Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hi,
Speaker 1: my name is Robert Lamb and this is The Monster Fact,
Speaker 1: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: focusing in on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
Speaker 1: In the previous two episodes of The Monster Fact, we
Speaker 1: discussed chaos demonology within the fictional far future universe of
Speaker 1: games Workshops Warhammer forty thousand, we discussed both the blood
Speaker 1: god Corn and Zinch, the Changer of Ways, as well
Speaker 1: as some interesting connections they each have to military and
Speaker 1: religious history. Today, we turn our attention to the play
Speaker 1: god Nergal, the master of contagion and general grossness. His
Speaker 1: demonic minions are foul oozing and blowed in wrecks. His
Speaker 1: mortal followers also willingly give their bodies and soul over
Speaker 1: to this sort of corruption. From the top of his ranks,
Speaker 1: the monstrous great unclean one, to the lowly swarms of Nerglings,
Speaker 1: we see a common likeness said to resemble Nergal himself,
Speaker 1: rotund toadlike humanoids with rupturing guts and rot toothed grins.
Speaker 1: As such, it's easy to equate Nergal with the Christian
Speaker 1: deadly sins of sloth and gluttony. But the ninth addition,
Speaker 1: Chaos Demons codex from game's workshop tells us that Nergle
Speaker 1: is actually empowered by mortal suffering and despair. It is
Speaker 1: when famines and pestilence are at their worst in the
Speaker 1: universe and vast interstellar populations lose all hope that Nergal
Speaker 1: advances on their souls and physical worlds. He offers them
Speaker 1: a bit of twisted wisdom. It is not courage to
Speaker 1: resist disease and corruption, It is courage to give in
Speaker 1: to these forces and to embrace Nergal's blessings. Nergalles name
Speaker 1: was of course inspired by the ancient Babylonian god Nergal,
Speaker 1: a god of pestilence, famine, and war who could be
Speaker 1: called upon to protect his worshippers from these very forces.
Speaker 1: He also became associated with the Samaro Acadian underworld. Forty
Speaker 1: Kay's Nergal is in many ways a darker and more
Speaker 1: twisted take on these elements. On the battlefield, the demonic
Speaker 1: forces of Nergal make for quite a grotesque horde, full
Speaker 1: of humanoid plague bearers and great sluglike monstrosities. There's also
Speaker 1: a dark whimsie to such units as the Grand cultivator
Speaker 1: horticulous Slimus on his snail demon Mount Mulch, as well
Speaker 1: as the capering blessed Nerglings. But of course we have
Speaker 1: to focus in on the Herald of Nergal Sloppety bile Piper.
Speaker 1: Like other plague bearer demons, he's a green skinned humanoid
Speaker 1: bursting with infection and decay, but he's also a jolly
Speaker 1: soul full of song and twigs did mirth. The Kodax
Speaker 1: tells us that he princes on the battlefield, infected by
Speaker 1: a deadly and highly contagious laughing disease. In one hand,
Speaker 1: he grips a jester's merit, decorated with his own face,
Speaker 1: of course, as well as a steaming mass of guts
Speaker 1: fashioned into a set of bagpipes, which he plays. His
Speaker 1: performance hastens the troops, but the Kodax tells us that
Speaker 1: it's uncertain if this is accomplished via inspiration or annoyance.
Speaker 1: He spreads the dancing plague as he cavorts, and when
Speaker 1: he eventually falls on the battlefield, his own body will
Speaker 1: turn into the next set of gut pipes for the
Speaker 1: next Herald to take up and play. Now there's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun gallows humor to this unit, but it
Speaker 1: also may raise some interesting questions about actual bagpipes. For starters,
Speaker 1: we should clarify that while bagpipes are strongly associated with
Speaker 1: Scottish and Irish tradition, some form of bagpipes have been
Speaker 1: played for centuries across Europe and parts of Asia and
Speaker 1: in different cultural traditions. It does seem that animal stomachs
Speaker 1: were used in the creation of bagpipes on occasion, such
Speaker 1: as the stomachs of sheep or seals, but most bagpipes
Speaker 1: you encounter today are going to be made out of
Speaker 1: synthetic materials or animal hides. In some cases, the bagpipe
Speaker 1: may be made from a largely intact skin, with the
Speaker 1: various stocks of the bagpipes connecting to where the limbs
Speaker 1: and head of the animal would have previously attached. So
Speaker 1: on one level, the notion of bagpipes made from flesh
Speaker 1: is not that far removed from their material origins. Additionally,
Speaker 1: there is something to the way bagpipes inhale and exhale
Speaker 1: that encourages the animal comparison. Ohen of course, the TV
Speaker 1: series Garth Marengue's Dark Place exploited this quite humorously in
Speaker 1: the episode's Scotch Mist, in which an animate pair of
Speaker 1: bagpipes attacks the main character. As for the comparison to
Speaker 1: be made between bagpipes and human entrails, I actually found
Speaker 1: an interesting treatment of this in the eighteen fifty humor
Speaker 1: book Memoirs of a Stomach by Sydney Whiting. The author,
Speaker 1: writing as a human stomach, compares itself to the bagpipe
Speaker 1: and shares a supposed origin story of the musical instrument.
Speaker 1: In it, a necromancer reanimates the stomach of a fallen
Speaker 1: Scottish warrior as bagpipes. Allow me to read a bit
Speaker 1: of it to you. Quote. There sat the weird king
Speaker 1: a wand in hand, and there lay the digestive organs
Speaker 1: of the departed. At length, he uttered a few strange
Speaker 1: words in tracing some hieroglyphics in the air. With his
Speaker 1: royal finger. He exclaimed aloud, change thou thy form a
Speaker 1: thing of mighty use. When in the living clay and
Speaker 1: on thy tube, let there be stops and keynotes, And
Speaker 1: in thy bag let there be wind, And let the
Speaker 1: natives of this region have cunning to play upon thee
Speaker 1: and let thy tones be ever as the shrieks of
Speaker 1: a tortured man, so that the Arenus may be satisfied.
Speaker 1: And let thou be called now and hereafter bagpipe, so
Speaker 1: that what I spoke may come to pass Evan unto
Speaker 1: the letter he said, and his astonished retainers raised from
Speaker 1: the earth, the first instrument bearing that name born unto Scotland.
Speaker 1: Now again, this is a work of humor and should
Speaker 1: not be interpreted as Scottish lore. If anything, I detect
Speaker 1: some possible anti Scottish sentiments to the work, but suffice
Speaker 1: to say that Grandfather Nurgel was not the first to
Speaker 1: snicker at the idea of stomachs as bagpipes. It's also
Speaker 1: worth noting that laughing plagues have occurred in the real world,
Speaker 1: likely cases of mass hysteria. But this is another story
Speaker 1: and shall be told another time. Join me next week
Speaker 1: as we continue our journey through the chaos demon factions.
Speaker 1: Tune into the Monster Fact each Wednesday in the Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. As always, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact that's Stuff to Blow your Mind
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