More on intercision

[HopeToBeWill1]

Here's a thought- if killing your daemon, or bringing them too far apart kills you practically instantly, why doesn't intercision do it? Any theories? (Mine is that the intercision alloy only severes some energy links but others remain intact, letting you survive).

Separation doesn't kill you, it just hurts. Will and Lyra and all the witches have been through it, after all. Prolonged separation would kill you eventually, but probably slower than intercision.
As for killing your daemon, I personally don't remember a reference to this. Although I certainly haven't memorized the whole text, so have you a quote please? At any rate, a dead daemon is rather worse than a severed one, I should think.

In regards to growing up daemon-less, I agree that one always dies before this becomes an issue, but if by some strange scenario one lived, then I don't imagine pysical growth would be impeded. Un-sentient (is that a word?) beings, animals and such, age and mature physically.

No, in-sentient. I think....

[keff]

Although, here's a thought (just came to me this moment, so may be faulty, but here goes anyhow) If Asriel's machine hadn't used all the Dust created by his separation, would he still have died in the same way? If the machine hadn't been there, could the Dust have kept some degree of bondage and left him with a witch-type dæmon?

Assuming of course that the shock wouldn't have killed him (or his dæmon). Which it very probably would have.

Did the machine actually feed off the Dust? I think it was powered by the burst of energy that resulted from the separation (but then, the energy might have been escaping or attracted Dust, which undermines my own point.). However, I thought prepubescent children had less Dust attracted to them as it is (think of Lord Asriel's "special emulsion" photogram).

Furthermore, while Lyra was eavesdropping on the Bolvanger men, they mentioned that the silver guilliotine was a new addition which had been preceded by ripping or "tearing them apart" which often led to death from shock. Is it possible that witchlike separation doesn't kill the people because they have a greater purpose to what they go through? For Lyra and Will, it was the goal to go to the LoTD (which, by the way, is a new abbreviation for me), and for a witch, it would be the realization of her full witchhood.

One thing I've always been curious about is how incision differs from children to adults. The nurses at Bolvanger seemed fine (as was mentioned before in this thread, that may have been due to physical well-being, or just being close to their daemons). So presumably they were cut after puberty. One of the children also mentioned that Tony Makario may have been taken because his daemon didn't change very much, although she wasn't actually settled.

One more thing: when Lyra released the severed daemons from the cages, the cage with Tony Makario's name on it was empty, intimating perhaps that she died when he did. Kaisa took the remaining daemons to find their people though they would neve be whole again. I don't think the book ever clarifies where those children were, or if and how the reunion happened.

Well, for my fourth post, it sure was long. I'm reading TGC right now, so I've been pondering these things lately. Any thoughts?

[moyeongsu]

Remember in Subtle Knife during Lee's battle with Magisterium soldiers? I don't believe any of them were ever mentioned having daemons and I personally believe they were severed, making them mindless soldiers for the Church. That really doesn't help the argument, but it did come to mind bc of this subject.