Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

QfB: https://old.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/comments/1oxvu1n/rnt_who_are_the_masterminds_behind_biancas_party/
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Episode Art by Nick Strom; you can find his work here: https://displate.com/artist/fadelias/dresden-files
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Creators and Guests

Host
Adam Ruzzo
Adam has been producing and hosting podcasts for over 20 years. Such podcasts include Tales of Heroes, Tales of Tyria, and Tales of Citizens. Spread throughout this is various video and streaming projects on his youtube channel. The most recent production is Recorded Neutral Territory, which examines the Dresden Files book series in a chapter-by-chapter re-read.
Host
Brian O'Reily
"Brian has been reading fantasy for nearly thirty years, from T.H. White to Steve Erikson. As a tutor, he professionally talks about nerd stuff, though he hopes Recorded Neutral Territory is more interesting than most of it."

What is Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast?

Recorded Neutral Territory is a chapter-by-chapter re-read podcast for The Dresden Files book series. Each episode, we one to four chapters with a deep dive on the writing, characters, and worldbuilding within this fantastic series. These episodes contain spoilers for all DF related material released at the time of recording.

New episodes drop on Fridays (~3 per month).

Adam (00:08)
Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to recorded neutral territory, where the spoilers go all the way through battleground, for a few more weeks anyway. I'm Adam Ruzzo, and with me, as always, is a librarian having a eureka moment, it's Brian O'Reilly.

Brian (00:24)
I think I've cracked what happened in Chicago. It was a war between Frankenstein and the Wolfman and there were bats everywhere.

Adam (00:34)
But how does the mummy fit into this?

Brian (00:37)
Gah! I've gotta go back to the drawing board.

Adam (00:39)
All right, while you take care of that, we're going to jump into our 12 months predictions. We are essentially about a month away as we release this episode from the release of 12 months. so we wanted to get some things down now and try and call our shot, so to speak. We're gonna start by talking about the overall plot arc of the book. My guess and...

Correct me if you think this is a bad one, but I think we're gonna see roughly 12 stories in this. And I also think there is going to be or maybe more than one, fairly strong thread that leads to a definitive conclusion in the November, December stories, quote unquote. It's gonna be a lot of time skipping, but I think there is going to be an important thread that runs through those.

Is that kind of the impression you got from the name and from what you've been hearing?

Brian (01:35)
Yeah, I'll juxtapose what I think we know versus what I think I would like to see. So what I think we know is that the book takes place over the course of an entire year. So there will be some amount of time skips and yada yadaing of at least sections of time. And Harry is supposed to have a date with Lara during each of those months, which provides a convenient framing device for potential sort of

Adam (01:48)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (02:04)
zoom in story beats, you know, during that time period. What I would love to see, what I hope we're going to see, is effectively 12 short stories, almost like a side jobs kind of collection built around this 12 months theme. And I don't know if I can like predict that that's gonna happen or I can say that that's what Jim's intending, because of course we don't actually know if we're gonna get the wedding at the end. We don't know if we're actually gonna get all 12 of those dates even.

we just know that that's sort of the framing device for the book. So whether it feels more like one story with some time skips or if it feels like a bunch of highly interconnected short stories, I don't think that we can say at this point, but.

something along that continuum should be what the book looks like. And that's very, very different from every other main series Dresden book.

Adam (03:02)
Yeah, and it might not be 12 dates and maybe you don't see all of them. Some of them take place off screen. Maybe they're referenced by some other thing, but it seems like that might be the case. Mab says that they have to make regular appearances at the end of Battleground during Harry's period of mourning. We don't know exactly what that means, but it could mean something like one appearance every month to show that their connection is still strong and that this betrothal is still on. So.

As far as the arc of the plot here, we are definitely going to get some kind of time jumping. We're probably going to get smaller stories that wind up tying themselves together into one bigger story later. After all, that's basically every Dresden Files book in the early days anyway, is hey.

Brian (03:47)
Right.

Adam (03:49)
these two different stories are somehow connected. So we'll probably see something like that in this, but let's talk about sort of the general arc of the book, beginning, middle, and end. I think we can expect the beginning of this book to be similar to the beginning of, but maybe not quite as bad as the beginning of,

summer night where Harry is essentially despondent at what happened to Susan,

basically my argument is not that he's less sad about Murphy.

but that he's better able to handle it now.

Brian (04:25)
Yeah, that's exactly where I was gonna go from where you were leaning us there, Adam. I think that the big difference is going to be that Harry's a lot more mature, he has a lot more life experience, his habits are just healthier. Harry is a person who is just better now at handling difficult things. And whereas in summer night, the situation was debilitating for him, something that he couldn't cope with, he is going to cope with this situation a lot better, but...

it is going to be even more traumatic for him in the sense that he literally saw her die. Now, that's something that we've kind of already seen in Changes. And look, I think we can just spoil this for the listeners. We've both read chapter one, which is out on Jim's website. And I think that's something that we're going to see that's similar to Harry as a living being after Changes is

Adam (05:12)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (05:20)
a lot of training. We're already kind of seeing Harry hit the gym in the spoiler chapter that was released and that seems to be something that Harry uses to deal with and that Jim likes using to deal with Harry having difficult emotions but dealing with them in a healthy way. Structured self-improving work I think is going to be a part of Harry coping with the fallout from battlegrounds and that

inward focus is going to give us a lot of time to examine exactly how much this is hurting him.

Adam (05:56)
Yeah, absolutely. And it's a very interesting parallel. As you said, we've read the first chapter that was released in it, I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say, Will is there as a friend helping Harry deal with his grief. And who was there in summer night helping Harry deal with his grief in chapter one? It was Will. Dude's a great friend. He's there for you when you need him.

Brian (06:20)
Yeah.

Adam (06:24)
and Harry absolutely needs him after what's been happening to him in Battleground. So I'm glad to see that he's there. Do you think Will is what snaps him out of his despondence? Because I don't think the entire book is gonna be Harry grieving. I think he's going to have to snap out of it at some point, probably in the first third of the book. What does it?

Brian (06:45)
Yeah, I think that insofar as the book follows sort of a three act Will is not going to be what snaps Harriett out of his funk.

And what we mean here when we're talking about this is not that Harry's gonna stop grieving Murphy after four months or whatever But that Harry is going to start looking outward after a certain point in the book And I think Will is going to be the platform that allows him to do that But the thing that's gonna force him to do that is going to be someone else who is in trouble and needs his help and he has to look outwards towards

There's a lot of potential candidates for that, from the Carpenter family, to one of the members of the Order of the Bean, even people like Lara, who could not just need him to go on a date, but need him to do a mission of some kind with her.

Adam (07:42)
Yeah, not only that,

remember that the law takes place after battleground, during 12 months, theoretically, right? So maybe that is one of the things that helps snap him out of it, and it's just referred to during 12 months.

Brian (08:00)
Sure, could totally see that, that's gonna be difficult for Jim to do, but I think at this point he's a good enough writer to manage it, to sort without going into explaining the law, like without recapitulating the law in too much detail during the book.

Adam (08:17)
Like you said,

he's gonna yada, yada, yada the, and then, you know, for the rest of February, I was blah, blah, blah. And then on March 12th, this happened. And then go into the story that takes place in March. At some point, he's gonna say, and then later in February, I finally took a case and it was to deal with some bozo that was harassing a woman about, you know, rent or whatever. And then, you know, like you said, just very quickly,

give an overview of the law in as short a time period as possible to mention like, and that snapped me out of my funk. And then I took another case and then another, and then on this date.

Brian (08:57)
Or perhaps

that that introduced me, that those events introduced me to someone who, was at my door again now.

Adam (09:07)
Yeah,

exactly, that could work perfectly to get one of those characters back again, like Max. All right, that's what we think might happen in the beginning of the book. What about in the middle of the book? Do you have any idea for like, once he's sort of out of his despondence, what is like the bigger thing happening around the middle of the book?

Brian (09:28)
So I think there's going to be, in 12 months, some overarching problem that Harry has to deal with that's going to unify the stories. And there's a bunch of sources that could come from, right? That could be the US.

Adam (09:42)
And we're gonna speculate on about a whole bunch

of them in a little bit.

Brian (09:45)
Right, but just to kind of give like a broad strokes that could be the government involvement, the librarians involvement in Chicago after battleground. It could be some situation involving the winter or white court. It could be the Justine situation with her being, infected and being pregnant with Thomas's child. It could be Thomas, in demon reach or something to do with demon reach. It could be any of those things.

Adam (10:04)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (10:14)
But the middle of the book is going to be Harry starting to treat that threat as the case he's working on. It's just gonna feel different from his other cases. And we might see, and I'm curious because we've had some hints that something like this is gonna happen to him.

we might see that Harry's going to get some help with that case from a character that we're at least seeing in a new configuration, a new sidekick, a new apprentice, a new someone who's gonna work with Harry on this problem. And if it is Harry's apprentice, I'm gonna hold off commentary on that for a couple seconds, but I could also see it being Fitz.

the character we met in Ghost Story, who I think is going to be a bigger part of the story

Adam (11:05)
Yeah, I could definitely see Fitz showing back up, having, remembered, hey, this guy everybody's talking about that just saved Chicago, I kinda helped his ghost find its way back to its body, and now I need something. Maybe I can call in this favor and get this guy to help me. Like, that might bring Fitz to Harry's door, and that might be the thing that gets him out to help.

You know, I owe this kid, he helped me save the day in Ghost Story or unlike a side jobs or a briefcases, I think everything that's happening this year, not everything, but a large chunk of the stories are going to be tied together in one or two threads that maybe come together at the end, like we've seen happen before. about the end of this story? I guess the real big question here is,

does the wedding actually happen?

Brian (11:59)
You know, I've struggled with this question a lot because we're going to talk about this. I really like Lara as a character. I think that she's exceptionally well written in ways that are very subtle.

and I would really enjoy getting some books where she and Harry are a power couple. I really think that would be extremely cool. So that part of me wants to say that the wedding will happen. I don't think Dresden's gonna end up with Lara though, and I don't think that he's gonna get divorced. So if the wedding happens, I think that signs her death warrant.

Adam (12:41)
I think it's possible that the wedding happens, but they become a political couple, right? They work together occasionally and they work together really well. We've seen that in the past, specifically in White Night. And I think that it's entirely possible for her to hang around, but Harry never to fully be able to trust her. And so he can never really embrace her as a romantic partner, but he can embrace her as a secular slash business slash.

political ally when needed. He's already done that several times in the series. This is just a slightly more formal version of that relationship. And we already know that I think Lara isn't necessarily the monogamous type. So I think she'd be perfectly fine having Harry, as long as he kept it discrete so as not to mess up reputations and all that, if he actually found love somewhere else.

Brian (13:26)
No.

Adam (13:37)
Maybe that does become a plot point later when he doesn't wanna keep it secret again, but I think initially that would be something that she would be fine with. I got what I wanted. My court has a powerful ally now, and I got this guy who's just technically my husband that I can call on for help, and he's getting really fricking strong recently. So I think that is, I think the wedding is gonna happen. I don't think she's gonna die.

We'll get more about what we think is gonna happen with Laura later, but I think the wedding is gonna happen, and I think there will be drama around it, but I think it's gonna happen, and I think it is the big power-up that Harry gets here,

Brian (14:14)
I think we should split this into two questions then, because we're gonna get into why the wedding might not happen or who might make the wedding might not happen a little bit later. But okay, let's say the wedding does happen. Do they ever or in any meaningful sense consummate the relationship?

Adam (14:30)
⁓ yeah,

that is a really interesting question. We know that winter has a specific way of consummating new positions and everybody gets to see so that everybody knows for a fact that it is official, right? Does that carry over into a winter night wedding? I'm gonna say probably not. I'm gonna say that there may be

some necessity for at the very least subterfuge where they pretend to consummate and do the deed, but it doesn't require the kind of overarching thing. The marriage itself is probably the important political thing and that officially makes it important. That's how I'm framing it.

Brian (15:16)
I think I agree and I think that it's very possible that they won't consummate the relationship and Lara won't even be that mad about it because she might not be able to stop herself from eating Dresden if she fed on Dresden. ⁓

Adam (15:36)
Yeah, and we know he's

still protected by Murphy, right? Exactly, yeah. So it certainly could happen if they wanted to, if they, like if it was super important and Dresden could be convinced somehow that it was necessary. They could find a way to do it, just have, I don't know, Dresden make out with some random floozy for a while and does that, is that enough or does he have to actually go and have sex with someone?

