The White Council

The White Council is a signatory of the Unseelie Accords and serves as the “supernatural nation” for all mortal wizardkind. It is composed of wizards from all nations, and the Senior Council (its governing body) ensures that most wizards in the world respect the Laws of Magic and disposes of the ones who don’t (via its Wardens; see below).

It maintains alliances with other occult groups like the Venatori Umbrorum, the Fellowship of St. Giles, and a few monasteries in Tibet and India.

Most wizards worthy of the name have come up through the traditional system: being apprenticed to a White Council member and joining the Council themselves as full members when they pass the trials of wizardry.

A White Council member gets a vote in deliberations and agrees to abide by its rules (including the Laws of Magic). A member is obliged to represent the White Council if necessary.

The language used in White Council conclaves is Latin. All members attending a full meeting of the Council wear a robe with a stole that denotes their rank (no stole for apprentices, blue for junior wizards, red for senior ones, purple for Senior Council members).

The White Council is governed by the Senior Council: seven wizards of age, skill, power, and knowledge. The leader of the Senior Council (and thus the entire White Council) is called “the Merlin.” They set policy by majority vote (usually of the entire membership of the White Council, but a Senior Council member can restrict matters to a closed vote of just the Senior Council).

The Laws Of Magic

The Laws of Magic are not the quasi-physics of how magic works; they are the practical regulations on mortal spell-slingers imposed by the White Council.

Simply stated, the Seven Laws are:

• One: No killing mortals with magic.
• Two: No transforming others.
• Three: No mind-reading.
• Four: No mind-controlling.
• Five: No necromancy.
• Six: No time travel.
• Seven: No seeking knowledge and/or power from Outsiders.

The Blackstaff

There are rumors that there is a secret White Council agent (authorized by the Senior Council) who is licensed to break any of the Seven Laws of Magic in those cases where the Seven Laws prevent the White Council from acting in a critical situation.

These are surely just rumors.

HARRY: Don’t be snotty, Billy. You already know more than most mortals.

Wardens

The Wardens are the guardians (and often executioners) of the White Council. They are responsible for policing both the White Council and the magical community outside it. A Warden is expected to protect mortals in his area, to be vigilant against supernatural threats in his region, to represent the Council in matters of diplomacy, to aid and assist other wizards who require aid and protection, and—when required—to strike out at the enemies of the Council. Think of them as “magic cops.”

All Wardens are battle-capable wizards of high skill and power. Warden security protocols are some of the best magical countermeasures in the world. They are trained in the use of wardhounds in this work, and they also have access to voluminous (if sometimes incomplete and out-of-date) dossiers on various supernatural players.

Their tokens of office are a plain grey cloak and a special sword—both serve as a sign of their authority, and the Warden’s sword is a puissant and useful enchanted weapon.

Subject to the Senior Council, they have their own Captain and are structured under regional Commanders. Regional commanders are in charge of security and operation for a large area (like, up to half a continent—though these current vast demesnes are certainly due to the current Vampire War; before this, four regional commanders normally handled North America alone).

So that’s the White Council.  But what of their allies? In two weeks, find out.

General old world order, setting

Supernatural Factions

Many supernatural “kinds”—wizards, vampires, faerie, etc.—are considered to belong to their own supernatural nation under the Unseelie Accords. (However, given the differences between the Vampire Courts, and the differences between the Summer and Winter Courts of Faerie, there are several separate ”nations” of vampires and faeries.)

Here’s a quick run-down of the major factions in play.

(For further details on the nature of each of these types of beings, see What Goes Bump in the Night. For discussions of specific individuals, see Who’s Who in the Dresdenverse.)

The Roman Catholic Church

While many priests believe in the Devil, only a handful have accurate information on the Prince of Darkness, much less the various Vampire Courts or the Faerie Courts. The general attitude of clued-in people in the Church is that anyone involved with the supernatural is either evil or sliding that way, with few exceptions.

A scattering of priests, monks, nuns, affiliated laymen and others know and stand sentinel against the darkness. Few of them have any real skill with magic, but some have particular areas of knowledge or individual alliances with supernatural factions. For example, the Knights of the Cross (though their calling comes from a higher source than any mortal religion) is strongly associated with a faction within the Church, which provides what support they can for the Knights.

