Maxims of the Dresdenverse (Part 3)
Belief is Power
Faith in itself is a form of power and a kind of magic. Strong faith in good (or evil) can act as a defense, an offense, a shield, or a guide, providing many effects which people would normally consider “magic.” This could include things like a glimmer of light from a crucifix in the darkness, burning a vampire’s hands as it grabs you, or a sudden burst of more-than-mortal strength.
The exact details of the faith can vary. Religious beliefs are the mainstay here: a staggering number of people have faith in God (or gods). Some people have strong faith in more philosophical beliefs—for example, the fundamental purity and goodness of magic, Tibetan mysticism, or even Communism.
The important thing is that if the person has faith in something—true, sincere, pure faith—then miracles can happen.
HARRY: Effective word here being “can”—while Michael, Charity, and Father Forthill have that kind of belief in the goodness of God and that everything will work out to some ineffable plan…I just can’t buy it. Not with what I’ve seen happen.
BOB: For my part, I know that faith has power. However, I am not allowed to understand anything further than that, by nature and by…other issues.
Magic is What You Are
You can’t make magic do something that goes against your fundamental nature. This works on both the deliberate and the emotional levels. An utterly kind, sincere person will not be able to muster malicious hate and bitterness of a level that would allow him to summon demons or blast with hellfire—or, at least, not without very significant provocation. Likewise, a vicious and corrupt thanatologist practicing human sacrifice isn’t going to have healing magic at her command—or, if she does, it may require blood and pain to make it work and will probably be more corrupting than simply leaving the open wound to fester.
At least, that’s the theory. Practice has, once again, shown things to be a lot fuzzier than the clear-cut examples above. Again, it all comes back to choice and to the complexity of the mortal mind and soul. Even a kindly old grandmother has the seeds of hatred within her, and even a cold-blooded gangster has moments of tenderness and kindness.
Magic is an expression of the person who brings it forth. It comes from their beliefs, their morality, their feelings, their emotional connections, their way of seeing the world: in a word, their soul.
BOB: See, boss, Billy gets it a lot more than you do.
HARRY: Shut up, Bob.
There’s a reason why the soulgaze is the ultimate proof of sincerity between many wizards. A soulgaze happens when two people (at least one of them a wizard) make eye contact long enough to look into each other’s souls and see what they truly are. In that moment, a wizard not only sees what a person is, but he also sees what their magic is—it’s one and the same. For instance, if you choose to practice black magic, you dredge up the corrupt parts of yourself and make them stronger. You are what you choose to become, what you make yourself into. (Luckily, if you’re mortal, you also always have the power to choose redemption after a slip.)
Whether it’s faith or magic, all power comes from the basic nature of the mortal or monster who is using it. Evil brings forth evil, and good brings forth good. We are what we do, and we do what we are.
Tune in two weeks from now as we start wrapping up Harry’s World with an answer to the question, What’s Out There?
Awesomely great stuff. Actually, I think these posts are more than enough of a bait to hook people on the books and upcoming game… hmmm… *plotting*
*Points at his comment back in the previous post.* I might be onto something here. And even if I’m not, I can always create a character that believes it.
Ya know since they mentioned the soul here there is something i always wondered. As we grow experience and change dont our souls change too? Like for Mrs. Beckitt her soul and being revolved around her daughters accident and that was the scene for her soulgaze. If her daughter came back then wouldnt she become kind of a new person, so shouldnt she be able to be soulgazed again. But harry always says that a soulgaze is a one time thing. Okay since its the Sight i know its burned into your head but if a person changes would what you see when you remember the gaze have changed too?
I agree. The whole soul gaze thing is going to be impossible to work with, becsuse in the books it contradicts itself. Its more of a “personality gaze” then a “soul gaze’ anyhow. Except you only use it once. Like with Helen Beckitt. In her soul gaze harry saw what happened to her daughter. But that would not have been the case before her daughter died. Also, no one event can shape a persons core being. It isn’t even Marcones fault that the girl died. he didn’t shoot her, and he surely didn’t ask to be shot at. What if her daughter died while someone tried to assasinate the president? Would Helen then go and assasinate the presiden herself? The whole thing is wonky. And the whole can’t use magic to kill, except that Harry does use magic to kill. All of the council does. He kills the Denarians, who have souls. And necromancers, who are humans. So it basicaly means kill anyone you think is a bad guy is OK. Harry has no idea what Helens magic is all about. We know she has some. So, its not really a soul gaze, and you really can use magic to do things you think are wrong.
