Inverse Fire is probably just the ships computer, and the "fire" in question is a computer monitor/hologram monitor.

Try and imagine a source of light that is not sorcerous.  A source of light that is not fire.   A source of light that is not the sun.  Of course it's electric, but to the Cunoroi or humans it's an inverse fire, a light that is not hot.

Mek wanted to get back in because he needed to know the results of Inchoroi Idol, who won?  Did his favorite get voted off?  He only voted 15 times, goddamn text fees.

I did make the point that the Sil, the Inchoroi King, might have left a really, really bad porn around and then forgot about it by the time that the Nonmen finally got to the Ark and found it.

Quote from: lockesnow

Crackpot: Earwa is in the center of the universe and the sun revolves around it.   That's how they were eventually able to find it, they kept going towards the center.

Have you read Anathem? (I'm about to SPOIL it entirely if you haven't)

(click to show/hide)

In that book, there are a series of worlds seemingly arranged in a sort of order of "perfection" or approximation of a central "world" (world in a loose sense). Using spaceships, it is possible to move between these worlds, "upstream", gradually approaching the perfect world through a series of less and less imperfect worlds (if you're curious and aren't planning on reading the books, more information is on these pages, although the jargon might be impenetrable: [1] [2]).

When Wutteät names Eärwa as the "Promised World", I couldn't help but imagine that a similar Platonism-esque cosmic system might be operating here as well. Perhaps Eärwa is so important since it's the source of all moral standards (and thus determines the criteria for damnation)? Given that the Gods are "Outside" of Eärwa, it would then make sense that the population of Eärwa (or more importantly, the reduction of the population of Eärwa to 144,000) would be the goal of the Inchoroi, rather than the Gods themselves. Perhaps those entities are only magnifying the collective judgment of Eärwans (as Curethan suggested above) so that it applies to all worlds?

Crackpot: Earwa is in the center of the universe and the sun revolves around it.   That's how they were eventually able to find it, they kept going towards the center.

I try to think of their quest like this:  Imagine if human scientists on Earth discovered a way to prove the soul exists.  Imagine if in pursuing their studies of the physical soul they discovered the physical soul continues to exist after death and decomposition of the body. Imagine if in pursuing their studies that they found out that souls undergo unimaginable torment because they are damned.  Imagine if in pursuing their studies they tested every single possible religion, isolated variables, kept people sin-free by every measure of a religion to no avail--every soul tested suffered eternal damnation, it did not matter how good you were or how evil you were, everyone was damned because no religion or belief system had gotten it right.

This would cause all sorts of consternation, jihads etc, eventually you would probably have the sect of humanity that won out create a species wide initiative to explore the universe in an attempt to discover a way to circumvent damnation. 

All worlds are the same, all souled creatures there are damned no matter what.  The sentient machine world (aka Cybertron. ) of Wutteat was damned, all worlds are damned because absolutely no world has gotten the magical belief lottery precisely correct.

But, like a monkey typing shakespeare, somewhere evolution has to have gotten it right, right?  Earwa is the first world where it is possible, where evolution may have resulted in a species that can shape damnation, if sorcery is an evolved ability in may be singularly important.  The question is, who evolved it first?  Men/Halaroi?  Nonmen/Cunoroi?  Or were the Cunoroi other space farers who found Earwa long before the Inchoroi and attempt to use the world to escape damnation just as the Inchoroi want to?  Or were the Cunoroi fallen angels?  Angels that attempted to intervene, or come inward only to be unable to return outside?

So many questions.

As you say, the inchies grafted the ability to work sorcery onto themselves (a mostly fatal process - the inchies were moribund before coming to Earwa, so it was obviously very important to gain the ability to work sorcery). 
It was sorcery that allowed the nonmen to effectively oppose them.
They apparently destroyed many worlds before coming to Earwa (presumably without encountering sorcery in any sufficiently effective form).
It is clear that they were searching for Earwa specifically, and that their quest is all about damnation. 

Judgement and thus damnation, seems linked to all souls - think of it as a universal quantifier.
Sorcery is linked to some souls, an existential quantifier.  It makes sense from a self-organizing system's perspective that such a sub group would be locally connected.
The common factor in these two subsets is a link to the 'outside' and the reality altering nature of sorcery (as either a thaumaturlogical mechanism or a conduit to an external energy source) entails that the place where the existential subset is centred would be the place to strike if you wanted to effectively disjunct the sets and alter the relation.
That is to say, assume that information flows from the universal set of souls to some other set via the conjunctive subset of souls that can transmit information (in this case Earwans). 
Why Earwa?  Just because it had to be somewhere, I guess. 

The source of the judgement is more a question than the damnation itself, I think. 
Is it just an unconcious collective manifestation of Earwans?  The nonmen, humans or just sorcerers?  Are the gods collective lumps of judgement and reality altering power?  Or is there some omniscient entity imposing an alien judgement system on everything.  If so why sorcerers etc etc

Given what Scott's said about one of the major themes of TSA, namely it being a metaphysical whodunnit, I wonder what people would think about this question: is it implied that Earwa is the only world where sorcery can happen? I think the places this idea from was ------ SPOILER ALERT-------- TTT. In the appendix to TTT it seems to state pretty clearly that the Inchoroi used 'Weapons of Light', not sorcery, in their first war against the Nonmen. Given how powerful sorcery is it would seem implausible for a race as obsessed with destruction as the Inchoroi not to have some ability in this, unless it hadn't been a possibility on whatever other worlds they had travelled from, and they hadn't had sufficient time to genetically graft it into themselves since their arrival on Earwa. This seems to fit fairly well into the apparently unique nature of Earwa, and the apparently close relationship of sorcery and damnation. Would be interested to know what others think, and I hope I haven't just stated the obvious here!

I don't think Bakker ever pimped that Grok!Studio once, though I'd heard rumours of a graphic novel last summer. I would have pitched.