Agasûl. Rock of the Dragons

[Simon_S]

Chapter 1: A Mitgardian Adventure https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/191046-a-mitgardian-adventure/

Chapter 2: Meeting with Haldor, the Master Builder of Bridges https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/191588-meeting-with-haldor-the-master-builder-of-bridges/

Chapter 3: The Hideout https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/192000-the-hideout/

Chapter 4: The Cake https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/192047-the-cake/

Chapter 5: New Belynia https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/192687-goh-10-b-new-belynia/

Chapter 6: Meet Hallad, the half frozen Berserk https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/192959-goh-10c-meet-hallad-the-half-frozen-berserk/

Chapter 7: The Frog King https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/193043-the-frog-king/

Chapter 8: The Monastery https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/193438-goh-10c-the-monastery/

Chapter 9: The Trolls came down the mountains https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/193942-the-trolls-came-down-the-mountains/

 

First comes a short story, then some details about the build and the building process ;-). Have fun reading it!

 

The Trolls invaded Mitgardia. They came down from the mountains. They dig tunnels and everywhere they climbed out of holes in the ground. There was no escaping. The heroes only had one option: To fight them. And to defeat them.

Simon gathered his old friends. Stephan and Ingrid came back. And together with Greta they held a council.

Stephan grumbling with his deep voice - you could really tell that he drank too much blueberry liquor in the last days of trouble: I think we should just kill all the trolls. Only a dead troll is a good troll.

Ingrid: Yes I agree. But I don't have enough arrows. And we are only four. Four heroes who should save Mitgardia?

Greta: How else could it be? It was always like this. A few brave men and women against the huge evil armies. And today it is our time to fight.

Simon: I agree. But we need help. We can't fight them alone. Who could help us?

Stephan: I have an idea...

Simon rolls his eyes: Oooh, an idea?

Stephan completely over motivated: Yes, an idea. We should go to Agasûl.

Greta outraged: Agasûl! You madman! You want to go to the rock of the dragons? I heard the fighting there is incredibly fierce.

Ingrid: But maybe Stephan is right. If we can convince the dragons to fight for us...

Simon: ... then we can easily defeat the trolls. Let's go there and try it. It's our only hope.

So they went to Agasûl, the home of many dragons.

Stephan: I've heard many tales about this place... It's a long time since the icy mother dragon arrived there. Legends tell it, that the source of her power lies deep in the mountain. People say, that there is a magic light crystal hidden in a cave and that this crystal is the reason, why all the dragons live there. They also say that the mother dragon farted to hard and accidently froze the peak of the mountain. The dwarves used this opportunity and converted the peak of the mountain into a huge freezer. There are rumors that the dwarves store hundreds of frozen pizzas in there.

Ingrid: That sounds like a place where I could feel like home. Here we are. Welcome to Agasûl.

It all went as they planned out... almost. To make it short: They climbed the mountain, talked to the mother dragon... and... she didn't want to help. It's not our problem she said. So the heroes had to change her mind. First, they reached out to the mages deep inside the mountain. Nobody knew the light crystal better than them. But they didn't know how they could convince the dragons to help. And they also didn't want to help. The heroes were running low on time. The trolls even invaded the dwarves' mine! They interrupted them in their feasts. The elves tried to help but they were just too many of the trolls. So the heroes had an idea: They told the dwarves to heat up their frozen food and feed it to the dragons... and it totally worked. The dragons turned friendly and started fighting against the trolls... and then, the fights soon were over.

The trolls were defeated.

Agasûl was saved.

The heroes were ready for their next adventure.

Please take a look at the album with the detail pictures: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjB4xWJ The whole build had an interior. And you'll find many scenes from the short story in there.

 

Thanks for reading the story! To the next part: Some informations about this MOC.

I built this MOC for Bricking Bavaria 2023 in Friedrichshafen. I heard about that convetion during my summer vacation in august and then there was no holding back. I registred myself as an exhibitor and started building. The MOC is 2x10 baseplates big (64x320 studs) and almost 1 meter tall. It's by far the biggest thing I've ever built. Literally all of my lbg and dbg boxes were empty after this. So I built this monster in a quite short time. It took me around 4 months and I guess that I used around 35'000 parts. I just want to share some facts or learnings that might be interesting for you:

1. The AFOL community is awesome! It was my first convention since 2016 and meeting so many kind and talented AFOLs was a huge pleasure. I met many people I only knew from online. I saw many masterpieces which I have already admired on flickr. But really, it was all about the people. Being a part of such a community is just so much fun.

2. Building round towers takes a lot of parts and a lot of patience. I saw that round tower tutorial from Barthezz Brick wo built that venice MOC and I thought: I want to do something like this. I ended up doing 2 towers. The larger one took 70 parts for 1 stud of height... and it was 40 studs high. You can do the math.

3. Hollowed out mountains are difficult to build. I wanted it all to have an interior. And to make it still somehow stable and use as few pillars as possible, I worked with technic bricks and pins to bridge the large gaps.

