Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb And this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: In today's episode, we return to the rich world of
Speaker 2: Dungeons and Dragons to discuss another creature from its various
Speaker 2: monster manuals, and I have to say it's one of
Speaker 2: the weirder ones they've ever rolled out. It is the
Speaker 2: Eton Sarah Morph. To back up, we need to establish,
Speaker 2: first of all, what an eton is named after? A
Speaker 2: giant from French traditions, The d and d Eton is
Speaker 2: a two headed giant whose main superpower is that two
Speaker 2: heads are better than one, at least when it comes
Speaker 2: to wisdom, perception checks, and related saving throws. Their exact
Speaker 2: origins were told in the fifth Monster Manual may involve
Speaker 2: cursed Orcs and a temple to the two headed demon
Speaker 2: lord Demogorgon, But who can say for sure that's the Eton?
Speaker 2: But what is a seramorph eaten? To answer that question,
Speaker 2: we have to enter the world of the mind flares,
Speaker 2: more formally known as the Alithids. They're an alien species
Speaker 2: that once dominated the inner planes, depending on their own
Speaker 2: terrifying psylonic powers to enslave humanoid species and also utilizing
Speaker 2: their astral planes spanning not alloid vessels. Individual mind flares
Speaker 2: resemble purple fleshed humanoids with heads like tentacled cephalopods. Despite
Speaker 2: their power, they are a civilization in decline, reduced to
Speaker 2: plotting and studying in their under dark colonies as well
Speaker 2: as other far flung locations in the multiverse. Christian and
Speaker 2: I devoted an entire stuff to Blow your Mind episode
Speaker 2: to these fantastic creatures back in I Believe twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: titled The Body Lithid Science of the mind Flares. So
Speaker 2: go back and find that if you want a more
Speaker 2: in depth rundown. We can't possibly go into as much
Speaker 2: detail today. But the key thing to keep in mind
Speaker 2: about the mind flares is their method of reproduction, as
Speaker 2: detailed in Volo's Guide to Monsters and Lithids are hermaphroditic
Speaker 2: and lay eggs at key points in their life cycle
Speaker 2: before succumbing to old age or injury and being dissolved
Speaker 2: into the brine of the elder brain, which serves as
Speaker 2: a kind of librarian that rules over the tomes of
Speaker 2: their collective memories. Parasitic larval tadpoles hatch from these eggs,
Speaker 2: and each vital specimen is then inserted into the brain
Speaker 2: of a comatose humanoid. There it feasts on the host's
Speaker 2: original brain tissue and eventually grows to become the host's
Speaker 2: new brain, attaching to the old brain stem, taking over
Speaker 2: altering the body in the process. This process is called seramorphosis.
Speaker 2: There are limits to what anlithid tadpole can do, We're told.
Speaker 2: There's a reason adult mind flayers are generally medium sized humanoids.
Speaker 2: Seramorphosis simply doesn't work on larger bodies, and attempts to
Speaker 2: grow giant mind flayers via the introduction of a tadpole
Speaker 2: into the brain of various giant species have ended in failure.
Speaker 2: The exception, however, is the eaten seramorph the result of
Speaker 2: introducing not one, but two eilithid tadpoles into a single
Speaker 2: eaten one for each of the host organism's heads and
Speaker 2: therefore brains. As Bigbe presents Glory of the Giants describes,
Speaker 2: each tadpole devours one of the eton's brains and grows
Speaker 2: to replace it, as you might expect, But then one
Speaker 2: of the two eaten heads begins to sink into the body,
Speaker 2: finally looking more like some sort of grotesque starfish attached
Speaker 2: to the giant's torso. Meanwhile, the other head, complete with
Speaker 2: idlithid tentacles, takes on a central position atop the shoulders.
Speaker 2: The sunken head controls the eaten seramorph's body, while the
Speaker 2: other head handles cognition and psionic powers. While not psionically
Speaker 2: as powerful as a typical lithid, the eaten sera morph
Speaker 2: makes up for this with physical size and strength, often
Speaker 2: serving as a guardian of one form or another within
Speaker 2: a hidden a lithid colony. It's a wonderfully weird monster,
Speaker 2: and I love the illustration provided in Big Piece. The
Speaker 2: idea of a second brain that controls the body is
Speaker 2: an interesting concept, and one that I assume stems from
Speaker 2: the real life nature of the octopus nervous system. To
Speaker 2: be clear, discussion of multiple brains within a single organism
Speaker 2: can get complicated, in part depending on what you define
Speaker 2: as a brain. The octopus, for example, only boasts a
Speaker 2: single central brain, but each arm has neural cells that
Speaker 2: seem to act as partially independent many brains to handle
Speaker 2: the creature's complex limbs. As Nora Bradford explained in a
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three article for Scientific American, how octopus arms
Speaker 2: bypass the brain, It would all seem to enable a
Speaker 2: form of decentralized coordination. We can point to cases in
Speaker 2: insects and anaalids as well that raise similar questions regarding
Speaker 2: what is and what is in a brain. But with
Speaker 2: the Eden Sarah morph we might think of one brain
Speaker 2: becoming dominant and the other essentially becoming a mini brain
Speaker 2: to handle the larger body. Now, this notion also raises
Speaker 2: the specter of an outdated hypothesis, that of the dinosaur
Speaker 2: butt brain. Yes, the dinosaur butt brain. Riley Black points
Speaker 2: out in the twenty twelve Smithsonian Magazine posts the double
Speaker 2: dinosaur brain Myth that this was a nineteenth century hypothesis
Speaker 2: that argued that a canal in the vertebrae over the
Speaker 2: hips of the Stegosaurus was larger than the cavity for
Speaker 2: the dinosaur's brain, and therefore it might serve as a
Speaker 2: place for a secondary brain or a brain like neural
Speaker 2: mass to be located to coordinate the creature's hind, legs
Speaker 2: and tail. After all, body is big and the tail
Speaker 2: is complex, so perhaps it just needed some extra neural
Speaker 2: power back there. Now, that cavity in question still remains
Speaker 2: something of a mystery, but palaeontologists are pretty sure it
Speaker 2: didn't house a second brain. Could an a lithoid put
Speaker 2: one in there, though, well, we'll have to think about that.
Speaker 2: Of course. The idea of the pre seramorphosis eaten is
Speaker 2: in ways a fantasy extrapolation of real life cases of
Speaker 2: polycephaly or multiple heads on a single body, which does
Speaker 2: occur in the natural world. But division of control between
Speaker 2: individual brains in these cases seems to vary greatly depending
Speaker 2: on the exact case in question. And of course you
Speaker 2: don't have to go this far to think about two
Speaker 2: brains in a single body when you consider the two
Speaker 2: hemispheres of our own brain. Things like dual brain theory
Speaker 2: and some fascinating studies concerning split brains in human beings.
Speaker 2: These are enough to make you wonder, well, maybe we
Speaker 2: are all eatens to a certain extent, but I digress.
Speaker 2: It all makes something like the eaten Sarah more, while
Speaker 2: a creature of pure fantasy, an interesting contemplation point, for
Speaker 2: considering purpose, identity, and plurality when it comes to brains.
Speaker 2: Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact, The
Speaker 2: Artifact or Anomalia Stupendium each week. As always, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com.
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