Mortals

Mortals aren’t a supernatural faction per se. But they are both prey and a threat (especially en masse) to many of the supernatural nations.

HARRY: We’re talking mobs of villagers with pitchforks and flaming torches here.

While more-or-less clueless to the supernatural shenanigans happening around them, hordes of mortals roused to action can be a danger to the supernatural nations. Before the beginning of the Vampire War, calling mortal authorities into an arcane fracas was akin to calling in an airstrike. After the Industrial Revolution, with the wide availability of steel weapons, guns, and ever more deadly technologies, the mortal threat upgraded to “nuclear” (literally!). For the past three hundred years, the supernatural folk have laid a bit lower than they had in the past.

Unfortunately, opinions on the dangers of mortalkind seem to be changing. Recent Red Court attacks in the Vampire War have killed thousands of unsuspecting mortals in the Third World with impunity. Furthermore, the rise of the entirely mortal  John Marcone to the status of Freedholding Lord has had some sort of ramifications among the supernatural set regarding mortalkind—

HARRY: My take is that, all of a sudden, mortals are now an even larger threat than before.

—but what those are exactly is as yet unclear.

Other Mortals

Clued-in mortals , werewolves, scions, and hedge wizards (especially the members of the Ordo Lebes) all play fairly minor roles in the overall supernatural situation. Most often, they are simply prey, targets, or obstacles to the larger and more powerful factions.

Sorcerers are often catspaws and pawns for the darker supernatural nations and Freeholding Lords. They usually don’t have enough oomph to stir up “international” trouble on their own.

On the other hand, big-time necromancers (especially powerful ones, like the Disciples of Kemmler) are individually a sort of “banana republic” in the overall supernatural nations schema. Given their power and undead legions, they cannot simply be controlled as sorcerers are. They are loose (powerful) cannons, which must be jostled into position or squelched, depending upon the larger supernatural factions’ aims and goals.

In two more weeks, you’ll have the White Council to deal with.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

General old world order, setting

There Is No Spirit Of The Law

The Accords were set up by one of the most notorious manipulators in the supernatural world; furthermore, the legalistic bent of the faerie mind, along with their important concepts of favor and debt, has a strong influence on the letter of the law.

Much like the Code of Hammurabi, everything is spelled out extremely clearly. Vicious as it seems to us in retrospect to claim an eye for an eye or a life for a life, it prevents one supernatural tribe from murdering all of another tribe in response to a single death or other faux-pas.

However, nobody’s going to respect “the spirit of the law” of the Accords, because there isn’t one. See above regarding Mab’s legalistic thinking (in gamer terms, she’s the consummate “rules-lawyer”). The supernatural nations all abide by the Accords, because the possibility of all-out mystical warfare is so much worse—as the current Vampire War between the Red Court and the White Council demonstrates.

Getting Screwed By the Letter Of The Law

In the ad hoc supernatural courts that judge these things, plenty of precedent has been established that there is only the letter of the law to protect you under the Accords, and each letter has a razor’s edge. It doesn’t matter what your sentimental excuses were, how many innocents were going to die, or that your true love’s life was on the line. If you break the Accords, then you are neck-deep in trouble.

The best thing that you can hope for is that your side will try to find some loophole to get you out of it, or work a behind-the-scenes deal to persuade the other side to drop their reasons for offence. Unfortunately, by far the most likely thing is that you’ll be served up on a platter with a set of apologies tied around your neck. There will always be people on your own side who will consider their own continued peace and safety far more important than your skin. And after all, what is one man compared to the prospect of supernatural war? These people may regret the political necessities, but that won’t stop them from gift-wrapping Accords-breakers and delivering them to the aggrieved parties.

At times, the letter of the law can actually be helpful. There are cases where people use the legalisms to their advantage. It is a clear and definite fact that someone who reads the Accords and plans their actions before doing something precipitous (like burning down a houseful of bad guys) is the person who is most likely to get away with it.

HARRY: You know, under the Accords, naughty children found on bridges are still lawful prey for trolls.

Tune in two weeks from now as we begin to delve into Supernatural Factions.

General old world order, setting

Old World Order

Most supernatural factions have their own hidden histories, dark secrets, and personal beliefs on how much they have affected world history. Yet, they do tend go to some effort to make sure that mortals don’t even bother to start looking for their fingerprints in the first place. To the supernatural set, comfortable ignorance is what most of the world should enjoy.

However, some events and episodes of supernatural interference are well-established and can even be tracked by mundane humans.

Old World Organizations

The “supernatural nations” detailed below tend to follow an Old World aesthetic of manners and methods. This often means a Renaissance-era mindset in their approach to political issues. It’s as if they read Machiavelli’s The Prince and just stopped there.

Meanwhile, the philosophies and technologies of mortal-kind have advanced. In fact, you could say that the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution caught the supernatural factions with their pants down. The aftershocks of both are still being felt among magical sorts. The disparities between the rough-and-ready modern mortal outlook and the more courtly and traditional supernatural attitude frequently causes friction between the factions.

All that being said, however, the most important aspect of interaction among the supernatural factions is the Unseelie Accords.

The Unseelie Accords

The Unseelie Accords, devised by Queen Mab of the Winter Court of Faerie, are a supernatural cross between the Magna Carta and the Geneva Conventions.

The Accords recognize major magical factions as independent political entities (or “nations”) with the right to defend, protect, and avenge their members. Even “Freeholding Lords” are recognized: entities of power that do not necessarily represent an entire kind, just themselves and their supporters.

HARRY: Simply belonging to any supernatural faction is enough to get a nice set of enemies along with your metaphorical membership badge.

The Accords lay out an important concept: magical nations are responsible for policing their own. If they don’t do this, and let their people run willy-nilly, these activities can become a lawful grievance to another nation—even up to a justification for war. The Accords also lay out other rules concerning such topics as the treatment of prisoners (though the rules do little if anything to protect them), setting prices on ransoms or prisoner exchanges, laying out procedures for negotiations between hostile supernatural nations, the establishment of neutral ground, rules of engagement and territory, a basis for diplomacy, and so on.

Most importantly, the Accords establish several hard and fast rules that provide ancient (read: Old World) customs of hospitality and honor with the force of law. If any two things are regarded as concrete by the supernatural nations, it is: 1) the binding power sworn oaths; and 2) the obligation of a host to offer aid, comfort, and protection to her guests.

The Accords recognize that it is mutually profitable for the supernatural nations to avoid overt or large-scale conflicts; indeed, they provide a means of settling disputes between rival nations by means of a trial of champions—based on the Code Duello—presided over by a mediator. Any member of any nation can be asked to be a mediator, but the choice must be mutually accepted.

All in all, the Accords are extremely complex, and applying them generally leads to a lot of arguing rather than actually solving any problems (it is likely that this is what Mab intended). They work, however; conflicts are often defused by the lengthy legal discussions. The Accords are supported by all sides, mainly in order to keep things from getting worse than they already are.

We’ll talk more about the letter and the spirit of the law in two weeks. Stay tuned.

General old world order, setting

Monsters

The world is full of monsters. There are other types of werewolves than those mentioned above (four or five in total), and at least four types of vampire (White Court, Red Court, Black Court, and Jade Court), all with different powers, hungers, and weaknesses. Then there are ghouls, the hard-to-dispatch killer thugs of the supernatural set.

Add to this the inhabitants of the Nevernever who can by various means cross from there into the mortal realm; these include a multitude of faerie species, spirits, ghosts, and demons.

A couple dragons and gods are still kicking around, but we don’t know much about them other than they usually don’t seem to get involved in stuff and are extremely powerful.

The Order of the Blackened Denarius is composed of Fallen angels bound to thirty silver coins, permitting them to possess mortal hosts; they are extremely bad news. Apparently, angels support the people of faith who wage war against the Denarians.

Then there are Outsiders and Old Ones. They want to consume reality. We don’t have much information on them because knowing anything about them is against the White Council’s Laws of Magic.

Current Situation

The White Council and its allies (the Fellowship of St. Giles, the Venatori Umbrorum, and some mystical monasteries in the Far East) are fighting the Vampire War against the Red Court. For its part, the Red Court is using ghouls (and Outsiders in the Nevernever) against the White Council. It is also trying to bring the White and Black—and possibly the Jade—Courts in to help fight. The White Court is neutral (due to infighting and a recent major setback), the Black Court is very small, and the Jade Court is very mysterious, so they haven’t joined the Reds quite yet.

The Summer Court and the Winter Court of Faerie are locked in their traditional enmity, though the violence has ramped up due to the Vampire War. The Summer Court has offered mild assistance to the White Council in the course of the Vampire War, but both are only indirectly involved.

