mccoyed

A Visit to Kaliphlin - The Lion's Eye Chapter 1 - Freebuild

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Note: This first build for Book 3 was actually in construction before I found out about the launch of Book 3. It was going to be for Summer Joust, then after the announcement I was leaning toward joining Kali... then Varlyrio was confirmed! So this one has been a roller-coaster. Thanks for looking.

The Duchy of Delmitra, Kaliphlin (East of Barqa)

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Small but wealthy due to control of a prosperous githril mine, the Duchy of Delmitra has only recently stabilized under the reign of its child-duchess, the Lady Elatisha Darya (Tisha for short). During the upheavals of the Kaliphlin civil war, her father and eldest brother were killed and Lady Tisha was forced to supply githril arms to first one side and then the other as Barqa's shifting loyalties caused ripple effects in the region.

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There's usually a lot of comings and goings at Delmitra due to its location along the Oil Road. Today we can see a Goldpike mercenary passing through on her way to some battle. A more peaceful scene transpires close by as a young centaur woman gathers cactus flowers.

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On the far side of the wall, a massive desert dewback tries to scare off a snake. But which one is the trespasser? On the walls, one archer looks on nervously as he realizes that the dewback is nearly big enough to climb over the wall itself! He hopes no one ever thinks to use the docile herbivores as weapons of war. Meanwhile, his younger companion is delighted by the sight of the dewback-rider coaxing the animal forward using nothing but a bushel of greens.

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Traffic makes its way into the city as well, greeted by the bright ringing sound of a githril-smith hard at work.

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Delmitra's audience hall is located near the entrance of the city and is open to all whenever the Lady Tisha is present. Her house guard is primarily Delmitraean Myrmidons, who watch the passersby with keen eyes. All kinds of people come through the castle, including hunters, fruitsellers, and laborers, often refugees, from as far off as Nocturnus.

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The rooftop of the audience hall is open to the public. All kinds of people spend time up there, and it's even used for storage!

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Known as the Blue Seat, the great chair of the Duchy stands in the audience hall where visitors can marvel at its githril inlay. Today, the Lady Tisha is entertaining a particular interesting visitor. Her regent, Lord Sasaram, looks on in horror as the Lady considers giving a priceless heirloom to a complete stranger. Meanwhile Tisha's bodyguard, Arrea of Bandari, tries to hide her amusement.

28959530817_f544fb06d0_t.jpg "This is what you want? Just this little thing?"

28959531787_51010700c8_t.jpg "Lady Elatisha! You mustn't think of it!"

42090393570_686b5c709c_t.jpg "Yes, that's the Lion's Eye. I came here hoping to recover it."

28959530817_f544fb06d0_t.jpg "That's so strange. It's just a stone. Not even pretty."

28959531787_51010700c8_t.jpg "But it's been in the Darya family for generations, Lady!"

28959530817_f544fb06d0_t.jpg "Oh hush, Regent Sasaram."

28959531827_afe7858522_t.jpg "Heh."

28959530817_f544fb06d0_t.jpg "So Fel --Can I call you Fel?-- why do you want this stone anyway?"

42090393570_686b5c709c_t.jpg "Well, it's part of a pair. This map will take me to the other one. I need them for evidence."

28959530817_f544fb06d0_t.jpg "Intriguing! Evidence of what?"

42090393570_686b5c709c_t.jpg "I believe there was once a seafaring empire of catfolk --lionells-- and these stones can help prove it."

28959531787_51010700c8_t.jpg "Foolishness!"

28959530817_f544fb06d0_t.jpg "Hush, I said. Fel, how can this prove your theory?"

42090393570_686b5c709c_t.jpg "There are records of a legend: ages ago, a brother and sister inherited the empire and split it across the sea, each taking a piece of an ancestral stone fashioned to look like an eye. One Lion's Eye was kept in Kaliphlin, the other in Varlyrio. Yours, I think. A gift for some noble a century ago."

28959530817_f544fb06d0_t.jpg "So if you get the stones, you can prove the legend is true and there really was once one big empire?"

42090393570_686b5c709c_t.jpg "Exactly!"

28959531827_afe7858522_t.jpg "Excuse me, but there are catfolk all over. Including some in my own homeland. Are you saying they are all related?"

42090393570_686b5c709c_t.jpg "I don't know, but I want to find out. If we all share a common history, shouldn't everyone know it?"

28959530817_f544fb06d0_t.jpg "I think so! I've decided you should have the stone!"

28959531787_51010700c8_t.jpg "Oh dear... what are they going to think about this in Petraea?"

28959530817_f544fb06d0_t.jpg "Those stuffy old scholars can... they can... go eat their own beards!"

42090393570_686b5c709c_t.jpg "Haha. Yeah!"

28959531827_afe7858522_t.jpg "I love my job."

...

...

...but wait... there's more going on in bustling Delmitra...

...

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On the rooftops, a meeting is taking place between Goldhorn, called by some the "Minotaur of Means", and a shady desert mummy.

28959530687_58d2872c68_t.jpg "I don't know, this seems like an awful lot of money just to follow some cat-girl around."

43848228232_2b7d77319c_t.jpg "Never mind that, Garm. You know from personal experience that my coin spends."

28959530687_58d2872c68_t.jpg "That it does, Mr. Goldhorn. That it does."

43848228232_2b7d77319c_t.jpg "Then you'll take the job."

28959530687_58d2872c68_t.jpg "Follow the girl, steal these Eye stones or whatever, and make sure no one finds out. Yeah, seems like my kind of thing."

43848228232_2b7d77319c_t.jpg "Quite."

...

...

Builder's Notes:

Spoiler

Phew. This is one of the biggest Lego MOCs I've made. It's a full 48x48 and was meant to be more of the castle but I ran out of sand and tan pieces! I settled for the design seen here and was able to adapt the build for my new Book 3 story after I ran out of time for the Summer Joust. Oh well, next year!

-Hope the shoutouts to Kali history and Bandari (Henjin's Mwamba Safe Haven) are okay!

-A lot of the lore for Delmitra was cooking before Book 3 was announced so I hope to use it in the future.

-I know, I quit Mitgardia, joined Varlyrio, and set my first build in Kaliphlin... don't blame me! Haha.

-These are Fel's civilian clothes. Don't expect her to always wear armor and be tossing a spear around!

-Some people might remember Goldhorn as he's a transplant from Lands of Roawia and was created years ago for a minifig contest. I liked the fig so much I decided to bring him to Historica as the main antagonist for this part of Fel's story.

-This build quotes a lot of Kali builders, especially Sarajoy, Mike S, SkaForHire, LittleJohn, Kai NRG, Robuko and Gideon. Hope I'm not forgetting anyone because there are a lot of greats in Kali! Thanks for the years of great builds, guys (and double thanks to anyone I forgot to mention!). Consider this my love letter to the Guild since I was THIS close to joining it!
 

 

Edited by mccoyed

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Excellent Kaliphlin build! I really like the desert fortress style of the build, feels like a place where bandits and dangerous creatures are plentiful so that all wealth must be shut in behind walls every night :classic:
You've also managed to create a busy atmosphere with all those different races which I think fits very well along the oil road.


Your style would indeed have fit very well in Kaliphlin, and I hope you will come to visit us more times when you want some change from fleshing out the Western Isle. You are very welcome to visit and build in Barqa! :classic:

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Too bad you didn't join Kali, because you pretty obviously got a good idea of what it's like in bricks!  Great combination of color with the tan and dark tan walls and then the white behind.  The cacti are really nice too, and you've got quite a few exotic creatures in there! :thumbup: 

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Nice scene and storyline. I love the ostrich being used to haul produce. Can’t wait to see Fel get the other eye. 

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Great figs first of all! Love the combos! 

 

All the details you have put in fills the moc with so much life! Great work!!

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Nice build! I really like the design of the entryway and although a simple design, the placement of the cacti adds just the right amount of color variation to the scene!

