Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is The
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind, focusing in non mythical creatures, ideas and monsters
Speaker 2: in time. On today's special omnibus episode of Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your minds The Monster Fact, We're going to dive
Speaker 2: into a little Chaos undivided if you will. We have
Speaker 2: all four previously published episodes of The Monster Fact concerning
Speaker 2: the chaos demons of Games Workshops Warhammer forty thousand Universe
Speaker 2: rank and file beside each other. So upburst, let's get
Speaker 2: to know the blood God Corn. In this episode, I'm
Speaker 2: beginning a four part Monster Fact series on the four
Speaker 2: main demonic factions in Games Workshops Warhammer for fourty thousand
Speaker 2: univers So first, a little background. The fictional far future
Speaker 2: forty KSE setting depicts an interstellar human imperium with various dark,
Speaker 2: fantasy and medieval elements. This aggressive imperium is challenged on
Speaker 2: all sides by equally warlike alien societies, but they also
Speaker 2: face the threat of chaos. In the forty KSE setting,
Speaker 2: the demons of chaos exist in a psychic dimension called
Speaker 2: the warp, but they can spill over into what is
Speaker 2: called real space through various methods and exploits, so in
Speaker 2: this setting, demons are not the mere creation of religion
Speaker 2: or occultism, but an actual spiritual and physical threat to humanity.
Speaker 2: Heretical drift on a far flung planet can mean far
Speaker 2: more than just mere rebellion. It can lead to a
Speaker 2: demonic incursion that consumes billions of souls. There are various
Speaker 2: ways to divide up de factions in a created world
Speaker 2: like this, but forty K largely splits the forces of
Speaker 2: chaos into four distinct flavors, red, blue, green, and purple,
Speaker 2: representing bloodthirst, chaotic change, pestilence, and hedonism, each a major
Speaker 2: conduit of mortal emotions and mortal souls in the fictional
Speaker 2: forty first millennium, with each conduit accreting into a powerful
Speaker 2: entity known as a chaos god. They are corn Zinch, Nurgle,
Speaker 2: and Slannesh. There are other lesser chaos gods as well,
Speaker 2: but these are the four main factions, and while they
Speaker 2: sometimes come to a working agreement with each other, they're
Speaker 2: mostly at war amongst themselves. In what is referred to
Speaker 2: as the Great Game. In this episode, we'll start with
Speaker 2: Corn as the so called Blood God is a lot
Speaker 2: more direct. He's powered by mortal violence and war. He's
Speaker 2: all about rivers of blood and pyramids of bone. His
Speaker 2: favorite color is obviously red, and he's not big on subtlety.
Speaker 2: His demonic Hords and mortal followers dig horns and blades.
Speaker 2: They spill blood for the Blood God. So really there's
Speaker 2: not much to elaborate on here. However, in browsing through
Speaker 2: the ninth edition Chaos Demons Codex from Games Workshop, I
Speaker 2: simply couldn't let the unit known as a skull cannon
Speaker 2: pass without comment. There's a lot of talk of skull
Speaker 2: harvesting with some of the other Corn units, and this
Speaker 2: one amounts to a big honking heavy metal cannon. A
Speaker 2: couple of red demons called blood Letters crew the weapon,
Speaker 2: loading it up with the fresh remains of slain enemy soldiers.
