Subject: (whorl) Inhumechanics

From: Dan Parmenter <dan at lec.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 10:43:05 +0000

Blattid writes:

> Ummmm. A great big "huh?" just hit me.
> 
> The inhumi can imitate us.
> 
> The inhumi can imitate Neighbors.
> 
> How many limbs have the inhumi? And how can they imitate both us
> and the Neighbors? Or ... can they?

Oddly enough, this hit me this weekend too.  I had come to think of
the Inhumi in their natural state as a kind of shapeless bat.  I
suppose that the question again emerges: how much actual
shape-shifting can they do?  And what exactly do they have to work
with?  We hear of limbs being stretched, but how many "limbs" do they
have?  I'm imagining a "radial" design, a kind of soft umbrella shape
which might give them as many possible "limbs" as they need, though
the shaping of hands, even poorly-functioning ones seems dicey as does
any kind of walking, though it seems that the Inhumi can do both, if
badly.  We hear on numerous occasions of reshaping facial features and
the wearing of powders and wigs, but I never assumed that they were
just flying silly-putty with a head.  There's also the seeming
"telepathic" component.  Wasn't it Borski who thought that this may
well be their primary mode of "shape-shifting".
 
> How much "information" do the inhumi get from their victims? We
> know that they get some kind of intelligence/memory/personality
> download; do they get some kind of genetic/somatic download also?
> 
> Is this yet another case of Wolfe playing Lysenko games?

Lamarck games I hope.  Wolfe has never advocated Lysenkoism and has
touched on the differences in several interviews and articles.  But
yes, Lamarckism is clearly one of Wolfe's recurring themes.

Shellac

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---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 12:17:39 +0000

Black Jacques Shellac a écrit:

> I had come to think of the Inhumi in their natural state as a kind of
> shapeless bat.  

Whereas I had been thinking of them as looking like, well, leeches.

> I'm imagining a "radial" design, a kind of soft umbrella
> shape which might give them as many possible "limbs" as
> they need, though the shaping of hands, even poorly-
> functioning ones seems dicey as does any kind of walking,
> though it seems that the Inhumi can do both, if badly.  

H'mmm. Leeches are kinda-sorta radial. At least their mouths are.

> There's also the seeming "telepathic" component.  Wasn't it
> Borski who thought that this may well be their primary mode
> of "shape-shifting".
 
Actually, I think it was Krait -- He says something to Horn
about people seeing what they expect to see and the inhumi
exploiting that, which struck me as one of those "I mean more
than I'm saying" things.

> Lamarck games I hope.  

Uh, yeah. That. Oops. That's right. I meant Lamarck. It
was a typo, honest. Lamarck.

The point of my question being, of course, that the inhumi's
kids seem to inherit the characteristics their mummsies (and
poppsies?) acquire from the various sentients they suck on.

Okay, inhumi life cycle basics. They lay eggs in water. Baby 
inhumi come to a certain amount of development, apparently
even including some degree of consciousness, in the eggses,
precioussss. They hatch in some kind of aquatically correct
shape -- little crocogaters? Awww, cuuuuute. 

H'mmm.  Wolfe describes them as reptilian; I think they're
more amphibious. Anywho, eventually they go on land and 
start looking for something sentient to snack on.

Now, how about this proposal: An inhumu (or inhuma) does not 
get his(her) smarts from who he(she) feeds on, but on who 
his(her) mother (parents?) fed on.

No; that won't work -- viz. Fava having to feast on children 
now and then to counteract the effects of feeding on Granny.
Or is that just physical appearance? I'm so confused...

---

From: Kevin J. Maroney <kmaroney at ungames.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 16:26:20 +0000

At 10:43 AM 3/28/01 -0500, Shellac wrote:
>We hear on numerous occasions of reshaping facial features and

I actually think I was the original advocate of the "inhumi as projective
telepaths" theory, but I could be wrong on both counts. 

It's clear that the inhumi do physically deform to resemble the things they
want to resemble, but there are also some textual hints that they make
their prey see them as they want to see them. (I wonder if they can only do
this to one target species at a time. This would explain why animals can
detect them when they're posing as humans.)

-- 
Wombat, a.k.a. Kevin Maroney kmaroney at ungames.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
http://www.nyrsf.com

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 20:43:18 +0000

> detect them when they're posing as humans.)

My impression was a weak psi-ability that doesn't influence what people
see so much as encourage them not to look too closely and to ignore the
flaws in the physical disguise, but that it could be overcome by someone
determined to pay attention and be wary.  But I don't think it's really
spelled out.  They might be influencing perceptions as well.

-Rostrum