boballab wrote:2. We know that the Shadow powers are transferable from parent to child as shown by Umbra. She was a Shadow Fox Monster that had those powers before being made an Arcan and she also had parents and not made by the Shadow Fox. Now this tells you that the powers have to be linked to DNA some way because that is that is what is given by the parents to make a child.
Not everything is encoded into DNA. All mammals have and need parasites in their gut to help digest food. In the real world a lot of basic cellular chemistry is 'inherited' via cellular mitosis (when the egg and sperm form) which has little to do with DNA. Also, if we postulate a second vector-component to a creature (or a symbiote) it's entirely reasonable to postulate a second form of inheritance.
Point 3 does not necessarily follow from 1 & 2. We have been told the spirits took little interest in the mortal realm before the breach. If this includes Shadow Fox (and is, you know, not a big pile of horse manure) then before the Breach the being we now know as Shadow Fox had nothing to do with foxes, and might not have had anything to do with shadows. It's very possible the ability to interact with shadow at some basic level was 'evolved' by 'normal' foxes not long after the breach, and Shadow Fox then adopted this species and it's abilities as her own.
One further note on this topic... I half wonder what would happen if Danna meet Kyven now. She didn't feel any attraction for him as a male arcan. (Yes, I know. Just pretend for a moment.) Will she feel attraction for him now that he's human? If they did sleep together, I half wonder if Shadow Fox would then turn up and say, "Of course Kyven is one of my children, and male... <shrug> Close enough. Poof! you're pregnant."
That leaves the interesting possibility that Danna doesn't have the Shadow powers because all the Shadow Fox did was switch Danna's humaninty with Kyvens Arcan nature but left the Shadow powers in Kyven.
Again we're going back to the Earth Air Fire Water system of biology, which I truly feel is a flawed model, even for magical creatures, as I've previously stated in other chapter topics. One big problem is that in order for 'powers' to be inheritable, as we assume that are, they
absoluitely must be encodable as digital information. Which means there is no 'move' only 'write', 'delete', and 'copy', and infinite copies can be made without any loss of data/capacity. This is where the 'gut bacteria' analogy makes more sense. If the powers are caused by a living symbiote (a spirit 'animal' linked to a body) then you can only grow so much at once, and can't duplicate it quickly. In which case all Shadow Fox needs to do is not install the link between Danna's brain and the symbiote, or damage the link afterward.
As to the humanity needed to make Danna human again I say the Shadow Fox is looking at Toby for that.
Ha! Good luck. I doubt that Toby is the type to sign anything without first reading it himself, and having a lawyer look it over. That will not be an option in this case except through the shaman, and Danna's current condition is pretty damn good evidence that the shaman will lie, cheat, mislead, and dissemble for their spirits at the drop of a hat. Firetail didn't seem the least bit surprised when Shadow Fox 'rewrote the agreement' which meant she knew Danna was getting a stiff deal and yet persuaded her this was a good idea anyway.[/quote]