: Ahhh, I see. Thanks for clearing that up, it was starting to get confusing
: trying to make sense of that. The fact that until meeting the phfor, they
: believed sentience required being bonded machines is still interesting,
: however, considering their creation myth. It implies that Yrro and P'thia
: may have been at least somewhat mechanical. Perhaps a similar situation to
: durandal and thoth, or durandal and the cyborg.
My theory is that Yrro and Pthia were (at least at one point) AIs, and that S'pht societies are always structured around a central intelligence to whom each individual S'pht is basically a "peripheral". The first central intelligences of the S'pht were Yrro and Pthia; then when Pthia was destroyed and Yrro left, he created new baby AIs, the S'pht Royalty, to be the central intelligences of the 11 different clans, and that this is the sense in which S'bhuth, the Royalty of S'pht'Kr, was a "failed Jjaro": he was the same kind of being as the Jjaro, an AI, but did not rise to their level. After the Pfhor conquered the S'pht, controller cyborgs like the one we destroyed in M1 took the place of the Royalty. And after Durandal liberated the S'pht on Boomer, he became their new central intelligence.
