Dresden Files discussion
Just what exactly is the single entity made up of the sidhe Mothers?
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Given that circumstance, I don't think it could be successfully argued that wizards are a different race any more than it could be successfully argued that people with red hair are a different race. Therefore, I submit that 'starborn' is a special designation referring to a conjunction when Harry was born. Butcher even hints that Lea might have been involved in Harry's life before he was born. Margaret made a pact with Lea so that Harry would be safeguarded after her own death. And we know Margaret had been moving in strange circles before she met Harry's father. I think it is more than possible that Harry was always meant to fight the Outsiders. I would go so far as to say Margaret engineered him to do exactly that and arranged things so that Harry would be nudged towards the course his life has taken.

I agree about the arrangement of the stars at Harry's birth possibly making him star kissed. The Sidhe are a very long lived race. Some would even say immortal so if anyone would have the patience to try and work something out like that it would be them.
Fight or get recruited by the outsiders? If I remember correctly He Who Walks Behind is an Outsider that has been dogging Harry's footsteps for a long time but did nothing to actively attack him outside of scaring the crap out of him from time to time. It was He Who Walks In Front who tried to do Harry harm. Harry has had what seems like a lot of contact with them so maybe it’s just as issue of power being drawn to power. In Skin Games Sasha could not come to help because he was fighting Outsiders off 2 at a time. Maybe the Outsiders have much more Intel about who the heavy players of this dimension are, than Butcher has yet to make known within his plotlines so far.

I agree about the arrangement of the stars at Harry's birth possibly making him star kissed. The Sidhe are a very long lived race. Some would even say immortal so if anyone would have the..."
As of 'Ghost Story' the motives of He Who Walks Behind are in question. He physically attacked Harry at the convenience store, but in retrospect Harry is no longer certain the demon was trying to kill him. He Who Walks Before did try to kill Harry in 'Cold Days' and he tried to recruit Harry near the end.
Power being drawn to power? Let's step out of the game for a moment and consider it from a plot POV. Butcher always has reasons for things happening. He foreshadows almost everything important in the series. It doesn't make sense to me to throw in such a large red herring as the Walkers always being countered by Dresden. There is more to it than just powerful beings lining up to see who is the "baddest dude on the block".
Sanya was actually fighting two of the Knights of the Blackened Denarius. They are effectively fallen angels, not Outsiders. Evidence indicates that at least one of the KBD was allied with the Outsiders when Arctis Tor was assaulted, but they are not the same thing.
As for the Outsiders knowing more about who the heavy players of the real world are than what has been explicitly stated in the books, I think that is a safe bet. Apparently they have their fingers in a lot of pies. I would guess that they have spies in every organization on the planet. They would be able to gather huge amounts of information and cross reference all of the data collected. Likely their information would be better than almost any other group's except perhaps the Angels.

I wasn't accusing Butcher of leaving plot holes. If he is intending to have the Outsiders play a bigger role in future segments of the series then it would explain why Harry has encountered them as frequently as he has. It also would explain why Mab manueved so stringently to make Harry her champion. Especially since it is her primary goal to prevent the Outsider's military assault on the NeverNever and our own world by extension. It would also mean that the Outsiders have much more information concerning our world than Butcher has stated so far within the given storyline. More light would be shed upon why, out of the blue Harry has been granted wardenship of the prison on Demonreach too. As if he wasn't already wearing enough hats (not that I'm complaining, I'm just saying). I began the 2nd sentence of this paragraph with the word if b/c this post is based on speculation and we all as of yet don't know for certain what Butcher plans to do in future installments of TDF. It could be that everyone here is way off base and that he will pull something out of his imagination that will both surprise and delight us all.
I'm not planning to take over the world or be a super-villian, but it would make sense to either recruit or destroy all obstacles when anything is planning to take over or destroy a world. This would lead into a power being drawn to power like conflict b/c the Outsiders seem to have a strong enough sentience to see the value of figuring out who needs to be assimilated or destroyed so that everyone else will get left unprotected and fall as easy prey for whatever. This would also make sense if viewed from a plot POV as well.


