Hello and welcome to the inner sanctum of the Moth Sanctuary. I'm Chloe. And I'm Andrew. And today we are going to be giving you a behind the scenes look at the finale of Season 1 of Penny Dreadfuls from the Moth Sanctuary.
We're going to be looking at Lady Death today. So this is a story written by Andrew. So tell us the brief overview of the story. Tell us what happens.
The story is, it surrounds a character called the Countess. And she is a figure who's been doing some pretty atrocious things to the people under her charge. The people that the sort of the peasantry that live in her lands. And she's doing it to try and seduce and entice death to prove that she can be a presence of death just as well as he can.
All for the purposes of trying to join his crusade for lack of a better word. And the story kind of unfolds when he catches up with her. So what was the inspiration behind this story? Was there a particular character that you had in mind when you were writing about Lady Death?
Well yeah, I mean the figure that I had in mind was Countess Bathory. Nasty Lady. Yeah, Nasty Lady who is rumored, and it is a rumor, sadly, it's not a real story. But she was rumored to take baths in the blood of virgins to keep herself young and beautiful.
And it's a lovely sort of image and a lovely sort of folk tale, but sadly it doesn't have any bearing in truth. What she actually was was a sadist who married very young and was incredibly wealthy to the point where the treasury of Hungary needed to actually take loans from her and her husband. He was an accomplished soldier and he would come back from different skirmishes, different battles, different times away with gifts for her that would be weapons. And he would teach a different ways of inflicting pain so that by the time that she was in her 20s she was assaulting and killing young women that were working for her or that were in her care and in her charge.
She had her own little room, which was essentially a torture room, which might be where the people theorize this is where the Bath story comes from. He has the torture dungeon. Exactly, but the floors of which would be covered in these people's blood. So you'd be walking around literally in puddles of blood.
So take from that what you will, that's probably where the rumor came from, that she was bathing in blood. But yeah, she was essentially the inspiration for Lady Death because it just seems so strange. Somebody who was so sadistic, somebody who was so wrapped up with the torture and killing of people. It seems like such a strange motivation and I want to kind of take that and give her a purpose for doing so.
If you get my meaning, she's still a psychopath, she's still crazy, but she's got a motivation which is all her own which nobody else can understand. So it's essentially taking that Lady Bath three character and sort of putting her into a context where she's trying to confront death. So the actual inspiration for the story is markedly more gory than the actual episode that we've created, which is arguably more of a love story. From her perspective, it certainly is.
I wanted to have, I had this visual in my head and it was either going to turn into Lady Death or it was going to be a vampire story. But I thought that having a vampire story where a vampire comes in the middle of the night to this young woman was a little bit tired and played out and there wasn't really much you could do with that. Whereas what I love the most about this was the conversation between the two and the counter's going from her belief that her suitor, this person that she's been trying to lure and tempt for so long, has finally arrived. And then through the course of the story, it slowly falls apart and she realizes that it's not what she thought it was.
And she's ultimately, by the end, utterly terrified of the prospect of what's going to happen. So what did you carry over from the legend of Countess Bathory? What were they, the elements that you kept? A lot of it in there is very overt reference.
So things like her having a room to go and take young women that worked for her. The fact that she had a quick temper, the same as Lady Bathory did, so that people would be put into this torch chamber for the slightest misdemeanors. The fact that they both have husbands who taught them how to kill, I think the only difference is that in Lady Death, it's kind of implied that she might have been responsible for his death, whereas in history, Lady Bathory and her husband were very much in love and she wasn't responsible for his death at all, from what I understand. Lucky escape, bro.
Well, I think he was just as sadistic as her, so he's probably not what he deserved. Do you have a favourite part of the story? You mentioned the conversation earlier. Yeah, it's something that I'm proud of most from this story.
It's the way in which it's told from how it slowly unfurls from beginning to end, how the tables turn, how it's almost like a little dance between the two of them. This very quiet, very stoic, very still death presence is coming up against this very wild, very fiery young woman, and how he doesn't have to change what he's doing at all, and just through his presence, just through his body language, through the little things that he'll throw in every once in a while, that you get that actually he is cold and unfeeling, and just as cruel as she is in some respects, but because he has to be and she chooses to be. Yeah, it doesn't have the same emotional motivation behind it. And she realises her own insignificance when she puts so much importance on herself and what she might mean, the line where he says, I have taken worlds.
It's supposed to be that you might imagine that you are comparable to me, but in fact, you're just a dart, you've been here for a second in my time, and when you're gone, you'll be forgotten. You'll be snuffed out. Exactly. And I really like how that interaction plays out over the course of the story.
What do you think is the most horrifying part of the story? What's the really scary part for you? And for me, strangely enough, given all that we've just said about the cruelty of the Countess and everything like that, it's death's cold indifference. There's something about that that I find really unnerving, and as he gets closer, it becomes more and more apparent, you know, like how far away it seems beautiful.
And that's the thing, I guess that's with all of us, is that there's this tendency sometimes to romanticise death, but that's when it's far away, and the closer it gets, the more terrifying the prospect becomes until it's literally on top of us. And I think, you know, there's no words of comfort that come from him. He's not trying to make a situation easier, whether or not she might deserve it. There's no softening from him.
And I think that's strangely the most terrifying thing is the cold indifference with which he regards her and probably regards everybody. Yeah, there's one thing that you can't bargain with, even though you've spent your life in pursuit of this thing, it all means nothing when it actually comes down to the final moment. Oh, chilling. Well, on that note, let's have a look at our bonus question for this episode.
So this is a fun one. Classic Monster Fight. Who is your favourite classic monster? Oh, God.
Movie and book versions are both acceptable. Wow, okay. I mean, speaking of vampire figures, it's got to be Dracula. That's the thing.
If it was just based upon films, then it's got to be Frankenstein or Frankenstein's Monster, rather. But because Dracula's the novel of Dracula, it's such a terrifying presence. He doesn't even have to do much. And he's this utterly sort of scary, wild, crazy creature.
Yeah, I've got to give it to Dracula in that respect. See, I would have gone for the creation Frankenstein's Monster, but trying to choose between the book version and the movie version is really difficult. Yeah. Because I think the movie version, Boris Karloff's portrayal of the creature is just so iconic and so beautiful in many ways.
He really captures that kind of childlike innocence of the creation, but also the sheer blind rage as well is incredible. But Mary Shelley's original description of the creation, I think, is absolutely phenomenal and terrifying and really visceral. And if you ever get the chance to go to Mary Shelley's House of Frankenstein in Bath, they have created an animatronic version of what Mary Shelley thought the creation looked like. And it's terrifying and wonderful.
It's wonderful. You should totally go and see it. Yeah, definitely go there. So yeah, I would have to say Frankenstein.
But here's a question. If they were in a ring, Drak vs. Frankenstein's Monster, who would win? Well, that depends on the context.
It's happening at night. Are the audience, the spectators, there was tortures and pitch walks. So yeah, I think if the creature could land a punch on Drak, he'd go down. But if he got too close, he'd just burst into a cloud of bats and fly away.
Either way, I want to be in the front row for that fight. Alright, here's one back at you. So obviously I think we've made our feelings known on the creation and Dracula. The Invisible Man or the Wolfman?
Wolfman, 100%. Really? Yeah, I love Wolfman. I mean, don't get me wrong.
I think the movie version of The Invisible Man possibly has one of the best one-liners ever and he throws a broom at someone and says, how's this for a hairbrush? Which makes no sense. He's just talking sh**ed a light fall. But yeah, Wolfman.
Definitely. Well, that's it for another episode of The Inner Sanctum of the Moth Sanctuary. We will be back with another episode, digging deeper into the stories and how we created them. If you want to go and listen to Lady Death, if you haven't already, that is the season finale of Season 1, it's episode number 10.
So go and listen to that. And if you haven't already, make sure you have subscribed to Penny Vreffool's from the Moth Sanctuary on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been Chloe. I've been Andrew.
And we will see you again pretty soon.