NiceMarmot

Lord Khelperth Darwyn, great map! We'll have to update our Kaliphlin / Siccus Badlands map with all these new discoveries! We Kaliphlin guildmembers might dispute your southern border a bit, as I believe our guild has towns and villages on both sides of the Red River (which empties into the Inland Sea, at the bottom of your map. I didn't realize that you all had bridges to the Mystic Isles; those must be quite some feats of medieval engineering. I had never understood why Avalonia was so lush and green. Now I see that all the rivers run together, so that the place is like one big river delta. That explains it. Thanks for providing the map; this will definitely help our merchants on trading missions to Avalonia.

For some reason, I don't have any chickens! I'll have to order some next time I do a BrickLink order. I've bought Mill Village Raid for my son for Xmas, so we'll have some in a month or so at least. And that's not even all the bananas we have. I held back on some.

Wahil, that is a beautiful tower! Wow, I might have to invest in some dark red bricks. I will send a caravan to the quarries of Brikkus-Lynk forthwith. I do agree with SI-mocs that maybe the pearl-gold pillars supporting the dome could be a brick or two shorter. Maybe put a minifig up there and see if the dome looks too high. I've posted a tour of the marketplace in my local town on the South Coast, Marja-Rhytaville. Here's an overview picture. I bought four PoP Fight for the Dagger sets on 50%+ clearance last January, and have been meaning to put them all together. Finally got around to it over the long weekend, and kept my four-year old son away from it long enough to snap some pictures. It's interesting -- he loves swooshing Star Wars sets, and playing with castle MOCs and stuff, but he really likes playing with all the minifigs, animals, foodstuffs, etc in this market. I bought Mill Village Raid for him for Xmas; I think he's going to like it. Maybe I should get Medieval Market Village before it's discontinued... Marja-Rhytaville Market

Greetings fellow travelers of Historica! Thought I'd show you all some scenes from market in my local town of Marja-Rhytaville. It's a small town on the south coast of the Siccus Badlands, across the straits from the Spice Islands. Nowhere near as big as the city of Messahmuk across the bay, but if you can afford it, no one would rather live in the 'Muk. MRV just a nice little place on the shore with some good fishing, excellent banana plantations, and great view across the straits to the Spice Islands and the island of Gorr. We do have an exceptionally fine market however, built back under the Yaf-Daryoush Dynasty, when this was a major port on the South Coast, and the 'Muk was just a small village in a swamp. Marja-Rhytaville Market Here's a view of the front. Someone's got their camels parked there. Better move them quickly before the town watch comes along and tickets them. Oops, looks like one kicked over a crate of gems! Here's another view from the front. Let's go in. Here's Abdel the fishmonger. Looks like a fine catch today, and he's got some fruit too. A cheerful chap, isn't he? Better watch out, he'll cheat you on your change if you're not careful. On the other side, we've got Rafi the fruit seller, and Mansour the gemcutter. Mansour always keeps a cutlass handy in case someone tries to get a bit greedy with the gems. Here's a closeup of Rafi. He has an enormous stock of bananas today. Bananas really flourish here in our tropical climate, and are a delicacy prized as far away as Cedrica. You might think those are green apples, but they don't grow down here; those are green papayas. Up to the left, that's an onyx statue of Anuphelis, our local god of fruit and wine. Back next to Abdel, here's Maliki the armorer. He's a bit of a curmudgeon, but they say his blades can slice a whisper in half. There's the town watch on the right, probably discussing donuts or something. Maliki's customer is a mummy. We get quite a lot of them coming into town to get weapons and bandages replaced. They tend to swing their swords kind of wildly and hit the walls of the temple passages; really dulls up the blades quickly. They live in the old tombs in the hills outside town, and there's a lot of them up by Mt Erezhi. They're a bit wrapped up in their own world , but they pay promptly and in gold. You know, one problem with living in a place named Marja-Rhytaville is that everyone is always asking for directions to it. People always ask me "where the hell is Marja-Ryhtaville?", and I just tell them, "it's anywhere you want it to be!" (, apologies to JB) Well, I hope you enjoyed the tour. That's what you get when you buy four PoP Fight for the Daggers and a couple of Banana Balances on 50% clearance. Hey, if you're ever in the area, look me up and drop by; we'll go down to the market and get some banana liqueur. I'm going down to the harbor to check on a delivery of sandstone I'm expecting for some watchtowers I'm building. See y'all around! Gex

@bligor- I use the 1x2 and 1x4 log bricks as well as the larger 6x6 palisade pieces. You're right, you do get better control over the details with the smaller bricks. However, using the 6x6 pieces is a bit cheaper, if you're just doing a plain expanse of wall. It's about $0.36 to build a 6x6 section of wall using them, as opposed to $0.45-0.50 using 1x2 and 1x4s.

