(urth) what is an autarch?

[Jeff Wilson]

On 9/27/2010 7:18 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> *From:* Jane Delawney <mailto:jane_delawney at sky.com>
>
>     I submit that save in the case of Ymar, who was the first, the
>     distinction is precisely in the ingestion of the memories of the
>     predecessor. Ymar, it is quite clear, did not perform the alzabo
>     ritual upon his predecessor Typhon. There's no question about this;
>     it simply didn't happen. How do we know for sure? Well - when Sev
>     finds Typhon's dessicated and then resurrected body, it has two
>     heads, and they are both intact. Nobody has taken an oyster-knife to
>     Typhon's skull; nor to Piaton's for that matter.
>
> We're probably not meant to think too deeply about the implications of
> the Vodalus method, which seems to work quite well even though no brain
> need be ingested. Nobody mentions it, but shouldn't it be possible to
> obtain the memories of the living in the same fashion, by cutting away
> and eating some less essential tissue (something the size of a finger
> joint is apparently enough). It would be useful for conducting
> interrogations, if nothing else...

I was speculating aloud on that 2-3 months back. The only reason I can 
think of that Vodalus doesn't do both people from the wreck is that he 
anticipates having to give one up to the Ascians but doesn't know which 
one, and doesn't think the injured one would survive being "sampled" in 
this way.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >