This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Dana Schwartz, host of Noble Blood.

Just a quick bit of housekeeping.

My new book, The Arcane Arts, is coming out this May.

I co-wrote it with a friend of mine.

It's a dual POV, dark academia story about a grad student and a professor studying illegal magic. It's a lot of mine. It's a dual P-O-V, dark academia story about a grad student and a professor studying

illegal magic. It's a lot of fun. It's by S.D. Coverley, which is the pen name we chose for

both of us writing together, but it's not a secret that we wrote it. And if you pre-ordered it,

it would just mean the world to me. So if you're looking for a

sexy, fun, dark academia, murder mystery thriller about forbidden magic, look up the arcane arts.

A pre-order would be super helpful. Okay. And now, time for the episode.

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky.

Listener discretion advised.

On the morning of January 18, 1921, the Mongolian capital city of Urga seemed quiet, typical for a snowy morning in negative 40-degree weather.

But out in the distance, you could see a series of fires had been lit in the hills surrounding the city.

One witness noticed cavalry moving down the mountainside, quote, like little black

dots against the snow. It turned out that the invaders were a ramshackle army of Mongolians,

Tibetans, and Russians, led by Russian baron Roman von Ungernsternberg, a man now sometimes referred to as the

mad or bloody baron. A bit of historical context. When the Chinese Republican force had occupied

Mongolia in 1919, they had had Bogd Khan, the highest Tibetan Buddhist authority,

placed under house arrest. But placed under house arrest in his lavish European-style home,

...