Wow, I didn't know Avalonia was such a nasty place. All green and cuddly on the outside, but... Maybe I'll take my next vacation in the Eastern Darklands instead. Nice MOC btw. Good blood effect.

bligor- You might want to pick up a bunch of 30140 bricks off BrickLink (Panel 2 x 6 x 6 Log Wall (Palisade)). I think these are essential for building log palisade style forts and such. They are a bit pricey, but they're big. You'll probably need at least twelve or so for MOCing. Of course, you'll want to get 30136 and 30137 log bricks too (1x2 and 1x4) in the same color, as well as some 1x1 round bricks and cones. Some western buildings in towns are a bit fancy in a sort of pre-Victorian way, so you might want to pick up some 1x1 modified plates with tooth (49668) for a gingerbreading effect. And some brown tiles; 1x4 reddish brown tiles are fairly cheap; buy a lot. You'll want brown barrels and wagon wheels too. See if your local Lego Store has horses in the PaB wall, and if so get a bunch, or they go for about $1 on BL (the non-white ones are more expensive). For landscaping, you'll want tan, dark tan, and reddish-brown plates. If you see any Ramses Pyramid games on sale, buy them. They were just on sale for $9.99; they've got a tan 32x32 baseplate (that's worth $5.50-8.00 on BrickLink alone), plus lots of other tan pieces. The 6064 prickly bushes are have a good western style too, especially if you can find the dark tan ones. The 30093 Sea Grass looks a bit cactus-like too. You'll save some money on minifigures by going Western as compared to some of the licensed themes, especially Star Wars. Quite a few minifigs can be hand fairly reasonably, and if you're willing to build your own minifigs from parts, you put a bunch of them together for $1-2 each off BrickLink. For women, some of the pirate and castle torsos make good Western minifigs, like 973pb528c01, 973pb732c01, or 973pb522c01. For western-style men, take a look at torsos like 973pb203c01, 973pb86c01, 973pb547c01, 973pb09c02, 973pb716c01, 973p21c01. The farmer-style torsos tend to be relatively inexpensive on BL, and make good wild west civilians or cowboys. The Desert Adventurers / Johhny Thunder / Pharoah's Quest torsos make good western-style figs too -- reasonably priced examples include 973pb391c01, 973pa7c01, 973pb42c01, 973pa1c01, 973px3c01, 973px4c01. Or the entire Johnny Thunder minifig (adv010) is available fairly cheaply. There are a bunch of Indian torsos too; they tend to be a bit more expensive, but still not too bad.

WIP: Watchtower MOC My watchtower is more of a mountaintop lookout post, high in the Rakath Mountains. Since it's so high up, it doesn't really need defending. Its sentries' job is to spot invasions, light the signal fire, and beat a hasty retreat into the mountains. Left-to-right: signal fire on pillar ready-to-light, hut for sleeping, campfire, lookout post/watchtower. Going for a simple, rustic look. No one's going to build anything fancy on top of a mountain. Mountaintop Lookout (WIP) Posting to get some feedback. Not quite done yet; thinking of doing the following: Adding minifigures (of course!) Adding more camp stuff - pile of wood for the fire, some food, tools, etc. Maybe working on the hut's roof a bit more. Did I clutter it up too much? Add some reddish-brown and LBG plates to indicate paths a bit -- thinking it has too much dark bluish grey. Put just a few touches of white on the rocks for snow? What do you all think?

These are all great ideas! My watchtower, even though it's quite small, is consuming a large amount of time, due to some engineering challenges (but that makes it a good learning experience). I like the idea of some smaller MOCs / vignettes for those of us without the time and/or bricks to do the bigger ones. Here's a few additional ideas: Marketplace / Shop - gotta have a place for the caravans to deliver the goods to! Mines - we not only have the Black Oil, we've got plenty of mountains and hills that need to be mined! A small mining vignette. An Arab-looking boat, nothing too big, like a dhow or something, but clearly 'southern' A vignette of Kaliphlin guild members trading goods with members of other guilds. Preferably involving amusing misunderstandings and cultural clashes. Vignettes from Kaliphlin's storied past! Guildhalls! What's the use of a guild if it doesn't have a fabulous guildhall where we can have marvelous feasts? Guildhall fights. What happens when the feast involves too much mead and wine, and someone makes a remark about someone else's sister... Temples. I think ours will be cooler than some of the other guilds. Our southern/desert background just lends itself to more exotic and interesting temples, than say, Avalonia. Sphinxes. Sand dunes. Seriously, we've got lots of them. See who can create the best/coolest/most unusual...

