186000 miles per second: it's the Law! 55mph? pshaw!

[g33k]

So, um... yeah.  It's a "Law" question.
For context:
 - I've read all the novels, including "WttJ" graphic novel errr... that is, comic book (per WoJ).
 - I'm an experienced RPG'er who's played 20+ systems & GM'ed half a dozen of 'em.
 - I haven't got DFRPG (yet, still tracking down a copy via FLGS), but I D/L'ed FATEcore to get a handle on the (non-DF) mechanics; some of this may be explicitly covered in the rulebook, and if so I apologize!

So, back to my question(s) of Law...

The WhiteCouncil's "Laws of Magic" basically specify whether or not (and to what degree) You're In Trouble -- it's pure story/consequence stuff, right?  No mechanical anything, shifts on dice, yadda yadda...  Just a scary guy in a grey cloak with a REALLY sharp sword.  Or even a Councilmember -- eeesh!   Either the Council thinks you broke their law, and then -- very explicitly -- You Are In Trouble; or they don't, and you aren't.

Then there's the DFRPG-universe's "Lawbreaker," i.e. the Stunt.  This DOES include some shifts on dice-rolls, it IS game-mechanical.  Story effects may be even more far-reaching, but they are implicit rather than explicit, right?  Having a Lawbreaker Stunt on-sheet doesn't automatically define stories, the way an angry Warden on your heels does...  Or does it???

By the by:  can Mere Mortals detect the "Lawbreaker" stunts, e.g. by soulgaze?  Clearly they can, in some cases.  Harry could see Molly's at-risk status, and the kid who got executed at the beginning was apparently clearly-corrupt to soulgaze.  Also, the stone guard-dogs of Ancient Mai seem to detect the Stunt by sense of smell...?  Can -- if a sufficiently-perceptive Soulgaze'r or other detection-method is used -- this ALWAYS be detected?  This seems to be implied, but not nailed down...

So, here is the core question that I have (the foregoing Q's were ancillary); probably a 2-part question:
 1:  Do the WCouncil's "Laws of Magic" have a 1:1 correspondence with the universe's "Lawbreaker" Stunts, and vice versa?
It seems so, based on the "Official" Perspective on Lawbreaking thread where it's stated:

It absolutely is a law of the universe that breaking one of the Laws of Magic actually changes you. Us folks who've worked on the RPG find this to be established in the canon, in the books, and as such don't see it as particularly up for debate.

So, if someone earns "Lawbreaker" from the universe, but not the censure of the WCouncil, it's only that the Council didn't notice the instance of Lawbreaking.  And while the Council may come after you for something that didn't earn you a Lawbreaker stunt, that's likely just their all-too-human imperfect understanding, in that they THINK you're a Lawbreaker (in the Stunt-earning sense of the word).

2.  Harry begins the series seeing the WCouncil as (mostly) wandering between stodgy ol' fuddy-duddies, scary-strict inflexible monomaniacs, and hidebound bureaucrats; eventually, he also sees them as having several/many corrupt (in the Lawbreaker-Stunt sense of the word, as well as violating Council Law) members flying under Council radar... implying that possessing the Lawbreaker Stunt is NOT something that can be seen by most/any Soulgaze'r, or they'd have been out'ed) .  Not sure if I should spolierblock this next bit, but better safe than sorry:

(click to show/hide)

Obviously, Wizard Peabody must have had some sort of anti-detection method, or his Lawbreaker would have been sniffed out by Ancient Mai's guard-dogs

So, here's the part of Point#2 that I'm wrestling with:  the close correspondence between WC Laws of Magic and the LawbreakerStunt-granting nature of the universe should be keeping the Council "pure."  The universe itself is on their side, fer cryin out loud!  How'd they get so rife with corruption??!?  Presumably, it's only advanced Lawbreakers who can mask their Lawbreaking, and so the Council should be able to nip their internal problems in the bud (even if it sometimes takes a bit to track down outside problems).  I'm having a hard time understanding how the WCouncil -- as portrayed in DF novels / canon -- exists as corruptly as they do, if the universe itself automatically plops a Black Hat (i.e. a Lawbreaker Stunt) onto each newly-minted badguy, as per DFRPG mechanics...