Brian (15:40)
Yeah, as Ryan said in the chat, yeah.

Adam (16:03)
That's not Murphy that he doesn't love in order to break that. I don't know that we've fully explored that. We know that Justine and Thomas have figured that part out, but I don't know that it was super explicit, all the details of how that works. I'm certainly interested to see how it plays out in the wedding episode.

Brian (16:20)
Yeah, and to be clear, I think that that would only be something that would happen if Lara demanded that it happened. And like I said, I don't necessarily think that that's something she's going to feel like she should, you know, ask for.

Adam (16:33)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. So

let's go back then and talk about more specific stuff. So we're gonna try to do this by individual group or person. We've kind of organized them that way and say, okay, with regards to this group or this person, if they're in the book, how are they in the book? What happens with regards to them? So it's important to understand that the predictions we're about to make, we're not.

predicting that these things will definitely happen. What we're predicting is if this group is in the book, this is how they're in the book. We think a lot of these groups probably won't be in the book, but it's fun to speculate on the what if they are. So let's start with the paranet slash better future society slash the castle. Now we did get some good responses from plot predictions on the Reddit. Thank you to templar9999 for throwing this one in there. They believe quote,

we will see the beginning of an open recognition of the paranormal within society, centered around the paranet, not just internet forums, but in-person meetings and community outreach will become widespread." Unquote. Now, I'm gonna give them the benefit of doubt and assume that they mean just inside Chicago. It's possible they meant more in the world in general, but I think it's a really solid bet that that happens in Chicago for sure. If I remember correctly, Brian, didn't...

something in battleground and in the law was kind of implied that the Battle of Chicago made believers out of a lot of Chicagoans, but that they couldn't convince the people outside of Chicago that this stuff is real.

Brian (18:12)
little bit... ⁓

Adam (18:12)
The heebie jeebies come to mind from the law. If you

guys haven't read the law, it's probably worth reading before 12 months.

Brian (18:19)
Definitely worth reading before 12 months. And I'm definitely going to be rereading it before 12 months in the next month. That one, Peace Talks and Battlegrounds are like on the firm to-do list. I think that Templar9999 ⁓ is getting a little bit ahead of his skis.

Adam (18:22)
Hmm.

Yeah, that's gonna be my reading list as well.

Brian (18:39)
Because open recognition of the paranormal in society? No. I don't think the majority of Chicago is going to believe that monsters are

What I think is going to happen is that a larger number of people, a critical mass of people, are going to believe that the paranormal is real in a way that allows somebody like Harry Dresden to go around calling himself a wizard and not be a phone book punchline, but be a more controversial figure.

Adam (18:57)
Mm-hmm.

Chicago's I think gonna split into the Rudolph likes that are like bury their head in the sand types and just accept the HBGB, heebie jeebies answer that the government gives that we learn about in the law. And then we're gonna have those that like don't stick their head in the sand.

Brian (19:17)
Yes.

Adam (19:32)
that actually believe what's going on. And those people are gonna need like to group together because they're gonna feel left out of society if they don't talk to other people who understand the way that they do.

Brian (19:34)
Let's...

Let's split that out a little bit more though, because it's not two groups. It's... But what I mean is there are sort of four camps, and one of them is the Rudolph camp.

Adam (19:48)
no, it's definitely gonna be more than that, yeah.

Brian (19:54)
And one of them is the, hey, I think monsters are real camp, which is I think gonna be a big chunk of people. There's a step further than that, which is the I saw Harry Dresden do magic That camp that, no, no, forget monsters are real, monsters are real, wizards are real, holy crap, I got a Rolodex. People who are now in the sort of, you could see them at max category almost.

Adam (20:18)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (20:19)
That's gonna be one sort of small group of the order of the bean folks. Then there's gonna be this larger group of people who I think monsters are real. Then there will be people who don't right? Like politics in America right now, the single party that gets the most votes in most elections is I didn't show up to vote. So that's gonna be the biggest group. Supernatural, no opinion, I got bills to pay.

Adam (20:47)
Right,

as long as there aren't any more battles of Chicago, these people are happy to ignore it.

Brian (20:52)
Right, was, you know, 9-11 happened and I gotta go to work tomorrow. And then there's going to be a hardcore percentage of people, like you're saying, a significant amount of people who are like actively like, you know, trying to stamp out what they see as this sort of, you know, occult. ⁓

growth in Chicago, that Rudolph group who are like, no, it was terrorists, you people are insane, we have to shut down your clubs kind of people. That backlash is going to exist too.

Adam (21:21)
Yeah, yeah, actually that, ooh, that could be, because

every time a believer says something, the non-believers feel that guilt for not believing. Ooh, yeah, there definitely would be a backlash from the quote unquote secular and the Rudolph and the more toxic version of that. There could also be a version of the believer that gets worse.

Like we saw in The Warrior, where you have someone that does believe, but they take it to another level they wanted to steal the sword from Harry in order to use it against evil. Or in this case, in the Battle of Chicago, somebody that sees all supernatural entities as enemies.

Even though there are widespread stories about many of them defending Chicago, they're going to choose to disbelieve those.

Brian (22:12)
Right, a 1968 Japanese Godzilla movie called Destroy All Monsters. And that is going to be the political platform of at least a certain proportion of the believers in Chicago. Wizard, vampire, troll, hobgoblin, I don't care, to the stake with you. Let's bring back the Inquisition.

Adam (22:18)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's the nightmare that's

basically been postulated throughout the entire series as to why the White Council and all of the different types of the supernatural community never want to bring the mortals, the humans, in to the supernatural world and let them know about it, because that's the nuclear option. That's the, we're gonna stamp out everything that's not normal human and...

So we may see some of that start to revert its ugly head in here, but okay.

Brian (23:01)
but

let's put a pin in the pitchforks and fire discussion for a second because we're gonna come right back to that in our next point. We've made a couple predictions with regards to the Paranet, the brighter future society, the castle in Chicago.

Adam (23:05)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And what we're gonna do with

these, by the way, people, we are assigning a bet value to each of them. The more specific we can be, the more points we'll get if we're right. But if you're wrong, you lose two points. So we're gonna see how that works out. But for right now, we're gonna sort of let that be the stage upon which we make these predictions. So Brian, why don't you start us with.

with what your prediction is gonna be to do with the paranet slash better future society slash the castle.

Brian (23:47)
Sure, so this is a little bit of a anti-prediction. This is a little bit different than many of our other ones, but something that's always struck me is that in White Knight, and I really love Elaine's character, we're gonna have a long conversation about Elaine's character at some point in the near future, but Elaine is sort of given a part of the mantle as...

person running the power net, person who the lesser talents can actually go to and expect help from. Similar to Harry, but without any of the White Council and later Winter Court responsibilities that Harry has. So presumably even more time to engage with these people and try to help them.

Adam (24:28)
Right, as

far as we know, she's basically been the Harry of the West Coast, like the Los Angeles area, I think that's where she was living, right? So she's had run-ins with Carlos over there, if I remember correctly, and he purposefully avoided finding her when she was on a list, or I'm confusing her with Molly. Okay, nevermind. And he had purposefully, yeah, he let her throw the test and avoided ratting her out because...

Brian (24:36)
Yes.

Nope, you're right. Yeah, he let her throw the test, basically.

Adam (24:55)
what she was doing appeared to be on the level and she seemed like a good person and not a warlock and he didn't want to see her get her head chopped off. So if she's been doing all the same kind of things that Harry's been doing and she was there when the Paranet was formed, it was formed out of the group that she was helping, the Ordolebes in White Knight, then it stands to reason that she probably is like at the very least like a regional watch commander or whatever the equivalent is in her area of the world. if she is conspicuously absent,

from this book where the paranet appears to be likely featured pretty heavily, what do you think that means, Brian?

Brian (25:31)
Well, my prediction is that she will be conspicuously absent because Elaine's Kumori.

Adam (25:38)
And what's Komori doing

during this book?

Brian (25:40)
Well,

we're gonna lay out that whole theory because I think it's really complicated because we're not gonna do it today. But we're eventually gonna lay out that whole theory, which is very complicated because I think there's a very good reason to believe that after Deadbeat, Kumori, Elaine, is no longer working with Cowl or is at least attempting not to. And go mine Elaine's dialogue in White Night if you want to see why I think that is. She seems like she's absolutely

against working for anyone like that again. But I do think that it's the kind of thing that Elaine can't actually escape from. She's gonna have something of a tragic arc in the series and it's going to keep her from associating with Harry and very specifically the Winter Court because ultimately the person who is most aligned against Cowl is Mab.

So Elaine wants no part of Chicago at this point.

Adam (26:41)
All right, so

my called shot for the Paranet is that this organization is going to grow and incorporate many sort of normal humans into it who are now aware of the supernatural via the Battle for Chicago. So they're gonna have a lot more volunteers sort of helping spread word about things and getting more information out there. Maybe they're compiling their own version of supernatural Wikipedia for the people of the Paranet to be able to add to and learn from and like be aware of this.

you know, to avoid getting caught by at night or whatever. And I think Harry is gonna be less of a leader because Jim's got other things for him to do than just to run an organization and he's probably not very good at that anyway, but he will be a figurehead. He will need to come maybe resolve disputes or encourage something, maybe prevent a fracture of the organization at the behest of the people.

running the organization day to day, the ones that are actually in charge of it, and I think you predicted it's gonna be Will and Georgia, and I think that's probably a pretty strong option. So I think that that's gonna grow and that Harry is not gonna be running it, but he will be called in to help deal with the dispute as he has a lot of reputation and gravitas within that community so he can help try to point them in the right direction.

Brian (28:04)
and you can correct me if I'm misstating your prediction here.

But I think that a good model for what this is going to look like or feel like is like Harry is sort of the figurehead of a movement like, ⁓ I'm gonna name two political movements, but I don't think this is gonna be political, of like a Black Lives Matter or like a Tea Party kind of movement where it's not like most people are a part of it. Or if you wanna get historical, like the Great Awaking in American history, the religious movement of

of different spiritual, you know, churches and new religion, you know, variants proliferating, he is going to sort of have that status and this is going to be a growing dynamic movement that has goals in sort of a structural way.

Adam (28:59)
Yeah,

it's always had the goals of like, make people aware of dangers and this and that. And that became much more specific during Ghost Story, right? When the Fomor started taking people and you had that meeting with Murphy and like, well, we just lost contact with, what was it, Spokane or something over in Washington. They lost contact with the entire chapter or something. Like that was a time when the entire organization sort of went through a sort of militant

under siege period. And so now they're gonna be regrowing and organizing from that period. So I think you're right. They're gonna be more specific goals beyond, ⁓ just share information and help, you know, hedge witches and wizards, build these patchwork wards to help each other avoid being supernatural prey. It's like, yeah, but not only that, let's put things into place so that nobody is supernatural prey. Like it might get more ambitious.

Brian (29:53)
Right.

Adam (29:55)
let's move on. Man, Jim teased it really, really well at the very end of Battleground, so it seems very likely that the librarians of Congress will show up, the so-called Men in Black. Now, will it look like the movie with Will Smith? Probably not, but TM8041 thinks...

Librarians and Agent Tilly from the FBI will show up at the castle to question Dresden. Threats will be made. There will be a massive snark off and eventually they will make a tentative peace. Meanwhile, 2427543, got Suggests that Harry and the librarians could become allies. Quote, Harry's way less secretive about the supernatural than, well, anyone else.

He'd have gone on TV and explained everything already if not for the massive shit storm it would cause." Unquote. Now, which of those two do you think either of those is likely?

Brian (30:51)
So I essentially think that 24, 27, 54, 3's heading in the right direction But I don't think it's going to be, Harry is going to become the best friend of the government agency, the Library of Congress.

Adam (31:09)
he does seem

to have a problem with

Brian (31:12)
Yes, so I think it's more likely that the Library of Congress is going to be a very bureaucratic almost research feeling organization where you they in general don't try to become friends with the wizards or vampires because that's really not their job and they're mostly trying to

As we were saying, you know, the pitchforks and, you know, fires thing, the library's job is fundamentally to keep that from happening. The library is there to stop supernatural panic from gripping the nation. That's really their job.

