Enter the Dragon (Harry Potter/Shadowrun)

Not how it works. If Harry starts going around killing people the government and most people in general will be on his victims' side unless he can prove he had a good reason to attack.

Any questioning with truth syrum or the like would happen AFTER Harry stopped killing people and surrendered.
It would also relate to Harry's crimes, not to what his victims may or may not be guilty of, not unless he had any evidence to present.

 

Why would they be on his victim's side?

Harry has the evidence that an attack was carried out on his house.

The story repeatedly claims that the head of house has a responsibility to defend and protect every member of their house.

If Harry claims that he has evidence showing this person is responsible or that person is directly involved, by the rules of this story, he has every right to do something about it.

And in a more Shadowrun cynical nature; anybody who's on the side of slavers probably needs to be eliminated also.

 

Because he's a crazed murderer going around killing people who might possibly have done something wrong, with no evidence to support him, and may turn on anyone if he gets the idea they're bad guys, whatever bad guy means to a deranged murderous dragon.

But no evidence the people people are suggesting he kill had anything to do with it, and in fact evidence that most if not all the people he's attacking did not have anything to do with the attack.

The story repeatedly claims that the head of house has a responsibility to defend and protect every member of their house.

Nope. If he has actual evidence to show that, then he can do what he wants. If he had a particular target in mind he might get away with attacking them even with no evidence, but the proposal was simply kill everyone who could conceivably have had anything to do with the attack.

 

You say that, but this is what people will hear.

"Someone hurt something of mine. I don't know who, but I'm going to keep killing everyone and anyone until I find out."

And once he attacks the first or second highly placed family with government connections, nothing he says will change that view.

And no, screaming "I have evidence" means nothing when you literally have none and cannot show it.

If i was robbed, I cannot randomly point at someone as responsible, murder them, then point at another guy to do it all over again. No one would buy it.

 

I can see where the "Harry would be fine just declaring a feud against all former Death Eaters" people are coming from, even though I don't agree. After all, something like that would be seen as perfectly reasonable in medieval times, and quite a few people think that that's how the Wizarding world actually works.

 

The Wizarding government is a wierd quasi parliamentary democracy on paper, but closer to an oligarchy with democratic trappings where none of the oligarchs wants the PMs seat because it was only ever intended to serve the role of a puppet to rubber stamp what they want.

In the case of Fudge, a do nothing procrastinator who enshrines their rights to keep business as usual is exactly what they want.

But if Potter starts blatantly bumping off the oligarchs, many whom are "former" Death Eaters, they will start demanding the government act.

Then it'll be Potter vs Wizarding England.

 

And Potter would win, going by Canon, since Voldemort nearly won twice, only stopped by a Potter, both times.

No Potters to stop Harry though.

 

Potter won because no-nose didn't have or want the backing of magical Britain. He'd paralyzed the government into ineptitude and ineffectiveness so his death eaters could run rampant while the aurors were stuck with their thumbs up their asses. Also Rowling deliberately made all the adults useless so Potter could be the star of the show.

That won't be the case here if he goes loud. The aurors here are, while corruption laden, are loaded down with top shelf gear and training. There's a large underground economy of professional leg breakers, private security and other unsavory types. And as we're crossed with Shadowrun, these are the backbones that will go on to become the basis for Megacorp magical security down the line.

They are NOT pushovers. Great Dragons that are magnitudes more powerful and smarter than Potter can and have been spanked by mortal forces before.

And even if he somehow does win against the martialed forces of, it'll be a pyhrric victory because the wizarding government will be left completely savaged, the magical races are now free to run rampant and settle grudges, the mortal government is going WTF, and many of the English mages will be dead, leaving them ripe for neighbors to waltz in and fill the void.

Great job breaking it Potter. Feel like a hero yet, or do you need another pile of burning orphan corpses?

 

What would Lofwyr's contribution be? How to piss off the most people while staying politically untouchable? How to use an Omega Order to nuke the shit out of your rival? How to be a backstabbing cunt most efficiently? Dunkelzhan, yeah, he's literally a jesus analogue, but Lofwyr is the serpent in the garden.

