Ecology of the ale rune wives, honey bee nymphs and mandrake roots

As we should all be well aware of by now, fantasy gaming takes monsters from myth and folklore and often twists them into something unrecognizable. Pathfinder is just as much of an offender as D&D, but the authors have the audacity to claim they are truer to the "source material" when they are not. In this post, I would like to focus on a trio of related monsters: the alraune, mandrake and thriae.

Alraune, "ale rune wives"

"Alraune" ©2009 GENZOMAN

Nomenclature: Alrunes, Alioruns, Alurines, Alruna Wives, alrauna (Polish and Serbo-Croatian), Alraune (German), alruna (Finnish, German and Swedish), alrune (Danish and Norwegian), Ölrún (Old Norse)

Description: originally a feminine spirit of the hearth, demonized by Christians as a witch or demon, attributed as being the mothers to the Huns, became synonymous with the mandrake root, appeared as a monster in Japanese video games, now hypersexualized by the monstergirl meme

The alruna, also called the "alruna wives" according to my sources, were originally feminine spirits of the hearth but under Christian influence they were demonized into witches. Indeed, they were considered to be the mothers of the Huns and had great powers of divination and changing their shape (but not gender). Their name later became synonymous with the mandrake plant in several Germanic languages.

The word and its cognates appear in several Germanic languages and translate to "mandrake, sorceress." It derives from the same root as rune, meaning "secret." It is not clear where the al- prefix came from, though one suggestion is that it derives from Old Norse Ölrún possibly meaning "ale rune." So that is how I invented the English title "ale rune wives," which in my opinion sounds more evocative than a German word few English speakers are likely to know.

In modern times, the alruna/mandrake appears as a monster in some Japanese video games and was adapted into the Monster Girl Encyclopedia. The Pathfinder monster is clearly derived from this depiction, the sexual elements sanitized; here it is a giant carnivorous plant that lures humanoid prey with a sweet smell and a flower shaped like a beautiful woman. Yes, yet another man-eating seductress cliche as if fantasy gaming was not already overflowing with them. (According to Daily Bestiary, the alraune can mimic males or females. Hooray for gender equality!)

In Monster Girl Encyclopedia, alraune monster girls are "pollinated" by honey bee monster girls and naturally the pollination process is lesbian sex. Like every other monster girl, the alraune is inseminated by human males whether the sperm donor wants to or not (because female-on-male rape is heavily fetishized therein). Monster boys only exist in art and fiction created by female artists and authors, and naturally slash (male/male relationships) abounds there for the same reason as lesbianism abounds in monster girl art.

The 3.x/d20/OGL Book of Fiends includes alrunes as plant/succubi/giant leech demons that serve Nocticula (Demon Lord of Assassins, Darkness and Lust). Where the PF alraune adapts the mandrake girl version, the BoF alrune adapts the post-Christian witch version. I am unsure how to relate them, except maybe to invoke their traditional shape changing ability.

"Alrune" ©2003 Green Ronin

Bibliography

• Dictionary of Demons by Fred Gettings
• Encyclopedia of Spirits and Ghosts in World Mythology by Theresa Bane
• Encyclopedia of Demons in World Religions and Cultures by Theresa Bane

Links

• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Alraune
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alruna
• http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Alraune
• https://teresawilde.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/alrunes-hun-ey-im-home/
• https://www.themystica.com/alrunes/
• http://occult-world.com/demons/alrunes
• https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/alrunes
• http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/bestiary3/alraune.html
• http://dailybestiary.tumblr.com/post/89719138553/alraune

Mandrake, "plant of humans"

"Oddish Family" ©2010 ZappaZee

Nomenclature: mandragora, mandrake, mandegloire, mandragloire, alrauna (Polish and Serbo-Croatian), Alraune (German), alruna (Finnish and Swedish), alrune (Danish and Norwegian)

