November 27, 2024 • 24 mins
In this classic omnibus episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, enjoy all four episodes concerning the chaos daemons of Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 universe: Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh. (originally published 08/23/2023)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is The
Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind, focusing in non mythical creatures, ideas and monsters
in time. On today's special omnibus episode of Stuff to
Blow Your minds The Monster Fact, We're going to dive
(00:29):
into a little Chaos undivided if you will. We have
all four previously published episodes of The Monster Fact concerning
the chaos demons of Games Workshops Warhammer forty thousand Universe
rank and file beside each other. So upburst, let's get
to know the blood God Corn. In this episode, I'm
(00:51):
beginning a four part Monster Fact series on the four
main demonic factions in Games Workshops Warhammer for fourty thousand
univers So first, a little background. The fictional far future
forty KSE setting depicts an interstellar human imperium with various dark,
fantasy and medieval elements. This aggressive imperium is challenged on
(01:16):
all sides by equally warlike alien societies, but they also
face the threat of chaos. In the forty KSE setting,
the demons of chaos exist in a psychic dimension called
the warp, but they can spill over into what is
called real space through various methods and exploits, so in
(01:37):
this setting, demons are not the mere creation of religion
or occultism, but an actual spiritual and physical threat to humanity.
Heretical drift on a far flung planet can mean far
more than just mere rebellion. It can lead to a
demonic incursion that consumes billions of souls. There are various
(01:58):
ways to divide up de factions in a created world
like this, but forty K largely splits the forces of
chaos into four distinct flavors, red, blue, green, and purple,
representing bloodthirst, chaotic change, pestilence, and hedonism, each a major
conduit of mortal emotions and mortal souls in the fictional
(02:19):
forty first millennium, with each conduit accreting into a powerful
entity known as a chaos god. They are corn Zinch, Nurgle,
and Slannesh. There are other lesser chaos gods as well,
but these are the four main factions, and while they
sometimes come to a working agreement with each other, they're
(02:40):
mostly at war amongst themselves. In what is referred to
as the Great Game. In this episode, we'll start with
Corn as the so called Blood God is a lot
more direct. He's powered by mortal violence and war. He's
all about rivers of blood and pyramids of bone. His
favorite color is obviously red, and he's not big on subtlety.
(03:02):
His demonic Hords and mortal followers dig horns and blades.
They spill blood for the Blood God. So really there's
not much to elaborate on here. However, in browsing through
the ninth edition Chaos Demons Codex from Games Workshop, I
simply couldn't let the unit known as a skull cannon
pass without comment. There's a lot of talk of skull
(03:26):
harvesting with some of the other Corn units, and this
one amounts to a big honking heavy metal cannon. A
couple of red demons called blood Letters crew the weapon,
loading it up with the fresh remains of slain enemy soldiers.
The cannon breaks everything down and then fires flaming skulls
across the battlefield, again fittingly direct. Thus far, in actual
(03:50):
human warfare, skulls and heads have proven poor missiles, but
the presentation of decapitated heads to the enemy has a
long history with plentiful examples to be found in the
classical and ancient world. The heads of enemy dead might
be delivered directly to enemy lines. They might be placed
(04:11):
on spikes or what have you. Ruth Schuster, writing for
Hauritz in twenty eighteen, points out that Iron Age gauls
even developed a resin based embalming method to ensure the
captured heads of their enemies didn't rot too fast. As
Peter Francopin points out in his book The First Crusade
(04:32):
The Call from the East, the Crusades saw a lot
of head taking on both sides, and there are Western
accounts of crusader heads being catapulted back into their siege
camps in order to hurt morale. The same terror tactics
were said to have been used by French crusader hosts
as well. This according to the French themselves in the
(04:53):
Old French Crusader Cycle. According to Sarah Grace Heller in
twenty eleven's Terror in the Old French Crusade Cycle, Various
other catapult Age accounts described the launching of dead bodies
into camps and besieged cities as a means of terror
and or biological attack. The age of the cannon presented
(05:14):
various new ideas of how cannons might be used in
one way or another to spread human remains. None of
these methods use the remains as ammo against other combatants,
but are worth noting. Nonetheless, the execution method known as
blowing from a gun often entailed the strapping of a
live victim to the mouth of a cannon, resulting in
(05:37):
partial or complete scattering of the remains. On the other
end of the spectrum, cremated ashes are on occasions spread
by cannon fire as a desired dramatic, funerary rite in
modern times. In a broader sense, however, the use of
human remains as weapons dates back to prehistory. Europeans were
crafting human bones into weapons at least ten thousand years ago,
(06:00):
a practice that continued into recent centuries for other far
flung cultures, at least for symbolic and spiritual reasons. Now,
as far as the creation and veneration of artifacts made
from human bones goes, this is the kind of thing
that's probably lost on the chaos god Corn. All he
cares about is the hacking, of the stabbing, and of
(06:23):
course the occasional explosively propelled pyrotechnic human skull. And now
for something completely different, Zinch, the Changer of Ways. It's
time to turn our attention to the next chaos god, Zinch.
Now that's traditionally spelled with a silent tea, but you
can really spell the entity's name anyway you want to.
(06:45):
I think Zench would appreciate that, especially if you put
a great deal of thought into the exercise and mix
things up a lot. After all, he is the changer
of ways and the demonic master of mutation, trickery and prophees.
Zinch's focus on change is sometimes perplexing because, of course,
change is not inherently evil or ruinous. As described in
(07:09):
the ninth edition Chaos Demon Codex from Game's Workshop, change
is largely the bait by which the dark God draws
in his followers. He promises change, he promises wisdom or
insight into the future, but what he actually delivers is manipulation, confusion,
plots within plots, and ultimately more out of control transformation
(07:31):
than anyone saying or mortal can comprehend. The vice he
feeds upon is unchecked mortal ambition and deception. As such,
Zinch is one of two Chaos gods, along with Slenesh,
who exhibits strong fostian elements. He offers tempting immediate rewards
(07:52):
in exchange for a great cost of unimaginable nature. The
battle forces of Zench are, of course, bonkers, imp like
pink horrors swarm across an ever changing, ever recreated battlefield,
splitting into blue horrors upon defeat, which in turn fall
to become flaming brimstone horrors. Now these are the lowest
(08:14):
of Zinch's forces, but his generals are the great blue
Avian monstrosities known as the Lords of Change, and the
most dangerous of these is an individual Lord of Change
known as Carryos Fate Weaver. The oracle of Zinch. Carryos
manifests a great two headed lord of change, resplendent in
(08:35):
blue feathers, kaleidoscopic wings, and countless gleaming eyes. Fittingly, there
are some enthralling elements to unwrap in this entity. Beginning
with its name, Fate Weaver speaks for itself, but the
demon's first name is the ancient Greek for the right,
critical or opportune moment, and in modern Greek time and weather,
(08:57):
it is written that the two heads of Carryos fate
we are all seeing one looks backwards into the past
and the other forward into the future. The symbolism brings
to mind various concepts from real world religion and iconography,
such as the two faced Janus of Roman tradition, who
is god of beginnings and endings, of transitions and doorways.
(09:19):
The image also brings to mind Hecadi, the Greek goddess
who is often presented as triple faced or triple bodied.
She is a goddess of crossroads who presents a different
form to each direction, So we might easily think of
both Janus and Hecaday as gods of change, as well,
as Robert Mills points out in Jesus as Monster, published
(09:42):
in the two thousand and three book The Monstrous Middle Ages.
From the twelfth century onward, there is also a tradition
in Christian iconography of depicting Christ with three human faces
or three human heads, as a way of visually depicting
the Holy Trinity or three in one god, Christ and
Holy Spirit. Mills points out that this is fairly remarkable
(10:05):
because these divine images coexisted with monstrous depictions of three
faced creatures in medieval bestiaries, and of course we also
have the three faced Satan in Dante's Inferno. The bird
heads of Carryos, Fate Weaver, and the other lords of
Change are also quite interesting. Certainly, there are plenty of
(10:26):
examples of real world gods and goddesses with Avian features
like this, But I also can't help but think of
a specific medieval depiction of Jesus Christ with the head
and long neck of a bird. Mills discusses this as well.
The example he points to in the English Book of
Hours in Psalter circa thirteen hundred, depicts a strange human
(10:49):
bird hybrid with a long neck and long vulture like beak.
The creature's loincloth, philosophic air, and body positioning strongly reflect
depictions of Christ. Mills wonders if this perplexing creature is
a reference to the bird men described in the Guest
of Roman Arum or Deeds of the Romans from roughly
(11:10):
the same time period. In this book, birdmen with long
necks and beaks are described as fitting judges because of
the distance between their heart and their voice. By virtue
of their long beaks and necks see words rise up
from the heart through the neck to the lips and
the longer they have to travel, the more time we
(11:33):
have to consider them and craft them for public consumption.
In other words, the Avian Christ might be a commentary
on the holy value of contemplation and the need to
balance justice and mercy. So with the Lord of Change
and other agents of zinch, perhaps we see a similar
symbolic effect, only demonically perverted. The chaos God celebrates contemplation,
(12:00):
but only in the form of endless scheming and deception.
Words travel long between his heart and his voice, because
every whisper is finely tuned to ensnare, bewilder and manipulate
mortals to further his own labyrinthine schemes. Up next, let's
(12:29):
get uncomfortably close to the plague God Nurgle. Today we
turn our attention to the plague god Nurgle, the master
of contagion and general grossness. His demonic minions are foul
oozing and bloated wrecks. His mortal followers also willingly give
their bodies and souls over to this sort of corruption.