 

How to make even those the Hate You respect you.

 

Is it really respect if they only respect you for intentionally being the biggest dick possible? Isn't that sort of counterintuitive?

 

Jancactus: Thanks. Much appreciated.

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I will point out that scrying is well understood and used here, but you need something to scry against (eg. something to compare the information scrying is bringing in against to see if it's what you're looking for). Thus you need to have something sufficiently distinct already in your possession before you can fill in the gaps with scrying.

There's a reason that all their leads ended up in firebombed crime scenes; Narcissa's cleaner knew his business well. It's also the reason that Lockhart felt the need to burn all his stuff rather than leaving it behind where it might have been discovered by law enforcement.

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On the subject of Dumbledore v. Harry (not that that is ever likely to happen in this story):

Harry is undeniably stronger than Dumbledore both magically and (obviously) physically. That said, he is young and clumsy, and he really doesn't know how to fight properly.

Dumbledore, while not able to overcome Harry's near-immunity to magic through strength, is quite experienced and creative: case in point how he brought a mountainside down with masterful use of basic transfiguration and a fifth-year charm. He is also an alchemist. Killing Harry with secondary effects/situations brought about through magic is entirely possible.

I'd say, if for some reason it came up right now in-story, Dumbledore would have perhaps a 20-30% chance of killing Harry in a straight fight if he were fully committed to it. If he were reluctant to take lethal options, that chance would very rapidly approach nil. Killing an unsuspecting Harry from ambush would probably have more like a 60-70% success rate given what he knows of Harry's biology.

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The way I'm playing it (as in what the Gringotts survey team is going to find) is that the first dune or two is fumed silica because it was so hot that nothing but silica could condense there and it had a relatively long dwell time at temperature in order to form the larger agglomerate particles. The rest is a mix of fumed silica, silica fume, and a significant amount of contamination from K and Al silicates as well as other trace minerals farther out.

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Hermione in this situation is not only dealing with the terrible situation she narrowly avoided, but also with the knowledge that she, personally, killed a man. That's tough for her, and she really doesn't want to think about it too deeply, so she's subconsciously setting herself up to ignore it and by association, any topic that might bring it to mind. Harry isn't experienced enough to realize she really needs to be made to deal with it in order to set herself in order, and Suze can barely comprehend the idea that someone might be bothered by killing some bastard that was attacking her family. All that is going to have consequences down the line.

As for the information about the 2070s time frame, that is asking for some ludicrously massive spoilers. I mean, Harry's not exactly a small fish in even that sea; he'll have some very large effects, and relating those effects now will reveal a great deal about the future of the plot. That's without even pointing out that I still haven't revealed the third component of the fusion setting. Still, I suppose I'll see what I can do without revealing too much detail of the plot...

...and after about an hour of thinking, typing, editing, thinking some more, and re-typing, I realize that there is no way I am going to be able to pull that off. A brief synopsis is not going to work, and going into detail for some of the major changes in order to convey them properly is not only utterly spoilerific, but also more work that I'm up to for a simple forum post. If you want to include my setting in your work, feel free, but I'm just going to have to let you speculate from what is already available on this thread. I'd be interested to see what you come up with.

Though one thing I can tell you, if you're set in the 2070s, you should only write in past tense about

Spoiler

Aztechnology

. It didn't survive the 2040s. That and Horrors should feature fairly prominently, having returned in force in the mid-late 2050s, although there is a reason (heavily tied into the plot) that they haven't yet overrun everything. That might give you an idea of some of the sweeping changes I've got in the works.

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More magic you have, the longer you can live, and females tend to live longer than males of similar magical strength, particularly if they have given birth to children. Though the longer you last, the more abrupt the fall at the end.

For reference, Madam Marchbanks is a strong witch with many children, and she is 268 in story. She is unlikely to hit 300. A weak witch with a few children would be looking at 200, while the same witch with no children would be looking at 160 or so.

