Current DR wardens

[peregrine]

Closest I came to AF (or any branch) was CAP.  But because of that and my uncle being AF, I've got a general interest in AF is all.

[Krusatta]

Fair enough.  My eyes weren't good enough to be a pilot like my father, so I decided I'd tell the pilots where to drop steel. 

[kazimmoinuddin]

Now the warden sword has been introduced, the council will attempt to retain the use of them. They are just too effective not to.

[Serack]

Chapter 17 of Cold Days begins like this:

“I don’t guess this job pays anything, does it?” I asked. The spirit just regarded me. “Didn’t think so,” I said. “So . . . when you call me Warden, you’re speaking literally.” “INDEED.”

Baring seeing the WOJ that Second Aristh is talking about, ( Any help here Serack? ) I have to stick to my guns and say there are multiple wardens and Harry is just one of them. Harry had to stand tall in front of DR and bloody his nose to invoke the site as a sanctum.  I can't see some Joe Blow warden just getting "sworn in" to the job. 

Also, given all the theories about the origin of the well, such as angelic grace being needed to create this prison, why do the wardens have to be human?  By the description of what's in there, in my opinion, some of the things would surpass a even the most powerful mortal's abilities. So maybe the question is not who are the other wardens? But WHAT are the other wardens that they could imprison these crazy badass entities?

~M

The WoJ is a trusted forum member's notes from a 2009 signing.

Q:  Can the skinwalker access the NeverNever and use the Ways?  If so, why didn’t it?
A:  Yes.  All I'll say now is that it's important to know that ‘wardens’ wasn’t always plural

Which to me implies that there is only one capital "Warden" especially considering the line in Eb's journal.

As for the cloak WoJ, that's more ambiguous. 

[kazimmoinuddin]

We know wardens have taken down skin walkers before, so if Harry can access those records he could permanently deal with shagnasty.

[dspringer1]

Why is everyone convince that Luccio invented the swords? Sure she is the only one able to make them, but that might just be a matter of skill.

It was specifically stated in one of the books that Luccio was the ONLY person who could make the swords, and that her ability to do so was lost by her body swap at the end of Dead Beat.   Since that point, the WC has been unable to make any additional swords.   Apparently you needed a special magical trick or ability to make it work and that trick is very rare or perhaps unique to Luccio.

JB did mention that all the big WC leaders have some cheat or special ability that is not shared by other wizards.  Perhaps this was one of Luccios. 

[kazimmoinuddin]

She likely has the designs and lore needed to replicate it. There might not be another wizard able to craft it, but what about those dwarfs , who are famed magical craftsmen, they could create and do most of the work to build the sword, allowing a lesser wizard to finish and complet it.

[Mira]

She likely has the designs and lore needed to replicate it. There might not be another wizard able to craft it, but what about those dwarfs , who are famed magical craftsmen, they could create and do most of the work to build the sword, allowing a lesser wizard to finish and complet it.

Apparently not, because if she did, the younger and newer wardens like Harry would all have swords by now.. Unless of course she really didn't lose the ability but only thinks she did because of Peabody's mind control ink.  It is to the enemy's advantage after all if the wardens are less effective because they don't have custom made swords to match their talents.

[Phariah]

while it has been said Luccio might be the only current person that could make Warden blades. i think this could be true. we already know of wizards having differing Talents and Affinities. it could be she had the right combination of them that allowed her to learn from a Tome or Book the Lore to craft them.

what i find interesting is that the WCouncil is basically stagnating itself, possibly destroying major Talents. the way they run itself is so old school and behind the times for our current population and growth. the Warlocks they have killed and were basically innocent or minor offenders but still caused an infraction and died/ were executed. imagine if they were carriers of some rare Talents, or combinations of Talent and Affinity. this is why i so wish the Paranet is absorbed into the WCouncil. to find these newbs before they Warlock-out.

Talent= supernatural skill. like Harry's Listening, or his ability to Artifice and craft is close to it.
Affinity= natural link to an Elemental nature. like Harry's to fire.

[SpoonR]

Knowing that one warden became many, and their original job, to me at least seems the same, to me their is little difference between what a warlock becomes and the things in the well, heck for all we know the things in the well find resonance with the actions of those warlocks and rach out through said connection to influence and try to control or meld with(which would transfer consiuosness not necassarly raw power, though an increased flow seems likely) until they have replaced enough of them that they genuinely believe themselves to be said creature, at which point, perhaps they are?
What I wonder at from that one warden, is the precise significance of the grey cloak, as it has been pointed out as a specific in woj. I have more than a few ideas of course, but would like some neutral feedback.

"As bad as the monsters are, humans can do worse", or something to that effect.  The basic difference between warlock & THINGS is scale. Is argle-bargle-monster really that different from crazed cursing Korean kid?  My theory is all this goes back to humans becoming dominant and various past flavors of monster-hunting groups.

Old days: The Warden has to go out and take down big bad monsters. The monsters are too something to destroy, hence DR. And comparatively few of them - unless anyone has better numbers, I'm assuming a few thousand, caught and penned over time.
New days: Damaged humans are the monsters. A lot more of them, but much less powerful. So you need a group of less-badass wardens to take over, and you don't have to bother with prison anymore.

Allow maybe half a millenium, and most people won't remember DR.

