[sciborg2]

Wutteat, AFACITell, has a soul and this is what sustains his undeath.

But the other dragons, from what I understand, are soul-less beings and this is why they can be controlled by the No-God.

Yet the way they speak in the series, they seem more like full entities when compared to the Sranc and the Skin-Spies.

So...does this mean they have souls? That they are soul-less but have a link to the Outside in order to breathe fire?

[SmilerLoki]

There are some rumors circulating that imply dragons are perhaps living Ciphrang or moving topoi, although for the life of me I cannot find any quotes confirming it.

[sciborg2]

There are some rumors circulating that imply dragons are perhaps living Ciphrang or moving topoi, although for the life of me I cannot find any quotes confirming it.

Bakker did say something about how the Chorae pain dragons because they are distortions of living beings...have to find the quote because it didn't make sense to me how dragons were significantly different from Sranc in that regard...

[H]

So...does this mean they have souls? That they are soul-less but have a link to the Outside in order to breathe fire?

It is incredibly unclear.  By hunch is they are souled.  But they are also something like cybernetic organisms.  In other words, they are living things grafted onto literal machines.  And the power source?  Actual miniature versions of the Inverse Fire.

I can't back any of this up at all.  But one thing is that Wracu show none of the "hallmarks" of being without a soul, with the exception of some sort of connection to the No-God.  But all other tekne beings without souls have clear limitations like being unable to comprehend paradox for skin-spies or being near something like instinct-machines like Sranc/Bashrags.

So my guess is they are souled, but they still have some inbuild mechanisms that render their connection to the No-God stronger than other souled beings.

Then again, none of them seem to really show being outright controlled in the way Scranc or Bashrags do.  So, that might have just been pure propaganda/misinformation.  Skafra, for example, sure makes a "show" of itself as a sort of thinking/doing independent being to some degree.  Not that this really proves much, they could simply just be the most sophisticated of the un-souled things.

[Wilshire]

The Inchoroi only had 1 dragon - Wutteat The Destroyer of Worlds. They found him in space somewhere, probably Cybertron or whatever.

Jokes aside, 1 dragon as template to create the Wracu. The Wracu are to Wutteat as Sranc are to Nonmen, as Skin Spies are to Humans.

They are just another weapon. We know the Inchoroi can't make souls on purpose, so I think its safe to assume that the Wracu do not have souls.

[sciborg2]

They are just another weapon. We know the Inchoroi can't make souls on purpose, so I think its safe to assume that the Wracu do not have souls.

...and yet ->

Mike mentioned this on TPB as the 'question of questions,' but I'm sure this in the books somewhere. Wracu find them painful, for reasons that are hotly contested. One interpretation involves the fact that it's not just places where atrocity wears thin the fabric of the onta. As Wutteat shows, it's beings as well. Wracu, some argue, are demonic in some respect.

Another interpretation turns on the way morality is intrinsic to the ontology of the World. If you look at Chorae as 'logic bombs' designed to obliterate violations of code, then you can chart antipathies to Chorae according to different kinds of violations. Thus the difference between Schoolmen and Cishaurim. Wracu are not simply Inchoroi abominations, they are Inchoroi abominations possessing souls. Like the Cishaurim, they do not so much violate the 'letter' as the 'spirit' of natural law. Chorae are 'ontological stressors' in the latter instance. 

[SmilerLoki]

Ah, and here's that quote I forgot about!

[sciborg2]

Ah, and here's that quote I forgot about!

yeah same heh....makes me wonder to what degree are we Nonmen wandering in forgetfulness...

[H]

...and yet ->

Mike mentioned this on TPB as the 'question of questions,' but I'm sure this in the books somewhere. Wracu find them painful, for reasons that are hotly contested. One interpretation involves the fact that it's not just places where atrocity wears thin the fabric of the onta. As Wutteat shows, it's beings as well. Wracu, some argue, are demonic in some respect.

Another interpretation turns on the way morality is intrinsic to the ontology of the World. If you look at Chorae as 'logic bombs' designed to obliterate violations of code, then you can chart antipathies to Chorae according to different kinds of violations. Thus the difference between Schoolmen and Cishaurim. Wracu are not simply Inchoroi abominations, they are Inchoroi abominations possessing souls. Like the Cishaurim, they do not so much violate the 'letter' as the 'spirit' of natural law. Chorae are 'ontological stressors' in the latter instance. 

I actually, at times, have wondered if they somehow went and "mixed" actual Inchoroi genomes and whatever genome Wutteät is/was in an attempt to manufacture Wracu.  Which might explain why they all are somewhat different than each other, each was some new experiment on how to combine Inchoroi DNA with Wutteät DNA and graft that onto cybernetic parts.  In other words, it was a makeshift process, using what tech they still had available, not wholesale "new" creations (which likely could not be souled because they lacked the understanding of how to imbue that "part").

Not that we could prove any of that one way or the other.

[sciborg2]

...and yet ->

Mike mentioned this on TPB as the 'question of questions,' but I'm sure this in the books somewhere. Wracu find them painful, for reasons that are hotly contested. One interpretation involves the fact that it's not just places where atrocity wears thin the fabric of the onta. As Wutteat shows, it's beings as well. Wracu, some argue, are demonic in some respect.

