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Check out our new Mini-Series: Dresden in 60 Seconds: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKjC4jQ75xugpDLFinN--yRDk0REX7DPs&si=YNzPxBCEwu3qf6BW
Patreon (bonus episode each month): patreon.com/RNTPod
Episode Art by Nick Strom; you can find his work here: https://displate.com/artist/fadelias/dresden-files
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
- (00:00) - Intro
- (01:08) - Ch. 11 - Mickey Needs Harry's Help
- (13:03) - Ch. 12 - Being Invited to help Mickey
- (29:57) - New Mini-Series: Dresden in 60 Seconds
- (32:40) - Character Analysis: Detective Rudolph
- (39:51) - Why does Rudy seem to change between FM and GP?
- (52:58) - When Did Rudolph's Sponsor Recruit Him?
Patreon (bonus episode each month): patreon.com/RNTPod
Episode Art by Nick Strom; you can find his work here: https://displate.com/artist/fadelias/dresden-files
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.
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. I'm Adam, and with me, as always, is a by-the-pook cop who can't stand the consulting detective, it's Brian O'Reilly.
Brian (00:22)
Now I've had enough of your methods, Mr. Holmes. We will be conducting this investigation the way that Scotland Yard should do. By the book!
Adam (00:33)
No, no, no, no, it's Rudolph, not Lestrade. We're talking about Rudolph today.
Brian (00:38)
I do another one?
Adam (00:39)
No, no, it's fine, we'll fix the accent in post, no Yes, ladies and gentlemen, today we are taking a look at chapters 11 and 12 of Grave Peril. In these chapters, Harry is returning from seeing Mortimer Lindquist earlier in the day to read up on Mort's notes, only he's intercepted by Rudolph and Stallings who are waiting for him when he arrives. They are there to whisk him away to Mickey Malone's house where Murphy,
desperately needs Harry's help, and that happens in chapter 12. So Brian, let's start with chapter 11. Harry's arriving home to find Stallings and Rudolph waiting for him, and right from the jump, Rudolph seems to be a very different person from the one we knew in Full Moon.
Brian (01:22)
Yeah, Jim does a great job of sort of signaling that this is gonna be like an oddly threatening interaction from the jump because it starts with an unmarked car sat in my driveway. Like you expect Marcon's guys are gonna hop out and shove them into the backseat and you know, yeah, see, you're gonna get off this case or something like that. But no.
Adam (01:45)
Right, or
when you find out they're cops, that they're gonna bring Harry in because something else incriminated him has happened before and will happen again.
Brian (01:56)
Right, but meanwhile, Stallings is just like, ⁓ hey Harry, what's up? Yeah, Murph wants a hand. And Rudolph is the whole time, get in the car! Shut up and sit in the back seat. You know, like he's gonna handcuff him any second.
Adam (02:04)
Yeah.
Brian (02:09)
I mean, it's clear that essentially Rudolph is way out of step with the rest of SI at this point. If we sort of just take what we know through this book, we can assume that Harry and Murphy on better terms since the end of Fool Moon, after seeing Harry's bravery in the Lugerub attack,
Most rank and file cops in SI probably think he's, you know, one of them essentially. And we're gonna find out later in this book that he not only is being brought in to, you know, help solve stuff, he's being brought in in tactical operations, which is not normally what a consultant does. So everybody else in SI seems to really respect Harry and Rudolph is just so far in the other direction.
that at least when it comes to Dresden, literally everybody else just completely ignores him. But I think you're right, Adam. I think we get the impression that it goes beyond just Dresden.
Adam (03:15)
Yeah, I mean the quote that I was thinking of here is Rudolph says, the lieutenant says she wants you down there now, you get your ass down there now, unquote. And it's just, it puts him into this box of like authoritarianism, which goes two ways, right? An authoritarian mindset wants to have somebody that they can just.
follow orders from because it makes life simple if all you need to do is do what the people above you say, but you also get to tell all the people below you to do what you want, which both of those things appeal to certain people and it feels to me like Rudolph is one of those people.
Brian (03:57)
and it's interesting that you use the term authoritarian, because
An authoritarian is the correct term, but I'm searching for something that's less loaded because it's not necessarily It's just sort of the person who thinks that a strong chain of command that no one deviates from is a good thing. Somebody who just likes authority. The thing about that person is they don't then buck that authority's take on anything. They're not like...
Adam (04:08)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (04:29)
an authoritarian in the sense that they like authority but also are very insubordinate. But that's what Rudolph is.
Adam (04:38)
Right, because Murphy and Stallings, who is his senior as far as I can tell here, are like, Harry's a good asset for the team and you've seen demons, you literally helped us fight one with Holy Water not that long ago. And here, of course, he's always insisting these are all tricks and not real. And I ain't seen anything that can't be explained. I think that's a direct quote from him in the next chapter. So you're absolutely right. He is not taking the quote unquote
party line within SI that makes him this outcast, this pariah.
Brian (05:12)
And this is a...
thing that I think is really true to life, I often refer to, just when I'm talking to people about stuff, the petty tyranny of small bureaucrats. You ever have to jump through a bajillion hoops to do a thing that obviously you should be clearly allowed to do, and why did you put all these hoops there? Can't you just make the hoops go away, person? No, you must jump through every single one. It is that sort of utilizing
Adam (05:24)
Yeah.
Brian (05:43)
your power to force people to do things because of the pure pleasure you get from seeing them bend to your will, do what you are master over.
What he's really saying is, in my world, two-bit wizards in the phone book listen when a police lieutenant tells them what to do. And it doesn't matter that neither Murphy nor Harry nor Stallings thinks about it that way. That's how he thinks about it.
Adam (06:11)
the more that I've been thinking about this, the more it feels to me like he's emulating someone. And you gotta ask yourself, who is he emulating? Who has he interacted with in his life that acts like this, that he's sort of modeling? And it's clearly not anybody in SI, right? Cause that's not how Murphy talks. That's not how Stallings talks. Maybe it was one of his former officers, but this feels more like a thing where he's emulating his daft.
Maybe his dad was, I don't know they ever mentioned who his parents were, but I imagine his dad was a big shot in a corporation or maybe in the police department or in politics or whatever. And when he said something, everybody else paid attention to him and did whatever he wanted. And Rudolph is looking at that like, I want that. But he doesn't understand that it's the respect that creates that effect of power.
and it's not just your attitude, you can't just project respect into people, your actions have to create
Brian (07:14)
Yeah, he wants the power to command without any of the reason one is entrusted with that command in the first place. He wants to kind of skip the hard part of earning that. And that's definitely a defect in his character.
