Indie Squid Kid

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.

Here is the contents of yesterday’s mystery package—a specimen of the seldom seen terrestrial cephalopod commonly known as the Tufted Cuddlestache. Natalie Metzger is the world’s leading expert on Cuddlestache biology and natural history, and the following account is from her website, The Fuzzy Slug (where you can also see one of the only known photographs of a Tufted Cuddlestache in the wild):

Extremely rare and elusive, the Tufted Cuddlestache is native to the dense temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest.  It was believed that they were hunted to extinction for their luxurious mustaches, which were used in the making of novelty stick-on mustaches and eyebrow replacements. However, while searching for Sasquatch in the remote backwoods of Washington state, field scientist, Dr. Crumpen Von Ludwig,  stumbled upon a small surviving population of the Tufted Cuddlestaches. Little was known about them as the last known living specimen died in 1910. He discovered that they were quite friendly and unafraid of man. Whether that was from isolation, or natural behavioral traits, studies so far have been inconclusive.  Since this great discovery, a  breeding program has been established by Washington State University in order to help restore wild population numbers and to gain valuable knowledge about the behavior and biology of these wonderful creatures. Currently, wild numbers are still very low (estimates are somewhere around 20 breeding pairs) and the Tufted Cuddlestache is listed as critical on the endangered species list.

In addition to being a reknowed cuddlestache-ologist, Natalie is also an artist, cartoonist, and photographer. She designed the Indie Squid Kid logo, and the famous “Bourbon Drinking Squid.”

Today’s Music Week (and Flickr Friday) entry is a gorgeous handmade cephalopod-themed banjo ukulele by Michelanious.

Here’s the first image I saw (via Dinosaurs and Robots), but one photo is not enough! There is so much cool detail here, that I would be remiss if I didn’t share the entire set.

Earlier this year Quirk Classics took the publishing world by storm with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Will their new literary mashup be able meet such great expectations? I say YES!

A) It has sea monsters, B) it has illustrations…

and C) OMG! The book trailer!

It goes on sale on September 15, and you can pre-order it from Amazon.com.

As Movie Week draws to a close, it’s time to come full circle with another Disney movie. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is the second installment of the trilogy based the popular theme park attraction. Even if you are not a fan, you have to admit that they’re pretty good for movies based on a 40 year old ride! Personally, I thought the first was thoroughly entertaining, the second was fun, but hard to follow, and the third made almost no sense at all. Dead Man’s Chest is the topic of today’s post because, of course, it features not one, but two cephalopod-based characters: Davy Jones, the film’s central villain, and the monstrous Kraken.

Davy Jones is an immortal mariner and captain of the infamous Flying Dutchman. He was originally tasked by the sea goddess Calypso to ferry souls of those who perish at sea to the afterlife. His subsequent betrayal of the goddess and dereliction of duty brought a curse upon him, transforming him into something resembling the Cthuloid spawn of an octopus and a lobster.  He has a roughly human face, but his entire head seems to be made up several octopi stacked on top of each other—their tentacles forming a writhing facsimile of the pirate’s original hair and beard. The index finger on his right hand has become a single winding tentacle. He has no nose but instead seems to breath through a siphon protruding from the side of his face.

Davy Jones is apparently the ruler of the ocean, and seems to spend most of his time attacking ships and forcing sailors to join his mutant aquarium crew. He locked his still beating heart away in a chest (the Dead Man’s Chest of the title), for reasons that are unclear but seem to be critically important to the movie’s plot. He commands the mighty Kraken (see below), which he sends to hunt down Captain Jack Sparrow (played by Johnny Depp, of course) who owes Jones his soul…or something like that.

Davy Jones was played by the fantastic Bill Nighy, and Industrial Light and Magic created his CGI “costume” via motion capture.

The Kraken, as you can see in this clip, is an enormous tentacled beast capable of not just sinking a ship, but literally ripping it apart. Davy Jones summons the beast to do his bidding using a device that sends out shock waves into the water. In this scene, we see it attack and destroy the Edinburgh Trader. Why does it do this? I think it has something do to with Will Turner (played by Orlando Bloom) and the key to the box that contains Davy Jone’s heart. Like I said, the story was kind of hard to follow.

Little of the Kraken’s body is seen in the movie, apart from it’s giant arms, two of which appear to be larger than the rest. This would be consistent with the monster being some type of squid, although these tentacles lack the characteristic club ends. At the end of Dead Man’s Chest, the Kraken has finally caught up with Captain Jack, and we get a clear view of the monster’s mouth. Instead of a beak, it has a circular maw with multiple rows of conical teeth. In this way, the Kraken resembles the Sarlacc from Return of the Jedi more than it does a giant squid. Like Davy Jones, the Kraken was entirely CGI, and ILM won the 2006 Acedemy Award for Best Visual Effects for their work on Dead Man’s Chest.

Not a squid.

Davy Jones and the Kraken return in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, the final part of the trilogy, although the Kraken only has a brief appearance. It seems Davy Jones’ new master (who has the box that contains his heart and therefore the power to kill Jones. I think?) has commanded ol’ squid face to kill his former pet. We do finally get a look at the body of the Kraken when Jack Sparrow finds its massive corpse washed up on a beach. (A scene that we are apparently supposed to find very poignant and symbolic.) It has a pair of enormous eyes and a long mantle with two rear stabilizing fins—all very squid-like. The book Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide (Dorling Kindersley, 2007), states that the Kraken was 1400 feet long (the length of ten ships) and the accompanying illustration shows its body being at least twice as long as its arms, making the Kraken more like a cuttlefish than a squid.

