Subject: Re: (whorl) About the secret of the inhumi, again (RTTW

From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at home.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 15:12:43 +0000

At 02:52 PM 4/19/2001 -0400,
Wombat wrote:

>B. If I am correct, it seems to me that this detail is supposed to be a
>major revelation about the nature of the secret, and key to understanding
>how the humans on Blue and Green could fight the inhumi. But I keep failing
>to see how this detail transforms what we knew into "a weapon too big to
>wield".

         There've been a couple of suggestions.
         1. Wiping out the inhumi would be so cruel that people would not 
be able to bring themselves to do it. Or, it would require so much work 
that humans would not be able to do it.
         2. Human beings are too wicked to treat the inhumi rightly, saving 
and transforming them by offering our blood. Along these lines, I think 
Adam's fine post "Dangling Thought Threads" makes some good points, and I'm 
coming around to his point of view on Horn and Silk.
         3. One can view this as both true, as horns of a dilemma, and as 
an explanation of why the Neighbors departed.

Nutria

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---

From: Spectacled Bear <spectacled.bear at pobox.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 13:29:42 +0000

At 15:49 2001-04-20, Adam Stephanides wrote:
>on 4/19/01 1:52 PM, Kevin J. Maroney at kmaroney at ungames.com wrote:
>
>> In _Return to the Whorl_, Jahlee tells Nettle a secret about the inhumi,
>> which, because of the structure of the story, we are led to believe is
>> *the* secret which has been sketched out in the first two volumes. The only
>> detail new to her revelation is that it is the children of the inhumi who
>> gain intelligence from the blood rather than the predators themselves.
>> 
>> A. Am I correct that this detail was not present in any of the earlier open
>> discussions of the secret?
>
>I believe so.  I don't recall it, in any case (though iirc a couple of
>passages can be seen in retrospect to hint at it); nor do I recall any of
>our discussions of the secret mentioning it.

That detail wasn't mentioned directly in the text, I'm sure, but we
did discuss it here. Have a look around August 2000 in the archives.
Adam, you drew attention there to the Neighbour who takes Horn to the
sewer saying that the Neighbours wanted to wake humans up, not to their
danger but to their safety. Horn only understands this after Krait tells
him the Secret, though it doesn't appear that the Neighbour is talking
about that directly, but about some other implication of the sewer. No
idea what, though.

Peter.