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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamman. This is The Monster Fact,

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Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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Speaker 2: focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time. As

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Speaker 2: a lifelong horror movie and Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast, I'm,

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Speaker 2: of course a devoted fan of the Ravenloft campaign setting,

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Speaker 2: which entails the various domains of dread Pocket dimensions separated

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Speaker 2: by supernatural myths, each a prison for a different dark lord,

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Speaker 2: and each a different shade of fantasy fueled horror, from

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Speaker 2: Gothic to folk, from body to cosmic, and so forth.

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Speaker 2: The latest raven Loft gaming book just came out, Ravenloft

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Speaker 2: The Horrors Within, so I thought I'd do an episode

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Speaker 2: to run through some of the creatures, monsters, and entities

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Speaker 2: in this particular volume. The book's bestI area includes various

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Speaker 2: updated creatures from past raven Loft installments and some creatures

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Speaker 2: I've covered on The Monster Fact before. For instance, there

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Speaker 2: is the Nosferatu vampire, based of course on the tradition

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Speaker 2: of ghastly cadaverous blood drinkers that springs initially from the

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Speaker 2: nineteen twenty two Silent film. As statted out in the

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Speaker 2: Horrors Within the Nosparatu vampire blood Fiend quickly flies into

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Speaker 2: a frenzy at the slightest drop of red and can

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Speaker 2: emit a disgusting blood spew previously called a blood disgorge

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Speaker 2: in previous editions to attack anyone that is getting a

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Speaker 2: little bit too close and a little bit too player

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Speaker 2: charactery for its own well being. This will enable the

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Speaker 2: creature to emit a fifteen foot cone of spray. It

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Speaker 2: is the necrotic contents of its own stomach now. As

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Speaker 2: I mentioned in a past episode of The Monster Fact,

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Speaker 2: this attack suggests both a vulture's meal disgorgement, which might

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Speaker 2: lighten the load for quick flying escape or serve as

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Speaker 2: a bribe for an attacking predator. You know, don't eat me.

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Speaker 2: How about you eat this disgusting thing. And it also

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Speaker 2: brings to mind the defensive projectile ocular sinus bleeding of

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Speaker 2: the Texas horned toad. We've talked about that on Stuff

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Speaker 2: to blow your mind before. We also have returning stats

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Speaker 2: for the jiangshi, or the so called hopping vampires of

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Speaker 2: Chinese folklore. In dungeons and dragons. These creatures are a

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Speaker 2: common feature in karature and of course in the dark

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Speaker 2: domain of I Caath based on Chinese folklore and Gothic horror.

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Speaker 2: I Caath isn't prominently featured in The Horrors Within, but

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Speaker 2: the Jugshi returns in the Bestiari. As I've previously discussed

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Speaker 2: on both The Monster Fact and on core episodes of

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Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This undead creature emerges from

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Speaker 2: a ching dynasty crisis concerning the burial of the dead.

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Speaker 2: A rise in unburied bodies left upon the ground caused

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Speaker 2: an empire wide crisis of perceived spiritual and funerary dysfunction.

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Speaker 2: The Jiangshi, stiff with rigor mortis, is forced to jerk

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Speaker 2: itself forward to hop as it moves towards its victim.

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Speaker 2: Emerges from this ripe soil of anxiety of cultural anxiety,

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Speaker 2: and of course later becomes a standard in Hong Kong

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Speaker 2: horror films of the eighties and nineties, which, of course

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Speaker 2: is that the prime influence point here for dungeons and dragons.

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Speaker 2: As The Horrors Within now includes Ensmith as a dark domain,

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Speaker 2: a number of Cthulhu mythos monsters have also wormed their

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Speaker 2: way back into the pages of Dungeons and Dragons, and

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Speaker 2: these include the Migo, the gug, elder things, Yetheans, night Gaunts,

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Speaker 2: show goths, and Cthulhu itself, all of them fully stated out.

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Speaker 2: Fans of The Whisper in Darkness will be pleased to

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Speaker 2: know that the Migo can in fact extract a player's

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Speaker 2: brain and preserve it inside of a Migo brain canister.

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Speaker 2: But I want to discuss one of the other newly

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Speaker 2: added or at least newly returned monsters in the book,

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Speaker 2: and that is the Death's Head tree. This concept is

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Speaker 2: as simple as it is grizzly. In Dunis and Dragons,

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Speaker 2: Death's heads are floating, flying, dis embodied heads of various creatures,

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Speaker 2: from humans and animals to medusas and mind flares, and

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Speaker 2: a death said tree is where heads like this grow

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Speaker 2: like foul fruit and sometimes even explode all over unfortunate

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Speaker 2: player characters. This concept has its roots in global folklore.

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Speaker 2: In religion, the Qoran mentions the tree of Zukum, which

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Speaker 2: grows in the Hell of Jahannam. Its fruit resembles the

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Speaker 2: heads of devils, which then feed the inhabitants of hell,

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Speaker 2: burning their stomachs in the process. Meanwhile, in Japanese and

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Speaker 2: Chinese folklore, we have the tradition of what is commonly

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Speaker 2: called the Jinmin Jew or the nim ben Jew tree,

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Speaker 2: which produces flowers that look like human heads and face

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Speaker 2: shaped fruit. According to Matthew Myers Yochai dot com, the

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Speaker 2: faceflowers will laugh at you if you laugh at them,

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Speaker 2: but they will wilt and fall off if you laugh

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Speaker 2: too hard. He also shares that this particular tree of

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Speaker 2: heads and faces likely has its origin in Islamic folklore,

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Speaker 2: specifically one known as the Wokwalk tree, which was said

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Speaker 2: to bear fruit shaped like humans and animals. The Walkwalk

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Speaker 2: was also a factor in the legends of Alexander the Great,

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Speaker 2: with the Macedonian conqueror having been said to receive a

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Speaker 2: prophecy of his own death from such a tree. There's

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Speaker 2: a whole array of traditions concerning human heads and other

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Speaker 2: human parts growing on trees, and a much larger global

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Speaker 2: tradition in which the botanical world crosses over with human

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Speaker 2: and animal biology. You see this all over the place.

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Speaker 2: We've discussed some of these examples on the show before,

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Speaker 2: such as the mandrake root and the vegetable lamb of Tartary.

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Speaker 2: But I think this is a concept and a topic

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Speaker 2: we might come back to for our core episodes of

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Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, because again, there's so many

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Speaker 2: examples of humans and especially trees fusing together in folklore,

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Speaker 2: in mythology, and just in human thought in general. It's

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Speaker 2: a common focus of human dreams and nightmares and is

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Speaker 2: such fitting material for the domains of Dread, which also

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Speaker 2: boasts other botanical harms. Tune in for additional episodes of

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Speaker 2: the Monster, Fact, the Artifact, or Anomalius to Pendium each week.

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Speaker 2: You never know what you'll get. As always, you can

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Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

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Speaker 2: dot com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.