September, 2016 - [
No Link]
Q: Are the Olthoi natural creatures, no different in origin from say a Shreth, or did they have a more malevolent purpose? I ask because the Tumerok refer to Olthoi as the children of Wharu, and Wharu is, essentially, a Tumerok demon, the spirit of decay. I believe in AC2, Wharu was revealed to be a Kemeroi.
A: During my time, the Olthoi were considered a completely natural form of life. They were a menace because they the evolutionary product of a far more aggressive insectoid-fungal ecosystem. If there was a later change to that, maybe it was intended to reconcile the absence of direct Nameless intervention in the Third Sending, as I discussed above.
The Tumerok references, at the time of ACDM, weren't intended to be literal truth, but an expression of how they think about the world in mythological terms. The Olthoi filled a biological niche they identified as akin to their spirit of decay, so they considered them to be an expression of Wharu's hand in the world.
