The man is sitting there in his "Fellowship of the Faceless Fiends" fez and being completely scientific about Yig and the Serpent Men. Easily one of my favorite people on the planet.
These videos are top notch and I look forward to every single one. You’re teaching a whole new generation about the myth is and your own experiences. Your takes on horror, RPG’s, HP, and the industry at large have been invaluable to me as a creator. Genuinely thank you and huzzah to more!
One of my City of Villains characters had Serpent Men, one in particular, memory and genes in his mitochondrial DNA. This particular Serpent man modified a human, and once every 4 or 5 generations one of her descendants would mature normally, and then in their early 20s, the Serpent Man DNA/memory RNA would 'unspool' and rewrite their genes. He'd go back to his lab, continue catch up on progress his previous incarnation made, then resume work. In exchange, he protected her bloodline, as it was in his best interest too. Lather, rinse, repeat, until my character came of age in a society/setting with genetic engineering.
I love that hat, Mr. Petersen. And I love the essay here. The Serpent Folk and Yig are some of my favorite Mythos beings mainly because I like reptiles and I like them for their obscurity. They're pretty underused by most Mythos authors, which gives others room to develop them.
I love this series because your examination of the Mythos threat brings out their weird, otherworldly and "scientific-beyond-comprehension" nature, so inherent to the idea of cosmic horror. I mean, I have known most of those creatures for my whole adult life and they sometimes seem very formulaic as every horror writer seems to need to call back to few facts we know from few HPL stories and then still write them as an appropriate monster from pop culture. Ghouls - zombies and Serpentmen - Reptilians are the most obvious victims.
Hear me out but I'm pretty sure yig is yigdrasil, the norse world tree. Based in some lovecraft works theres a strange emphasis on plant like biological life, and i believe it was a metaphorical understanding that animals had to have come from plants, and like plant roots start of as string or cord like the creatures in lovecrafts world start as writhing cord like entities that are probably initially photosynthetic before diversifying into a food chain
They're the same within the Hyborian Age and the time of Kull, and Yig is the god Set in the time of Conan. It's amazing how these two separate authors made a combined universe. It gets even crazier if you count the Marvel Conan comic books as well, Conan with Stormbreaker would be amazing to see.
Alright so lemme set some things straight about the Serpentmen and Yig(Also known as Set to Humankind during the Hyborian Age) that probably should've been included here, not your fault however as some pieces of lore do tend to be somewhat obscure and hidden I find, with some of the important elements from the Conan/Kull stories by REH tend to be overlooked in regards to Lovecraft lore despite them technically being in the same universe, especially in this case. In regards to what I mean exactly, Yig did create Serpents and Serpentmen themselves ages ago when he landed on Earth millions of years ago, and it is stated that after the culling of their kind during the Thurian Age they would attempt to reform their old civilization and form great cities within the cavernous depths of Yoth beneath K'n-yan(which also laid underneath North America) and would remain there, lying in wait until the early years in the Hyborian Age after the catacylsm had reformed what was once Thuria into Hyboria, but it was during this time they would forsake worshipping their creator Yig in favor of Tsathoggua for the sake of power to conquer over the new world. However, Yig would be most displeased by this and decided to look to another Elder Race he had set his eyes on to be his champions, The Giant Kings that would eventually rule over the empire of Acheron, who would aid Yig in punishing the Serpentmen by exterminating them for their treachery as he utterly cast down their great cities within the depths of the world and laid a curse upon them, which in turn forced the Serpentmen into hiding across darkest reaches and corners of Hyboria with their numbers becoming even more diminishing as their people would split apart and scatter across the world. This info isn't very well known so I don't blame you for missing some of these parts honestly, I had to do some serious digging myself and got most of my info from someone also who knows Conan lore a lot more than me. However, do keep in mind that NONE of this comes from Conan Exiles' "lore" as that game tends to portray the lore very haphazardly and often breaks it's own lore and canon most of the time, and I say this because they tried to implement the Serpentmen into the story but somehow makes them allies with the Giant Kings at one point despite the Serpentmen being exterminated by them and openly plot to get their revenge against them especially which makes little to no sense.