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This is a nice storytelling build.  Everything is deliberately placed and looks great.  The characters / minifigures are all very interesting and fit in nicely with the Kaliphlin setting.  I particularly like the githril-smith area, and the throne is a nice design.  I also love seeing Dewbacks walking the scene.

Wonderful work!

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First nice story.  Second great little scene.  There is a lot going on and I love all the figs.  The building is nice, I like the different tans and the white together.  The stone bricks give it some nice texture.  I also like your cacti.  Overall nice job.  

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Excellent story, as always! Build is awesome, especially lovin the cactusses.

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I really like the white and gold as the frosting on the tan/dark tan cake, so to speak. They are appropriate accent colors that make the structure pop. I like that you included interiors, too. 

And please, reference Bandari and Mwamba all you like! There are indeed cat-people in the city of Bandari and Mwamba in general, though they call them aelfcats there rather than lionells. I imagine they are the same thing, however. Bandarian aelfcats:

25099199607_af3dca8db0.jpg

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On 8/7/2018 at 3:29 AM, Gideon said:

Excellent Kaliphlin build! I really like the desert fortress style of the build, feels like a place where bandits and dangerous creatures are plentiful so that all wealth must be shut in behind walls every night :classic:
You've also managed to create a busy atmosphere with all those different races which I think fits very well along the oil road.


Your style would indeed have fit very well in Kaliphlin, and I hope you will come to visit us more times when you want some change from fleshing out the Western Isle. You are very welcome to visit and build in Barqa! :classic:

Thanks! I will definitely try to squeeze in some Kali builds when I can. I liked building Kali a lot during the Book 2 civil war. It just went too fast for me so I only got a few in!

On 8/7/2018 at 10:48 AM, Kai NRG said:

Too bad you didn't join Kali, because you pretty obviously got a good idea of what it's like in bricks!  Great combination of color with the tan and dark tan walls and then the white behind.  The cacti are really nice too, and you've got quite a few exotic creatures in there! :thumbup: 

Thanks!

On 8/7/2018 at 12:14 PM, CaptainAaron said:

Nice scene and storyline. I love the ostrich being used to haul produce. Can’t wait to see Fel get the other eye. 

Haha, it'll happen soon I hope.

On 8/7/2018 at 1:01 PM, de Gothia said:

Great figs first of all! Love the combos! 

 

All the details you have put in fills the moc with so much life! Great work!!

Thanks DG. Making 'figs is the most fun and agonizing part for me. I spent HOURS yesterday just doing a free-form scifi figbarf. Knowing when to walk away from a design is key.

On 8/7/2018 at 1:19 PM, Mike S said:

Nice build! I really like the design of the entryway and although a simple design, the placement of the cacti adds just the right amount of color variation to the scene!

I tried a few variations but they always wound up too blocky for the size/style of cacti I wanted, basically a Fishook Barrel catcus but with a red flower. I initially had these mossy patched with mushrooms, which looked terrible!
 

On 8/7/2018 at 5:13 PM, x105Black said:

This is a nice storytelling build.  Everything is deliberately placed and looks great.  The characters / minifigures are all very interesting and fit in nicely with the Kaliphlin setting.  I particularly like the githril-smith area, and the throne is a nice design.  I also love seeing Dewbacks walking the scene.

Wonderful work!

Thanks. I learned a lot about presenting dialogue and story when building for Andromeda's Gates and try to include these 'fig portrait dialogues where appropriate. This one had a lot of talking so thanks for reading the story parts!

On 8/7/2018 at 8:15 PM, zoth33 said:

First nice story.  Second great little scene.  There is a lot going on and I love all the figs.  The building is nice, I like the different tans and the white together.  The stone bricks give it some nice texture.  I also like your cacti.  Overall nice job.  

Thanks, Zoth. Especially for reading the story parts!

On 8/8/2018 at 3:02 AM, narbilu said:

Excellent story, as always! Build is awesome, especially lovin the cactusses.

Thanks, Narb! More to come, in Varlyrio next time. ;)

1 minute ago, Henjin_Quilones said:

I really like the white and gold as the frosting on the tan/dark tan cake, so to speak. They are appropriate accent colors that make the structure pop. I like that you included interiors, too. 

