Five items from A Link to the Past.
Magic Hammer: The last hammer I drew was for blacksmithing. This hammer is a wooden mallet suitable for wood working or head bonking. I know that a knot in the center of a mallet head would probably lead to a broken mallet, but I love the way knots look.
This could be the mallet used by the hermit monk who built the Temple of the Five Bells. The monk, with their trusted donkey, hiked into the trackless peaks of the Mountains of Heavenly Silence with a vision of founding an isolated temple. The monk and donkey were not seen for nearly a decade. The next time the monk was seen, they were erecting a sign post that directed travelers to the new temple. It is said, that when the first traveling monks arrived at the Temple of the Five Bells, the hermit carpenter welcomed them and then sat down with an elderly donkey and the pair died at the same moment, having seen their life’s' work completed.
The heartwood of an ancient tree is a powerful material component. That is especially true when the tree is a treant elder that has been bonded with the hamadryad matron of the western wilderness millennia. During a brief moment of privacy, the elder treant pulled this mallet from their own heart and gave it to a group of outsiders while saying, "Swing this at the right moment so that the forests will be there for our children's children." This act of creation claimed the elder's life. The first forest spirits to discover the outsiders with the elder's lifeless body assumed the outsiders slew the treant. In their grief they were unwilling to hear the outsiders’ story. The outsiders managed to escape with the mallet and are now hunted by avenging forest spirits and colonial agents eager to see the untamed forest fall to axe and saw.
Quake Medallion: This power medal gives Link the ability to cause a small earthquake. This has the normal side effects of shaking things out of trees and crumbling walls. The earthquake also mashes creatures standing on the ground into ooze monsters which is, at least to me, an atypical effect of an earthquake. Link acquires the medallion from a giant catfish who he has to annoy into giving him the medallion. This is a reference to a folk tale that explains where earthquakes come from.
When shamans are learning their art, they must make long pilgrimages into the wild places of the world to commune with the spirits of nature. When the shaman has truly connected with the spirits of a place, they ritualistically craft a totem to act as a conduit for that power. Each set of totems is incredibly personal to the shaman. One shaman may create small statuettes representing the shape the spirit appeared in while another may create medallions inscribed with meaningful symbols that fit into slots of an heirloom blade. No matter the shape of the totems, all shamans must ensure they have a strong connection to the raging storm, the enduring earth, and the consuming fire.
In the Giant Olympics, medals are given out for such competitions as boulder hurling, wind blowing, and earth shaking. This medal was given to the last winner of the earth shaking competition Fahra Soil Speaker, a stone giant mage. The Giant Olympic Committee is considering changing the rules of the earth shaking competition to disallow magic since Fahra destroyed much of the plateau the '12 giant Olympics were being held on.
Titan's Mitt: The titan's mitt lets Link lift even heavier objects than the power glove. I always loved seeing Link lift massive objects over his head after receiving the various power gloves.
This is the stone fist of the betrayer. The celestial guardian that sought to be a creator in their own right and in doing so, created the hordes of monsters that will one day destroy all life on the planet. Seeing the betrayal, the other celestials cut the betrayer down and struck their body apart into many pieces. The pieces were than scattered with the hope they would rot away from the world and never cause harm to it again. The curious nature of early peoples would not let that hope survive. The pieces of the celestial’s body fell from the sky as a magnificent rain of shooting stars. One of these falling stars landed so close to the first peoples' camp that they felt it was a gift from the gods. The first peoples could sense the power of the hand, so they brought it back to their camp and worshipped it as a totem of their gods. With the power of the hand, the tribe was able to absorb other groups and quickly became an empire ruled by the divine mandate of the celestial hand. At the height of the empire's power, the hand was stolen from the holy temple of the imperial fist. This theft ushered in an age of civil war and strife that would see many of the great works of the empire undone. All that is left of the empire are weather worn ruins, lost cities waiting to be rediscovered, and the unanswered question: where is the hand of power?
Ulm, the city of statues has always had golems and automata be a part of everyday life. Recently, a less than reputable sawbones has been offering to replace lost limbs with prosthetics harvested from decommissioned constructs. Almost all of the recipients have been completely satisfied with their new appendages. Some rumors have persisted that a few of the replacement parts seemed to have a mind of their own, sometimes getting their new owners into trouble be leaping or grabbing at the worst moment. The surgeon is unwilling to discuss the matter at all but discerning eyes will notice that all of the people who complained about their prosthetics seemed to receive pieces made from the same stony red material.
Power Glove: I couldn't get the image of the Nintendo's PowerGlove out of my head when thinking about what I was going to do for this drawing so I went with it. This glove makes lifting heavy objects so easy, it's child's play.
With the advent of body mods, people were able to push their physical capabilities past natural human limits. This generation 1 body mod control gauntlet was the only way to power the mods, and fine tune their operation after installation. Later generation mods have moved to an internal bio-synthetic battery system and a totally intuitive control system that is able to interpret nerve impulses as accurately as natural tissues. Today, gen. 1 control gauntlets look about as out of place as shoulder pads and big blown out hair. Hackers have posted special codes on the dark web that are supposedly able to complete max out the gen. 1 body mods' performance. Apparently providing the user with almost limitless strength at the cost of giving up all the fun.
This Mobile ARm-mounted Computer System, M.AR.C.S for short, is perfect for the action science hacker in your life. No other platform offers that computing power coupled with the totally fly fingerless leather glove. Don't miss this limited time opportunity. Act fast before you miss all the M.AR.C.S.
Lantern: I hate this lantern. I didn't do the perspective very well and I got so fed up with the lantern that I couldn't bring myself to go back and fix it. This series is about getting better through a lot of practice. That means that not every one of these drawings will be perfect.
You and your friends must have camped on an unmarked grave because you are now being harassed by intangible specters reaching out from the darkness. This little lantern is all that has been keeping the grasping fingers of the dead at bay. With fuel running low, you aren't sure that you have enough fuel to keep the light bright enough to keep everyone safe. You are sure that there would be enough to keep the light bright enough to protect one or two of you. Are you going to keep everyone safe for now if it means no one is safe soon, or will you choose to sacrifice some to ensure that at least a few of you survive? Have you thought about trying to find your way out of this accursed forest in the middle of the night with just this lantern to guide you?
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I sort of deviated from my normal fantasy story ideas on this one. I never really made any promise that this would be a dedicated fantasy space so I don't really have to make any apologies. I hope you enjoyed the really overt references to other media in the two glove entries.
Please, don't profit off my work without my consent. Feel free to use any and all of this in your personal life as you see fit.
And as always, be excellent to everyone.
-Ceph
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