Adam (07:23)
Mm-hmm.
Right,
his first words to Harry are, get in the car. Just a command, not a pleasantry, not a, hey, please get in the car, ⁓ we need you somewhere. It's just an order with no context, and he's acting as if he expects Harry Dresden of all people to just follow that, which.
so disconnected from reality. Like if there's one thing you can say about Rudolph, he's disconnected from reality and this proves it. Like what has Harry ever done that gives you the idea that you can give him a contextless order and get him to cooperate? He will dig his heels in harder than anybody else in the city of Chicago under those circumstances. He has a problem with authority.
Brian (08:17)
Now, Harry does get in the car because Stallings asks him very nicely, informing him that Murphy needs his help. And they bring him to,
I guess it's a crime scene. It's Mickey Malone's house.
Now, when they get to the scene, Harry does not immediately go into the house. And Adam, do you get the sense?
of why Harry realizes he's gotta look at something else first.
Adam (08:44)
The quote is, I got out of the car and felt something wrong. An uneasy feeling ran over me. Prickles of sensation along the nape of my neck and against my spine, unquote. And I believe he's described these sort of feelings.
about places in the past and how normal people can and do feel these things all the time, but they kind of brush it off as like, know, intuition about, this looks like a bad neighborhood or something. When in this universe, those are actually like magical sensations are so strong that even normal people can feel them and respond to them, right?
Demon Reaches, get the hell out of here. Aura is a supercharged version of this, but he's also described it as like the Full Moon Garage had like, I think an aura around it of like negative energy. And that's why you have trying to sell him on eBay in the same place as like the bad guys took him to in Full Moon. So you've got these locations that sort of have a feeling to them and-
As a wizard, he's more attuned to that. And that is what stops him when he gets out of the car, is that same thing.
Brian (09:58)
Yeah, and we've been doing prep for 12 months, which is coming out in just three weeks from now, essentially. And I wanted to mention this because it's a really good example of the notion that in the Dresden Files, when somebody gets the creeps about something, that's magic. that's not.
Like, I mean, I'm sure it can be a mundane thing, but when Harry talks about, extended my magical senses, that's the kind of feeling he's looking for.
Adam (10:27)
And so what he actually finds when he puts out those senses is a kitten that has been essentially twisted so that its neck has been broken. And then he finds, I think, a bird as well, its wings in two more places, and then two more birds without heads, something else that had been small and furry and was now small and furry and squishy. Jim, that's so good. this is obviously where
The Nightmare, we're unsure at this point in the book, but that's what we learn later, is The Nightmare is here, outside Mickey's house, waiting to figure out how it's going to get in. Or maybe he knows how he's going to get in and he knows he's just waiting for Mickey to fall asleep, because then he can cross over into the Never Never right here and sort of enter into Mickey's dream by proximity and get to him that way.
Brian (11:17)
And I find this to be so damn scary every time I read it thinking about it because it's just like so disturbed. Not that like, okay, it's...
Adam (11:22)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (11:31)
torturing small animals, whatever. It's just sort of the casualness of it. And Jim's description sort of imply a couple things that kind of like the nightmares shambling around the neighborhood sees a cat and is like, ooh, I'm gonna turn that into a fun squeeze toy for me. And then it's like Ozzy Osbourne, like chomping the heads off of birds, just like, you know, for like, I just see this as like demented stuff.
Adam (11:57)
Yeah, he's bored,
so let me kill some helpless animals. And he goes out of his way to do that too, because he says there's a dozen little bodies in this yard. I guarantee you there weren't like a dozen animals walking across that yard at night. A lot of these are animals that aren't necessarily nocturnal. So I think he like is bored, so he travels around the neighborhood.
find some birds in a tree, grabs one and brings it back and like you said, like bites its head off or starts playing with it, ripping the wings off and then he gets bored again and he goes and ⁓ here's a cat across the street, let grab that one and maybe there's more than a dozen if you kept traveling around the neighborhood you'd find more of these things because he spent hours out here but.
Brian (12:39)
And it
has for me that really sinister, casual, sadistic menace of like the Negloshi.
Adam (12:48)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (12:50)
So Harry sees this sort of macabre mountain of tiny dead animals does what he needs to do to sort of get an idea of what happened in the scene
So Harry says let's go and turns to head inside the house, but he doesn't step in directly. He, at the beginning of chapter 12, stopped outside the doorway. And there's a threshold, that Harry needs to cross to get into this house.
Adam (13:23)
And what I really like about this
he's willing to explain himself to Stallings and say, yeah, you I can go in, but then I can't really help as much, I leave the better part of my actual power outside. You know, it's just like how the monsters can't get through this threshold, blah, blah, blah. And then he also gives them a mundane explanation. Besides, it's polite.
And when Mrs. Malone comes out, he doesn't give her the spiel about She comes out and says, you wanted me to invite you in, and he says, I don't go where I'm not wanted, ma'am.
And that's just such a simple, perfect, mundane explanation. It's like, way to go, Harry, that's some good diplomacy, buddy. Where's that gonna be for the next seven books? Yeah.
Brian (14:09)
He clearly has shopped that one with clients
in the past and he's got that kind of ready to be deployed.
Adam (14:15)
Exactly, yes,
this is him having
Brian (14:18)
Now, the two interesting things that I think Jim does here is, yeah, you know, Rudy makes the count, Dracula jokes. By the way, this is actually the first place where Dracul, you know, the star born at top of the black, like he's mentioned here, spelt with a K, like the way that Jim does it for Dracula's father. I don't know if Jim had that whole arc planned out at this point, but he literally drops the character here. This is where Dracul is from.
Adam (14:31)
that's right.
Yeah, and what's more
is this is a really different Harry Dresden from the first two books where he's really reticent to share any information that's not directly related to the case. Here, Rudolph says, give me a break, who are you, Count Dracula? And Harry says, Dracul is still in Eastern Europe last time we checked. He just casually drops that, yeah.
Dracula's real and we think he's still over here. yeah, just dropping that information casually to someone like Rudolph, this is a very different person from the one that wouldn't even mention the existence of the White Council, despite the fact that he was under the doom of Damocles for helping his best friend at the time.
Brian (15:10)
Specifically, we, like there's a team,
Adam (15:32)
So yeah, it just shows how much he's grown in that aspect here. He's willing to share more information even with people he doesn't like.