Adam (31:48)
Yeah, that would be

interesting if maybe an early Library of Congress person or maybe just an early politician in the United States' history, read the whole deal with, we don't bring humans in because it would spark a giant war that would be devastating to both normal humans and to the supernatural community. And so that became the credo of the library was just...

Keep it all secret to avoid that at all costs.

Brian (32:17)
Yeah,

and you don't have to say a early figure in US history, Ben Franklin. We're talking about Ben Franklin. so I think that that is their job. So they're not going to become friends with Harry because their job is not to acknowledge fundamentally the supernatural exists. It's to steal the tape of the Lou Guru, not to go, you know, put a Lou Guru in a petting zoo. But I think there will be a likable librarian, maybe literally Agent Tilly.

who's gonna show up and is going to form a working relationship with Harry that I can only describe mentally for me. My father is a project manager now at an engineering company that works with a couple of government agencies on transportation projects. It's gonna be like the relationship my father has with the people at those agencies where...

They have a lot of phone calls where they discuss ⁓ how we're just gonna not get in each other's way. Like, hey, there might be somebody inspecting the site this week. You should make sure everything looks really good. know, the kind of helping each other.

out helping each other keep things on schedule and going in the right direction to avoid the kind of incidents that could cause antagonism, think Harry's gonna forge a strong working relationship with a librarian where they're on the same page about keeping the tensions down, not just in a hiding information way, but in an active political participant way. Adam, do you think...

that the librarians or the library are going to form any kind of relationship with Harry.

Adam (33:51)
think it is, I think I'm gonna lean more in the other direction. I'm gonna say if they do, it will not be a more likable character with a good working relationship. I think it will be a tolerance of each other. They're going to have things that they need from the other that they will deal with the other's situation in order to get them. Like at some point maybe during this book,

Harry has an issue with, the feds, the FBI or some other organization that is messing something up for him, for, don't know, somebody else that he knows, maybe a member of the bean or whatever. And it's unjust maybe because of all the crazy stuff that happened. And the feds thought that this guy, you know, walked out on his daughter when really he was fighting a battle to keep her safe or something like that, right? And the feds misunderstood the situation.

Brian (34:47)
Right.

Adam (34:48)
Harry will have someone to call and he's like, I really don't wanna owe these guys a favor, but they can make this go away as part of the government. That's how I see it kind of going. So.

Brian (35:00)
Well,

cause I could see the relationship kind of being one of three dynamics that we've already seen. One is the Morgan dynamic, which is basically we don't like each other, but we'll work together. Another is the Marcon dynamic where we can't help but respect each other, even though we're sort of frenemies. And then the third one is like the eldest gruff dynamic. And that's what I'm saying, that he's going to have somebody there who he's got that dynamic with.

Adam (35:15)
Mm-hmm.

⁓ Yeah. I see. Technically we

are at odds, but with a wink and a nudge, you know, we kind of both have the same goals secretly, even though officially we have different goals. Yeah, I could see that. So my official called shot though, mine is a little bit less ambitious than yours. I think I'm going to take a different tack than what TM8041 said, which is that the librarians will show up to question Harry. I think what's going to happen is...

They are going to show up as inconspicuously as possible and question people. And Harry is going to find out about this pair of people walking around investigating and asking a lot of questions. And he's maybe going to get the wrong idea or maybe the right idea and he is going to confront them. Bonus points if he does some kind of.

wizard shenanigans where he's sitting in their hotel room when they come back and saying, I hear you've been asking a lot of questions about me or something to that effect. That would be very cool.

Brian (36:24)
Right, Will doesn't

show up to work for several hours one day and tells Harry, yeah, I got pulled in for questioning, which is the first Harry hears about it. And then he goes and does some questioning of own. I do like that. So just to recapitulate the predictions here really quick, Adam and I both made level two bets on our prediction at the top there

Adam (36:33)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, exactly.

Brian (36:48)
The Paranet, The Brighter Future Society, The Castle. Adam's more general prediction about the Librarians is a two. I'm being a little more specific, so I'm going to call it a three for that level of specificity.

Adam (36:50)
Mm-hmm.

All right, let's

move on to the revenge on the Black Court. Now, we don't think this is personally gonna happen, but we did see a really great response from one of our threads, AnonJr Hope's quote, a letter arrives to Edinburgh, to Warden Carlos Ramirez, one Sir Harry Dresden, night of winter, cordially requests your company in the promised ass kicking retribution against the Black Court.

in memory of those we lost." Unquote. that is a really cool thing to have, to see play out that I do not think will happen in 12 months. I think there's too much rebuilding that Harry has to do for that to show up in this book. If it does, maybe it's way towards the end, but I don't think we'll see it. But Brian, suppose for the sake of argument that the black court does show up in some form in this book. How do you think that that will happen?

Brian (37:55)
the closest I think we could possibly get to the black court showing up would be Chandler escaping from Dracul's Oubliette pocket dimension and, ending up in Chicago telling Harry some, my God, this is what's going on. I found out this, Jesus Christ. I had to deal with this really horrible thing. I think that what's more likely is just that perhaps

through Lara on one of the dates, you know, because what are they going to talk about, gives Harry some backstory on Dracul. Because of course we know the white court was instrumental in wiping out the black court, so Harry and Lara have kind of a common

Adam (38:37)
Yep,

that makes sense. Now my prediction here is if we were to see a black court, like an actual black court instance in this book, it's going to be a new baby vamp that got made somewhere, similar to It's My Birthday too That's the short story, if you recall, where Thomas is doing a LARP for his friend, like, because he owes someone a favor, so he's helping do a in a mall, and then a black court.

shows up where she was excluded from this group and now she's coming to get revenge on them and Harry and Thomas have to defeat these black court vampires. I think we'll see something like that where it's like a, a big highfalutin, Mavra level black court, but like just an idiot that comes to Chicago thinking, it's a big disaster area. I can steal a bunch of people and kill them and nobody will notice. And Mavra or somebody tries to warn him like, don't go there, it has a defender.

you don't wanna do that. And this guy's like, I'm the strong vampire. I can do whatever I want. And it ends as one might expect with Harry just kicking its ass. So that's how I think it might show up. And that might be one of the things that sort of gets Harry back in the saddle. It's just like, really? Really? Somebody's, ⁓ you cannot leave you stupid vultures. You cannot leave the deadbeat. Like that kind of a situation is righteous.

Brian (39:52)
You assholes.

Adam (40:01)
rage at that sort of a situation, taking advantage of that, and then he'll just smite that vampire. So that's my shot there. Yeah, if that one does come true, I'll take three points for it. That's a very specific one. I originally had them set very low, because I didn't think the likelihood, but I also marked this one as a gimme. If nothing happens, actually that's all of them, right? If nothing happens with these, we're not losing points for them. We're only losing points if the black court does show up and doesn't fit into these molds.

Brian (40:11)
Yeah, I just I upgraded Adam's points for that because that is

Adam (40:30)
Why don't you talk to us about the Battle of Chicago aftermath? Because we're definitely going to see something with that.

Brian (40:30)
So the next.

Yeah, Tom C. Fitz wants to see some bean quests, people turning in their lima bean to Harry in request for aid. And I like is there any chance we don't see that? We have to see that, yeah. So we're going to see people turn in their bean, but my prediction is we will see people try to turn in the bean to get Harry to take scalps. They're gonna say,

Adam (40:49)
Yeah, he gave out hundreds of them, right?

Brian (41:03)
Dresden, you owe me, and what you owe me is Mab's head. You know, that kind of thing.

Adam (41:09)
Right, they

will have misattributed that ⁓ anger at all supernatural, right? They will not have, because you have to imagine, they didn't get a front row seat to the Mab battle. There was mist, there were copies, they were getting shelled by mortars. They don't really know what happened, but they heard about this evil winter queen that was on the battlefield. That must have been the bad guy, right?

Brian (41:33)
Right, or they're gonna ask him to go after some bad guy that is like, you know, like listen, or somebody who is, you know, a kind of a little bit too big for Harry to casually just go after somebody who's more likely to track him think Harry will wind up fulfilling those promises by essentially getting the real culprits.

Adam (41:39)
Hmm.

Brian (41:57)
in certain situations, know, actually taking out some leftover members of the FOMOR, and, you know, people like that. And that's how he's going to sort of square this misplaced anger against people who should be the allies of mortals.

Adam (42:12)
All

right, so that's a very specific prediction, so we're gonna give you a four for that. I also have a four for this. I think we're definitely gonna see some bean quests in particular. I bet Harry will be working on a missing persons case, because remember, his thing is about finding people. I think somebody's gonna come to him and say, you know, my sister, my cousin, my brother, whatever is missing. They don't appear to be among the dead. And it's going to be

Okay, then maybe they got taken by some supernatural baddie that's just an opportunist in the middle of this battle, right? And they're gonna go out and search and Harry's gonna try and find it. And you think you're going towards like a Malvora or maybe some black court vampire, a troll, something else we've dealt with before, right? No, turns out to be just a normal human monster that's taken someone.

kidnapped them off the street and locked them in their basement. Some kind of a serial killer or crazy guy, something like that, right? That is kind of where, that's just a, I know that's super specific, so it's unlikely to be right, think that would be a really fun head fake for Jim to deal with. It's like, it looks like we're going on this supernatural hunt for a missing person and there's a monster that's taken them. Ooh, but the monster is human. We really haven't done that much.

in this series before.

Brian (43:39)
Yeah, and I will also give you points on that just if it's somebody who didn't take part in the battle as far as we know. So if like the Ebes escaped, you know, the Earl King's, you know, ⁓ labyrinth realm.

Adam (43:49)
Yeah, that would be an interesting way to say,

hey, there's still one or two reds out there.

Brian (43:54)
Right. Or for example, if the Denarians, you know, did some shenanigans that we didn't yet know about. Anything like that, I feel like I'll give you the point on that one. If it's a mortal enemy or if it is some supernatural faction that we already know but that was not, as far as we know, participant in the battle.

Adam (44:01)
Mm-hmm.

Right, right, right.

Perfect, all right. we had a couple of predictions regarding Harry's tools. Baron Alexei predicts that Harry will enchant or craft a new magic item over the course of the whole year. So theoretically something that we haven't seen before. Meanwhile, ComcastHater1 predicts that instead of one new magic item, Harry's just gonna rebuild a better version of all of the things that he already has. So between those two, that's a tough call.

I personally think we wind up seeing him with at least some of his core tools by the end. He's gonna have his staff, his rod, his shield bracelet by the end of this book. That's my called shot. That's, mean, pretty generic, so I'm only giving myself a one for that. Brian, what do you think is going to be the evolution of Harry's tools in this one?

Brian (45:01)
I want to take this in another direction because I'm sure that Harry will give us something new in this book. It takes over the place over the course of 12 months and it would be shocking to me if we didn't get to see something new. In fact, we haven't even really seen what the castle can do in a main series book yet, so that's going to be part of it for sure. But I'm going to make, I think, a bold prediction Amorachius will be...

Adam (45:17)
Mmm.

Brian (45:25)
either actually used or someone will discuss taking it up in 12 months. And maybe not new long-term night thing, but maybe a night for a day thing.

Adam (45:33)
Okay.

Right.

Gotcha. That's pretty specific. I'm gonna give you a three. Yeah. If you predict who is gonna take it up, then I would make it a four. That might be a little too far down the-

Brian (45:46)
Yeah, well I think I know... I

mean, I'll throw it in. You're gonna have to me a five for this, but I'll say that it fits.

So Fitz is the character in Ghost Story that works with the Kinetomancer whose name is escaping me, it's something Greek, off the back of that gang. And the reason why I am so locked in on this is because...

A lot of this, I don't think Merlin is time traveling Harry, but a lot of the things that Harry does are evocative, things that Merlin did, and I think Fitz might be this series version of a kind of King Arthur character.

Adam (46:25)
Okay,

yeah, not to be confused with Ficks, different character. All right, now, we had a couple of people predict an abrupt Mirror Mirror Cliffhanger ending. Now, some things Jims has said in interviews suggest this is probably not gonna be the case, but John Glanser predicts, book will end with Harry getting ready for his wedding to Lara. He'll be in the bathroom in the church or wherever the ceremony's being held.

