AoM Barracks Phase 3 - Gathul Khazad.

[nivremis]

Long before the cities of men had sprung up across Historica, the dwarves had already begun to shape the world. Unable to resist the call of the ore from deep within the Mitgardian mountains, 4 of the most influential dwarvish clans claimed territories amidst its peaks, and an age of prosperity soon ensued amongst the dwarves. The oldest and wisest foresaw that all good things must come to an end, and in preparation built a watchtower with intentions of holding the pass to the Mitgardian mountains.

And his wisdom proved prudent. The richness of the clans soon drew the attention of the wild orcs from the Western Orcish Marches. Attack after attack came, and while the individual orcish clans were always beaten back, he knew that it would be a matter of time before a shaman united the clans and with their combined might the tower would not hold. Calling upon the elders of the other dwarf clans, a plan was hatched to fortify the tower. Each of the 3 remaining clans sent their best masons and builders, and whatever else they could spare. Thus, Gathul Khazad, the fortress of the dwarves, was bricked. Banners were raised, with a simple embalm representing the four clans, and soldiers were sent to forswear loyalty to no individual clan, but for the greater good of Mitgardia.

Each clan had built in their own unique style, but what emerged was a fortress capable of holding back the orcish clans. As the centuries passed, walls were damaged but never breached, and always repaired.

As unrest grumbled in modern Mitgardia, the call to arms was made, and soldiers prepared to move out. No firm orders had been given, but it was rumored that they would be lead by the mysterious stranger who had traveled far to reach Gathul Khazad. Unusual it was, but the troops had been trained to obey, and if that was what the commanders had decreed, then it would be so. As they lined up to march, many glanced up at the stranger, who would spend a further 3 days in the fortress before making haste to catch up with the troops.

Until then, Dorrim was in charge of marching the forces through the treacherous mountain paths.

I initially built and finished this for the HoM Challenge, but real life happened and simply never had time to photograph anything. In building it I wanted to try out different towers mashed into one castle. It's also my first real big castle moc, and my first round tower as well. Also wanted to play around with using wargs as beasts of burden. Couldn't have done it without all the inspiration and insights gained from all the great builders here in GoH and Eurobricks in general, so thanks to all. Sigfig Nivre can be seen in the white hood, and there are a few more pictures on my Flickr stream. Comments and criticisms more than welcome as usual.

Also - Tall dwarves. They're a thing now. Precedence set by Ecc, thanks bud.

Edited August 28, 2014 by nivremis

[vitreolum]

Very nice tower there.

[Tomsche]

Veru nice build, love the tower!

[Lord Vladivus]

Love the round tower!

[Gunman]

That round tower rocks.. I really lovr the wooden stairs coming out of the wall!!

Lots of action going on there its a great moc!!

Only thing is I would like some landscaping around the castle.

[robuko]

Nice idea and very nicely done. Lots of life and action, although the Courtyard looks maybe a little crowded. I really love the round tower, and I appreciate the way you have distinguished the other towers too.

[Thomas of Tortuga]

Very nice job on the tower and the staircase!

[IenjoyLego89]

Looks amazing, especially the round tower :) really liked the story. Well done :)

[Yzalirk]

Very nice builds but I do love that tower and the first picture a lot!

[mccoyed]

Good work on the build and my what an army. I don't like the tall dwarves craze sweeping Historica right now. :P

[Kai NRG]

Great job here, especially with the round tower and I like the steps leading to the door as well!

[nivremis]

Again, thank you all for the kind comments. Did think of landscaping around the castle, but figured I wanted to join it to more baseplates and do a bigger scene around it so left it open for now.

[Scaevola]

Very nice moc, I love the crooked stonework in the round tower and the attention to detail and articulation in the other towers

[TheLegoDr]

So I'm confused. Are all of these people dwarves? They can't be tall. That's the definition of a dwarf. They wouldn't have ever came up with a different nomenclature for a person of shorter stature then.

[mccoyed]

So I'm confused. Are all of these people dwarves? They can't be tall. That's the definition of a dwarf. They wouldn't have ever came up with a different nomenclature for a person of shorter stature then.

A couple of GoHers don't like the difficulty of posing "short leg" figs so they make their dwarves tall. I don't like it either. :P

[Venkefedo]

All the more reason to support BrickFortress, whose sole product is still articulated short legs!

I could see tall dwarves being fine in a build where it's all short races, like a battle between dwarves and Shraliek or something... but being as tall as humans, elves, orcs just feels weird.

[MKJoshA]

Dwarves are shorter than regular men. Period. There is no such thing as a tall dwarf. It's just a man with a beard. But great build. I love that tower and this is a beautiful barracks.

[Kai NRG]

Dwarves are shorter than regular men. Period. There is no such thing as a tall dwarf. It's just a man with a beard. But great build. I love that tower and this is a beautiful barracks.

I have to agree with you there, a minifigure can't really be called a dwarf if he has normal sized legs.

[Yzalirk]

I have to agree with you there, a minifigure can't really be called a dwarf if he has normal sized legs.

It depends on perspective, I guess. If you were a giant, wouldn't you call a regular sized human a Dwarf?