Speaker 2: The cannon breaks everything down and then fires flaming skulls
Speaker 2: across the battlefield, again fittingly direct. Thus far, in actual
Speaker 2: human warfare, skulls and heads have proven poor missiles, but
Speaker 2: the presentation of decapitated heads to the enemy has a
Speaker 2: long history with plentiful examples to be found in the
Speaker 2: classical and ancient world. The heads of enemy dead might
Speaker 2: be delivered directly to enemy lines. They might be placed
Speaker 2: on spikes or what have you. Ruth Schuster, writing for
Speaker 2: Hauritz in twenty eighteen, points out that Iron Age gauls
Speaker 2: even developed a resin based embalming method to ensure the
Speaker 2: captured heads of their enemies didn't rot too fast. As
Speaker 2: Peter Francopin points out in his book The First Crusade
Speaker 2: The Call from the East, the Crusades saw a lot
Speaker 2: of head taking on both sides, and there are Western
Speaker 2: accounts of crusader heads being catapulted back into their siege
Speaker 2: camps in order to hurt morale. The same terror tactics
Speaker 2: were said to have been used by French crusader hosts
Speaker 2: as well. This according to the French themselves in the
Speaker 2: Old French Crusader Cycle. According to Sarah Grace Heller in
Speaker 2: twenty eleven's Terror in the Old French Crusade Cycle, Various
Speaker 2: other catapult Age accounts described the launching of dead bodies
Speaker 2: into camps and besieged cities as a means of terror
Speaker 2: and or biological attack. The age of the cannon presented
Speaker 2: various new ideas of how cannons might be used in
Speaker 2: one way or another to spread human remains. None of
Speaker 2: these methods use the remains as ammo against other combatants,
Speaker 2: but are worth noting. Nonetheless, the execution method known as
Speaker 2: blowing from a gun often entailed the strapping of a
Speaker 2: live victim to the mouth of a cannon, resulting in
Speaker 2: partial or complete scattering of the remains. On the other
Speaker 2: end of the spectrum, cremated ashes are on occasions spread
Speaker 2: by cannon fire as a desired dramatic, funerary rite in
Speaker 2: modern times. In a broader sense, however, the use of
Speaker 2: human remains as weapons dates back to prehistory. Europeans were
Speaker 2: crafting human bones into weapons at least ten thousand years ago,
Speaker 2: a practice that continued into recent centuries for other far
Speaker 2: flung cultures, at least for symbolic and spiritual reasons. Now,
Speaker 2: as far as the creation and veneration of artifacts made
Speaker 2: from human bones goes, this is the kind of thing
Speaker 2: that's probably lost on the chaos god Corn. All he
Speaker 2: cares about is the hacking, of the stabbing, and of
Speaker 2: course the occasional explosively propelled pyrotechnic human skull. And now
Speaker 2: for something completely different, Zinch, the Changer of Ways. It's
Speaker 2: time to turn our attention to the next chaos god, Zinch.
Speaker 2: Now that's traditionally spelled with a silent tea, but you
Speaker 2: can really spell the entity's name anyway you want to.
Speaker 2: I think Zench would appreciate that, especially if you put
Speaker 2: a great deal of thought into the exercise and mix
Speaker 2: things up a lot. After all, he is the changer
Speaker 2: of ways and the demonic master of mutation, trickery and prophees.
Speaker 2: Zinch's focus on change is sometimes perplexing because, of course,
Speaker 2: change is not inherently evil or ruinous. As described in
Speaker 2: the ninth edition Chaos Demon Codex from Game's Workshop, change
Speaker 2: is largely the bait by which the dark God draws
Speaker 2: in his followers. He promises change, he promises wisdom or
Speaker 2: insight into the future, but what he actually delivers is manipulation, confusion,
Speaker 2: plots within plots, and ultimately more out of control transformation
Speaker 2: than anyone saying or mortal can comprehend. The vice he
Speaker 2: feeds upon is unchecked mortal ambition and deception. As such,
Speaker 2: Zinch is one of two Chaos gods, along with Slenesh,
Speaker 2: who exhibits strong fostian elements. He offers tempting immediate rewards
Speaker 2: in exchange for a great cost of unimaginable nature. The
Speaker 2: battle forces of Zench are, of course, bonkers, imp like
Speaker 2: pink horrors swarm across an ever changing, ever recreated battlefield,
Speaker 2: splitting into blue horrors upon defeat, which in turn fall
Speaker 2: to become flaming brimstone horrors. Now these are the lowest
Speaker 2: of Zinch's forces, but his generals are the great blue
Speaker 2: Avian monstrosities known as the Lords of Change, and the
Speaker 2: most dangerous of these is an individual Lord of Change
Speaker 2: known as Carryos Fate Weaver. The oracle of Zinch. Carryos
Speaker 2: manifests a great two headed lord of change, resplendent in
Speaker 2: blue feathers, kaleidoscopic wings, and countless gleaming eyes. Fittingly, there
Speaker 2: are some enthralling elements to unwrap in this entity. Beginning
Speaker 2: with its name, Fate Weaver speaks for itself, but the
Speaker 2: demon's first name is the ancient Greek for the right,
Speaker 2: critical or opportune moment, and in modern Greek time and weather,
Speaker 2: it is written that the two heads of Carryos fate
Speaker 2: we are all seeing one looks backwards into the past
Speaker 2: and the other forward into the future. The symbolism brings
Speaker 2: to mind various concepts from real world religion and iconography,
Speaker 2: such as the two faced Janus of Roman tradition, who
Speaker 2: is god of beginnings and endings, of transitions and doorways.