Help?

[123456789blaaa]

You can do bad things without breaking the Laws. For example, murder someone with a gun instead of a fire spell.

And the WC aren't that corrupt. There's Peabody and...uh...not really anyone else. Christos and his followers may be just plain greedy.

[Mr. Death]

Peabody's "anti-detection" was probably pretty simple--he's the secretary, so he gets to the location first before any of the guarding measures are set up, then stays after to tidy up, conveniently long enough for detections measures to leave.

[finnmckool]

I don't know that Peabody's all there is. I doubt it. But it does point to the larger problem of "we don't really know." The Black Council (the Circle, whatever), or more importantly Harry's investigation thereof kinda fell to the backburner after Chicken Pizza and dying and yadda.  Has the Merlin been asking these questions? Has Ebenzer found any answers? Who knows? We've not really heard any direct data from the White Council since Bianca's Mamma went there for her "truce." Hell, we never heard exactly what happened there or what any of the fall out was, never mind the Formor and the vacuum filling. In fact it's been TWO WHOLE BOOKS, nearly three, since we've heard anything, so as of Skin Game, it'll have been 18 months since the Red Court fiasco, more or less without any solid word as to what's been happening, and another year since Peabody was unmasked.

So who knows?

As to your first question...yes.

[Sanctaphrax]

So, here is the core question that I have (the foregoing Q's were ancillary); probably a 2-part question:
 1:  Do the WCouncil's "Laws of Magic" have a 1:1 correspondence with the universe's "Lawbreaker" Stunts, and vice versa?

I'll quote the book:

You could say that the laws exist as two separate concepts with 99% overlap-the Wardens of the White Council enforce one concept (law) while reality metaphysically enforces the other (nature).

the close correspondence between WC Laws of Magic and the LawbreakerStunt-granting nature of the universe should be keeping the Council "pure."

I don't see it that way. Real-world governments enforce important moral principles too, but it doesn't do much to keep them pure.

[Xandarth]

Um even in the books the consequences of Law Breaking have more effects than a trial and head chopping.

In Storm Front Harry runs into a guy who is on the drug that gives mortals the sight and that guy can tell Harry has had dealings with He Who Walks Behind so that's at least one lawbreaker (no playing with Outsiders) trait that from book one we knew permanently affected a Wizards aura. Any significant contact with outsiders marks you for all time.

In Dead Beat after Harry's run in with Kemmler Bob, Grevane can immediately tell that Harry smells of the "True Magic." So necromancy also has very visible affects on someone.

We also know that other lawbreakers become warlocks (and go fairly crazy) with continual lawbreaking. I think a large part of the reason for the ban is that due to the nature of magic requiring belief the more a person does these things the more likely that person will find that use of magic to be the best (and eventually only) solution to their problem.

So if you start acting like the most expedient method of solving your problems a few times is to simply kill everyone that gets in your way eventually you'll always just kill everyone who stands in your way since you believe it's the best way to deal with your problems and then you suddenly have a massive trail of corpses whenever a cop tries to give the warlock a speeding ticket.

Grevane is a perfect example. Killing the guard and Butters and turning them into zombies was probably his plan all along as he sees this as the expedient way to solve all his problems. However if Butters had become a zombie he wouldn't have been able to retrieve the information off the flash drive for him.

Molly is another example that still (deep down) thinks mind magic is justifiable in certain circumstances years after her initial brush with the law and is tempted to use it.

So lawbreaking often causes immediate effects that are often detectable by the Sight or some other means even in the books. That said, sometimes it isn't easily detectable (Nemesis infection) although even then Rashid is capable of detecting outsider influence with the help of artifacts most of the time so clearly Outsider influence is a detectable thing but there are probably skill rolls involved.