Brian (15:41)
And look, you know, there's an extent of this that's just, Rudolph is annoying him, so he's being smart. And he knows Rudolph isn't gonna like write that down and like file it away. So he knows he can get away with it. But you're absolutely right, Adam. You in Fool Moon, Harry has the whole conversation with himself about trusting Murphy with more information. And look, he does not resolve this right away, but...
Adam (15:46)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, he's being snippy, exactly right.
Brian (16:09)
It's a gradual progression and he's already taken a couple steps.
So Sonja, Mickey's wife, welcomes Harry in.
They have a little conversation. admits to a certain extent that he saved Mickey's life
the end of this little revelation and this conversation that they're having, we get our one sort of important mystery plot piece of information from Sonia that Mickey was up late last night. Sometimes he has insomnia.
Adam (16:38)
Yeah.
Brian (16:44)
He didn't come to bed until late, and Sonya got up saw him presumably in bed, nothing weird, and didn't want to wake him, so she let him sleep in. So this gives us some important clues about exactly what happened to Mickey Malone and why the nightmare was outside so long.
Adam (17:07)
Yeah,
and we have, we've gone over this in a previous episode, so I don't wanna reiterate it too much, but Harry has all sorts of theories throughout this book and later clarifies the actual order of events in like the epilogue, which is Lydia had nothing to do with Mickey Malone. She's already been captured by the Reds at this point in the day. And it was the nightmare getting to Mickey through Mickey's dream.
the same way that he will get to Harry through Harry's dream a couple chapters from now. And in this case, the fact that Mickey was up late and didn't go to bed until very late because of insomnia or whatever, that's why the nightmare had to stay outside and kill so many animals waiting. Those two clues line up perfectly.
Brian (18:00)
and we can presume
didn't start having his small and nightmare that created his demean in the dream world for Kravos to attack until he'd been asleep for a couple hours. Until he was getting those sweet sweet REM cycles or whatever.
But I do think we can assume that Sonya Malone gets up before sunrise because she's a teacher.
Teachers wake up early even when they're retired. She's given up at five in the morning to go, you know, do her Pilates or whatever. And Mickey, you know, sleeping in means sleeping to eight or
Adam (18:31)
Hmm.
Yeah, that makes sense to me too. Now, at this point, she kind of doesn't wanna go any further. She can't bear to see her husband in his current state,
And instead he finds Murphy behind the door who is in such a state that she can't even return the normal banter that they have with each other. Instead she's just so desperate, she's, don't know who, I didn't know who else to call. And she gives more details, know, Sonia called this in the morning, she had to lock herself in a closet in the cellar.
and they got there right before Mickey finished breaking down the closet door. So it really is. And so obviously this really feels like a possession, Brian, but Harry assures us it's not a possession. What we find out in the next chapter is that there are two distinct things going on. Number one, something savaged his spiritual self, right? When he looks at
Brian (19:18)
It's the Shining!
Adam (19:42)
Mickey with the sight, he sees chunks of flesh missing from Mickey's like spirit or soul or whatever you want to call it. And Harry describes it as essentially the same kind of damage that would be done to your spirit when somebody close to you dies, right? So that's the kind of damage that can be done to your psyche.
But I don't think that that damage is what's causing Mickey to act this way because he still has that damage after Harry deals with the second problem, that of the barbed wire spell that's wrapped around him, right? He pulls the barbed wire off.
and he throws it out the window and zaps it with a fuego and Mickey just sort of collapses to the bed and asks for his wife and like talks to them quietly. He stops being crazy. He stops acting weird. He's acting like himself, but in pain and exhaustion, not like a crazy person. So that suggests to me, Brian, the barbed wire spell is doing something to cause him to act that way. What is it?
Brian (20:52)
So what I think is going on is that Kravos' attack has sort of lowered Mickey's defenses. There's pieces of him Chunks have been taken out of him.
power, his spiritual strength, his ability to resist is diminished. So when you hit him with the barbed wire spell and what that seems to do is just gin up the most primal negative emotions that are influencing our spirits. Just sort of turn up the worst parts of the id as high as the amp will go.
It's a lot harder for somebody to resist the effects of that if you just ate a bunch of their good feelings. So if all you have left is just an amygdala that is firing in all cylinders with fear and rage and you just aren't functioning and you're in horrible pain that you just don't know how to make it stop.
and your inner reserves have been damaged. Any wherewithal you had to deal with this has already been sufficiently degraded. It's gonna the effect of that spell.
Adam (22:10)
so you had one interpretation, which is it amps up the parts of him that are manic and savage and crazy. I was wondering if instead the barbed wire spell is
binding away his reason and his love and compassion and all the positive emotions. And the only thing that's left is this gibbering monster, more or less, So to me, that's kind
the barbed wire suggests is rather than amping, and maybe it's doing both for all I know, but I think it fits better in my mind if it's taking that away. And the way that I see that happening is it's described as this paralyzing cold by Harry when he's touching it and when it gets into his neck. It's like so, so cold and he like can't feel his fingers. Now I'm guessing it's not physically changing the temperature of his fingers, but that's like what the
sense that he's getting in his physical senses. That's how his magical senses are translating it to him. And so I think what's happening here is he is getting paralyzed in all of the good pieces of himself.
Brian (23:24)
So I think there's two ways to interpret what you just said. And I think one of the dovetails exactly with what I was going for there, which is by him psychically.
you are causing him to react with the animal parts of you that get turned up when you are hurt, you are hunted, when you are in pain, when your leg's caught in a trap. That kind of defensive behavior, the aggression of anything that comes near you.
Adam (23:47)
Hmm.
Like you stub your toe
and you bang your fist on the wall to get back at it immediately because that's just what your body wants. Like, ⁓ pain has hit me. I must respond immediately.
Brian (24:08)
But You maybe are also getting at something else that later the Dresden Files are going to hint at pretty significantly. That the barbed wire spell is the anti-life equation. No, that's a joke, but seriously, mean, Kravos is a ghost.
Adam (24:21)
Ha ha ha ha.
Brian (24:27)
The people using the spell are Mavrah, a black-court vampire with an interest in necromancy. And where else is Harry hit with a paralyzing sensation of cold that nearly overcomes him and kills him? Evil Bob. Necromancy.
Adam (24:48)
Mmm, yes.
Brian (24:52)
that kind of anti-magic because necromancy doesn't just appear to be kind of like different magic it appears in some way to be like a thing separate from normal life-based magic because magic comes from life force it appears it appears
Adam (25:09)
There, yeah, yeah. So it reminds
me of like in D &D, you throw a healing potion onto a necromantic entity like a zombie, it does damage. And like you have to use a harm spell to heal something that is, you know, undead more or less and vice versa. That kind of element, we know Jim is fond of D &D and uses a lot of allegories of D &D in his
Brian (25:31)
right.