Another interpretation turns on the way morality is intrinsic to the ontology of the World. If you look at Chorae as 'logic bombs' designed to obliterate violations of code, then you can chart antipathies to Chorae according to different kinds of violations. Thus the difference between Schoolmen and Cishaurim. Wracu are not simply Inchoroi abominations, they are Inchoroi abominations possessing souls. Like the Cishaurim, they do not so much violate the 'letter' as the 'spirit' of natural law. Chorae are 'ontological stressors' in the latter instance. 

I actually, at times, have wondered if they somehow went and "mixed" actual Inchoroi genomes and whatever genome Wutteät is/was in an attempt to manufacture Wracu.  Which might explain why they all are somewhat different than each other, each was some new experiment on how to combine Inchoroi DNA with Wutteät DNA and graft that onto cybernetic parts.  In other words, it was a makeshift process, using what tech they still had available, not wholesale "new" creations (which likely could not be souled because they lacked the understanding of how to imbue that "part").

Not that we could prove any of that one way or the other.

Might be why they were so obsessed with "cunny" as well....

[H]

Might be why they were so obsessed with "cunny" as well....

Indeed, in fact all the more so, since they are likely in possession of part or some of the engineering that makes Inchoroi drawn toward those Damnable desires yet shackled to bodily forms that likely completely preclude even the possibility of acting on such desires.

Then again, given the seeming divergence of forms that Wracu seemed to have taken, each might have been "new" attempts at achieving a manufacturable design.  Or maybe it simply is that there was that they lacked an understanding sufficient to merge the Inchroi and Wutteät genomes in anything but a haphazard manner, achieving differing results each time.

Skarfa at least seems more articulate than Skuthula, but we really don't know much of of the rest of them to say just how divergent they might have been.  I'd still guess that what they were doing was attempting mash-ups of genomes they had on hand and enhancing them with "cybernetics" or at least reinforced skeletons/scales.

[Wilshire]

Its hard to square much of what Bakker says out of text vs. what's actually in the books. I'm of the opinion that Q/A answers that contradict the text like this are purposefully misleading, therefore don't mean what they appear to mean. I also often feel like the world that Bakker created isn't what he intended to create - and doesn't work the way he expects (as he spent too much time/energy trying to keep things obfuscated and created something else entirely).

If not, then the metaphysics and mystery within Earwa cannot be unwound or derived from the text we have about Earwa.

Look at Bakker's quote again with new bold text:

Another interpretation turns on the way morality is intrinsic to the ontology of the World. If you look at Chorae as 'logic bombs' designed to obliterate violations of code, then you can chart antipathies to Chorae according to different kinds of violations. Thus the difference between Schoolmen and Cishaurim. Wracu are not simply Inchoroi abominations, they are Inchoroi abominations possessing souls. Like the Cishaurim, they do not so much violate the 'letter' as the 'spirit' of natural law. Chorae are 'ontological stressors' in the latter instance. 

In summary: Another interpretation... If... Then... Thus...

He doesn't say that what follows after the bold is actually true, nor that it is his interpretation or whether or not he agrees with it. He is simply saying that some people might interpret the text in this way - without confirming at all that this is how it actually work. Therefore there is no new information in his response, just a simple slight of hand. He only tells us that some people speculate this way, not that this is correct.

So to me Bakker either doesn't know (worldbuilding bottom), or refuses to say for reasons that are his own (RAFO, etc.), but since he has an audience here he does a little cantrip as much for his own enjoyment as for those watching.

The Inchoroi being able to create beings with souls really breaks the majority of the worldbuilding that we have. If they could do that, then they'd have legions of sranc sorcerers, skin-spy schoolman armies, and Wracu that spit wards and powerful Gnostic warcants. There'd be no Second Apocalypse since the first time around they would have been successful.

[H]

The Inchoroi being able to create beings with souls really breaks the majority of the worldbuilding that we have. If they could do that, then they'd have legions of sranc sorcerers, skin-spy schoolman armies, and Wracu that spit wards and powerful Gnostic warcants. There'd be no Second Apocalypse since the first time around they would have been successful.

But we do know they can make souled beings.  Or rather, we know they could.  Because the Inchoroi themselves are manufactured and have souls.  Granted, they lost that ability eventually, but they had enough understanding to still use the grafts.  So what it might be is a sort of graft attempting to unify what might have been left of germinating Inchoroi and inserted Wutteät DNA as a graft.

Really, I think there is enough in the text to explain it either way we want to go.

[Wilshire]

What the progenators can do, and what the inchoroi can do are very different. The Inhcoroi at the height of their power on Earwa made Sranc and Wracu. Specifically Wracu to fight the Quya. If they could make ensouled beings that could compete directly with the Gnosic Quya - they would have. They didn't, because they couldn't.

That its possible, ie the one-off skinspy, is not really in question.

That said, I'll much more readily accept any in-universe text/explanation that leads to the exact same conclusion as what Bakker implies. I just don't think Bakker's quotes online are particularly viable.

[H]

Well, to me, these are the seeming "facts" I am try reconcile:

1.) Wracu have souls.

2.) The Inchoroi made Wracu.

It's hard to deny 2, so we can either deny 1, or find a way to justify why 1 would be true where everything else the Inchoroi made lacked souls.  I personally think that there are ways to do this, but other's results might differ.