A wizard peer of Marchbanks might hit 200. By contrast, a weak wizard might be lucky to hit 150, and a freak of nature like Albus Dumbledore will likely still be going strong as Headmaster at 350, unless he decides to pursue other things, but he will likely not last past 400.

Additional magic in the environment will lead to slight increases in longevity, 30-50 years probably, barring extraordinary efforts to harness it for that purpose. Too much environmental magic, though, will lead to thaumotoxic shock and a thoroughly unpleasant death.

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Veritaserum is one thing that I am changing, specifically the requirements for it to be reliable enough to be legally valid.

In this setting, veritaserum can be overcome by sufficient magical strength in combination with mental discipline. For this reason, veritaserum testimony is not permitted as evidence unless it is administered in such a way as to make such resistance impossible.

Since there is no way to ensure that someone does not have sufficient discipline, and the minimum threshold for magical strength is itself dependent on that mental discipline, the only way to ensure that veritaserum will function reliably as designed is to reduce the one providing testimony to a state of complete magical exhaustion, as measured by their unassisted healing rate. The only way of reliably doing that is decidedly unpleasant, involving as it does upwards of two weeks of enforced starvation, sleep deprivation, and daily deliberate and often severe injury, with the ultimate required time dependent on the initial strength of the witness.

There is a very good reason that veritaserum testimony cannot be legally compelled in this iteration of the wizarding world.

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As for Harry's plans going forward, I am reluctant to give too much information, lest I interrupt the lively discussion of late, but I feel I ought to give a hint at this point: think less rampaging murder-beast and more "What can I do for you today, Mr. Johnson?"

 

Well first the burden of proof for Bones to make an arrest is far higher then the burden of proof Harry needs before he is comfortable with throwing down the gauntlet in the middle of Wizengamot. A few hours later of course a certain family and all their homes and businesses suddenly find themselves burned to the ground. Basically Bones needs enough proof to prove to everyone Harry only needs enough proof to prove to himself who was behind this. I can see what Bones already has along with the Goblin's help getting what he needs rather quickly.

Too bad necromancy isn't a thing, yet.

 

Of course, Harry need not do anything himself.

I'm fairly certain that if he told the Goblins that he was going to take his people and go under a fidelis (sp?) for thirty years or so, until he was certain he could protect his family, they'd be happy to find anyone even remotely connected and deliver them to him with large bows on them.

Time is money after all, and the Goblins probably don't want to wait another thirty years to see how Harry's going to raise their profits another ten percent.

 

Wasn’t there a news headline in one of the movies about a wizard having his 700th birthday or something? Probably not canon for this fic with Albus being about peak for wizards and reaching ~380 before death, but holy hell could you imagine how strong that dude would be?

 

I believe there are a few in setting things that could drain magical strength in a matter of minutes or hours, the most obvious one I can remember is dementors which can temporarily magically neuter magicals.

Also I seem to remember that there was some sort of prisoner restraint devices used in some of the books, for example the chairs and chains that accused would sit in at during a wizengamot session.

At worst someone with the ability of legilimency, could be used to check if they can breach the targets mind, if not more veritasium is applied, then check again, repeat until the legilimens could successfully breach the targets mind one small dose at a time.

Another alternative is just use some sort of curse that drains a targets usable magic temporarily, there plenty of killing, stunning and babbling related curses, and similarly cursed items, that it is not a stretch that such thing could exist, only that the ministry and those in control of would want such this to be used "officially".

Remember the gaunt ring that almost killed Dumbledore, in stead of draining is "lifeforce?" maybe similar thing could be used to drain magic instead.

The basilisk venom has to overcome an objects magical protection to destroy it, as in tom riddle's diary. Perhaps a potion that used diluted venom could be used.

Certainly the goblins would have magically resistive, dampening and possibly draining materials to both fight wizards, protect their banks from thefts and curse/ward breaking on tombs.

All of the above could provide a reasonable method to a great or lesser degree of magical exhaustion.

 

The kind that questions the dead..... a certain ring anyone?