It's well known that the LAPD (Loyal Avalonian Patrol Detachment) have had longtime issues with racial profiling, overreacting, and brutality. Remember the whole King Rodney incident several years ago? Lucky an artist was on hand to capture images of the whole incident... So some poor Orc takes a shortcut through well-to-do forest, let's not go all Drow on him. And what with kids these days dressing down and wearing baggy leggings, you just can't tell much from the way he looks. If I'm not mistaken, that looks a lot like Mgathriz, the well known Southern orc music star. He owns a vacation island up in Avalonia; was probably up visiting it. Better release him before the Kaliphlin gazetteers find out, they'll have a field day with this story!

They look like Avalonian traders to me, probably trying to find new sources of 1x1 round plates. I hear their leader requires all buildings to use them for wall construction

Very cool, Yakob/J4ke. Definitely inspired me to try some builds like that. The tower looks a bit thin in the middle; I suppose no fat knights need apply for sentry duty here! Really like the combination of studs and tiles, giving it a randomly smooth and rough look. It's like it was built smooth, but weather has taken its toll. The last photo in the photoset, from a ground-level perspective, is very cool. Are the sides joined by hinges in other places besides the top? I'm guessing you're using hinges to join a few other places too.

I really like the Wither Woods name. But which woods is it? I'm not seeing any woods that the Oil Road goes through... Or are you talking about the road from Barqa to the capital of Avalonia?

Looks great! Love the city symbols! Just a few spelling differences: The lone volcano south of Petraea is Erezhi with an E, looks like you've got a G. And the cape in the east is Cape Dahaka, with a 'k' second from the last; hard to tell, but it looks like you may have an 'r' there. BTW, what's the spelling of Nocturnus' capital? It's hard for me to make out exactly. And do the symbols in Nocturnus represent trees and lakes? And while we're on it, is Nocturnus the name of the land as well as the guild? Avalonia has a very originally named capital city I really like the two very different styles of the maps; keeps them from being repetitive.

Well, I asked for feedback on the map and here it comes. Trying to find a balance between keeping the high-level, 'guild-level' map clean and uncluttered, and putting enough things on it to give a feel for the land and its important sites and features... I really like the idea of an ancient necropolis in the marshes there! In fact, I think Gex has done some treasure-hunting there in the past. But, on this high-level map, I'd rather name the marshes and the river, and leave sites like the necropolis to more detailed maps, unless it is still a major, inhabited city or something. No offense, but there won't be room on this map for all the tombs, ruins, necropoli, watchtowers, temples, pyramids, castles, etc that we're going to build! Plus it will be hard to fit the label in down there with the swamp symbols and delta. I'll try it out, and see if looks too cluttered. But, would you care to name the marshes and/or the river? Likewise, not sure if a quarry is at the level for a 'guild-level' map though... Perhaps there's a city there that is important enough, and the quarry can be on a more detailed map? I've tried it out, and putting a city or town there does not clutter up the map too much. Well, a healthy ego is important... is this an ancient town that you've renamed? Perhaps we should use the traditional name ? We could do with a town in the Spice Islands, nicely balancing Stone Town at the other end of the channel, so I'll put one in. A numbered list! A man of action! Excellent, I like it! River Zenagi it is! I'm thinking about switching your suggested mountains to the north-east of Gorr, and the desert all around the word Gorr. For a couple of reasons -- mountains go better with a river and lake than a desert does, it mirrors the layout on the main continent where the eastern mountains provide a rain shadow causing central / western deserts, and I can lay desert speckles under the word Gorr but it's harder to put mountains around the label. Let me know if you really want them the other way. And we do need a name for the desert, so The Parched Lands it is. So, still looking for names for the river flowing out of Qarkyr, and the one leading to the Salt Lake (which could also be renamed if anyone is inspired to do so), and the river leading to the Inland Sea. We could possibly have two more cities too -- somewhere in the south-east might be a good spot, and somewhere near where the Petraea-Cedrica road crosses the Arkbri River is probably a good spot too. Anyone want to name those, or suggest a different location? We could also use names for the other two smaller deserts too. This is all subject to approval by Dextrus Flagg, of course. Gex