(12:52):
From the top of his ranks, the monstrous, great unclean one,
to the lowly swarms of gurglings, we see a common likeness.
Say to resemble Nrgyl himself, rotund toad like humanoids with
rupturing guts and rot toothed grins. As such, it's easy
to Equatenrgyl with the Christian deadly sins of sloth and gluttony,
(13:15):
but the ninth edition Chaos Demon's Codex from game's workshop
tells us that Nrgyl is actually empowered by mortal suffering
and despair. It is when famines and pestilence are at
their worst in the universe and vast interstellar populations lose
all hope that Nergyl advances on their souls and physical worlds.
(13:36):
He offers them a bit of twisted wisdom. It is
not courage to resist disease and corruption. It is courage
to give in to these forces and to embrace Nurgel's blessings.
Nirgele's name was of course inspired by the ancient Babylonian
god Nergal, a god of pestilence, famine, and war who
could be called upon to protect his worshippers from these
(13:58):
very forces. He also became associated with the samarro Akkadian underworld.
Forty K'snurgyl is in many ways a darker and more
twisted take on these elements on the battlefield, the demonic
forces of NEURGYL make for quite a grotesque horde, full
of humanoid plague bearers and great sluglike monstrosities. There is
(14:21):
also a dark whimsie to such units as the grand
cultivator Horticulus Slimus on his snail demon Mount Mulch, as
well as the capering blessed Nurglings. But of course we
have to focus in on the herald of NEURGYL, Sloppity
Bile Piper. Like other plague bearer demons, he's a green
(14:42):
skinned humanoid bursting with infection and decay, but he's also
a jolly soul full of song and twisted mirth. The
Kodex tells us that he prances on the battlefield infected
by a deadly and highly contagious laughing disease. In one hand,
suggesters merit, decorated with his own face, of course, as
(15:04):
well as a steaming mass of guts fashioned into a
set of bagpipes which he plays. His performance hastens the troops,
but the Kodex tells us that it's uncertain if this
is accomplished via inspiration or annoyance. He spreads the dancing
plague as he cavorts, and when he eventually falls on
the battlefield, his own body will turn into the next
(15:27):
set of gut pipes for the next herald to take
up and play. Now, there's a lot of fun gallows
humor to this unit, but it also may raise some
interesting questions about actual bagpipes. For starters, we should clarify
that while bagpipes are strongly associated with Scottish and Irish tradition,
some form of bagpipes have been played for centuries across
(15:47):
Europe and parts of Asia and Africa in different cultural traditions.
It does seem that animal stomachs were used in the
creation of bagpipes on occasion, such as the stomachs of
sheep or seals, but most bagpipes you encounter today are
going to be made out of synthetic materials or animal hides.
In some cases, the bagpipe may be made from a
(16:08):
largely intact skin, with the various stocks of the bagpipes
connecting to where the limbs and head of the animal
would have previously attached. So on one level, the notion
of bagpipes made from flesh is not that far removed
from their material origins. Additionally, there is something to the
way bagpipes inhale and exhale that encourages the animal comparison ohen.
(16:31):
Of course, the TV series Garth Morangi's Dark Place exploited
this quite humorously in the episode Scotch Missed, in which
an animate pair of bagpipes attacks the main character. As
for the comparison to be made between bagpipes and human entrails,
I actually found an interesting treatment of this in the
eighteen fifty humor book Memoirs of a Stomach by Sydney Whiting.
(16:55):
The author, writing as a human stomach, compares itself to
the bagpipe and shares a supposed origin story of the
musical instrument. In it, a necromancer reanimates the stomach of
a fallen Scottish warrior as bagpipes. Allow me to read
a bit of it to you quote, there sat the
weird king wand in hand, and there lay the digestive
(17:18):
organs of the departed. At length he uttered a few
strange words, and, tracing some hieroglyphics in the air with
his royal finger, he exclaimed aloud, change thou thy form
a thing of mighty use When in the living clay,
And on thy tube, let there be stops and keynotes.
And in thy bag let there be wind. And let
(17:39):
the natives of this region have cunning to play upon thee.
And let thy tones be ever as the shrieks of
a tortured man, so that the ernus may be satisfied.
And let thou be called now and hereafter bagpipe, so
that what I spoke may come to pass, even unto
the letter he said, and his astonished retainers raised from
(18:02):
the earth the first instrument bearing that name born unto Scotland.