For me I put yig as more of an elder god rather than an outer good. He seems mostly almost benevolent but not really focused on man, in the same way Bast is more protective of cats, ie The Cats of Ulthar. And something I really like from 40k, when a good is eventuality birthed for whatever reason belief, or cosmic ingestion they become retroactively always having existed. So for me and my games, yig is an elder god created at an unknown time through human, serpent or other sentient misplacing their worship on snakes. Thus becoming a snake deity/guardian. Perhaps born from the continuous belief of many very powerful dreamers and the like.
Do you think there could be any relation between the serpent people and the strange quadrapedal reptile race of "the nameless city"? I think it makes a lot of sense for them to perhaps be an off shoot of them after the sinking of their main land mass on lemuria, or mu I can't remember.
I love your scholarly approach to this. You must be fascinating conversation in regards to this material and imaginings beyond what’s written. I’d love to read a book if you’ve written one!
I really like these videos about Cthulhu mythos, will you make videos for locations from the mythos too, like those we encounter for example in Arkham horror (Great hall of Celeano, Plateau of Leng, Carcosa, City of great race, etc.)?
Folk implies there's a kind of kinship between them. Folks generally refers to people of a commonality. The Serpent Men/People seem to be a heavily fragmented and divided people.
You know, I wish this series was around a few years ago. We were playing a game of Warhammer 40k Deathwatch where we the Kill-Team was dealing with the Lovecraft races.
Idea: Yig is less of a God and more an Ultimate Sorceror, When the Serpent Men found themselves in decline, they chose at least one of their number to carry the Wisdom of their people. The Humans consider him a Snake God since they lack this knoweldge.
Serpents have more traits than just being the legless reptile for instance there's this lizard called legless lizard which looks a lot like a snake but is a lizard due to their ears and scales and genetics being that of a lizard and not a snake. So serpent men could be serpents because they are genetically close too snakes and share a lot of their traits.
Well yes, but all true snakes are legless unless you count the tiny prongs on a boa or python. But again, how can you be "genetically close to snakes" if you evolved 50 million years before ... unless you are their ancestor.
I'd never thought I'd have to argue in favour of this: About the Serpent People/Human interbreeding: Isn't it established in some of Lovecraft's stories that humans can interbreed with "non-humans" humanoids? You have things like the White Ape that was able to get pregnant from a human. Similarly, in CoC lore, you have Deep Ones interbreeding with humans. I think it wouldn't be a stretch to say Serpent People can do the same.... Anyway, gonna get a drink now after thinking about humans getting it on with fish/apes/lizardmen for about 10 minutes...
What, no mention of the serpentmen civilization in Hyperborea, whose civilization at the time was _eaten_ when Tsathoggua was summoned to Earth in response to the prayers and rituals of the Voormis (who the serpentmen enslaved, experimented upon, and frequently ate)?
I'm no expert, but remember reading that "men" in older English dialects was more to refer to the entire species of humans, while "Wer" and "Wif" were to refer specifically to a male human, or a female human. That's why we have words like "Werewolf" and "Wife".
You might want to reconsider your "bipeds rare" assumption. There were plenty of bipedal dinosaurs. The first evidence we have of them is over 250 million years ago, and several lineages developed and did quite well for themselves with this trait. Birds, descendants of the tyrannosaurs, came much later. It is absolutely conceivable that Serpent Men evolved bipedalism or semi-bipedalism back then. The Serpent Men might have acquired their bipedalism that way. Thinking about snakes, evolution frequently occurs along a trajectory of bodypart reduction. One need only look at the history of insects where body segments reduced in number and complexity, multiple limbs became six, and what would have been legs in ancestral critters ended up fused to become mouth parts and antennae. Or the evolution of parasites who have divested themselves of all sorts of bits and become more effective at their specialized lifestyles. So there's lots and lots of precedent for lineages "getting rid of" working body parts. Now, with regards to snakes, we have some primitive snakes like the boa with vestigial legs and two lungs (one smaller than the other), and lizards which are either legless or well on their way to becoming legless. There turn out to be advantages to being a snake which have allowed those changes to be conserved. It might have just required a nudge for the Serpent Man scientists.
Bipeds are rare in modern times, and I think completely absent in the Permian/Carboniferous, which is when Serpent Men evolved. I agree they were common with archosaurs - the only lineage of vertebrate life which really features bipedalism (in dinosaurs & birds). Serpent men weren't archosaurs though.
@@SandyofCthulhu Hmm. I thought you'd put them at "no earlier than 250 million years ago" which would have been historical for the record as we know i. In any case, bipedalism isn't all that rare and has evolved several times as has getting rid of all those pesky limbs. I suspect the Serpent Men have been using their arcane science and cold-blooded magics to hide their origins from simian scientists because that's just the sort of thing they'd do :)
@@toddellner5283 Bipedalism is completely unknown outside of archosaurs (and humans - the only bipedal mammal) - even most archosaurs historically are quadrupeds. And losing limbs hasn't happened amongst vertebrates as often as you think. A few times with lizards, and 2-4 times for amphibians; never for archosaurs or mammals.
I love your Yig theory! When you say that the serpent men were atheists, what are your sources for that claim? In Howard's "The Shadow Kingdom" they are described as priests of a serpent god.
I've always liked that idea of certain great old ones (perhaps even Cthulhu) being just ascended members of mortal races, still so far below cosmic entities like the outer gods, as we are from them. I feel it gives a bit more sense to some of the cultists' attempts at dealing with them (maybe hoping they'll ascend in some way too), and to the wars between them and races such as the elder things, not ending in the absolute destruction of the more mundane of the two.
but Cthulhu isn't a god he just god like to us. one of tittles is High Priest of the Great Old Ones. you can't be a god if you warship another god. unless the love craft universe god's warship other gods
@@thomaskrogh85 , we know that some of the gods of the mythos serve and worship other gods, like for instance Nyarlathotep. It is never mentioned if Cthulhu is just the most powerful member of his race, or if he's the one that actually created them all. Lovecraft wrote a family tree of the gods in one of his letters, and in it, Cthulhu is a direct descendant of Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, and Shubb-Niggurath, but we don't know how much of that he meant to be considered canon in his stories. And even if it did, we don't know how much of a god would that make him anyways, remember that the outer gods can have mortal descendants, like the Whateley twins..
@@maximilianobartomucci6044 I still put Cthulhu in a god like tire/ category. lovecraft also played with perspectives I think this the quote. ants Human beings are mere insects compared to the eldritch gods. it also reminds me of a story of A one dimensional being meets A two dimensional being the one dimensional being sees the two dimensional and the cycle continues with three and fourth dimensional being.
Well, Darwinism does support the idea that snakes did used to have limbs. They found fossils o' snakes with little legs. Heck in the bible before the fall o' man in the garden o' eden, it be hinted at that snakes used to have limbs. Then God took em away as punishment for temptin' humanity into committin' wrong. So I don't think it be far fetched to think o' snakes with legs.
The man is sitting there in his "Fellowship of the Faceless Fiends" fez and being completely scientific about Yig and the Serpent Men. Easily one of my favorite people on the planet.
Great video! From another completely normal none serpent person human...
yes, we totally not serpent people need to sssstick together.
Huh. I guess a few managed to escape those Polyps after all.
The serpent men are also the main antagonistic force in the cartoon "Conan: the Adventurer" and their leader is a serpent men wizard named Wrath-Amon.
Yeah, a separate tribe that worshipped Set instead of Yig.
@@Damienx247 I think its theorised by some that Yig *is* Set in some way
These videos are top notch and I look forward to every single one.
You’re teaching a whole new generation about the myth is and your own experiences. Your takes on horror, RPG’s, HP, and the industry at large have been invaluable to me as a creator.
Genuinely thank you and huzzah to more!
thanks Morgoth!
One of my City of Villains characters had Serpent Men, one in particular, memory and genes in his mitochondrial DNA. This particular Serpent man modified a human, and once every 4 or 5 generations one of her descendants would mature normally, and then in their early 20s, the Serpent Man DNA/memory RNA would 'unspool' and rewrite their genes. He'd go back to his lab, continue catch up on progress his previous incarnation made, then resume work. In exchange, he protected her bloodline, as it was in his best interest too.