Yet another revision to the map. I've redone the mountains and forests, added some more detail from the overall Historica map, and added some decorations. I took the liberty of adding two features: Erezhi, the Lone Mountain, because every desolate wasteland needs a lone, possibly evil, volcano in the middle, and the Great Escarpment, because it sounds so cool, and a few hundred miles of cliff makes a good defensive barrier and a great place to put watchtowers. Siccus Badlands (Kaliphlin Guild) Did I overdo the mountains? I can cut them back a bit, or put back the old ones. I'm thinking this map has only one more revision to go. Looking for input on the following, and then I'll finish off the map: What are the names of the major rivers, ie. the one leading into Salt Lake and the one flowing from Qarkyr, and possibly the one in the far west? Any geographical features on the island of Gorr? Mountains? Desert? Forest? There's room for probably two or three major towns/cities if anyone wants to add one. If anyone wants a more detailed map, I'd probably break this up into four or so sections and zoom in accordingly for more detailed maps. Those detailed maps would be better for locating small towns and other places MOCs might be. I'll also investigate how to make links from Flickr to EB, so we can link from maps to our MOC threads. But probably not for a few days at least; I've got some watchtower ideas to build.

Thanks for documenting in detail how this is constructed. Many times we see fabulous MOCs with interesting techniques, but it's not clear from the final pictures how it was built, especially to someone just coming out of their Dark Ages who might not have ever built SNOT as a kid. In the side spiral towers, I'm guessing the whole scheme alternates every other layer, essentially rotating 1/12th full rotation each layer?

Very nice wooden build. I especially like the round top; I've used this technique a bunch too, and it produces a very good round, stockaded effect. The fellow on top in the brown hood doesn't look terribly happy. Perhaps he forgot his winter boots?

Very nice job! I also really like the wooden bit on top of the stone. What's with the stone railings on top, though? Are they mounted on the wooden structure? If so, that seems a bit unrealistic. Or is the wooden structure attached to the outside of the stone tower, which then goes all the way up to the top railings? I suppose that makes more sense.

Was posting this on the Kaliphlin Guild thread, and thought I should post here too. About 165 strong right now, with the recent addition of 16 mummy warriors from BL. Another 30-40 knights of various sorts are in hiding until the holidays and my son's birthday. There's a fair amount of variety, as I usually buy whatever's cheap, or build from parts purchased on BL. Castle Army Army, Left Side Army, Right

Greetings! Tafix Regex Marmota pledges the support of his meagre army! Here are some fine portraits of us gathered for inspection this afternoon. We are about 165 strong! Castle Army Here's another look, from over by the barbarians. Army, Right Side Here are the 16 mummy warriors I spoke of earlier, with various knights behind them. And yes, back in the middle next to the camels, that is a band of eighteen renegade Dragon Knights who defected from Avalonia or somewhere. Army, Left There are about another 30-40 of us in hiding until the holidays... So we will be 200 strong in about a month!

Yakob, great tower! A most unusual look you've achieved there by SNOTing the slopes around an octagonal structure. I'd say lose the triangular red and blue flags at the top; it's not obvious they are flags or banners, and you could probably mount something else there that would look better. You might also try mixing up the tan and LBG accents a bit so the layers aren't quite so uniform; not sure if that will look better but it's worth trying. Yesterday a band of 16 mummies arrived from Brikkus-Lynk, and they do seem quite ferocious. I've issued orders for all my warriors to assemble on the parade grounds this after noon for inspection. I've arranged for an artist to paint the army, hope to show it to you all later tonight. Gex

Fellow Southlanders! One of our caravans has returned from the north, and brought with them a splendid new map of Historica by the esteemed cartographer Thrash. I've had one of my scribes incorporate its new findings into our map of Siccus. She's not completely done with it, but here's what it looks like so far. She's also incorporated some of your newest discoveries, such as the Spice Islands and the large island of Gorr. The Siccus Badlands (Kaliphlin Guild) I've been away in Shi-Kaggo all week purchasing stone and other building materials. I come back today, and there's been no progress at all on the watchtower! Why must I be surrounded by such idiots?! We shall have to redouble our efforts, and what with the coming holidays, hope to make more progress on building. In other good news however, we have recently had reinforcements join us from the faraway land of Brikkus-Lynk, including a pack of 16 of the finest mummy warriors. I shall endeavour to have their portraits posted soon. Gex

Thrash, my map of Siccus Badlands (Kaliphlin Guildlands) is probably the best thing we have so far for our guild. I based it off a rough sketch that Si-MOCs had posted last week sometime. The general shapes probably fit pretty well together. On my map, the words "Siccus Badlands" in the middle are probably about in the same position as the words on "Akribi River" your map. So if you draw a horizontal line across from there, consider my map the source for everything south of that line, and I'll consider your map the source for everything north of that line. I'll repost a new version of mine, modified to fit into yours, probably on Saturday.

Nice builds, SI-mocs and K-nut! Should we have an index of Kaliphlin MOCs somewhere? Maybe edit the first post of this thread to put them in there?