And please, reference Bandari and Mwamba all you like! There are indeed cat-people in the city of Bandari and Mwamba in general, though they call them aelfcats there rather than lionells. I imagine they are the same thing, however. Bandarian aelfcats:

25099199607_af3dca8db0.jpg

Thanks, Henj! It's funny because I started with the wall and I shouldn't have. I would have liked to do a more complex interior of the Audience Hall because I really like the slitted (almost arrow slit) windows but they don't really feature well here. I would need a lot more tan and dark tan Lego to do what I had in my head, which was more like this:

https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/004/431/816/medium/ugur-unsoy-sehir2.jpg?1483712695

I actually name-dropped the aelfcats originally but changed the dialogue! I didn't want to overstep by "confirming" they come from the same parent civilization. I will leave that a mystery for now, since I imagine there are "catfolk" (my preferred catch-all term over) all over the world but that only the Varlyrian and Kaliphlin ones are the subject of Fel's research.

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Cool build! I like the atmosphere, all the different kinds of people and animals all over the place. 

I’m not a big fan of the flatness, some dunes would do the trick though.

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On 8/9/2018 at 10:05 PM, mccoyed said:

I actually name-dropped the aelfcats originally but changed the dialogue! I didn't want to overstep by "confirming" they come from the same parent civilization. I will leave that a mystery for now, since I imagine there are "catfolk" (my preferred catch-all term over) all over the world but that only the Varlyrian and Kaliphlin ones are the subject of Fel's research.

Back when Chima was new the established GoH name was Leanders if I remember correctly. But it seems like a great idea if there would be several different sub-races of catfolk, at least different regional names for them :classic:

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Great build. The stronghold inspires safety and peace between dangerous trips through the desert!

Great story too !

I remember some Leanders folks been used here and there as cat people by some builders long time ago.

Myself had used a Cat swordsman in my Castle Rose "safe heaven" challenge builds but from another origin too... Probably, like Gideon suggested, there are many sub races of cat folks in all Historica...

Great build. I will looking forward to see your Varlyrio builds.

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A very classical Kaliphlin build, it reminds me of the Book II Kaliphlin challenge (which happened, thinking of it, not that long ago)!

I especially like the colourscheme, though the desert itself seems a bit bare... On the other hand, that's the whole point of calling something deserted no? Anyway, I feel like for example some curved slopes might break it up just enough to add a special touch to the already nice build! :thumbup: 

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On 8/9/2018 at 2:11 PM, ZlatanXVIGustaf said:

Cool build! I like the atmosphere, all the different kinds of people and animals all over the place. 

I’m not a big fan of the flatness, some dunes would do the trick though.

I thought of this as kind of harder packed sand than the more wave-like dunes. Something more like the deserts/badlands in the US than the Sahara. However, I think there are definitely ways to make that idea work better.

On 8/11/2018 at 6:24 AM, Gideon said:

Back when Chima was new the established GoH name was Leanders if I remember correctly. But it seems like a great idea if there would be several different sub-races of catfolk, at least different regional names for them :classic:

I like "Leander" a lot better than "Lionell" personally. But yeah, I think there are many subraces so I'll try to leave it ambiguous whether all of them belonged to this mythic "Cat Empire" that Fel is trying to discover.

On 8/11/2018 at 7:02 AM, Faladrin said:

Great build. The stronghold inspires safety and peace between dangerous trips through the desert!

Great story too !

I remember some Leanders folks been used here and there as cat people by some builders long time ago.

Myself had used a Cat swordsman in my Castle Rose "safe heaven" challenge builds but from another origin too... Probably, like Gideon suggested, there are many sub races of cat folks in all Historica...

Great build. I will looking forward to see your Varlyrio builds.

Thanks Faladrin! Having catfolk in Varlyrio leaves even more room to develop them as a principle race of Historica.

11 hours ago, TitusV said:

A very classical Kaliphlin build, it reminds me of the Book II Kaliphlin challenge (which happened, thinking of it, not that long ago)!

