Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. A form slightly larger than Drifts, but
Speaker 1: obviously humanoid, drifted around a nearby stalactite. Drifts kicked off
Speaker 1: a stone to propel himself at it, drawing his other
Speaker 1: scimitar as he went. He knew his peril a moment later,
Speaker 1: for his enemy's head resembled a four tentacles octopus. Drifts
Speaker 1: had never actually viewed such a creature before, but he
Speaker 1: knew what it was. An ill apant, a mind flare,
Speaker 1: the most evil and most feared monster in all of
Speaker 1: the under dark. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and my name is Christian Sager,
Speaker 1: and today we're talking about mind flares. That's right, you
Speaker 1: get from that quote mind flares. For those of you
Speaker 1: who aren't aware, we're really diving down the geek well
Speaker 1: today to get a monster that we both love and
Speaker 1: grew up with. But this is a creature that was
Speaker 1: originally created for dungeons and dragons, right, Yeah. It also
Speaker 1: has a long history that I'm just learning about in
Speaker 1: the Final Fantasy games. And I imagine other other properties
Speaker 1: as well. That that that's that were inspired by especially
Speaker 1: early dungeons and dragons. Yeah. But so we're not just
Speaker 1: talking about this because we're into geeky stuff, right, not
Speaker 1: not that's like, yeah, we're using the mind flare as
Speaker 1: a jumping off point to look at some really interesting
Speaker 1: science both in biology but also a little bit in
Speaker 1: technology today in the same way that drifts our hero
Speaker 1: in the opening narration used that the stalactite as a springboard. Right.
Speaker 1: So that was a quote from R. A. Salvatores Exile,
Speaker 1: which is part of the Dark Elf trilogy. It's actually
Speaker 1: booked two in the Dark Elf trilogy. Uh, you may
Speaker 1: be familiar with this. If you're not, I'll give you
Speaker 1: a quick primer. These are dungeons and Dragons based novels, uh,
Speaker 1: set in the Forgotten Realm setting, based around this character,
Speaker 1: dritzto Arden that is pretty popular with that crowd and
Speaker 1: still still part of the property the board games that
Speaker 1: come out. He's He's mentioned in the materials for the
Speaker 1: Big Current under Dark campaign. I'm pretty sure they're still
Speaker 1: coming out with novels with him in it too. Um,
Speaker 1: and these I have a fondness for these novels because
Speaker 1: they were like my way to wind down my brain
Speaker 1: after doing too much research, either when I was in
Speaker 1: graduate school or sometimes from podcasting. So I've read. I
Speaker 1: want to say, there's like these books, and I've probably
Speaker 1: read three quarters of them. Uh. Mostly I refer to
Speaker 1: them as sword porn because there's just like whole sections,
Speaker 1: like pages and pages where it's just describing like the
Speaker 1: ways in which he moves his swords. I mean just
Speaker 1: in this one paragraph alone, like they've had to mention
Speaker 1: like the way he drew a scimitar and everything. But
Speaker 1: mind flares are like the primary antagonist in this specific book.
Speaker 1: So I pulled that quote and then there's another one
Speaker 1: later on where I think that this contributed to the
Speaker 1: lore surrounding them, so you know, we'll refer back to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So see, we're using this this creature, this wondrous creature,
Speaker 1: as as as an opportunity to discuss some some science,
Speaker 1: and we're using science as a way to explain some
Speaker 1: of the more fantastic aspects of this fictional monster. It's
Speaker 1: kind of relationship we come back to time and time again, because,
Speaker 1: as I like to say, no matter how fantastic, how
Speaker 1: crazy the imagined monster is, you can you can almost
Speaker 1: count on nature to have equal or surpassed it in weirdness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's exactly what's so wonderful about using this for
Speaker 1: an episode of the show. And I'd like to point
Speaker 1: out that this is actually connected to two other things
Speaker 1: that we do on Stuff to All Your Mind. The
Speaker 1: first is obviously Robert's Monster Science that he's been working
Speaker 1: on for years. If you go to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com, there are I dare say a
Speaker 1: hundred maybe monster science posts like you've covered almost every
Speaker 1: monster in existence. Um well, well I wouldn't go that
Speaker 1: far because they're pretty inexhaustible, but um yeah, the monster
Speaker 1: the Monster of the Week post kind of like the
Speaker 1: monster Science versions. And then there's the video series Monster
Speaker 1: Science as well, which you can find there or you
Speaker 1: can find while all the videos are on our Facebook
Speaker 1: and our YouTube channel as well. Uh. But also you
Speaker 1: and Joe are doing an episode coordinated with this that's
Speaker 1: about mind control. Yeah. It's gonna be titled what Mind
Speaker 1: Control feels Like, and it should be the episode that
Speaker 1: follows this. I think this episode right here is coming
Speaker 1: out on a Thursday, and the kind of the following one,
Speaker 1: the mind Control episode, come out on who stay. But
Speaker 1: it'll all come together, So brace yourselves, everybody. We're we're
Speaker 1: really getting into it with minds, brains and actual brain
Speaker 1: eating today. Yeah, because one of the things about the
Speaker 1: mind flares, if you're not familiar and if you're not
Speaker 1: familiar at all with the mind flares, just bear with us.
Speaker 1: We'll get to the real science as well. But they
Speaker 1: are not only these these octopus headed, purple fleshed evil
Speaker 1: doers that live in the under dark, this vast subterranean
Speaker 1: realm in the Dungeons and Dragons world. They are also
Speaker 1: psychic or psionically gifted creatures that are able to just
Speaker 1: dominate people left and right with their amazing psychic powers,
Speaker 1: you know, throwing mind blasts all over the dungeon, just
Speaker 1: really wreaking havoc. But that is their primary power, and
Speaker 1: their finishing move is to grab ahold of you with
Speaker 1: their tentacle mouths and suck your brain right out of
Speaker 1: your head. It's like, uh, total kill, like instant kill.
Speaker 1: I think if you get uh grappled by a mind
Speaker 1: flare by the head or whatever. You know. They actually
Speaker 1: not to skip too far ahead into their anatomy, but
Speaker 1: they're generally represented as having um just four digits on
Speaker 1: their hand, so they have three knuckles. And I was
Speaker 1: thinking the other day, this would be perfect for a
Speaker 1: t p K tattoo from my Flair or Total Party Kill.
Speaker 1: That's you're like your thug mind flare, I like it,
Speaker 1: I like But for those of you not from with
Speaker 1: the game Total Party Killers, when the creatures in the
Speaker 1: game were more specifically, the dungeon Master kills off the
Speaker 1: entire party with a Generally, generally this occurs because the
Speaker 1: encounter is not mathematically calibrated exactly. So yeah, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna use these as a jumping off point. And you
Speaker 1: guys are probably saying to yourselves right now, like, WHOA, Like,
Speaker 1: this isn't what I signed up for. Just bear with us,
Speaker 1: because the thing about mind flares in particular that is
Speaker 1: really useful for stuff to blow your mind is they
Speaker 1: were created for this game, and then it's been a
Speaker 1: good almost forty years that people have been working on them,
Speaker 1: whether it's in these novels that I mentioned earlier, or
Speaker 1: for rule books or for video games or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of like Star Wars creatures. They've had like
Speaker 1: more and more tagged onto their uh, fictional biology and
Speaker 1: culture and philosophy over the years, to the point that
Speaker 1: it's like it's this fleshed out world, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's it's really fascinating what multiple people brought to the
Speaker 1: table with it and how that then subsequently translates because
Speaker 1: they were obviously inspired by you know, creatures from real
Speaker 1: life or or philosophy in different cultures. Oh yeah, indeed.
Speaker 1: I mean, and in so many cases, either the people
Speaker 1: adding to the the mythos so say, the mind flares,
Speaker 1: they either were directly inspired by natural world organisms or
Speaker 1: they're just weird creativity managed to to parallel actual natural
Speaker 1: world weird. That's the like somebody needs to do a
Speaker 1: like a history of the mind flare creation book where
Speaker 1: they like talk to all these people, because in front
Speaker 1: of us here in the studio right now is Volo's
Speaker 1: Guide to Monsters, and it has a pretty comprehensive, like
Speaker 1: what almost ten page section on mind flares, more more,
Speaker 1: I dare say, than real world encyclopedias have on some
Speaker 1: of the real world animals we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: in today's episode. But it's really impressive and I would
Speaker 1: love to see how all these pieces came together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I just came out by the way of anyone
Speaker 1: out there is interested, Uh just can't just published now.
Speaker 1: In terms of what we're not going to attempt to
Speaker 1: do what we just mentioned here, We're not going to actually,
Speaker 1: uh you know, go piece by piece through the generation
Speaker 1: of the mind Flare, but we will just touch on
Speaker 1: its origins, which go back to Gary Gygax himself, the
Speaker 1: creator of Dungeons and Dragons. Indeed, he is the guy.
Speaker 1: He's the guy who started the whole thing, and you've
Speaker 1: got a nice quote from him here, specifically about mind flares. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, quoth the mind Flare I made up out
Speaker 1: of whole cloth using my imagination, but inspired by the
Speaker 1: cover of Brian Lumley's novel in paperback edition, The Burrowers Beneath.
Speaker 1: So I've never seen this before. What's it looked like? Um?