Brian (46:28)
No, different guy.

Adam (46:52)
or maybe in the waiting area, looking in a mirror and adjusting his tie when blammo, he gets yanked into the evil, hairy universe, unquote. And I saw that and I just had to put it in here, because that is such an awesome ending I don't know. I just thought it was a really cool idea and I saw a couple other people riffing on that idea of like, we know Mirror Mirror is next, and what if he winds up

going there at the end of this book as a cliffhanger. my answer to this one was a very generic, yeah, I think there's definitely gonna be a cliffhanger ending if the structure of the story is more episodic than normal, then it won't need a big climax in Denuman at the end. So you can afford a cliffhanger ending. We haven't really had a lot of those cliffhanger endings, changes being the biggest exception I can think of.

Brian (47:35)
I think you can give yourself a two on that one, Adam. That is like, you're not being specific on what it is, but I think that's a pretty bold prediction because that's not common in the Dresden Files. I want to say that I love, love, love, love. For me, Harry is at the altar with Lara. I think you might've actually suggested this to me a while ago, but he's at the altar and literally like goatee Harry rips him into a portal like from there. Like that to me is just the most...

Adam (48:00)
Yeah.

Brian (48:04)
dramatic possible way that it could occur.

Adam (48:05)
And I think I saw

another one that suggests that like, like in this situation, he's at the mirror in the bathroom adjusting his tie, and then he gets yanked into, and then it looks like he's skipped out on the wedding, and the politics, ⁓ no! And like when he gets back, he's gonna have to deal with the fact that everybody thinks he ran out, and now so Winter and White Court are not in an alliance, it's now a huge offense against the White Court, and Mab is pissed because,

Brian (48:11)
Bring back the belt

Adam (48:35)
he would have to explain himself. That would be an interesting way for it to go.

Brian (48:39)
or it could be the whole Evil Harry jumps into this universe to get married to Lara and then the beginning of Mirror Mirror is or the end of Mirror Mirror is Dresden appearing back at the altar to break up his own wedding which is that was I thought like that was my favorite sort of version of that.

Adam (48:56)
Yeah, those don't feel

like Jim's stories to me outside of like the side stories, right? Like something blue had some kind of shenanigans in it with weddings, but those don't feel like any of, like that's not the kind of story you get in the main Dresden Files stories.

Brian (48:59)
No. Yes.

So

in that respect, my prediction here is going to be lot more boring. I don't think we're gonna get a cliffhanger. I think we're going to get a shit I think we're gonna get that sort of very typical.

you know, man after they get married moment, feeling like the earth has completely shifted under your feet, not for the typical reasons, but Harry's going to feel like he is irrevocably been changed by what occurred. And we're gonna end on that maybe emotional cliffhanger to a certain extent, because it won't be resolved. But we're not gonna need dramatic event for the book to hinge on.

Adam (49:44)
Hmm.

Brian (49:56)
because it's going to be such a stark difference from Harry's perspective.

Adam (50:01)
Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's move on to some individuals and relationships. We're gonna start with the big Brian, what do you think is going to happen between Harry and Mab in this book?

Brian (50:14)
Okay, so I think we need to outline first that there's two possible interpretations of Mab's character that we can read from Peace Talks. One is that the way Mab was described to us in the early books was fundamentally wrong. And Adam and I have already talked about this at the end of Full Moon when we were discussing different

kinds of moralities in the series, the ethics of violence in the series. We said that you can interpret Mab in one of two ways. One is that she's just a total consequentialist, she's a calculator, and if the world is .01 % better if I torture this person to death, that's what I'm going to do. I have no restrictions on my behavior. I just do what needs to be done for whatever my goal is. And the other

that Mab is trying to create a world that not only lives to see her goal of turning back the outsiders in this cycle, but which also is the best possible version of that world. And that she actually goes to some great lengths to,

in kind of an emotional way, make people feel as good as they can about their survival by doing some things herself that are quite The option one version of Mab, the total consequentialist version of Mab, if that's who you think Mab is, if she's actually that much of a cold bitch, she is not actually crying in front of Harry in battlegrounds.

She is not actually as emotionally open to him as she seems in Battlegrounds when they're discussing the feeling of people dying under their command. These are a mask that she is putting on to relate to Dresden, to, as Ebenezer sort of implies in Battlegrounds, seduce him into feeling comfortable working with Or, flip side, Mab actually means everything she says to Dresden.

she's actually letting her guard down around him in a way. And whether it's because Dresden is changing Mab because he's a starborn and he's bringing more of the mortal back into her or because that's really who she is at her core, these feelings are real.

Adam (52:29)
Yeah, and I think that's an interesting parallel between her and Lara because we do know Lara has these feelings of like family. She cares about family. She wants to protect her family, but she's also willing to just throw lives away under certain circumstances for the greater good of her group, right? For her tribe, more or less. So we know that she's made similar calculations to Mab in terms of ruthlessness throughout her

hundredish years when she's basically been the top for her father. But when you surround yourself with other people who are that ruthless, you have to be that ruthless. You can't be anything else. And that's Mab when she's in the winter court all the time for hundreds of years. But here comes Harry.

entering the picture, telling her no because moral reason. And she is reminded of all the things that she never gets to see in a regular day among the she. Now we know she also goes out with Sarissa on the weekends like you're Mab's BFF, right? So she tries to remind herself what being human is like because

Brian (53:50)
what

she's fighting for.

Adam (53:51)
What she's

fighting for, exactly. So that she doesn't become that type one Mab that you're talking about. I think that suggests that she's trying to stay the type two Mab that you're talking about. The one that is doing this for a reason, because she cares. And I think Lara is the same way. And I think working with Harry, despite them just always seeming frustrated by him, allows them to be more human.

than when they're working with other ruthless people, you know?

Brian (54:22)
And just to be clear, we're not spinning this out of nothing. We'll talk to Lara about Lara later, but even Mother Winter says that Mab is too emotional. And at the time, Harry's like, Mab's too emotional? Holy shit, this one's really scary. But she's got a point because Mab ultimately can't deal with the mess and cold days because Maeve is her little girl, right? my prediction...

Adam (54:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, we're leading all this

up into your prediction for what Mab will do 12 months.

Brian (54:52)
So my prediction is that Mab is going to reveal to Harry the underlying, the actual reason why she's forging this alliance between Harry and Winter, between the White Court and Lara. What threat?

Mabb is preparing to counter, that Harry's going to actually learn why this is necessary in greater specifics that he knows right now, because Mabb doesn't need the white court to just be like generally on her side against the outsiders. They're part of the accords and they don't want reality to end. There's gotta be some specific purpose that she is shoring up alliances like this, because...

this needs to happen. And I think Adam, that could dovetail very nicely with your prediction.

Adam (55:46)
Yeah,

my prediction is that Mab will reveal that she has foreknowledge about her own death. She doesn't know exactly when, but she knows it's coming up soon. Maybe by the end of this cycle, right, the 666 year cycle, the star-born cycle, whatever you wanna call it. Maybe she has a prophecy or she had her own vision of it happening, but doesn't know exactly how or when. That's why.

She is so uncertain in that battle against the Titan and she tells Harry in Battleground, if I fall, you have to kill Molly. She's not ready because not just like, hey, this is gonna be a tough battle, but like, I know I'm gonna die soon. This could be it. So I think she's gonna reveal that specific piece of knowledge that she believes she is going to die soon and she has good reason to think so.

Brian (56:38)
I believe in Battleground, Mab says something like, and Chat, you can correct me ⁓ if I'm misstating this, but like the stars will fall from the sky before Mab breaks her word.

I think that's like actually going to happen. Mav is going to break her word. Maybe in the sense of she promised to protect the world from the outsiders and she's gonna die trying. And that's going to be Stars and Stones. That's gonna be that titled book of the bat. So.

You know, it might be that Mab is not sure exactly when it's going to happen, but she just reveals the nature of some kind of prophecy that states she will be dead at the end of one of these cycles, or specifically this one.

Adam (57:25)
Yeah, something that she's

been living with maybe for a long

Brian (57:28)
Empty night. Thank

Adam (57:30)
Now, this is a big one, Brian. The Murphy aftermath. What is going to happen with Harry in regards to Murphy?

Brian (57:39)
So, SNU45814 wants to see the after of Murphy's death, specifically the Clan Murphy aftermath. Mama Murphy saw their chemistry all the way back in Blood Rites.

you know Harry should at the very least have to deal with Mama Murphy's pain and the questions she and Murphy's estranged sister have. And I believe that Harry actually promised Mama Murphy that she would keep her daughter safe. not in this book, but in blood rights or something. So that could be thrown back in his face. Yeah, that could be a pretty ⁓ difficult thing to deal with.

Also, Jedi Cad predicts Harry goes to Murphy's funeral and being Harry, he apologizes to Murphy's mother for not protecting As I said, like he promised in the barbecue and blood rites. And Jedi Cad's prediction is that she lays down some wisdom and forgiveness, which is actually the trigger for Harry beginning to heal.

Adam (58:48)
that does seem like it would be a very cathartic way to begin Harry's healing process and sort of get him out of the despondent funk and get him back into the world is having some sort of forgiveness from Mama Murphy saying, I know it wasn't your fault. You obviously loved her. You tried to protect her as best you could.

My specific prediction here is that Harry's gonna continue to mope around for, I don't know, the first 25, 30 % of the first book until somebody, maybe Lara, kind of slaps some new sense into him, maybe literally, and reminds him that a lot of people need his help right now. You know, that is a huge part of his character on that string, and maybe Lara's the one that's need his help. I'll get to that when we talk about Lara.

Brian (59:34)
I think Molly is going to absolutely excoriate Harry by simply asking what Murphy would want him to be doing.

Adam (59:45)
Ooooo

Brian (59:47)
And that's gonna be the moment where he goes, fuck, I need to stop moping around.

Adam (59:50)
Yeah, let

Let's move on to the Zah Lord and his guard. Zadarian wonders if Toot Toot is gonna get another upgrade of some kind, and Solanimous predicts specifically, quote, Toot Toot gets a growth spurt and the Zah army is even bigger and better than before. Maybe some of Winter joining Harry's banner out of respect from the Chicago battle, unquote. That...

is an interesting prediction. I'm gonna steal that one actually. I think that's a great one. More specifically, I think Harry's gonna learn how to voluntarily bring up that banner and incorporate the guard into it, giving himself a sort of intellectus with the guard. Maybe he can communicate with Toot specifically, like telepathically. Maybe he can see through his eyes the way he did with Grimalkin. I don't think that's gonna work with everybody that's in his banner.

but I think it might work with Toot because they have that existing close working relationship.

Brian (1:00:50)
Yeah, and because he's Fae, and we know that Harry can do it with Grimalkin who is Fae, I think that we're gonna learn more about the nature of fairies in 12 months, and specifically, I'll plant my flag on this, I think Toot is...

Adam (1:00:54)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:01:06)
he's in the middle of the kind of process that turns things like dewdrop fairies and pixies into high And I don't think that this is something that a pixie can just do on their own. Jim has given some very interesting hints about this in various word of Jim's and there appears to be some kind of mortal involvement in the creation of any she. But I think Toot is going to become

⁓ I'll put it that way, in a way that is, if not like he's actually sort of there, it seems imminent and obvious to the reader.

Adam (1:01:46)
Yeah,

it's sort of been hinted at or you could guess at it up until this point, but I think you're absolutely right. I think it might become more obvious in this book. So that's a good one to go with. What about the new apprentice slash sidekick? I think Jim has dropped some hints.

that we are expecting Harry to pick up some new person that we haven't met before and have them as sort of a main sidekick character. So obviously Will isn't gonna tag along with him with everything in this book. It's gotta be someone new. Who do you think it's gonna be?

Brian (1:02:18)
Well, I think, Adam, that you and I have talked about in the future, Dresden getting a new apprentice as a version of this because Jim has spoken on that. And I think I agree with you about who sort of the clearest candidate for that is. And I think it'd be very narratively satisfying. We're not the only people in the fan base saying this. Yeah.