Now again, this is a work of humor and should
not be interpreted as Scottish lore. If anything, I detect
some possible anti Scottish sentiments to the work, But suffice
to say that grandfather Nrgul was not the first to
snicker at the idea of stomachs as bagpipes. It's also
(18:23):
worth noting that laughing plagues have occurred in the real world,
likely cases of mass hysteria. But this is another story
and shall be told another time. Last, but certainly not least,
we have a date with Slannesh, the Lord of Excess.
(18:44):
In forty k Lore, we are told that Slanesh is
the youngest of the chaos gods, having only truly accreted
out of mortal souls and emotions with the fall of
the decadent al Dari civilization, an event that all but
destroyed the Aldari and pour open a massive warp rift
known as the Eye of Terror. Slanesh's domain is that
(19:09):
of hedonistic excess, but also that of need, want, and obsession.
The demons that manifest in Slanesh's service are alluring contradictions
that blur the line between pleasure and pain, desire and revulsion.
The demonets of Slenesh make up most of the chaos
(19:30):
God's battle force, and they feature some favored characteristics of
Slanesh's servants. They are humanoid beings with pale flesh and
long purple hair, alluring yet also equally ghoulish. Their feet
and legs are reminiscent of reptiles or birds, bringing to
mind such real world mythic traditions as that of harpies
(19:52):
and succubi. Oh yes, and they also have crab claws,
lots of crab claws, something that doesn't really connect to
any mythic or folkloric traditions that I'm aware of, but
they absolutely make it work, and it has become a
signature aspect of their look. Demonets also appear bilaterally asymmetrical,
particularly in the chest region, where one side features a
(20:15):
female breast and the other a male breast. While titillation
is clearly part of this design, it also strongly echoes
the male female duality in the symbolism of Bathome from
occult in Western esoteric traditions. This influence is especially prevalent
in the towering Keeper of Secrets the deadly Slaneshy demon champions,
(20:36):
which often, especially in recent depictions, features strong goat like
characteristics such as foot and head reminiscent of Bathamet. But
there's another servant of Slanesh that I'd like to talk
about here, and that's the Mask of Slannesh. This purple
hued herald once danced in the good graces of the
(20:58):
Lord of Excess. To the ninth edition Chaos Demons Codex
from Games Workshop, the Mask fell out of favor with
Slenesh and is now cursed to dance and cavort forever
across strange realms and battlefields. The dance of the Mask
emboldened surrounding Sleneschi forces, but also in sourcells enemy troops
(21:20):
to join into its spiraling dance, where it slices them
to exotic ribbons of flesh. This, of course, brings to
mind a famous mania from our own history, the dancing
plagues of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. It is pointed
out by John Waller in a Forgotten Plague, Making Sense
(21:41):
of Dancing Mania, published in two thousand and nine in
The Lancet. A certain degree of embellishment stains some of
these accounts, but cases in thirteen seventy four and fifteen
eighteen are pretty well documented. Most sources agree that dancing
plague incidents involved groups of individuals swept up in long
bouts of involuntary dancing. The dancers cried out in pain
(22:05):
or pleaded for mercy. In some accounts they danced until
they died. While enigmatic and certainly hard to believe from
a modern perspective, dancing plagues are not without skeptical explanation.
Whiler explores a few leading ideas in the paper. First,
there's the possibility of urgit poisoning, a topic we've discussed
in depth. Un stuff to blow your mind before. It's
(22:27):
caused by the consumption of fungus infected grains that can
lead to nightmarish altered states of consciousness. Wiler also discusses
the possibility that the dancers could have been in an
involuntary trance state, something people are far more susceptible to
during states of intense psychological distress, and these centuries certainly
(22:47):
provided plenty of stressors. This explanation also required exposure to
a pre existing belief about dancing plagues, and in these
cases the cause would be believed to be some of
a spirit or a curse, and there is evidence for
this in art, literature, and law from these time periods
in regions. So Whiler writes, quote, every so often, when
(23:10):
physical and mental distress rendered people more than usually suggestible,
the specter of the dancing plague could quickly return. All
it then took was for one or a few poor souls,
believing themselves to have been subject to the curse, to
slip into a spontaneous trance. Then they would unconsciously act
(23:31):
out the part of the accursed, dancing, leaping and hopping
for days on end. It's a different sort of compulsion
than that found among the followers of Slannesh, but there
are other examples of mass hysteria or mass psychogenic illness
to consider, such as laughing epidemics and witchcraft panics, though
(23:53):
of course Slanesh doesn't have to work through such real
world means to control people. I hope you enjoyed this
series and I'm always looking for new ideas to explore
on the monster fact, the Artifact, or some other spin
on the short form format. Tune in for additional episodes
(24:14):
each week. As always, you can email us at contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is The
Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind, focusing in non mythical creatures, ideas and monsters
in time. On today's special omnibus episode of Stuff to
Blow Your minds The Monster Fact, We're going to dive
(00:29):
into a little Chaos undivided if you will. We have
all four previously published episodes of The Monster Fact concerning
the chaos demons of Games Workshops Warhammer forty thousand Universe
rank and file beside each other. So upburst, let's get
to know the blood God Corn. In this episode, I'm
(00:51):
beginning a four part Monster Fact series on the four
main demonic factions in Games Workshops Warhammer for fourty thousand
univers So first, a little background. The fictional far future
forty KSE setting depicts an interstellar human imperium with various dark,
fantasy and medieval elements. This aggressive imperium is challenged on
(01:16):
all sides by equally warlike alien societies, but they also
face the threat of chaos. In the forty KSE setting,
the demons of chaos exist in a psychic dimension called
the warp, but they can spill over into what is
called real space through various methods and exploits, so in
(01:37):
this setting, demons are not the mere creation of religion
or occultism, but an actual spiritual and physical threat to humanity.
Heretical drift on a far flung planet can mean far
more than just mere rebellion. It can lead to a
demonic incursion that consumes billions of souls. There are various
(01:58):
ways to divide up de factions in a created world
like this, but forty K largely splits the forces of
chaos into four distinct flavors, red, blue, green, and purple,
representing bloodthirst, chaotic change, pestilence, and hedonism, each a major
conduit of mortal emotions and mortal souls in the fictional
(02:19):
forty first millennium, with each conduit accreting into a powerful
entity known as a chaos god. They are corn Zinch, Nurgle,
and Slannesh. There are other lesser chaos gods as well,
but these are the four main factions, and while they
sometimes come to a working agreement with each other, they're
(02:40):
mostly at war amongst themselves. In what is referred to
as the Great Game. In this episode, we'll start with
Corn as the so called Blood God is a lot
more direct. He's powered by mortal violence and war. He's
all about rivers of blood and pyramids of bone. His
favorite color is obviously red, and he's not big on subtlety.
(03:02):
His demonic Hords and mortal followers dig horns and blades.
They spill blood for the Blood God. So really there's
not much to elaborate on here. However, in browsing through
the ninth edition Chaos Demons Codex from Games Workshop, I
simply couldn't let the unit known as a skull cannon
pass without comment. There's a lot of talk of skull
(03:26):
harvesting with some of the other Corn units, and this
one amounts to a big honking heavy metal cannon. A
couple of red demons called blood Letters crew the weapon,
loading it up with the fresh remains of slain enemy soldiers.
The cannon breaks everything down and then fires flaming skulls
across the battlefield, again fittingly direct. Thus far, in actual
(03:50):
human warfare, skulls and heads have proven poor missiles, but
the presentation of decapitated heads to the enemy has a
long history with plentiful examples to be found in the
classical and ancient world. The heads of enemy dead might
be delivered directly to enemy lines. They might be placed
(04:11):
on spikes or what have you. Ruth Schuster, writing for
Hauritz in twenty eighteen, points out that Iron Age gauls
even developed a resin based embalming method to ensure the
captured heads of their enemies didn't rot too fast. As
Peter Francopin points out in his book The First Crusade
(04:32):
The Call from the East, the Crusades saw a lot
of head taking on both sides, and there are Western
accounts of crusader heads being catapulted back into their siege
camps in order to hurt morale. The same terror tactics
were said to have been used by French crusader hosts
as well. This according to the French themselves in the
(04:53):
Old French Crusader Cycle. According to Sarah Grace Heller in
twenty eleven's Terror in the Old French Crusade Cycle, Various
other catapult Age accounts described the launching of dead bodies
into camps and besieged cities as a means of terror
and or biological attack. The age of the cannon presented
(05:14):
various new ideas of how cannons might be used in
one way or another to spread human remains. None of
these methods use the remains as ammo against other combatants,
but are worth noting. Nonetheless, the execution method known as
blowing from a gun often entailed the strapping of a
live victim to the mouth of a cannon, resulting in
(05:37):
partial or complete scattering of the remains. On the other
end of the spectrum, cremated ashes are on occasions spread
by cannon fire as a desired dramatic, funerary rite in
modern times. In a broader sense, however, the use of
human remains as weapons dates back to prehistory. Europeans were
crafting human bones into weapons at least ten thousand years ago,
(06:00):
a practice that continued into recent centuries for other far
flung cultures, at least for symbolic and spiritual reasons. Now,
as far as the creation and veneration of artifacts made
from human bones goes, this is the kind of thing
that's probably lost on the chaos god Corn. All he
cares about is the hacking, of the stabbing, and of
(06:23):
course the occasional explosively propelled pyrotechnic human skull. And now
for something completely different, Zinch, the Changer of Ways. It's
time to turn our attention to the next chaos god, Zinch.
Now that's traditionally spelled with a silent tea, but you
can really spell the entity's name anyway you want to.
(06:45):
I think Zench would appreciate that, especially if you put
a great deal of thought into the exercise and mix
things up a lot. After all, he is the changer
of ways and the demonic master of mutation, trickery and prophees.
Zinch's focus on change is sometimes perplexing because, of course,
change is not inherently evil or ruinous. As described in
(07:09):
the ninth edition Chaos Demon Codex from Game's Workshop, change
is largely the bait by which the dark God draws
in his followers. He promises change, he promises wisdom or
insight into the future, but what he actually delivers is manipulation, confusion,
plots within plots, and ultimately more out of control transformation
(07:31):
than anyone saying or mortal can comprehend. The vice he
feeds upon is unchecked mortal ambition and deception. As such,
Zinch is one of two Chaos gods, along with Slenesh,
who exhibits strong fostian elements. He offers tempting immediate rewards
(07:52):
in exchange for a great cost of unimaginable nature. The
battle forces of Zench are, of course, bonkers, imp like
pink horrors swarm across an ever changing, ever recreated battlefield,
splitting into blue horrors upon defeat, which in turn fall
to become flaming brimstone horrors. Now these are the lowest
(08:14):
of Zinch's forces, but his generals are the great blue
Avian monstrosities known as the Lords of Change, and the
most dangerous of these is an individual Lord of Change
known as Carryos Fate Weaver. The oracle of Zinch. Carryos
manifests a great two headed lord of change, resplendent in
(08:35):
blue feathers, kaleidoscopic wings, and countless gleaming eyes. Fittingly, there
are some enthralling elements to unwrap in this entity. Beginning
with its name, Fate Weaver speaks for itself, but the
demon's first name is the ancient Greek for the right,
critical or opportune moment, and in modern Greek time and weather,
(08:57):
it is written that the two heads of Carryos fate
we are all seeing one looks backwards into the past
and the other forward into the future. The symbolism brings
to mind various concepts from real world religion and iconography,
such as the two faced Janus of Roman tradition, who
is god of beginnings and endings, of transitions and doorways.
(09:19):
The image also brings to mind Hecadi, the Greek goddess
who is often presented as triple faced or triple bodied.
She is a goddess of crossroads who presents a different
form to each direction, So we might easily think of
both Janus and Hecaday as gods of change, as well,
as Robert Mills points out in Jesus as Monster, published
(09:42):
in the two thousand and three book The Monstrous Middle Ages.
From the twelfth century onward, there is also a tradition
in Christian iconography of depicting Christ with three human faces
or three human heads, as a way of visually depicting
the Holy Trinity or three in one god, Christ and
Holy Spirit. Mills points out that this is fairly remarkable
(10:05):
because these divine images coexisted with monstrous depictions of three
faced creatures in medieval bestiaries, and of course we also
have the three faced Satan in Dante's Inferno. The bird
heads of Carryos, Fate Weaver, and the other lords of
Change are also quite interesting. Certainly, there are plenty of
(10:26):
examples of real world gods and goddesses with Avian features
like this, But I also can't help but think of
a specific medieval depiction of Jesus Christ with the head
and long neck of a bird. Mills discusses this as well.
The example he points to in the English Book of
Hours in Psalter circa thirteen hundred, depicts a strange human
(10:49):
bird hybrid with a long neck and long vulture like beak.
The creature's loincloth, philosophic air, and body positioning strongly reflect
depictions of Christ. Mills wonders if this perplexing creature is
a reference to the bird men described in the Guest
of Roman Arum or Deeds of the Romans from roughly
(11:10):
the same time period. In this book, birdmen with long
necks and beaks are described as fitting judges because of
the distance between their heart and their voice. By virtue
of their long beaks and necks see words rise up
from the heart through the neck to the lips and
the longer they have to travel, the more time we
(11:33):
have to consider them and craft them for public consumption.
In other words, the Avian Christ might be a commentary
on the holy value of contemplation and the need to
balance justice and mercy. So with the Lord of Change
and other agents of zinch, perhaps we see a similar
symbolic effect, only demonically perverted. The chaos God celebrates contemplation,
(12:00):
but only in the form of endless scheming and deception.
Words travel long between his heart and his voice, because
every whisper is finely tuned to ensnare, bewilder and manipulate
mortals to further his own labyrinthine schemes. Up next, let's
(12:29):
get uncomfortably close to the plague God Nurgle. Today we
turn our attention to the plague god Nurgle, the master
of contagion and general grossness. His demonic minions are foul
oozing and bloated wrecks. His mortal followers also willingly give
their bodies and souls over to this sort of corruption.
(12:52):
From the top of his ranks, the monstrous, great unclean one,
to the lowly swarms of gurglings, we see a common likeness.
