Philosophy Spotlight: Sierra, Queen of Antarctica

“Society imposes its customs and values on each of us, telling us who we are and how we should live. It is all irrelevant noise. I need no one’s permission to choose my own path.”

— Sierra, Queen of Antarctica

Sierra’s philosophy demonstrates the self-assurance needed to exercise your own free will. A free will chooses its own values, in addition to its actions, creating a personal ethics rather than accepting one from others.

While this freedom is accepted on an applied level - we each naturally choose our own career paths, hobbies, personal priorities, and relationships - it is more controversial on a meta level. If we can freely choose our own values, what stops us from choosing malice, sadism, or indifference? If society demands self-sacrifice for the sake of others, is it ultimately up to each of us to determine what is right or is the selfish option impermissible? When push comes to shove, most people believe that there is at least some minimal value we must place in each other before we have the freedom to choose our own values.

The most poignant depiction of the audacity of free will comes from Nietzsche’s Metapmorphosis. After growing resilient from a life of hard work, the individual is confronted by the Dragon of Thou Shalt, the imposing metaphorical embodiment of society’s values and culture, created from the sum of history, that we are expected to adopt. The Dragon declares that the question of value has been answered, and there is no room left for the individual to create their own. To reject the Dragon, denying the values that society compels us to absorb, the will must have the strength of a lion and boldly declare its own authority.

Philosphy Spotlight: Sir Thomas

“Only power commands respect. People want what they do not have, and they will kill you to get it. My dragon grants me power to suppress the ravenous masses and keep human nature in line. The weak may hate the gods who rule them, but they survive only under our protection.”

— Sir Thomas, Commander of the Pompeiian Army

Inspiration: Hobbes’ political philosophy

Hobbes argued for the necessity of government to save people from the horrors of anarchy. In Hobbes’ view, anarchy is a constant state of war where each person has good reason to fear everyone else, because anyone stands to gain from using violence for their own ends.

The government’s power to enforce laws is a deterrent against the potential profit of violence. Peace can only be possible when people fear the punishments for theft and murder, and this peace is worth sacrificing the freedoms that a government limits.

Sir Thomas embodies Hobbes’ philosophy from the perspective of the monarch. Thomas recognizes the danger created by human self-interest and justifies the total power of his own rule as a necessity for maintaining peace and order.

Hobbes’ philosophy was particularly groundbreaking because it was the first influential argument for a monarchy that appealed to each individual’s self-interest rather than a divine right to rule. This reasoning developed over time and became the idea of a social contract, which imagines that we would all agree it is worth restricting some freedom for the safety of a governed society. Sir Thomas connects this ethical theory with his own aspiration for power, highlighting the tension in the role of government and the self-interested people who want to rule.

Philosophy Spotlight: Kodame

“Our behavior defines our character. If desires rule our actions, we are the subjects of nature’s whim, and we have as little control of our actions as we have of our desires. To experience true freedom, you cannot allow your unfiltered instincts to dictate what you do; instead, you must carefully reflect on each decision to ensure that it aligns with your better judgment.”

— Kodame

Inspiration: Kant’s Ethics

Kodame’s philosophy is an application of Kant’s ethics, particularly inspired from a seminar taught by Ermanno Bencivenga. Kodame is one of the oldest characters in our game, responsible for creating the forest that spread across Africa, so I wanted her quote to demonstrate a big picture mindset that Kant suits perfectly.

Kant’s ethical system is incredibly ambitious. He wants to explain how ethics apply universally while respecting each individual’s free will. Freedom has two important requirements - first, we each can set our own values and priorities, and second, our decision making must causally determine how we act.

The key challenge for Kant is the unpredictable influence of our desires. Taking inspiration from his predecessor David Hume, Kant believes that our goals are set by our desires and reason alone cannot tell us what we should want. But we do not choose our desires, and if we simply act on whatever desires we feel, we are not freely choosing our actions and are instead merely reacting to our given nature.

Rather than choosing our values, reasoning can help determine what limits we have to respect in order for each of us to have the space to pursue our own goals. This restriction is necessary for freedom and ethics to be possible. If we all acted without regard for each other, none of us would be able to live freely, and each person can reason this for themselves and understand what is necessary to live with mutual respect for each other’s freedom.

The second requirement for freedom is satisfied by the same solution as the first. Kant, again agreeing with Hume, believes that causation is simply universal correlation. So our will causes our behavior only if our actions always match what our reasoning determines we can or cannot do. If we always act in line with our reasoning, our judgment itself causes us to behave reasonably, and we are acting freely because our actions are directly attributable to our own will rather than our given desires.

Chimera Series: Tiphant

Greetings everyone! We hope you are doing well. It has been an eventful month for us, as we have been immersed in creating art and improving our workflow by integrating our databases into a new software system. We are excited about this change as we believe it will lead to increased productivity and improved organization.

