An okus in the world of Spéir is a piece of a person's soul rendered into an object. It is a demonstration of resolve and vulnerability to a gesture, deal, or wager.

In Illimat, the board game that inspired Spéir, an okus is a token that players compete over to gain points. The "traditional" idea is that each player must take a small object that is significant to them and place it on top of the Illimat (a box at the center of the table which governs part of the game) to signify their commitment to the game and begin play.

Spéir has both magical and non-magical games of Illimat. So the average person knows about an okus as part of the game, but there are tons of folk stories about people making magical deals with okuses. Also someone might refer to something like a wedding ring as an okus, because it represents a serious spiritual commitment.

Physically, they can be anything, but usually it's something small enough to fit in the palm of a person's hand. Something that can be small and secret. I like to think of them all as beautiful.

and then james d'amato swooped in out of nowhere (literally swooped, he was wearing a large woollen cape), and said if we had any questions about the game he would do his best to answer them, and jokingly i said "can you show us how to play?"

and he did. he just sat himself onto the floor next to me and ran us through two rounds of the game.

A friend surprised me with a copy of Illimat as a late Christmas gift! Seeing as how I can't find too much online about it, I figured I'd share my thoughts!

Illimat is a folk inspired trick taking card game that revolves around the four seasons, and various pools of cards. The aethetic of the game is incredibly timeless in appearence and feels like something that you could conceivably play with a normal deck of cards if you didn't have the game itself. It's also incredibly compact, and uses the box itself as a component to show which pool of cards is in which seasons.

Game was fairly quick to pick up, and rounds go quickly. Scores are based on number of cards you've collected total, who has the most of one suit, negative points if you have the most of a different suit, and then bonus points if you've cleared out one of the four fields.

illimat syzygy coin, 2023

I finally got the Skyjacks Illimat boards/handkerchiefs hung up. They're so beautiful I didn't want to store them in a box out of sight.

I made a basic frame to attack them to using a giant spool of ribbon that was 80% off after the holidays. So they shouldn't get stretched out. And I only tacked them on so I can remove one if I want!

featuring my naughty cats who wanted to eat the thread as I was stitching.