My guess would be that the outsider's do not have more information than Ivy b/c then they would most likely be able to circumvent Mab.

I would disagree about the Outsiders having less information than Ivy. The Archive is the repository of all written knowledge in the mortal world. So Ivy knows only what has been written down throughout the centuries humans have had a written language. Everything from cave paintings to computer data to the works of Shakespeare and Sun Tzu. But she does not have every piece of data on the beings of the Nevernever. I'm sure she knows a lot of that sort of thing, but not as much as a spy might be able to supply to the Outsiders. At best Ivy is on par with them and likely has more information than they do about human history.
By the way, this is one of the more interesting discussions I have had lately.

I have already taken into account that Ivy only has recollection of written information and theirfore would not have every morsel of info ever generated. Think about it for a second why would the Outsiders have a greater level of information than that? Even taking into account that much can be learned from a foe about a foe during battle, the Outsider's are still mostly only encountering Mab's half of the race and not the Summer Queen's half.
Getting back to Ivy. Throughout history Mankind has had the tendency to suppress information for whatever purposes be they political or otherwise. Ivy would have access to that information if it has been written down. Traditional Fae lore always suggests that their are ways of interacting with the Fae in general that would place them if not in your debt then at least temporarily under your control. Fae lore also states that it is dangerous to try doing this but I'm sure someone has tried and succeeded and written the account down along the way (even if it was for their own personal reference). Mab is after everything else a Fae and Ivy knows everything ever written. So you see Ivy wouldn't need to know a lot about the Fae, only enough about dealing with the Fae in general. I'm guessing this is why someone tried to kidknap her in the first place (was it the knights of the blackened denarius?).

I hate to disagree with someone as courteous as you, Maeve, but I hold to my earlier assertion that the Outsiders have as much or more information than Ivy does. They have been around longer than human history and they know more about their own kind, whereas humans know next to nothing about them. Even the White Council knows very little about the Outsiders. As you say, they have primarily been in conflict with the Winter Fae, but that does not mean that they are limited to the knowledge gained during that conflict. Remember that Arora, the Summer Lady before Lilly, was corrupted by the Outsiders and driven to rebel against the traditions of the Fairy Courts in an attempt to end the conflict between Summer and Winter. We also have little information about how they are interacting with the new threat of the Fomor. And we already know they had some influence on the Red Court.
Events in the series may prove me wrong. It's one of those things we'll have to wait and find out about.


It is Butchers talking about Archives true purpose
http://dresdenfiles.wikia.com/wiki/Ob...

It is Butchers talking about Archives true purpose
http://dresdenfile..."
Bear, your link is no good. Might try that one again.

It is Butchers talking about Archives true purpose
http:..."
My bad....
here it is,cut and pasted:
As Posted by the author on his online Forums:
I'm pretty sure this will never make it into the actual Dresden Files, since Harry has no idea the Oblivion War is happening, along with everyone else. So I'll share it here. :)
The Archive was constructed /for/ the Oblivion War. Specifically.
Yes, the Archive (and Ivy, the two aren't really divisible) know about these forgotten beings. The Archive is in essence the keeper of the dead, where they are concerned. Once the archive believes one of them has been consigned to oblivion, she holds on to the memory of that being briefly, for another thousand years or so, watching for any mention of that being in print in an effort to make sure that she is the /last/ person alive who remembers whichever hideous entity has been consigned.
And once the safety period has elapsed, and the Archive is confident that no one else remembers, she deletes the memory from the Archive. Bad guy, /gone/.
She also tries to keep track of the enemy players in the Oblivion War via watching for communications and so on. When she finds a trace of them, somewhere, she lets a cell of operatives (like Lara and Thomas) know what's up, through a blind drop, and sends them off to handle the problem.
The Oblivion War is a huge, /slow/ thing. Stuff happens every few decades, at most. That's why the Archive was created--to be an immortal awareness, something that could track and intelligently direct responses to the enemy in a war happening on an almost geological scale.
All that other stuff she says the Archive is for? Smoke and mirrors. :)[1]


