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On TPB, was discussing this with 01, who asked why the Tekne couldn't be used to make super locusts or a biological plague.

Also, to add to that, how did they manage to make a skin-spy with a soul? By accident?

Why does the soul allow for the apprehension of paradox, and how was a skin-spy able to come to possess such a thing?

I suspect the Tekne can only make mockeries of creatures that are extant, or perhaps alter them (the Inchoroi themselves along with Wutteat). Somehow these mockeries end up lacking souls.

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I assumed that the Consult had re-purposed one of the Mangaeca magi into a skin spy in order to make a skin spy with a soul, but it really isnt all that great of an assumption.

On the subject of a plague, didn't the No-God release some kind of horrific malady after he was killed by the Heron Spear?

As for the paradox, I may not be one for all that fancy pants logic and thinkenearing, but I kind of assumed that, despite all their animal cunning and single-mindedness,
Skin-Spies are rather dim creations, same with the Sranc.  Men and Non-Men can understand a paradox as a paradox is a syntax error in language, so a en-souled being can
intuitively work around a paradox, but a Skin-Spy is a biological machine, programmed to be very good at what it does, driven and controlled by big pendulous boners, but beyond
its function a total moron.  Maybe the Skin-Spy with a soul was the one Skin-Spy that the Consult was able to correctly wire its brain together.

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Most Earwan animals don't have souls either.  The tekne makes smart animals, basically.  It's trick is being able to control instinct - the biological imperative - as though it were a rational decision.
 
I believe the thing that defines Bakker's souls is the fact that they can apprehend the logos.  That is, they have the potential to master circumstance and break the tyranny of that which comes before, they have some sliver of free will, and I think that it is this ability that (to some extent) enables magic.  After all, in the world of Earwa anything that transcends causality seems either thaumaturlogical or sorcerous. 
Skin spies (for the most part) cannot apprehend the logos, as they are thoroughly enslaved.

The tekne is seemingly limited by the fact that it probably requires ensouled raw materials.  The womb-plague seems like it was caused by gene therapy rather than a virus or bacteria.  All the weapon races are created from base races with souls.  The no-god is seemingly made using the soul stripping golden room.  Even the incu-holonais seems to be some kind of biological perversion.  So super aids and monster locusts are out by extension.

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Or maybe the two remaining Inchoroi, in keeping with the idea that the Inchies have already lost much of their technology, where the Inchoroi equivalent of plastic surgeons in their past, and while aided by the Consult they might have made the No-God, when they're on their own, they're stuck making clever, horrifying perversions of nonmen and spies with faces made of fingers.

Incidentally, I wonder if the Inchoroi intentionally rigged the womb plague to kill, or if something about making people immortal in Earwa shatters the cycle of souls and lead to the womb plague. Obviously the Inchoroi were malicious in their intent, but that doesn't mean they did anything more than make people immortal and watch and wait for all the women to die.

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Here's how I see it:

After the Ark crashed, and the Inchoroi lost several wars with the Nonmen, their technology was thoroughly exhausted. They spent most of the resources remaining on the ship finding a way to graft the Onta. So, while they initially had the capacity to build lasers and a virus that left the Nonmen barren, by the time we get to TSA, all they can do is an advanced form of selective breeding.

It's not like they can build a nuke with what they have left.

Why does the soul allow for the apprehension of paradox, and how was a skin-spy able to come to possess such a thing?

No skin-spy possesses a soul. The skin spy in TWLW fails to answer Mimera's question correctly.

In Bakker's view, intelligent consciousness will always lead one to philosophical problems. Since 'intelligent consciousness' = 'soul' on Earwa, any being capable of grasping a philosophical paradox has a soul. Kellhus figures this out, somehow, and develops a simple diagnostic test for Skin Spies.

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No skin-spy possesses a soul.

Not true, the skin spy posing as Akka's mandati handler (forget his name) has a soul and that is why he can use the gnosis; Maithanet explains it when he catches him in TTT.
In the appendix it is revealed that animals occasionally can be born with a soul as well.

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On the subject of a plague, didn't the No-God release some kind of horrific malady after he was killed by the Heron Spear?

