(urth) On dream travelers

[James Wynn]

All good, Roy. Few additional things...

> Roy C. Lackey-
> The first of these is that spirit travel is exactly that; the spirit of the
> subject makes the journey, not the flesh.

A person in soul travel lighter but he still has mass. He is subject to 
gravity. He also bleeds and receives harm. When the Rajan is climbing 
the rock-face in RttW as inhumi are attacking he says:

"Here I am tempted to write that the cliff-top appeared suddenly above 
me, for that was how it seemed to me. The truth, of course, was 
considerably more prosaic--I [...] had climbed altogether about three 
times the height of the tower, and so so had reached it. I do not 
believe I could have done it in the body that lay sprawled on the floor 
of Judge Hamer's sellaria. Fortunately, I did not have to; the weight I 
lifted--clawing, sometimes, with bleeding fingers at the red 
rock-face--although it felt real, was substantially less than my true 
weight."
RttW, Chapter 9, Before My Trial


Secondly a person in soul travel is--from the perspective of other 
humans--entirely human. Even an experience as intimate sex, his true 
nature would not be detectable. Jahlee seduces men guards on Urth. When 
she begins to try to seduce Hide, the Rajan says:

"Honesty compels me to tell you that Jahlee is not an inhuma at present. 
She is a human being here, exactly as we are, and I believe for the same 
reason. But if we return to our real whorl, and I believe that we will, 
she will be again what she was before we came. "
IGJ page 319

> Roy C. Lackey-
> When Quetzal died on Horn's lander his body reverted to its natural inhumi
> shape, the reptilian horror that caused Moorgrass and Nettle to scream
> (EXODUS, 381).

"Returns to it's natural state" only from the perspective of humans. In 
fact, they never really change. Inhumi wear make-up and costumes. The 
rest of the ruse seems to be performed by something of a "glamour" such 
as Gideon Chase used in "An Evil Guest". Krait presents this ability as 
nothing more than a common, low-rent illusion. But his ability to come 
off as human with only a shirt and pants, or the ability to hide even 
his presence to selected people in attendance during a conversation with 
the resurrected HORN suggests it is a more advanced ability than 
that--although founded on similar principles. The inhumi cause others to 
see them as they want to be seen as Krait explains:

"Krait nodded. "You said you thought he was an old man, and you were 
angry because he had tricked you. You told me some trooper shot and 
killed him." I nodded.
        "Did you see his corpse?" [...] Did he look like an old man 
then?" [...] He didn't look like an old man anymore, did he? He couldn't 
have."
        I shook my head.
        "What did he look like?"
        "He looked like you."
        When Krait said nothing, only transfixing me with his hypnotic 
stare, I added, "He powdered his face, and painted it. Like a woman. We 
found the powder and rouge in a pocket of his robe. So would I if I had 
those things, just as I wear this shirt and these pants, which I took 
from you. The eyes see what the mind expects, Horn. Babbie there, lying 
still with a green twig in his mouth, could make you think he was a 
bush, if you were expecting to see a bush."
"The young siren you call Seawrack doesn't see me the way you do.[...] 
Knowing that, is it so hard for you to believe that at times she doesn't 
hear me /at all/? [...]If she's listening, she hears you alone, Father. 
Only the murmur of your voice. She probably thinks you're talking to 
yourself, or to your hus."
~ OBW, Chapter 10, Seawrack's Ring

u+16b9



On 2/10/2011 1:59 PM, Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> Most of the following was written months ago in the context of another
> argument, but I decided it just wasn't worth the effort to pursue at the
> time. I trot it out now because it has some relevance to current
> discussions.
>
> I am going to lay out some not-so-random textual conditions imposed on those
> who dream/spirit travel.
>
> The first of these is that spirit travel is exactly that; the spirit of the
> subject makes the journey, not the flesh. This is explicitly stated by
> Silkhorn the first time he went to Urth with Jahlee and Rigoglio. This may
> seem just too obvious to mention, but maybe not. "We are spirits here.
> Watch." (IGJ, 320) He then proceeded to shape a sword that looked like the
> one Horn had on Green, out of nothing. Other weapons, garments, the gold he
> gave the _Samru_ captain on Urth, etc., were not real, none of it. These
> objects could also be made to disappear, like the slug gun Hide had in
> Maliki's village on Green. The ability to conjure objects out of nothing was
> not peculiar to Silkhorn; Hoof and Hide also did it.
>
> The spirit travelers themselves are not real, not real in the sense that a
> stone or slug gun or table are real. Physical objects such as these cannot
> be transported between the start and destination locations. One of the
> consequences of spirit-only travel is that the travelers -- whether human or
> inhumi -- can eat food at the destination location , but it is a pointless
> exercise because they have no digestive system. This is *expressly* stated
> by Silkhorn, in a paragraph too long for me to copy out, on page 266 of
> RTTW.
>
> Another consequence of spirit-only travel is that the travelers, because
> they are not real, can and do violate other natural laws of physics. This is
> demonstrated many times in the text, such as when Jahlee walked right
> through the locked door of her cell in the Matachin tower (ibid, 267), and
> when Silkhorn and Hoof walked right through the Curtain wall at the Citadel
> to get to the necropolis (ibid, 395).
>
> We have the examples of Rigoglio and other humans who died at the
> spirit-travel destination, but their bodies back on Blue did not die, they
> just lost their animating spirit. We have no example of an inhumi who died
> at the spirit-travel destination, but Fava's body on Blue did.
>
> When Quetzal died on Horn's lander his body reverted to its natural inhumi
> shape, the reptilian horror that caused Moorgrass and Nettle to scream
> (EXODUS, 381). This demonstrates that Quetzal did not get to the LSW by way
> of spirit travel; his body was his real body, not a spirit-travel body.
>
> There is no textual justification to suppose that the rules that govern
> spirit travel were any different for the Neighbors.
>
> -Roy
>
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