(urth) bsharp's Inire theory

[Roy C. Lackey]

bsharp quoted and wrote:
>A "holy slave" need not be restricted to only one race of beings.

>>True, but I can't help but think Inire and the Cumaean are fundamentally
different than Famulimus and Barbatus.

>>The latter are so tall, so graceful so beautiful.  They are short-lived.
They wear a couple uncomfortable masks and are careful to work only
tangentially with the human race.  Their true nature seems above human.

>>The former seem old and ugly. They live a very long time. They don't wear
masks and are capable of shape changing and they interact directly with the
human race. Their true nature seems animalistic.<<

I find this hard to square with the exchange Sev had with B,F & O in Apu's
tomb.

"'... the Cumaean, she was a Hierodule, like you. Father Inire told me.'
Famulimus and Barbatus nodded."

Sev had already brought the New Sun and Ushas was a reality back in the
future Sev had fled from to the past, and B, F & O knew that; they said so.
Why would they acknowledge that the Cumaean was a Hierodule at that stage of
the game, but not point out that she had been some sort of corrupted agent
of the cause? The game was over.

A holy slave serves the Increate, not the Hierogrammates or humanity.

You go on to say:
>>Barbatus and Famulimus clearly eschew the  debauchery of these two,
remaining
above it. I think if Inire and the Cumaean are of the race of angels they
have clearly
fallen (the play does happen to have two demons). Maybe broke they broke the
other
Edenic taboo and ate from the Tree of Life? While perhaps these two are not
"evil"
(Ava warns us against the dichotomy) I think maybe they corrupted the human
race
necessitating a cleansing. Surely neither Inire or the Cumaean survives on
Ushas.<<

If they didn't survive on Ushas, nothing that B, F & O said to Sev in the
distant past could change the fact of Ushas. Why not disabuse him of false
notions?

The human race had been corrupted, in the biblical sense, long, long before
the Cumaean and Inire arrived on the scene. And the sins of the First Empire
were ancient history, even in Typhon's time. No matter who was responsible
for the black hole or when it was put in the sun, it was there and required
a white hole to fix it. The campaign to repair the black hole in Urth's sun
began at the tail-end of Typhon's reign, with the establishment of the
Conciliator religion.

Even if you posit some sort of fallen-angel/demonic contamination of the
human race by sex-crazed non-humans of any stripe, I don't see that it has
any meaningful relevance. I don't see that lust, with or without incest, has
anything to do with a black hole in the sun, which is what would lead to the
"do nothing" future, the future of ice. I know of no evidence to suggest
that Inire was on Urth before Ymar's reign. At most, any hypothetical sexual
monkey business delayed the coming of the New Sun by a thousand years or so.
Given the Hierogrammates had all the time in the universe(s), that's no big
deal from their viewpoint, or the Increate's.

-Roy