Speaker 2: The image also brings to mind Hecadi, the Greek goddess
Speaker 2: who is often presented as triple faced or triple bodied.
Speaker 2: She is a goddess of crossroads who presents a different
Speaker 2: form to each direction, So we might easily think of
Speaker 2: both Janus and Hecaday as gods of change, as well,
Speaker 2: as Robert Mills points out in Jesus as Monster, published
Speaker 2: in the two thousand and three book The Monstrous Middle Ages.
Speaker 2: From the twelfth century onward, there is also a tradition
Speaker 2: in Christian iconography of depicting Christ with three human faces
Speaker 2: or three human heads, as a way of visually depicting
Speaker 2: the Holy Trinity or three in one god, Christ and
Speaker 2: Holy Spirit. Mills points out that this is fairly remarkable
Speaker 2: because these divine images coexisted with monstrous depictions of three
Speaker 2: faced creatures in medieval bestiaries, and of course we also
Speaker 2: have the three faced Satan in Dante's Inferno. The bird
Speaker 2: heads of Carryos, Fate Weaver, and the other lords of
Speaker 2: Change are also quite interesting. Certainly, there are plenty of
Speaker 2: examples of real world gods and goddesses with Avian features
Speaker 2: like this, But I also can't help but think of
Speaker 2: a specific medieval depiction of Jesus Christ with the head
Speaker 2: and long neck of a bird. Mills discusses this as well.
Speaker 2: The example he points to in the English Book of
Speaker 2: Hours in Psalter circa thirteen hundred, depicts a strange human
Speaker 2: bird hybrid with a long neck and long vulture like beak.
Speaker 2: The creature's loincloth, philosophic air, and body positioning strongly reflect
Speaker 2: depictions of Christ. Mills wonders if this perplexing creature is
Speaker 2: a reference to the bird men described in the Guest
Speaker 2: of Roman Arum or Deeds of the Romans from roughly
Speaker 2: the same time period. In this book, birdmen with long
Speaker 2: necks and beaks are described as fitting judges because of
Speaker 2: the distance between their heart and their voice. By virtue
Speaker 2: of their long beaks and necks see words rise up
Speaker 2: from the heart through the neck to the lips and
Speaker 2: the longer they have to travel, the more time we
Speaker 2: have to consider them and craft them for public consumption.
Speaker 2: In other words, the Avian Christ might be a commentary
Speaker 2: on the holy value of contemplation and the need to
Speaker 2: balance justice and mercy. So with the Lord of Change
Speaker 2: and other agents of zinch, perhaps we see a similar
Speaker 2: symbolic effect, only demonically perverted. The chaos God celebrates contemplation,
Speaker 2: but only in the form of endless scheming and deception.
Speaker 2: Words travel long between his heart and his voice, because
Speaker 2: every whisper is finely tuned to ensnare, bewilder and manipulate
Speaker 2: mortals to further his own labyrinthine schemes. Up next, let's
Speaker 2: get uncomfortably close to the plague God Nurgle. Today we
Speaker 2: turn our attention to the plague god Nurgle, the master
Speaker 2: of contagion and general grossness. His demonic minions are foul
Speaker 2: oozing and bloated wrecks. His mortal followers also willingly give
Speaker 2: their bodies and souls over to this sort of corruption.
Speaker 2: From the top of his ranks, the monstrous, great unclean one,
Speaker 2: to the lowly swarms of gurglings, we see a common likeness.
Speaker 2: Say to resemble Nrgyl himself, rotund toad like humanoids with
Speaker 2: rupturing guts and rot toothed grins. As such, it's easy
Speaker 2: to Equatenrgyl with the Christian deadly sins of sloth and gluttony,
Speaker 2: but the ninth edition Chaos Demon's Codex from game's workshop
Speaker 2: tells us that Nrgyl is actually empowered by mortal suffering
Speaker 2: and despair. It is when famines and pestilence are at
Speaker 2: their worst in the universe and vast interstellar populations lose
Speaker 2: all hope that Nergyl advances on their souls and physical worlds.
Speaker 2: He offers them a bit of twisted wisdom. It is
Speaker 2: not courage to resist disease and corruption. It is courage
Speaker 2: to give in to these forces and to embrace Nurgel's blessings.
Speaker 2: Nirgele's name was of course inspired by the ancient Babylonian
Speaker 2: god Nergal, a god of pestilence, famine, and war who
Speaker 2: could be called upon to protect his worshippers from these
Speaker 2: very forces. He also became associated with the samarro Akkadian underworld.
Speaker 2: Forty K'snurgyl is in many ways a darker and more
Speaker 2: twisted take on these elements on the battlefield, the demonic
Speaker 2: forces of NEURGYL make for quite a grotesque horde, full
Speaker 2: of humanoid plague bearers and great sluglike monstrosities. There is
Speaker 2: also a dark whimsie to such units as the grand
Speaker 2: cultivator Horticulus Slimus on his snail demon Mount Mulch, as
Speaker 2: well as the capering blessed Nurglings. But of course we
Speaker 2: have to focus in on the herald of NEURGYL, Sloppity
Speaker 2: Bile Piper. Like other plague bearer demons, he's a green
Speaker 2: skinned humanoid bursting with infection and decay, but he's also
Speaker 2: a jolly soul full of song and twisted mirth. The
Speaker 2: Kodex tells us that he prances on the battlefield infected
Speaker 2: by a deadly and highly contagious laughing disease. In one hand,
Speaker 2: suggesters merit, decorated with his own face, of course, as
Speaker 2: well as a steaming mass of guts fashioned into a
Speaker 2: set of bagpipes which he plays. His performance hastens the troops,
Speaker 2: but the Kodex tells us that it's uncertain if this
Speaker 2: is accomplished via inspiration or annoyance. He spreads the dancing
Speaker 2: plague as he cavorts, and when he eventually falls on
Speaker 2: the battlefield, his own body will turn into the next
Speaker 2: set of gut pipes for the next herald to take
Speaker 2: up and play. Now, there's a lot of fun gallows
Speaker 2: humor to this unit, but it also may raise some
Speaker 2: interesting questions about actual bagpipes. For starters, we should clarify
Speaker 2: that while bagpipes are strongly associated with Scottish and Irish tradition,
Speaker 2: some form of bagpipes have been played for centuries across
Speaker 2: Europe and parts of Asia and Africa in different cultural traditions.
Speaker 2: It does seem that animal stomachs were used in the
Speaker 2: creation of bagpipes on occasion, such as the stomachs of
Speaker 2: sheep or seals, but most bagpipes you encounter today are
Speaker 2: going to be made out of synthetic materials or animal hides.
Speaker 2: In some cases, the bagpipe may be made from a
Speaker 2: largely intact skin, with the various stocks of the bagpipes
Speaker 2: connecting to where the limbs and head of the animal
Speaker 2: would have previously attached. So on one level, the notion
Speaker 2: of bagpipes made from flesh is not that far removed
Speaker 2: from their material origins. Additionally, there is something to the
Speaker 2: way bagpipes inhale and exhale that encourages the animal comparison ohen.
Speaker 2: Of course, the TV series Garth Morangi's Dark Place exploited
Speaker 2: this quite humorously in the episode Scotch Missed, in which
Speaker 2: an animate pair of bagpipes attacks the main character. As
Speaker 2: for the comparison to be made between bagpipes and human entrails,
Speaker 2: I actually found an interesting treatment of this in the
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty humor book Memoirs of a Stomach by Sydney Whiting.
Speaker 2: The author, writing as a human stomach, compares itself to
Speaker 2: the bagpipe and shares a supposed origin story of the
Speaker 2: musical instrument. In it, a necromancer reanimates the stomach of
Speaker 2: a fallen Scottish warrior as bagpipes. Allow me to read
Speaker 2: a bit of it to you quote, there sat the
Speaker 2: weird king wand in hand, and there lay the digestive
Speaker 2: organs of the departed. At length he uttered a few
Speaker 2: strange words, and, tracing some hieroglyphics in the air with
Speaker 2: his royal finger, he exclaimed aloud, change thou thy form
Speaker 2: a thing of mighty use When in the living clay,
Speaker 2: And on thy tube, let there be stops and keynotes.
Speaker 2: And in thy bag let there be wind. And let
Speaker 2: the natives of this region have cunning to play upon thee.
Speaker 2: And let thy tones be ever as the shrieks of
Speaker 2: a tortured man, so that the ernus may be satisfied.
Speaker 2: And let thou be called now and hereafter bagpipe, so
Speaker 2: that what I spoke may come to pass, even unto
Speaker 2: the letter he said, and his astonished retainers raised from
Speaker 2: the earth the first instrument bearing that name born unto Scotland.
Speaker 2: Now again, this is a work of humor and should
Speaker 2: not be interpreted as Scottish lore. If anything, I detect
Speaker 2: some possible anti Scottish sentiments to the work, But suffice
Speaker 2: to say that grandfather Nrgul was not the first to
Speaker 2: snicker at the idea of stomachs as bagpipes. It's also
Speaker 2: worth noting that laughing plagues have occurred in the real world,
Speaker 2: likely cases of mass hysteria. But this is another story
Speaker 2: and shall be told another time. Last, but certainly not least,
Speaker 2: we have a date with Slannesh, the Lord of Excess.
Speaker 2: In forty k Lore, we are told that Slanesh is
Speaker 2: the youngest of the chaos gods, having only truly accreted
Speaker 2: out of mortal souls and emotions with the fall of
Speaker 2: the decadent al Dari civilization, an event that all but
Speaker 2: destroyed the Aldari and pour open a massive warp rift
Speaker 2: known as the Eye of Terror. Slanesh's domain is that
Speaker 2: of hedonistic excess, but also that of need, want, and obsession.
Speaker 2: The demons that manifest in Slanesh's service are alluring contradictions
Speaker 2: that blur the line between pleasure and pain, desire and revulsion.