Adam (25:38)
universe. So I could see exactly what you're talking about. Necromancy or specifically maybe the kind of magic that vampires use, specifically Black Court vampires maybe, is a sort of anti-magic. It maybe comes from a different place and doesn't work the same way as real magic. I could see that being the case.
Brian (26:00)
It might be that any magic that a black court vampire uses is fundamentally necromantic, you know, in its beginnings. Like it's easier for them to learn necromancy than any other kind of school of magic, cause they're dead. But I think the kind of key deliverable that that gives us is, well, what would be better at suppressing the things that make you truly alive in a human sense?
Adam (26:05)
Hmm. Yeah.
Mmm.
Brian (26:29)
necromancy. So if this is a necromantic torture spell, what would it do? It would reduce the things that are sort of characteristic of a higher life form and make you act more like a scared brain stem medulla oblongata animal.
Adam (26:46)
Yeah, exactly. All right, now we're gonna talk more about this when we get to chapter 13 the next time, including like, how did that barbed wire spell get on Mickey Malone? Did Bianca do it through his threshold using Kravos as a channel? Or did she teach Kravos to do it?
Brian (27:00)
Yeah.
Can Kravos do it,
who can do it from the never never in your dream into real life? And then why doesn't he do that to Harry?
Adam (27:15)
Yeah,
so it's certainly an interesting question to have. So we're gonna talk about that the next time we get into this. I do wanna leave us here with Murphy clearly being absolutely enraged that she is so helpless in this situation, right? She loves being the person who can help people. That's why she became a cop. But in these situations, she has to rely on Harry.
and she hates that fact about the world, right? She doesn't hate Harry, but she hates that she has to rely on someone else to fix this problem
Brian (27:54)
Yeah, though I do think that some of that is, man, Dresden, if you can't do anything here, gonna be a very big problem for Murphy in sort of a morale and
Adam (28:07)
yeah, I
agree. That's gonna be another consideration, but this is her friend and she wants to be able to help her friend and she probably suspects that he's been attacked because of his association with her and we know they both have that martyr complex, right? She's going to take the blame if this was an attack because Malone was part of her squad, which it turns out that is the case.
Brian (28:12)
Of course.
Yeah.
Adam (28:33)
So she's blaming herself just the way that Dresden does. Most, in many of those cases, it's unjust. They're not being just to themselves for situations like this where they cannot be held accountable for blowback from doing their job.
because of a super ghost that can enter their dreams. I mean, even Harry wouldn't have been prepared for that shit. He isn't in this very book. He's literally unprepared for it. It's why he gets part of himself eaten away in a later chapter.
Brian (29:07)
Yeah, you know, definitely one of the things that Kravis is doing successfully here is beyond just Mickey, he's making other people feel helpless.
and he's driving them towards the sort of negative emotions and behaviors that make them more likely to have the kind of dreams he wants them to have. It's a very effective way of sort of spreading the fear, the panic that he needs to do what he really wants. But look,
We're not doing chapter 13 today. We're going to go into this in more detail next time. So we're going to leave this discussion here and we're going to go to not our question for Bob. ⁓
Adam (29:56)
No, we have a quick announcement
before we go to our character analysis of Detective Rudolph, and that is, we've got a surprise for you folks. This episode comes out on January 2nd, and on January 3rd, if you check our YouTube video, you will find a brand new series that we are starting called Dresden in 60 Seconds. Brian, we're in the middle of rereading for the upcoming 12 months.
Brian (30:24)
⁓ so much Adam. ⁓ it's so much.
Adam (30:26)
Yeah, and
I know a lot of other people started rereading months ago, but we're sure that there are some people that decided they don't have the time. So if you want to remind yourself what happened in the 17 previous books, we got you covered. We're going to be releasing an episode summarizing all of the major events that happen in each book, one episode, one book.
60 seconds, and we're doing that one per day, starting on the third, so that we will drop our Battleground episode the day before 12 months is released.
Brian (31:05)
and there's a little banter around them, so they're not exactly a minute flat a piece. But basically, if you have 30 minutes to remind yourself of what's been happening in the Dresden Files before you read 12 months, as opposed to 30 hours to get through a couple audiobooks or whatever, this is a good way to just be like,
Yeah, that's right. In Proving Guilty, we met that guy and that, we still haven't answered that question, have we? Just to kind of twig yourself to some of the unanswered mysteries and important plot threads from previous books that may or may not come up in 12 months, but you should at least be aware of if they slipped your mind, walking in.
Adam (31:51)
So if you wanna check those out, we'll have a link in the description of the podcast here, and you can also just look up our YouTube channel, Recorded Neutral Territory.
Brian (31:51)
Yeah.
Adam (32:00)
another quick announcement, no show will be released next week.
There will not be an episode on the 9th, but there will be an episode on the 16th, and in that episode we will cover chapters 13, 14, and 15. That's where Harry lifts the barbed wire spell off of Mickey and then consults Bob on the case.
Brian (32:20)
And then for the remainder of the month, there will be episodes, but they won't be about grave peril because there'll be kind of something a little bit big going on in the Dresden world. And we're going to talk about that instead.
Adam (32:32)
Yep, so we'll get more details on that. If you want more details about how we're going to be covering 12 months, sign up for the Patreon. We'll be talking about that in the coming weeks. But for now, let's jump on to our main topic, which is not a question for Bob. Instead, it is a character analysis of Detective Steven Rudolph.
Brian (32:53)
Steven.
Adam (32:54)
No, I just made up a name. I was very surprised to discover there is no first name for Detective Rudolph anywhere. Not even in the RPG, which you sometimes find details that Jim has snuck into the official Dresden Files RPG that are not in the books or in the Wiki or in the words of Jim, but there's nothing there. They just call him Rudolph.
Rudy or Detective Rudolph in every single book. It blew my mind that such a recurring and important character has no first name to our knowledge.
Brian (33:31)
It was really funny, Adam, because when you said that to me, it really put it in perspective. mean, Rudolph appears in at least a third of the books, if not half of them, and we don't know his first name. And I was like, well, that's not that weird. mean, well, I guess we do know Stalin's first name. And then I was like, do we know Rollins first name? And you looked it up, we know Rollins first name. And well, okay, how about Carmichael's first name?
Ron, we know Carmichael's first name.
Adam (34:00)
We even know
Tilly's first name and he's only in Changes.