Speaker 1: I looked at it, I will. I looked at the
Speaker 1: various covers and the one that I think most modern
Speaker 1: readers are used to is the one looks kind of
Speaker 1: like an eye in the center of a nautilus, and
Speaker 1: that one looks more mine flairy. Um. But the original cover,
Speaker 1: the one that I think Guy Gas would have seen
Speaker 1: just kind of looks like a silhouette of dark tentacles
Speaker 1: rising out of a hill. But still I take the
Speaker 1: man in his word, um lumly of course was Lovecraft influenced,
Speaker 1: and there's definitely a lot of Lovecraft I and weirdness
Speaker 1: to the mind flare. So just just as the fictional
Speaker 1: race has crossed over from another realm in Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: the very inception is sort of a cross pollination from
Speaker 1: a different dimension of literary fannas. Yeah, I think you
Speaker 1: could probably trace their origins all the way back to
Speaker 1: of Craft's intense fear of sea life. So and just
Speaker 1: to get this out of the way too, because again
Speaker 1: I know a number of you maybe primarily familiar with
Speaker 1: these critters from Final Fantasy. Are their properties e lit.
Speaker 1: It is definitely a D n D property, right, They've
Speaker 1: got the t M on that. Yeah, so you can't
Speaker 1: just throw a lithids around another games or video games
Speaker 1: or novels without you know, big Dungeon getting a cut,
Speaker 1: but mind flavors you'll see elsewhere. Yeah, thats right. In fact,
Speaker 1: we saw there was a paper that you found that's
Speaker 1: stunning all about like the various types of sort of
Speaker 1: cephalopod monster mollusks that show up in video games. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an article um that was published in Geek Studies,
Speaker 1: and I'll try to include a link to that on
Speaker 1: the landing page for this episode. But yeah, just all
Speaker 1: about weird squid and octopus monsters from sixteen videos. And
Speaker 1: there was this amazing chart of all of the various ones,
Speaker 1: uh down to their little like eight bit renderings, and
Speaker 1: there's the mind Flare very recognizable in there. So yeah, again,
Speaker 1: these are basically purple people with octopus heads. Their mouths
Speaker 1: are like Lamprey's. We're gonna go through the anatomy pretty
Speaker 1: carefully because that's how we're going to tie it into
Speaker 1: real world science. That's right, all right, So let's dive in.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about their origins real quick, which are of
Speaker 1: course shrouded in mystery. So they're basically two origin stories
Speaker 1: in play here. Most likely the mind Flares hail from
Speaker 1: the far Realm, which is an alien dimension of cosmic
Speaker 1: horror and the dn D universe, but there's also this
Speaker 1: whispered rumor that from the future and perhaps even the
Speaker 1: distant highly evolved state of humanoid life in the multiverse,
Speaker 1: though I'm I'm not sure much doc is actually put
Speaker 1: in that interpretation. I want to say that that is
Speaker 1: that's the one that's heavily Lovecraft influence, because there's and
Speaker 1: I can't believe I can't remember the name of the
Speaker 1: monster from one of the Lovecraft short stories, but that's
Speaker 1: one of the things from his This monster is from
Speaker 1: the future and it's come back in time to sort
Speaker 1: of right some wrong or something like that. And I
Speaker 1: think this is again not there's no sources behind this,
Speaker 1: but but if my memory is correct from playing D
Speaker 1: and D for twenty some odd years, uh, their origin
Speaker 1: story differs depending on which setting you're playing D and DAN. Well,
Speaker 1: that's right, it's a it's a multiverse, and and of
Speaker 1: course they also instill this in you. Your game is
Speaker 1: not necessarily taking place in the same corner of the
Speaker 1: multiverse as the campaign across across the Road. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So.
Speaker 1: One of the really important plot points with the Lithids
Speaker 1: is that in ages past they carved out an enormous
Speaker 1: empire for themselves. What the cells, one that spanned whole
Speaker 1: worlds and the material plane as well as other various planes.
Speaker 1: They they had Slash have spaceships called no Alloyd's then
Speaker 1: enable travel across the plains. But they've lost the technology
Speaker 1: of their manufacture like any you know, decent elder race.
Speaker 1: They've they've forgotten how to read kind of like relative
Speaker 1: now out. But they built their empire mostly on the
Speaker 1: back of psionically dominated slave labor. But after time, as
Speaker 1: you know happens when you build your empire on slave labor,
Speaker 1: the slaves rose up, they rebelled, and their their empire
Speaker 1: felt to pieces, and so they had to go out
Speaker 1: and just sort of find little corners to survive. And
Speaker 1: and in particular they end up taking up in the
Speaker 1: under dark. Uh and and here they end up, you know,
Speaker 1: having more slave races, and each one they mess up
Speaker 1: by just psionically dominating them, altering them, changing them into
Speaker 1: whatever form suits the mind flares, and just just causing
Speaker 1: lots of trauma and mischief, um, just across the world.
Speaker 1: They remind me kind of of this ant that we've
Speaker 1: covered on the show before. I'm gonna have trouble remembering
Speaker 1: its Latin name off the top of my head, but
Speaker 1: you might know it Court Accepts. Oh, yes, the Court
Speaker 1: aceps U. Fun guy that end up growing in the
Speaker 1: ants exactly. Um, so this this fun guy gets inside
Speaker 1: these aunt brains and it's it sort of controls them
Speaker 1: to take care of its fungal colony and allow it
Speaker 1: to take the aunt resources and mind flair. I guess
Speaker 1: sociology is somewhat similar. And that they they dominate these
Speaker 1: you know, people of various D and D species, dwarves, elves,
Speaker 1: human beings, whatever. Gift Oh yeah, the gift off touching
Speaker 1: the gift here, and that they're the slaves that sort
Speaker 1: of like work and do all the labor for the
Speaker 1: mind flares. They even one of the things that the
Speaker 1: slaves are known to do is they have to scrub
Speaker 1: down the elder brain and get in massagy. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and they all their brains important to that. That's the thing.
Speaker 1: All the all these different elements that we're touching on here,
Speaker 1: they might sound a bit like fluff that we're gonna
Speaker 1: come back to them and discuss some science around them.
Speaker 1: But real quick about the gift. The gift were the
Speaker 1: the biggest mistake that they made. These were the thralls
Speaker 1: that really os up and not only helped bring about
Speaker 1: the follow their empire, but regularly now the Gift regularly
Speaker 1: venture out from their astral plane headquarters to hunt down
Speaker 1: and eradicate Elithid colonies wherever they can find them. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the key reasons that elipids live and
Speaker 1: you know, the safety and secret of the under dark
Speaker 1: or other secluded places and in each separate colonies cut
Speaker 1: off from all the others while while they calculate in
Speaker 1: scheme and forgot how they're going to restore their empire. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they basically like live in these like deep caves there.
Speaker 1: It's like a it's almost like an ant colony, it is, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's all based around the center of this elder
Speaker 1: brand I mentioned earlier, which we're gonna get into. Uh.
Speaker 1: They but they yeah, they kind of like occasionally just
Speaker 1: go out grab some slaves, pull them back in, and
Speaker 1: like that's how their society runs. Yeah, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: very helpful as we go far just to think of
Speaker 1: them as youth social parasites. Yes, they write really like
Speaker 1: they have two options. They either capture somebody and eat
Speaker 1: their brain, or capture them and dominate their mind and
Speaker 1: make them into a slave. Right, So either way, an
Speaker 1: encounter with the mind flare is going to end up bad,
Speaker 1: all right, So let's launch into their biology again. Bipedal
Speaker 1: humanoid bodies, four tentacles, four claude digits per hand. Diet
Speaker 1: consists mostly of psionic energy, with some additional sustenance stuff
Speaker 1: from the gobble brains themselves. Uh. Now, technically speaking, their
Speaker 1: troglophiles their cave dwelling creatures that complete their life cycles
Speaker 1: in a cave, but they can also survive above ground.
Speaker 1: Help me out with this. Troglo files is a real term. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is a real term. There's not a
Speaker 1: dungeon dragon's term. This would be the the the natural
Speaker 1: world classification for a creature like this, though, of course,
Speaker 1: classifications are difficult when you're considering even fictional intelligent creatures.
Speaker 1: You know, one that is choosing to live underground in
Speaker 1: a subterranean environment for their own purposes, and now their
Speaker 1: reproductive system is utterly bizarre. And yet uh, there are
Speaker 1: real world examples that are almost as bizarre. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're a real world example. When you start
Speaker 1: looking at complex life cycles, you look at some of
Speaker 1: the the parasite life cycles out there, and various insect
Speaker 1: life cycles. They are not only just like a bizarre
Speaker 1: circle of parasitic behavior, but also when you see branches
Speaker 1: in the tree. And this is key to understanding the
Speaker 1: mind flares, when you see various morphs that can emerge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so all right, walk us through this. All right, So
Speaker 1: you have an egg. That's where it starts, an a
Speaker 1: lipid egg, a mind for an adult mind flare. What
Speaker 1: came first, the mind flare the egg. Now an adult
Speaker 1: mind flare lays an egg. Yes, okay, so they lay
Speaker 1: an egg. That egg hatches into an a lipid tadpole,
Speaker 1: so little squirming us a tadpole, a little larval elithid.
