{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1802",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1802,
    "subject": "Hethor's Slug Revisited",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-09-30T16:40:17+00:00",
    "last": "1999-09-30T16:40:17+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0148@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Greene, Carlton",
        "address": "cgreene2 at hunton.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-09-30T16:40:17+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Hethor's Slug Revisited",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Robert Borski wrote:\n\nhence I'd like to quibble with Mother Pyrexia's entry in LEX-URTH (\"She had\nchanged into something very strange when the house was opened, a noctural\ncreature, and was quickly killed\"), arguing that she may well have lived,\ntaking to the woods about Salthus until Hethor arrives. (He's in the crowd\nat Morweena's execution.) Somehow, beastmaster Hethor is able to\nenlist/compell her aid and I believe it's the transmogrified Mother Pyrexia\nwho attacks Severian in the antechamber and underground cell of the\nMagician's Academy (both places are dark)--not some giant interstellar slug.\n\n\nI think it unlikely that Hethor's slug and the former Mother Pyrexia are the\nsame creature.  When Severian finally encounters the snuffling slime\ncreature in person, he describes it as a brown, pudding like mass nearly the\nsize of a destrier -- presumably much larger than an old woman.  More\nimportantly, there is no indication that Hethor's pudding monster had reason\nto fear fire; instead, when Severian was faced with the monster in the\nwooden long house (during the battle of the magicians) the monster appears\nto be able to snuff out the torches remotely --\n\nin came \"what had been the bottom of some fetid marsh.  It flowed around the\ndoorposts blindly and softly, and as it did, another torch went out.\"  III\nat 147.\n\nlater in the same scene, the creature has melted Decuman and is advancing on\nSeverian:\n\n\"The creature was turning, blindly but purposefully ... To get one of the\ntwo remaining torches, I had to run toward the creature.  I did and seized\nthe torch, but it went out as I took it from its bracket.\"  III at 148.\n\nIn light of the exceptional size of the creature and its ability to douse\nfires, it seems to be a far different creature from the nocturnal,\nfire-fearing ex-Mother Pyrexia -- Hethor's slug would have just doused any\ntorches carried by Saltus villagers, and slurped them up in its destrier\nsized bulk.  :) "
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}