Mascots of Miskatonic – A History
By Miskatonic Alumni and Historian, Hudson Obervon
When the School first began, a North American Badger was kept as the school Mascot. Easy enough to catch for events as an extended family of them were often disrupting the school grounds, much to the Groundskeeper’s consternation. Their aggressive tendencies did little to endear to them to the student populace, but was of much use for various pranks and so the animals remained the Mascot, with the representing animal being called Best Badger.
Today the School’s official Mascot is Cully the Octopus, represented by one of the local species of octopus.
A couple events precipitated the change in Official Mascots.
The first came in 1925, at which, due to some disruptive ocean event, a large number of the singular local species of Octopus, the North Atlantic Giant Octopus or Jersey Octopus as it was known at the time, for the reef it was discovered in, began an ill-fated migration up the Miskatonic River. They swam upriver, some crawling their way over land attempting to get to some unknown destination northwest of Arkham, or simply escaping some confusing stimuli from the ocean, it is not known. They were later discovered to a brackish survivable species, an unobserved adaptation in other octopus species, but accounts for their longer survivability in the fresh waters of the Miskatonic before succumbing to ill effects of overhydration. The result was hundreds of dead and dying octopuses coming to their end in and around Arkham. Not a group to take the gift of freshly dead seafood for granted (and to prevent the inevitable smell) the residents of Arkham gathered them up and boiled them into stews and stocks. A notably event on its own, but when it happened again the following year, the residents made it a communal clean up effort and held an outdoor picnic to eat their spoils. By the third and forth year it was expected, and celebrated. In the fifth, with university scholars agreeing this was the species’ new norm, their population seemingly exploding, a full festival was inaugurated as annual event.
This combined with other prominent schools taking up a Badger Mascot of their own, to say nothing of the congeniality of the Arkham Octopuses (as they were now commonly known) versus the captured badgers, at least to their human caretakers, led to the discussion of possibly changing the Mascot to the now, more famous local animal. A local legend was born when one of the migrating Arkham Pods faced off against a wild badger and dispatched it before becoming incapacitated from water intoxication. The beastie was found, still clutching it’s vanquished opponent, and was saved by some quick thinking Miskatonic biology students. It was moved to a saltwater tank and made a full recovery. The students named her Cully (for culling the badger) and as her story grew, the support for a mascot change was overwhelming.
So while the first Cully passed away years ago, her mantle has been taken up by several more Arkham Pods, though now the role (when a live representative is required) is most often played by a more unique local species, the Giant Miskatonic Purple Octopus.
The result of many years of lab study and experimentation, the Miskatonic Octopus, or Miskapods for short, are the first known euryhaline species of octopus, able to survive in both fresh and saltwater. To understand how that was possible one first needs to understand what made the native Arkham Octopuses so special.
Amphibioctopus Jersey, a member of the Enteroctopodidae Family is a species of large octopus first discovered in the Jersey Reef off Kingsport. Originally name Octopus Jersey it was reclassified and renamed to Enteroctopus Jersey in 1911 following the reclassification of the Giant Pacific Octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini) in 1910, marking both their larger sizes over other octopuses as worthy of a separate Family, the Enteroctopodidae, still of the Order Octopoda. It was reclassified again to its own Genus as the Amphibioctopus Jersey when its brackish and extended land-walking survivability was discovered after the first Miskatonic migration.
This unique adaptation was of keen interest to scientists and the Miskatonic Biology department in particular, who funded extensive research into the evolutionary adaption and how it might be further refined. Years of selective breeding and several experiments later the Giant Miskatonic Purple Octopus was born.
Euryhalinioctopus Miskatonic, still of the Enteroctopodidae Family is the euryhaline sister species of Amphibioctopus Jersey, and shares many of the same traits.
Both are nocturnal inter-tidal hunters (mostly crabs as they come out at night, but anything they can get their tentacles on easily enough, to include the odd rowdy mammal), and while they can color shift like most octopuses to hide and hunt they maintain a dark slick outer color naturally, with the Arkham possessing a brown-orange sucker side, and the Miskatonic a purple sucker-side(Hence its name). Curiously, the lab-born Miskapods maintain a bright white coloring until exposed the unpurified waters of the river or ocean, then shift to the sister species natural black. It is unknown precisely why. A social species like the Larger Pacific Striped Octopus, they live in group “cities” (in the Jersey Reef for the Arkham, and the Miskatonic Delta and lake Wenham for any escaped Miskapods). A curious feature natural to both is the adaptive size. Adults can range anywhere from 0.5 meter (1.5M Average) to huge 3 meter beasts that live out in the Ocean (so far found). The size seems to depend on the available space and ease of prey, so some are easily kept as pets and kept in smaller tanks at first with regular “easy” meals until they adapt to the food regime and then can be moved to larger tanks without much size growth. But should they go hungry too long, they will resume hunting and size growth to dominate their tanks.
Team Mascots
So while the School Mascot is the Cully the Octopus, the sports teams tend to pick their own Mascots for personal pride. Chosen from puns, other animals, or even popular exhibits from the Orne Library, the School hosts a wide array of Mascots. A few of the more popular ones include:
Happy the Haliphron – This Seven-Arm Octopus is the deepsea Mascot of the Miskatonic Diving Belles (Deep Diving Club)
Cone Snail (Harppon attack) for the Dueling team. (A Gastropod, so still a pod)