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 on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
In the previous two episodes of The Monster Fact, we discussed chaos demonology within the fictional far future universe of games Workshops Warhammer forty thousand, we discussed both the blood god Corn and Zinch, the Changer of Ways, as well as some interesting connections they each have to military and religious history. Today, we turn our attention to the play god Nergal, the master of contagion and general grossness. His
demonic minions are foul oozing and blowed in wrecks. His mortal followers also willingly give their bodies and soul over to this sort of corruption. From the top of his ranks, the monstrous great unclean one, to the lowly swarms of Nerglings, we see a common likeness said to resemble Nergal himself, rotund toadlike humanoids with rupturing guts and rot toothed grins. As such, it's easy to equate Nergal with the Christian
deadly sins of sloth and gluttony. But the ninth addition, Chaos Demons codex from game's workshop tells us that Nergle 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 Nergal 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 Nergal's blessings. Nergalles 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 Samaro Acadian underworld. Forty Kay's Nergal is in many ways a darker and more twisted take on these elements. On the battlefield, the demonic forces of Nergal make for quite a grotesque horde, full
of humanoid plague bearers and great sluglike monstrosities. There's also a dark whimsie to such units as the Grand cultivator horticulous Slimus on his snail demon Mount Mulch, as well as the capering blessed Nerglings. But of course we have to focus in on the Herald of Nergal Sloppety 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 twigs did mirth. The Kodax tells us that he princes on the battlefield, infected by a deadly and highly contagious laughing disease. In one hand, he grips a jester's 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 Kodax 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 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 Marengue's Dark Place exploited this quite humorously in the episode's Scotch Mist, 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 a wand in hand, and there lay the digestive organs of the departed. At length, he uttered a few strange words in 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 Arenus may be satisfied.
And let thou be called now and hereafter bagpipe, so that what I spoke may come to pass Evan 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 Nurgel 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. Join me next week as we continue our journey through the chaos demon factions. Tune into the Monster Fact each Wednesday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. As always, you can email us at contact that's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production
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