Brian (34:04)
So the fact that we know so little about Rudolph symbolized by the fact that we don't even know what name is.
Adam (34:16)
Yeah,
yeah, there's so much going on with him, seems there's so much going on with him off screen that we're not aware of that we can only speculate on. is one other possibility, It could be his name is Detective Rudy Rudolph. I don't wanna go there, but that's a possibility that Jim could throw in there later.
Brian (34:36)
Listen,
I will say that would explain a lot. Like, you'd have a pretty big inferiority complex too if your name was Adam Adamson.
Adam (34:43)
Yeah,
it's like Mario Mario. Okay, so we're gonna start with what we definitely do know about Rudolph. He has some kind of a quote unquote sponsor insofar as it's very apparent in changes, Harry notices that he's super stressed acting way crazier than normal, being pushed by some outside entity, whether it's
Brian (34:49)
Exactly.
Adam (35:11)
blackmail or a direct superior threatening his job or some kind of mind magic that's directly affecting him. Something is going on with Rudolph and which makes sense because we see that somebody goes to kill him later in that same book. So obviously something's going on with him. But even in peace talks after Rudolph and Bradley show up at Murphy's place to grill her about what happened in skin game, they both
Harry and Murphy speculate, you know, somebody's behind him, somebody's pushing him on this. It doesn't make sense that IA would be doing this investigation and not homicide. Neither of us are cops anymore. So somebody is putting their thumb on the scale to get this investigation into Rudolph's hands. Who and why is a question that is unanswered in peace talks and battlegrounds and is still unanswered to this day.
Brian (36:05)
And let's
frame this before we get into discussing the great responses we got from the We know Rudy has a sponsor for all the reasons you said and because he gets promoted out of SI where...
Adam (36:26)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (36:28)
Clearly none of his superior officers ever wrote him like a recommendation and like a sterling, you know review or whatever So that's one and in addition
Adam (36:32)
No.
Brian (36:38)
We know that his sponsor isn't She dies at the end of this book and he's still got a handle. We can be pretty sure it's not John Marcon doesn't really operate exactly like this and doesn't seem to have this kind of antagonism towards Harry and Murphy. Maybe we can't be certain of that, but...
it's not necessarily likely that it's MerCode. Let's put it that way.
Adam (37:04)
I agree,
it's not likely. Murphy does suspect in some of the early books that Rudy is in Marcon's thumb because I think Marcon gets some information and they're speculating like, how did he get that? ⁓ bet he got it from Rudy or something. And she speculates that, but it doesn't quite fit with the events and changes in, which really don't have anything to do with Marcon. The way that he's acting in that book seems to be more connected to the Red Court.
And yet, after the Red Court is destroyed, he still acts weird and shady and comes after Dresden and as somebody pointed, we'll get there. Other things that happen in Peace Talks and Battleground suggest that he's still under somebody's thumb. that, to me, rules out the Red Court, but maybe it was the Red Court earlier and he's just got a different handler now, who knows?
Brian (37:56)
Maybe,
and the other one that we wanna sort of talk about just as a framing ⁓ question because it's Chicago politics is the Wraiths, specifically Lara. And we talked about in our 12 Months Predictions episode, I'm on team, Lara has changed. I tell you what, if I'm right, it's not Lara. If I'm wrong, my God, that's so messed up. ⁓
Adam (38:20)
Mmm.
Brian (38:22)
Like that's really, and we can talk about that, but.
Adam (38:24)
You're
right, because if she considers Harry a potential obstacle, is there a more white court way handling that situation than using a cat's paw to just throw Harry in jail for 10 years or whatever?
Brian (38:40)
hmm, I either need Dresden dead or I need to marry him. So I guess I'll have somebody kill his girlfriend. You know? Yeah. So, okay, but...
Adam (38:44)
my god, And
we know the white court can get in people's heads and make them do things because we know that Madeleine Wraith did it to that lawyer in turncoat.
Brian (38:58)
Right, and so she could do that, but if Lara is the character who is doing that, she is not the character that I think she is. So.
Adam (39:06)
Agreed, but it could be
somebody else in the white court because that is a power they have to get into people's heads.
Brian (39:09)
Right.
And the reason why I mention all of the Reds and Marcon and Lara is because if it's not one of these sort of obvious Chicago politics antagonist or quasi antagonist figures, it's kind of a big weird mystery. Like.
Adam (39:32)
Right, at that point you
gotta ask, is it the FOMOR, black council, nemesis, outsiders? Like, those are much bigger questions and you're like, how did they get hooked into Rudy of all people if it's not one of these local politics? Exactly right. go through this one step at a time. The first question I wanted to ask is why,
Brian (39:39)
Right.
Adam (39:55)
does Rudolph become so difficult after full moon? Like we talked about in this episode where he just becomes a massive prick. powderkeger1 wants to suggest that maybe there's some mind manipulation going on as early as grave peril. Before I asked this question, I hadn't really considered this option. I assume that by changes, we see evidence of potential mind manipulation of
Rudolph, but maybe not this early, but here's what Powderkeger1 says, quote, That not a normal reaction.
That's not even the believable rationalization. I think when he sees the supernatural, this compulsion actively twists his perception, kind of like we see Maeve do to Lily in cold days."
Brian (41:04)
I think this is totally believable and it's part of what I was honestly trying to set up by describing how the rest of SI is behaving in the chapters we just looked at. Rudy appears to be literally the only person who was in the precinct during Fool Moon who doesn't believe that Harry's for real.
Adam (41:30)
Yeah, and pointing that out, I don't know if I missed that in Battleground, like the two times I read it, I just didn't notice the importance of the fact that rationalization, exactly as Powderkeger said, makes absolutely no sense unless you believe that his perception is being.
and then pulling out that exact spot in cold days where Harry's trying to talk to Lily and Maeve is changing what he says and the expressions on his face so that Lily sees something different. We know that's possible in this world and it makes sense that such a mental whammy would kind of make someone act really weird and crazy and prickish if he thinks he's the only one who sees reality for the way that it is.
Brian (42:19)
And I think that makes perfect sense because if Rudolph is literally getting a completely separate picture of reality from everyone else, it perfectly explains why he simultaneously is able to withstand the pressure to conform from everyone else and
thinks that everybody else is clearly so crazy and stupid because it does look like a trick to him.
Adam (42:46)
Yeah, yeah,
he just, instead he gets to be, gets to think to himself, I'm the only one smart enough to see through Dresden's tricks, other fools. Yeah, exactly, the last Saint man in Chicago. So until Powderkegger mentioned this, I'd always thought of Rudolph as someone who was just in denial, like deep down, they know what they saw in Fool Moon.