Maybe Ivy/The Archive has captured our imaginations and is such a hot topic of debate b/c her very existence as well as the characters she is affiliated with, brings into balance another character from the storyline and the groups she is affiliated with.
Here's my reasoning:
The Red Court has been wiped out. The Jade Court is little more but an obscure reference and other Vampire Courts have not been mentioned by name as of yet. (Since I like diagrams)
1. The Archive -> White Court -> Oblivion Wars
- Ivy's side works to push harmful "Beings" out of existence. Has influence over what gets to exists or not.
2. Marva -> Black Court -> The Kemmlers
-Marva's side works to bring harmful "Beings" back from the brink of not existing or making "Being" exist that have for whatever reason stopped doing so aka bringing things back from the dead aka oblivion if they officially can not die.
This balance puts me in mind of the balance that has already been mentioned between the Sidhe Courts.

Maybe Ivy/The Archive has captured our imaginat..."
That's an intriguing possibility, Maeve, but I don't understand how you are linking Mavra to the Kemmlerites, or how you linked the Black Court to the Oblivion War.
Unless I am mistaken (I frequently am) the Black Court was virtually wiped out sometime in the late 1800s. Only a remnant exists now. We haven't seen Mavra since 'Dead Beat'. Aside from Mavra and her scourge, only one other Black Court vampire has shown up in canon. The only link between Mavra and the Kemmlerites was her desire to obtain the copy of the book Peabody wrote. That points towards her being in conflict with Kemmler's disciples rather than in collusion with them.
I do like the idea of an equal opposite to Ivy, though. We know Nicodemus Archleone spent a great deal of effort trying to obliterate records of himself. Maybe that's not all he was destroying. Of the known characters, I think he would be higher on the list of suspects to head an organization to reconstitute beings that had been forgotten. And the Fomor surely have an interest in reminding humanity that they exist. Perhaps it is one among them who is the counter weight to Ivy.
And maybe there is a third force involved. We know the Fae are composed of the Winter and Summer courts as well as the Wild Fae. If there is parity in the real world, then there almost has to be a third group. Maybe that's where vanilla mortals come into the mix. A group that is ignorant of the workings of both Ivy and the organization that opposes her.

Maybe Ivy/The Archive has capture..."
I will have to do a re-read of the series soon b/c The disciples of Kemmler seemed to me like a collection of people who were part of a group that had similar goals but were fragmented by the fact that everyone was busy vying for the role of top disciple by getting their hands on the book first and possibly gaining the favor of their Master Kemmler. Sort of like how different apprentices will spar and train against one another to become the “protégé” of the Master. The black court seemed to have more members than we are speculating b/c I remember a fight breaking out between the Black and the White court in which the White court had troubles standing their ground. I think it was Blood Rites where a new nest of them were discovered?
Ohhh Nicodemus Archleone and the KBD would also make a very cohesive counterpoint for Ivy and her cohorts within the Oblivion war. That would be a fascinating turn of events as well. As of Skin Games Archleone has had a serious fall in status within the supernatural world and a development like this can help him stage some kind of a come-back…The Fomor still seems vague and unformed to me as of yet. Much like the Svartelves information regarding these two groups for me has been so sparse I’m having difficulty linking them to more established characters and groups. I do agree that the Fomor does have proper incentive to remind humanity that they exist but I feel that they need to strive toward making us readers more aware of their presence within the Dresden Universe first :-)
Excellent point concerning the Fae! Your theory about the wilding (or trouping) Fae is the perfect mirror for another link into this equation. (Where did Toot Toot and Luna go BTW?) Outside of money and the bragging rights of being the only vanilla Freeholder within the Unseelie accords this would give Marcone a presence within the story line that I find very provocative indeed.
For some reason though the prospect of reading about the Black and White courts going toe to toe still seems like the most entertaining option. I’m hoping for a rematch where the White court more predominantly gives the Black court a good butt kicking and a more Thomas based story line of course :-)

Your reasoning seems to be in par with my own on this one Kevin. Star kissed could also mean someone has a favorable astrological birth chart as well. As in containing planetary alignments that would suggest greatness or powerfulness is very obtainable within ones life time. Although I'm rather fond of your recessive gene theory.....X-Men Unite :-D