Indie Squid Kid

Like I said yesterday, Dragon*Con is this weekend, and I am rather bummed not to be in attendance this year. The con is more than just a science-fiction or comic book convention, it is a chaotic multi-media/multi-genre extravaganza celebrating every corner of geeky popular culture. Here is but a small tentacled taste of Dragon*Con from the past few years. All photos are from my Flickr account, unless otherwise noted.

Doctor Octopus (Dragon*Con 2008)

Stygian Depths booth (Dragon*Con 2008)

"Doctor Cthulhu" (Dragon*Con 2008)

Photo by Foenix

Cthulhu and Ichigo (Dragon*Con 2007)

Photo by Futuregirl_LeahRiley

"tentacle monster" (Dragon*Con 2005)

Born in Providence, Rhode Island on August 20, 1890, Howard Philips Lovecraft would come to be considered one of the most influential American horror authors of the 20th century

He is best known for the creation of what has become known as the Cthulhu Mythos, a series of stories and novels that feature a pantheon of cosmic entities so horrible and incomprehensible to the human mind that the mere knowledge of their existence is enough to drive a person insane. These tales of cosmic horror were often set in his native New England, and they featured a number of memorable fictitious Massachusetts towns such as Arkham (home of the equally fictitious Miskatonic University), Innsmouth, and Dunwich. Lovecraft also created the concept of the Necronomicon—an ancient book containing secret knowledge pertaining to these Great Old Ones.

Other authors, such as Lovecraft’s friend and publisher August Derleth, would go on to write their own stories of the Mythos, elaborating and expanding on the themes, settings, and mythology of Lovecraft’s bleak and fascinating universe.

Lovecraft died in 1937 of intestinal cancer. He was 46.

Lovecraft's original sketch of Cthulhu

I came across the above image on the Ectoplasmosis! blog. They do a regular feature with the fiendishly clever name Cthulhu Cthursday (a name I wish I had come up with!). I wonder what Lovecraft would have thought if someone had told him that his work would be so revered and influential (as well as controversial) 119 years after his birth?

Remember board games like Monopoly, Clue, and Candy Land? Arkham Horror is nothing like those games. In fact, Arkham Horror leaves those games quivering in the corner, gibbering incoherently at mind-shredding visions of extra-dimensional terror. Also there are tentacles.

Published by Fantasy Flight Games, the epic board game specialists, Arkham Horror is based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft and the extended Mythos he created. It’s the 1920’s, and the university town of Arkham, Massachusetts (as wall as the neighboring communities of Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport) is beset by cosmic forces that are determined to rip through the thin boundary between our world and any number of strange and terrible outer realms. The goal of these Ancient Ones, as you might imagine, is to devour all of humanity. In this cooperative game, the players are all investigators working together to find clues, fight monsters, and arm themselves against the teeming servants of these ancient gods. With a little skill and no small amount of luck, they just might succeed in preventing the awakening of such horrific beings as Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, and even Cthulhu himself.

Arkham is a sprawling game with hundreds of bits, and rather complicated rules. It blurs the line between board game and role playing game (in fact, it is based on the Call of Cthulhu RPG). You select a character representing one of many period archetypes—the reporter, the professor, the private eye, etc.—, and each has a special ability, a range of skill points, and stamina and sanity points that represent their physical and mental well being. You can obtain weapons both mundane and magical, spells, artifacts, and allies to help you the other investigators survive the dangers that lurk around every corner.

All you need to play is the core game (recently back in print!), but there are, at present, six expansions (the two most recent, Black Goat of the Woods, and Innsmouth Horror, are not pictured above) which add new cards, characters, monsters, board segments, and rules variations.

You can pick up Arkham Horror at your Friendly Local Game Store, or, barring that, the game and all expansions are currently available for purchase at www.fantasyflightgames.com.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Rising from the non-Euclidian halls of sunken R’lyeh comes a week dedicated to our favorite cosmic squid god. The green, sticky spawn of the stars. The being so freaking eldrich that they named an entire Mythos after him. The Ayatollah of Rock ‘n Rolla. The Dread Cthuhlu.