A bunch of necromancers made a play for godlike power a few years ago. Luckily, some of the White Council’s Wardens stopped it.

The Denarians continue their millennia-long rampage of evil and destruction, checked by the Knights of the Cross. While the Denarians aren’t directly participating in the Vampire War, they are taking advantage of it. The Knights have aided the White Council on more than a few occasions.

The first “pure vanilla” mortal has signed onto the Unseelie Accords, becoming the first non-supernatural Freeholding Lord. It is likely he will assist the White Council versus the Red Court.

Then, there’s a mysterious faction out there—alternately called the Black Council or the Circle—that is apparently stirring up trouble behind the scenes.

Most recently, a huge dust-up happened in Chicago between the Knights of the Cross, the Archive, representatives of the White Council, and the Denarians. (There’s also evidence that the Summer Court and Winter Court of Faerie were involved.) Suffice to say, it wasn’t pretty.

And that’s what’s going on at the moment.

That’s it for Harry’s World. In two weeks we begin with paranormal politics: the Old World Order.

General harry's world, setting

What’s Out There?

Here’s a quick and dirty breakdown of the mortals, “semi-mortals,” and monsters running around out in the Dresdenverse. Keep your eyes peeled, and you might recognize them.

(For further details on the political factions and recent history of these groups, see Old World Order. For more information on the nature of each of these types of beings, see What Goes Bump in the Night. For discussions of specific individuals, see Who’s Who in the Dresdenverse.)

Mortals

First, you have true mundane mortals. They are unaware of the supernatural goings-on all around them.

Then you have the clued-in, who have experienced the weirdness up-close and personal, and may know a bit about the various people and critters involved in occult stuff. Clued-in groups include some people of faith, law enforcement officers who specialize in “black cat investigations,” researchers who come across anomalous (read: supernatural) evidence, and even some members of organized crime.

Next are the minor talents. These are folks who have a (usually limited) supernatural talent of their own. Maybe they can cast a spell or two, know some effective rituals, speak to the dead, see the future, that sort of thing.

Sorcerers are more powerful magic-workers, often tapping the power of cults surrounding them to empower spells or rituals or to summon demons. Sorcerers usually don’t have the training, power, knowledge, or ethics of White Council wizards. White Council members have the tools and the talent, but they must abide by certain Laws of Magic. Those who break the Laws are known as warlocks. (Usually, the White Council sends its Wardens to enforce the Laws, but due to the current Vampire War, their hands are a bit full.)

Lastly, there are necromancers, who use the power of death to do magic, like raising ghosts and zombies and all other sorts of creepy business. (Playing with death magic is a big no-no to the White Council, by the way.)

HARRY: You could consider necromancers to be bigtime warlocks.

“Semi-Mortals”

“Semi-mortals” are people who have a foot in the mortal world and a foot in the supernatural world. They retain some aspects of choice, balanced against their nature.

These include some types of werewolf, scions of mortal-monster matings (such as changelings, which are part-human and part-faerie), and the poor folks who have been half-turned—or infected—by a vampire. (A large percentage of the membership of the Fellowship of St. Giles is composed of people infected and turned halfway into a Red Court vampire.)

HARRY: Per this breakdown, I’m almost tempted to put the Knights of the Cross under “semi-mortal.” It seems like Michael often does not have the freedom to choose not to follow his belief structure and mission. Does choice count if you choose to always follow your nature?

BOB: Hey, boss: Pot. Kettle. Black.

… Actually, Billy, I’d consider a “classic werewolf” like yourself and your compatriots to be minor talents, based on free will.

BILLY: That’s the thing about spellcasters.  Everything’s a spell to them!

In two more weeks, we’ll bring you the conclusion of Harry’s World, as we look at Monsters and the Current Situation.

General harry's world, setting

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?

General harry's world, maxims of the dresdenverse, setting

Science Fails

The comforting rules of science and technology, the certainty that a better computer or a bigger gun will settle the problem—sorry, they don’t work ’round here. Wizards and some other monsters cause nearby technology to malfunction simply by their presence.

HARRY: Billy, please change “some other monsters” to “some other supernatural entities”? We’re not all that bad.

Well, mostly.

Okay.

Just freaking change it, Billy.