As for your claim that the White Council is Justice! We know the White Council has been wrong about Harry pretty much 100% of the time so I don't know where you got that impression.

[g33k]

I'll quote the book:

Thanks!  That quote was exactly what I was wondering about the book, and it addresses bug chunks of my puzzlement.  I'll be getting the hardcovers "soon"(ish), the PDF's within a few days, but this gives me a big piece of something I needed, setting-wise.  It lets me move my cauldron big iron pot off the back burner and start adding in more ingredients!

... Real-world governments enforce important moral principles too, but it doesn't do much to keep them pure.

  But real-world gov'ts cannot soulgaze/etc, have only mundane surveillance/investigation/etc to detect their "lawbreaking."  It's hard to see, when the WCouncil has those stone dogs from Ancient Mai, soulgaze, real Temple Dogs (Harry has one, and Mai recognizes Mouse as soon as Mouse makes a move so she's relatively-familiar with them) and (presumably) one or more other similar magical litmus-test / Dark-Detectors (to steal a Potterism) ... given all these (and the hardline anti-Lawbreaking stance of the Council) it's hard to see how corruption (of the Lawbreaking kind) can creep into the Council.  It seems unlikely in the extreme... unless of course there's some reliable way to MASK the magical traces of Lawbreaking (presumably, some form of Lawbreaking is itself involved... likely a deal with Outsiders, given that even the Gatekeeper cannot do 100%-perfect detection there).


Steve, the g33k
 

[g33k]

Um even in the books the consequences of Law Breaking have more effects than a trial and head chopping.
<snip various good examples>

Yeah.  My point was just that:  there's the WCouncil's "Laws of Magic" which are... y'know... written-down-on-paper-by-people sorts of laws, and they have enforced-by-people sorts of consequences.

Then there are -- completely without ANY written-down-laws, some "(natural) laws of magic" which have internal, spriritual consequences... by and large, they seem to turn people into... well, worse people; eventually, into monsters.

I was explicitly inquiring about the relationship between those two separate things.

As for your claim that the White Council is Justice! We know the White Council has been wrong about Harry pretty much 100% of the time so I don't know where you got that impression.

  Oh, I don't mean to say "the White Council is Justice!"  Clearly, the WCouncil makes mistakes.  They were (we presume) mistaken about Harry (of course, Harry's story isn't over yet, and he still has time to turn to the Dark Side... though we don't really expect it of someone who not only RESISTED a Denarian imprint for over a year, but ended up converting her to his side!    ), and Molly (though she now has a WHOLE new set of Personal Challenges, and the whole Sword of Damocles is no longer even on her shortlist of worries... but she too may yet get a whole lot darker than she is Light ... ) .  Still, Harry *had* killed by use of magic, so technically he had broken WCouncil Law.

But, the WCouncil's "Laws" are, apparently, 99% the same as the "natural laws" of the universe, so it's fair to say that the Council is trying to do the Right Thing (where've we heard that before?     )... at least on paper.  Maybe Harry's kill was in one of those 1% corner-cases where the WCouncil law paints him "Guilty" but the natural law didn't give him Lawbreaker (the Stunt)... or maybe Ebenezer trained him through some milestones and Harry bought it off...  retcon'ing the novels into the DFRPG matrix may not perfectly fit, of course!


- Steve, the g33k
 

[GryMor]

I haven't seen anything so far in the books that contradicts the hypothesis that the Laws of Magic exist because the White Council has been enforcing them in what amounts to a millennium long ritual powered by the blood sacrifice of thousands of Warlocks.

[g33k]

I haven't seen anything so far in the books that contradicts the hypothesis that the Laws of Magic exist because the White Council has been enforcing them in what amounts to a millennium long ritual powered by the blood sacrifice of thousands of Warlocks.

Hmm.

Y'know, that is a fascinating observation.   Nothing to contradict the hypothesis... anything (besides the close Council/natural laws' correspondence) in either novels or DFRPG to suggest this IS so...?