Speaker 1: Now from that point there are a few different things
Speaker 1: that can happen. Ideally there there's a process called sea
Speaker 1: morphous us and this is where adult mind flares would
Speaker 1: come and pick up the little tadpole and implant in
Speaker 1: the cranium of a captive humanoid, like a captive kind
Speaker 1: of like psychically washed humanoid. And they usually you put
Speaker 1: it through the ear. But there's a drawing in volos
Speaker 1: guide of monsters of like it's very based on wrath
Speaker 1: of calm of like the tadpole like crawling its way
Speaker 1: up the face towards the eye socket of a victim. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that exact scenario. So one way or another,
Speaker 1: they get that dust that puppy into the brain and
Speaker 1: then it eats the brain, replaces the brain, and then
Speaker 1: that host body becomes the new mind flare body. Go.
Speaker 1: You know, I guess it turns purple, slimy, loses a
Speaker 1: digit on each hand, gets pretty skinny. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you've got You've got yourself an adult elithid that carries
Speaker 1: on adult elipid business and eventually can go onto legs
Speaker 1: of its own. Right now, there are two other possible
Speaker 1: ways that this can go with the elithid tadpole. So
Speaker 1: sometimes the elithid becomes a you lethar it. And this
Speaker 1: is uh, this is essentially a super mind flare that
Speaker 1: is going to eventually leave the colony with some other
Speaker 1: mind flares, found a new colony and become its elder brain. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't have human humanoid form. It's just like
Speaker 1: the superpowered tadpole. It's a super powered tadpole still have
Speaker 1: to be implanted into a humanoid, but it's destined to
Speaker 1: be this uh, this this cedar of a new colon
Speaker 1: and it will eventually grow into a giant brain right
Speaker 1: once it establishes itself. Else and then the other way
Speaker 1: that things can go is the elithid tadpole can become
Speaker 1: a neolithid. And this is when they're nobody's taking care
Speaker 1: of the tadpoles. Nobody, no mind flares are coming around
Speaker 1: to look after them and make sure they're stuffed into
Speaker 1: the right skull. In this case, they all freak out
Speaker 1: and start eating each other, and whichever one is left
Speaker 1: grows into a giant, powerful beast intelligence monster. Huh. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have never encountered one of these before. It's is good,
Speaker 1: it's like a level wow. Okay. But but what's going
Speaker 1: on with both of these cases, and this is where
Speaker 1: there's a there's a real world parallel that will will
Speaker 1: break down a little a little more in a bit,
Speaker 1: is that you essentially have two morphs springing off from
Speaker 1: the tadpole. One is caused by negative environmental constraints and
Speaker 1: that leads to the neolithid, and the other is positive
Speaker 1: environmental constraints, which leads to the leth All right, so
Speaker 1: I'm assuming this is dependent on like how many humanoids
Speaker 1: are available for them to eat. Brains of or make
Speaker 1: slaves into or or or whatnot. How big the cave
Speaker 1: system is that they're living within. Yeah, it's it has
Speaker 1: to do with population density in our real world examples
Speaker 1: that will get to so you can think of it
Speaker 1: in those terms like is the is the colony successful
Speaker 1: enough to send off anything to found a new colony,
Speaker 1: or is it even successful enough for the tadpoles to
Speaker 1: continue to thrive or should they just all eat each
Speaker 1: other out of you know, purely economic cannibalism, which is
Speaker 1: the thing that happened in multiple species. Yeah, well right, right,
Speaker 1: in real species, but also in this fictional when we're
Speaker 1: talking about right, just in our real world, cannibalism is
Speaker 1: always the most economic path to avoid wasting the energy
Speaker 1: that goes into flesh. So we've mentioned this elder brain
Speaker 1: multiple times, and basically I just said it's a giant brain.
Speaker 1: But let's let's get a little bit more defined here
Speaker 1: on this. Yeah, I mean, essentially, it's just a giant
Speaker 1: brain in a Brian pool that is in charge of
Speaker 1: the mind flare colonies see in the in the Drifts books,
Speaker 1: it's in cerebral fluid. And I always wondered where did
Speaker 1: they get all that cerebral fluid from like maybe they
Speaker 1: eat the brains and then they like keep they drain
Speaker 1: the cerebral fluid out to put in their little elder
Speaker 1: brain pool that they've got. Now, they just had Amazon
Speaker 1: weekly deliveries on sailing, Okay, yeah, well the two day
Speaker 1: shipping on projects. Yeah, we gotta do it, even to
Speaker 1: the under dark exactly. Yeah. So according to vote is
Speaker 1: what's going on here with the elder brain is? So
Speaker 1: is this to survive and to make the necessary meta
Speaker 1: calculations in order, you know, to to to actually survive
Speaker 1: and to eventually reclaim their empire. Uh, they've either evolved
Speaker 1: or developed the elder brains and these are giant immobile
Speaker 1: thought thought organs that flowed in tanks of Brian serving
Speaker 1: as the mind Flares colonies, library of knowledge, a history
Speaker 1: of past lives and a nexus of metacognition for the
Speaker 1: individuals in the colony and each individual that is going
Speaker 1: to employ non aliftid thralls as well. This reminds me
Speaker 1: of in the Marvel universe, they have a similar thing
Speaker 1: the Cree alien species, which I haven't seen a lot
Speaker 1: of the TV show Agents of Shield, but I think
Speaker 1: they show up in there, they're ruled by a thing
Speaker 1: that's very similar to this, that's called the Supreme Intelligence.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the same thing. It's just like a
Speaker 1: big blob and like a giant canister of cerebral fluid,
Speaker 1: and it's got some brain tentacles and the eyes in
Speaker 1: the mouth. These don't have eyes in the mouth of
Speaker 1: just brains, just big brains, and they do all sorts
Speaker 1: of of you know, psionically powerful tactics against anybody that
Speaker 1: threatens them. But we'll come back to the elder brains
Speaker 1: in a bit, because there are actual parallels to discuss
Speaker 1: with humans. All right, So that is the crash course
Speaker 1: in the fictional elithics, and now from here on in
Speaker 1: the episode, we're going to largely focus on what the
Speaker 1: natural world, what real life biology can tell us about
Speaker 1: what's going on with the elithids, and how we can
Speaker 1: use the elithic examples the way to explore these examples. Yes,
Speaker 1: so the way that I approached this was sort of like,
Speaker 1: let's Frankenstein from the real world, a mind flare out
Speaker 1: of what we know of how they're described, right, So
Speaker 1: their biology, anatomy, all that stuff, like what's in the
Speaker 1: real world that we can bring to our understanding of this.
Speaker 1: And the first place that I went to was their
Speaker 1: mouths because they are described as even though they've got
Speaker 1: these tentacles, they're described as their specif cific mouths as
Speaker 1: being like lamprey mouths. Lampreys, if you're unfamiliar, are jawless fish. Uh.
Speaker 1: They've got these thorny, suction cup like mouths and they
Speaker 1: are parasites much like the mind flavors and a lot
Speaker 1: of the creatures we're gonna talk about today. They use
Speaker 1: their mouths to attach to an animal's body and then
Speaker 1: they cut with these teeth through surface tissue until they
Speaker 1: reach the blood and bodily fluids of it um. They've
Speaker 1: they're known to live in both coastal and fresh water.
Speaker 1: They're kind of they look like eels kind of, but
Speaker 1: they're not. They're fish. Uh. There's three types of them.
Speaker 1: There's flesh eaters, blood drinkers, and just a type that
Speaker 1: lives for three to seven years in a larval stage
Speaker 1: and then they only live for six months as adults,
Speaker 1: but they don't really feed. They just reproduce with other
Speaker 1: lamp reas and then they die. So an equally weird
Speaker 1: example from the real world. Now, there is an excellent
Speaker 1: article on Wired fromen called Absurd Creature of the Week
Speaker 1: the lamprey that just really dove deep into the lamprey's biology.
Speaker 1: So I turned to that for a real deep description
Speaker 1: of this mouth. What's going on with this mouth? Now,
Speaker 1: flesh eater lampreys and blood drinker lampreys have different types
Speaker 1: of mouth, So let's go with the flesh eater for today,
Speaker 1: since we know that the mind flare is definitely using
Speaker 1: it to eat brains. So they have a structure that's
Speaker 1: like a tongue. These are lampreys, and it's called a piston.