Description: a plant with roots in the shape of a human body, grows from the "drippings" of hanged men impregnating the earth, attributed with aphrodisiac qualities (but your child will be Voldemort), released a deadly or maddening shriek if uprooted, now hypersexualized by the monstergirl meme, appears as a generic monster in fantasy gaming

According to bestiaries the mandrake root has fantastical properties. Its roots grow in the shape of a human body and if uprooted it releases a cry that causes instant death or insanity. It can also run away if not contained by a circle of iron (fairy reference!). The process of harvesting it requires using a rope to tie it to a dog, who dies in the process of uprooting it. Hooray for pointless animal cruelty! Not only that, but the root has powerful medicinal and aphrodisiac qualities. It is a key ingredient of cures for headache, earache, gout, epilepsy, cramps, and head cold. If you use it to conceive, like some witches are said to, then your child will be born soulless and unable to love (just like Voldemort in Harry Potter, who was conceived under a love potion and was born a sociopath, so I strongly suspect that Rowling got this idea from reading about the mandrake love potions). The most disturbing part is that the plant supposedly sprouts from soil watered by the "drippings" (i.e. blood, semen, piss, shit) of men hanged at the gallows. The details vary as to whether the hanged man had to be innocent, guilty of theft, or cursed by an accident of birth, but the result is the same. (There is no mention of hanged women, for better or worse.)

Naturally, the Tome of Horrors series and Pathfinder Bestiary series introduced the mandrake as a generic man-eating plant monster. Like most monsters, its sole purpose is to cause pain and suffering until the party kills it. It has evil alignment, because the game typically assumes that the party is good and we cannot have them kill anything that is not evil because the game logic is stupid like that. The Tome of Horrors did not go into detail about its ecology other than it being carnivorous, but Pathfinder Bestiary asserts that it is the result of a normal mandrake plant (i.e. the kind that exists in reality) being fertilized by the blood or corpse of a demon. I have no idea why this is even necessary, since the hanged man origin was awesomely creepy, but then again Pathfinder has this absurd obsession with making sure that their fictional fantasy worlds closely follows the real world's laws of physics and biology as opposed to magical laws that make more internal sense because it is a fictional fantasy world.

I wrote posts before about how my campaign settings use fantastical concepts like spontaneous generation. The mandrake root is a perfect example: it spontaneously generates from soil that absorbs the drippings of hanged men. That is not to say all mandrake roots must originate that way, since there is no reason that the roots cannot reproduce themselves like other tubers. However, I would like to posit that perhaps the roots contain the soul of the hanged man and that explains their human appearance. Whenever people are harvesting mandrakes and grinding it up to make love potions, they are essentially torturing a cursed or damned soul. It is no wonder that children conceived by love potion are soulless sociopaths.

In a bit of trivia, the word mandrake is actually a corruption of mandragora. The word mandragora is of uncertain origin, though one posited etymology is that it derives from a Persian phrase meaning "plant of humans." The word mandrake misinterprets the word as a compound of man and drake, and thus it took on a new meaning as an imp or dragonet immune to fire for some reason. This is possibly the inspiration for the pyromaniac mandrakes in Warhammer 40,000.

Links

• http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast1098.htm
• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mandrake
• http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Alraune
• http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/plants/mandragora-tohc/
• http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/bestiary2/mandragora.html
• http://dailybestiary.tumblr.com/post/36715796090/mandragora

Thriae, "nymphs of ash-trees, honey, divination-pebbles"

"Queen Bee" © Noa Ikeda

Nomenclature: bee girl, meliae, mellissae, thriae

Description: nymphs of bees and honey, dryads of the ash trees, oreads of Mount Parnassus in Phocis, divine the future through pebbles and birds, originally virgins but now hypersexualized by the monstergirl meme

Those of you who have read the Pathfinder Bestiary books may be familiar with the thriae, who are glorified fetish monsters. Their whole shtick is that they are all-female and reproduce by convincing adventurers to impregnate them. They are nearly identical to the bee girl from Corruption of Champions or the honey bee from Monster Girl Encyclopedia, and I would argue they are directly inspired by that.

Oddly, Pathfinder's hypersexualized thriae ignore the most interesting aspects of monster girl inspirations. Namely, the bee girl lay her eggs inside her partners (non-fatally) and consuming her honey will gradually transform the player character into a bee boy; the honey bees outright kidnap men in droves to keep as personal sex slaves and sensually harvest the nectar from mandrake or alraune flowers (which are depicted as monster girls too). I am actually surprised that aspect was not included in the bestiary.

This contrasts with their name, "thriae", being taken from Greek myth and having completely different connotations. The original thriae were prophetic nymphs with a non-sequitur resemblance to bees. They were explicitly noted to be virgins, as in they never had sex. Quite the opposite of Pathfinder's depiction.

In the original Greek myths, thriae are often conflated with the meliae or mellissae but appear to have at some point referred to separate groups. The meliae or mellisae, nymphs of the ash tree and honey sap, appear to be distaff counterparts of the beekeeper deity Melisseus (their names translate to "of the bees"). They were the nurses to infant Zeus and are comparable to Amalthea, who herself is listed as the wife or daughter of Melisseus.

This has inspired me to write my own plot hook involving the thriae, meliae or whatever you wish to call them. The party journeys to the mountain demesnes of the thriae nymphs in the hope that their gift of prophecy may move the story along when it hits a snag. The party has heard rumors about the thriae involving them supposedly taking men as husbands and isolating them in opulence, but only if they consent of course because they are emphatically not evil! This is dismissed as the fever dreams of horny bards. When the party arrives, the thriae claim that divination with take time and in the meantime they invite the party to sample their honeycomb which is the best in the world. However, this is actually a plot to turn the party into giant bees using the transformation properties of their honey. Once transformed, the party members will be destined to work in the thriae's franchise operation forever! Cue evil laughter. (If you are wondering who they are serving it to, then the answer is whoever lives in the fairy lands. The honeycomb is fairy food. The dangerous properties of fairy food only affect non-fairies whereas fairies consume it as their food of choice, hence the name.)

Links

• http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/KoureteMelisseus.html
• http://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/NymphaiMeliai.html
• http://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/NymphaiThriai.html
• http://www.theoi.com/Ther/AixAmaltheia.html
• https://threehundredandsixtysix.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/the-melissae-in-greek-myth-and-legend/
• http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/bestiary3/thriae.html
• http://dailybestiary.tumblr.com/search/thriae
• https://d-infinity.net/game-content/so-you-want-play-thriae
• http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2r442?Hypersexualization-of-women-in-Pathfinder

Connecting the three

I would like to posit a connection between these three monsters. The mandrake tuber is the juvenile form of the mature alruna blossom. The alruna/mandrake is the reincarnated soul of a hanged man. The alruna blossom is actually a shape changer, capable of assuming a variety of forms including woman, flower and demon, but she cannot change her apparent gender. They are witches skilled in divination and other mysteries. The alruna in her blossom form is pollinated by the thriae and their bees, who harvest her nectar to make their honey. The shape changing ability of the alruna confers their honey with its transformation properties, which the thriae used to transform unsuspecting victims into honey bee satyrs to serve their franchise operation.

The alruna/mandrake is either male (alruno husbando), female (alruna waifu) or both, and may have children with humanoids. Their child by a woman will be a cambion, soulless and unable to love. Their child by a man will be a great warrior like the Huns, destined for gold and glory. Their cuttings have a wide variety of medicinal and aphrodisiac properties, assuming you can harvest one (iron is helpful). New mandrakes may only be produced by the drippings of a hanged man, so the plant handily has strong vines which easily serve this purpose.

The alruna's nature attracts them to one of the fairy courts. Those of the seelie court are the alruna wives, the hearth spirits of pre-Christian Germanic/Scandinavian cultures. Those of the unseelie court are the post-Christian mandrakes/witches, mothers of the Huns, and seductive monster girls.

And so on. That is all I have for now. If I get any more bright ideas I will either add an addendum or make a new post...