Lather, rinse, repeat, until my character came of age in a society/setting with genetic engineering.
I really love the depiction of them in Conan Exiles. They play up the serpent qualities through the body type.
I love that hat, Mr. Petersen. And I love the essay here. The Serpent Folk and Yig are some of my favorite Mythos beings mainly because I like reptiles and I like them for their obscurity. They're pretty underused by most Mythos authors, which gives others room to develop them.
I love this series because your examination of the Mythos threat brings out their weird, otherworldly and "scientific-beyond-comprehension" nature, so inherent to the idea of cosmic horror. I mean, I have known most of those creatures for my whole adult life and they sometimes seem very formulaic as every horror writer seems to need to call back to few facts we know from few HPL stories and then still write them as an appropriate monster from pop culture. Ghouls - zombies and Serpentmen - Reptilians are the most obvious victims.
thanks! I think it's just too easy to say "well they are reptiles who resent the mammals" and base everything on that. I like to probe further.
Hear me out but I'm pretty sure yig is yigdrasil, the norse world tree. Based in some lovecraft works theres a strange emphasis on plant like biological life, and i believe it was a metaphorical understanding that animals had to have come from plants, and like plant roots start of as string or cord like the creatures in lovecrafts world start as writhing cord like entities that are probably initially photosynthetic before diversifying into a food chain
You look suspiciously like Grunkle Stan out of Gravity Falls in that hat, hehe.
They're the same within the Hyborian Age and the time of Kull, and Yig is the god Set in the time of Conan. It's amazing how these two separate authors made a combined universe. It gets even crazier if you count the Marvel Conan comic books as well, Conan with Stormbreaker would be amazing to see.
I have no idea what you are talking about, but is still a delight to listen. Man, i never got to play an entire roleplay campaign...
Alright so lemme set some things straight about the Serpentmen and Yig(Also known as Set to Humankind during the Hyborian Age) that probably should've been included here, not your fault however as some pieces of lore do tend to be somewhat obscure and hidden I find, with some of the important elements from the Conan/Kull stories by REH tend to be overlooked in regards to Lovecraft lore despite them technically being in the same universe, especially in this case.
In regards to what I mean exactly, Yig did create Serpents and Serpentmen themselves ages ago when he landed on Earth millions of years ago, and it is stated that after the culling of their kind during the Thurian Age they would attempt to reform their old civilization and form great cities within the cavernous depths of Yoth beneath K'n-yan(which also laid underneath North America) and would remain there, lying in wait until the early years in the Hyborian Age after the catacylsm had reformed what was once Thuria into Hyboria, but it was during this time they would forsake worshipping their creator Yig in favor of Tsathoggua for the sake of power to conquer over the new world.
However, Yig would be most displeased by this and decided to look to another Elder Race he had set his eyes on to be his champions, The Giant Kings that would eventually rule over the empire of Acheron, who would aid Yig in punishing the Serpentmen by exterminating them for their treachery as he utterly cast down their great cities within the depths of the world and laid a curse upon them, which in turn forced the Serpentmen into hiding across darkest reaches and corners of Hyboria with their numbers becoming even more diminishing as their people would split apart and scatter across the world.
This info isn't very well known so I don't blame you for missing some of these parts honestly, I had to do some serious digging myself and got most of my info from someone also who knows Conan lore a lot more than me.
However, do keep in mind that NONE of this comes from Conan Exiles' "lore" as that game tends to portray the lore very haphazardly and often breaks it's own lore and canon most of the time, and I say this because they tried to implement the Serpentmen into the story but somehow makes them allies with the Giant Kings at one point despite the Serpentmen being exterminated by them and openly plot to get their revenge against them especially which makes little to no sense.
For me I put yig as more of an elder god rather than an outer good. He seems mostly almost benevolent but not really focused on man, in the same way Bast is more protective of cats, ie The Cats of Ulthar. And something I really like from 40k, when a good is eventuality birthed for whatever reason belief, or cosmic ingestion they become retroactively always having existed. So for me and my games, yig is an elder god created at an unknown time through human, serpent or other sentient misplacing their worship on snakes. Thus becoming a snake deity/guardian. Perhaps born from the continuous belief of many very powerful dreamers and the like.
Do you think there could be any relation between the serpent people and the strange quadrapedal reptile race of "the nameless city"? I think it makes a lot of sense for them to perhaps be an off shoot of them after the sinking of their main land mass on lemuria, or mu I can't remember.
I love your scholarly approach to this. You must be fascinating conversation in regards to this material and imaginings beyond what’s written. I’d love to read a book if you’ve written one!
I really like these videos about Cthulhu mythos, will you make videos for locations from the mythos too, like those we encounter for example in Arkham horror (Great hall of Celeano, Plateau of Leng, Carcosa, City of great race, etc.)?
That's a cool idea.
Folk implies there's a kind of kinship between them. Folks generally refers to people of a commonality. The Serpent Men/People seem to be a heavily fragmented and divided people.
The serpent man God calls set/yig Robert E Howard and HP Lovecraft perspectively
“Serpent men” [dark souls 3 music intensifies]
You know, I wish this series was around a few years ago.
We were playing a game of Warhammer 40k Deathwatch where we the Kill-Team was dealing with the Lovecraft races.
The serpentmen are so very interesting.
Idea: Yig is less of a God and more an Ultimate Sorceror, When the Serpent Men found themselves in decline, they chose at least one of their number to carry the Wisdom of their people. The Humans consider him a Snake God since they lack this knoweldge.
do the serpent men have ties with the xmen savage lands?
I guess you'd have to ask the Savage Lands people.
Serpents have more traits than just being the legless reptile for instance there's this lizard called legless lizard which looks a lot like a snake but is a lizard due to their ears and scales and genetics being that of a lizard and not a snake. So serpent men could be serpents because they are genetically close too snakes and share a lot of their traits.
Well yes, but all true snakes are legless unless you count the tiny prongs on a boa or python. But again, how can you be "genetically close to snakes" if you evolved 50 million years before ... unless you are their ancestor.
That is true I was just countering your argument of how are they snakes when they have arms and legs.
I'd never thought I'd have to argue in favour of this:
About the Serpent People/Human interbreeding:
Isn't it established in some of Lovecraft's stories that humans can interbreed with "non-humans" humanoids?
You have things like the White Ape that was able to get pregnant from a human. Similarly, in CoC lore, you have Deep Ones interbreeding with humans.
I think it wouldn't be a stretch to say Serpent People can do the same....
Anyway, gonna get a drink now after thinking about humans getting it on with fish/apes/lizardmen for about 10 minutes...
Arms and legs on scaly noodles?
Sounds more like reptile weasel-men to me... :)
Why isn't this channel 100k minimum
You're a MOTCOJCOLDS? I knew there was a reason I liked you!
I've always thought that the Yuan-ti of D&D are the games equivalent of serpent men. What do you think?
Old Ones from Neverwinter Nights, if one wishes to deem that canonical
What, no mention of the serpentmen civilization in Hyperborea, whose civilization at the time was _eaten_ when Tsathoggua was summoned to Earth in response to the prayers and rituals of the Voormis (who the serpentmen enslaved, experimented upon, and frequently ate)?
I see you got a "Fiend Without A Face" fez. Any chance you'll do a vid on them and/or a RPG scenario with them?
I'm no expert, but remember reading that "men" in older English dialects was more to refer to the entire species of humans, while "Wer" and "Wif" were to refer specifically to a male human, or a female human. That's why we have words like "Werewolf" and "Wife".
You might want to reconsider your "bipeds rare" assumption. There were plenty of bipedal dinosaurs. The first evidence we have of them is over 250 million years ago, and several lineages developed and did quite well for themselves with this trait. Birds, descendants of the tyrannosaurs, came much later. It is absolutely conceivable that Serpent Men evolved bipedalism or semi-bipedalism back then. The Serpent Men might have acquired their bipedalism that way.
Thinking about snakes, evolution frequently occurs along a trajectory of bodypart reduction. One need only look at the history of insects where body segments reduced in number and complexity, multiple limbs became six, and what would have been legs in ancestral critters ended up fused to become mouth parts and antennae. Or the evolution of parasites who have divested themselves of all sorts of bits and become more effective at their specialized lifestyles. So there's lots and lots of precedent for lineages "getting rid of" working body parts. Now, with regards to snakes, we have some primitive snakes like the boa with vestigial legs and two lungs (one smaller than the other), and lizards which are either legless or well on their way to becoming legless. There turn out to be advantages to being a snake which have allowed those changes to be conserved. It might have just required a nudge for the Serpent Man scientists.
