{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4409", "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": 4409, "subject": "SS Matters Revisited", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2005-04-21T09:10:33+00:00", "last": "2005-04-21T10:50:12+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "<126F4428-B280-11D9-BFD0-000393567C20@studiobl.com>", "from": { "name": "studio at studiobl.com", "address": "studio at studiobl.com" }, "date": "2005-04-21T09:10:33+00:00", "subject": "(urth) SS Matters Revisited", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Re-Posted, with some additions (including supporting quotes):\n\nI am just finishing a third(?) reading of RTTW. I felt that I was \nbeginning to get some\ninklings of new insight, and have resolved to re-read the entire BOTN, \nmaking marginal\nnotes.\n\nI have a few thoughts and questions, though.\n\nHas anyone worked out a timeline of events. I found that this time, I \nwas able to keep\ntrack of the different time sequences better than previously, but on \nbeginning to reread\nthe first book, I started becoming confused just where SilkHorn's time \nin Gaon fit into\nthe timeline.\n\nWhy is Seawrack missing a limb? At one point, I thought Babbie had \nbitten it off,\nresulting in some kind of psyche transference, but I'm not so sure of \nthis now. The Mother seems pretty powerful--if Seawrack is supposed to \nattract at least in part by physical beauty, why wouldn't the Mother \ncompletely replace her arm, rather than just cauterize it? I tend to \nwonder if Seawrack's arm is missing for some specific \nreason...creatures with extra limbs, Seawrack with a missing limb...I \ncan't figure it out..\n\nDoes Seawrack's ability to trigger uncontrollable rutting behavior have \nany thing to do\nwith inter-species breeding experiments?\n\nWhat is the encrusted thing that climbs aboard Horn's boat?\n\n[OBW, Ch6 'Seawrack': \"Something climbed into our sloop last night that \nwas neither a\nbeast nor a man, and was not a thing of the sea nor a thing of the \nland, nor even a thing\nof the air like the inhumi...In appearance it was like a man of many \narms and legs, long\ndead and covered over with crabs and little shellfish and other \nthings...I think it feared\nthe storm as much or more than we.\"]\n\nI thought the broken dome on the island had most likely been a \ngreenhouse for genetic\nexperiments. Possibly human/plant hybrids resulting in the Neighbors. \n--The Neighbors\nwould then be humans transformed to meet new environmental stresses. \nWhy then, would similar domes be at the bottom of the sea, as Seawrack \nmentions?\n\n[OBW, Ch8 'The End': '\"I know of places in the sea where there are \nwalls like those,\"\nSeawrack told me. Her voice was hushed. \"'Underwater' is what you \nsay.\"']\n\nIs Horn made part Neighbor on the island? Or just what the heck \nhappens in the pit?\n\n--It does sound as if he is killed in the fall, and somehow restored to \nlife by one or\nmore Neighbor. I wonder if Horn's spirit isn't temporarily 'stored' in \nBabbie, while the\nrepairs (or whatever) are made. When Horn's spirit is being \ntransferred to Silk's body\n(OBW Ch 16) there is some understandable confusion about who is who and \nwhere, including some confusion between the identities of Silk/Horn and \nBabbie.\n\nIf the Neighbors allowed the Imhumi to became part human in order to \ncompare the result\nwith the result of Inhumi infused with Neighbor blood, where are the \nNeighbor/Inhumi?\n\n[RttW, Ch11 'My Trial': (Horn is speaking) 'That is what the Neighbors \ndid. Knowing what their own inhumi were like, they gave us ours so they \nmight compare the two.']\n\n\n\nWhy does Horn's son see a Neighbor sitting on a \"tree branch\" when he \nlooks through Horn's ring?\n\n[RttW, Ch17 'He Took Me With Him': (Hide writes) 'I held it to my \neye...I noticed the limb of a tree floating upright to starboard. The \nleaves were still silver and green, and the limb was so big it looked \nlike a whole tree even though I would think there must have been a \ntrunk floating the regular way since a floating tree does not stick up \nlike that. There was somebody sitting in one of the branches, and it \nwas one of the Vanished People.']\n\nIf the Vanished People were dryads, why wouldn't the ring allow you to \nsee a VP in a regular tree? Why is the tree also hidden, and why is it \nsticking up out of the ocean?\n\n\nI think much of this fits together as a breeding or hybridization \nprogram. The three\nraces (Neighbors, Humans and Inhumi) are brought together to create \nhybrids that are\ndesirable somehow to someone. This is accomplished, in part by \nbringing the colonists\nfrom the Whorl to Blue and Green. The Whorl is to be sent away with a \ncargo of pure human stock, presumably with the idea to repeat the \nhybridization in another 600 years or so. Possibly this is why the \nNeighbors have 'gone away' --to preserve remaining pure stock for \nfuture hybridization.