Ok, this is my first post so I'd thought I'd make one on a general audience topic that you can discuss with your children:
Do Skin-spies have Black Seed?
Most Weapon Races seem to have black seed, I always assumed that it was as an obvious anti-human/natural life attribute that they had but surely the skin-spy wouldn't have any in the instance that it needed to have sex to keep up 'the act'. Think of that noble who ended up dying of sickness during the seige of Caraskand. I'm pretty sure he would have had a wife as part of a political marriage and then he may have had a consort just to appear 'normal' (all medieval nobles had mistresses, of course).
I think Esmenet was shacked up with 'Sarcellus' at the start of the Holy War so I think she would have noticed if he had black jizz especially after rooting Aurang in human form (that was Aurang, wasn't it?), but wasn't mentioned in the at the time. I don't think they use condoms in Earwa.
Obviously they wouldn't be able to reproduce but would they have human appearing sperm? Also does that apply to other bodily functions? They need to eat and drink (or appear to) so I expect they have all necessary organs for those functions. Can they get drunk? I think Bakker needs to give us a Skin-spy dissection (or knowing Bakker, a vivisection) at some stage.
Another thought; if that was Aurang who came to Esmenet in The Darkness...when he paid her with gold, then is the human form another creation of the Tekne? Or did he appear as a Skin-spy? Or did he possess some poor sucker like he did to Esmi later in the series? Or maybe I'm just reading way too deeply into this?
Also how does the synthese-bird body work, do all Skin-spies have them and can detach their body? That would be a useful ability to have, especially for a spy.
I'm not sure if this has been discussed before but let me know what you think. Holy crap, I just previewed and that is way more than I intended to write.
