Sera BrutonWhat’s up, everyone? Time has been chugging along over here, and it’s finally spring! I can now go on walks and still feel my face when I get home! 🌸
So! In this post I’m going to be talking about my personal favorite starter — Anger! If you’d like to read more about the general process and philosophy behind all of these starter designs, check out my last devblog post here! And without further ado…
Anger Starter 😠
Though I personally love this Phantom, during our initial tests with people, a lot of folks were put off by how scary-looking the original design was so I had to dial it back a little bit… 😅
Like most of the other Phantoms so far, we have to go through a few different iterations to get to where we are, but the original design vomit sheet was pretty diverse!
Reminder: a lot of the designs that weren’t chosen might show up later as Phantoms! Just not as starters 👍 And the “final” design that we chose is even still subject to change!
When thinking of anger as an emotion, most people link it with the element of 🔥 fire 🔥, and I wanted to curb that expectation of typings in The Phantom Keeper. Games like Pokemon, Final Fantasy, and other RPGs use a lot of elemental types but our game is meant to be different, using emotions instead! Not all of the Anger Phantoms will be fiery, not all of the Sadness Phantoms will be water-based, etc! And what better place to start than a starter!
The inspiration behind the Anger starter was pretty simple: the yeti, Abominable Snowman, or Meh-Teh! I was looking for a cryptid, monster, or animal that could look intimidating, but still be somewhat… fluffy? So here we are! Big ol arms, tiny little legs, big angry eyebrow/horns, and somewhat cartoonishly scary claws!
The Yeti is purported to live in the Himalayan mountain range, and is described somewhat similarly to Bigfoot / Sasquatch and other ape-like cryptids. There have been numerous reported sightings of Yetis, starting with pre-Buddhist Himalayan people supposedly worshipping this “wild man” who was depicted as an ape-like creature. These people also shared tales of the Yeti to warn people away from dangerous animals, and to stay close to the community (similar to countless other cultures!).
During the 20th century, more Westerners began climbing the Himalayas and describing huge footprints on the mountain (many of these were later thought to be bear tracks). Like most cryptids, a majority of the “evidence” of the Yeti’s existence comes from eye witness reports. However! There are a few pieces of physical evidence — almost all of which has been disproven 😬 A scalp found by Sir Edmund Hillary (the first man to scale Mt Everest!) in 1960 (later determined to be from a serow, an animal similar to a goat), some mysterious footprints (later determined to be bear tracks), and even a finger were reported to be proof of the Yeti! (The finger was later found to be human through DNA analysis, possibly from a monk’s corpse… yikes.) Various hair, teeth, and tissue samples thought to belong to Yetis have also been tested against the DNA of known species. Most of these have been found to be from animals such as cows, bears, horses, and dogs.
Ending Notes!
So yeah! I only went through one Phantom this time around, but I really like talking about cryptozoology soooo 😅
I hope you enjoyed reading, and if you have any questions or comments, please let me know either by commenting below ⬇️ or by hopping on the Pine Drake discord server! I promise I don’t bite, but I cannot say the same for our lil Anger starter (gottem, tied it back, nice)! Thanks for reading! 👋