One Eye, Four Islands: A Yureishima Saga (CH.1-PT. 2)

[mccoyed]

Above: Maps showing the location of One-Eye's prison and neighboring environs.

"It seems that for most of the three years he spent confined to a hut, Capt. One-Eye was treated in a manner one might expect a prisoner to be treated anywhere in Historica. However, once the local lord decided what to do with him, there was a major change in the demeanor of his captivity if not of his captors. Never again would One-Eye's prison be one of squalor and isolation. The more he penetrated Yureishimese society, the more gilded his cage became."

-Professor Artur Rimbyld, University of Petraea Geographical Society

"We can no doubt learn something from Yureishimese grooming standards. Accounts vary based on social rank, but it seems that their society generally prizes a clean and ordered appearance at all times. Who knows what reason they'd give for their bathing and grooming practices, but hygiene seems twice as important to even the commonest Yureishimese than it would be in, say, Mitgardia where many of the clansfolk believe (with some empirical evidence) that spending time wet is an invitation for illness. I would be interested in comparing the rates of illness among Yureishimese directly with that of comparable populations in Historica. If only it were possible!"

-Professor Nora Furnasdottir, University of Petraea Physicians' College

Wolf Island, Yureishima, Date Unknown:

One-Eye was led some miles away, on foot, to an isolated but well-appointed complex of buildings.

Outside, a man who appeared to be a gardener seemed to be raking... sand? He created swoops and whorls in the fine gray sand, seeming to be focused around a dark gray boulder that was placed just so in the sandy area. One-Eye had no idea what that was about and decided he didn't want to know.

Once he got inside, he changed his mind. As they shoved him into a wooden tub as if he was laundry, One-Eye very much would have preferred to be raking sand with the old man.

Noooo! What are you doing to me!?

Stop your whining, Shujin! Can't you see I am trying to enjoy my lunch?

<How hairy he is! Wow!>

<Ehhhhh. I have seen much hairier.>

What are you saying? What is that claw thing for? Get it away from me!!!

<Hold still, Shujin. Your hair and beard are so thick you're forcing us to break out the heavy duty gear.>

<I am glad it is not me who has to clean this barbarian!>

<It's not so bad, eh? He's so smelly and big! This is more interesting than our usual bathing jobs.>

 <Shhh! You'll get us into trouble being so informal.>

<But look at his tooth! It is made of gold! Kawaii!>

I hate this so much.

<Everyone shut up while I'm eating!>

Eventually, the women finished up with One-Eye and he realized he was no worse for wear. What was more, he felt kind of... good? Refreshed! The women had fixed his hair and beard and given him fresh clothes. Now he was starting to feel like a human being again. His irritation and fear subsided. He couldn't think of a reason why they'd bathe him if they were just going to kill him.

He was starting to notice the details of this strange land. Its beauty, which was not rustic and wild like his homeland. Everything he had seen was cultivated, ordered. He wondered if the land was naturally like that or if its occupants were responsible.

There, Shujin. Now you are staring to look like a human being again.

I was just thinking that. I could use some food though. Something red and bloody! All you people feed me is fish and those little white grains.

You don't like gohan? You do not have it... where you are from?

Something like it but it's brown. I think they eat it in Kaliphlin.

Kaliphlin?

Never mind. It's just some desert back home. Look, you got me all cleaned up and pretty. What the deuce are you planning to do with me now?

His jailer, this official, whoever he was, seemed to be treating him far more civilly than before. Had the bath or the lunch improved his mood? One-Eye would have believed either at this point.

You will be escorted to Yoku Village where the daimyo is waiting. These lands are Akahasu 赤蓮 and what happens to you will be for the good of the clan.

Aka-whatsu?

You would say 'Red Lotus'. It is the name of the clan to whom your life now belongs, Shujin.

  Hey! My life belongs to just me. I don't care if you Aka-whatevers are the most powerful clan in wherever-this-is, you'd better not forget that.

