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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.

The latter half of that raises an interesting question, in my opinion, in that, we haven't any idea (unless of course I've missed hints in the text) of the Inchoroi's initial purpose. Is the Incu-Holionas a warship delivering conquerors, or a refugee ship fleeing something, or simply complete accident it crashed on Earwa?

I also can't help but wonder at the effect the Maengecca have had on the development of the Tekne. This idea only occurred to me as I was writing this so it might be easily dismissed, I can almost picture the Inchoroi having even less mastery of the Tekne in a post-first apocalypse Earwa than they did prior to it due to the influence of the Maengecca essentially hi-jacking it?

Side note: Might the Inchoroi's immortality technology be applied to humans? Could there possibly exist ancient Maengecca amongst the Consult? What advancements in the Gnosis might the thousand year old sorcerers have made? If so, there may be members among the Consult that possess sorcery approaching a Quya mage, making Kellhus' gambit for the support of Ishterbinth all the more essential. (I might just be spouting a poor crackpot theory though)

More questions than answers, but I guess that's how you get to the bottom of things

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It's pretty explicit from the texts that Shauriatas is surviving Grandmaster of the Mengaecca from 1123 when the School is outlawed because "Shaeonanra, then Grandmaster of the Mangaecca, had discovered a catastrophic means to undo the scriptural damnation of sorcerers." (p.464, TTT LE)

Shaeonanra becomes known as Shauriatas, Cheater of the Gods, some four hundred years later.

Also, it's interesting to note that the Inchoroi themselves are responsible for the belief in the "scriptural damnation of sorcerers." And Nonmen, for that matter. Though the Judging Eye suggests that Achamian is damned - whether that is because of his sorcery or not, the text is ambiguous.

As to your interesting question, Camlost, in Dune:

(click to show/hide)

The Honoured Matres are thought to be the Big, Bad Evil for a couple books before it's discovered that they are themselves fleeing something worse (though, damnation itself satisfies the "something worse" here.)

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As if the Tekne wasn't enough to contend with.. Madness, your post makes me fear for Kellhus' Ordeal all the more

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sciborg2 has corrected me. In the interview with Pat:

When the Inchoroi began using Men to master the Aporos and produce the first Chorae, they gave the first sorcery-destroying spheres to the Sranc, only to discover that the creatures were far too reckless. Having fixed and morbid habits of ornamentation, the Sranc rarely valued the spheres, and were thus prone to lose them.

So the Inchoroi began giving them to the Men of Eärwa, hoping to incite them to rebellion. But the Halaroi had no stomach for rousing a feared, and most importantly, absent master, and so rendered the deadly gifts to their Nonmen overlords. The Inchoroi then looked to Eänna, where the Men were both more fierce and more naive. They gave the Chorae to the Five Tribes as gifts, and to one tribe, the black-haired Ketyai, they gave a great tusk inscribed with their hallowed laws and most revered stories–as well as one devious addition: the divine imperative to invade the ‘Land of the Felled Sun’ and hunt down and exterminate the ‘False Men.’

The Nonmen only rebuilt and reinforced the Gates after the first great migratory invasions generations later.

I still wonder...

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The inchoroi were moribund and therefore unable to reproduce before they got to Earwa. 
It seems likely that they sterilized themselves to achieve immortality and then discovered that did not assauge their impending damnation as revealed by the inverse fire (merely postponed it). 
I think the inverse fire was a previous attempt to avoid damnation by removing the ability to judge themselves - but it only burns away the parts of your soul that allow exaltation/redemption.
Again, this is part of my reasoning behind the tekne being an iterative technology that works upon the mechanism of the flesh through how is connected to the soul (or the outside).

Not sure how it powers ray guns and space traveling cities though - obviously neither were the inchies by the time they hit Earwa.  Given that the applications the consult have rediscovered also exclude them it may be that these tekne branches are only as closely related as laser technology and medicine in our science.

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I think the Tekne is exactly what it appears to be. A "sorcery" of the material. The same thing that allows this forum to exist in the real world. Any bits of it that are powered by the Outside must have originated after the fall, due to Earwa's intimate and apparently unique connection.

I also think that th Inchoroi's sterility was itself an accident. I see them as a species that took a catastrophic fall down the slippery slope via self modification. Their sterility is simply a result of such a long and radical series of genetic alterations that their germ line is utterly nonviable. Aurang himself is apparently speckled with scattered tumors and cancerous growths from successive graftings over the millenia...which was after the fall, granted. The Inchoroi appear to have reproduced using their ship (Thus "Children of the Ark"), perhaps through some sort of cloning factory.