Speaker 1: It has this convex structure to it that moves both
Speaker 1: side to side and up and down, basically gouging flesh
Speaker 1: out of its victim, with a strong middle tooth attached
Speaker 1: to it. And this middle tooth is shaped like a
Speaker 1: U in the flesh eater lampreys and like a W
Speaker 1: and the blood drinker lampreys. And for different reasons, when
Speaker 1: one's better at like pulling flesh into the mouth, the
Speaker 1: other is better getting blood flowing um. And there are
Speaker 1: very much like other animals that we've talked about. When
Speaker 1: we've covered vampires on the show before. They have glands
Speaker 1: in their throat that secrete an anticoagulant and that helps
Speaker 1: keep the blood flowing, help get stuffed down their throat. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the flesh eaters, the anti coagulant glands are much smaller,
Speaker 1: but they still exist. So presumably a mind flare would
Speaker 1: have some kind of anticoagulant gland as well. Now, lampreys
Speaker 1: have two rings of structures inside the mouth that helps
Speaker 1: them adhere to their victims through suction. One ring is
Speaker 1: the oral fimbria, and it basically looks like little leaves
Speaker 1: that are made of flaps of tissue, and these adhere
Speaker 1: closely to the skin of the victim and they form
Speaker 1: this tight seal. Like I mean, I've never been bitten
Speaker 1: by lamprey, but I imagine, like from what I've heard,
Speaker 1: there next to impossible to get off of. You. Like,
Speaker 1: part of the country that I lived in for a
Speaker 1: while in New Hampshire was right next to what was
Speaker 1: called the Lamprey River, and so obviously there are a
Speaker 1: lot of fresh water lamp freas in there. I never
Speaker 1: encountered them, but you know, my understanding is, like you know,
Speaker 1: you have to basically kill it to get it off
Speaker 1: and then have it I think surgically removed. Um, so
Speaker 1: it's it's clamped on their tight There's a second ring
Speaker 1: in the mouth that is made of conical structures known
Speaker 1: as papal a, and these help the lamprey actually sense
Speaker 1: where best to attach themselves. So the blood drinking lampreys,
Speaker 1: they're so sensitive with this region of their mouth that
Speaker 1: they can actually use it to find underlying blood vessels
Speaker 1: around victims. So this is like think of it as
Speaker 1: like uh like radar almost right, Like it's a super
Speaker 1: sensitive organ built into their mouth so they can find
Speaker 1: the best possible place to clamp down and start chewing
Speaker 1: and sucking blood or and or flesh out of you. Now,
Speaker 1: they don't often go after humans. Don't be listening to
Speaker 1: this and like free times. Oh boy, like that. You know,
Speaker 1: that's pretty rare. I think it. It has happened obviously.
Speaker 1: But fun fact that Joe actually told me about. I
Speaker 1: was talking to him about this episode before we came
Speaker 1: to the studio and he said, well, did you know
Speaker 1: the his classic Joe He's got just like this ample
Speaker 1: amount of weird knowledge. He goes, did you know Henry
Speaker 1: the First died from eating a pie fell lampreys. And
Speaker 1: I was like, what what are you talking about? Like
Speaker 1: a lamprey pie? Yeah, And he was right. Apparently, King
Speaker 1: Henry the First died from food poisoning when he ate
Speaker 1: what was referred to as a surfeit of lamprey's in
Speaker 1: a pie. His physician specifically told him not to because
Speaker 1: like this is this is a bad idea, and he instead,
Speaker 1: I think he was like sixty eight sixty nine. He was,
Speaker 1: you know, for the time, quite elderly, but he was like, Nope,
Speaker 1: I'm eating this pie flo lampreys. I can't imagine what
Speaker 1: that tastes like. It just made me immediately nauseous when
Speaker 1: Joe told me about it. But by all accounts, there's
Speaker 1: there's multiple pieces of evidence that this guy ate a
Speaker 1: lamprey pie. We'll have to hear from people who have
Speaker 1: a culinary experience with lampreys. Yeah, maybe they taste great.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I can't imagine that a creature that
Speaker 1: solely subsists on just like hanging onto the body of
Speaker 1: its victim and draining it of blood has got like
Speaker 1: a lot of like good fatty flesh on it. For eating,
Speaker 1: but I'm also a vegetarian. Now for the mind flares part,
Speaker 1: of course, it's it's not so much about blood or meat,
Speaker 1: it's about getting that brain. So so I guess the
Speaker 1: idea here would be if we look at the lamprey,
Speaker 1: it would be to either use some sort of specialized
Speaker 1: tongue after attachment to either like cut its way through
Speaker 1: an eye socket or some other natural uh the fleshy
Speaker 1: gateway to the brain, or just like straight through the skull. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The way I've always seen it drawn is from behind,
Speaker 1: like the of mind flare, tentacles wrap around your face
Speaker 1: from behind, the mouth attaches to the back of your skull,
Speaker 1: and then presumably this piston thing is in their mouth
Speaker 1: and just bores through your skull, and subsequently they just
Speaker 1: chunk your brain up and suck it up through their mouth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: leaving you with the head without a brain. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, uh, let's take a quick break, and
Speaker 1: when we come back we will explore more horrifying wonders
Speaker 1: related to the elithid body as well as natural world organisms. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're back, Robert. You had previously mentioned the possibilities
Speaker 1: of tadpoles in real life and in mind flare life
Speaker 1: being cannibals. So let's talk about this all right, So
Speaker 1: once more again according to to Volo's guided monsters and
Speaker 1: elithid las eggs and protected pools and larval tadpole hatcheries,
Speaker 1: all right, the tadpoles hatch and then they get turned
Speaker 1: into adult mind flares, now tadpoles and abandoned pools. These
Speaker 1: are pools that, you know, the mind flares that looked
Speaker 1: after we're all slain by high level adventures or or
Speaker 1: or gift coming in from from the outside, so there's
Speaker 1: nobody to take care of them, so that what they
Speaker 1: do is they end up eating each other until all
Speaker 1: you have left is just one mutated survivor known as
Speaker 1: a neolithid, and this just grows into a monstrous psychic
Speaker 1: worm that's a danger to elithids and non elithids alike,
Speaker 1: large powerful animal, minded monster with us with some signic ability. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there are some real world examples of this, right yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: For the real world world parallel here would be tiger
Speaker 1: salamander cannibal Morse. So the life cycle of the tiger
Speaker 1: salamander features an interesting developmental fork an egg can develop
Speaker 1: into a normal larval tadpole or into this cannibal morph
Speaker 1: see now, under normal circumstances, tiger salamat or eggs developed
Speaker 1: into normal tadpoles and then into normal adult tiger salamanders.
Speaker 1: But if the population is too large for the available environment,
Speaker 1: so like they're in a small pool or something, uh,
Speaker 1: then consistent tactile interactions with other tadpoles cause m with
Speaker 1: the eggs to develop into tadpoles with larger heads, bigger mouths,
Speaker 1: and more well developed teeth. And I'm definitely picturing like
Speaker 1: a baby is you know more? Yeah? So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: basically the scenario is not to personify uh that you know,
Speaker 1: non human non intelligent um relationships here, but it's almost
Speaker 1: like there's a there's somebody in charge of all, right,
Speaker 1: we've got too many, we've got too many salamanders in
Speaker 1: this pool. Let's just make one that's really good at
Speaker 1: eating all the other all the other salamanders. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so basically they have a built in population control system
Speaker 1: larva on larva cannibalism. If the broodpools overcrowded and the
Speaker 1: resources are too scarce, then some tadpoles physically transform in
Speaker 1: order to better gobble up the others. That is absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 1: Let's back up for a second here, let's imagine let's
Speaker 1: apply this to human beings. Imagine there's a nursery and
Speaker 1: it's you know, at the hospital, and it's got all
Speaker 1: the babies in their little beds, and one baby grows
Speaker 1: a little bit larger. Its head gets bigger, it gets
Speaker 1: this huge mouth, and it grows well developed teeth, and
Speaker 1: then it proceeds to crawl around the nursery and eat
Speaker 1: some of the other babies. That's basically what we're talking
Speaker 1: that's the basic scenario here. Yeah, now, and uh and
Speaker 1: and after this calling is done, the the cannibal MorphOS salamander,
Speaker 1: it keeps its large head and bigger mouth, but then
Speaker 1: goes through its diet normalizes, and it goes to a
Speaker 1: normal life cycle. I'm trying to imagine like the animal
Speaker 1: documentary that's narrated by like Morgan Freeman or Sigourney Weaver
Speaker 1: or something, and they're like, and here we have the
Speaker 1: tiger salamander eating all of its fellow tadpole babies, and
Speaker 1: it's just like, well that that's exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: thing Attenboro would hit us with Attenborough would love it,
Speaker 1: that's true, and I would have to I would have
Speaker 1: to immediately skip the track for my son, as would
Speaker 1: watch the nature shows. Um, now let's turn to the
Speaker 1: neil with it. So, Yeah, the neil that you can
Speaker 1: look at and say, this is essentially a cannibal morph.
Speaker 1: This is one tadpole eating all the other tadpoles and
Speaker 1: then growing into this giant thing. So if we're to
Speaker 1: use nature as our guide here, we can only assume
Speaker 1: that the neolithid morph once served in evolutionary purpose, allowing
Speaker 1: a tadpole pool to survive in times of chaos or abandonment,
Speaker 1: absorbing the nutrients of its fellow tadpoles with just pure
Speaker 1: economic ruthlessness, just like the cannibal morphs of tiger salamanders. However,
Speaker 1: with the mind flares, you can definitely say that the
Speaker 1: neolithid is something of of this stigial thing, right, because
Speaker 1: there's there's no information any of the books I looked
Speaker 1: at that that let us know that. Then the neolithid
Speaker 1: continues the alipid race in any way, shape or form um.
Speaker 1: It's not going to develop into as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, it's not going to develop into an adult
Speaker 1: mind flare. So this is perhaps in a you know,
Speaker 1: a fitting accident for a species that has manipulated other
Speaker 1: species and itself for so long. Under normal condition, larger
Speaker 1: tadpoles would would be killed and they certainly would not
Speaker 1: be permitted to mature into a kneel with it, right yeah.
