More 5HC questions The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 17 Jun 1998 https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/820 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. ============================================================================== Neal Smith — 17 Jun 1998, 14:14 I had mentioned in passing the addictive substances that the Shadow Children used in "A Story", in response to a post of Alga's. Later, this made me think: how much significance should we attach to this substance? I seem to remember a passage, perhaps the same one, where use of the drug is linked to not being able to use tools. (I'm not completely certain of this, not having the book in front of me at the moment). Exploring this, would this indicate that the factors causing the abos to not be able to use tools are more environmental? Perhaps the abos are capable of using tools, if they can recover sufficiently, but the "humans" (non-abos?) aren't used to seeing them that way. Is this related to Roy T. being a drunkard? Is it stated that he drinks, or that he's intoxicated - possibly on something else? (I think it is stated he drinks, but I'm going to have to go back and look now). The reason this takes on any significance, is that most of the arguments for or against abos or half-abos still being around, or not, seem to focus on just how much tool use some of the characters demonstrate. Just some questions - I'll be looking back over the story to see if any of this is supported. Anyone else have thoughts on the topic? Neal Smith ------------------------------------------------------------------------------