Say to resemble Nrgyl himself, rotund toad like humanoids with
rupturing guts and rot toothed grins. As such, it's easy
to Equatenrgyl with the Christian deadly sins of sloth and gluttony,
(13:15):
but the ninth edition Chaos Demon's Codex from game's workshop
tells us that Nrgyl is actually empowered by mortal suffering
and despair. It is when famines and pestilence are at
their worst in the universe and vast interstellar populations lose
all hope that Nergyl advances on their souls and physical worlds.
(13:36):
He offers them a bit of twisted wisdom. It is
not courage to resist disease and corruption. It is courage
to give in to these forces and to embrace Nurgel's blessings.
Nirgele's name was of course inspired by the ancient Babylonian
god Nergal, a god of pestilence, famine, and war who
could be called upon to protect his worshippers from these
(13:58):
very forces. He also became associated with the samarro Akkadian underworld.
Forty K'snurgyl is in many ways a darker and more
twisted take on these elements on the battlefield, the demonic
forces of NEURGYL make for quite a grotesque horde, full
of humanoid plague bearers and great sluglike monstrosities. There is
(14:21):
also a dark whimsie to such units as the grand
cultivator Horticulus Slimus on his snail demon Mount Mulch, as
well as the capering blessed Nurglings. But of course we
have to focus in on the herald of NEURGYL, Sloppity
Bile Piper. Like other plague bearer demons, he's a green
(14:42):
skinned humanoid bursting with infection and decay, but he's also
a jolly soul full of song and twisted mirth. The
Kodex tells us that he prances on the battlefield infected
by a deadly and highly contagious laughing disease. In one hand,
suggesters merit, decorated with his own face, of course, as
(15:04):
well as a steaming mass of guts fashioned into a
set of bagpipes which he plays. His performance hastens the troops,
but the Kodex tells us that it's uncertain if this
is accomplished via inspiration or annoyance. He spreads the dancing
plague as he cavorts, and when he eventually falls on
the battlefield, his own body will turn into the next
(15:27):
set of gut pipes for the next herald to take
up and play. Now, there's a lot of fun gallows
humor to this unit, but it also may raise some
interesting questions about actual bagpipes. For starters, we should clarify
that while bagpipes are strongly associated with Scottish and Irish tradition,
some form of bagpipes have been played for centuries across
(15:47):
Europe and parts of Asia and Africa in different cultural traditions.
It does seem that animal stomachs were used in the
creation of bagpipes on occasion, such as the stomachs of
sheep or seals, but most bagpipes you encounter today are
going to be made out of synthetic materials or animal hides.
In some cases, the bagpipe may be made from a
(16:08):
largely intact skin, with the various stocks of the bagpipes
connecting to where the limbs and head of the animal
would have previously attached. So on one level, the notion
of bagpipes made from flesh is not that far removed
from their material origins. Additionally, there is something to the
way bagpipes inhale and exhale that encourages the animal comparison ohen.
(16:31):
Of course, the TV series Garth Morangi's Dark Place exploited
this quite humorously in the episode Scotch Missed, in which
an animate pair of bagpipes attacks the main character. As
for the comparison to be made between bagpipes and human entrails,
I actually found an interesting treatment of this in the
eighteen fifty humor book Memoirs of a Stomach by Sydney Whiting.
(16:55):
The author, writing as a human stomach, compares itself to
the bagpipe and shares a supposed origin story of the
musical instrument. In it, a necromancer reanimates the stomach of
a fallen Scottish warrior as bagpipes. Allow me to read
a bit of it to you quote, there sat the
weird king wand in hand, and there lay the digestive
(17:18):
organs of the departed. At length he uttered a few
strange words, and, tracing some hieroglyphics in the air with
his royal finger, he exclaimed aloud, change thou thy form
a thing of mighty use When in the living clay,
And on thy tube, let there be stops and keynotes.
And in thy bag let there be wind. And let
(17:39):
the natives of this region have cunning to play upon thee.
And let thy tones be ever as the shrieks of
a tortured man, so that the ernus may be satisfied.
And let thou be called now and hereafter bagpipe, so
that what I spoke may come to pass, even unto
the letter he said, and his astonished retainers raised from
(18:02):
the earth the first instrument bearing that name born unto Scotland.
Now again, this is a work of humor and should
not be interpreted as Scottish lore. If anything, I detect
some possible anti Scottish sentiments to the work, But suffice
to say that grandfather Nrgul was not the first to
snicker at the idea of stomachs as bagpipes. It's also
(18:23):
worth noting that laughing plagues have occurred in the real world,
likely cases of mass hysteria. But this is another story
and shall be told another time. Last, but certainly not least,
we have a date with Slannesh, the Lord of Excess.
