All in all, its not Ajokli's. You keep bringing up magic when the progenitors lived on a planet with no such thing. The IF came through means of technology.
Yeah, I have a hard time buying "Ajokli all the way down" sort-of theories.
We don't have any idea how the Progenitors happened upon the revelation that the Outside (and so, what appears to be a soul) was real and deterministic. We could imagine though, that through some quantum mechanical investigation or something similar, it was discovered that there was "more" to the universe. "Subparticular," in the Inverse Fire's description, could well mean sub-atomic, sub-
any particles, which places the Inverse Fire below that of matter. This could well be what the Outside actually is, the substrate by which all subsequent substrates are substantiated out of.
I am recalling this opening quote from TTT, Chapter 10:
"Souls can no more see the origins of their thought than they can see the backs of their heads or the insides of their entrails. And since souls cannot differentiate what they cannot see, there is a peculiar sense in which the soul cannot self-differentiate. So it is always, in a peculiar sense, the same time when they think, the same place where they think, and the same individual who does the thinking. Like tipping a spiral on its side until only a circle can be seen, the passage of moments always remains now, the carnival of spaces always sojourns here, and the succession of people always becomes me. The truth is, if the soul could apprehend itself the way it apprehended the world—if it could apprehend its origins—it would see that there is no now, there is no here, and there is no me. In other words, it would realize that just as there is no circle, there is no soul."
So, if we accept it's conclusion, that there is no soul, then we must go back to Memgowa's (which, admittedly
could be wrong) that there is no now, here or me. In support of this, we do anecdotally know that the Outside is apart from time, in some way, it also is apart from the spatial map of the world (and maybe the Universe), and in the Outside identity is shorn away.
I've managed to convince myself, here, that the Inverse Fire could have given them view of Ajokli's Hell, and so Ajokli some view of them, but I'm not convinced that it is probable that it was Ajokli that spurred the whole thing on. The Progenitors knew of damnation and knew of it's implications. I don't see why we need another agent.
Back to the original question of this thread (I think) was, how did the Inchoroi know that Eärwa was the Promised World. Well, unforunately, we have no idea. But, considering that they reduced some large number of worlds to try to find out means that there would seem to be two options. If we initially presume that the Inchoroi didn't know exactly what to look for, because, if they did, they would not have needed to reduce each world, just simply look for the signs. Ergo, it is plausible that they didn't know what to look for until they in fact found it. This means that, somehow, Eärwa appeared (in whatever fashion) differently and so they knew. In this case, it would seem that Ark failed because it had accomplished what it was intended to, but this is a poor explanation, because it had lasted that long and still (presumably) had an important function, why waste it?
There is also the possibility that they
didn't know, pre-Fall. In fact, they still didn't know post-Fall. But, the reason Ark failed was exactly because Eärwa was the Promised World. That is, somehow, whatever powered it, or sustained it, or allowed it to "live" was not able to function on Eärwa. This would explain why it crashed without intentionality. Nothing tells us that they knew that Eärwa was the Promised World pre-Fall. Cleric, a la Wutteät, offers us the idea that Ark was already failing pre-Fall: "Only to arrive here broken and exhausted!" Cleric cried. "YES—YES!" Later, Aurang recalls: "He remembered their hallowed vessel faltering upon the shoals of the Promised World[.]"
So, most plausibly, Ark was already failing, for some other reason. This last Fall seems to have been what killed it. Now, we can go back and presume that in it's weakened state, perhaps some aspect of Eärwa is what killed it, or we can presume that it just so happened that it happened there. I don't think the Inchoroi knew though pre-Fall and that calling Eärwa "The Promised World" is a post-hoc rationalization.