Speaker 1: I would imagine like in the mind flare society, this
Speaker 1: isn't always a good thing, right yeah. It kind of
Speaker 1: deviates from your normal routine. It would be like it
Speaker 1: would be exactly like if humans could do this, you
Speaker 1: would you would know, never, never, always space your babies out,
Speaker 1: don't let don't put them too close, or you're gonna
Speaker 1: end up with a cannibal morph baby. And then what
Speaker 1: are we going to do about that? You know? Well, so,
Speaker 1: I this isn't directly related to the cannibalism thing, but
Speaker 1: I found an interesting article about tadpoles that I just
Speaker 1: wanted to throw in here as well to try to
Speaker 1: understand the neolithids. So, according to research that was published
Speaker 1: in apparently tadpoles can see if you attach eyeballs to
Speaker 1: their tails. What now, this is utterly bizarre? Why what
Speaker 1: what I'm wondering, is like, you know what the working
Speaker 1: conditions are like in this laboratory. But basically it was
Speaker 1: compelling to scientists to study because they wanted to learn
Speaker 1: how much a tadpole brain could interpret sensory data. So
Speaker 1: they took the African claw frog Xenopus lavists I believe
Speaker 1: that's the Latin pronunciation. They took their tadpoles and they
Speaker 1: grafted eyeballs onto their torsos and tails, and then they
Speaker 1: removed their original eyes. So that's the part to me,
Speaker 1: I'm like, what mad science is this? That they're just
Speaker 1: like plucking eyes out of these creatures and then pasting
Speaker 1: eyes onto other parts of their body. Yeah, who's the
Speaker 1: awful under dark monster here? Yeah, exactly, this is very
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing mind flares too. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Then they gave a tadpole vision test, and the way
Speaker 1: that they did this was they illuminated half the area
Speaker 1: that the tadpoles were in with red light and half
Speaker 1: with blue light. And in the red light, the tadpoles
Speaker 1: would get electrocuted, they'd get zapped with electricity. So again,
Speaker 1: more torture, right, and we've already yanked your eyeballs out
Speaker 1: pasted them onto your tail. Now we're gonna zap you.
Speaker 1: But apparently some of these tadpoles would go over to
Speaker 1: the blue light area because they knew that it was safe.
Speaker 1: So the scientists determined some of them could actually see
Speaker 1: with their eyeball tails because they stayed in these safe
Speaker 1: blue areas. So the researchers basically argued, this is evidence
Speaker 1: that the brain in general is remarkably plastic in its
Speaker 1: configuration for different body arrangements, like especially at tadpole stage,
Speaker 1: when it's so um, you know, you're at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the life cycle, it can adapt quickly enough to
Speaker 1: like somehow rewire, so it can attach to these eyeballs
Speaker 1: that are just not supposed to be there um. And
Speaker 1: this is what allows mutations in all kinds of body plans,
Speaker 1: not just in frogs and tadpoles, to still work with
Speaker 1: the existing anatomy. So the basic idea here is like,
Speaker 1: if there's some kind of a mutation in a single organism,
Speaker 1: it can adapt quickly, or its brain can adapt quickly
Speaker 1: because like it's designed to be so I don't know, flexible. Literally, Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's wonderful because this not only gives us a
Speaker 1: little more information about tadpoles and how they work, but
Speaker 1: again it shows it supports the theory that mind flayers
Speaker 1: are essentially us. Yeah, very much so. And I think right, like,
Speaker 1: can imagine there, here's your D and D campaign, right,
Speaker 1: you have you have to hear some adventurers. You have
Speaker 1: to sneak into a mind flare cave, take some of
Speaker 1: their tadpoles, and then pull their eyes off and rejection
Speaker 1: their tails and perform this experiment in uh in D
Speaker 1: and D time. So we'll see what kind of odd
Speaker 1: results that would have. Now we're talking about brain eating
Speaker 1: monsters here, so so one of the most obvious areas
Speaker 1: to to to explore here would be what animals eat brains?
Speaker 1: And it's a trickier scenario than we often think because
Speaker 1: they're playing almost eat brains, humans eat brains. Totally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is gonna have forever scarred me. But
Speaker 1: growing up Jeverisy Faces of Death No, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: very familiar with them by reputation they were You're lucky
Speaker 1: they didn't. But there was one of the like bootlegged
Speaker 1: VHS copies that I saw back when I was god
Speaker 1: it must have been like fourteen or fifteen years old. Uh.
Speaker 1: They they did the thing where they put the monkey
Speaker 1: in the middle of the table. The table has like
Speaker 1: the circular entry, and you hit the monkey on the head,
Speaker 1: open up at skull, and people eat the brains. This
Speaker 1: would be the very thing that was referenced in that
Speaker 1: awful scene in the second Indiana Jones movie. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And if you wonder why I'm a vegetarian, that was
Speaker 1: probably the beginnings of it right there. Yeah. God, what
Speaker 1: what an odd I want to go back and watch
Speaker 1: that movie sometimes, but don't. There's so much weird xenophobic material. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Yeah. I feel sorry if our list wars are
Speaker 1: out there and you know what I'm talking about. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of examples, plenty of animals, birds,
Speaker 1: humans that eat brains, right, But to understand the mind
Speaker 1: flare affect on, uh, the humanoids that they're eating the
Speaker 1: brains of, I turned to a couple of specific creatures
Speaker 1: that I think will help us out here, because one
Speaker 1: of the things about the mind flare is that you know,
Speaker 1: in in a in a very fantasy way, it eats
Speaker 1: psychic energy. And of course there's no real parallels to
Speaker 1: that in the in the real world. Otherwise, they're definitely
Speaker 1: eating the brain and nothing else. So the way to
Speaker 1: describe this in biology would be to say that they're
Speaker 1: I obligate, I guess neurovores, And it's difficult to find
Speaker 1: anything like that in biology. But you have a couple
Speaker 1: of pies, I do, yeah, all of them much smaller
Speaker 1: than the mind flare. The first is and again help
Speaker 1: me with my Latin here, I think it's neglia foul Larry.
Speaker 1: This is referred to in English as the brain eating
Speaker 1: amba uh and this amiba is the primary cause of
Speaker 1: the infectious disease ambic men and joe encephalitis, which is
Speaker 1: also referred to as just PAM P a M. The
Speaker 1: amiba can exist in different kinds of environments, sometimes in soil,
Speaker 1: sometimes in fresh water, and that's where it becomes trouble
Speaker 1: for us as human beings. Or it can exist in
Speaker 1: the human central nervous system. Now, these infections are really rare.
Speaker 1: Well we're about to tell you, like, don't get super
Speaker 1: freaked out. It's soup. It's incredibly rare. But when they
Speaker 1: happen of the time, it's fatal, Like If you get
Speaker 1: one of these amiba in you, you're pretty much done
Speaker 1: for this is this is rolling a one on your Yeah.
Speaker 1: The CDC actually estimates that there were a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty eight cases of pam AND reported in the United
Speaker 1: States between nineteen sixty two and Okay, so that gives
Speaker 1: you an idea of how rare it is. Of those,
Speaker 1: only three of the patients survived. Uh so, how do
Speaker 1: you get it? You're all probably immediately going, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want that. How How how do I stay
Speaker 1: away from that? Well, usually it's from engaging in recreational
Speaker 1: water activities like swimming or diving. So you know, you
Speaker 1: basically have to stay away from water fun if you,
Speaker 1: if you, if you want to totally avoid this thing.
Speaker 1: The amiba enters the human body through your nose and
Speaker 1: it attaches itself to the epithel cells that line the
Speaker 1: inside of the nasal cavity. Then it migrates to the
Speaker 1: nerves that are situated in the nasal area. Eventually this
Speaker 1: reaches the central nervous system of your spinal cord and brain,
Speaker 1: and it induces your body's immune system to activate macrophages
Speaker 1: and neutrophils to combat infection doesn't feel good. And here's why.
Speaker 1: The amiba itself, this is the airy mind flawery. It
Speaker 1: has food cups on its surface that allow it to
Speaker 1: capture its own food resources, and this is everything from
Speaker 1: bacteria and fungi to human tissue if it's gotten up
Speaker 1: your nose. In addition, it produces cell destructive molecules that
Speaker 1: destroy the membrane structure of nerve cells. So the combination
Speaker 1: of these two things make it really effective at inducing
Speaker 1: severe nerve damage. It eventually will destroy your entire central
Speaker 1: nervous system. This makes them a pretty serious public health
Speaker 1: hazard um because they can be easily acquired. You know,
Speaker 1: you just swimming along, you get one up your nose
Speaker 1: and boom, and then they're associated with this really high
Speaker 1: mortality rate. Now, the symptoms don't show up until about
Speaker 1: two to eight days after infection, and they include the
Speaker 1: following and this is I think we can use these
Speaker 1: as probably an idea of what symptoms would be like
Speaker 1: of uh be either being under the thrall of mind
Speaker 1: flares or during the process of your brain being consumed. Okay,
Speaker 1: so as they're sucking that brain, just beginning to suck
Speaker 1: it out. I guess, so sudden headache, that's a that's
Speaker 1: an obvious one, right, high fever, neck pain, nausea, vomiting, ryanitis,
Speaker 1: light sensitivity, and eventually seizure, seizures in a coma. So alright,
Speaker 1: mind flare is probably doing this much quicker than the
Speaker 1: brain eating amiba is right, But that's a basic idea,
Speaker 1: you know, unless they have different culinary styles. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe there's some of them. Maybe they like to eat slow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I was reading the geek Out a little bit.