The one "execution" we saw (the Korean(?) warlock) DID have a huge portion of the Sr. Council on-hand... and, IIRC, a circle...

There was no overt Ritual Magic happening, or Harry would've noticed... but those Very Heavy Hitters might have been able to slip some minor continuity-of-tradition rituals past him.  He was hardly at the top of his investigatorial game in that scene...

[Sanctaphrax]

But real-world gov'ts cannot soulgaze/etc, have only mundane surveillance/investigation/etc to detect their "lawbreaking."  It's hard to see, when the WCouncil has those stone dogs from Ancient Mai, soulgaze, real Temple Dogs (Harry has one, and Mai recognizes Mouse as soon as Mouse makes a move so she's relatively-familiar with them) and (presumably) one or more other similar magical litmus-test / Dark-Detectors (to steal a Potterism) ... given all these (and the hardline anti-Lawbreaking stance of the Council) it's hard to see how corruption (of the Lawbreaking kind) can creep into the Council.  It seems unlikely in the extreme... unless of course there's some reliable way to MASK the magical traces of Lawbreaking (presumably, some form of Lawbreaking is itself involved... likely a deal with Outsiders, given that even the Gatekeeper cannot do 100%-perfect detection there).

There probably are ways to mask Lawbreaking, but I doubt they're perfect. I think the Council has very very few Lawbreakers, but it has all kinds of non-Lawbreaking bad people. Some of those bad people are probably very good with technicalities.

I haven't seen anything so far in the books that contradicts the hypothesis that the Laws of Magic exist because the White Council has been enforcing them in what amounts to a millennium long ritual powered by the blood sacrifice of thousands of Warlocks.

Why would they do that?

I doubt they want Lawbreakers to become crazy and evil. If they were gonna sacrifice thousands of warlocks to imbue the Laws with magical power, wouldn't it make more sense for them to make breaking the Laws weaken or kill you?

[Hick Jr]

Sanctaphrax has an excellent point. The Council and by extension the Wardens are anything but inefficient. If you're going to mass-break your own Laws for the express purpose of screwing over other people who break those Laws, why not have it turn off their magic or melt them instead of making them crazy and better at Lawbreaking?

Also, that kind of ritual is an incredibly huge violation of the Laws in and of itself, ergo the Wardens performing it would be affected by it. Which would be silly.

[GryMor]

And yet it's what they are actually doing, intentional or otherwise, they promulgate and evangelize the Laws and execute those who they believe violate them. That is a lot of power going in to making the Laws real. We already have evidence that non magical acts stain the soul gaze vision, that you become how you behave, the only things really special about the Laws is that you can get power out of them and the White Council's Wardens enforce them. We also have evidence that they can be bypassed or at least, that the damage can be insulated against or redirected, though we the exception of the blackstaff, we don't really know the mechanism. Now it may be the case that the power associated with Law Breaker would be there without the White Council's Jihad, that the acts would be specifically twisting above and beyond their mortal equivalents, but so far we only have correlation, and we know we have an unreliable narrator.

[GryMor]

There was no overt Ritual Magic happening, or Harry would've noticed... but those Very Heavy Hitters might have been able to slip some minor continuity-of-tradition rituals past him.  He was hardly at the top of his investigatorial game in that scene...

While possible, I was more referring to the program as a whole constituting a ritual working ny the Council as a gestalt entity, not each individual execution of a warlock being an intentional ritual by individual members.

[g33k]

While possible, I was more referring to the program as a whole constituting a ritual working ny the Council as a gestalt entity, not each individual execution of a warlock being an intentional ritual by individual members.

Hrmmm... AFAIK, there has been no Dresdenverse material suggesting that magic can work that way ...  At least, not mortals' magic.  I s'pose some of the immortal beings -- who are force-of nature / force-of-magic / must-be-true-to-their-natures sorts of beings --  have shown a few hints that they can "do magic" just by doing their normal and nominally-mundane activities....