Holiday: Happy belated third anniversary to The Speaking Squid!

Happy belated third anniversary to The Speaking Squid!

Gift: There is no telling what could be in this gift box. The only limit is your imagination or the list of previously released item cards..

True to form, I forgot the three-year anniversary of this blog. This is a bit late, but drawing and sharing my work for three years is something worth celebrating.

At this point, I’ve drawn about 900 item cards and I think I’ve published a bit more than 700 item cards. Reflecting on those numbers is pretty wild. I’m still drawing all the time and getting better bit by bit. Here’s to another few years of creativity and expression. Maybe I’ll actually go through the giant mess of items that is all the items in Breath of the Wild.

Get a vaccine when you can and be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

Not a colorist: Five full color items from Oracle of Seasons you may have seen before.

Five full-color items from Oracle of Seasons you may have seen before.

What you’ve got there, that’s not a knife. Now this, this is a knife.

Not an artist: Four items from Oracle of Seasons found in a temple during its restoration.

Four items from Oracle of Seasons found in a temple during its restoration.

D8: I felt the need to complete the set of RPG dice drawings. The d8 was nice because it gave me another opportunity to draw triangular objects in perspective. That sentence is only partially sarcastic as perspective is a really powerful drawing skill, but one I don’t have great mastery of yet.

The order who originally founded the temple was very fond of relying on luck and randomness. To determine how and where they began their morning rituals, a die was cast three times to determine which direction they should travel, how far they should travel, and how long they should pray to start each day.

Celebrating the first day of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere with a little charm.

 A preserved Four Leaf clover to start Spring off with a bit of Luck.

Four Leaf Clover: While this lucky charm may not have thousands of years of folk history behind it, many know it as one of the main pillars of the lucky charm cannon. According to Wikipedia, they have about a 1 in 5,000 rate of appearance, which isn’t common by any means, but also isn’t the rarest thing either.

—————

The start of Spring is always an exciting time for me. It marks the beginning of life returning after Winter’s harsh grasp. I’m especially excited for the rains and the general vitality moving water brings into a landscape. 

See y’all tomorrow for some items from Oracle of Seasons.

Be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

Holiday: Chase the snakes away with this crosier for St. Patrick's Day

Take note of St. Patrick's Day with this crosier.

Crosier of the Pierced Serpent: A staff wielded by a religious zealot in their campaign to push out native religious practices from a foreign land.

In researching St. Patrick’s day I wanted to know the origin of the legend that St. Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland. As it turns out, Ireland was never known to have any snakes living on the island. Instead, the snakes are allegorical for the Druid’s who practiced their native religious traditions in Ireland before Christianity destroyed Ireland’s native religious and cultural practice. 

This is not an uncommon theme in Christian history. The church and its faithful saw all other views as abominable and forced others to convert. Often through violence and destruction ensuring that the practices were as lost to history as possible. This is not a practice I think is positive and I regret only taking the time to learn the history of the festival now.

Like many holidays imported by immigrants to the USA, Americans have reduced it to an excuse to feast and get drunk while perpetuating Irish stereotypes and making everything green, regardless of the possible impact. I always wonder if Chicago dying a river green has negative ecological consequences.

If you are celebrating St. Patrick’s day today, try to be sensitive to the real history of the person and the people under the spotlight.

—————

Spring seems to be arriving where I live which is an extremely exciting prospect. I can’t want to put away my winter boots with confidence, unfortunately, that will probably be some time in May.

I recently got my second dose of the Moderna COVID vaccine. I know a lot of people and places are transitioning “back to normal” but I hope you all realize that only a small fraction of people have been immunized and we all need to keep wearing masks, maintaining social distance, and limiting our contacts to ensure we can get out from under COVID’s thumb. Think about it like we are in the final stretch of a race that we have been fighting to finish, you don’t stop and celebrate because the finish line is in sight, you have to keep pushing and wait until after the race is over to fully celebrate.

We are still all in this together, so be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

Not an artist: Five items from Oracle of Seasons in a game with the highest stakes.

Five items from Oracle of Seasons in a game with the highest stakes.

Square Jewel: As with all the previous jewels from Oracle of Seasons, this is one of four jewels that act as keys to the locked entrance to the Tarm Ruins. Link needs to bomb a wall to get this jewel. In a normal game, the jewel is behind a cracked wall in Spool Swamp that is only accessible during winter. In a linked game, the jewel is behind a cracked wall in the basin of Eyeglass Lake that is only accessible when the water level in the lake is at its lowest point during summer.

The first and only game most people play in the Soul Cairn Casino is a simple game played with familiar dice. This game acts as a filter for those too mundane to be of any interest to the mysterious casino owners. It is not clear what the game tests for, because winners and losers, rich and poor, famous and unknown have all been invited to the private rooms after a few rolls of the dice.

Not an artist: Five items from Oracle of Seasons used to find a hidden treasure.

Five items from Oracle of Seasons used to find a hidden treasure.

Dragon Key: Amid the rocky peaks and bottomless pits of Goron Mountain there is a small patch of ground reachable only with the help of a flying companion. Riding atop the flying panda Moosh, Link can reach this hard-to-reach location and earn the Dragon Key as a reward for his perseverance. The key is required to stop the flow of the waterfall that covers the entrance to the Dancing Dragon Dungeon.

According to legend, a great dragon so disliked their heirs that instead of passing down some of their great wealth to their newly independent children, the dragon hid their hoard at the end of an impossibly complex trail of secrets and clues. To even find the start of the trail, one must have a dowsing rod made from silver that once was part of the dragon’s vast hoard. Many claim to have knowledge on the whereabouts of such rods, but few offers are credible, and even less are safe.