Bipeds are rare in modern times, and I think completely absent in the Permian/Carboniferous, which is when Serpent Men evolved. I agree they were common with archosaurs - the only lineage of vertebrate life which really features bipedalism (in dinosaurs & birds). Serpent men weren't archosaurs though.
@@SandyofCthulhu Hmm. I thought you'd put them at "no earlier than 250 million years ago" which would have been historical for the record as we know i. In any case, bipedalism isn't all that rare and has evolved several times as has getting rid of all those pesky limbs.
I suspect the Serpent Men have been using their arcane science and cold-blooded magics to hide their origins from simian scientists because that's just the sort of thing they'd do :)
@@toddellner5283 Bipedalism is completely unknown outside of archosaurs (and humans - the only bipedal mammal) - even most archosaurs historically are quadrupeds. And losing limbs hasn't happened amongst vertebrates as often as you think. A few times with lizards, and 2-4 times for amphibians; never for archosaurs or mammals.
I love your Yig theory!
When you say that the serpent men were atheists, what are your sources for that claim? In Howard's "The Shadow Kingdom" they are described as priests of a serpent god.
Clark Ashton Smith mostly. I know Howard gave them a serpent god, but like I said when they evolved there were no serpents so ...
@@SandyofCthulhu : Which Smith stories feature serpent men other than their brief appearance in "The Seven Geases"?
@@SpectrumDT the Double Shadow, for one.
A YIG yig,yig yig Yig Yigg Yigg..🐲🐲🐉🐸🐍🐊
I've always liked that idea of certain great old ones (perhaps even Cthulhu) being just ascended members of mortal races, still so far below cosmic entities like the outer gods, as we are from them.
I feel it gives a bit more sense to some of the cultists' attempts at dealing with them (maybe hoping they'll ascend in some way too), and to the wars between them and races such as the elder things, not ending in the absolute destruction of the more mundane of the two.
but Cthulhu isn't a god he just god like to us. one of tittles is High Priest of the Great Old Ones. you can't be a god if you warship another god. unless the love craft universe god's warship other gods
@@thomaskrogh85 , we know that some of the gods of the mythos serve and worship other gods, like for instance Nyarlathotep.
It is never mentioned if Cthulhu is just the most powerful member of his race, or if he's the one that actually created them all.
Lovecraft wrote a family tree of the gods in one of his letters, and in it, Cthulhu is a direct descendant of Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, and Shubb-Niggurath, but we don't know how much of that he meant to be considered canon in his stories.
And even if it did, we don't know how much of a god would that make him anyways, remember that the outer gods can have mortal descendants, like the Whateley twins..
@@maximilianobartomucci6044 I still put Cthulhu in a god like tire/ category. lovecraft also played with perspectives I think this the quote. ants Human beings are mere insects compared to the eldritch gods. it also reminds me of a story of A one dimensional being meets A two dimensional being the one dimensional being sees the two dimensional and the cycle continues with three and fourth dimensional being.
@@thomaskrogh85 Flatland!
@@SandyofCthulhu is that the name of the story the conversation reminded of
So someone claims to know all about the Serpent Men, yet doesn't utter "ka nama kaa lajerama"...
Sadly Brule the Spear-Slayer forgot to mention that part.
Well, Darwinism does support the idea that snakes did used to have limbs. They found fossils o' snakes with little legs. Heck in the bible before the fall o' man in the garden o' eden, it be hinted at that snakes used to have limbs. Then God took em away as punishment for temptin' humanity into committin' wrong. So I don't think it be far fetched to think o' snakes with legs.
Who ever said the serpent men were atheists?
Snake furries
I saw Yig! He's so big! He smokes cigs! Eats like a pig!
Dang dude. Not all southerners were racist. And there are racists in all cultures and hemispheres. Stop the southern racist trope. It’s old and done.
Exactly.