Indeed, sir. The Indigo Plague, it was called. The claim was it was due to ashes from the No-God's body swept up in the winds after Mengedda. But the Mandate says this is a load, he was recovered by the Consult, etc., etc. Either way, it was one of the worst in Earwa's history. So, make of that what you will.

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Sounds like a plan B.

Basically the consult still want toys left after the door to damnation is closed. They are probably stuck in either making something that's not effective, or too effective (wipes out all the rape toys)

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I don't  believe the inchies could engineer diseases.  The womb plague seems like an effect of the immortality treatment they administered.  I tend towards the Indigo plague as some type of fallout.  Being able to engineer a disease would just make things too easy for them.

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I don't  believe the inchies could engineer diseases.  The womb plague seems like an effect of the immortality treatment they administered.  I tend towards the Indigo plague as some type of fallout.  Being able to engineer a disease would just make things too easy for them.

We'll have to disagree that the womb plague was incidental to Inchoroi medicine.  For mine, the womb plague served the Inchoroi ends in closing the world, and was likely intentional.


PS Please would you change your avatar?  It's giving me the creeps.

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Put me in the camp of people who think the Inchies fucked up. Now, I think they planned to eliminate the Nonmen (I also wonder if there were Nonmen who refused the treatment) but didn't want things to go south so quickly.

After all, the Inchies likely wanted to avoid fighting more than anything, given the reality of their damnation.

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We'll have to disagree that the womb plague was incidental to Inchoroi medicine.  For mine, the womb plague served the Inchoroi ends in closing the world, and was likely intentional.

Not necessarily incidental, but rather administered directly (like the immortality nostrum) rather than as an infectious disease.  I think the term 'plague' is misleading, especially seeing as 100% of nonwomen died. 
If the tekne could engineer a virus that caused a specific malady amongst 100% of its targeted genus, all of their other measures were rather pointless, no?

PS Please would you change your avatar?  It's giving me the creeps.

I'll see what I can do.  Maybe I'll go back to the wall of vaginas.  Pictures of Bashrags are hard to find y'know.

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Compared to engineering a multicellular organism, making a bioweapon is cake. I could make one that would devastate Earwa and its lack of antibiotics in my garage for a thousand dollars or so.

I'm going with the whole "The Inchoroi are stuck with legacy tech that they don't understand on any kind of fundamental level" line. Some machinery left on the Ark that allows, with what knowledge and infrastructure remains, for the relatively intuitive rearrangement of organs and tissues on a macro scale with major genetic or epigenetic changes being handled "under the hood" for the user.

Although Akka was quite disturbed by his discovery of the Skin Spies. Not just because they could be anywhere, but because they were new. Which hasn't happened since the Sranc and Bashrag. (The No-God seems to be a truly ancient plan possibly devised before their arrival on Earwa.)

It's possible that the Maengaecca have rediscovered the fundamental principles of the Tekne, or at least the biological side of it. If they have that...who knows what they could do?

All I know is that eating Sranc is probably a really bad idea.

As for the womb plague...it infected 100% of female nonmen with a 100% fatality rate, and either had a long but oddly synchronized incubation period or was triggered through some external mechanism. I really have trouble seeing that as anything but intentional.

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Oh yeh, I think it was intentional too.  The deal with Cujara Cinmoi gave the inchies the oportunity to move freely amongst the nonmen and administer their nostrums to all of them (men and women).  The males got immortaility and the females all died...

There is no evidence of the Tekne being used to modify any species that didn't originally have a soul.  Sranc from nonmen, bashrag and skin-spies from men, wracu from Wutteat (Dragons?).   Even the synthese birds have man-heads.
So is it really bio-engineering as we know it or some form of physicalform or soul-engineering?

It seems likely that the inchies removed certain things like sympathy from their own make-up, perhaps using the inverse flame.
Skin spies etc seem to be 'programmed' by retaining certain emotional hungers and drives whilst removing the need for the part of the soul that connects them to the outside.

Certainly the inchies lost the knowledge of most of their tech after being almost wiped out by the non-men and its likely that they barely understood it when they landed/crashed on Earwa.

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If I recall an interview with Bakker, they lost the touch with Tekne during the first brushups with the Nonmen or right after Sil died. At least, what he said made it seem that way.

On the note of the skin-spies and their relative modernity (Serwe II mentioned she'd been around two or more centuries), I hope we'll see some new creations in TUC and beyond!