[Wic]

"Why are they on Earwa?" I suspect is a question that will be answered in TUC. But what kind of world did they come from? No sorcery, yet they apparently had some kind of understanding of the Outside and Damnation. Is that a 'science gone too far' kind of thing?

[Cosi]

I don't think there's any particular reason the Inchoroi came to Earwa. My read of Wutteat's dialog in WLW is that the Ichoroi had simply been traveling from world to world, killing all but 144k people and seeing if that saved their souls. The reason they're on Earwa is just that they crashed and can't leave. Possibly the No-God seems promising for ending damnation.

[EkyannusIII]

My pet theory is that they are fleeing from someone else (another species of a non-depraved faction of their own race) who were trying to exterminate them. Their motives don't parse otherwise, since they are biologically immortal and had interstellar levels of tech, so they had no real reason to fear damnation unless someone was actively trying to end their lives. This will probably not pan out, but my crackpot is dear to my heart.

Other pet theory - they are full of shit about Earwa being the promised planet of "salvation", there is nothing that can shield them from Judgement because the force they are trying to fight against is the cause of the cosmological structures they are attempting to wield as weapons.  You can't seal the World from the Outside when there is Someone in the Outside Who causes the World to exist in the first place, all He has to do is unmake your defensive measures and there you are.  I look forward to seeing the Inchies rage out like mad when they realize this.

[Wilshire]

Reaching their prophesied 144k and then having Yatwer come down and smite them would be quite the end for them.

Also, if you're familiar with Dune:
Dune spoilers

(click to show/hide)

Honored Matra analogues all around

[RedSetter4570]

[Spoilers ?]

Not "whence the Inchoroi" but "who are the Inchoroi?" 

This is out there, and in no means a defamation of anyone, simply a fan theory (like how I think How I Met Your Mother is actually a suicide note).

Could the Inchoroi be humans from Earth?  Thousands of years of technology advanced?  They have a nuke, which is pretty human, especially in a universe where geometry can straight murder you and your whole town, unless you have a (non) magic rock.  They seem to be he prefect blend of science and religion.  One that utilizes weapons of mass destruction (and weapons of light, or lasers, or whatever).  They can manufacture and manipulate genes, which honestly is technology we can or will be able to do within this century.  The ship is built from a mystery metal, and if a time traveler brought back a set of titanium golf clubs to 800AD, or Chobham armor...and a modern tank...it would be as wondrous to them as sorcery is to us.

Also, the fact that the Inchoroi are looking for 144k souls.  That's the doctrine of certain door knockers, born in North America, and fearing the edicts of Popery. 

Was the Three Seas born of humanity from Earth?  Were Nonmen genetic experiments of such colonization just as the Consult was, sent to condition colonies for humanity that never came? Save for the Five Tribes of Men (weird the five tribes all kind of look alike).

Did Earth die and the last remnants of the dead planet arise in the Consult?  The Nonmen being tools left to, their own devices?  The fact humanity was largely isolated on the other side of the mountains, separate from the Nonmen lends credence to this.  Technology and tactics are logical, they have the same flora and fauna as Ice Age Earth, which would be great for a species looking to settle on a new planet especially after 6 thousand years.

Hence, the last remnants of Earth are in the Consult, taking knocking on doors to a violent new level?  I would have pegged the Mormons to be the last folks, but then again, not as many Mormons in Eastern Canada as the Western US.

[The Sharmat]

Yeah the "inchoroi are actually unrecognizably altered trans-humans" is one of my favorite crackpots.

My pet theory is that they are fleeing from someone else (another species of a non-depraved faction of their own race) who were trying to exterminate them. Their motives don't parse otherwise, since they are biologically immortal and had interstellar levels of tech, so they had no real reason to fear damnation unless someone was actively trying to end their lives. This will probably not pan out, but my crackpot is dear to my heart.

Biological immortality or not if you live long enough something is going to kill you. A few centuries or even millennia is nothing compared to eternal damnation.

[Madness]

My pet theory is that they are fleeing from someone else (another species of a non-depraved faction of their own race) who were trying to exterminate them. Their motives don't parse otherwise, since they are biologically immortal and had interstellar levels of tech, so they had no real reason to fear damnation unless someone was actively trying to end their lives. This will probably not pan out, but my crackpot is dear to my heart.

