HBM101: Much Corruption

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Growing up, Jeff Emtman had a hard time balancing his piety for the One God with his piety for the Gnomish lord Berwyn.  Generally, he deferred to the latter, though he lost favor eventually with both.

Jeff’s scoutmaster, a retired surgeon with a habit of collecting unusual boats, was always trying to get Jeff outside, away from the computer where he spent most of his free time playing a game where he tried to save the world from corruption and evil.  

Ancient Domains of Mystery (more commonly called “ADOM”) is an massive roguelike game that’s inspired heavily by Dungeons and Dragons.  Developer Thomas Biskup released the first version of it in 1994.

Jeff, a gnomish wizard of status, is susceptible to corruptive background radiation.  Once pure, his breath became ever more sulphurous, thorns that sprouted from his hands, etc. And he failed in his quest to save the world.

The Surgeon invited Jeff to join him for kayaking on the Naches River of Washington State.   The river holds a small irrigation dam that the two must navigate--the Surgeon with ease, and Jeff with no small amount of existential, religious struggle.

The “burning hands” spell in this episode comes from a Esperanto-language reading of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, released as public domain audiobook by Librivox. The excerpt used can be translated to “...and the chain was bound around the arm.”

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Editor: Jeff Emtman
Music: Serocell, The Black Spot, AHEE, Circling Lights ← New music!

 

Example of a character bio created in ADOM. This character, a dwarfish wizard was born in the sign of the Falcon, which garners benefits to initial willpower and charisma. Also has increased ability to survive in in wild. Dwarves tend to be good with magic and subterranean skills.

Character ‘@’ engaged in combat with goblin berserker ‘g’ in a partially explored dungeon. Hostile ice vortex ‘V’ approaches. Far right: Staircase leading upwards ‘<’, lawfully aligned altar ‘_’ and an ancient statue ‘&’. Also pictured: walls ‘#’, floors ‘.’, and doors ‘#’.

HBM100: Faraway Minds

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Photo by Anna Klein, edited by Jeff Emtman.

Photo by Anna Klein, edited by Jeff Emtman.

 

Anna Klein thinks that tea tastes better on the Faroe Islands.  She thinks the water’s more pure there, and the Northern Lights let the sky be whatever color it wants to be.  She often thinks about moving there.

Content Note: Violence (momentary) and Language

But she also worries that her fantasies of running away to the remote corners of the world may be a familial urge to isolate herself, the same way her father did...a tendency that ultimately contributed to his early death.

It was a loving and hurtful relationship that led Anna to retrace her father's life.  From her home in Aarhus, to his dying place of Copenhagen, to his hometown of Skagen, and then back to Aarhus again via the museum at Moesgaard.

Producer: Anna Klein
Editors: Jeff Emtman and Bethany Denton
Music: Lucky Dragons and The Black Spot

Nick White is our editor at KCRW, where there are a lot of people we don’t often get the chance to thank, but help us to make this show: including Gary Scott, Juan Bonigno, Adria Kloke, Mia Fernandez, Dustin Milam, Christopher Ho, Caitlin Shamberg, JC Swiatek, and many others.

We’ll be back in the fall with new episodes.  In the meantime, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for updates from the off-season.  Rate us on iTunes and tell a friend too.

 

HBM099: Spell for the Repulsion of Astral Vampires

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👆 Video version 👆 👇 Audio only version 👇

 

There’s currently an invisible, supernatural pandemic affecting the world, or so claims HBM host Jeff Emtman.  What else could explain the wide-ranging malaise of our current times? He thinks that the most logical conclusion is that astral energy vampires are draining humans of their lifeforce en masse.  Jeff’s never encountered one of these beasts, but that’s probably because he’s developed an elaborate spell to trap them in an alternate timeline.  In this video episode of Here Be Monsters, Jeff shares his special spell of repulsion.

Content Note:
Stylized blood and flashing images

Ingredients: 

A note from Jeff on the creation of this episode:

I spent my teenage years listening to Coast To Coast AM each night from 10PM until I fell asleep.  It’s a 4 hour nightly show about the supernatural that exists in a world of increased potential for the unusual.  Guests, callers and hosts are so densely packed with stories of the strange that eventually what used to seem ludicrous becomes possible, and what used to seem possible seems likely.   

Like many, I was deeply saddened to hear of Art Bell’s recent death.  Bell was the original host of Coast To Coast.  While I grew up in the George Noory era, Bell would still host most weekends.  

But on further reflection of my years dedicated to this program, I came away conflicted.  It is truly an amazing feeling to have one’s world blown open on a nightly basis by some new ‘truth’ revealed, it’s also a format that often peddles in fear of the unknown.   It’s a fear that I internalized, hard. Now nearing 30, I’ve likely cumulative years of my life in fear of evils that don’t actually exist. And of the evils that do exist, I fall into nearly every demographic group that statistically protects me from them.  

If I were a sociologist, I’d study whether there’s inverse correlation between the amount of generalized fear a person feels and how much danger that they actually live in.  I have a hypothesis about misplaced fears and their relationship to the supernatural, but I am no sociologist.

So in this episode, I take a fanciful view on the enemies of the astral plane.  The astral plane is a favorite location of Coast To Coast, probably because its inherent indefinability means that just about anything goes.  But with that being said, please don’t bathe in blood, or electrocute yourself.