Brian (42:56)
The last sane man in Chicago.
Adam (43:15)
but they they're not allowing themselves to accept that. They just keep denying it forever and using every rationalization possible. But explanation of his perception being actively manipulated makes so much more sense to that scene in Battleground where he said, just shot someone with a Basooka I'm taking you in. Like.
That is the, that's the rational answer. If you saw her kill a person with a bazooka and not a 25 foot tall giant.
Brian (43:49)
Right, and
that's the point, right guys? Like to just like put a bow on this really clearly, if you saw somebody shoot a 20 foot tall human with a bazooka and you acknowledged that you saw that, there is no, like not even in a delusional motivated reasoning world can you believe that the supernatural is not real.
You just saw a giant and you're acknowledging it. So if Rudy didn't acknowledge it, if he just said, you just shot a bazooka on a city street, but no, no, no, you're literally acknowledging you saw her shoot a giant. How is that not bridging the gap for you, man?
Adam (44:32)
Mm-hmm.
but he didn't say giant, he says someone, which suggests he saw her shoot a person, because if you saw a giant, you would refer to them as a giant, not a someone. Okay, so this was a real like mind blow moment for me when I considered this, because then I was trying to like, from Rudolph's perspective, you know, what is he dealing with? It's awful. Now, don't get me wrong.
Brian (44:38)
someone yes
Exactly.
Exactly.
Adam (45:03)
He's still a shitty person. Even accounting for this, like if this is the explanation, I still hate him as a person, but I at least feel a little more pity for him in the end, having been manipulated like this. Because I think a better person, like if Murphy had had her perceptions warped and everyone around her was telling her something different, she would come to the conclusion that she was crazy. She wouldn't insist that she was the last sane person in Chicago, as you put it.
So what are other possibilities besides mind manipulation for this kind of change in Rudolph from full moon to grave peril? Brian, I think there's a very obvious reason. It's trauma from the Luguru attack.
Brian (45:43)
Yeah, Animar14 believes it might be just that. Quote, he's so desperate to get out of SI and its horror movie incidents that he flees. The best way to do that, deny, deny, deny, suck up, and be a toady. Absolutely, Rudolph could totally be so scared shitless.
by the Lugru attack that he is completely in reaction mode. He is a caricature of the picture of mortals that Jim is trying to draw us as being scared by and reacting badly to the supernatural. Rudy is our sort of like in-universe example of why that can be a bad thing. He is just exactly what he looks like.
Adam (46:16)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and as a counter to what we were talking about before, it could be that that kind of trauma and that kind of deep denial could make it so that you warp your own perceptions of reality. We don't have to go to mind magic to explain why he sees Murphy shoot a Jotun and then goes, you just shot a guy. yeah, he could be that damaged because he's been in this trauma cycle for like,
a decade or more now by the time you get to battleground. So I think that is a possible explanation for sure.
Brian (47:10)
And there's another interesting explanation that has to do with grave peril. Elphich 47 suggests he could have been attacked by Kravos.
Adam (47:19)
Yeah, we know Kravos was going after all the members of the crew that were, that took him down in real life, including Michael, Murphy, Malone, Harry, but you who else was there? Rudy was there. We see him in the flashback in Harry's dream. So it's entirely possible that Kravos attacks him
And Elphich says, Rudy is attacked off screen by Kravos in the same way that Murphy and Mickey Malone had been attacked, but he didn't have anyone to help him after the attack. His personality shift after that has all of the earmarks of being a victim, unquote. I don't think this is the case, but I love the idea and it was fun to think about. The main thing is,
Brian (48:05)
it-
Adam (48:06)
If you think that what happened to Mickey also happened to Rudy and nobody noticed, I don't know, man. I think he'd be way more damaged than just being a dick.
Brian (48:18)
Well, that's possible, but maybe the night that Kravos turned into the Rudy's having a bad dream. Kravos doesn't know the barbed wire spell yet. He can't do all the, but he, you know, takes a chunk out of him. Yep.
Adam (48:32)
He can chomp out your, yeah, okay, okay.
If only gets half of what Mickey got, the chomp out your spirit part, that could turn him into a prick, absolutely.
Brian (48:41)
And I think it's important to realize that what Elphich is saying obviously could be literally correct, or it could be a stand-in for the notion that we don't have any idea what's happened to Rudy between full moon and when we see him in this chapter. His aunt could have been eaten by a troll. We just have no idea.
Adam (49:03)
Yeah, technically.
Brian (49:06)
So it could totally be that there's additional trauma that we don't know about, whether from Kravos or just from something else, and that could have to do with whatever does get a handle on him eventually.
Adam (49:22)
Yeah, I think that's entirely possible. right, we've got one more here of explanation for why Rudy seems to change between the two books. IR 1871 suggests that Rudolph doesn't really change much at all. He's always been a prick. We're just seeing it more clearly in Grave Peril. Quote, let's look at how he gets to SI. He's a young detective who gets inappropriately frisky with someone senior's relatively young daughter.
in Full Moon, he's in an experienced team that has a grudging respect for Harry, even arc skeptic Carmichael, but he doesn't like him. In a violent and dangerous incursion at the station, everyone else in the team steps up and he freezes and dithers and cowardice.
and then his reaction to it afterwards is to double down, deny and be hostile to Dresden. He's a weasel from day one. By his second appearance, all of SI holds him in contempt."
Brian (50:15)
I really like the last thing that he said which is all of Si holds him in contempt in a way that's not really fair. Because IR 1871 definitely gave a perception of Rudy that you could totally have from the series, but you could be a lot nicer to him, which is to say that there's a lot of cops running around with their, you know, like just scared from the Lugru when it attacks
the station. not the only one. He's one of the younger members of the team, one of the least experienced. That's why Carmichael leaves him with Dresden and he performs admirably by doing what he needs to do and listening to Dresden under the circumstances. So if you do that...
Adam (50:46)
yeah.
Brian (51:03)
and you're held in contempt because you didn't have to get any battle scars, you didn't have to stare the beast down, you from their perspective got off easy, I could see that metastasizing into this kind of of Dresden and the supernatural that goes beyond just, a fear reaction.
