r/dresdenfiles • u/RenagadeFemShep • 16h ago
Spoilers All Is Proven Guilty when Mab discovers that Lea is Spoiler
Nfected? did Lea attack Arctis Tor? And send the Fetches for Molly?
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u/BagFullOfMommy 6h ago edited 6h ago
Lea became Nfected near the end of Grave Peril and between then and some point prior to Dead Beat she passes on the Nfection to Maeve, Lea had already been imprisoned by the time Dead Beat was taking place. Mab becomes aware that Maeve is also Nfected prior to Small Favor, it's why she uses an interpreter for a few books, because she is ... not happy, and her voice carries power. She could kill people with her grief by just speaking to them.
As for who attacked Arctis Tor, it was orchestrated by Maeve working with an Nefected Denarian to get Lea back. A common theory among fans is that it was Thorned Namshiel because Nicodemus calls him out by name in Small Favor. Personally however, to me that doesn't track. I think a much likelier candidate is Tessa and / or Rosanna. Thorned Namshiel helps Marcone stop a major plot of the Outsiders by stopping Ethniu in Battle Talks. Marcone along with Thorned Namshiel not only rally forces to help defend Chicago and send Ethniu off to the worlds worst summer camp, he hands over the castle to Harry when Harry 'asks' for it. If Thorned Namshiel was Nfected / playing for the Outsiders he would have Nfected Marcone as well, neither would have helped out in the battle for Chicago, and Marcone would not have handed Harry a magical Fort Knox of fuckery to continue ruining everyone's plans from.
As for who had Molly kidnapped in Proven Guilty, it was almost certainly Maeve. She used the fetches to kidnap Molly and set everything up so that Harry could go and 'rescue' her as another layer to the plans to get Lea back. Knowing that Harry would break Lea out of Mab's prison when he saw her there (which he absolutely tried to do). Maeve also manipulated Lily ...who is operating with a monumental amount of stupidity... to help with her plans.
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u/Corvo1235 6h ago
I think some of the Denarians would be open to working for the Nefected without being fully on their side if it has something good enough to bribe them with. I wouldn’t say they necessarily have to be all in or all out. They might be kind of like a contractor or mercenary.
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u/Karma1913 5h ago
Spoilers all
I'd buy that in the early books or at times not covered in the series, but we know something big and cyclical is happening. We can guess it involves Outsiders. We can guess all the immortals have some knowledge of what's up.
If Outsiders becoming Insiders is the end of all things or reasonably thought to be then you need a Denarian really committed to not doing anything anymore ever or convinced of something else.
That said, we've got some setup of Nfected deception with Maeve. They convinced her a fundamental thing was not true with the lying stuff.
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u/BagFullOfMommy 5h ago edited 5h ago
I think some of the Denarians would be open to working for the Nefected without being fully on their side if it has something good enough to bribe them with.
There is nothing you could use to bribe an immortal god tier being older than time itself trapped within a magical coin who can only experience reality (relative to them) for brief moments through a barely evolved monkeys senses with, except it's freedom, and the Outsiders in reality don't have the juice to do that. There's also some fuckery with the coins and the Fallen themselves that I don't think Jim took into account when he spoke about what it would take to destroy a coin / what would happen if it happened. The Outsiders and the Angels exist above the multiverse, meaning there is only one of each that interacts with the infinite multiverse, there arnt an infinite amount of copies of each like there are of Harry for example. You'd have to destroy every single coin a Fallen is trapped in, in the forever expanding infinite multiverse to actually free them.
There may be one other thing you could bribe them with. Revenge against the one who put them in the coins to begin with. A handful of Denarians may be willing to help destroy the entire system just to get a shot at beating the dicks out of Lucifers flaccid hairless asshole for what he did.
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u/jacob_fw 5h ago
I think one of the questions here is who is more powerful, the Outsiders or the Denarians (I lean towards the Denarians at least in spirit world matters). The Denarians have always seemed to be something of a wild card in the spirit world. I don't think the Denarians are actually aligned with the Outsiders, more of an alliance of convenience.