Speaker 1: I was reading that supposedly some mind flares experiment by
Speaker 1: say subjecting their they're they're victims to musical thoughts or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like they'll they'll they'll want a certain mind state before
Speaker 1: they eat it because it had just take later. Interesting, Okay,
Speaker 1: so they go to like they go to like a
Speaker 1: special school, like learn what specific thoughts to beam into
Speaker 1: the brain before they eat it. Yeah, if you want
Speaker 1: your your brain meal to be more a little like
Speaker 1: a veal and wanted to be a sushi, you know
Speaker 1: that depends. Huh. Well again, I want to remind everybody
Speaker 1: the brain eating amba is pretty rare. It's so rare
Speaker 1: that no clinical trials for developing treatments even exist as
Speaker 1: often Usually if it's found, it's treated with something called
Speaker 1: Ampho terrison B, which is an anti fungal drug, as
Speaker 1: well as a variety of other antifungal drugs. And I've
Speaker 1: got some examples for you. In fact, these are the
Speaker 1: three survivors in the US, um one of the Now,
Speaker 1: there's been seven survivors in the whole world. Three in
Speaker 1: the US. One of them was a nine year old
Speaker 1: girl in California who was infected in nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: and she caught it by swimming in Deep Creek Hot
Speaker 1: Springs in San Bernardino National Forest. She was treated with
Speaker 1: exactly what I just described. They gave her Ampho terrison
Speaker 1: B some their antifungal drugs intravenously, and she beat it
Speaker 1: and lived through the experience. Now, two other children were
Speaker 1: reported survivors of this just in two thousand thirteen, so
Speaker 1: just three years ago, and they were twelve and eight
Speaker 1: years old. And a twelve year old first contracted it
Speaker 1: at a water park that was near Little Rock, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: So don't think to yourself like, oh, this is only
Speaker 1: if I swim in like natural water, because apparently they
Speaker 1: got it at this water park as well. Uh. In
Speaker 1: addition to the anti fungal treatments that they usually give,
Speaker 1: this girl was so bad off that they had to
Speaker 1: subject her to induced hypothermia to reduce her brain swelling.
Speaker 1: So this is pretty nasty disease. Um. But also, you know,
Speaker 1: let's keep it in mind when we're thinking about boy,
Speaker 1: this mind flare. It's got its lamprey mouth attached and
Speaker 1: it's piston drilling through my head. What's that going to
Speaker 1: feel like? So this would be an example of a
Speaker 1: creature that certainly doesn't depend on human brains at all
Speaker 1: exact but this is it. But it also gives us
Speaker 1: an example of what brain eating in the real world
Speaker 1: consists off. Yep, we have a couple other examples here too.
Speaker 1: The next one is neurosist curosis, which is a type
Speaker 1: of tape worm that usually lives in pigs. This is
Speaker 1: very stuff to blow your mind. You must have covered
Speaker 1: the pork tapeworm. Uh. Pork tape worm produced larva that
Speaker 1: can latch onto cranium, whether it's a pigs cranium or
Speaker 1: human cranium, and they show up as large white cysts.
Speaker 1: They usually disperse through a pig's blood stream. So when
Speaker 1: you're eating undercooked pork, you could be eating their larva.
Speaker 1: Uh So when they enter a human, usually from eating
Speaker 1: undercooked pork, they still flow through our blood stream and
Speaker 1: they get stuck inside the fluid filled cavities in our brains.
Speaker 1: These can lead to a coma loss of motor functions,
Speaker 1: violent seizures, or blindness. And the reason why they're eating
Speaker 1: holes in your brain. Now, my understanding of this scenario
Speaker 1: is that essentially you have a parasite that is lost
Speaker 1: in an unfamiliar host exactly, Yeah, and it's just doing
Speaker 1: what it thinks it's supposed to do and it results
Speaker 1: in this. Yeah. Now, it's unlike the amiba. This is
Speaker 1: more common than you might think. It's estimated that two
Speaker 1: thousand people have them in the US, in twenty nine
Speaker 1: million in Latin America. Now, these are just pork tape
Speaker 1: worms going about the regular business, not not necessarily getting
Speaker 1: lost to winding up of the brain though, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: believe that's true. Yeah, which can be right, It can
Speaker 1: subsequently lead to that. The other one that's related to
Speaker 1: this similar effect, very different being is prion disease. And
Speaker 1: we've we've talked about this occasionally on the show um Prions.
Speaker 1: There are a variety of fatal neurological illnesses that are
Speaker 1: associated with them. They are abnormal proteins and you can
Speaker 1: both inherit them or have them transmitted into your through
Speaker 1: infected animal tissue. They result in symptoms of dementia or
Speaker 1: a taxio, which is impaired motor control, and they eventually
Speaker 1: lead to death, and it can take anywhere from weeks
Speaker 1: two months. UM. You might have heard of this as
Speaker 1: Kreuzfeld Jakob disease. Uh, there's also new variant Kreutzfeld disease,
Speaker 1: crew Gerstmann Stralser, Shinker syndrome, and fatal familial insomnia. So
Speaker 1: all of these are caused by prion proteins in the brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Kuru in particular is the one that is associated with
Speaker 1: traditional acts of funeral cannibalism um in in certain parts
Speaker 1: of the world. And yeah, exactly what Papa New Guinea.
Speaker 1: It leads to disease. Yeah, so all of us are
Speaker 1: probably most familiar with these from the animal form that
Speaker 1: we referred to as mad cow disease. It's caused by
Speaker 1: a similar thing with prions. Now we've known about this
Speaker 1: in sheep and goats. For hundreds of years it referred
Speaker 1: to as scrappy in sheeps and goats, but we didn't
Speaker 1: know that it was actually transmittable until the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: So basically what happens here is these diseases are caused
Speaker 1: by proteins that are misshapen um and that's why we
Speaker 1: refer to them as prions. They clump together and proliferate
Speaker 1: by inducing shape changes in our normal proteins, and this
Speaker 1: causes sponge like lesions in the brain that disrupt brain function.
Speaker 1: So there's your three examples. You get the prions, the
Speaker 1: pork tape worm, and the brain eating amiba. Basically, you know,
Speaker 1: very different kinds of creatures that can get into your
Speaker 1: nervous system and wreck havoc, but good examples of probably
Speaker 1: what's going on with mind flare consumption. Alright, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break and we come back. We're going
Speaker 1: to compare the elpids to a certain tongue eating pair
Speaker 1: of site. So we talked about this earlier, but the
Speaker 1: creation of the mind flare, and it's I guess lore
Speaker 1: throughout the last forty odd years is so amazing that
Speaker 1: they've actually come up with a detailed process with its
Speaker 1: own title called ceremorphosis, which is basically the the idea
Speaker 1: of how it reproduces parasitically, right right, Yeah, it's that
Speaker 1: example we talked about earlier. The the little tadpole is
Speaker 1: shoved up into the cranium and then it eats the
Speaker 1: host brain and it attaches there to the brain, storm
Speaker 1: swells up, grows into the new brain for this body,
Speaker 1: and then transforms the body. Now here's a here's a
Speaker 1: nerdy little bit that I remember about illids. Sometimes when
Speaker 1: they do this, they take on like mental ticks from
Speaker 1: the host the they grow within. Uh. And this is
Speaker 1: considered like social flaw. It's like a it's a real
Speaker 1: like bad sign of manners in mind player society, so
Speaker 1: they try to hide it from the rest of their speechies.
Speaker 1: So like let's say, like, um, all right, We'll use
Speaker 1: Joe as an example. Let's say Joe has like a
Speaker 1: tick where he picks at his fingernails, and then they
Speaker 1: insert a mind flare tadpole into Joe. It eats his brain,
Speaker 1: it turns Joe into a mind flare, regrows as his brain,
Speaker 1: but it may still have that tick. Where it picks
Speaker 1: at its fingernails, but it has to hide it constantly
Speaker 1: from other mind flas or else they'll they'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's something off with you. You're not mind flairery enough.
