TT Harry in Proven Guilty

[groinkick]

No, no. Merlin Made DR in our reality specifically. NN time isn't the issue, it's true time as seen by mortal linearity. An i'm not sure the actual passage of time would be important than, just that the precise 'time' is co-aligned in each different area to be at the same time from whichever standard time can then be measured from... the stars themselves perhaps?

The books have been completely vague on this.  What makes you so sure?  Harry's home for example was protected from the Never Never side by Leah, without Harry's knowledge.  Why couldn't Merlin have been doing a lot of the work in the Never Never when constructing the Island?

[jonas]

The books have been completely vague on this.  What makes you so sure?  Harry's home for example was protected from the Never Never side by Leah, without Harry's knowledge.  Why couldn't Merlin have been doing a lot of the work in the Never Never when constructing the Island?

Negligible, DR exists IN reality. It's existence as a physical place/magical construct are it's resultant 'creation. Unless other event's/layers become apparent that's the one i'm counting... and I'm not so sure his actions didn't sync the other side automatically to what it became/is anyway. What if like Marcones bank the other side was just waiting for a connection?

[groinkick]

Negligible, DR exists IN reality. connection?

The Island does, the holding place of the things down below is not so certain to be in reality.

[raidem]

In not so certain that Merlin created the entire demonreach prison.  I think he ended up encapsulating demonreach prison around some of the already locked up inmates.  So, there is a prison that predates merlins construction.

As to the argument about Merlin creating demonreach at different times all at once with the assumption that it is a single timeline really doesn't make sense.  I mean, I'm known for out there time travel theories but for this to be true it exceeds my out there theories by far.  My theories are typically a single time loop, not loop to the fifth power.  This is why parallel realities are needed. We didn't know much about parallel realities but we were introduced to them in the same book that Bob models Merlin creating demonreach.  There very well may be realities that spun off where Merlin didn't create demonreach.  We are restricted to a set of realities so far where it has been created.

A side note.  In amber, amberites can actually choose shadowworlds and have them be at a time, define by their imagination.  So say Merlin is an appetite or is working with one, he can choose a parallel earth that looks as if it was 1000 years ago, but it isn't time travel into the past, it is just a world that ticks slower or was made after another.  So we have another option where Merlin chooses 5parallel worlds at different stages of time to create his demonreach prison.  It is only created once on each world.  But Merlin creates all of this at the same time.

[groinkick]

In not so certain that Merlin created the entire demonreach prison.  I think he ended up encapsulating demonreach prison around some of the already locked up inmates.  So, there is a prison that predates merlins construction.

Yeah.  The Island itself is on Earth but the magic woven around it could have been done on Earth, and different planes in the NeverNever.  Considering the nature of the things locked up it would make sense that the NeverNever would have spells too.  I mean if it didn't they would have a back door escape so to speak.  The reason Harry didn't get killed was as I pointed out before, Leah had protected his home from the NeverNever.

[jonas]

The Island does, the holding place of the things down below is not so certain to be in reality.

That's not tenable, it shows no direct travel to the NN and Harry in the first room after the staircase(in the prison proper) was still in the mortal realm, in fact Mab was still in the mortal realm when she stayed with him as her power stayed with her.(See SK, Aurora and Elaine's convo on trying to kill Harry)
Always considered trapping them inside reality to be the whole point, it prevents them from manifesting elsewhere but leaves their power/balance inside the mortal realm.

[jonas]

Yeah.  The Island itself is on Earth but the magic woven around it could have been done on Earth, and different planes in the NeverNever.  Considering the nature of the things locked up it would make sense that the NeverNever would have spells too.  I mean if it didn't they would have a back door escape so to speak.  The reason Harry didn't get killed was as I pointed out before, Leah had protected his home from the NeverNever.

Might be the outer gates you describe there.... or just the Dreamland entrance (from Tibet?)