Adam (51:26)
Yeah, yeah, I could definitely see, you're right. He might be the only one that was there that day that doesn't have any battle scars. And other people noticed that. Hey, did you see Rudy in the fight? No, I didn't see him. Where was he? He was there at the end. he must've been hiding or something like that. That kind of talk could easily go around. And I like that IR 1871 kind of pushed back on the premise of the question. No, he was a dick the whole time. Cause we know that he got thrown down here.
for doing something wrong with somebody's daughter. So it's entirely possible that his current mannerism is exactly what he's always been. And that kind of also points out how the Kravos idea of him being attacked in this book doesn't really line up with everything because all the other cops, including Stallings here, already just sort of ignore him and disrespect him. They hold him in contempt. So it can't be something too new.
that has caused him to change. He must have been acting like this for a while. So it may just be that maybe Kravos did attack him and it amped it up. That's possible.
Brian (52:36)
Or it could be from the Kravos raid in the first place, actually. Maybe, you know, he's on the raid. He shows up for that like a good soldier. Could be after that. But I think what's important to recognize here is that exactly why Rudolph has the delusional reaction to the supernatural is a separate question from who's got a handle on it.
Adam (52:43)
Mmm. Yeah.
Brian (52:58)
Because regardless of Rudolph is under mental manipulation or has just been that way the whole time, there's still this pressure on him and he's still being guided in his activities in a way that isn't just natural or just the normal political human progression as far as we can tell.
So Adam, when did that sponsor recruit him?
Adam (53:29)
Yeah, that's a really interesting question because he is, from this moment forward, acting like a dick that has an ulterior motive and Powderkeger jumps in here again to point out,
He gets his transfer to IA and immediately just starts being a prick despite seeming to genuinely care about Murphy and Full Moon. The time between the books makes the most sense for when his sponsor got to him." Unquote.
So yeah, I think what Powderkegger is saying here is that the transfer to IA might be part of what's going on. And that kind of brings me to my theory. And Brian, I'll let you sort of tear mine apart if you want. But I'm thinking this is a sort of slow seduction over many years in the same way that Marcon would get his hooks into someone by asking for something.
Really inconsequential, not even really illegal. Just pass me a little bit of information that I would like to have first. You know, it's gonna be public information anyway, but let me, just give me a little heads up before it goes public. And then he's asking for a little more and a little more. And meanwhile, he's giving you, ⁓ you get some gifts from him or you get some perks. Maybe you get a nice promotion to where you wanna work in and you get out of that terrible SI place that you don't like.
And then by the time you get to someplace like Changes, and it's been many years down the line, whoever's got their hooks into you, now they've got you doing illegal things, and they have evidence of you doing those illegal things that they can ruin your life with. So now, in Changes, he's being forced to do some of these things. In the other books, it feels like he's acting on someone else's behalf.
but he's doing it gladly. I hate that Dresden guy. Of course I'll get you some information to burn him, right? But the time you get to changes, he's clearly being pushed and forced into doing things he doesn't want to do. He's threatening his own career by doing quasi legal things against Dresden and changes, and it's causing him tons of stress. And so that's, think, how you got from...
A to B. And one thing I'll call back to is Sephir 27 kind of reiterated that. They said quote, I suspect that a red court vampire or a black court member leaned on someone at City Hall to lean on someone at the police to find a detective to lean on to make Harry's life difficult. And eventually they got enough power to get Rudy promoted and enough.
dirt on Rudy to call in his debt in changes and force him to break the law and go after Harry." Unquote. So, Sephir 27 kind of sums it up exactly the way that I was thinking that same thing would have happened. And I'm trying to think to myself, who would have the sort of cunning and...
discipline and long-term thinking that would be necessary, competency to do something like this really well. And who would still be around after changes to jerk his chain? Listen, I'm putting my bet down. I think Listen got to him at some point and was using him. Maybe it was after the Red Court handler died, Listen was paying attention.
got information, knew this guy was dirty, found the information that the red cord had on him, and just decided to use it. I don't know, but I feel like he might be involved somewhere. He seems like the kind of guy that would do this.
Brian (56:59)
So I'm not gonna tear that theory apart because I think it's honestly good. There's basically only two options, right? Either Rudy is kind of brought under somebody's handle very suddenly. It happens kind of all in one go at some point and we can't be exactly sure when, right before changes, all in one go he's brought under sort of somebody's,
Adam (57:19)
Somewhere before changes though.
Brian (57:27)
thumb and that just occurs and from then on he's their man. Or it happens little by little. I mean it's kind of gotta be one or the other. There's really no other way. Well, the happening all in one spit doesn't make a lot of sense unless it happened between full moon and grave peril. And who's even paying attention at that point?
Adam (57:51)
as many people have pointed out, and some of them in the thread that we talked about, his erratic behavior is the kind of thing that you see as a result of somebody messing with you via mind magic, Guilty, yeah, trigger discipline, know, exactly. So the kind of...
Brian (58:05)
for sure. Trigger discipline.
Adam (58:12)
Mental, what happens to him in Battleground especially feels like mental compulsion. Whether he was under mental compulsion up to that point is an open question. It feels to me like all of the stuff happening before changes was him working in concert with somebody else to get something he wants. The better job, more attention, more praise. Like he was doing a quid pro quo.
By the time we get to changes, he's now being forced to do things via blackmail, essentially. And by the time we get to battleground, not even blackmail works. Somebody's gotta get in his head to do things and make him do stuff. That's kinda where I'm at.
Brian (58:55)
now the possibility that I want to kind of separate out here is there's a difference between Rudolph is put under someone's thumb gradually, which I think is just sort of very likely that's how it and Rudolph is under someone's thumb more and more and more more and more and more and more more.
Adam (59:09)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (59:19)
as we go through the series. Because a very plausible reading is that the Red Court, having lost at the end of Grave Peril their sort of person in Chicago, needs to go find some kind of double agent to keep an eye on this Dresden character, because they are going to try to kill him eventually.
Adam (59:32)
Hmm.
Brian (59:42)
recruits Rudolph and at the end of changes, zip zaps up, that whole thing is over and done with. Rudy is his own man again. But he's kind of a dick and he's a bad cop and you know in SI, yeah, it's generally good cops but I mean is it that weird that there's a desk jockey cop in America who has bad trigger discipline and is a petty tyrant? Like no, there's a few police officers.
Adam (1:00:06)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (1:00:12)
who sort of are addicted to the authority and don't actually deserve to carry a weapon. Everybody knows there's, right. Right, but at minimum, everybody can agree there's at least a few, right? So, it's possible that that's what Jim is just saying Yes, most of the cops in this story, partially because most of the cops you meet are SI cops who are sort of marked as being different and that's how they ended up there, are good cops.
