#this is the perfect synthesis of my genetics obsession from high school and my current locked tomb obsession

[onefleshoneendonebraincell]

y‘all, lyctorhood is genetic

Which is a huge mindfuck

But let’s start with my reasoning for this theory. Which is very simple: when John and Wake discuss her plan, John initially thinks her plan was to kill a lyctor‘s child to get a giant thanergy explosion. And he says that it was a good plan. So we know, that at the very least, John is convinced that a lyctor‘s child is different than a regular child, aka that lyctorhood is to some extent hereditary.

And that just brings us to so many questions: why would he assume that? I honestly intuitively thought that lyctorhood wasn’t genetic, that it was simply something done to the body but not to its DNA. Because (not 100% sure on that) literally everything you do with your body doesn’t change your DNA (not taking epigenetics into account but we aren’t manipulating our dna with that yet). So that’s the norm for people. Why would John know that it’s different for lyctors? Did one or more of the lyctors have children? Did he specifically establish their weird breeding pods to stop that from happening? (I honestly don’t think so, but it is weird that they use technology to have children. Do they have to? Did necromancy fuck up their ability to have children? (Actually I think the books mentioned that about Harrow‘s parents but I don’t have the quote))

Also, if a lyctor‘s powers are (even if just to a small extent) inheritable why make more lyctor’s why the eightfold word? Why not just have them have children? Especially since it could be literally outsourced to their pods? The obvious answer would be that the bond between parent and child is an incredibly strong one. Maybe John didn’t want to risk anybody rebelling against him because of their child. (Also, mildly related tangent: I might be wrong here, but it seems as if parent child relationships like we have them (and expect them!) don’t really exist in the locked tomb universe. Harrow certainly doesn’t have anything close to that. Gideon here is the exception, since she expected (and wished for) her mom to love her, to the point of fighting with Harrow over it. So there is an expectation of parental love. But if that’s the case where are everybody‘s parents? With most of the cast of the first book being children and young adults, I would expect parents to be mentioned. But they aren’t.)

But most importantly of all, this puts the whole idea that lyctors are powered by the souls they devoured, into question. Because it’s not like the soul or the link to it would be passed on to the child. So maybe the lyctoral process fundamentally changes the lyctor and then only the changes are passed on? Because I doubt lyctors can be made as easily as „just by having a kid“. Especially with all the thematic weight that is placed on the sacrifice and the horror of devouring another person to reach lyctorhood. One can only become a lyctor for the price of a soul and eternal regret. I cant imagine a child could just get the same powers without any sacrifice.

(Also Gideon’s inheritance from John is heavily likened to a lyctor’s child, but I don’t think that it checks out. John is definitely something else than a lyctor, whatever he is or did)