  Respect, Shujin. It is what binds these lands together and you will learn to show it to your betters or it will prove costly.

Ha! I've got nothing to lose and thanks to you I'll leave a pretty corpse. Better to die free anyway.

Who said it would cost you? Perhaps if you keep up this insolence, the price will be paid by your men. Think on that.

The official walked away, leaving him with the soldier and the gardener who seemed preoccupied with a bird in a tree. He'd provoked the official into dropping his friendly facade. Good, One-Eye thought, he hated playing pretend anyway. And now he had learned that they did know something about his men. Besides, he was starting to understand this guy was just a flunky. He was going to meet someone with power, this "daimyo" character. Then he'd have some answers!

Builder's Notes:

Spoiler

 

-I plan to try different roof and wall designs with pretty much every build until I get something I like. This one is okay from exteriors but the interiors are bad and I'd like something that works both ways.

-The Sakura Tree was fun to make but what's with that bird again?

-There isn't much in the new Southern Okami map, but there will be as One-Eye makes his way to different locations.

-Please see the Bonus Shots to check out the sliding door. I've also been working on making a sliding door that works nicely but I'm not keen on this one. The other build had a better one.

 

 

Bonus Shots:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TitusV]

A very cool, Japanese-styled build! Whereas I feel like the roof shows a bit too much studs (probably just my personal taste), I really like your sliding door!  

Looking forward to the continuation of the story!

[Garmadon]

Nicely done!  I really like that roof, especially what you've done with the edges, and the landscape is great as well   I agree with you that the sliding door is a bit bulky, but it's a neat additional playfeature anyways! 

[mccoyed]

10 hours ago, TitusV said:

A very cool, Japanese-styled build! Whereas I feel like the roof shows a bit too much studs (probably just my personal taste), I really like your sliding door!  

Looking forward to the continuation of the story!

Thanks. I actually think studs up works pretty well to suggest the overlapping bumpy tiles from classic Japanese architecture. I know what you mean, though, because studs are difficult to employ effectively. One of the reasons I took kit easy on using wing pieces and the like on the grass was so that it would balance out the studded roof, showing that this is one of those Lego builds with a lot of exposed studs. I'll be trying something different with the roofs next time, I think, though I was pretty satisfied with this one.

9 hours ago, Garmadon said:

Nicely done!  I really like that roof, especially what you've done with the edges, and the landscape is great as well   I agree with you that the sliding door is a bit bulky, but it's a neat additional playfeature anyways! 

Thanks. The edges are my favorite part. The way it sits on the spine of the house didn't really come together until I added those 1x1 studs and the red border. I think I can improve the sliding door when I get into more interior-heavy builds.

[Khorne]

I love watching your story unfold and the MOCs that go with it. Asian/Japanese Lego builds are a bit of a niche, so it's always nice to see such creations pop up  . The sliding door is a nice touch! The story vaguely reminds me of the movie 'Silence'.

[Henjin_Quilones]

I like this building more than the beach hut, mostly because of the roof. I approve (unlike Titus) of the studs as bumpy shingles, almost like a tiled roof but on LEGO scale. I don't really like the bird in the tree, and I think more foliage on the tree would be better, but the detailing along the path is nice. The two statue-like things made with 1x1 bricks with studs on four sides are simple but very effective. I like the story, too. 

[mrcp6d]

As always, I appreciate when studs are used by builders intentionally for texture, function, etc.!  The plates on the roof certainly evoke a shingled structure, and work very well here I think.  I do think the flower stems as grass/weeds sort of clutter an otherwise clean MOC though.  I think either having the grassy areas either pretty much completely covered by them or using fewer of them would have been better.

Also, non-LEGO related comment: I'm really liking that you're guiding us through Yureishima via the maps at the beginning of each of these builds! 

