Holiday: Make a wish this New Year’s Eve.

 Holiday: Make a wish this New Year’s Eve.

Shell Boats: My wife’s family has a tradition where each person makes a boat out of a walnut shell and a candle. You light all the boats at the same time and the person with the last boat floating gets a wish.

Happy New Year! 

Be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

Wind Waker: A gruesome pike.

 A gruesome pike.

Skull Tower Idol: This gruesome stack of bones is another idol in the decoration trading sequence. Link must trade another idol for this one and it can be traded for an idol or flag. Since this can also be placed on the Joyous pedestals around Windfall Island, this is the best idol to max out the island’s spookiness.

You stand before a fallen keep choked with sand from the encroaching desert. Atop the gate was carved the message, “Look into the faces of those who opposed me and despair for I am eternal.” Amidst the decay, a single pike remained piercing a bleached white skull that could have been a vanquished enemy or a deposed tyrant. 

----------

This was my inexpertly handled homage to Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

Holidays: Break a leg this Christmas.

Holidays: Break a leg this Christmas.

Leg Lamp: Every person harbors safe wishes that they can share and others will support, and darker secret wishes they keep hidden from the world. This is one of those hidden secret wishes, but someone was fool enough to let it out into the world. Brace yourself for the havoc this wish will wreak on the unsuspecting and unprepared.

The infamous leg lamp from A Christmas Story. This is one of my mother’s favorite Christmas movies and I can still remember her howling with laughter when the leg lamp gets unboxed.

My household celebrates Christmas. Merry Christmas if yours does too.

Be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

~Mild NSFW~ Wind Waker: An ancient Venus statute. ~Mild NSFW~

~Mild NSFW~  An ancient Venus statute. ~Mild NSFW~

Wind Waker: A boarding pike.

 A boarding pike.

Hero's Flag: Nearing the end of the decoration trading sequence, Link must offer the Big Sale Flag to receive the Hero’s Flag. With this final flag, Link can obtain one of the statues available in the sequence. This can also be placed in a Joyous Pedestal on Windfall Island.

When the captain of your ship fell to the pirates boarding your small vessel all hope seemed to be lost. You weren’t even thinking when you picked up the pike that slew your captain and led a desperate counterattack that freed your ship. You didn’t know it then, but that was your first step toward becoming a legendary hero of the seas.

----------

I always want to play a polearm specialist ala the Sand Snakes from Game of Thrones or a Wuxia spear fighter, but I will probably just make them a spear-themed warband or encounter since I’m a forever GM.

Be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

Wind Waker: Sashimono of the Beetle Clan.

 

Sashimono of the Beetle Clan.

Big Sale Flag: Another flag in the decoration trading sequence, this flag is offered in exchange for one of the idols or the hero’s flag. It can be offered to obtain other decorations or be placed in a Joyous Pedestal on Windfall Island.

When two siblings who could not accept the laws of succession called on their followers to wage a bloody civil war one clan chose to forsake their oaths and instead ensure every person on either side of the war could find food. When the war was decided the Beetle Clan was exiled for cowardice and sent out to die in the wastes. It was in those wastes that the clan’s survivors stumbled upon thriving trade roads and took the first steps in becoming the internationally trusted clan of merchants they are today.

----------

This was my attempt to give Beedle a wholesome backstory that connects to a larger clan of merchants that sort of explains why there is a Beedle in most of Link’s adventures. Link, Zelda, Gannon, etc. are destined to be reincarnated time and time again but is Beedle core enough to the universe’s grand design to be a member of the ever-incrnated?

Be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

Wind Waker: Trident of the Sea Sovereign.

Trident of the Sea Sovereign.

Big Catch Flag: Initially, Link must trade a sickle moon flag with one of the traveling merchants of the Great Sea in exchange for the big catch flag. This is another step in the decoration item trading sequence, so Link can trade this flag for the next flag in the set or place it on a joyous pedestal on Windfall Island.

Legends speak of a great island nation that dominated the seas using god-like magics and wondrous machines. This wonder of the world was swallowed up by the seas they believed they commanded for the hubris and corruption of their sovereigns. While the sea mercilessly crushed the sovereign, the regular people of the island were each given a small fraction of the power held in the Sea Soverign’s Fork so that they might breathe water as well as air and rebuild their nation in cooperation with the sea instead of in domination of it.

----------

That is a socialist revolution retelling of Atlantis. Imagine searching for the lost city to claim its god-like artifact only to find the fork a powerless token of a failed social order.

Be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph