Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamman. This is The Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time. As
Speaker 2: a lifelong horror movie and Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast, I'm,
Speaker 2: of course a devoted fan of the Ravenloft campaign setting,
Speaker 2: which entails the various domains of dread Pocket dimensions separated
Speaker 2: by supernatural myths, each a prison for a different dark lord,
Speaker 2: and each a different shade of fantasy fueled horror, from
Speaker 2: Gothic to folk, from body to cosmic, and so forth.
Speaker 2: The latest raven Loft gaming book just came out, Ravenloft
Speaker 2: The Horrors Within, so I thought I'd do an episode
Speaker 2: to run through some of the creatures, monsters, and entities
Speaker 2: in this particular volume. The book's bestI area includes various
Speaker 2: updated creatures from past raven Loft installments and some creatures
Speaker 2: I've covered on The Monster Fact before. For instance, there
Speaker 2: is the Nosferatu vampire, based of course on the tradition
Speaker 2: of ghastly cadaverous blood drinkers that springs initially from the
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty two Silent film. As statted out in the
Speaker 2: Horrors Within the Nosparatu vampire blood Fiend quickly flies into
Speaker 2: a frenzy at the slightest drop of red and can
Speaker 2: emit a disgusting blood spew previously called a blood disgorge
Speaker 2: in previous editions to attack anyone that is getting a
Speaker 2: little bit too close and a little bit too player
Speaker 2: charactery for its own well being. This will enable the
Speaker 2: creature to emit a fifteen foot cone of spray. It
Speaker 2: is the necrotic contents of its own stomach now. As
Speaker 2: I mentioned in a past episode of The Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: this attack suggests both a vulture's meal disgorgement, which might
Speaker 2: lighten the load for quick flying escape or serve as
Speaker 2: a bribe for an attacking predator. You know, don't eat me.
Speaker 2: How about you eat this disgusting thing. And it also
Speaker 2: brings to mind the defensive projectile ocular sinus bleeding of
Speaker 2: the Texas horned toad. We've talked about that on Stuff
Speaker 2: to blow your mind before. We also have returning stats
Speaker 2: for the jiangshi, or the so called hopping vampires of
Speaker 2: Chinese folklore. In dungeons and dragons. These creatures are a
Speaker 2: common feature in karature and of course in the dark
Speaker 2: domain of I Caath based on Chinese folklore and Gothic horror.
Speaker 2: I Caath isn't prominently featured in The Horrors Within, but
Speaker 2: the Jugshi returns in the Bestiari. As I've previously discussed
Speaker 2: on both The Monster Fact and on core episodes of
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This undead creature emerges from
Speaker 2: a ching dynasty crisis concerning the burial of the dead.
Speaker 2: A rise in unburied bodies left upon the ground caused
Speaker 2: an empire wide crisis of perceived spiritual and funerary dysfunction.
Speaker 2: The Jiangshi, stiff with rigor mortis, is forced to jerk
Speaker 2: itself forward to hop as it moves towards its victim.
Speaker 2: Emerges from this ripe soil of anxiety of cultural anxiety,
Speaker 2: and of course later becomes a standard in Hong Kong
Speaker 2: horror films of the eighties and nineties, which, of course
Speaker 2: is that the prime influence point here for dungeons and dragons.
Speaker 2: As The Horrors Within now includes Ensmith as a dark domain,
Speaker 2: a number of Cthulhu mythos monsters have also wormed their
Speaker 2: way back into the pages of Dungeons and Dragons, and
Speaker 2: these include the Migo, the gug, elder things, Yetheans, night Gaunts,
Speaker 2: show goths, and Cthulhu itself, all of them fully stated out.
Speaker 2: Fans of The Whisper in Darkness will be pleased to
Speaker 2: know that the Migo can in fact extract a player's
Speaker 2: brain and preserve it inside of a Migo brain canister.
Speaker 2: But I want to discuss one of the other newly
Speaker 2: added or at least newly returned monsters in the book,
Speaker 2: and that is the Death's Head tree. This concept is
Speaker 2: as simple as it is grizzly. In Dunis and Dragons,
Speaker 2: Death's heads are floating, flying, dis embodied heads of various creatures,
Speaker 2: from humans and animals to medusas and mind flares, and
Speaker 2: a death said tree is where heads like this grow
Speaker 2: like foul fruit and sometimes even explode all over unfortunate
Speaker 2: player characters. This concept has its roots in global folklore.
Speaker 2: In religion, the Qoran mentions the tree of Zukum, which
Speaker 2: grows in the Hell of Jahannam. Its fruit resembles the
Speaker 2: heads of devils, which then feed the inhabitants of hell,
Speaker 2: burning their stomachs in the process. Meanwhile, in Japanese and
Speaker 2: Chinese folklore, we have the tradition of what is commonly
Speaker 2: called the Jinmin Jew or the nim ben Jew tree,
Speaker 2: which produces flowers that look like human heads and face
Speaker 2: shaped fruit. According to Matthew Myers Yochai dot com, the
Speaker 2: faceflowers will laugh at you if you laugh at them,
Speaker 2: but they will wilt and fall off if you laugh
Speaker 2: too hard. He also shares that this particular tree of
Speaker 2: heads and faces likely has its origin in Islamic folklore,
Speaker 2: specifically one known as the Wokwalk tree, which was said
Speaker 2: to bear fruit shaped like humans and animals. The Walkwalk
Speaker 2: was also a factor in the legends of Alexander the Great,
Speaker 2: with the Macedonian conqueror having been said to receive a
Speaker 2: prophecy of his own death from such a tree. There's
Speaker 2: a whole array of traditions concerning human heads and other
Speaker 2: human parts growing on trees, and a much larger global
Speaker 2: tradition in which the botanical world crosses over with human
Speaker 2: and animal biology. You see this all over the place.
Speaker 2: We've discussed some of these examples on the show before,
Speaker 2: such as the mandrake root and the vegetable lamb of Tartary.
Speaker 2: But I think this is a concept and a topic
Speaker 2: we might come back to for our core episodes of
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, because again, there's so many
Speaker 2: examples of humans and especially trees fusing together in folklore,
Speaker 2: in mythology, and just in human thought in general. It's
Speaker 2: a common focus of human dreams and nightmares and is
Speaker 2: such fitting material for the domains of Dread, which also
Speaker 2: boasts other botanical harms. Tune in for additional episodes of
Speaker 2: the Monster, Fact, the Artifact, or Anomalius to Pendium each week.
Speaker 2: You never know what you'll get. As always, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com.
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