(urth) bsharp's Inire theory

[Dave Tallman]

b sharp wrote:

> Where DO hierodules come from?  The larvae of Tzadkiel would seem to be involved
> in sexual reproduction.  Tzadkiel herself engages in asexual budding and compares the
> process to that of Porifera sponges which reproduce both sexually and asexually.  Are
> hierodules completely separate from these processes? I think they say a couple times
> they don't serve Tzadkiel but rather the Increate directly so perhaps that is the case.
>
>
Sev says in Citadel XXXIV:
"...they (the Hierogrammates) look both forward and back, and in so looking
they have discovered us.... The Hierodules they have found too, and formed
more quickly, to serve them in this universe. On their instructions, the
Hierodules construct such ships as the one that bore me from the jungle to
the sea, so that aquastors like Malrubius and Triskele may serve them also."

Humans have been found, and are to be formed into Hieros. Hierodules seem to
be another species that was found and "formed more quickly" into usable
entities by the Hierogrammates.  It doesn't look to me like Hierodules are
budded-off like little Tzadkiel or a larval form like Apheta.

The business of the Hierodules constructing ships under the command of the
Hierogrammates contrasts with what Father Inire says of his own ship
problems in his letter in Citadel XXXV. He says: "You will perhaps consider
the ship I summoned to aid my master, the autarch of his day, inadequate --
as for that matter do I -- yet it was the best I could obtain, and I was
hard-pressed to get it. I myself have been forced to travel south otherwise,
and much more slowly; the time may come soon when my cousins are ready to
side not just with humankind but with *us* -- but for the present they
persist in viewing Urth as somewhat less significant than many of the
colonized worlds..."

I take "the ship I summoned" to be the birdlike aliens who attempt to rescue
the Autarch and Sev from the Ascians at the end of Citadel XXV. They fail,
and the two are carried off by Agia and Hethor instead. It seems these alien
"cousins" don't have the Hierogrammate point-of-view about the importance of
Urth. If Inire were a Hierogrammate (or even a high-ranking Hierodule) then
he should be able to do better than this. He could be lying, but making
lying excuses doesn't seem like a good way to win the confidence of the new
autarch.

Still, Inire is of a "short-lived race" (Citadel XXXVIII), and the B,F,O
Hierodules are said to live "a score of years, like dogs" (Sword XXXIII).
There has to be a connection. Probably both are creations of the
Hierogrammates from the same original life-forms. Their shorter lifespans
may have made it easier to accelerate their evolution. Multiple types of
Hierodules seem to have been made, with different roles.
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