Speaker 1: You didn't discard uh, the human shell that you're so
Speaker 1: it's so you're weak because you're in a since you're
Speaker 1: letting your your clothing control you. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Alright,
Speaker 1: So you're probably wondering, well, this sounds just monstrous and
Speaker 1: off one of the worldly. What's what possible parallel was there? Well,
Speaker 1: there's a wonderful one and in the form of Simothia Exigua.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is a Stufftabiliary Man classic. We talked
Speaker 1: about this one on the Strain episode. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the tongue eating ice a pod. You might be familiar
Speaker 1: with these from a movie that came out a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. It's a found footage horror movie called
Speaker 1: The Bay, and I think the premise I watched it
Speaker 1: a while ago, but the premise was something like, there
Speaker 1: was some kind of pollutant in the waters around this
Speaker 1: coastal town. It caused the the isopods to mutate, uh,
Speaker 1: and so they started infecting human beings instead of fish. Yeah. Now, luckily,
Speaker 1: luckily they don't actually affect humans. But there hasn't been
Speaker 1: a lot of new research published on these creatures. It's
Speaker 1: it's they're they're quite rare. They're possibly popping up more
Speaker 1: these days due to over fishing. But essentially what you
Speaker 1: have here, this is the scenario. Is we understanding, This
Speaker 1: little crustacean sneaks in through the gills of a fish,
Speaker 1: It sets up shop on the host taste buds, and
Speaker 1: then there's there's only so much room and a fish
Speaker 1: is on a fish mouth, so you can imagine what
Speaker 1: the the louse's first meal is. It has a tasty
Speaker 1: helping of tongue juice, starts sucking on that tongue juice,
Speaker 1: and once the loose drains the tongue of enough blood, uh,
Speaker 1: it attaches itself to the atrophied stump of the tongue
Speaker 1: and essentially becomes the new tongue for the fish. And
Speaker 1: every time the host opens his mouth for a meal,
Speaker 1: the loos, you know, helps itself to a little food
Speaker 1: on the way down. Yeah, you can easily u find
Speaker 1: a Google image search of what these things look like.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of pictures of people prying fish mouths opening
Speaker 1: you can see the little isopod inside. Yeah, every time
Speaker 1: I show my wife it, she just goes like she
Speaker 1: does the voice of the isopod saying like hello, like
Speaker 1: this is peaking out from inside this fish mouth. Fun fact,
Speaker 1: not these specific is A pods that that it regrow
Speaker 1: as tongues, but other is A pods can grow to
Speaker 1: be over two point five feet long. And uh, these
Speaker 1: aren't the tongue replacements. This that these are the kind
Speaker 1: that scavenge the carcass is of whales, which we've talked
Speaker 1: about before the show as well. Yeah, so these are
Speaker 1: really I mean, I don't I don't know how to
Speaker 1: describe isopods verbally on the show, but they're real creepy
Speaker 1: looking critters. And just imagine them crawling along the corpse
Speaker 1: of whale, just slowly chewing their way through it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to drag in another fictional comparison, they remind me a
Speaker 1: lot of the Gartham from the Dark Crystal, the big
Speaker 1: beetle creatures. Yeah, yeah, that's a good Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: good example. So with Samothia exegua, you have a creature
Speaker 1: here that that mainly you know sucks on tongue juice
Speaker 1: attaches itself to the stump, while the elithid tadpole goes
Speaker 1: far beyond that. The the elithid tadpole is replacing the
Speaker 1: central organ of the nervous system. Uh. And it's it's
Speaker 1: quite appropriate to think of this as an act that
Speaker 1: just kills the host, but it really serves as a
Speaker 1: sort of of of parasitism. The body continues to live,
Speaker 1: albeit in a different form, and many natural world parasites
Speaker 1: inflict behavioral and physical changes on their hosts. It also
Speaker 1: gives us a rough evolutionary idea of where the elithids
Speaker 1: came from, or would have come from in a natural system,
Speaker 1: right brain replacing parasites that eventually transcend into something greater. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean, if you really think about it, like
Speaker 1: they have to even though like mind flare is best
Speaker 1: operate on the dark and hide an attack, they have
Speaker 1: to come into contact with other humanoid species because otherwise
Speaker 1: they're just going to only exist as tadpole form, right,
Speaker 1: they have to. They have to use humans for bodies,
Speaker 1: they have to use humans for food. It's yeah, because also, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can think of it this way. So the parasitic
Speaker 1: form that goes inside the host is physically eating the
Speaker 1: brain from the out, from the inside out. But then
Speaker 1: as adults they have to crack open skulls and get
Speaker 1: brains um, you know, in a different way. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I wonder what happens if a mind flare eats a
Speaker 1: prion infected brain. That would be that would be an
Speaker 1: interesting plot point. Infected brains and how maybe they can
Speaker 1: detect them and know not to them. Maybe that's it.
Speaker 1: That's like the oh, it's like it's like an alien
Speaker 1: three when they the aliens don't attack Sigourney Weaver because spoilers,
Speaker 1: she's got one of them in her. But like the
Speaker 1: mind flares will like kill everybody except for one person,
Speaker 1: and it's because they can sense that they've got, you know,
Speaker 1: either pryon related disease or like a pork tape worm
Speaker 1: or something. But this would be a wonderful plot for
Speaker 1: anybody out there who's putting together a campaign. Imagine a
Speaker 1: scenario in which the big breath that the mind flares
Speaker 1: are facing, or perhaps the the methodology that's being employed
Speaker 1: by their enemies is a pry on. It's being induced
Speaker 1: to the populations that the mind flavors depend on for
Speaker 1: food mad mind flare disease. Alright, but we've got some
Speaker 1: more biological parallels specifically with locusts. Right, Yes, so remember
Speaker 1: the oleithard that we have mentioned earlier. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the super mind flare. So again, the scenario here is
Speaker 1: you have tadpoles growing into adult mind flare if everything
Speaker 1: is going like normal, but then there's an exceptional mind
Speaker 1: flare adult who starts rivaling the elder brain. You know,
Speaker 1: they they're they're disagreeing on everything. And finally the elder
Speaker 1: brain says, all right, go do your own thing, take
Speaker 1: your followers, get out of here, start your own colony.
Speaker 1: And that's what happens, seeds a new colony. And again
Speaker 1: you can think of this as a morph a version
Speaker 1: of the species that's going to go out and uh
Speaker 1: and and found a new colony. Okay. And the best
Speaker 1: example that that I came across to to discuss this
Speaker 1: is that of the desert locust. So desert locust feature
Speaker 1: both a gregarious and a solitary morph. A gregarious morph
Speaker 1: arises as a response to population density. It's more adapted flying,
Speaker 1: so it can it can get the heck out of
Speaker 1: that immediate area, go off and help found a new
Speaker 1: population of desert locusts. So I think that's what we
Speaker 1: have we have here with the olythics. You have a
Speaker 1: model that closely resembles morse that developed due to population
Speaker 1: density in order to spread out and establish new community.
Speaker 1: So in this case, it's it's the idea there's there's
Speaker 1: enough of them around that it means that the population
Speaker 1: is healthy, the resources are abundant enough, and the colony
Speaker 1: can actually uh you know, depart, splinter and form new
Speaker 1: populations of the species. Now, what's inherent about that, especially
Speaker 1: for these mind flares, is that they're hermaphrodites, so they
Speaker 1: don't need mates in order to create more mind flares.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking about this, I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: her map preditic reproduction is is definitely a real thing.
Speaker 1: But let's look to another example to try to figure
Speaker 1: out how that would work with mind flares. And the
Speaker 1: one I turned to was C. Elegants, which is a
Speaker 1: type of nematode of roundworm or thread worm uh and
Speaker 1: it lives in the soil, usually sometimes rotting vegetation, and
Speaker 1: it basically feeds on bacteria and they're they're very primitive,
Speaker 1: but we human beings study them a lot, and why
Speaker 1: because they share essential characteristics with human biology, So you know,
Speaker 1: they're great for studying the effects of certain things on
Speaker 1: without doing it to humans. Or I don't know, ferrets,
Speaker 1: which are another sort of I guess if you're thinking
Speaker 1: about it in terms of evolved life forms higher up
Speaker 1: the chain that has human characteristics. Except some of c
Speaker 1: elegants are self fertilizing hermaphrodites, just like the mind flairs are. Uh,
Speaker 1: And the way that they do this is they cleave embryonically,
Speaker 1: So I would assume this is something that happens in
Speaker 1: the mind flare. It proceeds through morpha genesis, and then
Speaker 1: they grow into an adult. Now we've been told by
Speaker 1: Volo's Guide of Monsters that mind flavors lay an egg.
Speaker 1: But this is all right, not trying to be grossier,
Speaker 1: but I'm trying to figure this out. Right, you go
Speaker 1: through ceremorphosis, changes your body, turns your head into an octopus.
Speaker 1: Presumably it creates some kind of orifice that you can
Speaker 1: lay an egg through. Yeah, I would guess so, or
Speaker 1: it's utilizing an existing orifice in some way. Shape or form. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: but I'm wondering if maybe what's happening is it's because
Speaker 1: it's creating its own eggs. It's it's cleaving embryonically inside
Speaker 1: of itself, laying that as an egg, and then that
Speaker 1: egg hatches, proceeds through morpha genesis, and then goes through
Speaker 1: the ceremorphosis procedure that we've already described right now. See,
Speaker 1: elegants also has only male counterparts. So there's hermaphrodites and
Speaker 1: there's males, but there aren't females. It's kind of fascinating.
Speaker 1: Most of their volume when you look at their anatomy,
Speaker 1: is taken up by their reproductive system. So you'd have
Speaker 1: to imagine maybe mind flares would be the same way.
Speaker 1: Like other than the big head, everything from the neck
Speaker 1: down is reproductive system. Yeah. I mean, they probably don't
Speaker 1: need much in the way of a traditional digestive system
Speaker 1: because they're only getting a limited amount of sustenance out
Speaker 1: of that brain. Yeah. Um. And then and then who
Speaker 1: knows how they defecate. Maybe they just they're always coming
Speaker 1: in slime, so maybe they just maybe they just secrete
Speaker 1: it through their wars. Well. Um, the sea elegance of
Speaker 1: their nine hundred and fifty nine cells, three hundred of
Speaker 1: them are neurons. This sounds about right for a larval
Speaker 1: mind flare, especially if it's you know, primarily using its thoughts,
Speaker 1: its brain, it's thinking capacity. See, elegans also have neural structures.