[nivremis]

Wow look at all the.... Height-cists in here

In perspective, everyone in this build is a dwarf, so they're all technically short.

Having said that, if dwarves are a race, surely there are some odd tall ones here and there ?

[Bregir]

AFAIK, Tolkien's dwarves are not described as particularly short compared to ordinary people - They are of a different stature, but not necessarily shorter... Just my two cents!

[MKJoshA]

It depends on perspective, I guess. If you were a giant, wouldn't you call a regular sized human a Dwarf?

No, you would say he is dwarfed. There is a big difference between size ratio and a race of people.

Having said that, if dwarves are a race, surely there are some odd tall ones here and there ?

Yes, surely there are a few taller ones. Maybe they had ent-draught?

AFAIK, Tolkien's dwarves are not described as particularly short compared to ordinary people - They are of a different stature, but not necessarily shorter... Just my two cents!

I would love a quote to back this up. Everything I've read of Tolkien (which is most of his works) seems to indicate a shorter size, though I too don't have a book and page number to back it up... yet.

[Kai NRG]

It depends on perspective, I guess. If you were a giant, wouldn't you call a regular sized human a Dwarf?

I might call them that, as a term of derision... But then, not if I were a smart giant, because if I thought everyone else was a dwarf, I couldn't really lay claim to being a giant...

Okay, seriously. Dwarf, usually, does not refer merely to a person that's short. I consider myself short (and I've met several fully grown people even shorter than I am - 5'3", 5", even 4"9', possibly shorter, who also are not dwarfs) but I'm not a dwarf. Dwarfs have pretty obvious differences to a normal human (depending on type of dwarfism), such as head/rest of body ratio (that one, obviously, is not reproducible in LEGO, except in so far as head/length of legs ratio is), and others. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as a "tall" - or normal height - dwarf. It's an anomaly that just doesn't happen - like, there are no people that have three eyes. You just can't get three eyes. Period. And you can't get a "tall" dwarf. Not by definition, but genetically.

Now, of course, a fantasy dwarf might have a slightly different definition than a real life dwarf. I haven't read much (if any, really) of that kind of fantasy, so I can't really speak to the subject a whole lot, but I would think short stature would be one of the distinguishing features.

And then, when it comes to LEGOs, I can totally understand using tall legs for articulation. In Ecc's MOC, since I believe all of them were dwarfs, I could pretty easily imagine everyone being short together. In this MOC, it makes it a lot harder to tell who's a dwarf and who isn't. I originally thought that only the two standing next to nivremis's fig were dwarfs. Now, reading his comment, they all are. Which is fine. Personally, I wouldn't call a fig a dwarf if he has normal legs. But if it works for the MOCer, he's of course welcome to do it!

[mccoyed]

The problem is that I doubt Ecc and Nivremis, good as they are, took into consideration the proportion changes "talling up" the dwarves would necessitate in their builds to make them still proportionate. Looking at this fortress build here, there's nothing distinctively "dwarvish" about it. This means the "talling up" is purely cosmetic or due to a dislike of the short leg pieces (which fair enough) but it seems to me that proportions must change across the board if we're doing a "zoomed" in build.

This is just a discussion of aesthetics, though. No one should be overly concerned about this but we do want to make sure GoH has appropriate precedents otherwise there's no discernible reason to differentiate between categories like human or dwarf. As good as Nivremis's build is, and it is, it's not distinctively "dwarvish" architecturally either. I think if you're going to call your human-sized figs dwarves, a happy medium for consistency's sake would be to make sure the architecture says "dwarves built this" and this build does not do that IMO.

A note about Tolkien's dwarves and thus the dwarves in general Western fantasy which are pretty well received from Tolkien (who received them from Norse and Celtic myths):

Dwarves are not "short humans" or humans with the dwarfism condition as we know it. We can all agree on that. In fantasy, dwarves are proportionately (stature, as some have said already) different than humans. As a fictional/mythological creation, there is infinite room for interpretation of "dwarves" and there's not a lot of right or wrong there, it's just what you're trying to evoke. In GoH, we normally go for a classic fantasy (Tolkien) style (especially in Mitgardia). Those dwarves are pretty well established in terms of elements like culture, appearance, etc and we all can agree they're generally shorter and stouter than humans. But some dwarves are extra tall, just as some hobbits have been. They run a height range, just like humans and elves and everything else. But the norm is 4-5' tall in most lore. Beyond that, it's important to remember that TLG has exactly two mainstream height choices in figs. Dwarves are expressed, like children and hobbits, with the short legs for good reason: to differentiate them from the human-sized figs so, with the big old beards and all, we can recognize at a glance that "oh this, is a fantasy dwarf".

If you want to do a new spin on dwarves where they are tall or something, that's fair, but you need a compelling reason to still classify the creation as a "dwarf". To be fair, Ecc and Nivremis aren't doing that. They're just doing "zoomed in" builds where relative proportions are set to "dwarf".

Anyway that's just my two cents.

Edited August 29, 2014 by mccoyed

[Hobbythom]

Wow, the round and the roofed towers are awesome! Great job on those!