In terms of art, we have been busy designing characters for the chimera series. One of our recent creations is the Tiphant, the result of an experiment that combines the DNA of a tiger and an elephant.

This creature was fun to bring to life, and I shared on Youtube my process for painting a grayscale version of the character, then coloring it after. I don’t always work this way, but I do like to change my process from time to time to see what will be most efficient.

There are more chimera creatures in the works, and we can't wait to share them with you soon. To stay up to date on our latest creations, be sure to follow my art account on Instagram. We often post sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes content there first. Thank you for your ongoing support and interest in our work.

Painting Process: Garden Fairy

I’m back with another fairy painting! If you watch the video, you will see the older versions I have of this painting dating all the way back to 2018. I’m much more pleased with how it turned out this time!

I have to say, I really enjoyed painting the background in this one, as well as her dress.

I hope you enjoy this artwork when you play your nature decks! I can’t wait to see them in action.

Painting Process: Nursery Worker

Hello! I am back again with another speed paint! This guy is a fairy in charge of caring for saplings and eggs at the nursery. Eggs will grow into bugs and other creatures, and saplings will become trees (ents).

I’m pleased with how the lighting turned out in this one! I have a few more fairies I’ll be sharing in the future so keep an eye out if you are interested in that sort of thing!

Painting a Spirit: Orisha

Hello! I recently painted a new character called Orisha. It is a spirit that uses both water and nature mana, hence the blue and green glowing elements. I shared my process on youtube with a speedpaint video.

It was fun painting squiggly globs of magic! As always, I tried to make interesting shapes. If you like art and want to see more of this kind of thing, please subscribe to my youtube channel! I am still very new and open to suggestions for types of content to put out.

Philosophy Spotlight: Maluhia, Bristlecone Pine

“Reality is filtered through our eyes. Space and time, color and shape, beauty and meaning - we see only what our minds can construct. What could lie beyond the reach of our minds? Some confuse what they see with what is, others deceive themselves because they do not trust their own sight. The truth is not so simple. Observer and object are like two sides of a coin - neither can be represented without depending on the other.”

— Maluhia

Inspiration: Nagarjuna’s Buddhism

Maluhia’s philosophy is an interpretation of sunyata, the Buddhist concept of emptiness and the origin of our game’s name. An object is empty if it has no traits without depending on external conditions such as an interaction with another object or a reaction from our senses. Nagarjuna argues that all things are empty, and the key to learning Buddhism is to understand what sunyata means for different schools of thought.

Colors are perhaps the easiest category to understand emptiness. The colors we see are not traits of the objects themselves, they are representations our minds use when reacting to the limited range of wavelengths we can see. If we imagine what each color would look like independently of our perception of them, we are left with an empty, indescribable concept.

Shapes are a more difficult category to explain. The shape of objects we see matches what we feel with our hands, so shape may not seem to depend on the reaction of either sense. However, consider the role our size plays in our perception - we can only see objects that are relatively large enough to be relevant to us, and we feel objects as solid when the gaps in them are not wide enough for us to pass through. But at an atomic level, neither shape is retained. The object’s surface is not the smooth layer it looks to be, and the gaps of empty space in each atom make up the majority of the object.

Emptiness applies to ethics and personal values as well. Values are empty because there is no objective fact independent of us about what should matter. Our values come from personal attachments that are heavily influenced by our environment. Notably, although Buddhism draws attention to our attachments as the source of suffering, it does not advocate the nihilistic view that we should not care about anything because nothing matters (doing so would, ironically, be a failure in applying emptiness to nihilism itself). Instead, understanding emptiness leads to an honest self-reflection on our psychology and the way we choose to live. Buddha himself gave practical advice to help people find peace and meaning through simple tasks such as spending more time outside or eating a moderate diet.

These arguments are just a sampling of how the philosophy of sunyata approaches different fields. Emptiness also applies equally to thoughts about aesthetics, causation, personal identity, and Buddhism itself. From a general perspective, emptiness is an alternative to both realist and nihilist philosophies. Contrary to traditional realism, we cannot know or conceive of anything about the world that does not depend on our limited representations of it. But this does not imply the nihilistic conclusion that the world we interact with exists only in our minds. Instead, the world, as we perceive it, is the result of a mutually dependent reaction of our senses to our surroundings.

Painting Process: Shaman

I chose “Shaman” to be my first painting to record for Youtube since I planned to make it one of the featured images on the website at launch. She is a magical fairy with the ability to evolve trees into stronger trees using her magic. Trees are one of the creature types (yes, trees are creatures in this magical world) that you can use to customize your deck, and Shaman’s ability can be an important part of your strategy.

I started with a sketch that had some elements that I ended up changing by the end of the painting. From there I did the initial blocking in stage, and then the fun part of rendering. I used mostly a simple set of brushes but I did play around with some texture and foliage brushes as well. This was painted on my iPad pro using Procreate.

Please share, subscribe, and feel free to offer some feedback! I am excited to share with you my journey this year as I continue to paint every character in this game.