouldn't be able to help Harry at all, why didn't he start spitting out theories right then? Or a few minutes later, after he had recovered some equilibrium?

We know that becoming Bob's master is not just simply an issue of whoever last handled the skull; otherwise, there would have been issues with Murphy in "Something Borrowed".  I do not believe Cowl is ever Bob's master; every other change of master that happens to Bob occurs when the previous master is dead, and I can totally believe Bob still being bound to Harry and faking it for Cowl.

It does not appear to be beyond question that the holder of the skull has to have some sort of magical talent in order to actually become the owner.

In GP ?

if you think Cowl actually wants to carry out the Darkhallow, well, it takes a lot of preparation.  It needs the Erlking book to be found, it needs the exhibition of ancient Native American stuff that Corpsetaker is preparing in the guise of Bartleby as a source of ancient zombies, it needs the boundary between Earth and the NN to be ripped up by the tormented ghost stuff in GP. (Which, come to think of it, indicates that somebody might well have been working in Darkhallow prep prior to GP; the tormented-ghosts plan is kind of overengineered for merely getting Bianca's revenge on Harry, it has a very specific side-effect of ripping up the boundary, and mavra is right there as a suspect.)  Cowl expresses active disdain for Kemmler and the Kemmlerites, and what we see of him elsewhere has no necromancy involved, so I can believe he has no real need of Bob until his plan is ready.

Given that the author is still alive and that furthermore two copies of the book were found in the same small bookstore, I don't really think that it would take that long to find a copy of the book. The Native American artifacts were useful, for a certainty, but not only do I not think it essential, there are loads of other gatherings of important artifacts, some of which that should have already been in the Museum. Also, are you suggesting that the boundary still hasn't recovered from GP to DB, what, four years later? And, to be fair, Cowl and Kumori were right there too. I would think making sure that he had the tool he needed early on would make a lot of sense--for all Harry would know, Bianca had stashed it somewhere separate from the rest of his gear, and for all Cowl knew, Harry kept Bob stashed behind layers and layers of wards. He really did luck out on Harry removing him from his defenses...

If, like me, you believe that Cowl and probably Mavra played the entirety of DB primarily to have the White Council take on Grevane and Corpsetaker and secondarily to mislead the Red Court into thinking they were about to have a necrogod ally, therefore over-reaching by trespassing on Faerie under the impression they were about to obliterate the White Council, and ensuingly getting the living daylights kicked out of them by Summer in PG, then Cowl leaving Bob with Harry makes even more sense as not tipping his hand and leaving all the pieces in the right place.

I'm not sure that I buy your rationale, but you do at least have one. Why would Cowl and/or Mavra and/or the BC want the RC smacked around? To extend the conflict?

I'd also note that one consequence of the  "Cowl was associated with the Justin/Maggie/Lord Raith cabal" notion is that it could mean Cowl has known where Bob is all along; first through knowing Justin had him, and then through knowing Harry had survived and the Council had not destroyed Bob.  (From what Luccio says about Bob in SmF, finding he had survived Kemmler's defeat after all would have been major news in the Council, so the lack of that news when Justin dies would tell Cowl someone else had retrieved Bob, and Harry's the logical prime suspect.)

Granted, and  I suppose that that suspicion could have been confirmed in GP.

I thought that it was Archangels who had Intellectus, not all angels. The Fallen aren't Archangels, are they?