Speaker 2: The demonets of Slenesh make up most of the chaos
Speaker 2: God's battle force, and they feature some favored characteristics of
Speaker 2: Slanesh's servants. They are humanoid beings with pale flesh and
Speaker 2: long purple hair, alluring yet also equally ghoulish. Their feet
Speaker 2: and legs are reminiscent of reptiles or birds, bringing to
Speaker 2: mind such real world mythic traditions as that of harpies
Speaker 2: and succubi. Oh yes, and they also have crab claws,
Speaker 2: lots of crab claws, something that doesn't really connect to
Speaker 2: any mythic or folkloric traditions that I'm aware of, but
Speaker 2: they absolutely make it work, and it has become a
Speaker 2: signature aspect of their look. Demonets also appear bilaterally asymmetrical,
Speaker 2: particularly in the chest region, where one side features a
Speaker 2: female breast and the other a male breast. While titillation
Speaker 2: is clearly part of this design, it also strongly echoes
Speaker 2: the male female duality in the symbolism of Bathome from
Speaker 2: occult in Western esoteric traditions. This influence is especially prevalent
Speaker 2: in the towering Keeper of Secrets the deadly Slaneshy demon champions,
Speaker 2: which often, especially in recent depictions, features strong goat like
Speaker 2: characteristics such as foot and head reminiscent of Bathamet. But
Speaker 2: there's another servant of Slanesh that I'd like to talk
Speaker 2: about here, and that's the Mask of Slannesh. This purple
Speaker 2: hued herald once danced in the good graces of the
Speaker 2: Lord of Excess. To the ninth edition Chaos Demons Codex
Speaker 2: from Games Workshop, the Mask fell out of favor with
Speaker 2: Slenesh and is now cursed to dance and cavort forever
Speaker 2: across strange realms and battlefields. The dance of the Mask
Speaker 2: emboldened surrounding Sleneschi forces, but also in sourcells enemy troops
Speaker 2: to join into its spiraling dance, where it slices them
Speaker 2: to exotic ribbons of flesh. This, of course, brings to
Speaker 2: mind a famous mania from our own history, the dancing
Speaker 2: plagues of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. It is pointed
Speaker 2: out by John Waller in a Forgotten Plague, Making Sense
Speaker 2: of Dancing Mania, published in two thousand and nine in
Speaker 2: The Lancet. A certain degree of embellishment stains some of
Speaker 2: these accounts, but cases in thirteen seventy four and fifteen
Speaker 2: eighteen are pretty well documented. Most sources agree that dancing
Speaker 2: plague incidents involved groups of individuals swept up in long
Speaker 2: bouts of involuntary dancing. The dancers cried out in pain
Speaker 2: or pleaded for mercy. In some accounts they danced until
Speaker 2: they died. While enigmatic and certainly hard to believe from
Speaker 2: a modern perspective, dancing plagues are not without skeptical explanation.
Speaker 2: Whiler explores a few leading ideas in the paper. First,
Speaker 2: there's the possibility of urgit poisoning, a topic we've discussed
Speaker 2: in depth. Un stuff to blow your mind before. It's
Speaker 2: caused by the consumption of fungus infected grains that can
Speaker 2: lead to nightmarish altered states of consciousness. Wiler also discusses
Speaker 2: the possibility that the dancers could have been in an
Speaker 2: involuntary trance state, something people are far more susceptible to
Speaker 2: during states of intense psychological distress, and these centuries certainly
Speaker 2: provided plenty of stressors. This explanation also required exposure to
Speaker 2: a pre existing belief about dancing plagues, and in these
Speaker 2: cases the cause would be believed to be some of
Speaker 2: a spirit or a curse, and there is evidence for
Speaker 2: this in art, literature, and law from these time periods
Speaker 2: in regions. So Whiler writes, quote, every so often, when
Speaker 2: physical and mental distress rendered people more than usually suggestible,
Speaker 2: the specter of the dancing plague could quickly return. All
Speaker 2: it then took was for one or a few poor souls,
Speaker 2: believing themselves to have been subject to the curse, to
Speaker 2: slip into a spontaneous trance. Then they would unconsciously act
Speaker 2: out the part of the accursed, dancing, leaping and hopping
Speaker 2: for days on end. It's a different sort of compulsion
Speaker 2: than that found among the followers of Slannesh, but there
Speaker 2: are other examples of mass hysteria or mass psychogenic illness
Speaker 2: to consider, such as laughing epidemics and witchcraft panics, though
Speaker 2: of course Slanesh doesn't have to work through such real
Speaker 2: world means to control people. I hope you enjoyed this
Speaker 2: series and I'm always looking for new ideas to explore
Speaker 2: on the monster fact, the Artifact, or some other spin
Speaker 2: on the short form format. Tune in for additional episodes
Speaker 2: each week. As always, you can email us at contact
Speaker 2: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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