We’re almost at the end of Movie Week! Tomorrow, for the final installment, I’ll take a look at the cephalopod movie hall of shame.

So here’s the thing. I am a giant Tolkien nerd. I mean it’s not as though I can read Elvish or recite the lineage of Númenorian kings, but I know the ancient language of the Elves is called Quenya and I understand why Aragorn was such a big deal. Anyway, ever since my mother first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy to me as a child, I have been utterly fascinated with J.R.R. Tolkien’s densely layered fantasy world filled with his meticulously crafted cultures and histories.

I also absolutely love Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations, a fact that probably hurts my Tolkien nerd cred a little bit. Sure, I wish Jackson had included Radagast the Brown and the Scourging of the Shire, but I also feel that he produced a cinematic masterpiece like nothing else I’ve seen in my lifetime. And the things he got right FAR outweigh the things he got wrong.

All of which brings us to the topic of today’s Movie Week post: the Watcher in the Water from Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (New Line Cinema, 2001).

©New Line Cinema

The Watcher is a multi-tentacled beast that lurks at the bottom of a fetid lake on the edge of the western gate of Moria–the ancient realm of the Dwarves. It appears in one memorable scene about half way through the movie. (On the Extended Edition DVD, you can find it on disc 2, scene 33: “Moria.” ) The Fellowship, having failed to travel over the mountains, reluctantly decide their only remaining option is to go through the mines, but they are stymied by the Doors of Durin. While Gandalf tries in vain to puzzle it out, Hobbits Merry and Pippin attempt to amuse themselves by throwing stones into the lake, but Aragorn stops them with the warning “Do not disturb the water!” A smart guy, that Aragorn…

When smarty-pants Frodo figures out the riddle before Gandalf does, they both fail to notice that the rest of their party is getting increasingly nervous about disturbances in the water. Entering the cave, they quickly realize that they are surrounded by the corpses of slain Dwarves, and everyone starts to lose their shit. But before they can mount a full-scale retreat, a tentacle grabs Frodo and pulls him toward the lake. The ever dependable Sam hacks the tentacle loose, and it slithers back into the water. But then all hell breaks loose. Frodo is hoisted into the air, and we see the horrible visage of the Watcher for the first time. Aragorn and Boromir hack at its tentacles while Legolas shoots arrows into its face. They manage to rescue Frodo and keep the beast at bay long enough to retreat back into the cave. The last we see of the Watcher, it lunges up onto the shore and tears down the stone doors and much of the entry passage, blocking the way out. The  Fellowship now has no choice but to proceed through the “long dark of Moria.”

©John Howe

With a few minor exceptions, this scene is fairly close to the original text, although it has been expanded for dramatic effect. (You can read it for yourself in The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter IV: “A Journey In the Dark”). The Watcher in the Water is one of the few denizens of Middle-earth about which Tolkien says very little. Its tentacles are described as “pale green and luminous and wet” as well as “fingered.” It has a foul stench. When Frodo asks Gandalf if it was one creature or many (more than 20 tentacles had emerged from the water, but no more of the creature was seen), the Wizard replies, “I do not know, but the arms were all guided by one purpose. Something has crept, or has been driven out of the dark waters under the mountains. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.”

So what type of creature is the Watcher? In A Tolkien Bestiary (Gramercy Books, 1979), David Day refers to it as a Kraken (although this is not a term Tolkien ever used) and speculates that it was the remnant of beings spawned by the evil god Melkor in the ancient past. Many artistic renderings over the years depict it as a monstrous octopus or squid. Peter Jackson’s version is clearly cephalopod-inspired (conceptual drawings show several versions of a very octopus-like Watcher), but its toothed maw and three-fingered tentacles place it firmly in the realm of fantasy.

The Watcher in the Water also appeared in Ralph Bakshi’s animated film J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (Universal Artists, 1979). I’ve only seen part of this movie (ages ago), and all I really remember are the strange rotoscoped live action sequences.

Lastly, I want to direct your attention to Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog, where guest blogger China Miéville (one of my favorite contemporary fantasy authors—I’m currently reading The City & The City, and it is amazing!) mentions the Watcher in the Water in his list of Five Reasons Tolkien Rocks.

Injury Is No Reason To Be Bereft Of Style, originally uploaded by Jared Axelrod.

This is my friend Jared Axelrod, and he is sporting the fabulous Sucker! tie by Cyberoptix Tie Lab.

Jared is obviously a Man of Fashion, but did you know that he is also a renowned Man of Action? You can read all about his many creative exploits at www.jaredaxelrod.com.

The tie, as you can see, is available in multiple color options, and I honestly have no idea which one I like the best. All I know is that this site makes me want to wear a different tie every day. For the rest of my life.

And if one tentacle-adorned piece of neck wear wasn’t enough, here is the design they call SquidBrain.

Follow the glamorous life of professional space-goth tie makers at the Cyberoptix t0ybreaker blog.