And if anyone wanted me to, I'm pretty sure I could go find something in the first few books where Harry tells us that the Nevernever is the Spirit World.

It's also rather obvious at this point, given what we've just learned, that Kimmler's ritual was either designed with the intent to consume mantles, or that it can be modified to do so, because that's kind of the whole point of Halloween, and it's the only way a mortal could legitimately become a god that we know of, which is what the ritual says it delivers.

 

Just stop, Raine. Just stop.

 

I don't know. I'm of the opinion that if Mab ever releases Harry from the mantle, his back will still be fine. He fell to the ground when he violated Winter Law, something that the Winter Knight can't do. The mantle went away because of Harry violating the deal, so Mab's end also disappeared.

As long as Harry doesn't sneak out of being the Winter Knight, and leaves through an official way, I see no reason why his back wouldn't stay healed.

 

The problem there is that the only "official" way out of a mantle we've seen so far is the way that ends with Dresden in a body bag.

 

Well the only way that we know of to transfer a mantle is that way. However, as Odin/Vadderung/Kringle appears to be alive still it seems like taking up and setting aside a mantle temporarily is not as much of an issue. I don't think we have enough information considering all that we have seen to be able to make any for sure statements on the subject.

Considering what we do know, I don't think its unreasonable to say that he will have no trouble setting aside the mantle whenever he doesn't need it. What it actually means to be carrying a mantle/mask but not 'wearing' it is a better question to be speculating about I think.

 

With no counterargument in sight? Sure. Let me pull the car over right here.

That's not the big problem. Harry is the Knight at the behest of Mab. If he could get her over a barrel, he could get her to release him as part of a bargain or deal.

The problem is that being the Knight hasn't fixed his back. It's just patched over it. He stops being the Knight, he stops being able to move without a wheelchair. Unless something else heals him, he needs to be the Knight.

The problem is that everything that could heal him is Bad News, capitals emphasized. I'm sure Lasciel could fix his back, should Harry ever decide that souls are overrated. I'm sure Mab could too, if she wanted to, if Harry was willing to make yet another deal and dig himself into a hole twice as deep as the one he's already in.

Odin is a god, though. An immortal. They play by different rules. We were told as much when Halloween was explained. They can swipe bits of each other, put on new identities, shuffle their powers around amongst each other.

There is no evidence that shows the same is true for mortals. Harry didn't become the Erlking when he lead the Wild Hunt, for instance.

 

It has been, but that's nothing but one of it's many names. It's also called the Other Side and a bunch of other things. Not everything from there is a spirit, because the term spirit has been defined, several times. Not all spirits are ghosts and not all things from the Nevernever are spirits. The Fae aren't, as was gone over in SF, because they have solid, physical forms. Vampires, despite being from the Nevernever, are also not spirits. Most beings we've seen aren't spirits, in fact. Besides Ghosts, I can only think of Bob, who is specifically labeled a 'Spirit of Air.'

If by obvious, you mean nothing says that anywhere and it's nothing more then an assumption you've pulled out of your ass that is directly contradicted in DB itself, then yes.

The Darkhallow is an Ascension rite. It's point is not to steal Mantles--it's to make a new one. There is nothing anywhere even vaguely supporting anything you're stating is 'obvious.'

 

*coughs into hand*

Okay. Sure.

[EDIT]

Honestly, I'm kind of annoyed that Harry rolled over on every argument he had with someone in this book. "You're an asshole because you'd rather kill yourself than be like your brother."

Except that being the Winter Knight is nothing like being a White Court vampire. Like, at all. Having a Mr. Hyde to deal with is not even remotely the same to selling yourself into the service of a malevolent, ruinous power, and if Thomas thinks it is, he clearly doesn't understand what's at stake here.

Likewise, making Molly his apprentice to save her from being killed is not the same thing as setting her up to become the Winter Lady. That was a pure bullshit line from start to finish, and after Harry telling Mab and her opinions to suck in at the end of Ghost Story, it was kind of a shame to just have him roll over and be all "yeah, okay, maybe."

No. No maybe. They aren't even remotely the same thing.

 

I guess I'm looking at it differently. You're looking at it as the back's still broke, but there's magical superglue holding it together.

I look at it as it's healed already, and if he violates the deal by doing something that the Winter Knight is not allowed to do, the back isn't healed anymore. I'd be willing to bet that if you took an x-ray of his back, there wouldn't be a break in it anywhere. Whereas if you took an x-ray of his back after he violated Winter Law, there would be.

And yeah, the Darkhallow creates new mantles, or something to the effect of that at least. Isn't there a quote where Jim said something about how that was how Mab originally ascended to power? Maybe not the Darkhallow specifically, but something close enough to be damn near the same thing.

And no, the fae aren't spirits. I'll say the obvious since no one else has. Every spirit we've seen has either been incorporeal, or needed a shell to house it's "body" in. Hunter spirits were given form, presumably, by the power of the Erlking. The fae aren't any of those. They're flesh and blood. Granted, some fae may be spirits. Bob was aligned with the Winter Court, I think. Or I assume, at least, since he had contact with Mab. But fae, like Mab and the Erlking and Titania? They're not mortal, but that doesn't make them a spirit.

 

The Erlking used a method like the Darkhallow to ascend, which is why he's the one that the Necromancer's summoned--he's done this before. Mab used a different method; the Stone Table. Anyone sacrificed on it gets gobbled up by the Queens.

 

Which is basically the same thing. Each of them used a Conjunction (Hallowe'en or the Stone Table) to fuel their ascension rite and create their mantles.

---------- Post automerged at 07:03 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:44 AM ----------

The Sight is also called the Third Eye, but it doesn't open a literal eye in the middle of the forehead. Poetic naming does not normally work well in conjunction with literal interpretation.

Aside from that, there are two main arguments.

1) The term spirit as derived from real world lore generally means an incorporeal being. Given that Jim's only truly original creation for creatures in the Dresden Files is the Ik'k'uox, it makes sense to apply real world knowledge to beings that are not explicitly described as being different (such as the vampire species or werewolves).

2) All beings directly stated to be spirits, other than the Erlking whom carries the mantle of a Hunter Spirit and thus brings spirits of the hunt into his domain, have been incorporeal.

Given these two arguments, it simply seems to me that spirits are their own separate category of being, along with Faerie, Vampire, Ghoul, Demon and God. All of which have their origins in the Nevernever.

 

While that is a difference, I'd point out two things.

1.) For all intents and purposes, there is no difference. If Harry gets rid of the Mantle somehow, fairly or otherwise, his back would logically 'break' again, because it's the Mantle that's holding it together. Whether you say it's healed and just 'reopens,' or if you say it is merely patched over and still technically broken, it doesn't really matter.

Harry can't go against Mab's wishes without losing the lower half of his body. He's not healed. And since it's apparently come part and parcel with being the Winter Knight, if he ever stopped being the Knight, it would also happen. In fact, we saw it happen. Harry stopped being the Winter Knight when he decided to screw over Fairy Law. That power left him. And when it did, boom. No legs. Then he took it back, and boom, he could walk again.

2.) While Harry is not infallible, he himself stated when it happened that it "confirmed (his) worst fear," which was that he had never been healed at all. While that is just a guess on Harry's part, if we're taking his supposition as canon, then no, he isn't healed. The Knighthood is just an arcane bandaid over the injury. Until we see something to suggest that Harry is wrong, I'll take his viewpoint as fact.

The Third Eye in Hinduism doesn't literally give you a third eye either. There's a reason it's also called the "Inner Eye." It's an invisible manifestation of your anja chakra that gives you supernatural perception (you can see ghosts, spirits, chakras, ect) and the ability to ascend to a higher state of consciousness.

Here's the wikipedia article for your ten second crash course in it. If you want my one sentence crash course in it, no, it's not a literal third eye in the middle of your forehead, it's a third eye that exists inside your mind, which you open through meditation and spiritual focus, and it lets you do most of the cliche Harry Potter fandom bullshit things regarding powers and auras and the mind.*

Also, if any name for it is poetic, it's Nevernever, not Spirit World. The Spirit World is a descriptor, like The Lava Plains. The Nevernever is the poetic one.


*And you will never see a legitimate fic where Harry has to learn Vedic magic and harness his chakras, because Voldemort already mastered the disciplines long ago, and has all of the bullshit fandom powers at his command, forcing Harry to play catchup. Dumbledore will never personally tutor Harry in this, and Harry will never romance Pavarti and/or Padma while this is happening.

Because we can't have nice things.

 

Yes, that's actually what I was getting at though. Odin is a god. Kringle isn't though; he's a faerie. What about Vadderung then, what is he (just a simple alias IMO or maybe his name from before he ascended)? How do those various things interact with one another and what responsibilities does Odin gain/lose while he's wearing Kringles mask/mantle? They're the same person underneath but what does that person underneath owe to each of the masks/mantles while he's wearing/bearing one of the others?

Also, one of the other points that Bob raised here is that the Darkhallow had to occur on Halloween. That implies to me that mortals can play with the same rules - so long as they know how to.

Its mentioned somewhere that the Erlking is only one of the potential leaders of the Wild Hunt which is quite different from saying that the leader of the Wild Hunt has the mantle of the Erlking.

I've also noticed that Toot called Harry a Winter Lord at a couple points in Cold Days. Given how precise all of the fae speak (yes, even the little folk) that definitely a) can't be an accident and b) seems to foreshadow Harry getting a bit of extra status in the world.

 

Ins't Halloween a pretty recent invention?

 

Not really. It's rooted in the practice of Samhain, which was essentially the ancient Celtic harvest festival. It ended up being combined with Scandinavian/Germanic festivals that involved using masks to hide from evil spirits to eventually become modern day Halloween.

 

As a holiday, yes. It's explained how it became so in Cold Days, in fact.

Edit: sniped.

 

That's a complicated question, and we can really only speculate at this point. If I had to guess, I'd say that Odin is only a fairy when he's wearing the Kringle mask. Odin has no weakness to iron, and doesn't give a damn about lying. Kringle, however, would.

It's a bad example anyway, because Santa himself would also be a weird case. He's Wyldfae, but is associated with Winter (he is the so-called "Winter King")and is allegedly a paramour of Mab. His opposite, as far as we know, is the Erlking, also a Wyldfae, also associated with Summer, and the most probable suspect for Summer King, both because he fits the profile perfectly, and because Oberon is confirmed to be, if not dead, then at least out of the equation.

However, unlike the Erlking, Santa is semi-worshipped by kids the world over. Everybody believed that Santa was real at some point. Who the hell believes in Mab or Titania? Santa Claus in the Dresdenverse would have a shitload more power than normal anyway, because he's got the faith of tens of millions of children backing him up. That's a hell of a lot of metaphysical muscle to throw around. The Red King was worshiped as a god by a single civilization that's been dead for the better part of a thousand years, and he was still fighting in a weight class an entire plateau above anything we had seen up until that point.

What the hell kind of power is Santa going to have when he actually decides to stop laughing in the background and kick some ass?

So he's a weird case anyway. Even if we ignore the Odin side of the equation here, I'm not entirely sure Kris Kringle could even be called a fairy anymore. If any fairy could ever break the rules and do things like tank iron, it would be him. Hell, violating thresholds without an invitation is literally part of his mythos. That alone gives him a power no other fairy has.

It's also worth noting that this isn't just as far back as it goes; it's just as far back as we can give hard evidence. The earliest Irish literature describes Samhain as a firmly established event, which means it was already a tradition by the earliest we can date it. While historical fact must be rooted in hard evidence, which we lack, the actual celebration of Samhain is clearly far older. So Samhain morphed into All Hallow's Eve, and we have no idea how old Samhain actually is.

 

I have one thing to say; Odin being Kringle makes me mad as fuck. Klaus The Toymaker was a total boss.

 

And when kids find out Santa wasn't? That betrayal they feel? We have no idea what that could potentially do to a beings belief power.

On the Red King.. he sent a holy virgin to Dresden as a distraction tactic. A holy virgin that was 100% ready to be used in any way Dresden saw fit because her god had commanded it. That indicates a fairly active relgion, regardless of how the supernatural world at large views him.

 

So you're saying you think Odin isn't Klaus?

That's only mostly a joke.

Also, has anyone considered the possibility that Sarissa is Harry's daughter?