\n\nHave the Neighbors really gone anywhere if you can find one just by \npeeping through one of their rings? What is that damn ring anyway? It \nseemed like Horn left it on Green when he was placed into Silk's body. \nThen he got a different ring that seem to turn, over time, into the \noriginal ring.\n\nIs one of the three races the method of hybridization, rather than a \nbase stock? Possibly\nthe Inhumi?\n\n[An interesting quote from OBW, Ch5 'The Thing on the Green Plain': \n(Horn writes) 'If the inhumas' eggs hatched in our climate, would not \nour human kind become extinct? What tricks Nature plays! If they are \nnatural creatures at all.\n\tBut they surely are. Natural creatures native to Green. Why would \nthe Neighbors create something so malign?']\n\nIf the gods have hidden in animals, is Echidna in Babbie? Is someone \nin Oreb? Is Oreb\neven the original Oreb? Could Scylla be in Oreb for some reason? I'm \nnot sure why I\nthink this last, I seem to remember some connection between the two, \npossibly from the\nLong Sun Books. A lot of what happened around Lake Limna seemed fishy \nto me. I think\nthere is a lot of hints in that portion of the book that I couldn't \nquite get.\n\n[Regarding the gods hiding in animals, RttW, Ch16 'Hari Mau': (the \nWhorl crew surgeon M'to is talking to SilkHorn after the operation to \ntransplant one of SilkHorn's eyes into Pig)\n'\"...You know about the animals?\"\n\t\"What animals?\"\n\t\"Great Passilk is supposed to be mad at his wife and half his \nsprats...people say they've turned themselves into animals to get away \nfrom him.\"]\n\nAnything about the ocean-dwelling giants confuses me. I still don't \nquite get it about\nAbaia and whatnot. Was he just an alien who was scheming to take over \nUrth? Where does the Mother (in Blue's ocean) fit into the picture? \nShe seems to be less malign than Abaia and his wives. For one thing, \nthe Mother seems to be involved in helping Mucor survive. Either \nSeawrack or the Mother are probably the ones chasing fish up onto the \nrock for Mucor to eat.\n\n\n\nI wonder if Mucor is able to assist with the transference of the \npsyches of others--kind of\nlike a human Sacred Window. If she could appear to the blind Pig, she \nmay have offered to release the trapped PasSilk. She may also have \nbeen removing some rider from Babbie when Horn returned to Maytera's \nisland with her eye. ...either Echidna, some part of Echidna, or even \npart of herself...a sort of recording mechanism by which Mucor could \nplant part of herself, then retrieve it later and access its memory.\n\nIn Rttw, Ch1 'The Bloodstained Men', Hide tells Horn about a dream. \nHide has dreamed, among other things, that he hides under a \nmulti-legged couch and discovers that a girl is already hiding there. \nHiding under a multi-legged thing sounds like hiding in spirit inside a \nhus, but who is the girl? Hide never says.\n\nI don't doubt that some of these questions have been answered \nbefore...searching the Urth archives can be kind of frustrating, \nthough--lots of slogging through barely related\nmaterial that results from searching a keyword.\n\nBrian Lovely\n\nStudio bl\nhttp://www.studiobl.com" } ] }, { "message_id": "<001701c5469a$8e818d10$60a3f63f@wynnhouse>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "thewynns at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2005-04-21T10:50:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) SS Matters Revisited", "in_reply_to": "<126F4428-B280-11D9-BFD0-000393567C20@studiobl.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Brian Lovely said:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Has anyone worked out a timeline of events. I found that this time, I was\nable to keep\ntrack of the different time sequences better than previously, but on\nbeginning to reread\nthe first book, I started becoming confused just where SilkHorn's time in\nGaon fit into\nthe timeline." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The Narrator's rule over Gaon takes place after the Narrator leaves the\nWhorl...after he gives his eye to Pig (RTTW). Remember he got to the Whorl\nby leaving Horn's body behind on Green (IGJ). And he got to Green with the\nlander that left from Pajarocu (OBW).\n\nThe entire Short Sun story is written after the Narrator returns to Blue.\n\nAfter the story has started to be recorded, the Narrator escapes from Gaon\n(end of OBW), fights the war at Blanco(?) (IGJ), liberates Dorp, and returns\nto New Viron (RTTW).\n\nBut as I wrote before, there are still some REAL puzzlers about the\ntimeline." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Why is Seawrack missing a limb? At one point, I thought Babbie had bitten\nit off,\nresulting in some kind of psyche transference, but I'm not so sure of this\nnow. The Mother seems pretty powerful--if Seawrack is supposed to attract\nat least in part by physical beauty, why wouldn't the Mother completely\nreplace her arm, rather than just cauterize it? I tend to wonder if\nSeawrack's arm is missing for some specific reason...creatures with extra\nlimbs, Seawrack with a missing limb...I can't figure it out.." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah. It seems there ought to be some point, thematic or otherwise. (shrug)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "[OBW, Ch6 'Seawrack': \"Something climbed into our sloop last night that was\nneither a beast nor a man, and was not a thing of the sea nor a thing of \nthe\nland, nor even a thing of the air like the inhumi...In appearance it was \nlike a\nman of many arms and legs, long dead and covered over with crabs and\nlittle shellfish and other things...I think it feared the storm as much or \nmore\nthan we.\"]" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh. Well, the Narrator makes some suppositions about this that bring to mind\nBaldanders retreat into the sea." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I thought the broken dome on the island had most likely been a greenhouse\nfor genetic\nexperiments. Possibly human/plant hybrids resulting in the\nNeighbors. --The Neighbors\nwould then be humans transformed to meet new environmental stresses. Why\nthen, would similar domes be at the bottom of the sea, as Seawrack\nmentions?\n\n[OBW, Ch8 'The End': '\"I know of places in the sea where there are walls\nlike those,\" Seawrack told me. Her voice was hushed. \"'Underwater' is\nwhat you say.\"']" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ah yes! And Seawrack is very uncomfortable in the destroyed dome on the\nisland. I have no answer to this one." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Is Horn made part Neighbor on the island? Or just what the heck happens\nin the pit?\n\n--It does sound as if he is killed in the fall, and somehow restored to\nlife by one or\nmore Neighbor. I wonder if Horn's spirit isn't temporarily 'stored' in\nBabbie, while the\nrepairs (or whatever) are made. When Horn's spirit is being transferred to\nSilk's body" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "(OBW Ch 16) there is some understandable confusion about who is who and\nwhere, including some confusion between the identities of Silk/Horn and\nBabbie." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "True. There is some confabulation between the Narrator and Babbie at the end\nof OBW. I don't understand that part, but I think my explanation explains\nmore and is appealing on more levels. I wish I understood Babbie.\n\nHmmm....Here's a hypothesis: Horn asks Mucor to find Silk and because he\nwants to bring him back to New Viron. She contacts him psychically and\nhe refuses to leave the Whorl, telling a lie that it would be \"dangerous\" \nfor\nhim and Hyacinth for Horn to contact him. But Mucor is still helpful and\nreturns with a psychic piece of Silk and transfers it to Babbie. Then she\ngives Babbie to Horn. Thus she helps Horn succeed in his task. That\nwould explain why the Narrator (who contains both Horn's and Silk's\npsyches) is confabulated with Babbie's identity." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If the Neighbors allowed the Imhumi to became part human in order to\ncompare the result\nwith the result of Inhumi infused with Neighbor blood, where are the\nNeighbor/Inhumi?\n\n[RttW, Ch11 'My Trial': (Horn is speaking) 'That is what the Neighbors did.\nKnowing what their own inhumi were like, they gave us ours so they might\ncompare the two.']" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "(Crush smiles with satisfaction). Their Inhumi are like VINES. Note how the\non both Blue and Green, one finds the trees and lianas in \"embrace\".\n\n\"Green is a whorl made for trees, and Green's trees have solved every\nproblem but that one [the lianas]. One might almost call it a whorl made by\ntrees...\"\nIGJ pg 17.\n\nThis also fits with the Inhumis association with Dionysus, the god of the\nvine:\nhttp://www.urth.org/whorlmap/quetzal.htm" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Why does Horn's son see a Neighbor sitting on a \"tree branch\" when he looks\nthrough Horn's ring?\n\n[RttW, Ch17 'He Took Me With Him': (Hide writes) 'I held it to my eye...I\nnoticed the limb of a tree floating upright to starboard. The leaves were\nstill silver and green, and the limb was so big it looked like a whole tree\neven though I would think there must have been a trunk floating the regular\nway since a floating tree does not stick up like that. There was somebody\nsitting in one of the branches, and it was one of the Vanished People.']\n\nIf the Vanished People were dryads, why wouldn't the ring allow you to see\na VP in a regular tree?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What makes you think it couldn't? He only looks at one. But there are\nall sorts of hypotheses for why one might only see a tree's associated\nNeighbor some of othe time." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Why is the tree also hidden, and why is it sticking up out of the ocean?