Adam (1:02:25)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, but I'll take that side. I think the Zoo Day warlock,

right? The kid in Zoo Day that Harry saves from, like he's actually accidentally summoning, like I think it was like a black dog or something from the fey when he got mad. And Harry just casually opens a way to the Never Never and it just jumps through without even realizing it. And then he closes it again and the kid is like stunned. He's like, nobody's been able to deal with that before.

I think we might see that kid. I think that's a pretty strong contender.

Brian (1:03:09)
Yeah, I think that's a great prediction and honestly if Harry gets an apprentice specifically, I mean I think it has to be that character frankly, but...

I will say that that's not the only kind of sidekick Harry could get. And if it's not an apprentice, I think Fitz will end up working with Harry in a more direct way as sort of the

young, mortal disciple of the experienced wizard, the Aragorn to his Gandalf of the Dresden Vial story.

Adam (1:03:38)
Hmm. Yeah, that's

entirely possible. Now we're getting into some really big ones here. Let's talk about Molly. Now, to get us started, Gdex86 gives us an absolutely wild prediction. I do not expect this, but I've gotta share it, because it's awesome. Quote, we discovered that Molly has been trying to hook Mouse up with appropriately aged foo dogs that...

Brian (1:03:45)
Yeah.

Adam (1:04:05)
because while he loves Harry and Maggie and the Carpenters, he does want something that's just his. There's this nice Alaskan Malamute that she's been helping him text with, and with a major dog show coming up in a rebuilt Chicago, they are going on a date." Now, that is great. I wish we had more wild speculation like that. A lot of people are making very careful predictions about, but like, just go wild, people. These are fun.

I don't think that's gonna happen, but Brian, what do you think is gonna happen with Molly in this book? Okay, okay, let's not

Brian (1:04:36)
No, wait a second, before we just move past that,

your wife is a dog trader, right? Is it possible that she snuck onto Reddit while you weren't looking? Just...

Adam (1:04:41)
She is, yes.

You

know I didn't think to question that, but now I think I might have to.

Brian (1:04:53)
And we can move past the dogtender prediction to something that is a little bit more grounded in the general tone of the series. So my prediction is that in this book, Harry is going to finally come to the realization in his own mind, in his own words to the reader, that Molly is his peer.

And this is kind of ironic because of course Molly was his apprentice, but now she's really his boss. So the fact that he'll be seeing her as a peer will be something that still doesn't fit the official nature of their relationship, but it will be an important evolution for him to see this person that, you know, was someone he trained and he helped.

Adam (1:05:19)
Yeah.

Brian (1:05:39)
who later through sort of a twist of fate got put into this really difficult, powerful position that technically he was working in her department to, no, no, no, no, no. I'm actually really comfortable having Molly as my quote boss because Molly is, you know, in many ways my equal. She has really grown. She is mature and she will demonstrate that to Harry in this book. And metaprediction,

That is gonna make the fandom less weird about the Harry, Molly shipping discourse, which is either if you think that this could even possibly happen, you're a bad person, to obviously this is gonna happen and there's nothing weird about it. Like, it would have been weird, and this is going to be something that just makes their relationship more normal in a way that makes that a less heated question.

Adam (1:06:14)
Hmm.

Exactly.

Now I'm going out there. have a strong prediction here. We see Lara kind of notice that Molly's got a torch for Harry in the end of Battleground. I think it's hinted that she kind of makes a ⁓ face.

when she realizes something, when Molly looks more frustrated and angry about the wedding result than she expects or something. And a lot of people sort of interpreted that as her kind of reading between the lines and going, ⁓ she's in love with Harry. And not saying it out loud, like Harry feels like he's missing something, that seems to be the undercurrent of what's being said or not said. So I think Laura, having recognized this, is going to offer to let Molly be with him.

not knowing anything about the Winter Lady mantle that we learned in cold case, right? She is just going to try and be a good person to Molly and like start a good working relationship being like, listen, I literally can't be exclusive or I'll kill him.

So, you if you want to jump in there, I'm not opposed to that. I think that conversation is going to happen in front of Harry, making him incredibly uncomfortable. And he's gonna be like, wait a minute, no. And Molly is gonna get all mad because she knows from cold case that she can not do that as the winter lady. I don't know. I think there's a lot of potential for fun drama there in sort of a comedic sense.

Brian (1:08:04)
And I hope it goes the way you're saying because the other thing that I could see happening here that I don't, I'm really not hoping is that Lara and Molly end up being kind of antagonistic towards each other over Harry. And I think I don't want to, that would be a very natural evolution for their characters. And I do think that that would feel very I just personally don't want to see that because I think we don't have enough.

Adam (1:08:19)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:08:33)
female characters who are just kind of... well, literally that are not either wildly above Harry or completely not on his level. So Molly and Lara are like sort of in terms of their supernaturalness equivalent to Harry and I just want them to, be normal people to each other.

Adam (1:08:35)
that are passing the Bechdel test.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, there could be

a period of that, right? Because it does look like...

Brian (1:08:59)
If it's reconciled, I'm not talking about that, I'm saying if it's, yeah.

Adam (1:09:01)
Exactly, exactly, but you're

right. Long-term antagonism, I agree with you, that would be unfortunate for the series as a whole, and for their characters

Brian (1:09:10)
But it could happen because Molly might not know that Lara doesn't know about the restrictions on the Winter Lady. And that could definitely be a trigger for it. Yes. Taunt.

Adam (1:09:20)
Right, and so she might take that as like a sort of offense

and then that will, when they reconcile, she'll explain it and that will be Harry learning about it and she'll explain what happened with Carlos and he'll go, ⁓ my God, that's what he thought, ⁓ no, I owe him an apology, right?

Brian (1:09:44)
And if that happens, the way, we both get four points. If that happens, we both get four points. Adam, speaking of Lara, obviously she's going to be a big focus of this book. I don't want to go into everything we think is going to happen with Lara, but ZenFox91 thinks Harry will soul gaze her. That's certainly really interesting.

Adam (1:09:46)
Yeah, We both made our way there.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and then I had to ask,

if he does, is it on purpose or by accident? And I think the answer, I don't think I put it here, but I think the answer that Zen Fox gave was, well, it's gotta be on purpose, because they're both way too, like, on guard with each other for it to be accidental.

Brian (1:10:21)
Savvy. Yeah.

and ZenFox 91 also said that they'll come to some financial arrangement where Lara, make sure that he's not wearing whatever horrid shoes he wears everywhere and that he buys a nice Armani suit.

Adam (1:10:35)
Right. Yeah, and this is where I got that idea,

by

Brian (1:10:38)
And you know what, I actually want to take that one step further. I actually think that she would help with the basic costs of maintaining the castle, both because she thinks that it's embarrassing if she doesn't, but also because she probably wants Harry to feel like she really is a member of the Brighter Future Society, which was...

Adam (1:10:57)
Hmm, that's true. I forgot the White Court

is technically a part of that, because it was sort of an alliance against the FOMO, or more or less. So yeah, that's a good point. And the White Court likes their good PR. You know, they want to appear very human. So being part of the alliance that reaches out and technically protects humans does seem like something that they might do, because for all they know, the way this is going is gonna be like, get all monsters. And she can go, no, we're the good ones. Look, we're-

We're doing all the good stuff. So having an extra bit of PR, like we're funding this thing, that could be very useful. Now, Figure It Out cast calls their shot, quote, at the end of 12 months will be the wedding of Harry and Laura. The officiant will ask if anyone objects to the union. And that's when Ebenezer will say something to the effect of, you better believe I do. And he rolls in with some white council hitters, including Listens to Wind and Carlos, That.

is a hell of a scene and he might show up there, but I don't think he rolls in with a bunch of white council hitters. think that particular piece feels wrong to me. I think if he does, A, he doesn't need anybody, B, if they all rolled in there like that, making it like a white council thing, that's a huge political problem. The senior council wouldn't do that. But he might be there as Ebenezer and like,

Brian (1:12:06)
He's the black staff, he doesn't need anybody.

Adam (1:12:24)
I'm not here on behalf of the council. I'm here on behalf of myself. Hoss, don't do it. You know, one last plead, you know, to try and get him out of this. Alternatively, I could see him showing up earlier, but we're gonna talk about Ebenezer later. I just wanted to throw that in there, because it was about Harry and Laura.

Brian (1:12:41)
Now, Magic Man Boobs points out, I've been doing a relisten to the book, and something has struck me this time through. Harry has always been drawn to Lara in a way that has nothing to do with her being white court.

I think much like how he knew Demonreach before he actually claimed it, his feelings for Lara have less to do with her power and more to do with his foresight coming in. Now, time out, like just pause for a second. I will say we did a whole episode where we discussed why Harry's parents were killed.

And I think that Harry remembers Demonreach because he's been there before he was perhaps even born there. So I disagree with that part of the But I also think that MMB here is hitting on something that is, you know, central to the plot of 12 Months, which is that Harry doesn't just like Lara because she's a sexy vampire

He likes Lara because she is really smart and practical and polite is the best way I can put it.

Adam (1:13:45)
Mm-hmm.

but they also

have just great chemistry. Like take out the sexy vampire aspect of it. Imagine she was just a wizard of the White Council with exactly the same attitude and the sort of same smarts, same sort of witty repartee that she has with him. They have the same adventures together. Take out the fact that she's a monster and I think they hit it off like crazy.

Brian (1:13:53)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's the Hannah Asher chemistry basically just over the course of multiple books. So whether it is precognizance or just, you know, Harry coming to that realization, I think he is going to come to realize that he genuinely has positive feelings towards Lara Wraith, the person distinct from Lara Wraith, the person who's got the demon inside her.

Adam (1:14:19)
Yeah!

Yeah.

Brian (1:14:43)
That actually leads me to my prediction, which is little less of a prediction of something different that's gonna happen with and a little more of a prediction about what Harry is going to tell us about Lara, which is that she's changed. She's a different than the one we meet in Blood Rides.

because the Lara we meet in Blood Rites is willing to kill her brother because it'll make her life easier, even though she likes him. And that Lara is the product of, like a century of, and we're not gonna go into this, horrifying abuse at the hands of her father, and a world of white court politics that is barely civilized.

Adam (1:15:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:15:31)
Since then, not only has Lara ended this cycle of degradation against her own person, and simultaneously pulled back the veneer of civilization, and actually become a little bit more humane in her treatment of mortals,

She has also experienced Harry, and very importantly Thomas, and very importantly her assistant Justine, being people with like firm moral principles in her immediate orbit, who have been constantly telling her there's a better way, and showing her that they are living out that way. Lara...

Adam (1:16:12)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:16:13)
in White is killing low-level practitioners because, or is allowing them to because she thinks that ultimately true consequentialism, that gives her a 2 % chance of living a little longer. I don't think Lara of Peace Talks is that person I think she's changed. I think they might even have a conversation about that.

and we'll find that while Lara still can be ruthless and still is very practical and still is willing to do what needs to be done to achieve her goals, her goals have shifted and she's now a person who's a little bit more like Thomas than her father.

Adam (1:16:58)
Yeah, I

think what you're describing kind of sounds like the trope of like the cold frigid, bitch character in a story that finds themselves wanting to be a better person the protagonist. It's kind of a stale sort of kind of sexist trope, but we might have something like that here that's more sincere, where she basically says to Harry,

Brian (1:17:24)
Yes. ⁓

Adam (1:17:26)
You know, I found myself seeing my decisions through your eyes and I don't like what I see. Something to that effect, right?

Brian (1:17:34)
Or, and here's the way I think that could be a lot less of that trope, I don't think it has to be about Harry because

Adam (1:17:40)
Right.

Brian (1:17:41)
We're gonna talk about Thomas later. It could literally be through my brother, who by the way, right, didn't like challenge her accession to the throne of the white court. He could go take out his father and try to become the new white king any day he wanted to, because Lara's technically not the white anything. She's just the power behind the throne. So Thomas, for Lara, has to be a constant revelation of this is literally a white court vampire. This is my who is...

Adam (1:17:46)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:18:09)
behaving with a completely different set of moral parameters to me, and I like him better than I like myself.

Adam (1:18:15)
Yeah,

yeah, that could be a huge part of it. So anyway, so that's, to recap, your prediction is that Lara has changed and we're going to see evidence of that specifically during her interactions with Harry in the next book. I think that's actually quite likely. Mine is really detailed and so, but I really like it. I came up with it and now I'm gonna be disappointed if it doesn't come true and it's gonna be, know, Jim, you didn't write the right book, because the one I had in my head was better. So.

