(urth) On dream travelers

[James Wynn]

> Roy-
> Yes, they can be harmed, but let's be real. No digestive tract means, among
> other things, that there is no ability to produce blood and its nutrients.
> Without blood and a circulatory system to move it, the body dies, brain and
> all. Spirit-travel bodies are not real in the sense that they are not the
> same as normal human bodies -- human bodies do not work that way.

No. They are not merely corporeal bodies. They are a lighter. They don't 
need food. But the DO have blood! The Rajan bleeds. The inhumi attack 
him for his blood. They die from physical harm.

> Even if
> you can grant some for-the-sake-of-the-story magical dispensation of
> biological realities, it could not go on for very long. That spirit-travel
> body would soon die without new fuel to power it.

I will not grant that assumption. I have my own opinion about what 
happens to an astral body if its corporeal body dies. I realize it is 
still an open debate,  but even if you don't believe it lives on, you 
can hardly claim that the text affirms that it dies. We know nothing 
about what "powers" an astral body. To do all it does and still remain 
solid would require far more energy than a single physical body could 
provide.

> The stated reason that the inhumi are just as real as humans during spirit
> travel is that their spirit bodies are manifestations of how they perceive
> themselves to be in their hearts or souls or whatever,

No. I don't think, so. Perhaps you are remembering something I am not.
As I recall the Rajan says only that the inhumi are humans in astral 
travel for "the same reason" that human's are human in astral travel. I 
understood this to be that they are human in astral travel because they 
have human souls just as humans do. But they are not _pure spirit_. They 
have mass and they are mortal. Those are BODIES that they have in astral 
travel. Those bodies are different from corporeal bodies, but they are 
in fact physical entities.

>   and even then that
> only holds true for inhumi who have previously fed on human blood. A "wild"
> inhumi from the jungles of Green would not appear to be human if caught up
> in spirit travel; it wouldn't even understand the concept. The inhumi soul
> or spirit must come by way of human blood, in some mystical religious sense,
> much as Christians partake of the essence of Christ in Catholic ritual.
> (*Please* let this not start another tiresome religious debate! I think you
> know what I mean.)
>
> In other words, the bodies of spirit travelers have much more to do with the
> spirit than the flesh; the flesh is a manifestation of the spirit, and harm
> done to the flesh of a spirit traveler is on the spiritual level. That is
> what happened to Rigoglio.

I disagree. It is not possible that physical weapons would harm a pure 
spirit. The spirits in astral travel assume NEW bodies during that 
period that operate according alternate unexplained physical laws.

> I don't know for sure. During one of Hoof's astral warps to Urth, he started
> making little things out of nothing. That violates natural law, in and of
> itself, but then he went on to *make* Hide: "Then I looked around to see if
> anybody was watching, and I made Hide." (RTTW, 363). Real humans can't make
> people. Because Hoof had the attention span of a gnat, he wasn't able to
> hold his brother there for long, but he did it, and Hide hadn't even been on
> Silkhorn's boat when they went to sleep. Afterward, Hide said he had no
> knowledge of any such thing having happened to him (ibid). Was Hide really
> there, or was he there only in spirit because his brother *willed* him to be
> there?

There are certain literary experiments with astral bodies that I would 
have liked to have seen performed. What if a wild inhumi fed on an 
astral traveller? What if one had fed on the generated Hide? The ability 
to generate weapons and even (potentially I suppose) people while in 
astral travel reminds me a bit of the CS Lewis novel "The Great Divorce" 
in which those in Hell could at will create houses, fire, and food. 
However, that case, the houses provided no shelter. The fire no heat. 
And the food no satisfaction. The weapons created by the Short Sun 
astral travelers are quite potent. Possibly more potent than the normal 
kind.

u+16b9