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "How is it hidden? I don't understand. The Narrator says it was floating." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think much of this fits together as a breeding or hybridization program.\nThe three\nraces (Neighbors, Humans and Inhumi) are brought together to create hybrids\nthat are\ndesirable somehow to someone. This is accomplished, in part by bringing\nthe colonists\nfrom the Whorl to Blue and Green. The Whorl is to be sent away with a\ncargo of pure human stock, presumably with the idea to repeat the\nhybridization in another 600 years or so. Possibly this is why the\nNeighbors have 'gone away' --to preserve remaining pure stock for future\nhybridization." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Which begs the question: To what purpose? Especially since the Narrator and\nSeawrack abandon the Green/Blue system (Bleen). Are you then in agreement\nwith my theory that the Neighbors had a hand in the launching of 'The\nWhorl'?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Have the Neighbors really gone anywhere if you can find one just by peeping\nthrough one of their rings? What is that damn ring anyway? It seemed like\nHorn left it on Green when he was placed into Silk's body. Then he got a\ndifferent ring that seem to turn, over time, into the original ring." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes. Damn Wolfe!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "[An interesting quote from OBW, Ch5 'The Thing on the Green Plain': (Horn\nwrites) 'If the inhumas' eggs hatched in our climate, would not our human\nkind become extinct? What tricks Nature plays! If they are natural\ncreatures at all.\nBut they surely are. Natural creatures native to Green. Why would the\nNeighbors create something so malign?']" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah, but there are also quotes that suggest the Inhumi were merely natural\ncreatures whose camouflage powers became malign in the presence of a \nsentient\nrace that preyed on its own species." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "[Regarding the gods hiding in animals, RttW, Ch16 'Hari Mau': (the Whorl\ncrew surgeon M'to is talking to SilkHorn after the operation to transplant\none of SilkHorn's eyes into Pig)\n'\"...You know about the animals?\"\n\"What animals?\"\n\"Great Passilk is supposed to be mad at his wife and half his\nsprats...people say they've turned themselves into animals to get away from\nhim.\"]" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, we know that and we know why. Passilk is called that because he has\nrequired Silk's psyche as a patch for the psyche lost during his erasure.\nBut it is Silver Silk in Pig. They are hiding in the animals. Perhaps it was\nPas in Oreb during the Long Sun but it is definitely Scylla in Oreb when\nthey return to Blue (she sneaked in at during the sacrifice)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Anything about the ocean-dwelling giants confuses me. I still don't quite\nget it about\nAbaia and whatnot. Was he just an alien who was scheming to take over\nUrth? Where does the Mother (in Blue's ocean) fit into the picture? She\nseems to be less malign than Abaia and his wives. For one thing, the\nMother seems to be involved in helping Mucor survive. Either Seawrack or\nthe Mother are probably the ones chasing fish up onto the rock for Mucor to\neat." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, someone like Mucor could be in contact with anyone imaginable,\nincluding races below the sea:\nEither those giants, or the inhabitants of the domes, or Mother, or all\nthree if they are one people." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I wonder if Mucor is able to assist with the transference of the psyches of\nothers--kind of\nlike a human Sacred Window. If she could appear to the blind Pig, she may\nhave offered to release the trapped PasSilk. She may also have been\nremoving some rider from Babbie when Horn returned to Maytera's island with\nher eye. ...either Echidna, some part of Echidna, or even part of\nherself...a sort of recording mechanism by which Mucor could plant part of\nherself, then retrieve it later and access its memory." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, if she is not limited by time then she can simply access that time to\nretrieve whatever part of herself she wants." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In Rttw, Ch1 'The Bloodstained Men', Hide tells Horn about a dream. Hide\nhas dreamed, among other things, that he hides under a multi-legged couch\nand discovers that a girl is already hiding there. Hiding under a\nmulti-legged thing sounds like hiding in spirit inside a hus, but who is\nthe girl? Hide never says." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm pretty sure that is the inhuma Fava who did not return to her body after \nspirit\ntraveling and has retreated to the world of dreams. Doesn't he see her later\nin a dream playing hide and seek with Mora?\n\n~ Crush" } ] } ] }