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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

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 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.