b sharp wrote:<br><blockquote style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;" class="gmail_quote"><pre>Where DO hierodules come from? The larvae of Tzadkiel would seem to be involved<br>
in sexual reproduction. Tzadkiel herself engages in asexual budding and compares the<br>process to that of Porifera sponges which reproduce both sexually and asexually. Are <br>hierodules completely separate from these processes? I think they say a couple times<br>
they don't serve Tzadkiel but rather the Increate directly so perhaps that is the case.</pre></blockquote><div><br>Sev says in Citadel XXXIV:<br>"...they (the Hierogrammates) look both forward and back, and in so looking they have discovered us.... The Hierodules they have found too, and formed more quickly, to serve them in this universe. On their instructions, the Hierodules construct such ships as the one that bore me from the jungle to the sea, so that aquastors like Malrubius and Triskele may serve them also."<br>
<br>Humans have been found, and are to be formed into Hieros. Hierodules seem to be another species that was found and "formed more quickly" into usable entities by the Hierogrammates. It doesn't look to me like Hierodules are budded-off like little Tzadkiel or a larval form like Apheta.<br>
<br>The business of the Hierodules constructing ships under the command of the Hierogrammates contrasts with what Father Inire says of his own ship problems in his letter in Citadel XXXV. He says: "You will perhaps consider the ship I summoned to aid my master, the autarch of his day, inadequate -- as for that matter do I -- yet it was the best I could obtain, and I was hard-pressed to get it. I myself have been forced to travel south otherwise, and much more slowly; the time may come soon when my cousins are ready to side not just with humankind but with <i>us</i> -- but for the present they persist in viewing Urth as somewhat less significant than many of the colonized worlds..."<br>
<br>I take "the ship I summoned" to be the birdlike aliens who attempt to rescue the Autarch and Sev from the Ascians at the end of Citadel XXV. They fail, and the two are carried off by Agia and Hethor instead. It seems these alien "cousins" don't have the Hierogrammate point-of-view about the importance of Urth. If Inire were a Hierogrammate (or even a high-ranking Hierodule) then he should be able to do better than this. He could be lying, but making lying excuses doesn't seem like a good way to win the confidence of the new autarch.<br>
<br>Still, Inire is of a "short-lived race" (Citadel XXXVIII), and the B,F,O Hierodules are said to live "a score of years, like dogs" (Sword XXXIII). There has to be a connection. Probably both are creations of the Hierogrammates from the same original life-forms. Their shorter lifespans may have made it easier to accelerate their evolution. Multiple types of Hierodules seem to have been made, with different roles.<br>
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