(urth) Neighbors & Trees/Ash & Vine

[Roy C. Lackey]

James Wynn wrote:
> So, anyway, this post is intended as a "proof of concept". An attempt to
> show that it is at least possible.
>
> Suppose the Neighbors that Horn encounters in the woods are in
> dream-travel. That's not hard. But suppose their physical beings are not
> much like their soul traveling bodies. Suppose they are trees. Suppose
> that soul-traveling is their almost constant active state.
>
> "The trees are bigger up the river. Bigger and older, and not so
> sleepy." [oBW]
>
> Suppose the trees and vines originated on Green.

The books state that the Neighbors were native to Blue (lists, OBW, IGJ), so
if they are trees they did not originate on Green.

> And suppose they
> achieved their soul travel ability through some power inherent in the
> vines, or alternately the vines have inherited something by clinging to
> the Neighbors. But the vines are not sentient beings. Yet, through their
> physical connection with the Neighbors, when the Neighbors soul
> traveled, the clinging vines came along for the ride to become the
> inhumi--non-sentient animals.
>
> The Neighbors--as active in soul travel as humans but as free to travel
> as the Rajan-- created their cities, fought their wars, and transported
> seeds and vines to Blue.

The migration of the Neighbors was the other way around. They were native to
Blue and only later went to Green. That is why there are few ruins to be
seen on Blue, but the ruins on Green still stand.

That is what Silkhorn told Hide in that chopped-up conversation about the
Vanished People they had while camped at the edge of that swamp after
leaving Blanko. See particularly pages 352-53 of IGJ.

> I personally presume that the Neighbors did not
> have the ability for space travel until the Whorl arrived. So the inhumi
> were used for that purpose.

Silkhorn believed that the Neighbors had spaceships (ibid., 353). Inhumi
were introduced into the _Whorl_ by the Neighbors, presumably when they
first boarded the ship as it neared the Short Sun system (RTTW, 232). If the
rules for spirit travel are the same for Neighbors as they are for humans,
the spirit bodies of any inhumi they bring along will lose their fangs and
other inhumi characteristics, as was the case for Fava, Jahlee and Juganu.
Quetzal had fangs and was every bit an inhumu, therefore he did not get
there by spirit travel.

-Roy