Adam (1:00:17)
Yeah, a few.
Brian (1:00:39)
But there are ones like Rudy, and that's why he doesn't stick around an SI, and he goes somewhere like Internal Affairs. And yeah, he was under somebody's thumb because he's corrupt, he's bad, he's somebody who will make those kinds of deals. But actually, when we get to battlegrounds, he's just a bad police officer. And that's the is that it's just a random, dumb human who kills Murphy, and there's no conspiracy.
Adam (1:00:59)
Yeah, I mean...
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
the other reading of that, It just fits so well for the Red Court to be the one behind Rudolph up through changes, because everything that's happening in changes, it makes sense that Rudolph would go crazy after Dresden, because who's the bad guy in It's not the Denarians. It's not the Black Council. The Red Court are the ones making moves against Dresden in changes.
Brian (1:01:31)
And they send the Ick to kill Rudolph. The Ebes are there sending the Ick to kill him.
Adam (1:01:34)
Yeah, yeah. So
it makes sense that they've decided that he's a liability or they just want to cut off that particular avenue, because now they're done with him, right? He's no longer a useful tool or whatever. So the Red Court fits so well and it's possible. If you wanna eschew the idea that somebody else picks up where the Red Court left off, kind of like what you're talking about, and just have it be...
He's just a shitty he's got shitty human weaknesses. I could see this being something like what we see in Rudolph in peace talks and battleground is him still having the effects, the after effects of whatever mind magic the Reds used on him years ago at this point, right? I think battleground is like four or five years after changes.
and he's still suffering under those effects because we know that that can happen. Nelson, Harry thinks, is literally gone insane forever after what Molly does to him, which seems to be incredibly minor, and she only does it to him once or twice. Imagine if you were the Red Court's plaything in your mind for years up until that point. It makes sense that it would continue to affect you for years to come.
Brian (1:02:55)
Yes, so either way, it's not necessary that Rudolph has a handler after changes for the series to play out the way it does. But that's not the fun theory.
Adam (1:03:06)
I agree.
It is the more tragic way, right? If the track, like I could definitely see Jim writing out like, ⁓ we're finally learning more about Rudolph, whether it's because he's, I don't know, killed himself or he dies of something else and Harry's like reading his journals or his case files or some other thing, or, know, Harry gets to him and like he finally admits something to Harry and we get all this backstory that we've been speculating about.
Brian (1:03:10)
It is.
He's soul
gazing.
Adam (1:03:33)
Or maybe he soul gazes him, perfect example. And it's being set up, like Jim is setting it up like, yeah, he had this whole handler and that must, they must have been the one that wanted Murphy dead. And then as you're learning about the backstory, but then the handler's gone and nobody's pushing him. He's, it's just him. a shitty weak human having shitty trigger discipline that caused it all. And it's just that makes it that much more tragic.
I could see Jim going that way, but I agree with you. The more fun way, the more fun aspect to explore is if there is still a handler after changes. And then the question is, is it the same or different?
Brian (1:04:11)
whole suspect list we have, and we're just gonna read them out to you guys, right? These are the potential suspects. Red court, talked about them already. Fomor, specifically in the person of listen, I think is an interesting one, talked about that already. White court, we mentioned that a little bit at the top. Black court, I mean it could be, I guess, right?
Adam (1:04:31)
I
just threw that in there because it's a possibility. It's a big power.
Brian (1:04:32)
Yeah, no, could be.
Mavra is definitely doing stuff in Chicago constantly. So totally could be. Nemesis obviously can kind of have its fingers in anything. But then we have as a separate item in the list, Black Council. And may I present the theory, that's not a separate item in the list. That's a heading that most of the list falls under.
Adam (1:04:36)
Yeah?
⁓
That's a good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brian (1:05:02)
So
seriously though, if we're going to think of the theory, okay, no, Rudy's been manipulated the whole time. The Lugru attack happens and he has been manipulated from then on. He literally, when he watches Murphy shoot a bazooka at a giant, sees her killing a person. he literally, that's what he sees. How does that happen? Well, like you said.
You need somebody competent, need somebody organized, you need somebody who's looking for ways to get to Dresden. You need somebody who's persistent, who's gonna stick around and who's making long-term plans. You need somebody like Cowl You need somebody who is already in Chicago, handing out wolf belts, making gifts at Bianca's party, teaching Victor Sells magic. You need somebody who's around.
Adam (1:05:38)
Hmm, okay.
Brian (1:05:52)
who's looking for ways to plug into the system because they care about this Dresden character because they know he's starboard.
Adam (1:06:02)
All right, yeah, no, that is a good counterpoint to listen. Cowell is also the kind of dedicated, cunning character, and many people have speculated that he's responsible for all those things you just mentioned. If we do find out that that's true, I could easily see him also messing with the police to keep Tabs on slash push Dresden in one way or another.
Brian (1:06:23)
Okay, but if it's Cal as the mastermind, you're not necessarily wrong. Because I think it's pretty obvious that the Red Court is handling Rudolph, at least to certain extent, up through changes. And Cal's not the kind of person who lets you see his fingerprints on things. It's very possible that...
Adam (1:06:45)
Hmm.
Brian (1:06:49)
because we know, mean, Cal and Bianca are literally in grave peril with this book kind of working hand in hand, it's very possible that Cal suggests that the Red Court get a cop in SI on their squad, and when the Red Court's wiped out, he literally turns to listen, the foamware's favorite, Starborn, and says, hey, by the way, you should probably use this guy to try to take out your Starborn competition.
Adam (1:06:55)
Mm-hmm.
Brian (1:07:18)
And it might be the case that that involves Nemesis or it doesn't. The Black Council Nemesis relationship as we've discussed is a little bit murkier than it might seem at first glance. But it's very, and it doesn't have to be Cal. It could be anyone on the Black Council. We just don't know all of them yet.
But it makes sense to me that the kind of people who are literally trying to harvest food dogs to be able to, have their own pack of spiritual basically, are the kind of people who would try to get leverage over the mortal authorities in cities where that might prove useful.
Adam (1:07:51)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right, well, we might find out more about all of this in 12 months. I think of the different things that we predicted, like what could happen in 12 months, getting some backstory or at least resolution on the Rudolph situation is pretty high up there on the plausibility scale. So I'm looking forward to talking about this more at the end of January.
Brian (1:08:23)
I hope we do that and Justine's baby, you gotta give me those Jim. I gotta know what happens.
Adam (1:08:27)
All right,
with that, I think we are done. We won't see you next week, but we will see you the week after. Stay frosty.