# Inire's...Things *The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 13 Jun 1998* > 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. --- ### m.driussi *13 Jun 1998, 01:09* Spectacled Bear, Ah, so magic mirrors are "machines"? I hadn't really thought of them in that sense. A sort of clockwork? Mechanical? But not the Botanical Gardens, surely, nor the second house, for these are architectural, aren't they? No, I really am kidding. Machines, devices, tools, dinguses. There seems to be a lack of what standard skiffy calls "robots," but this might be because the android sailors are a race apart and long emancipated, and the magical sciences of Urth are more tuned toward self-repairing biologicals. The idle idol carvers, loitering in the lap of long loyal luxury, like lice . . . oh, stop right there . . . at the turgid Tower of Power in the Cursed Town of scenic Mount Typhon. But there is the "isochronon," a gift to the autarch from the ruler of some other planet (III, ch. 34) which might be a nightwatch robot or just a mechanical clock. Granted, if there is a pacing tower (which tripod locomotion do you prefer: (1) "Peg-leg" [ba-BOOM, ba-BOOM]; (2) "Stampy" [BOOM-ba, BOOM-ba]; or (3) "Whirling Waltzer" [ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba]?) at the root of the continent, we will say that it is Inire's. But it just seems so =different= from Inire's style. The picture leading into the second house that also has a metal detector which traps the individual and summons a human; endless mazes, bending time in the case of the Botanical Gardens, bending space in the case of the second house; and when I think of servitors of Inire, I think first of the imps, the creatures of the mirrors, and unseen spirits (genii or hatifs or daemons). Or cagey codgers like beloved old Rudesind the curator--"That's right. That's right. There's a logical explanation for everything, and don't you forget it" (II, ch. 20). Maybe even talking mirrors like the monitors of the Whorl, or talking doors like those on the ship _Tzadkiel_ . . . in fact, everything on that ship is the sort of Alice-in-Wonderland level of Yesodic techno-magic I associate with Inire. Where look, even this picture in a cabin is a window to another dimension; all you have to do is place your chair beneath it, then step up and through . . . Careful with that teleporter as a way to build your ship in a bottle! I'm still far from convinced that anything "beamed out" from Briah will be easily found anywhere in Briah; or that anything "beamed in" to Briah comes from anywhere in Briah. Anyway, whatever the stampy thing down there is (oh hell, it's Behemoth to match the Leviathan of Abaia), I thought that it's stamping was not a signal that it was coming because "the man-apes aren't coping," as you put it. My impression was that it was more like a mother stomping her foot and saying, "Don't mess wif da holy man! D'ja hear me? Git in here, right now, else I gonna whip you little butts!" That is, calling off the dogs rather than coming out with a shotgun. And see how they run! (In a Tolkien setting it would be, what, a Balrog coming up the volcano vent?) =mantis= --- ### CRCulver *13 Jun 1998, 01:50 · follows m.driussi* After a forced absence (I haven't read FHoC, darnit!) I am happy to be contributing now that the BotNS is being discussed again. Mantis said: I always thought it was the water clock mentioned in another part of the text (no citation at the moment, I'm afraid). Mantis continued: Inire's technology appears to be magic, it is so different from the somewhat- real science of the ship of Tzadkiel. A lumbering thing isn't what I would thing of as a creation of Father Inire. Mantis also said: <(In a Tolkien setting it would be, what, a Balrog coming up the volcano vent?)> Yes, and the man-apes would represent the Orcs of Moria. This scene always struck me as taken right from Tolkien; so much so that the "thing" which lumbers out of the depths would be a living thing and not a machine. Christopher R. Culver http://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html ------------------------------------------------ "The darkest dreams are the ones that come true." -Warren Defever --- ### Charles Dye *14 Jun 1998, 12:25 · follows CRCulver* CRCulver at aol.com writes: > Mantis said: > other planet (III, ch. 34) which might be a nightwatch robot or just a > mechanical clock.> > > I always thought it was the water clock mentioned in another part of the text > (no citation at the moment, I'm afraid). I don't think so. Water clocks have been around for a long, long time, but they're not terribly useful by modern standards. The flow rate of the water tends to vary with the supply pressure, i.e. the amount of water remaining in the supply vessel, and other factors like temperature. Silt or dust can also affect the flow rate. Water clocks are, in other words, not isochronous. (There are at least two references to water clocks in The Book. In Dr. Talos's play, a demon provides an inverted explanation of the clepsydra Jahi hides behind: "knowing what time it is, [you] can tell by that how much water's flowed." And Thecla substitutes a water clock into Kepler's clockwork universe: God has built it, but who will refill the supply?) raster at highfiber.com ---