Or better yet some astral plane adventure maybe.

 

Eeh I feel like that is too sweeping of a change of effects when you have already set in place good reasons why Veritaserum is not used.

Corruption. Considering how dark and corrupted the leaders of the Wizarding Britan is, I could easily see the use of it being regulated so far into the ground that it is almost impossible to do.

Something like requires a unanimous vote in the wizgamot to use it compel a person to be questioned under it, and a majority agreement to question someone that is taking it willingly. Maybe there is Head of Noble House privileges that prevent them from being forced to confess under Veritaserum?

and while Dumbledore has been trying to change those laws, he has not gotten a lot of traction because even non-‘dark’ houses view those restrictions as useful.



or the questions have to be absolutely precise and are useful mostly for confirming guilt or innocence when all the other facts are known

So these wouldn’t work
“Did you support Lord Voldemort?”
”No” (Because while he supported Voldemort’s ideals, he was not a big fan of Voldemorts)

”Were you part of the group that Killed X?”
”No,” (Because I was assigned to keep watch for reinforcements, and thus not part of the group that killed x”

“Were you imperioed to obey Lord Voldemort”
“Yes,” (I had my wife Imperio me to “Obey Lord Voldemort” yesterday so that I could say yes to this question.

“Were you imperioed by Lord Voldemort”
”Yes” (he wanted me to serve him tea, but I refused because he is a heretic that puts his milk in first before he pours.”

while this is what works.
“Did you kill Y by poisoning his tea?”
”Yes”

So you could confirm the facts of an event, but not necessarily guilt or innocence with the sheer amount of things magic can do to a person.

edit: and maybe some form of physical/mental/magical exhaustion makes it easier for the spirit of the question to be answered rather than the letter of the question.

Add in laws caused by both corruption, and honest concern about not starting a “witch-hunt” that limit how many questions and what type can be asked. (Also gives the Death Eaters a very good reason to go about cloaked and and in disguise, beyond the fear and terror bonuses.)

Or some mixture of the the two.

I think these or other twould be far more interesting than “magic potion finally makes torture an accurate information gathering method.”

 

The trick I'd imagine you run into with most of these is that you need to really go right to the edge of lethal for this to be guaranteed to work, and doing that reliably means a slow process which is easy to control and unlikely to overshoot. Maybe you could build that into a spell, potion, or device, but I really doubt anyone would want to be the first one to test it.

The system I described is unpleasant, but it would be reliable and can be ended (and largely reversed with magical healing methods) at any point if something does go wrong.

I originally altered the function of veritaserum as part of thinking through the legal system and why it is not used routinely in trials, particularly by the falsely accused. Sure you'd need to be careful with question wording to avoid misleading answers, but at least you could guarantee that the answers given were answered truthfully which is a huge advantage in court. By making it prohibitively costly (in the form of suffering), it becomes an advantage that requires significant courage to take advantage of, and thus it hits much more heavily when it is actually used.

While I do have a plot point built around that particular usage, it is not part of this particular plot thread... or rather, it is only of ancillary relation. I included the explanation of how veritaserum functions here mostly to explain why they wouldn't be using it in the manner Monitor described in his post, rather than as a justification for torture.

Of course, given that Snape is going to be heavily involved in running this campaign, it's not so much the torture aspect that throws it out of consideration, but rather the 2+ week delay for reliable intel. We've already seen that the Syndicate can react faster than that to obfuscate compromised leads, so you need to go with other, faster methods.

 

If speed and semi accuracy is required, especially if we are talking about Snape here, you could go the voldermort route -

Crucio + Legilimency = speed + some accuracy in gather info = semi to permanent brain death.

Astral travel maybe be slow(?) but from what I can remember in Shadowrun, it can be used to journey towards an answer to a question, basically accurate divination with extra steps. I think it was some sort of knowledge repository in the astral plane.

But someone would need to know how to do it of course, so maybe a book in the black library or vault.

 

That makes about as much sense as a giant flying dragon transforming into a pigeon.
i.e it can work for the story but I hope you skim over or completely ignore the scientific issues with that.