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u/introvertkrew 5h ago
The Outsiders. Jim answered a question relating to that in an interview in April this year about who is stronger, a Walker or Uriel, and Jim said that the Walkers are far more powerful than the archangels, however the archangels can work within reality whereas the Outsiders are limited Inside. Here you go.
Dresden Files Podcast Show April 2026 WoJ:
Q: "Are Angels of a similar caliber to say the Walkers? Is Uriel like a He-Who-Walks-Before?"
Jim Butcher: "Oh, no, the Walkers are stronger than them. Yeah, that's one of those fights that's a ten to one against. You know, you don't bet, you don't put your money on Uriel versus He-Who-Walks-Behind, unless you just have a lot of money to spare and you sorta want to see what happens. Uh, that's an underdog fight. But, at the same time though, Uriel's kind of got the interior position so to speak. You know, he can exist within reality, within Creation, whereas the Outsiders can't. They're sort of stuck out there, most of the time they're sort of formless, there's nothing really to compare them against because nothing is, you know, nothing is geometrical or Euclidean out there. But the angels were created for a specific purpose and if they stay within their bounds and stick to their purpose they can do their job and uphold reality. But it's not something they want to throw themselves into too quickly, you know, angels understand that once they start throwing the amount of power they have around that there's enormous universal implications. So, they absolutely want to make sure they have all the paperwork filled out before they do something because the Creator does get a little bit worked up about things. If you go screwing up Creation, he does have a problem with that so."
Q: So, we've learned that Uriel is Obi-Wan and he has the high ground even though Anakin is stronger."
Jim Butcher: "Very much so."
This matters because the Fallen are also bound not to interfere unless a human works with them so the Outsiders should be beating them easily.
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u/Bobis-Bob 4h ago
The problem with that is how did the Outsiders get booted to begin with? If God created the current reality out of the empty night that the Outsiders seem to want to go back to, then his Archangels and Angels would have had to kick them out. Archangels have the power to destroy the Galaxy. How can an outsider be more powerful?
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u/introvertkrew 3h ago
What do you mean get booted? The White God created the multiverse, which seems to me to mean that it has to exist surrounded by the Outside, so the Creator just reached out and formed a, for lack of a better term, a universal or multiversal snowglobe, and the Outsiders looked at it and was upset that it exists in their formless void. Which, to be fair, kind of understandable.
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u/jacob_fw 3h ago
Not looking to start a fight here, but it does still sound like Butcher is sort of arguing that the archangels can still be more powerful than the Walkers (at least in the right circumstances). Like it's pretty obvious that Uriel is more powerful than Nicodemus, but Ole Nick can still screw around with him.
I guess I'll reframe my question then about the Denarians; do you think the Outsiders are able to exercise control over the Denarians? Either through threats, or even by infecting them? I would argue in both cases the answer is no. For one, every time we've seen the Denarians working with the Outsiders, it seems to be more of a temporary alliance of convenience. Maybe the Outsiders can still hurt the Denarians, but so can the Knights and I don't really think we would say the knights are their superiors. And when it comes to infecting the Denarian host, I'm not 100% sure what would happen. While the Fallen are limited when it comes to what they can do, it does seem that the host's body is their domain, and I'm doubtful if the infection can affect the Fallen directly; everything suggests their immutable but who knows; The Fairy queens are supposed to be somewhat comparable to the archangels in power, and since Maeve was able to be infected maybe that means the angels can do, but maybe the angels are of a significantly different nature they can't be affected.
Not sure. Interesting thought. Need to reread these books now.
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u/introvertkrew 3h ago
The Fae Queens are not at all comparable to the archangels in power. Uriel himself said he can destroy galaxies, none of the Fae can destroy the world without losing their reason for existing. They could've launched an ice age, as we saw in Summer Knight, but Mab and Mother Winter can't just tear the Earth apart without loosing everything. The Queens are all a sixth of a Titan, and archangel is the highest form of angel, they're the peak or the arch of angelics, and the archangels are confirmed in the books to be capable of destroying galaxies.
Jim isn't saying that the archangels can be more powerful, he's saying that they have the high ground because the archangels are part of the Creator's creation and are in tune with it whereas the Outsiders are invading, but if an archangel steps beyond the Outer Gates they'd be killed easily, so it's not about power, it's about position.
