# Eidolon or Aquastor? *The Urth list — 3 messages, 2 voices, 03 Dec 2008* > 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. --- ### O'Donnell, Tim BOSI *03 Dec 2008, 12:02* Hi Son of Witz, I don't think there is a strong difference between them at all. Mantis came up with a useful (to me anyway) rule of thumb a while back. "Wolfe uses (or seems to use) "aquastor" and "eidolon" interchangeably. However, at times in the past when I was trying to ferret out the different forms of "ghosts" involved (i.e., hair-splitting) I leaned on "aquastor" as being (1) machine generated (as opposed to biological mind generated), (2) having physical presence; leaving "eidolons" to be the (1) non-physical, beamed directly into the brain, seen by nobody else forms." http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0009/0739.shtml To be honest, I think the difference is akin to explaining the difference between a "ghoul" and a "ghost" to someone. (Nitpickers have at it, I haven't checked my OED so there could be a distinct difference between the two!) --- ### brunians at brunians.org *03 Dec 2008, 12:23 · in reply to O'Donnell, Tim BOSI* > To be honest, I think the difference is akin to explaining the difference > between a "ghoul" and a "ghost" to someone. A ghost is a remnant of a dead entity, normally a person. A ghoul is a creature that eats the bodies of the dead. It may or may not have been a living person at some point. That said, I agree with you that Wolfe is using eidolon and aquastor interchangeably. . --- ### O'Donnell, Tim BOSI *03 Dec 2008, 16:24 · follows brunians at brunians.org* Hahaha, Brilliant! Thanks Brunians! Man, I think Ghoul is going to be one my new favourite words. ---