Monsters aren’t reliably affected by the laws of physics. (They seem to treat them as “vague guidelines” more than laws.) They can fly, walk through walls, tear apart steel doors, and bounce bullets or ignore them entirely. All the carefully acquired handguns, sniper rifles, flamethrowers, computer security, and mobile phones in the world may ultimately be useless if pitted against the wrong sort of adversary.

Not only does technology not work around the wizardly-inclined, nobody can really explain why post-WWII technology doesn’t work. There aren’t any convenient rules. No wizard has yet attempted to catalogue his effects on technology.

HARRY: Butters is pretty close. He has some theories.

BOB: Last time Butters and I spoke, he was on about something about your electromagnetic field (I call it an aura) interfering with electron spin and/or phase jumps in transistors and other solid state electronics. (I think that’s what he said. Technology is just another flavor of faith to me.)

Furthermore, no monster is going to publish a list of ways that it can be hurt.

HARRY: Like this game. Heh.

By the by, there’s some circumstantial evidence that indicates Stoker was manipulated into writing Dracula by the White Court. So while no monster is gonna come up with a “Top Ten Ways to Whack Me” list, another monster might do so.

However, others can. The most recent example of such a tome, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, detailed most of the significant ways in which a Black Court vampire can be damaged or killed. The Black Court still hasn’t recovered.

This dovetails remarkably well with the note above about people choosing not to see what’s going on around them. Scientists who might be able to analyze data on monsters don’t want to know in the first place; then their instruments go nuts, so they dismiss the cases of spontaneous combustion or bouncing bullets as statistical anomalies. With regard to the supernatural, science can’t tell you what just happened, can’t explain why it happened, and can’t stop it from happening again.

Sure, Mr. or Ms. Sciencey-Science, your lab is spotless, filled with the tools and gear of analysis, and you have spent years filling your head with logic, knowledge, methods—but the specimen before you refuses to make sense according to everything you’ve been taught. Meanwhile, it’s very dark outside, something large is moving around in the gloom, and your electric light has started flickering. The monster is getting closer, and you can’t do thing one about it—or even understand what’s going on.

However, this doesn’t mean that technology can’t be useful, if properly applied (and kept away from wizards who can make it go pfft!). Different creatures have different vulnerabilities—a flamethrower or a water balloon filled with holy water might be just the thing to even the odds against a Black Court vampire. Even if a bullet in the brainpan fails to take a monster down, extreme applications of kinetic force (such as a car at ramming speed or a crashlanding satellite) tend to have some sort of effect. Other tools of technology can be used to pass information, archive data, set up perimeters, collect evidence, or may be functional in particular ways against particular types of monster.

Assuming that a wizard doesn’t accidentally fuse them, of course.

In two weeks, we wrap up this section of Harry’s World with the final Maxims of the Dresdenverse

General harry's world, maxims of the dresdenverse, setting

Maxims of the Dresdenverse

There are certain themes that hold true in this world which are noticeable enough that you should take them under consideration. They can be roughly summarized as follows.

Monsters have Nature, Mortals have Choice

Almost all beings that could be considered “monsters” are, one on one, far more powerful than the average mortal. They have great strength, implausible toughness, blinding speed, and unnatural powers. What they don’t have is choice.

A monster’s nature is oriented towards fulfilling its hungers. Vampires need emotion or blood or death, loup-garoux need the hunt and the kill, fae literally cannot step outside their natures or break oaths…These entities have power, but they don’t have the option of saying no. They are what they’re made to be—and some things are simply made cruel, or bloodthirsty, or just plain evil.

On the other hand, mortals have options: choice. That’s their great strength and their great responsibility. Only animals and monsters can truthfully say that they can’t do anything else, or that they can’t be other than what they are. Every human being can make a decision about what to do or not do, what to accept and what to refuse, whether to kill or not kill.

HARRY: Mortals—humans—also have the advantage of numbers. Up until very recently, calling mortal authorities into a supernatural situation was like radioing in an airstrike.

Unfortunately, in the course of the Vampire War, some of the supernatural “nations” seem to have gotten hold of the mystical equivalents of nukes.

That said, the situation is often grey and not clear-cut. There are those few who are part mortal and part monster: vampires who struggle to fight their hungers and do the right thing; werewolves who chose lycanthropy to get the strength to defend their community;

BILLY: Alphas, represent!

wizards who accept help from dark sources, but hope to restrain the urges that threaten to overwhelm them. Choice is the overwhelming theme of these individuals’ lives. Will they retain their humanity or will they become monsters? And is there any way that those who are now monsters can perhaps regain some degree of humanity, some capacity for choice?

HARRY: For Thomas’ sake, I hope so.

Things Fall Apart

The world is growing darker. Humans are choosing the worse over the better, and the monsters are cheering them on. There are trolls under the bridges, unseelie fae stealing the children, vampires running businesses behind the velvet curtains, and ghosts sucking the life from babies in maternity wards. Organized crime is strong and getting stronger, gunshots echo in the night, and policemen take payoffs. Drug use is spreading, alcohol is an answer rather than a stopgap, and people lose themselves in their searches for pleasure, power, or escape.

But there are those who stand against the rising tide of shadow. Whether they are ordinary humans, secretive wizards, individuals chosen by supernatural powers, or people empowered by some other means, they will not let the darkness win. Perhaps all the more obvious against the shabby dirtiness of the world around them, perhaps stained or marked by their own errors and problems, they nevertheless hold their ground and work to protect, to support, to rebuild. They choose to use their power for others as well as for themselves. These people exist, and they haven’t given in yet.

HARRY: Billy, have I ever mentioned that sometimes you speak like a freaking superhero in a comic book?

That’s not an insult, but I’m not sure it’s a compliment.

Tune in in two weeks for part two of Maxims of the Dresdenverse

General harry's world, maxims of the dresdenverse, setting

This begins a multi-part series of posts giving a preview of two chapters: Harry’s World covers the basics of the world and the setting (a primer of sorts), while Old World Order digs into the politics of the paranormal.  Every other Tuesday, you’ll see another post with more from one of those chapters, running for the next few months.  Enjoy!

Harry’s World

For most people, Chicago is Chicago, America is America, and Earth is Earth—but there’s more to the world than that.

Beneath the “normal” surface of the world are things and people which most humans don’t know about, don’t want to know about, and will do their best to forget about if they ever come anywhere near them. That dead body with the odd toothmarks? Attacked by stray dogs. The traces of thirty different infectious diseases on this corpse in the mortuary? Statistical anomaly. The Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton from the museum scattered in a thousand pieces on the college lawn after the several day long city-wide blackout? Student prank during unusually severe weather.

People won’t see things they don’t want to see. It’s almost always possible for everyone, from heroes to bystanders, to turn away and not get involved in what’s going on. It’s often the easiest thing in the world to do. You don’t have to get involved. You can choose between good and evil, between light and darkness, between necessity and possibility, and between taking action and going home to curl up with a good book.

HARRY: It’s not as though the Archangel Michael came down in person and gave you a Sword made from one of the nails that pinned Christ to the Cross and charged you with a sacred mission, after all.

By the way, if anyone out there has had the Archangel Michael come down to charge them with a holy mission, give me a call. I’m in the book.

The world is weirder, more wonderful, and more deadly than it seems. Some people know this. Most of the citizens of Chicago would laugh at the idea of magic, even though Harry Dresden has his number and occupation right in the phone book. But there are people who know that magic exists and know who to call when they run into it. There are humans who have been divinely blessed or diabolically cursed. There are fairies—small, big, hugely ancient and terrifying. There are even dragons, although these days it’s said they consider bearer bonds as well as pure gold for their hoards.

The Nevernever—the world of fae and ghosts—is just on the other side of a boundary Veil from normal life; courts of vampires divide the night between them; the White Council of wizards tries to protect the innocent and stop the misuse of magic.

All of this is going on, right under our noses.

However, this is also a world where a single person, in the right place, at the right time, can do the right thing and save the people he cares about.

Here in what we like to call “the Dresdenverse,” we can choose to be people who see, who are aware, who make our own paths, and who do the right thing and take the responsibility for doing it. Seen clearly, this world is full of light and darkness, with all the shades of grey between.

HARRY: You have got to be kidding me.

Billy, nobody but you and Kirby call the world “the Dresdenverse.” NERDS!

Join us, if only in play. Because it’s only a book, a game, a roleplaying entertainment of magic and monsters.

Isn’t it?

You be the judge.

Join us in two weeks as we delve into the Maxims of the Dresdenverse!

General harry's world, setting