Associations of gray: Goodman Gray, I think "He Who Dances around Mac's place" had a wrap of strips of gray cloth, the gray council, halfway on the spectrum of White Council, Gray Cloak, and Black Staff.  Maaaybe the blood repelling property is relevant - the Warden has more resistance to prisoners' weird brain-hurting powers, and similar?

[kazimmoinuddin]

While each wizard has there own style, any piece of magic one can do, other wizards can create their own version. All wizards can create something akin to a staff. The swords are a type of combat foci that can double as an actual physical weapon that are designed to act against magic.

[Lawgiver]

So I was reading GroinKick's thread on previous wardens ( http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,47345.0.html ) and remembered this from Cold Days:

“Hey, how come you called me Warden?” I asked. “I mean, I’ve been a Warden, but there are a lot of other guys who are better at it than me. I’m not exactly the poster child.” “WARDEN,” Demonreach said. “NOW THERE ARE MANY. FIRST THERE WAS ONE.”

Who are these people?!  Don't they care that there's a noob on the island? 

Why doesn't Harry ask who they are?  He's creating a sanctuary for himself, shouldn't he care about who has keys to it?  He doesn't mention anything about it in Skin Game in his, "After the year I've had here, I could stop that Outsider incursion of last year before my morning coffee" bit. 


If Eb, the GateKeeper, and Listens all know about this, and i think they do because they all kind of react the same way, then i think it's possible that they could be wardens and were letting the Noob do a trial by fire with the whole Outsiders' incursion.  Risky & frightening, but a true test of a warden.  Or, and this to me is even scarier, Eb, the GateKeeper and Listens aren't wardens and just know about the nature of the island.  Then if there are other wardens besides Harry, they either don't care about their responibilities, or have grown so much that they think that DR and the inherent risks are beneath their concern.

~M

Hmmm...
after re-reading the whole scene for full context... I'm not sure DR's reference to "many" vs "one" is definitively about Wardens or even wardens in general.  DR has an odd way idea/information association.  Its job is to imprison nasty stuff.  He is "beholden" to the Warden.  Perhaps its conceptual association was triggered by the term "warden" and it was then referring to its primary task - which would refer to thinks in the prison... first there was one, now there are many.

Basically he's telling the Warden, we've got a large prison population.  That could end up being a disturbing thought... any time a warden gets told "we got a lotta prisoners" its usually a prelude to "too many prisoners" and some sort of catastrophe, usually involving riots and attempts at mass breakouts, etc.

Maybe that was DR's way of trying to warn Harry that the whole thing is about to pop?

[MoroccoMole]

First, thanks Serack for the WOJ.

Lawgiver, I like this, and looking at it again, just in terms of language and punctuation, it seems that DR was addressing Harry as "Warden", then giving him information, "things are getting interesting around here".  This works a lot better for me.

~M 

[Dashkull]

Which to me implies that there is only one capital "Warden" especially considering the line in Eb's journal.

As for the cloak WoJ, that's more ambiguous. 

To me, that WoJ implies that there are non-human guardians acting as wardens of Demonreach on the never never side. That is something I hadn't considered before and something that Harry should investigate, like, yesterday.

[Serack]

To me, that WoJ implies that there are non-human guardians acting as wardens of Demonreach on the never never side. That is something I hadn't considered before and something that Harry should investigate, like, yesterday.

It is my opinion that when Harry descends down all those steps and enters the chamber down at the bottom, he has gone down the rabbit hole and in most respects *is* on the NN side of Demonreach. 

I say in most respects because Demonreach was created and exists on a dimensional level that Harry has a hard time experiencing, so when he's down there his experience is kinda skimming the surface of a pond of what is actually there NN wise without necessarily getting wet.

I haven't followed this conversation closely, but let me share a little more of my opinion of who and what a capital "W" Warden is and why it is significant.  As with most of my theorizing over the past few years, this is heavily influenced by my concepts of overall DF cosmology, and the mortal experience's position in and influence over that cosmology.

The entirety of the Demonreach construct was created on and exists on a level that spans more than just Harry's individual reality and timeline.  It is immense and powerful and enduring and ... Lithic.  What do I mean by "Lithic?"  It exists as is and is non-introspective and unchanging in its purpose, function, and resolve. 

But on the Demonreach level of the big picture, the fabric of Reality has a degree of malleability, and the driver and medium of this malleability is mortals and their free will.  For Demonreach to function on this malleable level of existence, it needs a malleability engine of its own.  A Warden capital W, with free will who can make decisions that encompass aspects of its purpose that require more malleability, dynamism and introspection than it possesses on its own as a Lithic construct. 

It is possible that Demonreach's existence is wide enough that it interfaces with more than one discrete "Capital W Warden" across multiple discrete realities and timelines on the level Harry experiences in such a way that from Harry's and thus our perspective, these interactions happen relatively "simultaneously" and individually.  However, I think it is more likely that from the Demonreach perspective, these malleability engines are less discrete and are more of a reality spanning singularity like itself.  Sort of.

Which is a really long and arduous way of saying that in my theories there is only one capital "W" DR Warden. 


Edit:  I'd like to add that I'm really proud of the two analogies of Harry experiences in the NN being like skimming a pond without getting wet (not getting the full depth of the experience, only an aspect of it), and Warden Harry's free will being an "malleability Engine" for the overall Demonreach construct.