: So "the Jjaro" were perhaps a race, but also a singular being
: composed of all the individuals in that race, whom the S'pht recognized as
: "Yrro". And Pthia likewise, a whole race of beings bound
: together by a singular overmind. Which then makes me wonder, though, what
: became of the individuals constituting Pthia when "Pthia"
: (presumably the central mind) was destroyed.
This sort of uncovers why I don't understand people taking Yrro and Pthia so literally.
I don't know why people think that these are actual individual characters in the Marathon universe. I feel it is pretty clear that they are meant to be the mythological abstractions of entire civilizations or factions from the ancient past.
Sort of how like Gilgamesh defeats Humbaba, guardian of the Anshan forest, or defeats the Bull of Heaven, but some people have interpreted those monsters to be abstractions of real world events. For example Humbaba was a tribe of people that the real city of Uruk defeated in war to gain the lumber of that land. Or the Bull of Heaven was actually a natural disaster that the real city of Uruk managed to survive.
It seems pretty obvious that we are meant to view Yrro and Pthia as the S'pht's mythologized perception of ancient events, while we know the truth, Yrro wasn't an ancient god-hero, "he" was actually a civilization called the Jjaro. I am baffled by people's determination to read everything hyper-literally.