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u/Glittering-State-284 3h ago
Great example of common DF theme - the higher the power level, the more limits on said power. This has been seen over and over and it feels like an intentional field leveling device in order to give plucky underdogs a chance
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u/BagFullOfMommy 3h ago
...I really ... really wish Jim could keep his own lore straight. He has on multiple occasions said that Uriel and the Walkers are in the same weight class, except for Nemesis who isn't all that powerful in a fight but it has a super unique and special skill that is invaluable to the Outsider cause. Now apparently it's "Uriel is a droopy eyed armless little school girl vs a buff MMA He Who Beats Angel Ass".
Jim if you ever read this, hire me. At this point I know your own lore better than you do and I'm starting to become worried you've got some kind of memory problem going on ...fuckin Mickey Mouse clock showing back up after burning to bits in Changes...
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u/BagFullOfMommy 5h ago
I think one of the questions here is who is more powerful, the Outsiders or the Denarians
Depends upon which Outsider, which Fallen, and where they are. The Outsiders are severely downscaled power wise when interacting with reality. The Walkers are the knights of the great old ones, and they (the walkers) are on the same power scale as Uriel. The great old ones are probably equal to the White God (who is almost certainly an Outsider itself).
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u/Bobis-Bob 4h ago
I think it’s going to be Marcone/Namshiel and Harry going back in time that attack Arctus Torr. know there is significant shenanigans going on in that book.
We don’t know who drove Harry off the road, taking enough time to keep him from using a little Chicago that would have blown up his head.
Then someone who could only be time-traveling Harry fixed Little Chicago.
A. Harry was the only person who knew that Little Chicago even existed.
B. He’s the only one who could have gotten past his wards,
C. fixed Little Chicago when he was the only person who knew what was wrong with it. PG Harry didn’t know until the end of the book when Bob told him.
D. Future Harry was the only person who could have told Bob not to tell PG Harry who fixed it, and
E. very importantly tell Bob to tell PG Harry what was wrong and that he would have blown up his head of he did it earlier the previous day because of a power something. This move gets rid of the Grandfather paradox of why did he go back and fix it if he didn’t know it was faulty.Sure someone else could have picked up Bob to take ownership and give him those orders, but when PH Harry returned he would have had to have picked up Bob to reclaim ownership.
F. Future Harry could have told the Gatekeeper about the rise of black magic in Chicago or better yet nudged the situation so that the Gatekeeper noticed. We don’t know why the Arctus Tor attack happened, unless Future Harry and Marcone did it to open the doors for PG Harry and crew. Possibly under Mab’s order.
Mab also thinks it was Namshiel that attacked AT. Explains why she got an angry look on her face when Harry called Marcone “Sir Barron”1
u/Independent-Lack-484 3h ago
I agree with most of what you said; it's been my theory for a while. Although, I'm pretty sure it was Rosanna who took part in the attack on Arctis Tor.
Rosanna is supposed to be Tessa's right-hand denarian, but she was nowhere to be seen in Skin Game. Nic though either Tessa or Rosanna was the traitor, but he didn't mind having Tessa around.
Plus, whenever Harry used hellfire with his fire magic it kept a trace, usually with a smell of rotting eggs. Tessa's usual battle magic is lightning, while the hellfire was mixed with regular fire magic. Rosanna is the only denarian so far who has used fire magic as her main battle magic (the kelpie attack on the way to the island).
As for Mab, I think she let the attack happen to test if Maeve was working with the black council/Nemesis. But I can't be certain, so take it with a grain of salt.
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u/Ky1arStern 7h ago
No. Harry is looking for a Lea in an earlier book and Mab is the one who picks up the phone.
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u/introvertkrew 5h ago
No, clearly not, Harry found Lea in Proven Guilty already imprisoned in ice and they talked about why she was there, and how Mab was helping her, and it had clearly been going on for a while.
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u/Adiin-Red 1h ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if Harry in the time travel book is the one who catches her in Arctis Tor doing something and puts her in the prison.
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u/texanhick20 7h ago
Lea was already incarcerated in Arctis Tor. She wasn't a free agent that could command the Fetches.