[YoungestGruff]

Snip:

As to the argument about Merlin creating demonreach at different times all at once with the assumption that it is a single timeline really doesn't make sense.  I mean, I'm known for out there time travel theories but for this to be true it exceeds my out there theories by far.  My theories are typically a single time loop, not loop to the fifth power.  This is why parallel realities are needed. We didn't know much about parallel realities but we were introduced to them in the same book that Bob models Merlin creating demonreach.  There very well may be realities that spun off where Merlin didn't create demonreach.  We are restricted to a set of realities so far where it has been created.

But, raidem, that's part of the whole deal. Merlin is an uberWizard, so far beyond that even Bob can't totally grasp what happened. It's quantum physics magic: if you understand it, you really don't understand it.

[Griffyn612]

Also, Bob showed Harry that time passed between events occurring in the same place.  He showed trees growing and dying.  Why do all that if it was a different island with different trees in a different timeline?

[raidem]

The trees bit is essentially stating time passes.

The same location can be on 5different worlds at 5different Times. I really do believe parallel realities are going to be part of how Merlin created demonreach.

One fallback, though.  It seems like each layered spells was building on top of each other, but the bowtie was the all at once.

We do know that demonreach had to dumb it down for Bob.  So Bob's model about Merlin creating demonreach isn't necessarily exact or everything.

[Snark Knight]

That's not tenable, it shows no direct travel to the NN and Harry in the first room after the staircase(in the prison proper) was still in the mortal realm, in fact Mab was still in the mortal realm when she stayed with him as her power stayed with her.(See SK, Aurora and Elaine's convo on trying to kill Harry)
Always considered trapping them inside reality to be the whole point, it prevents them from manifesting elsewhere but leaves their power/balance inside the mortal realm.

The cave ceiling a thousand feet below ground level being full of tree roots that Harry narratively lampshades as being impossible under the conventional rules of nature is a pretty big hint there's something else going on with the cave. The stairwell down below and the barrier to the "minimum security" anteroom both pretty much melted out of previously solid material - that's plenty of opportunity for Alfred opening a gate so skillfully that Harry can't even tell it is a gate (another thing he's lampshaded the real pros being able to do).

I don't really buy that it's in the Nevernever either, though. Your reason that Mab was causing the long winter in Chicago by her presence in the cave taking care of Harry in GS is one solid point. Another is that it doesn't really fit with the surface reflecting onto some super-lethal patch of the NN, and putting supernatural supermax right in the Nevernever doesn't seem all that secure against some ungodly powerful creature of the spirit realm deciding to jailbreak its buddy by brute force either. Mainly, though, what seals it for me is that Harry didn't melt and die shortly after returning to Chicago because of all the cells that had been built on being fed intravenously by the tree roots reverting to ectoplasm.

I'm betting it's some sort of weird pocket dimension that Merlin made. Loosely related to how Bob said Harry could create a demesne within the NN if he wanted to invest sufficient effort, but Merlin's much more advanced technique let him put it in between worlds instead.

[Griffyn612]

but what else did he do?

All this talk about making Demonreach, and rereading the bits in Cold Days to research the subject, led me to another thought that relates to this.  Maybe it's come up before, but I don't recall it, so...

Was the Ladies' attack on Demonreach really the extent of the temporal attack?  They just used time dilation to make their spell hit at multiple times?

It feels like the whole "throwing the rock" analogy was wasted on what ended up being an attack that took place immediately before the explosion.

There were three barges set to attack, and the attack from the Ladies, for a total of four. 

But what if there was a fifth?  What if Maeve also attacked during Proven Guilty, sending energy forward to land simultaneously with her planned future attack?

It'd fit the thrown stone analogy, it'd give Harry something to do while there, it'd link the two times we saw time dilation, and it'd explain how Mab knew when the trigger had to be pulled on Maeve's last redemption offer.

[raidem]

The rock throw and hit had to be on essentially within hours of each other per vadderung.  There did seem to be a big source of energy but I thought it was the tapped demonreach leyline.

[jonas]

The cave ceiling a thousand feet below ground level being full of tree roots that Harry narratively lampshades as being impossible under the conventional rules of nature is a pretty big hint there's something else going on with the cave. The stairwell down below and the barrier to the "minimum security" anteroom both pretty much melted out of previously solid material - that's plenty of opportunity for Alfred opening a gate so skillfully that Harry can't even tell it is a gate (another thing he's lampshaded the real pros being able to do).

