Wind Waker: Great sticks from Wind Waker for people living on the move.

 Great sticks from Wind Waker for people living on the move.

Bait Bag: The bait bag does what you think it does. It is a bag to hold bait. Link can purchase the bag from the merchant Beedle who also sails the Great Sea. The bag holds hyoi pears and all purpose bait that Link can use in his adventures. Stay tuned for what those pears and the bait do when those item cards appear on the blog.

Some people stay in one place their whole lives without ever looking to see what’s over the next hill. Those people fill their lives with so much stuff that, if they ever feel like starting over someplace new, they are too weighed down by all their material goods to really enjoy the change. Not so for the modern nomad, living with their whole life tied up in a sack slung over their shoulder, ready to jump a train to the next opportunity.

Hangool: Nomads in the horn of Africa use this simply looking stick in a variety of helpful ways. Cane, hook, driving switch, club, and so much more all in one everyday stick. One ritual of becoming an adult is going into the wild and finding the perfect stick to be honed into a hangool, so each hangool is unique to its owner.

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Hangools are real things from Somalia. In trying to research this post, I was shocked at how little information about traditional Somalian tools there was online in English. Makes me sad, especially because of how expansive the Wikipedia article on wrenches is.

Vocab fun fact: Sticks with sacks tied around their end are called bindle sticks. Now you know that.

Be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

Wind Waker: Antique diving equipment from Wind Waker.

Wind Waker: Antique diving equipment from Wind Waker.

Magic Armor: The magic armor in Wind Waker is an arcane barrier that drains either Link’s magic bar or his rupees, original game and HD release respectively, when activated. Link is protected from harm while the barrier is maintained. If Link’s magic bar or rupees run out, the barrier drops. The magic armor is an optional item and can be obtained from Zunari the merchant after completing enough of the trading sequence.

The thrill of being the first person to discover the ruins of a sunken city that could be Atlantis was greatly diminished in discovering a derelict submarine and an antiquated diving suit in the entry of the city’s central temple. While you may not be the first person to rediscover the lost city, it seems you will be the first person to tell the tale, as the diving suit contains the skeletal remains of the sunken city’s first visitor. With your modern diving equipment, you are sure to have more luck than that poor soul.

Spoils Bag: This bag is used to hold the various minor treasures dropped by defeated enemies across the Great Sea. With the spoils bag, Link can hold up to 99 of each of the different treasures to be traded or sold. Link must pass the rope swinging challenge aboard Tetra’s pirate ship. If Link can finish the course, Niko awards him with the spoils bag.

It will take time to prepare before you are able to explore the vast interior of the main temple, but you were able to explore the submarine during the preparations. Unsurprisingly, the vessel had experienced significant mechanical failure which left it to drift to the bottom of the sea. Searching through the contents of the submarine, there are no human remains, so you are left to piece together the final story of the ship from the journals, letters, and baggage left by the long-dead crew.

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This week’s item mini-stories were inspired directly by The Temple by H.P. Lovecraft. It sort of satirizes nazi self importance, but, knowing H.P. Lovecraft was super racist even for his time, I’m not 100% sure where the satire ends and the author’s voice begins. Read or listen at your own risk.

Be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

Wind Waker: Tools of the maestro of tranquility from Wind Waker.

Tools of the maestro of tranquility from Wind Waker.

Picto Box: Found hidden in the jail cell that holds Tingle, the original Picto Box allows Link to take and store up to three black and white pictures. In the HD rerelease of Wind Waker, the Picto Box’s storage is increased to twelve photos and Link can now take selfies. These photos can be shown to people around the Great Sea, and they used to be able to bottled up in Tingle’s Bottle and sent to random players on the Miiverse prior to its collapse.

With a fan brush in hand, Bob Ross could summon up bushes, grasses, and endless forests of happy little trees. Those happy little trees, living among Ross’ pastoral landscapes, were some of the first things that inspired me to make art. Years later, I still can’t paint, but I do try to believe only in happy accidents instead of mistakes.

Deluxe Picto Box: The Deluxe Picto Box is an upgraded version of the Picto Box that can now take photographs in full color. Link must help Lenzo, the foremost expert on pictography in the Great Sea, complete his research into color pictographs to earn the Deluxe Picto Box. In the original release of the game, a firefly from Forest Haven was required as part of the quest leading up to the Deluxe Picto Box, but that requirement was removed in Wind Waker HD. I feel the inclusion of the firefly keeps the Picto Box silly and fantastical in a similar manner to Discworld's Impo powered Iconograph.

Watching the Joy of Painting as a kid, I remember being thinking that the names of Ross' paints sounded magical. Phthalo Blue and Alizarin Crimson sounded like substances conjured up from other worlds. In my adulthood, I intellectually know that the names are just specifying hues made in specific places or ways, but I still feel some of that magic when I hear Bob say which paint he’s loading up on his brush.

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This was a bit of a diversion from my usual mini fictions inspired by the item cards I drew, but this is where inspiration led me. I love The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross and I recommend everyone sit down and watch him work through at least a few paintings. I believe it is well worth your time.

Bob was also one of the first people that I can remember who actively practiced radical acceptance. The only other person that really jumps to mind in that category is Mr. Rogers. While I am nothing like Bob Ross or Mr. Rogers, I try to carry their lessons of acceptance and positivity into the world. That might give you a clue why I always end these posts the same way.

Be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

Wind Waker: Two very different ways of finding something out from Wind Waker.

 Two very different ways of finding something out from Wind Waker.

Tingle Tuner: In the GameCube version of Wind Waker Link is given the Tingle Tuner by Tingle as a thank you gift for getting him out of jail. The tuner is an oddity as it only works if the player connects a GameBoy advanced to the GameCube. This will activate the tuner, which looks like a GameBoy advanced crossed with Tingle himself. The tuner allows the player to benefit from Tingle's interventions. Most of these interventions come in the form of information and hints about the many islands and hazards of the Great Sea.

When you said the motion scanner wasn’t picking anything up, you hadn’t yet noticed the thing wasn’t actually turned on. Now that you’ve got it turned on, you can’t help but be worried about how many things are moving near you that you just can’t see. Especially worrisome is the one dot that keeps creeping closer so slowly it only appears on your scanner as a ghost.

Tingle Bottle: In the HD rerelease of Wind Waker for the Wii, the Tingle Bottle replaces the Tingle Tuner as Tingle's gift of thanks for freeing him. The bottle allowed players to send screenshots and messages to other Links exploring the Great Sea. To send a message, Link must place a message in the bottle and throw it out to sea. Only for it to randomly appear in another player’s Great Sea. The screenshots and messages would appear in the player’s Mii profile, but since Nintendo ended the Miiverse the bottle is useless. 

Most messages in a bottle show up in your life on a beach where they have washed in on a high tide. What makes this message in a bottle a little different is that it appeared in your bottle of brandy just after you had poured yourself a glass. How did it get there, what does it say, and who wanted to make sure you got the message?

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Here is the first example of me not coloring every item card in this set. I committed to making a color version of every different base line-art, but some cards are just swapped symbols or tweaked details, and they won’t always get a unique color version.

I am coming up on 1,000 Zelda item cards drawn, I have drawn well over 1,000 cards if you include all of my side projects, and I’m getting close to my 300th post. I don’t know if I expected to be keeping this project up for more than three years, but I am and I have no plans to stop anytime soon.

Be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph