{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/987",
    "note": "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.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 987,
    "subject": "Inhumi secret again",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-08-29T16:08:09+00:00",
    "last": "2000-08-29T16:08:09+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0011-0197@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "David Wells",
        "address": "adw at ovum.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-08-29T16:08:09+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Inhumi secret again",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I think the idea of a voluntary sacrifice of some kind has all the right\nqualities to be \"the secret\".\n \nBut the details seem elusive - especially as wielding the secret is supposed\nto return the inhumi to the status of dumb predators.\n \nSuppose, however, that the inhumi were to feed from zoanthrops?\nLike those involved in the melee with the alzabo, Severian and the Little\nSeverian's doomed family in Ch. XVIII of The Sword of the Lictor?\nWould not the result be exactly what Horn states to be that of wielding the\nsecret - to make them \"stop thinking forever\"?\n \n...which leaves the question of who is going to \"volunteer\" to be\nlobotomised and fed to the inhumi...\n \nIt's logical, I think, although I can't pretend to believe that it's a very\n_satisfying_ theory. What do you think?\n \nold newt\nP.S. I also think that the question of what happened to the \"wonderful\"\ninhumi who had fed from the Neighbours, and the offspring who presumably\ninherited some of that wonderousness, is an interesting one.\nP.P.S. The alzabo, needless to say, as a supernaturally and adaptively\nimitative predator, is extremely analogous to the inhumi. But the alzabo\nnever got to snack on a zoanthrop, because of the near-100% body count which\nresulted from their encounter. Hmmm...\n \n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}