I don't really buy that it's in the Nevernever either, though. Your reason that Mab was causing the long winter in Chicago by her presence in the cave taking care of Harry in GS is one solid point. Another is that it doesn't really fit with the surface reflecting onto some super-lethal patch of the NN, and putting supernatural supermax right in the Nevernever doesn't seem all that secure against some ungodly powerful creature of the spirit realm deciding to jailbreak its buddy by brute force either. Mainly, though, what seals it for me is that Harry didn't melt and die shortly after returning to Chicago because of all the cells that had been built on being fed intravenously by the tree roots reverting to ectoplasm.

I'm betting it's some sort of weird pocket dimension that Merlin made. Loosely related to how Bob said Harry could create a demesne within the NN if he wanted to invest sufficient effort, but Merlin's much more advanced technique let him put it in between worlds instead.

Technically, I agree entirely. But for simplicities sake I wasn't going to add that variable to my own deduction because it just get's more confusing...
But how about... DR is on earth and at it's center it reaches through to the NN sanctum like it's an active portal between the two? i'd already considered the idea for something else.
*what I mean to say is inside the prison, Reality and NN overlap each other in existence.

[Kindler]

But what if there was a fifth?  What if Maeve also attacked during Proven Guilty, sending energy forward to land simultaneously with her planned future attack?

It'd fit the thrown stone analogy, it'd give Harry something to do while there, it'd link the two times we saw time dilation, and it'd explain how Mab knew when the trigger had to be pulled on Maeve's last redemption offer.

I'd be happy with that, though as Raidem pointed out, the amount of energy involved required closer temporal proximity, according to Odin (Woden? Wodanaz? Vadderung lacks familiarity, so I've often wondered why he doesn't present himself as Odin—don't the old gods gain in power by spreading stories about themselves? Or am I confusing Vadderung with Wednesday again? Guhll-dang-it, I read too much).

Still, I could actually see Maeve in Proven Guilty traveling forward in time to augment her future attack on Demonreach, and Harry being forced to stop it from happening.

Alternately, and to possibly make it fit with Vadderung's explanation, Maeve was attacking from Proven Guilty's timeline (while Mab was distracted with other things and Lea was on ice) at a point in Demonreach's timeline that was within a few hours of the Cold Days events. So yes, the attack is coming from within a day of the events, but the punch is being thrown years in advance.

It always bothered me why Maeve and Lily waited to do their assault until Harry was alive and kicking. It never made any sense. Why not do it while Harry was a ghost (I get it, Mab was on the island), but they've had years to do it from BEFORE Harry was even the Warden. I've always kind of assumed that Harry claiming Demonreach and personifying the island's genuis loci made it stronger (cuz now it has a Warden), but also made it vulnerable, since now it's a physical thing that can be assaulted, if that makes sense.

Even if you accept that it had to be done on Halloween (because Maeve also wanted to kill Lily, or the attack required it for some other technical reason), there were several Halloweens' worth of missed chances, and a few shots at it before Harry was awake.

Therefore, I propose the following:

1. Maeve saw that Demonreach would have a Warden in the future. This would allow an assault to actually have a chance to succeed.
2. Maeve's infection was discovered by Mab somewhere around Proven Guilty. I believe she was outed by Lea during one of her lucid periods.
3. Maeve, realizing that she wouldn't have much of a chance to do something as big as blowing up Demonreach with Mab looking over her shoulder so closely all the time, hatched a plan to hit Demonreach from multiple points.
4. With Mab distracted by the events of Proven Guilty, Maeve took her chance and sent her attack, whatever form it took.
5. This locked Maeve into her tight timeline; she had to initiate her other attack within a certain timeframe of the one she had sent, so she manipulated events as best she could in order to keep the Warden dead. She thought she might've succeeded until he showed back up in Arctis Tor, but by then it was too late to change her plans.
6. Cold Days happens.

I think that might work, but what do I know?

Also... who summoned He Who Walks Before? Did we ever get an answer to that? Because I sure as heck don't remember it.