Brian (1:18:33)
I love this.

Adam (1:18:44)
Lara's wedding to Winter is going to make her automatically more powerful and protected, right? We know that she is the power behind the throne, but it's kind of an open secret as I understand it by this point, like the other high level members know that she's puppeting her father and that gives her more and panache inside their organization, right? But when she...

lines up with Winter as an ally, she is gonna be just solidified as the White Queen for a long time to come. So any of the other families that didn't get wiped in White Night, anybody else that wanted to challenge her for control of the White Court is gonna have to do it before the end of this book, before that wedding,

Thus, I think we're gonna see white court assassins doing something they don't normally do, and that is overt action, right? We talk all the time about how the white court can depend upon the fact that their internal politics is all cat's paws and hidden knives and things like that. Well, what happens?

when they send overt assassins. My prediction is people try to kill Lara while she's on her dates with Harry. Harry literally has to save her and she's like, you don't like me. You could have gotten out of this whole thing if you didn't take that bullet for me, use your shield, whatever, right?

that could spark something important between them as well. So I think he saves her life during one of these attempts. Together they investigate and confront whoever's behind it. That's my very detailed prediction for one of the larger plot threads that happens over the course of this book, that happens over the course of months, where the first one and then they don't get any leads, but then the second one and they can tie two things together, but then that turns out to be nothing. And then the third attempt, oh, now we finally have a cell phone that we can use to trace back to whatever, right?

Brian (1:20:47)
And for various reasons, Adam, I'm not gonna give you points if it's either Ebenezer trying to kill her, which... But that could happen.

Adam (1:20:54)
Agreed, that's not what I'm talking I'm talking about white court politics. That could

happen too.

Brian (1:20:59)
But also could be, and I won't give you points for this either, the Svartalfs, right, if they have suspicions, right? But I will give you points if it is some other supernatural group that, for political reasons, doesn't want to see Lara become ensconced in the protection of the Winter Court.

Adam (1:21:05)
Yeah.

Okay, so not revenge,

but if it's a political angle, then I'll get credit for it. Okay, that's fair. All right, moving on to another member of the Wraith family. Thomas is stuck inside Demonreach as of the end of Battleground. Do you think he's going to come out of the island?

Brian (1:21:23)
Exactly.

I don't think Thomas is going to come out of the island before Lara and Harry's wedding. I think that that would simultaneously make things too complicated and too easy.

Adam (1:21:50)
Plus there's a really good

joke when he wakes up and you get to say, brother-in-law.

Brian (1:21:57)
Yes.

Now, think that maybe at the very end of the book, we'll get an epilogue of him getting out of the island or something, but I don't think it'll happen during the book. I do think that one of Harry and Lara's dates, and I kind of am putting mental quotes around that word, is going to be going to the island.

As if they're visiting Thomas when he's like in the hospital with a And they're going to, maybe he's not going to take her down into demon breach, but maybe he says, you know, I'm going to go check on him. You know, I'll tell you how he's doing. Right.

Adam (1:22:33)
or maybe he brings the crystal up to the surface

or something and they talk to him just in case he can hear them the way that people do to coma patients,

Brian (1:22:43)
Right, or maybe he does bring her down the stairs. mean, you know, what is she gonna do? They're gonna be like firm allies in a month or something, so maybe he will do that. I don't think so, but maybe. But I think that's gonna be one of their dates. Adam, how about you? What do you think is gonna happen with Thomas? he's gonna jump into this story?

Adam (1:22:57)
I'm going the other way with this. I think

getting Thomas out of demon reach is going to be a functional and important part of this book. I think they're going to resolve the situation somehow, but it will be costly. And I think, here's my called shot. Harry's gonna get Leah to help him put the hunger to sleep. We've seen that she can do it with Red Court half vampires, specifically Susan and Martin in death masks.

and Harry's astonished at that. And then that whole thing is dropped. you could cure Thomas, at least temporarily, of his hunger. It won't try to kill him. So, if it works the same way. So maybe she can use that to put his hunger to sleep so his hunger isn't like devouring his body to try to repair his body, and instead, maybe they can use normal human medicine to fix up his body, then wake his hunger back up with a body that

Brian (1:23:39)
if it works the same way.

Adam (1:23:56)
isn't devastated by getting beaten bloody for two hours or whatever the Svardovs did to him. And then he can feed without killing somebody and he's, you know, eventually back to his old self. So that's kinda how I see it going.

Brian (1:24:10)
I think it would honestly be really, really interesting if Jim woke Thomas up in the middle of the book because I think Thomas's take on what's happening could be very sort of...

Like there's like a very dumb version of it, but there's also some really interesting and kind of deep and like very just psychologically interesting versions of it that I'd love to see. just, this book can't be as long as like it would need to be to do 12 novellas, right? So we've got to, yeah, but I do kind of hope that that happens. It's true.

Adam (1:24:41)
That's true. That's true.

Jim has been writing really long books, like Battle Talks. So I don't know, do we have a

page count on this? I mean, look, the other thing that I saw somebody suggest was that Lara reveals the Oblivion War to Harry because Thomas isn't around to help her. I don't think that's true. It would kind of defeat the purpose of the Oblivion War, like you don't.

first rule of oblivion war, you don't talk about oblivion war, not even to your potential husband. So I don't think that that, I think that's just a fun thing that Jim is gonna have on the side. I don't think we'll see that in the main books, but maybe that ties into the outsider somehow. If it does, that'll be really interesting.

Brian (1:25:24)
If

that happens, that'll happen in the next outsider's book. Not this one. Yeah.

Adam (1:25:29)
Agreed. Yeah.

Speaking of outsiders, Brian Justine has to have that baby some point during this book.

Brian (1:25:38)
True. Adam, do you think that Harry's gonna save the day on this one?

Adam (1:25:43)
Yeah, I'm thinking we learn anything about outsiders, it's how we perform an outsider exorcism. That could even be a way for try reconnect with Ebenezer, who seems to know something about fighting outsiders. Listen, I tracked one of them down, I bound it in a circle or whatever he does, know, he catches Justine somehow. Yeah, it's also pregnant with your grandson.

Brian (1:25:50)
Hmm.

It's pregnant with your grandson.

Adam (1:26:10)
help me get it out of her, that might be an interesting start to their reconciliation.

Brian (1:26:17)
Yeah, that would be pretty intense, frankly. That's some very Catholic horror vibes. I am gonna go in a different angle from the Exorcist, though. I'm gonna go more towards Rosemary's baby. I think Justine's baby is sort of like the literary equivalent of a Mordred figure. Like Nemesis thinks that it's making the Antichrist.

Adam (1:26:24)
Mm-hmm

Brian (1:26:43)
And don't think that that's because the baby is an anti-Starborn kind of, no, I literally don't think that that's possible. We will talk more about Starborn in the future. I don't think that that's But I think that it's probably very rare that someone who is infected reproduces with a powerful supernatural entity.

And I think that the fact that Nemesis can influence the development of Thomas's child could lead to some capabilities, inclinations, features that are, shall we say, non-standard.

Adam (1:27:29)
Well, I'm happy to see if that does come true. We'll give you four points if it does.

Brian (1:27:35)
You know, we need creepy kids in the Dresden Files. Not just cute ones like Maggie. We need some black-eyed children running around.

Adam (1:27:39)
Okay,

well Molly had a goth phase does that count? Okay

Brian (1:27:44)
No.

Okay, so Adam, what about everyone's favorite frenemy, John Markov?

Adam (1:27:51)
man, it's gonna be a lot harder for him to be a frenemy with Dresden after the Denarion thing. Sir Marcon, Sir Baron, I don't think we'll see much of Marcon in this book, but I think if we do, it'll be kind of peripheral, and it'll kind of be reminiscent of old days, right? Marcon is gonna be buying up all kinds of real estate, because that's one of the things he does, sort of does a bunch of shady real estate deals.

bribes people in order to like get a big, big payday on rebuilding Chicago. And something involved in that intersects with Harry. Maybe it results in one of the Knights of the Bean getting kicked out of their house because of a bribe to the wrong, to a councilman or something like that. And Harry has to get involved and be like, no, I owe this guy a favor. You're not plowing over his house and they have to come to some understanding. Maybe he has to do something from our cone in order to make it happen, whatever.

I think that it'll be a peripheral thing that takes place sort of on the side. I don't think Mark Kohn's gonna be a major figure.

Brian (1:28:54)
I think this is one of the only ones where we like, actually I would be pretty surprised if Marcon isn't a major figure, because I think he's going to attempt to make himself the indispensable conduit between people like the librarians and the supernatural world. That Marcon is as a... ⁓

And literally, I don't think the librarians are even going to be able to tell that he's a Denarion. I think Thornden Namchul can make it completely impossible for the librarians to even get an inkling that he's supernatural. But I think he is going to avail himself to the government as a resource, making them feel like, he's doing this to keep the heat off of us because he's a gangster. But they're going to be shocked at how good his information is.

Adam (1:29:27)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:29:42)
and he is going to in turn be telling Mabb everything she needs to know about making sure that none of her people and none of the Accords people run afoul of the And this is going to put him into a contentious relationship with Harry, going to be trying to do basically the same thing, but for the good of everyone else and not for his personal political position.

Adam (1:30:03)
Yeah, I could see that. John Marcon trying to squeeze himself into positions to give himself more power, definitely on brand. So let's go to another big one here, Brian, Ebenezer. We talked about him a little bit here, but do you think that we're gonna see him in this book, and if so, when?

Brian (1:30:25)
I almost agreed with the earlier comment that we're gonna see him and he's gonna try to stop the wedding at the like during the wedding but and I think that that's honestly really plausible and a good prediction but I'm gonna be a little bit more lame than that and just say Ebenezer is gonna be too ashamed to talk to Harry for the first six of the 12 months that if we see him it will be in the second half of the book and the reason why I'm specifying this is because I think that ⁓

while he might not change his opinions on the cooling off period is going to literally make him ashamed of his behavior in a way that forces him to try different tactics to deal with it, so that we actually don't get that big wedding scene necessarily, or that we're trying to avoid that consciously because Ebenezer has decided I need to operate differently. What I was doing was wrong. ⁓

Adam (1:31:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I

could definitely see that. And we know that him and Harry, like after the Blackstaff revelation, they didn't talk for like two books or something, if I remember correctly. So they're good at just ignoring their interpersonal problems and just waiting it out. mean, Ebenezer is like 300 plus years old at this point, right? What is he, 350, I think?

Brian (1:31:32)
Mm-hmm.

He's approaching the end of his even wizard natural life.

Adam (1:31:47)
Yeah, so I

think when you're that old, you can put off that talk, know, like, I'll do it next year or something like that. Like the reconciliation doesn't feel as importantly necessary right away. to that end, I could definitely see them ignoring each other for the first six months or whatever. Maybe there's some inciting incident that brings them back together, like the Justine thing we were talking about. my...

My main point here, my prediction, Ebenezer absolutely comes in to try to talk some sense into Harry, to try to stop the wedding. And I've been trying to ask myself, does he go further than that? Does he try to like, kidnap Harry and say like, this is for your own good, boy.

Brian (1:32:21)
to try to stop the wedding, you mean? Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam (1:32:35)
You know, and like, I'll get him back and deprogram him in Edinburgh or something like that, or down at the farm probably, more likely. You don't think he's gonna bring him to Edinburgh if he's not a white council member anymore. So I've been thinking and I'm like, yeah, based on how much he hates the white court, I think it's possible he shows up with another trusted person, maybe Martha Liberty or somebody like that, and tries to like put Drez in to sleep.

Brian (1:32:36)
or kill Lara.

Yep.

Adam (1:33:02)
kidnap him, bring him down to the farm, contain him, and just talk sense into him where he can't walk away. Something like that. I think it's gonna start with him trying to talk sense into him. When that fails, that's when he's gonna try to trigger a trap.

Brian (1:33:10)
I think.

And I think that it's gonna be more subtle than that, but it could be the same kind of coercion. And frankly, I think you earn the points if it's something like this too, because I believe the accords, like the actual physical accords are going to make things like Ebenezer trying to assassinate Lara effectively something that he won't do because he's just too committed to his duty as a wizard.