I also suspect that even before the fall the Inchoroi may have lost a deal of their understanding of the Tekne due to simple decadence and distraction. Their losses both from the impact, which apparently one in a hundred or so survives; and from the initial war with the Nonmen presumably culled most of the technically proficient members of their race. They may have exacted quite a toll on themselves in their mad scrabble to graft sorcery into their physiology as well. They "filled the pits of the aborted" or some such in the appendix. Lack of infrastructure, attrition, and their degenerate natures did for the rest.

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That's a good summation of what I was trying to say.  Although undoubtedly rooted in the mechanics of biology, the applications they have instituted since the fall all seem dependant on the materials modified having a soul.

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The Inchoroi only possessed the Tekne when they arrived in Eärwa. All of the Inchoroi are the products of successive Graftings, species-wide rewrites of their genotype, meant to enhance various abilities and capacities, such as the ability to elicit certain sexual responses from their victims (via pheromone locks), or the capacity to ‘tune sensations’ and so explore the vagaries and vicissitudes of carnal pleasure. The addition of anthropomorphic vocal apparatuses is perhaps the most famous of these enhancements.

The Grafting that produced Aurang and Aurax was also devised during the age-long C no-Inchoroi Wars, one of many failed attempts to biologically redesign themselves to overcome the Nonmen. But they had been outrun by their debauchery by this time, and had lost any comprehensive understanding of the Tekne. The Graftings had become a matter of guesswork, more likely to kill than enhance those who received them. The Inchoroi filled the Wells of the Aborted with their own in those days.

Aurang and Aurax are two of six who survived the attempt to Graft the ability to see the onta.

Check out the R. Scott Bakker Part 2, Sharmat as that is what you're quoting.

I agree with your description here, including the thoughts of reproducing using their ship. Though, I agree with Curethan that the Tekne seems to be biomolecular engineering with the technological know-how or ability to execute it. Perhaps, they had other "technological" knowledge as the Greek root suggests.

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99% sure the inchies were moribund before they got to Earwa, can't remember if it's from the glossary or 'ask Bakker' forum on 3c's tho.  That rules out the ark being a means of cloning or reproduction.

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I think we've gotten that idea from the Dream in TTT where Seswatha references tales describing the Ark as "mothering or fathering" the Inchoroi.

I'm not sure about the logic of a huge symbiotic species evolving while just floating in the Void but they've clearly been to many worlds on the Ark. Plenty of time for them to go from being a reproductive species to moribund, through Grafts, etc.

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I can't remember where I read this (but it was probably Three Seas), but Scott mentioned that a few Sranc and Skin Spies have souls.  Essentially they are (baseline) very smart animals so a few exceptional individuals (Sranc and Skin Spy Isaac Newtons) will have capacity to possess souls.  In the grand scheme of things, a few Srancs with souls really doesn't matter, but the one in a million Skin Spy can be taught sorcery and pass paradox tests.

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Yep, I recall the same thing - I think from the glossary.  The odd animal in the wild is ensouled too.

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99% sure the inchies were moribund before they got to Earwa, can't remember if it's from the glossary or 'ask Bakker' forum on 3c's tho.  That rules out the ark being a means of cloning or reproduction.

Where'd you pick this up? Aurang remembers himself as being "young" when the Ark was in orbit over Earwa, though I suppose that is a highly subjective term for an immortal race. Combined with the Inchoroi apparently describing themselves as the Children of the Arc and descriptions of the ship having once been walled in flesh, I suspect that it was the source of all newborn Inchoroi prior to impact, which destroyed most of the ship's reproductive organs.

Madness: We're not looking at natural selection, but intelligent design. The pacing will surely be a bit different. Though for all we know, they were mules even before the construction of the Ark.

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An intelligent design that, judging by the pendulous-ness of their phalluses, was carried out by middle-school boys.

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Or designed by sentient geese, elephant seals, bonobos...y'know, the really perverted rape-happy members of the animal kingdom.

I must wonder if there were ever any female Inchoroi, and if so, what happened to them...It's  possible gender originally had no meaning for them. It's easy to imagine them grafting new sexual organs to themselves to be compatible with whatever organisms inhabited the world they were culling.