Cthulhu (typically pronounced kə-THOO-loo) was created by H.P. Lovecraft and first appeared in the short story “The Call of Cthulhu,” originally published in 1928 in the pulp magazine Weird Tales. Cthulhu is a member of a race of extraterrestrial beings of immense size and power called the Great Old Ones, who are worshiped as deities by various human cults. The Cult of Cthulhu waits for the day when their terrible god will awaken from his slumber beneath the sea and rise to consume the world. He likes long walks on the beach, candlelit dinners, and devouring your immortal soul.

Learn more about Cthulhu on Wikipedia

“That is not dead that can eternal lie.

And with strange aeons even death may die.”

-Abdul Alhazred, the Necronomicon

I’ll admit that, for a geek, I know very little about video and computer games, and I know even less about the world of independent game design. However, what kind of Indie Squid Kid would I be if I didn’t acknowledge indie game designer Miguel Sternberg of Spooky Squid Games Inc.? Miguel is the creator of two cephalopod themed games—both were made in conjunction with Artsy Game Incubator, an event that encourages the Canadian indie game community (of Toronto and Montreal, at least) to develop and hone their gamemaking chops.

Night of the Cephalopods! is a “survival horror game with old school pixel art graphics and an innovative fully voiced dynamic narrative system.” Having mistranslated the sinister Octinomicon, you must survive until dawn, fighting tentacled horrors armed with only a shotgun. (Um, you are armed with a shot gun, the cephalopods are armed with, well, their arms.) All the while, your every move is narrated in grand Lovcraftian fashion. Here’s some sample game play…

Cephalopods Co-Op Cottage Defence is Miguel’s follow-up-in-progress to Night of the Cephalopods! It is a two-player, cooperative game “featuring a lady scientist, her clockwork valet and hundreds of squidy things.” Surviving the night is again the goal, but this time it seems you must also defend your laboratory form eldrich invasion.

Both games can be downloaded at AGI.

All this came to my attention by way of Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

happy Cthulhu cake, originally uploaded by Cryptonaut.

It was never “official,” but you might have noticed that it’s been Birthday Week here at Indie Squid Kid. Yesterday was the birthday of one of my oldest and closest friends, and this was her cake! Mur Lafferty is an author and podcaster, and she commands a legion of loyal minions who do her bidding at the drop of a hat. Most importantly, for six days every year we are the same age! Find out all about her creative works and ongoing projects at The Murverse. Mur isn’t nearly as cephalopod-obsessed as I am, but she does have a special fondness for H.P. Lovecraft’s betentacled elder god.

The cake is a recreation of “Cthulhu’s Day Out” by Ursula Vernon. (Ursula’s work has been featured here a couple of times before, as you may recall.) I don’t know who actually made the cake, but I will post that information here when I find out.

Update: Mur tells me the cake was made by Rebecca Hirschman (which is possibly misspelled, sorry!). Surprisingly, Rebecca is not a professional cake tech—she just loves to bake!

Lovecraftian, originally uploaded by jawboneradio.

Monster by Mail is the brain child of podcaster and cartoonist Len Peralta. The concept is simple–you give him money, and he sends you an original piece of art. Give him a little bit more, and you get a YouTube video of him creating your monster. At the time of this writing, the rates are $25/$35…a pretty good deal for original art.

When Len first launched the site, the rules were you had to give him an adjective, any adjective, and he would make a monster for you based on that word. Mine was “Lovecraftian.” Here’s the video.

Through the early iterations of MbM there were various other themes: cryptozoology, zombies, Halloween, etc. However, all you have to do now is give your monster a name and click the PayPal link you Len will make it for you!

Here is one I commissioned last Halloween. It is titled, simply, “The Were-Squid.”

When Len isn’t drawing awesome monsters, he is producing and co-hosting Cleveland’s best podcast, Jawbone Radio.