 

A sensible reason for that.

That must be a first

Yeah, I don’t think I have ever seen a truly sensible and reasonably thought out reason why it can’t be used. But this is, to some extent, one. Torturing someone innocent isn’t a good idea, and that would always be the risk here - although I am guessing that volunteering Veritaserum is available, in general…

Of course, not doing it for the Imperiused death eaters is still stupid, and not really thought out - after all, they are all guilty as sin, with only the possibility of mitigating circumstances - they did the things, after all. But corruption is a powerful tool…

 

I can see the reasoning. Given the obvious utility of the imperius curse, I'm absolutely sure Voldy really did use it like they claimed. A lot of Death Eater attacks were probably led by a first wave of disposable mooks they 'recruited' via imperius.

Which I'm certain Lucius and company were more than happy to use to muddy the waters.

 

Oh, of course.

There definetly was something like that going around, but still…

I would expect most of the Imperiused to have different political opinions though

 

Something to keep in mind about the Impirio mind control curse, there's absolutely nothing stopping you and your friends from casting it on each other and then "making" each other do what you'd planned to do.
That means even if there was a way to detect if someone had it used on them there's no reason the loyal DE wouldn't have those signs.

 

Counterpoint, Azkaban. Unless your story changes a lot of the wizards punishment system for the better, (and honestly it seems like it would be worse!) being tortured for up to 2 weeks would be significantly less painful than the standard sent to Azkaban for X number of months/years or being Kissed depending on the severity of the crime.

Especially since the torture is healable, while dementor seems to leave rather long term mental scaring even in short exposures.

The only way that I could see a wrongfully accused person being unwilling to undergo the treatment necessary for Veritaserum to be guaranteed to work is if they are blocked from requesting it. Either because of expense, unavailability or politics.

And politics makes the most sense, because if someone is falsely accused, often someone else stands to benefit.

So having a Law that prevents the use of Veritaserum from being used without something like a majority agreement of the Wizgamot would enable the powerful to be protected from it being used on them, while also making it easy to keep their fall guys from having it verified that they are in fact telling the truth.

 

I really look forward to how he'll recover from this. I also look forward to that cesspool getting cleaned out, because clearly too long without any sort of ethical oversight has produced some really nasty people.

What was the thing with Narcissa doing this to target Ron, though? I don't quite recall the details.

choices. He had

 

ron kicked draco so hard in the balls one had to be removed
what they dont know if that nott also cursed draco so him having kids is almost zero

 

i thought it was zero but that the malfoy parents didnt know that part

 

I like the goblins FREEDOM CAPITALISM AND MAH GUNS culture, however, I am not certain that the wizards would not have made a spell or potion to make themselves intangible or a wide area cham/ward to make the guns inoperable, perhaps they have and it has not come up in the story yet. similarly, why did harry use a water wheel to power a reading lamp when he could have asked the professors for some bluebell flames and gotten free, no-maintenance light. also, wizards can regrow eyes from whole cloth, so permanent blindness, outside of curses or potions designed to prevent healing, shouldn't be a thing. also also, it sounds like a lot of the beginner potions would be hilariously lethal and caustic explosives and acids if brewed in the right wrong ways. on a potentially related note, are unbreaking charms not used on cauldrons because they interfere with the brewing process, and if so, why not make a ward anchored to a button/rock/bit of metal that you wear or carry around that makes all things flying at you stop before hitting you, to prevent injuries from bullets and explosive potion failures alike?
EDIT: sorry for necro.
also read a bit more and must say that you underestimate the utility of the duplication charm, the cleaning charm, and the conjuration series of spells. similarly, I can't really see the veela winning their freedom through fire and blood, because if they were sex-slaves, at least some of them would be owned by the rich and important, and so would have ample opportunity to work their veela allure (actual magic that makes whoever is in their presence infatuated with them) to make said rich and important wizards pass veela rights laws, which is why they have all the rights of a full citizen in the countries where veela are native.