What I was trying to say is that Helens Beckitts soul gaze gives us no understanding. We know she is torn up about the death of her daughter, and that she wants revenge, but we have no idea of why she is so completely, mind numbingly able to think of that, and that alone. The majority of people would be heartbroken, but not so that they couldn’t heal. So. Ok. She is stuck in that moment. Why? Why does she blame Marcone? If we saw her soul we would know why. If we were to see her once her daughter woke up, then would her soul have changed? No. So what is a soul gaze? f you looked into me right after I say flunked an important midterm would I look the same as usual?
What are the real rules for what one sees?
It’s been implied that there are no hard and fast rules for what one sees. A wizard with a sufficiently different mindset than Harry (if someone was 300 years old or so that would give them a very weird perspective on things, for instance) might have seen something entirely different. Harry seems to get inconsistent amounts of information when he performs a soulgaze and doesn’t necessarily get all of a person summed up in a neat little package. he probably has some kind of bias he can’t control affecting what information he gets.
From some discussion of soulgazes in Turncoat I gathered that a person’s soul could significantly change and if a wizard had soulgazed that person previous to that happening then they would simply be misled by their intimate knowledge of who the person was instead of who the person is.
Thank you , Tam. Very helpful input. I get what you mean. Is not just the info, but the interpertation. So like maybe the info IS all there, but Harry might just see the most emotionaly charged bits, but someone with a more long term outlook, like a 300 yr old wizard could see a more balanced perspective. And if a soul changing event occurs after the soul gaze you have old info, and thats that. I like it.
“Evil brings forth evil, and good brings forth good. ” But sometimes, cant Good bring forth evil or vice versa?
@Leeden, absolutely — but honestly, that’s the sort of thing that I’d expect to arise from the mortal gift of free will getting mixed into the picture. Over time, the maxim tends to bear out, even if there are specific-situation exceptions along the way (as there are with all of them).
Well, yeah. Soulgazes from my narrow understanding of the books isn’t necessarily a ‘these are the facts about this person and what they’re capable of doing’. It’s put through the subjective filter of the participants in the soulgaze. It’s also one of those fuzzy elements that can’t really be given hard rules in a RPG setting, because it’s very subjective information.
And as Tam said, people change, too. Since a soulgaze would only happen once, a wizard would become confident in that image they initially witnessed, and as life happens, that image would become outdated.
I don’t think there should be any hard rules for what someone should see in a soulgaze. That’d kind of kill the mystery behind it. The whole idea behind Harry avoiding doing a soulgaze the majority of the time is that one doesn’t KNOW what they’re going to see, for good or ill. And some things, as mentioned in Turn Coat, are not meant to be known about another person.
Fun stuff!!!!!
What happens if someone has an implacable belief in technology and scientific progress? Could they manifest miracles in the form of cell phones and other technical devices that are unaffected by magical effects?
@Peteman, certainly would not qualify, since technology is manifestly evident, and thus in no way occupying a position of faith.
@fred
What if we have a manifestly unhinged guy? Like Mad Scientist unhinged?
@Peteman, ask your GM. It doesn’t sit right with me for a game I’d be running (strikes me as too goofy/too game-the-rules-ish), but thankfully I’m not running every game out there.
Faith in The Singularity, then, which is practically a cult of its own.
There’s a spanish translation of both Harry’s World and Maxims of the dresdenverse at:
dresdenfilesrpg(.)wordpress(.)com
@blair
more specifically at:
http://dresdenfilesrpg.wordpress.com/about/el-mundo-de-harry/
and
http://dresdenfilesrpg.wordpress.com/about/maximas-del-dresdenverso/