Doesn't mean they aren't dangerous. They simply have a different way of pursuing their objectives than open war.
I can't imagine that Laura Raith wouldn't like the White Council out of her way if she could achieve it. She even talks to Dresden about destroying his people with peace or something like that.
With kindness, yes. But if it comes to it, I can kill her myself. She is not, unlike the red king, a demigod. I can, to borrow a phrase, nuke her from orbit. If I turn her house, while she is in it, into a giant decompression chamber (and by the time this would need to be done, Harry is capable of magic on a scale like this, and air magic is much easier than earth) and then...release... her lungs explode, her blood boils, and she dies. Messily.
Hell, I can even do it just to her in order to avoid mortal casualties. Or I can hire Kincaid. Or ask Ebenezer if he would be ever so kind as to drop some space junk on her...
Point is, I have options, and I am more clever and willing to engage in more indirect methods of killing than Harry is.
And anyway, at the point this scenario starts, Lord Raith is still in charge, and we can't assume that things will work out the same with Laura replacing him. Lord Raith is in bed with an outsider with a personal interest in us and has a great motivation to kill us, and frankly is almost certainly a Black Council member or ally.
That is what Book 6 engineering is for. Hell, book six I almost dont have to change as long as Book 4 goes according to plan. That is just a matter of avoiding injury, and the circumstances of Book 7 which depend on Book 6 is in the form of information. Information I have a priori anyway.
Marcone's thief is still going to pick up The Word in an estate sale and Kemmler's disciples will be after it. I still get my zombie T rex.
Okay, I'm going to dispute the "no lasting harm" bit. No lasting physical harm, maybe. Psychological harm on the other hand...
Every White Court Vampire, in my opinion, can be considered a rapist. They subdue their victims through a form of mental manipulation that is difficult if not impossible for most people to resist, which does not sound like a situation which qualifies as consensual. In other words...
THEY NEED TO RAPE TO LIVE.
They do, but the majority of the time, their one-off victims dont perceive it that way because most people dont know the vampire exists and have no idea their free will has been violated. They have no way to know. They dont compel obedience. They short-circuit the whole system by which there would be resistance. "No" just does not occur to their victim, and said victim can easily rationalize the whole thing into psychological irrelevance given the vampire's pre-existing attractiveness. "Wow, what the hell got into me? Meh, it was fun, off to work!"
It is rape, and it is creepy as fuck. But it does not cause psychological trauma. Which means of my available options, they are the least repugnant option.
They also seem particularly fond of gathering influence in the mortal world, which I thought was supposed to be a no no. That alone makes them dangerous.
Influence is acceptable. Bringing large numbers of uninitiated mortals into great-powers conflicts is not.
I agree they're not as high priority as the Reds, but don't think they aren't monstrous and dangerous, and enough so to warrant taking out if you get the chance. In Dresden's shoes, I'd burn them down in a second if I could.
I pick my battles. They are pretty far down the list after the lovecraftian nightmares, the reds etc etc etc etc etc etc. Reach all the way down the list, and you find the White Court.
Pragmatically, that's a good point. Though how small is Monoc really?
Odin is a Freeholding Lord, Monoc Securities is not a Great Signatory like the Council or the Reds. Not large.
Armed conflict isn't their style, definitely. Ambush killing or enslavement is. As Romulan Republic mentioned Lara's outright said she plans to kill the White Council with peace. Writing them off as the lesser evil just makes it that much easier for them to pull off their eventual sudden, vicious and victorious war.
Harry is Vigilant. So shall I be.
But the same logic could apply to the Reds or even goddamn Nicodemus.
I might actually be willing to sit down and have a chat with Nicodemus... if he was not a minion of actual satan and himself even more treacherous than that Whites.
As it stands, my first meetings with him will be an attempted regional geocide homocide and the second enslaving the archive. That is not going to go over well. If I do talk to him, he better have a damned good explanation as to how either of those things were in service of stopping outsiders and how they were *necessary* for that. Otherwise I am gonna grab his neck-strangulator and finish the fucking job.
And then, as Alyrium Denryel said himself, there are the scumbags of Skavis and Malvora, who are possibly even worse than Raith (if not, perhaps, as competent)
Given that Skavis get off on despair and Malvora get off on pain....
Raith get off on pleasure, and they dont actually need to use the Psychic Come Hither in order to do it. It just helps. Thomas managed to feed for years by just being a hairdresser, and I suspect many of the one-off non-emergency feedings are seduced mostly conventionally or with very gentle suggestion. All Laura had to do is...work in porn. That's all. If Thomas went to university all he would need to do is chat people up at the gym and be charming, or hang around in a pool hall and be charming etc. By description he is a good-looking and personable guy. I would sleep with him (were it not for the vampirism) and he is fictional.
They can turn up the mind-whammy. When they are... food stressed it seems automatic, and some of them are just assholes, but it does not seem mandatory.
Which is a far cry from the reds who HAVE to use addictive saliva to subdue struggling victims, and keep hordes of people in multi-generational peonage or chains (even outside formal functions...), and become gradually more and more addicted to human blood, and thus need more and more...
The White Court vamps are not good by any stretch. But when you time average the actual harm they do even to their own victims, it is much less than any available alternative, and while they WILL betray you if it is in their interests, they dont do it reflexively either. They are very realpolitik in their betrayal. That is something one can work with.