Speaker 1: These are just in nematodes, mind you that include sense
Speaker 1: organs for taste, smell, temperature, and touch. They don't have eyes,
Speaker 1: but they do respond to light. Hopefully nobody starts sewing
Speaker 1: eyes onto these guys anytime soon. But they they're responsive
Speaker 1: to light as well. Uh. And they move by flexing
Speaker 1: and relaxing their dorsal ventral waves along their body to
Speaker 1: propel themselves along. And this was how I was imagining
Speaker 1: the mind flare. Larvae must have to have some kind
Speaker 1: of locomotion, right, whether it's moving through cerebral fluid that
Speaker 1: it's swimming around in, or it's crawling up into somebody's skull.
Speaker 1: So it probably does a similar thing right by flexing
Speaker 1: and relaxing until it burrows up in there and eats
Speaker 1: the brain. So I think c elegants as a nematode
Speaker 1: is a pretty good start. There's lots of hermaphroditic creatures
Speaker 1: out there that we could look to. But this seems
Speaker 1: plausible for how the mind flare I guess the reproductive
Speaker 1: part inside the actual adult mind flare's bodies working. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's an interesting spin on it, and certainly
Speaker 1: fleshes out something that at least in the guides I've
Speaker 1: looked at, they don't really put a lot of detail into. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably a little too much for your average A
Speaker 1: D and D reader that's in volos Additional Guy, the
Speaker 1: Midnight volos Erotic Guide the Monsters. Um, Okay, so we've
Speaker 1: talked a lot about this on the side, but let's
Speaker 1: really get into it. The elder brain. So can imagine
Speaker 1: like if we just had rather rather than like, um,
Speaker 1: a boss at work instead, where your boss's office is,
Speaker 1: there's just a big baby pool that's filled with cerebral
Speaker 1: fluid and a giant brain, and that's what tells you
Speaker 1: what your duties are for the day. I'm picturing it
Speaker 1: right now. I mean I could probably get behind it
Speaker 1: after after a while. Yeah, yeah, you could trust an
Speaker 1: elder brain. Yeah, I mean that's the older brain. Who's
Speaker 1: who's gonna question the alder brain, but you, I certainly
Speaker 1: wouldn't know, but Drid Stowarton did. That's a spoiler for
Speaker 1: that book Exile. Uh. Speaking of which, Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is actually a quote from it, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you a little bit of an idea of from
Speaker 1: the pros what they're like. The inside of the giant
Speaker 1: stone structure was ringed by balconies and spiraling stairways, each
Speaker 1: level housing several of the mind flares, But it was
Speaker 1: the bottom chamber, unadorned and circular, that held the most
Speaker 1: important being of all, the central brain. Fully twenty feet
Speaker 1: in diameter, This boneless lump of pulsating flesh tied the
Speaker 1: mind Flare community together in telepathic symbiosis. The central brain
Speaker 1: was the composite of their knowledge, the mental eye that
Speaker 1: guarded their outside chambers, in which had heard the warning
Speaker 1: cries of the illaphid from the drows city many miles
Speaker 1: to the east. To the Illatids of the community. The
Speaker 1: central brain was the coordinator of their entire existence and
Speaker 1: nothing short of their god. Thus, only a very few
Speaker 1: slaves were allowed with this special tower, captives with sensitive
Speaker 1: and delicate fingers that could massage the illiphant god thing
Speaker 1: and soothe it with tender brushes and warm fluids. So
Speaker 1: it's a little insight into what goes on with the
Speaker 1: older brains with gotta keep the elder brain well scrubbed.
Speaker 1: It's like constantly, like at a day spa. Yeah. So again,
Speaker 1: you get back into this idea that either they developed
Speaker 1: this over time or they evolved to have the elder
Speaker 1: brain as part of their their biology essentially um but
Speaker 1: part of their They're just there their life cycle. I
Speaker 1: tend to like the idea that they they developed it
Speaker 1: or they turned to it after the fall, because the
Speaker 1: mind flares endlessly plot the restoration of their empire, and
Speaker 1: to do so, they have to maintain a perfect balance
Speaker 1: of secrecy and exploration, ever clawing out the shortest, safest path,
Speaker 1: much like the Spacing Guild and the dude yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: can't make big risks because because if they don't pay off,
Speaker 1: they could lose everything. So to survive and to make
Speaker 1: the necessary meta calculations here, the elethids have this elder
Speaker 1: brain uh again, giant immobile thought organ in a tank
Speaker 1: of brine. It's the in these library of knowledge, a
Speaker 1: history of all their past lives. When they die, their
Speaker 1: their their own brains are returned to the elder brain.
Speaker 1: It's a nexus of metacognition for the individuals in the colony,
Speaker 1: and likewise kind of serves the thralls as well. You
Speaker 1: know what that sounds like to me? What cyborgi ism? Yeah,
Speaker 1: except for it's using organic material It sounds very much
Speaker 1: like what we talked about in our episode on cyborganism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I couldn't help but think about human computing.
Speaker 1: The entire system resembles in many ways human information networking
Speaker 1: systems and the ever evolving supercomputers that manage it. But
Speaker 1: the externalization and interconnectivity of thought, and as we drift
Speaker 1: ever closer to the technological singularity, when computer super intelligence
Speaker 1: truly eclipses that humanity, it seems like we could be
Speaker 1: approaching our own age of the elder brain, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, well, think about it the cloud, the way
Speaker 1: everyone talks about the cloud, we're just like offloading and
Speaker 1: nation to the cloud. And I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess we do have like people whose whole job
Speaker 1: is to maintain the cloud. I don't know that they're
Speaker 1: necessarily giving it a delicate finger massages, but you know,
Speaker 1: they work inside these data centers that house all this information.
Speaker 1: That's our version of the elder We put all of
Speaker 1: our human knowledge into it. We put all these details
Speaker 1: about our daily life. Even when we die, information about
Speaker 1: us lives on. Yeah. Yeah, I mean what yea, what
Speaker 1: is the internet? What is the cloud? But an elder brain?
Speaker 1: And you know, the more I think about it, I
Speaker 1: would I think I'd be okay with trusting. I'd be
Speaker 1: I feel safer trusting the world. Do an elder brain
Speaker 1: or or in the human variation here, a super advanced
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. Yeah, so you're ready to give up to
Speaker 1: sky neet at this point, You're like, maybe it'll do
Speaker 1: a better job than we have. It's kind of the
Speaker 1: sky net situation, right because the mind flares are saying, look,
Speaker 1: we screw this up. We're done, We're doomed, we're done.
Speaker 1: So let's let's let's have this elder rain that's going
Speaker 1: to take care of all those choices for us, and
Speaker 1: this way we can survive and maybe even rise again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so I'm trying to think to like parallels of this,
Speaker 1: if you you know, like so in the stories of
Speaker 1: mind flares, basically they'll protect the elder brain at all costs. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's you know, as you mentioned earlier, I think it's
Speaker 1: a pretty high level monster to fight an elder brain
Speaker 1: or something, right, It's pretty like they'll just like psychically
Speaker 1: wipe you out if you try to hurt them. But
Speaker 1: but like, imagine if you just destroyed the Internet, you
Speaker 1: just took out the cloud. Now, I know that's like,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty much as much fantasy as mind flares
Speaker 1: at this point, right, But like the world right now
Speaker 1: without all of that data backed up that we've got
Speaker 1: would be an utter chaos, And so what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do for now? We're going to protect it at
Speaker 1: all costs, right, That's like information is our primary resource
Speaker 1: right now. Kind of crazy. Yeah, you sound like a
Speaker 1: modern human, you also sound like a mind flare and
Speaker 1: saying that, which brings us back again to this area,
Speaker 1: this idea that the mind flares are essentially us. They
Speaker 1: may have tentacles, they may eat more brains than we
Speaker 1: do on a daily basis, but they're essentially humans with
Speaker 1: a with a very similar reliance on information and informational systems. Um.
Speaker 1: So think about that the next time you encounter one.
Speaker 1: You know, no one of your adventures. Yeah, absolutely, be
Speaker 1: a little bit more humane with the mind flares that
Speaker 1: you may be attacking. Yes, in humans before before you
Speaker 1: rule your initiative and I think twice all right, So
Speaker 1: there you have it mind flares. So this was an
Speaker 1: episode that was a little bit of an experiment for us,
Speaker 1: and we had fun. But obviously we want to know
Speaker 1: if you had fun too, if you liked this kind
Speaker 1: of thing and you want more content like this from us,
Speaker 1: in let us know, Okay, reach out to us, let
Speaker 1: us know on social media. We're thinking about doing something
Speaker 1: similar to this, maybe on our social media platforms when
Speaker 1: we do live videos. Uh. So remember we're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
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Speaker 1: find more information like this if you liked this and
Speaker 1: you want more right now, there's lots of monster science
Speaker 1: and Monster of the Week articles on stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind dot com. Yeah, if you want our monsters,
Speaker 1: let us know. If you want more B and D
Speaker 1: related content, role playing related content, let us know. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if there are any specific examples that we talked
Speaker 1: talked about in here, stuff from from the natural world
Speaker 1: that you would like to see explored in greater depth.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing we can do as well.
Speaker 1: And as always, if you want to reach us in
Speaker 1: any way about this, you don't have to drill holes
Speaker 1: in our skull. You don't have to shoot psionic mind
Speaker 1: blasts at our brain. You can email us directly and
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