Adam (1:33:44)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:33:46)
to do something that crazy.

Adam (1:33:47)
But as the Black Staff,

he has not only the authority, but the duty to track down someone who has the doom hanging over them and make sure they're on the straight and narrow. So he could easily get away with like kidnapping Harry to try to talk sense or deprogram him or something.

Brian (1:33:55)
right.

Well,

but see, I think that's part of the, and maybe we should actually do, well, I think we'll do this later. But I think that it's possible that even though Harry's been kicked out of the council, because he's the winter knight and therefore still a member of the Accords, that's not something that the White Council could do to him as they would to some other warlock.

Adam (1:34:23)
I

agree if they were to like harm but I think if they just disappear him for a little bit, it wouldn't, and then bring him back, it wouldn't be so bad. think, yeah, it depends on the context and the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian (1:34:32)
Definitely depends on the amount of time, I think, in that case. Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah. But the point I'm making is that that doesn't mean they can't kidnap Will Borden.

Adam (1:34:42)
Ooh, yeah, that might be an ends justifies the means kind of thing for Ebenezer. Ooh, okay, okay, now I'm getting chills. Is it January 20th yet? All right, the last couple we wanna talk about here in terms of individuals and plot developments, What about Rudolph? Jettie Cad and Solanimous both wanna see Rudolph face justice.

And Merican

Down Under goes even further and suggests what if Harry saves Rudolph from suicide? Boy, that just, the possibilities are crazy there in my head.

Brian (1:35:25)
Yeah, that, I think that every fan wants to see Rudolph held to account for his actions. And I think that seeing that in 12 months, that's like a ⁓ very good prediction to make. Like it's an interesting prediction to make because on the one hand, that's very logical, but on the other hand, Jim doesn't do that. You know, when somebody like Nicodemus doesn't get his comeuppance after small favor.

We have to wait five books to see him again, to see him, you know. So that would be a little bit of a break in the pattern, which makes sense due to the differing nature of the book, but I think that's a good prediction. I really like the prediction that the justice is going to be in part mercy as Merck and Down Under's predicting. I think Jim is meaner than that.

Adam (1:36:11)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:36:18)
So my prediction is that Rudolph gets a promotion. Because, because as far as Chicago PD knows, Rudolph was on the front lines, putting his life on the line, trying to save the city from those heebie-jeebie wielding terrorists. And hang on, you might say, okay, but Bradley is gonna set them straight by saying that Rudolph shot Karen Murphy while she was trying to hit a...

Adam (1:36:35)
And

Brian (1:36:46)
troll with a bazooka? Well, he's gonna sound like a crazy person. He's more likely to get fired to be put on mandatory retirement psychiatric leave than for his word to be believed.

Adam (1:36:54)
Plus, there's whoever's working behind the

scenes could put their fingers on the scales and make it all go away.

Brian (1:37:00)
Bingo, ⁓

What in real life sometimes happens when the government is accused of wrongdoing? Or when something unfortunate happens in a battle-like situation in the military? There's a friendly fire incident. Well, you know, sometimes you tell the truth. Sometimes you try to cover it up.

And one of the best ways to cover it up is to stick a metal on their chest and say they did a great job and it's really sad that all those nice people got killed.

Adam (1:37:31)
Yeah,

nobody would accuse a war hero of such a thing. Yeah, exactly. All right, so I think there's a different outcome here. I think Rudolph disappears. Why? Number one, he's hiding from the law. Bradley witnessed what happened. Bradley seems like an up and up. He would also probably be somebody that would be like, ignore the whole shooting a giant, a fire giant with a bazooka thing, and just tell I witnessed Rudolph.

Brian (1:37:34)
Exactly.

Adam (1:38:00)
shoot Karen Murphy, he had poor trigger discipline, he was not in his right mind, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, whatever, right? So he's running from the law. But if Rudolph doesn't have a place in the Chicago PD he's no longer of use to whoever was pushing him to get there in the first place. And if he's no longer use, now he's a loose end. So Rudolph is not only on the run from the cops, he's on the run from his former patron and

Where might he go for help? Well, our good friend Harry Dresden and crap, I've just redone the turncoat plot. Damn it. Okay, that probably isn't gonna happen then because I don't think Jim would do the same plot twice, but maybe that is where he goes. He disappears and Harry tries to hunt him down, but can't maybe somebody else winds up finding him and say, hey Harry, I heard you were looking for this guy and that's where he goes from there. But I think Rudolph goes on the run and nobody can find him for a while. That's my prediction.

Brian (1:38:57)
Or corollary, the person he goes to isn't Harry, it's Butters.

And that could be kind of an interesting wedge issue here, where Butters feels like he has to hide Rudolph from Harry. ⁓

Adam (1:39:10)
Right, right, right, because Butters saves

his life from Harry and he might recognize Butters if he worked, Dr. Butters or whatever? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, that would be really interesting. you know, yeah, I can't go to the cops. I can't go to Dresden. You're my only help. You saved me.

Brian (1:39:17)
I think he does. I think he actually says in the moment, Dr. Butters, or maybe that's Bradley, but somebody recognizes him.

Adam (1:39:37)
Can you hide me or something like that? That would be an interesting way for him to resurface. All while we're waiting to hear about Rudolph's fate, what do you think is gonna go happen with Will and the alphas?

Brian (1:39:39)
Mm-hmm.

So I think that Will is going to be, Jib has this habit of sort of like somebody's the CEO, right? And they have like a person who's like their combination personal assistant slash like the executive vice president of the whole organization. Like, yeah, like they, the one hand are just like fetching coffee for the person running the show, but on the other hand, also their word is second to God, you know? So.

Adam (1:40:04)
Like Justine.

Yeah.

Brian (1:40:16)
I think that Will's going to be that, you know, Huguenin-Munin figure for the Paranet.

He is going to be the person on a day-to-day basis actively running operations that are sort of, to a certain extent, under the figurehead aegis of Harry Dresden symbolically. But that will is going to be, because the alphas are kind of in the same situation Murphy was a few books ago, where the story is starting to move past baddies they can tangle with. And I don't think Jim's gonna kill everybody off, but I think that they need to get power-ups in different ways.

will is going to get is going to be one of becoming more of a leader, not just of the local wolf pack, but of a national organization that is combating in a wide sense, paranormal threats. I really like your theory on this, maybe even better than that though.

Adam (1:41:16)
Yeah, this

one came to me while I was walking upstairs to get a drink before the show. has avoided politics, except for wizard politics, right? But he's avoided real world politics, political offices specifically. Yeah, exactly.

Brian (1:41:30)
But he mentions them. He mentions Lara getting her hooks into senators

and Marcon buying the governor or whatever.

Adam (1:41:36)
Right, but we

haven't seen like a political campaign happening in the background. Nobody's running for mayor in that universe that Harry ever tells us about. But what if this whole thing fractures the Chicago society into those different factions that we talked about? Maybe some are like believers who want revenge on the entire supernatural community. Others are believers that don't know what to believe. Others are abstaining. Others...

Brian (1:41:58)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:42:04)
try to say this is all terrorists and we need to put forth all these extreme measures to get the terrorists or whatever, right? And Will and Georgia and the Alphas recognize, hey, if there isn't somebody out there in Chicago politics keeping an eye on what's happening there, it could really get out of control for all of us. And one of them, I'm actually leaning towards Georgia. At first I thought,

But no, I think Georgia would be perfect for this because she just seems like a more calm, reasonable, like person that you can just believe, right? Trustworthy, like she's very confident and forward and always, every interaction we've seen her since the very beginning back in Full Moon, she's always been that way. So I could see her.

running for office and Will acting as like her political consultant slash supporter slash assistant kind of a person. Campaign manager, that's the word I'm looking for, thank you. ⁓ So I could see that and like the other Alphas also helping the campaign and like they get to lean on A, all the people in the paranet that they know, automatic constituency, probably willing to help vote for them. They already get to lean on everybody that is like an actual believer.

Brian (1:43:01)
Campaign manager. Yeah. Yeah

Adam (1:43:22)
that knows their reputation, that's heard about them. Like they are well known within the community for what they've done. They've got a built in base. It could work. And I think she's got the charisma to pull it off. And they're both very smart. So I think they could also make it work because of that.

Brian (1:43:39)
Yeah, I mean, actually, I think this is really plausible specifically them because they're both UChicago graduates and the University of Chicago is not only an excellent university, but it's also the premier one in Chicago, apologies to Northwestern. ⁓

Adam (1:43:44)
Mm-hmm.

And

by the way, I'm not saying they have to run for mayor or anything. They could run for like a councilman seat or whatever the local legislature is within the town.

Brian (1:44:01)
Well,

that's what I was actually gonna say. I could see this, I will give you credit for anything from Will running for alderman or ombudsman or, you city council member, right? Not dog, well, actually maybe dog catcher. That'd be pretty funny. But ⁓ that would be something that he could just do because, ⁓ man, I mean, if the alderman of the district were, we have a castle in.

Adam (1:44:09)
Whatever he eggs not dog catcher though. I don't think he's running for dog catcher

Yeah.

Brian (1:44:27)
Like Marcon bought the guy, that's why he could ignore all these building permits. But I might need to just become the guy. Or I could see it being something like Georgia is literally attempting to be anything from like a state senator to like, okay, she's not running for mayor, but she's actually now the head of, you know, health and safety, like for the mayor, Chicago mayor's office, you know, she's a member of that.

Adam (1:44:28)
Right, right, right.

Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:44:56)
know, person's team for exactly the same reasons. So I think, you know, does Jim have time to do all this stuff? Is he gonna put that in? I don't know. But these are actually things that would kind of fill plot holes, like how is Dresden going to maintain, not just monetarily, but legally, a castle in the middle of Chicago neighborhood?

Adam (1:45:17)
So that's all of our individuals and sort of plot elements. Now we're gonna... You saw the runtime, you know it's not done yet. We've got a couple more things to talk about specifically around new lore we expect to learn.

Brian (1:45:22)
And that's the end of the episode. No.

Adam (1:45:34)
Now we talked a couple of different pieces of this already about how we might learn some of these things, but we're gonna try to talk a little bit more specific about new lore that we might learn and speculate what that might be. Now, the Wat-satron considers, listens to when promised Harry he would tell him everything after getting permission, which would take one year. I'd imagine we'd find out more about...

the Starborn and Harry situation, unquote. And a few others point out that the time suggests that Listen to Win might be just about to tell Harry, only for him to get pulled into the mirror verse ending the book. Now, those are pretty fun possibilities, but Brian, we kind of have word on Jim that this is not going to be the case.

Brian (1:46:14)
Yeah, it's been Jossed guys, if you know that term from the ancient days of fandom discourse, the beginning of TV tropes. The word of Jim is that this takes place in Chapter One of Mirror Mirror. So, Jim lies, but that would suggest that, one, Harry is not getting pulled directly into the Mirror Dimension at the end of the book, and two, it doesn't happen in this book. So, we have to wait.

Adam (1:46:26)
But Jim lies. We don't know for sure.

Brian (1:46:39)
But that doesn't mean that we're gonna get no information about Starborne. I think that if the Justine situation is resolved, we're gonna have to find out more stuff about what a Starborne can do because that's the only person. Harry is the only person, or Harry and any other Starborne, are the only person who could get ⁓ Nemesis out of Justine.

I also think we might get little tidbits from some loose ends like where the heck is Listen?

Adam (1:47:15)
Hmm.

Brian (1:47:16)
And if we do hear anything about Dracul, it's gonna matter that he's a starboard. So I think there's just a lot of different angles. We could get teensy little bit of really appetizing, I smell the pie wafting from the window, I'm floating towards it. And then at the end of the book, Jim slams the window shut on our cartoon noses because he's saving the big stuff for Mirror Mirror.

Adam (1:47:43)
I think, here's my prediction here, Harry is going to somehow, whether it's dropped into conversation, whether it comes up as a result of something else, I think he's gonna find out that Lara knows something about Starborn, doesn't realize that he is one, and he's gonna be like, wait, you can tell me more about this? She's like, only that they exist and that it's a confluence. She doesn't actually have any answers for him, but.