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Editor: Bethany Denton
Music: The Black Spot, Serocell, The Other Stars

This episode features illustrations by Fortunio Liceti from the 17th century.  Fortunio did not believe his subjects to be hideous, as he considered deformity to be the intersection of nature and art.  

👇 Video stills 👇

 

HBM098: Feed the Queen

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Image by Jeff Emtman

 

The Victoria Bug Zoo is home to dozens of species of insects and arachnids, and two leaf cutter ant colonies.

There's the new colony, with a three year old queen whose kingdom grows every day. If all goes well, she is expected to live to the age of fifteen, laying an egg approximately every three seconds. Her colony is teaming with a healthy population of soldiers, gardeners, and foragers with the potential to reach more than a million ants. There is a constant stream of activity; the soldiers patrol the tunnels to keep the queen and colony safe, the foragers trek back and forth retrieving leaves for the gardeners who busily chew the leaves into substrate.

Leaf cutter ants don't actually eat the leaves they cut down. Instead, they use chewed up leaves to build nurseries for the hatchlings, and to grow fungus gardens. The fungus produces a nectar, and that's what everyone eats. These ants have farmed and domesticated this fungus for many millions of years, long before humans discovered agriculture. This special relationship is called “mutualism”.

The second ant colony -- the old colony -- is not a robust as the first. At thirteen, almost fourteen years old, the old queen recently passed away. In fact, Bug Zoo tour guide Ash Bessant discovered ants dragging dismembered parts of her body to the ant graveyard as HBM producer Bethany Denton was interviewing him.

According to Ash, some of the ants continue to try feeding and cleaning the queen even after she’s died. Without a queen to lay eggs, the colony population will eventually dwindle and die out.

Can’t get enough leaf cutter ants? We recommend the 2013 BBC documentary Planet Ant: Life Inside the Colony. 

Producer: Bethany Denton
Editor: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot, Serocell
Images: Bethany Denton

 
From: Ants! Natures Secret Power A giant ant colony is pumped full of concrete, then excavated to reveal the complexity of its inner structure.

HBM097: Fox Teeth

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Icelandic fox. Photo by Megan Perra.

Icelandic fox. Photo by Megan Perra.

 

In the Westfjords of Iceland, people wait for birds to come ashore so that they can gather the feathers they leave behind.  These birds, called Eider Ducks, are the source of eiderdown, a ridiculously expensive and rare stuffing for bedding. 

This has landed the Arctic Fox in the crosshairs (quite literally).  These relatively common foxes are opportunistic eaters who snack on eider ducks if they get the chance.

So the Icelandic government placed a bounty on each fox killed (if you can provide its tail as proof).  Hunters of the Westfjords set up elaborate baiting ambushes for the foxes, and wait in darkened houses with rifles in the middle of blizzards.But some foxes are smart enough to outfox the hunters.

Megan Perra heard a rumor of a three legged Icelandic fox named “Tripod” that beat the odds.  A fox that grew to almost twice the normal size from stealing food from traps for three full years (or so the legend goes).  Megan is an illustrator/journalist from Portland, Oregon, and she’s currently working on a video documentary about the foxes’ interactions with humans. 

 
The taxidermied body of “Tripod”, a three-legged fox. Pictured here carrying the body of a seabird (a razorbill).

The taxidermied body of “Tripod”, a three-legged fox. Pictured here carrying the body of a seabird (a razorbill).

An Arctic Fox (vulpes lagopus).

An Arctic Fox (vulpes lagopus).

 

Megan retraces the steps of Tripod, from his birthplace in the Westfjords, to the lab in southern Iceland where he was dissected, and to his current home in a glass case at the Arctic Fox Centre.

But some foxes are smart enough to outfox the hunters.

Megan Perra heard a rumor of a three legged Icelandic fox named “Tripod” that beat the odds.  A fox that grew to almost twice the normal size from stealing food from traps for three full years (or so the legend goes).  Megan is an illustrator/journalist from Portland, Oregon, and she’s currently working on a video documentary about the foxes’ interactions with humans. 

Megan retraces the steps of Tripod, from his birthplace in the Westfjords, to the lab in southern Iceland where he was dissected, and to his current home in a glass case at the Arctic Fox Centre.

 
An Icelandic hunter, Jóhann Hannibalsson, at a remote cabin where he intends to shoot a fox.

An Icelandic hunter, Jóhann Hannibalsson, at a remote cabin where he intends to shoot a fox.

 

She visits a rural gas station where she finds Jóhann Hannibalsson, the hunter who finally shot Tripod after years of trying.  The two of them go on a snowmobile ride that brings them to a cabin where, in the dark, Megan witnesses Jóhann’s version of a fox hunt. 

Along the way, Megan also speaks to Ester Unnsteinsdóttir (a fox researcher), Siggi Hjartarson (a hunter), Stephen “Midge” Midgley (Manager at the Arctic Fox Centre), and Þorvaldur “Doddi” Björnsson (the taxidermist who preserved Tripod’s body).

Producer: Megan Perra
Editor: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot, Serocell
Images: Feral Five Creative Co / Megan Perra

 

Icelandic Language documentary on the production of eiderdown.

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