# Multi LImbs *The Urth list — 7 messages, 5 voices, 04 May 2009* > 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. --- ### Brian Lovely *04 May 2009, 22:29* "They're hiding in animals" Maybe this applies to the Neighbors as well. Not all animals on Blue have extra limbs. Somewhere in the books, Horn talks about eight-legged wolves and regular wolves. ...I think it's wolves. Anyway, what if the Neighbors decided to hide from the Inhumi in animals, and the animals they are inside are the multi-limbed ones. It may be a kind of defense against the Inhumi in that if the host animal is attacked, the Inhumi only gets non-sentient animal blood. Perhaps the Inhumi mimicked Pas also by hedging their bet with more than one survival strategy: hiding in animals, hiding in trees, maybe hiding in undersea domes, and possibly hiding in "the spaces between". Or maybe the "spaces between" part is when they come out of their various hiding places. At the end of "In Green's Jungles" Silkhorn and Hide see a baletiger. Silkhorn has been doing a lot of communing with the Outsider. Hide asks about the baletiger something like "It that...?" and Silkhorn replies "I think so". ...or something very much like that. There are at least two interpretations of what Hide was thinking. One that the baletiger was a messenger of the Outsider, or at least currently under the direct influence of the Outsider. Another is that the baletiger was a Neighbor host. During the trial in Dorp, a Neighbor says that Horn has stayed in his house. Assuming you accept the theory that at some point Horn has been in Babbie, that could be when this occurred. Babbie has extra limbs, marking him (according to this theory ) as a Neighbor host. Also, Horn first sees Babbie jumping from Maytera Marble's island, he has trouble determining how many creatures he is seeing. This confusion of number is a very Neighbor-like trait. -----Original Message----- From: urth-bounces at lists.urth.net [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net] On Behalf Of urth-request at lists.urth.net Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 5:10 PM To: urth at lists.urth.net Subject: Urth Digest, Vol 57, Issue 4 Send Urth mailing list submissions to urth at lists.urth.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.urth.net/listinfo.cgi/urth-urth.net or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to urth-request at lists.urth.net You can reach the person managing the list at urth-owner at lists.urth.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Urth digest..." Today's Topics: 1. multi-limbs (b sharp) > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 08:18:52 -0400 > From: b sharp > Subject: (urth) multi-limbs > To: > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > > FWIW, my impression of the message of multi-limbs on Blue's creatures is the > opposite > that some others get. Having four limbs is not a universal ideal or baseline > (as our arthropod > cousins show); it is just an evolutionary by-product of the basic earth > vertebrate pattern. > > So rather than seeing multi-limbs as an alteration, I see them as a way that > Wolfe marks > certain creatures on Blue as natives; others are are alien invaders. This > could be a > clear message that Blue is not Earth or Urth or Ushas. > > Also, I suppose it has been mentioned before but I just re-noticed Wolfe's > description of > Inhumi as not being good with tools. Add this to their parasitic and > mimicking nature and > I think the connection to Shadow Children becomes quite powerful. This might > make Fifth Head > of Cerberus a very fruitful place for understanding Inhumi origins and how > they think and feel > as they assume a new identity. > > -bsharp > _________________________________________________________________ > Hotmail? goes with you. > http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Mobile?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial > _Mobile1_052009 > > ------------------------------ --- ### Adam Thornton *04 May 2009, 22:55 · in reply to Brian Lovely* > On May 4, 2009, at 5:29 PM, Brian Lovely wrote: > Somewhere in the books, Horn > talks about eight-legged wolves and regular wolves. There's a joke waiting to be made here about "the beast with two backs." Can't quite find it. Adam --- ### Dan'l Danehy-Oakes *04 May 2009, 23:21 · in reply to Adam Thornton* Do the Neighbors have tails? Do the inhumi? > On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 3:55 PM, Adam Thornton wrote: > > On May 4, 2009, at 5:29 PM, Brian Lovely wrote: >> Somewhere in the books, Horn >> talks about eight-legged wolves and regular wolves. > There's a joke waiting to be made here about "the beast with two backs." > > Can't quite find it. > > Adam > _______________________________________________ --- ### Brian Lovely *05 May 2009, 13:11 · follows Dan'l Danehy-Oakes* Some more thoughts about Neighbors, domes and blood. If the domes are greenhouses, it seems strange that the one Horn and Seawrack find has no old growth in it. Where did the plants go? Were they removed for the purpose for which they were grown? The glass of the domes intensifies light, which I have interpreted as meaning that the domes are greenhouses. Seawrack says she has seen structures similar to the ruined one she and Horn find on the weed island. If they are just shelters, maybe the light intensification is to allow sunlight into an undersea dome. As to the Neighbors hiding in animals, I think maybe the Neighbors used the Marc's eat/spit out hybrid behavior of the trees to create animals capable of hosting them. What's up with blood? We know that Wolfe uses blood transfer as a mechanism of personality/physical attribute transfer. Why does Seawrack react at the mention of blood sharing? I just re-read the encounter with He-pen-sheep in the Land of Fires. When He-pen-sheep says he shared blood with a shearbear, Seawrack reacts with surprise/shock. This happens again in Pajarocu. Was Seawrack transformed from a vanilla human to a siren through some blood transfer mechanism? The Mother likely made her a siren in the first place. Could the Mother have altered the Neighbors so that they could escape the Inhumi? -----Original Message----- > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 4 May 2009 08:18:52 -0400 > From: b sharp > Subject: (urth) multi-limbs > To: > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > > FWIW, my impression of the message of multi-limbs on Blue's creatures is the > opposite > that some others get. Having four limbs is not a universal ideal or baseline > (as our arthropod > cousins show); it is just an evolutionary by-product of the basic earth > vertebrate pattern. > > So rather than seeing multi-limbs as an alteration, I see them as a way that > Wolfe marks > certain creatures on Blue as natives; others are are alien invaders. This > could be a > clear message that Blue is not Earth or Urth or Ushas. > > Also, I suppose it has been mentioned before but I just re-noticed Wolfe's > description of > Inhumi as not being good with tools. Add this to their parasitic and > mimicking nature and > I think the connection to Shadow Children becomes quite powerful. This might > make Fifth Head > of Cerberus a very fruitful place for understanding Inhumi origins and how > they think and feel > as they assume a new identity. > > -bsharp > _________________________________________________________________ > Hotmail? goes with you. > http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Mobile?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial > _Mobile1_052009 > > ------------------------------ --- ### James Wynn *05 May 2009, 18:07 · in reply to Brian Lovely* > If they are just shelters, maybe the light intensification is > to allow sunlight into an undersea dome. This is something I have been thinking recently. It is common to think of the underwater domes Seawrack has seen as a sign of a world flood. But the dome Horn found might be a sign of the *drying* of Blue, or of the floating island raising the dome above the waters. --- ### Jeffrey Brent McBeth *05 May 2009, 18:15 · in reply to James Wynn* >> On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 01:07:21PM -0500, James Wynn wrote: >> If they are just shelters, maybe the light intensification is >> to allow sunlight into an undersea dome. > This is something I have been thinking recently. It is common to think of > the underwater domes Seawrack has seen as a sign of a world flood. But > the dome Horn found might be a sign of the *drying* of Blue, or of the > floating island raising the dome above the waters. If the glass intensifies the light, couldn't these be underwater habitats using the glass to provide natural sunlight? Jeff ``` ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." -- Mark Twain ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ``` --- ### Brian Lovely *06 May 2009, 17:55 · follows Jeffrey Brent McBeth* For a while I was thinking the domes were undersea because the Inhumi were unable to survive salt water, but Krait swims to Horn's boat at one point. If they domes are shelters against the Inhumi, there's no need to put them underwater. > If they are just shelters, maybe the light intensification is > to allow sunlight into an undersea dome. This is something I have been thinking recently. It is common to think of the underwater domes Seawrack has seen as a sign of a world flood. But the dome Horn found might be a sign of the *drying* of Blue, or of the floating island raising the dome above the waters. ---