[mccoyed]

On 12/2/2017 at 9:04 AM, Khorne said:

I love watching your story unfold and the MOCs that go with it. Asian/Japanese Lego builds are a bit of a niche, so it's always nice to see such creations pop up  . The sliding door is a nice touch! The story vaguely reminds me of the movie 'Silence'.

Thanks! I wish the Asian/Japanese themes weren't niche. They would be super popular if Lego found an entry point into a more medieval version, but they don't seem too interested. Ninjago is the closest we get but I drool when I think about what could be done with a more medieval series of Ninjago. They've explored a lot of subthemes as Ninjago has gone on, though, so I shouldn't complain. :P They've done cyberpunk, steampunk, ghosts, snake cults, and now something modern with the movie sets.

Anyways, a stronger influence on this story is the novel Shogun by James Clavell. It's probably my favorite historical fiction novel. Silence has some stuff in common with it though.

On 12/3/2017 at 12:46 PM, Henjin_Quilones said:

I like this building more than the beach hut, mostly because of the roof. I approve (unlike Titus) of the studs as bumpy shingles, almost like a tiled roof but on LEGO scale. I don't really like the bird in the tree, and I think more foliage on the tree would be better, but the detailing along the path is nice. The two statue-like things made with 1x1 bricks with studs on four sides are simple but very effective. I like the story, too. 

Yes, this is a much better roof. The bird is important so I don't know what to tell you about that. :P I am curious about what more could be added to the tree, though. What did you have in mind? I'll have to do more sakura trees, peach trees, etc as I go so I'm trying to figure out ways to make my limited white and pink pieces stretch. Those statue like things are a version of this.

On 12/3/2017 at 4:32 PM, mrcp6d said:

As always, I appreciate when studs are used by builders intentionally for texture, function, etc.!  The plates on the roof certainly evoke a shingled structure, and work very well here I think.  I do think the flower stems as grass/weeds sort of clutter an otherwise clean MOC though.  I think either having the grassy areas either pretty much completely covered by them or using fewer of them would have been better.

Also, non-LEGO related comment: I'm really liking that you're guiding us through Yureishima via the maps at the beginning of each of these builds! 

Thanks, I'm glad to be vindicated about the roof design! I sort of agree with you about the grass/weeds. Do you mean more the grass pieces, or the little bright green ones or both? Before I added foliage, the ground seemed too textured with the studs, but definitely seemed more neat and organized and felt a little closer to a Japanese "yard". Having the grass be completely overgrown felt like overkill but I did try a version of this build with that. Maybe a nice compromise would be to just use multiple colors of studded green plates, perhaps with a few of those brighter green "flower" pieces.

And thank you for complimenting the maps. They are really fun and I plan to try and show a lot of Yureishima as a I go. The website I use doesn't let you duplicate maps easily so it's actually kind of hard to replicate a "zoomed in" area. I have to do it by hand and the one for Southern Okami Island in this build, for example, took several iterations. I will probably not zoom in this much from now on and chunk the maps to larger scales. I really, really wish Inkarnate had a "copy/paste" function for maps though. Jeez.

[mrcp6d]

19 hours ago, mccoyed said:

Thanks, I'm glad to be vindicated about the roof design! I sort of agree with you about the grass/weeds. Do you mean more the grass pieces, or the little bright green ones or both? Before I added foliage, the ground seemed too textured with the studs, but definitely seemed more neat and organized and felt a little closer to a Japanese "yard". Having the grass be completely overgrown felt like overkill but I did try a version of this build with that. Maybe a nice compromise would be to just use multiple colors of studded green plates, perhaps with a few of those brighter green "flower" pieces.

I think these  leaf parts are unnecessary clutter.  They bring in a jungle vibe that's not good here.  Better without them probably?  

[mccoyed]

Yes I think you're right. They are killer for bamboo though. Should have just done a few copses of bamboo trees but I didn't want too much clutter (the irony!).

[soccerkid6]

Neat way of showing the raked gravel The tree is very pretty, and I like how you included a bird as well