I especially like the colourscheme, though the desert itself seems a bit bare... On the other hand, that's the whole point of calling something deserted no? Anyway, I feel like for example some curved slopes might break it up just enough to add a special touch to the already nice build! :thumbup: 

Book 2 Kali builds were some of my favorites. I do agree that the desert is a bit bare and I did try curved slopes for the sand but it always looked too "dune-y" to me. I wanted it to feel more like this:

e39f9006afd5ffb0f68bf4ab043a5187.jpg

As opposed to this:

maxresdefault.jpg

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I definitely thought Arizona as opposed to the Sahara. Maybe some olive-green bushes or trees would help with that impression (for Palo Verde trees or something similar). It's a really cool build, though. I especially love how busy it is inside. 

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Lovely Kaliphlin setting. Builds like this are what make the southern guild so attractive :thumbup:
I love the square column setup you used over the gate, and the walls stepping out a stud half way up is a neat design. Plenty of Kaliphlin banners around too!

Very excited to see Fel's story continue :classic:

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On 8/14/2018 at 5:35 PM, Ailhbe said:

I definitely thought Arizona as opposed to the Sahara. Maybe some olive-green bushes or trees would help with that impression (for Palo Verde trees or something similar). It's a really cool build, though. I especially love how busy it is inside. 

Yeah there's got to be a way to do it where the "desert "feel doesn't get lost in too much green. Maybe a larger build with more terrain would give the room to sell that different kind of desert complete with the shrubs, trees, etc.

20 hours ago, soccerkid6 said:

Lovely Kaliphlin setting. Builds like this are what make the southern guild so attractive :thumbup:
I love the square column setup you used over the gate, and the walls stepping out a stud half way up is a neat design. Plenty of Kaliphlin banners around too!

Very excited to see Fel's story continue :classic:

Thanks SK!

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Going with all-studs and cacti certainly inspire thoughts of the American deserts rather than African or Arabian to my eye, even before I read the posts above related to the subject. :thumbup:

Looking forward to where the quest leads! 

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Very cool!  I like the prodigious use of animals, particularly the SW lizard, and I think that the cacti are awesome!  I love the use of some of the unusual colors like light blue and light purple that I would not normally consider to use in one of these builds.  I always thought that Kali had two sections: one that was sandy and one that was more like the american southwest.  Thus, I assumed that your build was more of the former, as it has a more arabian feel, rather than an american southwest feel.  I like the story that goes with your build, too.

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5 hours ago, mrcp6d said:

Going with all-studs and cacti certainly inspire thoughts of the American deserts rather than African or Arabian to my eye, even before I read the posts above related to the subject. :thumbup:

Looking forward to where the quest leads! 

Thanks. I'm working hard on the next build!

2 hours ago, Grover said:

Very cool!  I like the prodigious use of animals, particularly the SW lizard, and I think that the cacti are awesome!  I love the use of some of the unusual colors like light blue and light purple that I would not normally consider to use in one of these builds.  I always thought that Kali had two sections: one that was sandy and one that was more like the american southwest.  Thus, I assumed that your build was more of the former, as it has a more arabian feel, rather than an american southwest feel.  I like the story that goes with your build, too.

Thanks Grover! LittleJohn and Soccerkid's builds are a big inspiration to me and I've noticed pastel colors pop up in a few of their builds so I'm sure that's where I got the idea. I think there's definitely an "Arabian" feel to the architecture but I definitely wanted to evoke a more North American style badland/desert. If only because we see a lot of the wavy dunes and palm tree oases in Kali.

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There are many different types of deserts and badlands in Kaliphlin.
Name whatever real-world reference landscape with lack of water and Kaliphlin most likely has something very similar! :wink: 

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10 hours ago, Gideon said:

There are many different types of deserts and badlands in Kaliphlin.
Name whatever real-world reference landscape with lack of water and Kaliphlin most likely has something very similar! :wink: 

Haha. Good to know!

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The build is quite nice, and I can't wait to see where the story goes from here!

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