(urth) Like a good Neighbor

[Marc Aramini]

I think this is backwards.  The trees and vines both fed on sentient beings in the past and revert to their natural primitive state without that influx of sentience.  The inhumi really are what they consume, and that is very very clear from the text.  They started as lianas then became animals through consuming animals.

--- On Wed, 11/23/11, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:

> From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: (urth) Like a good Neighbor
> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Date: Wednesday, November 23, 2011, 12:14 PM
> 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.
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