We will find out that she knows of their existence and maybe some tiny new tidbit about Starborn, like maybe what she thinks their purpose is, but it won't be right.

Brian (1:48:23)
Yeah, well, Warren will be right, but the interpretation she's going to give him is not very useful because something that I know I've speculated, I don't think I'm the only one, is that the outsiders...

And the, you know, Cthulhu great old ones, Nelarth R'Tep, we've seen a few Lovecraftian mythos people in short stories, in think Warcry and Cold Case. And the great old ones that the Oblivion War is waged against are, you know, cousins at the very least.

And if that's the case, then people who are members of the real Venatori might know stuff about Starborne that's not really germane to the outsider outsider threat, but insofar as that has to do with the Oblivion So it might not be useful information for Harry, but she might actually have a really good reason for knowing a little bit about Starborne, because it's kind of part of her second job.

Adam (1:49:23)
Yeah, it could very well be the case. All right, speaking of Lara, new White Court

Brian (1:49:30)
Yeah.

Adam (1:49:30)
we do have

two books that featured white court politics very heavily, right? We we have blood rights and we have a little bit in proven guilty and white night specifically. So I think we're going to learn a little bit more in this book specifically. I think Harry has never asked Lara about his mother. He wants to know more about her.

Brian (1:49:52)
Mmm.

Adam (1:49:53)
She lived with the woman for years when she was with Wraith, so she might be able to tell him at the very least what she was like on a day-to-day basis, what her situation was there. He could learn more about it.

Brian (1:50:06)
Yeah, and I mean, one of my bigger call-jot theories is that, you know, Maggie was a part of the Black Council and was going to have a starboard for them and ran away. And I think that Larry's not going to tell Larry that in this book.

but she could be starting to lay the groundwork for that eventual revelation. Because if I'm right, and I feel pretty good about that one, Jim's got to start doing it soon. I think we're going to find out something else, though. I think we're going to find out why Ebenezer hates the White Court so much.

Adam (1:50:39)
Yeah, that's

a pretty good call to be honest. I mean, that was very heavily part of Peace Talks and even before that. really want to know more about exactly what happened to make Ebenezer hate the White Court the way that Harry hates ghouls. We got to learn that at some point and Next Book is as good as any other.

Brian (1:51:00)
Yeah,

and if we don't learn that, then I don't really think Ebenezer's gonna feature very heavily in the book at all. Let me put it that way.

Adam (1:51:06)
Yeah.

All right. What do you think about more lore with regards to the Fae?

Brian (1:51:12)
So we've talked about a couple things. We think we're gonna learn kind of what Mab thinks the biggest threat is. We think we're gonna learn something about how she began. So I think that those predictions are all possible. ⁓ Adam, do you have any additional predictions about the fey?

Adam (1:51:29)
I'm thinking Harry's banner that he manifested in the middle of battleground is going to become more important over time. And I think this book, he learns a little bit about how to conjure it up outside of that kind of desperate battle situation where he kind of did it unconsciously. So that's kind of what I'm expecting. If we do see more fail-or, I think that's kind of where we're gonna be. ⁓

Ryan pointed out in the chat here, one of our patrons, that they did, you know, kind of take his daughter, and I bet he suspects Ebenezer that the white court killed her.

Brian (1:52:10)
except Harry asks Ebenezer about that in I think Peace Talks. And Ebenezer says, when Harry says, do you hate them because of mom? He says, her too.

Adam (1:52:22)
Right, okay.

Brian (1:52:24)
So it's not just that. We know it's gotta be more than that. Ebenezer's already told us it's more than that. so one other thing we might find out about the fairy court is just how supernatural mantles became a part of it. And that's because, again,

Adam (1:52:28)
That's a good catch, I had forgotten that little piece.

Ooh.

Brian (1:52:46)
I think we're gonna learn some particular reason for the wedding that goes beyond just the political alliance that should theoretically exist anyway. And it might be about specifically aligning incubi and succubi with the winter court. And there might be sort of ritual aspects to that that maybe aren't gonna go happen to one go here, but that Mab is laying the groundwork for.

Adam (1:53:15)
Yeah, okay. Let's move on to the White Council. What kind of lore are we gonna learn about the White Council?

Brian (1:53:24)
Okay, this is a very popular theory and I vacillate on the extent to which I believe this. But you don't get to be the Merlin of the White Council by collecting bottle caps. And...

The Merlin has done a lot of things over the course of the series that from Harry's perspective and from our perspective using only Harry's knowledge seem kind of dumb. Not, you know, stupid in the sense of he's an idiot, he's clearly not, but stupid in the sense of what possible goal could this be serving that's more important than the one that Dresden's serving?

Adam (1:54:02)
Right, a lot of them seem

counterproductive from Harry's perspective.

Brian (1:54:06)
I we might not find out what goal the Merlin is serving, but I think we possibly will find out that the Merlin didn't get Harry kicked out of the White Council because he doesn't like Harry and doesn't want him to be a part of the council.

but because he didn't want the council to have to handle blowback from the kind of stuff Harry's gonna have to do now. ⁓

Adam (1:54:34)
Right, so you're saying he

engineered Harry's expulsion not out of malice, but out of practicality, something that probably would benefit Harry and the White Council equally, or not equally, but at least both to some extent.

Brian (1:54:46)
Right.

And perhaps even though he is content to allow a certain degree of animus to develop between Harry and Wardens who used to serve with him to discourage fraternization, he personally actually is happier with Dresden than he's ever been.

Adam (1:55:03)
Yeah.

So I've got a crazy theory here. And if it doesn't happen in this book, I think it's going to happen at some point in the near future. the outcome of Battleground vis-a-vis Senior Council is not clear. You can read Battleground as if Christos is dead. You could also read it uncertainly, and it's not given any certain answer.

Brian (1:55:27)
But I'm gonna tell you, Adam, I think he's dead.

Adam (1:55:30)
I think,

yeah, that would be an interesting price to pay. mean, all of this and to have none of the senior council that were on the front line go down seems, I mean, yes, they're very powerful, but they're just as vulnerable in the end if you manage to get a shot in somehow. They're just meat bags, just like the rest of us, right? So I think Christos is dead. And I think that leads to a major power shift in the White Council. Maybe Langtree is ousted as the Merlin. Somebody else goes in instead, maybe. But.

And this is going way beyond that. I am reminded of the last Harry Potter book where there's a coup in the Ministry of Magic and it immediately causes chaos where they try to, you know, send Death Eaters after the party and things like that. I could see something like that happening with Ebenezer showing up on Harry's doorstep bloody from battle.

and like requesting aid or something like that. Similar to Morgan, instead of this like, I've been accused of a crime, it's civil war within the council, right? That, I think that scene, something like that is coming. Probably not in this next book. I think it's gonna need to be its own thing, but I think it's gonna happen on the periphery, because Harry's not a part of the council anymore. I don't think he gets involved directly.

Brian (1:56:36)
Yeah.

Well, remember, Christos is on the senior council in the first place because politically that seemed necessary in order to keep the council from fracturing. There was... ⁓

Adam (1:57:00)
Mm-hmm. But I mean, we've had this

secret, you know, black council that's been hiding in the white, like, for so long, it's been bubbling under the surface. At some point, I think they're going to reveal themselves, Cylon-like, and take over everything ⁓ once they've gotten enough of their pieces into place. And maybe Christos' death is the catalyst

for some of that, maybe not, like I said, probably not all of it, but.

Brian (1:57:32)
Well, but we've already seen.

the White Council need to make compromises to keep itself together, like putting Christos in the council in the first place. So if in the wake of Christos' death, the Merlin needs to make more and bigger compromises in order to keep the council together, we could end up with a new head of the wardens, a new any kind of number of things that could be very disruptive. And even if the Merlin's not ousted,

Adam (1:57:38)
Mm-hmm

Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:58:04)
he might be politically crippled in a way that renders the council somewhat rudderless. So whether we see civil war or just desperate political machinations to avoid civil I'll say you get the points if Christos' death effectively kneecaps the White Council in 12 months.

Adam (1:58:17)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I put

this in the lore section because Harry, I don't think is gonna be directly involved anymore, but I think he's going to learn about it in this book. He's gonna interact with somebody, maybe Ebenezer, maybe Lucio, and they're gonna give him, yeah, and they're not gonna be able to tell him everything, because he's not in the council anymore, but they're gonna be like, you should know the council is currently in gridlock.

Brian (1:58:28)
No.

Maybe Lucio. Right.

The Gatekeeper.

Adam (1:58:51)
as a result of this inner political stuff, they're not gonna be able to do much of anything to deal with the blowback about the Chicago situation because they're paralyzed with indecision and infighting or something like that, right? Again, not much details, but something going on. That's kind of what I'd expect.

Brian (1:59:09)
now I think we're also almost certain to get some actual hard info about the Library of Congress, which Jim has been teasing and talking about and mentioning, as far as we can tell, since full moon, and he started being asked questions about the Lugaru tape.

and pretty low 34-39 both think we'll have some interactions with librarians. I totally agree. Adam, do you think it's going to go anything further than having some interactions?

Adam (1:59:45)
Yeah, we kind of outlined some possible plot situations, but my revelation vis-a-vis lore is consider for the moment. The librarians apparently have existed for a while. We basically haven't learned about them. I think the only other interaction that we theoretically assume that they're involved in is the disappearance of the Lugaroo tape. I don't know that there's any other overt

examples of things that we can attribute to their involvement, right?

and they probably were involved in covering up the disappearance of ⁓ Milwaukee during the unseelie incursion of what 1994 or something like that, the thing that resulted in the accords. So given the fact that they've been around for a while and we hardly ever hear of them, that could suggest two things. One, they're a joke and the supernatural community doesn't take them seriously. Or two, they're extremely competent.

and they stay secret and hidden very well. So that led me to like, how could either of, how could that second one be possible? So like my prediction is that they turn out to be a lot more knowledgeable and competent than anybody expects. And maybe the way that that happens is because they have their own group of maybe one family throughout the years that has been wizard level talent.

that left the White Council or was never part of the White Council in the first place, that's been part of this organization, that's been able to shield it from the White Council's knowledge or from anybody else's knowledge about how competent they actually are and how knowledgeable they actually are. So that's my prediction. We're gonna find out they know a lot more than anybody gives them credit for, and they're a lot more competent than anybody gives them credit for. Nobody takes them seriously.

but they deserve to be taken seriously, they use that

Brian (2:01:47)
I think that, you know, honestly, they, like you said, are highly competent, and their goal is simply to ⁓ suppress knowledge of the supernatural being real. And for that reason, supernatural powers generally like and tolerate them. And they are not deliberately antagonistic towards supernatural powers. They're not trying to stamp them out or anything. It's not the Inquisition.

They're very, very shadowy, but they're not supernatural joint special operations command. It's not an agency of Kincaids and Agent J's and Agent K's. It's a bunch of butters. It's a bunch of nerds who go and research the supernatural so that they know what's going on and they can cover it up. It's Jacques Valle and

Adam (2:02:31)
That's interesting. Yeah.

Brian (2:02:44)
the guy who did the Mothman prophecies and it's a bunch of those wackadoo scientists in our timeline are in the Dresden files accredited government researchers who work for the Library of Congress and the men in black are the kinds of people who appear in their stories because that's their cover.

Adam (2:03:09)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. All right, Brian, I think we've covered it all. No, not even close, but I think we've got all the big ones we wanted to talk about. I think we'll have a few more small discussions here and there about 12 months before the actual book comes out. up next week, it's Christmas week, we're taking the week off from our main show, but good news for you guys, we've got something that we're going to be revealing in January that we've been working on.

that ⁓ is gonna be fun for everybody, I think. Not just a patron exclusive thing. And then coming up in January itself, the first episode on January 2nd is going to continue our Grave Peril coverage. The next one on the 16th is gonna be Grave Peril as well. And finally, keep in mind, we're going to have a live show for you patrons on the release week.

the 23rd, Friday the 23rd, where we sort of unstructured, try to put all the pieces together that we learn in 12 months. And that's when we'll take all this stuff that we just predicted and find out if either of us has been right enough to be called a winner.

With that, I think we're going to call it no episode next week, but look for us on the 2nd of January. You won't be disappointed.

Brian (2:04:26)
See you guys in 2026.