Biological immortality or not if you live long enough something is going to kill you. A few centuries or even millennia is nothing compared to eternal damnation.

It would be an Honored Matres nod as well.

[The Great Scald]

The Inchoroi seem to be exactly what they appear - a humanoid species who progressed technologically to the point where they could rewire their own neurology for maximum pleasure, at which point they turned themselves into a race of hedonist psychopaths. What happened in Bakker's book Neuropath, basically, but on a species-wide scale.

They're probably not human originally, just a species who had a similar technological progress and reached a "transhumanism" of their own. The Ark seems to be a part of the species' reproduction, "a dead womb" rather than just a vessel, so their reproductive cycle is like nothing human. Their slimy translucent skin and oyster-skulls actually suggest a deep-sea origin - very likely, the Inchoroi were already a developed society when they left their aquatic home and added the wings, mouths, phalluses, etc.

Bakker's buddy Peter Watts, that old marine-biologist, should really write a Spacedicks: The Origins spinoff story one day.

[The Sharmat]

The wings could easily be augmented and hypertrophied fins, like flying fish. I'm pretty sure they're described as having gills as well.

[Callan S.]

You can't seal the World from the Outside when there is Someone in the Outside Who causes the World to exist in the first place

This is the outside that attributed the no god to somehow being the deeds of men?

[Bolivar]

Meaning, sorcery, and the supernatural are all intertwined and it's suggested by Aurang in TTT and TFS that these things are unique to Earwa. It then makes no sense to me how or why another civilization, whose planet had none of these things, would have the means to find out about damnation, or why it would apply to other planets outside Earwa. This is why I think the Inchoroi are just interstellar hedonistic antinatalists.

I also like the theory that they're us, and that the 144,000 number might just be a vague reference from the Apocalypse of St. John that they don't really understand anymore but figured they might as well try to bring about. The nuke also seemed to lend credibility to the Earth theory as well.

We heard that TGO would have the moment in the series' strip tease where the g-string flies across the room. I assume it's the nuke but I wonder what exactly it's revealing. To me, the mushroom cloud is something that is iconic of the 20th century. Unless you think it's teleologically inevitable that all conscious species would inevitably weaponize nuclear fission, it seems too much of a coincidence to me that something so visually recognizable from our civilization and cultural consciousness would just so happen to show up.

[Alia]

The Inchoroi seem to be exactly what they appear - a humanoid species who progressed technologically to the point where they could rewire their own neurology for maximum pleasure, at which point they turned themselves into a race of hedonist psychopaths.

Something like Bank's Culture gone horribly wrong? I like that idea very much.

[The Great Scald]

The Inchoroi seem to be exactly what they appear - a humanoid species who progressed technologically to the point where they could rewire their own neurology for maximum pleasure, at which point they turned themselves into a race of hedonist psychopaths.

Something like Bank's Culture gone horribly wrong? I like that idea very much.

They're the Culture gone horribly right.

Bakker is very much a technological pessimist, where Ian Banks was an utopian optimist. Their conclusions are largely the same, they just feel differently about it. (Bakker writes horror far better than Banks for this reason; he's basically a conservative soul, much like Lovecraft and Tolkien.)

In fact, Bakker's technological pessimism is why I don't think there are any "non-depraved Inchoroi". According to the man himself, the neuroscience revolution will lead to the destruction of meaning and morality as we know it, and our technical progress points that way - the amoral hedonists would've been the elite of the Inchoroi species, since transhumanism would inevitably lead to depravity, while the primitivists who clung to fossils like "morality" would've lost and gone extinct. If there was an Inchoroi Civil War, the neuropath elite won it. Meaning, according to Bakker, is a mammalian relic on its way to extinction.

Of course, the big twist is that morality is real in the Bakker-verse, and the Inchoroi are damned as a result of their progress. How they discovered that damnation, though, is the more interesting question. The g-string is still on, as of TGO...

[Wilshire]

We heard that TGO would have the moment in the series' strip tease where the g-string flies across the room

I think this was when TGO/TUC were concieved as a single book. She's still wearing the g-string, I think.