(urth) Rajan and Food

Tue Apr 28 15:11:49 PDT 2009

Well, whatever the Neighbors are to trees, the Inhumi are to vines.  Maybe
their base form is the slug-like thing that drops out of a tree on green,
kind of an amphibian that lays its eggs in water.  But if there base form is
just a vine, then feeding on something higher pulls them up from vine to
amphibian.  It's all up.  The uncrossed Inhumi are still vines, those who
have managed to move up a level are slugs, those who have fed on humans are
bat-winged devils.

Crossbreeding.  The corn that Horn seeks on the Whorl.  The underwater
greenhouses, the strange doubling of limbs that many creatures on Blue
exhibit.  I read somewhere in the list a theory about polyploidy something
or other--some biology that I don't know anything about--but the upshot was
that you can cross corn in such a way that the genetic pattern is
doubled...something like that.  More to the point, like beasts with eight
legs.  Who was crossbreeding who, and why?  Did the Neighbors have to change
themselves in order to survive?  Were the 8-legged animals experiments, to
perfect the technique?  

Message: 2
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 07:04:11 -0500
From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Rajan and Food
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
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>He's a tree, he's a tree! Neighbors are trees,
>Inhumi are parasitic vines.  .or something.
>Not sure what the Neighbor-version of Inhumi
>are-maybe the vine with a face that is cut for Incanto's staff.

Brian, let's posit that the Neighbors are dryads--that their steady physical

form is one of the "sleepy trees" in the forests of Blue. How do the inhumi 
make the jump to become vines? Or how do they transform back to 
winged/clawed vampiric reptiles? That is the fundamental problem with any 
"tree/vine theory" regarding the Neighbors and inhumi.

J. 

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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:00:10 -0700
From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Rajan and Food
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
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	<273409710904281100p29971f87s893b7b7aff2a2e5b at mail.gmail.com>
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I've wondered if the strange creature (not the leatherskin) that jumps on
the ship with Horn when he first sets out, which is described much like a
neighbor but faaaar scarier isn't maybe a nieghbor/inhumi remnant.  That is
what occurred to me.

I can't get behind the neighbors as trees/inhumi as vines theory at all.  It
seems like such a stretch.  There is no denying a connection of some sort
between trees and neighbors.  I'm not certain it is a literal connection.
In New Sun, there are instances of Wolfe anthropomorphising trees and such.
With human qualities.  Why wouldn't the same be true on another planet, but
echoing the essense of the 'original' inhabitants, the neighbors.

And I think, in terms of the Neighbors infecting the inhumi on the Whorl, it
was primarily to get a sense of what the souls of the humans were like.
When they saw the result, they made their deciscion that they could give the
world to Humans, as they had confidence that the humans would have a chance,
that the neighbors did not, to end the cycle of inhumi/host extinction, due
to the possible quailities of the human soul.  I think, in Horn/Silk in
particular (keeping in mind that when the neighbors gave Blue to humans
through Horn, he was still Horn and not Silk at all), they saw something in
humanity (in my opinion, not his being a neighbor doppleganger) that
convinced them that they might be able, at some point, to make a peace with
the inhumi.  They wouldn't have known that if they had not first infected
the Whorl with inhumi.

What is much more controversial to me is that the neighbors say they also
spent time on the whorl, and befriended some there.  What are the
implications of this?  Who did they befriend?  We have an inhumi character
in Long Sun.  Is there a as yet unidentified Neighbor?

On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 5:04 AM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

> He's a tree, he's a tree! Neighbors are trees,
>> Inhumi are parasitic vines.  .or something.
>> Not sure what the Neighbor-version of Inhumi
>> are-maybe the vine with a face that is cut for Incanto's staff.
>>
>
> Brian, let's posit that the Neighbors are dryads--that their steady
> physical form is one of the "sleepy trees" in the forests of Blue. How do
> the inhumi make the jump to become vines? Or how do they transform back to
> winged/clawed vampiric reptiles? That is the fundamental problem with any
> "tree/vine theory" regarding the Neighbors and inhumi.
>
> J.
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:03:19 -0700
From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Rajan and Food
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
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Also, it seems like the Neighbors choose to enslave the inhumi, much like
humans were doing to each other.  They were wiped out because of it.  I see
no evidence of the neighbors having" rid yourself of them by being so
passive?they?d take on your Christ-like willingness to sacrifice yourself."
They failed in that regard spectacularly, apparently.  However, Silk/Horn
taking one as a son, and maybe being the first being to actually LOVE
another inhumi, is the christlike action, that 'changes the rules' as hide
says at the end of the Whorl.

It is the Love for the inhumi that gives the possibility of their redemption
and the ending of the cycle.  At least it seems so to me.
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