Talk:Ly-Cilph

I removed the content pasted below. It seems to be taken from somewhere else, is not structured as an encyclopedia article, it lacks links and it is too blockish.

I'll check if it is original, and if so will chop it in more manageable bits, write up a suitable intro and try to have the image author's permission for displaying it. Meanhwile, no article, unless someone wants to to this properly.

Tuválkin 21:07, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Life on a moon (one of 29) orbiting a gas supergiant. Fourth out from star, only one with an atmosphere. Perpetual tropical climate on the nearside, moving via storms to the farside where it cools. Very little night on surface due to the proximity of the infrared glow from the star. Every nine years, the moon aligns with its three lower sisters, causing mass chaos, storms, and a new cycle of activity began. Life evolves in breeding cycles that coincide with the nine-year storm cycle. Farside plants are adapted to sun’s yellow light, nearside plants grow dark but are unable to thrive on the farside because they can't tolerate the brief nights when they occur nor can the yellow light provide sufficient nourishment for them compared with the red light of the nearside. After 800 million years, the Ly-cilph are fully adept to the nine-year cycle such that they have reached transcendence. They begin in fish form. After three years, they lose their tails and develop a snail-like skirt. They root with horns and tentacles through the dark undergrowth, finding nodes to eat. These nodes are actually cells that bubbled up on the skin of prior generations and have fallen off of their ancestor's bodies like fruit. Each node consists of the chemical memories of all the knowledge gained by the Ly-cilph throughout time. This brings a vast understanding and stimulates the telepathic center of their brains. Next, they move to the farside of the moon during the brief and contained moment of night, linking their minds to discover all that the universe holds. When the moons line up again after nine years, this cause tremendous distortion in the supergiant’s magnetosphere. Ions shoot upward through the first three moons, becoming a “fountain” in which the Ly-cilph moon moves in to. In 10 hour’s time the moon’s atmosphere and surface is torn apart by storms. This occurs exactly at the end of the Ly-cilph’s mating season. Eggs float safely to the bottom of lakes and new nodes form on the bodies of the Ly-cilph. Each node becomes saturated with chemical knowledge and drops into the thick vegetation where they lie for another three years, until the next generation matures to consume them. The burst of energy from the supergiant that comes from the alignment of the moons supplies the Ly-cilph with all they need to shed their bodies and shoot up the fountain and out into eternal space. For several days thereafter, their minds collect above the moon until the storms give way to clouds, and order returns. Though now incorporeal, their perspective is unchanged. They seek understanding and dissipate to discover the universe. Hamilton writes: “If life has a purpose, they speculate, then it must be a journey to complete understanding.”



A Ly-cilph arrives at the edge of the Oort cloud surrounding Lalonde’s stellar system in 2610, after traveling through space, making numerous observations for billions of years. As is the custom, the being made an overview analysis of the system, focusing on the uninhabited regions first. It learns of the inner worlds first. Calcott, Gatley, Plewis and Coum. Having skipped Lalonde (the third planet from the star) for the moment, it researches and classifies the five gas giants in the system: Murora, Bullus, Achillea, Tol, and Puschk, the last with a “strange cryochemistry.” After 15 months, and having made brief note of the Edenist Habitat, Aethra, orbiting Murora, the Ly-cilph heads for Lalonde.

A Ly-cilph manifests itself to Father Horst in his church. He believes it to be some kind of demon spirit. It analyzes his thoughts, which Horst experiences as a rush of his thought processes “headlong through empty space.” Briefly, he loses the sense of time and place and experiences a complete emptiness that terrifies him. When he regains his senses, the Ly-cilph appears as a small ruby star above him. This sends the poor unstable priest rushing out into the jungle with wild abandon.

This particular Ly-cilph has categorized millions of species of lifeforms during its journeys through space. Comparatively few of these are capable of recognizing its presence, so it is naturally inquisitive about Father Horst and the other humans. It perceives humans as possessing “a great deal of potential for energistic perception development.” This, however, is encumbered with a reasoning mind that conflicts with such development. The Ly-cilph has no record of any species in the universe where this conflict is so sharply defined.

The Ly-cilph is present at the sacrifice of Powel Manani by Quinn Dexter. It detects a slight transfer of energy from Manani to Quinn. As Hamilton puts it: “This transference was extraordinarily rare in corporeal entities. And Quinn Dexter seemed to be aware of it at some fundamental level, he possessed an energistic sense far superior to that of the priest” (meaning Father Horst). The Ly-cilph inserts itself into this energy flow to learn more of it. It discovers that it is an “energistic vacuum.” It opens its perceptual abilities into the vacuum and discovers a chaotic assortment of independent entities. When it attempts to communicate with this assortment, the Ly-cilph itself is invaded and is forced to shut itself down, trapped in a gridlock with these “alien mentalities” until the infinitesimal chance that it is reanimated by its own kind in the future. This is the most basic description Hamilton offers us as to the workings of the reality dysfunction.