(18:44):
In forty k Lore, we are told that Slanesh is
the youngest of the chaos gods, having only truly accreted
out of mortal souls and emotions with the fall of
the decadent al Dari civilization, an event that all but
destroyed the Aldari and pour open a massive warp rift
known as the Eye of Terror. Slanesh's domain is that
(19:09):
of hedonistic excess, but also that of need, want, and obsession.
The demons that manifest in Slanesh's service are alluring contradictions
that blur the line between pleasure and pain, desire and revulsion.
The demonets of Slenesh make up most of the chaos
(19:30):
God's battle force, and they feature some favored characteristics of
Slanesh's servants. They are humanoid beings with pale flesh and
long purple hair, alluring yet also equally ghoulish. Their feet
and legs are reminiscent of reptiles or birds, bringing to
mind such real world mythic traditions as that of harpies
(19:52):
and succubi. Oh yes, and they also have crab claws,
lots of crab claws, something that doesn't really connect to
any mythic or folkloric traditions that I'm aware of, but
they absolutely make it work, and it has become a
signature aspect of their look. Demonets also appear bilaterally asymmetrical,
particularly in the chest region, where one side features a
(20:15):
female breast and the other a male breast. While titillation
is clearly part of this design, it also strongly echoes
the male female duality in the symbolism of Bathome from
occult in Western esoteric traditions. This influence is especially prevalent
in the towering Keeper of Secrets the deadly Slaneshy demon champions,
(20:36):
which often, especially in recent depictions, features strong goat like
characteristics such as foot and head reminiscent of Bathamet. But
there's another servant of Slanesh that I'd like to talk
about here, and that's the Mask of Slannesh. This purple
hued herald once danced in the good graces of the
(20:58):
Lord of Excess. To the ninth edition Chaos Demons Codex
from Games Workshop, the Mask fell out of favor with
Slenesh and is now cursed to dance and cavort forever
across strange realms and battlefields. The dance of the Mask
emboldened surrounding Sleneschi forces, but also in sourcells enemy troops
(21:20):
to join into its spiraling dance, where it slices them
to exotic ribbons of flesh. This, of course, brings to
mind a famous mania from our own history, the dancing
plagues of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. It is pointed
out by John Waller in a Forgotten Plague, Making Sense
(21:41):
of Dancing Mania, published in two thousand and nine in
The Lancet. A certain degree of embellishment stains some of
these accounts, but cases in thirteen seventy four and fifteen
eighteen are pretty well documented. Most sources agree that dancing
plague incidents involved groups of individuals swept up in long
bouts of involuntary dancing. The dancers cried out in pain
(22:05):
or pleaded for mercy. In some accounts they danced until
they died. While enigmatic and certainly hard to believe from
a modern perspective, dancing plagues are not without skeptical explanation.
Whiler explores a few leading ideas in the paper. First,
there's the possibility of urgit poisoning, a topic we've discussed
in depth. Un stuff to blow your mind before. It's
(22:27):
caused by the consumption of fungus infected grains that can
lead to nightmarish altered states of consciousness. Wiler also discusses
the possibility that the dancers could have been in an
involuntary trance state, something people are far more susceptible to
during states of intense psychological distress, and these centuries certainly
(22:47):
provided plenty of stressors. This explanation also required exposure to
a pre existing belief about dancing plagues, and in these
cases the cause would be believed to be some of
a spirit or a curse, and there is evidence for
this in art, literature, and law from these time periods
in regions. So Whiler writes, quote, every so often, when
(23:10):
physical and mental distress rendered people more than usually suggestible,
the specter of the dancing plague could quickly return. All
it then took was for one or a few poor souls,
believing themselves to have been subject to the curse, to
slip into a spontaneous trance. Then they would unconsciously act
(23:31):
out the part of the accursed, dancing, leaping and hopping
for days on end. It's a different sort of compulsion
than that found among the followers of Slannesh, but there
are other examples of mass hysteria or mass psychogenic illness
to consider, such as laughing epidemics and witchcraft panics, though
(23:53):
of course Slanesh doesn't have to work through such real
world means to control people. I hope you enjoyed this
series and I'm always looking for new ideas to explore
on the monster fact, the Artifact, or some other spin
on the short form format. Tune in for additional episodes
(24:14):
each week. As always, you can email us at contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Good Game with Sarah Spain
Good Game is your one-stop shop for the biggest stories in women’s sports. Every day, host Sarah Spain gives you the stories, stakes, stars and stats to keep up with your favorite women’s teams, leagues and athletes. Through thoughtful insight, witty banter, and an all around good time, Sarah and friends break down the latest news, talk about the games you can’t miss, and debate the issues of the day. Don’t miss interviews with the people of the moment, whether they be athletes, coaches, reporters, or celebrity fans.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.