4. SNOT mountains take only a few parts and you can build them quite fast. So this is most probably the most interesting fact about the rockwork. Everything is just large SNOT plates which I decorated with wedge plates / bricks, tiles and slopes. The reason for this is simple: I wanted to build a mountain as large as possible with the collection I have. And if you've ever built a mountain, you know how fast you run out of slopes and normal bricks. But many of us have a larger bin with large dbg / lbg plates, because they're used as baseplates in many sets. So working with these saved me a lot of time and parts. And I think on this scale it looks pretty decent.

5. Black is a really dark colour. Think twice before building a black cave. The lowest level of the mountain was really just black. You couldn't see anything of the nice rockwork inside there. I felt like I wasted a lot of time on the details there. Than I had the idea about the light crystal. And because I know nothing about lights and never used them in my moc, I just placed christmas tree lights in the crystal and hid the battery box. Solving that problem even made this part of the build to one, which the visitors liked the most.

6. Dragons are colourful. I tried to use all my colours in this build. Especially for the dragons. I used every weird colour. On the top right there is even a royal blue dragon made from knights kingdoms parts. I had to get creative, because from many colours I didn't have a lot of pieces. The turqouise dragon has a water tap as head. Some of the dragons use perfume bottles on their heads. The dark blue dragon has a mummy headscarf as head because I didn't have any dark blue pieces left.

7. LEGO stores with pick a brick walls are super useful. Many small parts which I used in large quantities are from the LEGO store in Zurich which opened a year ago: trans light blue tiles, bright green three finger leaves, 1x2 rounded slopes in light bluish gray and in coral, 1x1 plates in yellow, 4x6 plates in dark bluish gray (you can fit around 100 in 1 large cup if you stack them nicely + you also get the small stuff which you can fit around it) and so much more.

8. Thanks for taking pictures of this: A friend of mine called Domi took all the detail pictures and the main picture is taken by felix the builder.

9. Last fun fact: This MOC won the first place in the public voting in the Bricking Bavaria 2023 :-).

 

Me @ Bricking Bavaria 2023

Please make sure to check out the detail shots, the main one can't show all the work I put in there: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjB4xWJ 

Thanks for looking and reading. Have a nice day and brick on! - Simon

Edited November 26, 2023 by Simon_S

[Yperio_Bricks]

Impressive layout! There is so much to explore and discover! Some of my favorite scenes are the dwarfs enjoying popsicles, the giant illuminated crystels in the cave and the rock with the skull next to the waterfall. And i never knew there is a Lego bagpipe?!

Also some interesting behind the scenes info

[Kai NRG]

There's even an inside to the mountain!  That's crazy, so cool, especially the lava!  I love the colorful dragons and the variety of buildings on either side.  Super impressive MOC!

[zoth33]

Great looking display.  The color combinations really make this display pop.  The water looks great and the boats give it some nice depth.  The rock work and landscaping are fantastic.  All the buildings are unique and have nice interiors.  The interior of the cave is impressive with the especially the lava.  All of the dragons look great with their different designs.  Some great looking figs in there too.  Overall wonderful job on all that hard work.  

[Simon_S]

On 11/27/2023 at 10:24 PM, Yperio_Bricks said:

Impressive layout! There is so much to explore and discover! Some of my favorite scenes are the dwarfs enjoying popsicles, the giant illuminated crystels in the cave and the rock with the skull next to the waterfall. And i never knew there is a Lego bagpipe?!

Also some interesting behind the scenes info

Thank you for the kind words! The bagpipe is from a CMF which came a loong time ago and I think it works very well in a fantasy setting: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=col07-6#T=S&O={"iconly":0}

On 11/28/2023 at 12:37 AM, Kai NRG said:

There's even an inside to the mountain!  That's crazy, so cool, especially the lava!  I love the colorful dragons and the variety of buildings on either side.  Super impressive MOC!

Thanks :-). Yeah the inside of the mountain was a lot of work. Especially because when the front was finished, you had the idea that the MOC is ready for the convention / for display. But it took so much time and parts to make the whole inside of the mountain nice.

On 11/30/2023 at 1:08 AM, zoth33 said:

Great looking display.  The color combinations really make this display pop.  The water looks great and the boats give it some nice depth.  The rock work and landscaping are fantastic.  All the buildings are unique and have nice interiors.  The interior of the cave is impressive with the especially the lava.  All of the dragons look great with their different designs.  Some great looking figs in there too.  Overall wonderful job on all that hard work.  

Thank you for the kind comment!

[jtooker]

Wow! Truly incredible creation! I missed it when you first posted, I'm glad I found it. I wish I could see it in person to appreciate all the details and effort you put into it.

[Simon_S]

On 1/31/2024 at 2:56 AM, jtooker said:

Wow! Truly incredible creation! I missed it when you first posted, I'm glad I found it. I wish I could see it in person to appreciate all the details and effort you put into it.

haha thanks for the kind words :-). I think many people somehow missed it online but it's not that bad because I built it first for the convention and posting pictures of it online was just the second cool thing to do with it.