(urth) Like a good Neighbor

[David Stockhoff]

On 11/23/2011 2:29 PM, James Wynn wrote:
>
>> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
>> OK, let's see if I can summarize this correctly. You believe that
>>
>> (a) the Neighbors are sentient trees native to Blue, who can astrally
>> project into the form the Narrator meets;
>>
>> (b) the inhumi are not-natively-sentient reptiles or amphibians native
>> to Green, who take on the nature of what they feed on (at least in
>> their offspring);
>>
>> (c) because they fed on Neighbors, who are trees, the inhumi "take on"
>> a sort of tree-ishness and become lianas.
>>
>> Is that correct?
>
> Precisely correct except that "reptile" is an analogy. One should not 
> assume a true reptile nature.
>
> As the Rajan says:
> "These people, like people everywhere here, seem to fear that an 
> inhumu may live on even with its head severed. That is not the case, 
> of course; but I cannot help wondering how the superstition originated 
> and became so widespread. Certainly the inhumi have no bones as we 
> understand them. Possibly their skeletons are cartilage, as those of 
> some sea-creatures are. On Green, Geier maintained that the inhumi are 
> akin to slugs and leeches. No one, I believe, took him seriously; yet 
> it is certain that once dead they decay very quickly, though they are 
> difficult to kill and can survive for weeks and even months without 
> the blood that is their only food. "
> ~ OBW chapter 4

Interestingly, that is much more true of slugs than of most plants and 
plant parts. Even fruits stick around unless they are opened. I have 
always assumed that at base the inhumi were indeed soft parasitic bugs. 
They still could be---the forests of Green are evolutionarily impossible 
without bugs of some kind. You need a long war between predator and prey 
to evolve new forms.

And I think this is thematically possible as well---after all, no one 
knew 2000 years ago that grapes became wine because they have yeast 
bacteria embedded in their skins. Such bugs---slugs---blugs---could have 
merged with plants millennia ago and provided some basic genetic coding 
like the bacteria needed in the gut to break down food. We know a 
species of seaslug contains algae; this is but the reverse.

That was "then." Inhumi could be closer to plants now.