Grover

FYI, you may want to ask an admin to move this thread to the LEGO Historic Forums if you would like more traffic and replies. The Guilds of Historica is a subforum for builds related to the Historica world storyline. It's confusing because the tagline says it'sa a MOCers paradise, but the non-Historica MOCs are out in the main Historic forums.

A grand Hello to all of our current Historica guild members! I am honored to announce that I am the new guild leader of Avalonia. Currently, we are looking at starting Book IV, as we have some new members and current member activity is somewhat slow. We are planning on offering a number of traditional activities (challenges, etc.), but also would like to take this opportunity to hear from all of you, old and new members alike, as to what you would like to see in Book IV. For those of you who are newer, I would like to ask some questions: • What drew you to Eurobricks and the Guilds of Historica? Did you want to have a place to post awesome builds? Were you hoping to get feedback and grow as a builder? Did you like the cohesive storyline? • What aspect of the Guilds here do you like the most? The least? • What questions do you have about the Guilds that might help you understand the activities here better? Technical questions about the various ongoing challenges (age of Mitgardia, University of Petrea, etc.)? Short synopsis of the history of the various books? • Although you have likely chosen a guild already, how would you rank the guilds in your level of interest and why did you rank them this way? Any other thoughts or questions are welcome. We are taking a look back at what has worked well in the past and what is no longer relevant to make everyone's time more enjoyable. We all build for fun, and our time is precious, so we aim to make this an enjoyable and fulfilling experience for everyone. For our veteran builders: • What of our ongoing challenges (settlements, age of Mitgardia, Avalonian tasks etc.) do you like the most and least? • Which challenges did you like the best and least? For example, I joined some years ago when I returned from my dark ages and was looking for a place that had experienced, high quality builders who were willing to critique my castle builds and help me get better. To this end, I found the Guilds, which is filled with some really amazing builders, and joined up. As a mostly castle builder, this was a natural place, and I loved the story aspect to the Guilds that provided a cohesive theme for everyone's build, and a collective narrative. It struck me more as a collaborative story than a role playing game, and as such, no one was stuck waiting for you to 'take a turn' and you could contribute as much or as little as you had time for, making for a more relaxed pace that I could sustain for a long time. Those builders who have critiqued my builds have helped me the most, and I love when builders will show the techniques for their various builds. @soccerkid6 and @LittleJohn have done a great job with some tutorial builds in the Historic forum, and comments from them and others on my specific builds have been incredibly valuable to me as learning tools. Were I to rank my interest in the guilds, it would probably be Avalonia (duh!) > Mitgardia > Nocturnus > Varlyrio ~~ Kaliphlin. That's not to say I dislike any of the guilds at all, and I plan to build in all of them (I think I need to build in Mitgardia and Kali still...), but I have always loved the traditional castle setting, and have a love of the viking scene. Nocturnus I found fun, open to about anything, and almost whimsical at times. Valyrio is very interesting to build in and allows some more modern techniques, and Kali has some cool desert aspects that don't appear anywhere else. For my character's story, I wanted to work on my traditional castles, as I love that genre, so that made my decision. Don't worry, we have plenty of fun too. I try to do a joke build for each challenge with my alter ego, Bob (search for Bob the Unemployed Avalonian Plumber if you want to see ridiculous builds), and you are free to have a blast. Thanks for all your input, and I am excited for the upcoming Book IV!

Now that I have my latest freebuild posted and updated the settlement list, I now have my plate cleared off, and I am ready to officially make the announcement: I have been asked to take over as the guild leader of Avalonia, and with much humbleness and gratitude, I have accepted this responsibility. I am very honored that @Henjin_Quilones has asked me to take over this great role, and to have the support of the other guild leaders that are still active here. A *huge* thank you to Henjin, who spent a lot of time organizing and cleaning up the various roles, tasks, lists, and other administrative tasks that keep Historica together. His efforts have helped me keep on top of things, and he has some really amazing builds to boot. Currently there is a forum hiccup that prevents links from working, but you can still find these pages with an internet search of "Eurobricks" and whatever thread you're looking for. Hopefully the links will be fixed shortly. I'm going to try and organize some of the intro threads a bit more to help with finding some of the legacy ongoing threads such as the settlement index. In any case, I would like to formally welcome all the new members to our guild! We are working on getting Book IV started, but we would like some of your input, so when you have a chance, please take a look over in the Book III thread and let us know!

Prenmôr Hops Farm As the castle began to take shape on the rocky plateau overlooking the ocean and river, the small community of Prenmôr began to draw some attention. No doubt aided by the dealings of Ambassador Gisela, the town started to take on a reputation as a place of refuge where opportunity flourished. The large brewery operating in the up and coming castle required a significant amount of wheat, oats, and hops, and a few families had moved to Prenmôr to farm there. One of these recent additions was the family of Helena Eichsdottir, the strong-willed daughter of a Mitgardian Jarl, who had come of age and found opportunities for women in her father's tribe lacking, so had moved to northern Avalonia in the foothills of the mountains on the Mitgardian border. She had learned some harsh life lessons about self-sufficiency, but with this came wisdom, and after a time in the small community there, love. After starting a family, Helena decided that the dry, cold mountainous foothills did not provide the abundance she wanted for her family, so she sought a warmer climate more conducive to farming. After meeting Lady Gwenllian at the large concert in Prenmôr the previous year, she had moved her family there in the spring. With the help of the local community, they had built a modest house, and now were enjoying the more mild coastal weather, watching their hops grow faster than they had ever seen in the mountains. The vines produced bright green hops that were plucked off the vine by local workers and collected in large bins, backpacks, and sacks. These were then taken to the castle under construction at the top of the hill and were there traded for supplies, other foodstuffs, steel tools from Sven's forge and occasional coin. Coin was sparse in Prenmôr, but it was quickly growing as the community expanded and grew more ties to the neighboring villages.

There's a couple of reasons that I like the 1x1 plates and tiles for details: 1. Most people usually have at least a handful since they are frequently 'extra' parts in a set 2. If you want a lot of one, they are usually cheap direct from Lego 3. Small parts can be combined to make larger parts, but not the other way around, so you can use them in microscale, full scale, as detail in a setting etc. Occasionally they appear on the PAB wall, although I've only once seen them in what I would consider to be a useful color for medieval building (dark stone grey). It really isn't a big deal, since you don't need a lot of them to be effective.

Thank you! I thought I might be doing something wrong, and I was! Appreciate the help!

@SimWies, congrats on getting front paged! I'm glad that @MKJoshA made this a featured post. I learned a lot from his builds, particularly since he was gracious enough to share some of his techniques with the rest of us. I hope that with this featured post, we have a few other outstanding builders who may contribute some thoughts. We have a lot of talent on the forums here, and I found it one of the best places to learn, so I try to pass on knowledge others have shared with me and various tips and tricks I have learned as well. There are variations on what I posted above, too. If you have, say 1x1 quarter round tiles in med. stone grey or dark stone grey, these can replace the same tiles in green as rocks. More spotty vegetation suggesting poor soil may be accomplished by leaving a hole in the green plates to a brown plate below, maybe with some grey 1x1 round plates as rocks, etc. The options are limitless. Rather than simply write a suggestion, I thought I'd make a few example builds, and since I still have the small scene together, I can try to incorporate others' ideas and get pictures for a more complete look.

Now that we have spoilers back ... (yay!) I haven't had an issue embedding flickr links, but https links, such as in imgur, will not embed, such as this: https://imgur.com/kdVXhea Is this a forum issue or is this new? I have never had issues previously. Thanks!

You are quite welcome, and your build is lovely. I also appreciated that your tree stump is right in the line of fire for the tower, and this tree would have likely been cut down not only for being too close to the road and overhanging travelers, but also because it blocked the line of sight for the archer in the tower to fire on hostiles in the road. As @T-86(swebrickLUG) said, you can add to your build with some foliage, and of course, with more variety in parts comes more detail. This takes more pieces and with a limited piece count, you did very well. I also appreciate that you didn't reach and use too many shades of green or clutter up your build with so many great ideas that it was too busy and you lost the overall feel. Going a bit further in detail with common pieces can be challenging, but I wanted to take a quick opportunity to do sort of a master class in this, if you will, that I invite our other members to jump in on. To start, I tried to reproduce the landscape you had, at least in the foreground: Then, using some common 1x1 grey elements, and the more elusive but not entirely uncommon 1x1 dark tan, scattered a few about the path to make some loose soil. Additionally, I added a 1x2 brown slope as a tree root from the stump. The next step would be to try to smooth out any blocky corners with things like 1x1 quarter round tiles in green, a 1x2 rounded slope, and a couple of olive 1x1 round tiles to fill in odd corners or break up long lines. Fairly small additions, but these small things can help bring some detail and break up long lines in more organic matter.

Very nice job! It's nice to see some more builds rolling in!

Wow, what a fantastic piece, and a great story too! Before I go further, I must stop and marvel at your English. It's fantastic! I am always so impressed on these international boards how everyone's English is so amazingly good. I am very humbled as I cannot write in another language as good as everyone else here. Back to Lego... this is an outstanding build, and I think that maybe it shows that GoH is still doing the right thing. It is obvious that you have read through many comments and threads here, and you have avoided so many of the mistakes we all did when we started out. For starters, I love that you have integrated the path beneath the grass (and not built above as many of us did initially) which makes is much more realistic, and then you smoothed the edges with wedge plates to make it even more appealing. You have some really nice texture to your grasses with plate height changes, which is nice and smooth, and you have an amazing irregular base. On top of that, the tower is great! The roof has some nice tiling, and has a gorgeous flush seam at the top! The railing on the top of the tower is genius, and has a very minimalist feel to it while still looking clean. I also appreciate how you mixed old and new grey bricks together, something that I think gives a nice texture to the stone. The SNOT ingot tiles are beautiful and really drive home the brick effect of the stone. (I should have used some of these in my recent castle build!). You also included a door on the top of the tower, something many times neglected, as well as a stone merlon for cover (although flanking this archer may be easier due to the minimal railings on his sides, at least he can protect his own door!). The two trees are solid, and you have attached enough of the limb pieces that they don't look thin. Trees are particularly hard to do, and you did a fine job with a limited piece count. I would also like to say that this is one of the first builds that I have seen that truly holds to the 'You don't need a lot of pieces to make a nice build'. I usually don't like hearing that because it was just said by someone who made an 8x8 build of sand blue, sand red, dark brown, and olive. You did a nice job with the mini positioning and the photography as well. Everything is in focus, the lighting is pretty good, and all the minis are clearly positioned. I like the story! I'm excited to see where Sam and Alric go, which is great! If you can make people want to keep reading, you have succeeded. I want to learn more of their homeland and their travels, and look forward to seeing more builds!

I'm trying to get in touch with leadership here to get things rolling again. I hope to ignite some builds and keep things going on GoH. I'm currently building a hops farm, a collab started with @Kai NRG, so we should see some builds soon!

Thanks!

It definitely happens. I had not planned on spending almost 3 years with bricks in storage as I moved and had to work on my house to make it liveable, but c'est la vie! Best of luck to you for your summer builds! I hope to be back in the saddle again this summer as well!

Thanks! I tried to make the whole place seem like things were moving, so glad it came across! The round tower has been a design I've been working on and refining ever since I found the original I based it on over on the innova lug website (which now gives me errors). I have a pic in a spoiler below for anyone interested on how it's constructed. Thank you! I try to go for realism as much as I can (although it is a fantasy world, so I prefer the term 'realism' over 'historically accurate'). I was fascinated about the 'putlog' holes when I read about them and knew I needed to build a castle under construction scene out of Lego. One other fun fact: over 2/3 of all livestock in the medieval period was fowl! So I have tried to incorporate as many chickens as possible, as they generally ran everywhere in the medieval period. Since Prenmôr is on the coast, I also try to add seagulls (and whitewash) as much as possible. I tend to use the fleshies and yellow heads to signify various lineages. Usually, the fleshies signify some sort of non-human ancestry in my Lego world, so you see a lot of elf and dwarf fleshies, but there are definitely exceptions. Thanks! I tried to make the darker dirt freshly torn up by wagon wheels and thought the dark brown underneath brought that out, although admittedly it used almost all my dark brown! I have been collecting it for a while, but broke quite a bit on this build since the older dark brown was brittle. Not sure if that is fixed now or not.

@Kai NRG, funny enough, I had thought of the same thing, and then asked about its function on the general forum, and *poof*, they are back! Woo hoo!

I can't seem to figure out how to put a spoiler in now to hide text unless clicked on. Is there a guide somewhere? Old posts with spoilers still work so this obviously is possible.

Thank you! I am glad you enjoy seeing your characters stories weaving into some of the Avalonian story. I'll keep them going and when you have time, you can stop in and read! The microscale is kind of funny, I'm not a huge microscale fan, but I keep updating the microscale build for every story drop I have so one can monitor the progression of the castle build as it happens! Thanks! I spent a lot of time with the stone setup. The batter is a little fiddly, as are the round walls, but I'm really happy with the look and stability. As the castle walls go up, I'm going to stick with the technique and will hopefully have removable floors. I still have to figure out how to incorporate the arrow loops and the windows on the round tower, but it's coming along! And thanks for the congrats on the move/setup. As anyone who has moved with a Lego collection knows, it is *not* easy to do. My last place was a temporary rental and I was there almost 3 years. Sooo glad to have a permanent space again. I'm hoping that we can get some more action back into the Guilds soon!

Castle Construction | Grover | Avalonia Hops Farm | Grover | Avalonia

I am finally organized and back in the saddle. It has been quiet around here, and I'd love to see some more awesome builds from our new members, so it's time for me to step up and get some building going on for Avalonia from some of the older guard (although I myself am not of the first generation on GoH). The latest installment of Prenmôr is below: Can we do spoilers anymore? The latest update killed BBCode, so I'm unsure how to do spoilers, and I used to use them to make my posts shorter. Not sure what to do about that.

The Tales of Lady Gwenllian Castle Construction at Prenmôr The winter in Prenmôr had been cold but largely uneventful. No more work on the castle was possible with the cold weather, which prevented any new mortar from setting, and the partially built walls were covered with straw and daub to insulate them until spring. Aside from winter brewing, which kept Lady Gwenllian and some of her household busy, there was little to do besides repairs and sharpening tools. The same had not been true for Ambassador Gisela. Gisela had learned from her father Staffen that the revenge for her brother's death was at hand, and she had traveled back to Varlyrio to take part. The usual fraught and overly complex machinations Varlyrio was known for had transpired, but this time her father wound up on the losing side. Staffen had been betrayed by cowards, as she told it, and Poppa had been kidnapped in Kaliphlin from her secret location, with her bodyguard Tsiri, the Kaliphlin Champion, having been murdered in the process. Gisela, ruthless as ever, had bribed, threatened, and eviscerated her way through the secrecy surrounding the kidnapping, and, again as she told it, rescued her sister from a fortified residence in Kaliphlin where she was held captive by mercenaries paid by the De Carlo family who (at the time) sat in the Rego's chair in Varlyrio. Presently, Lady Gwenllian walked through the brisk spring air, observing progress on the castle construction with Gisela and her younger sister Poppa struggling to keep up with their long strides. Mohatu, ever watchful, trailed not far behind. "So you did not have to fight the De Carlos?" Lady Gwenllian asked. "No, m'lady, only the mercenaries, who were no match for our hired muscle. The De Carlos had left Poppa with them, since they themselves were too incapacitated from the qui amat capras disease." "Isn't that the uniquely caprine venereal affliction arising from direct contact?" Lady Gwenllian asked. "Yes," Gisela nodded. "It is fatal and victims deteriorate quickly once symptoms appear, but it can lay dormant for years. Fortunately, it cannot be passed from person to person. Unfortunately, or so it would appear, there was a family proclivity for a, er.... herd mentality, since few of the De Carlos were spared," Gisela quipped. "I guess that's one way to ... goat," Lady Gwenllian commented, smirking at her own jest and rather proud of herself for being able to make a pun in the Historican language that was still at times a little new to her. "I am glad that you are back. The winter allowed some fine brewing, and we are now have a large stock to sell. Are you ready to find some trading partners?" she asked. Gisela smiled her crooked, mischievous smile. Seeing the expression on Gisela's face, Poppa skipped a step, understanding the trouble it meant. However, she knew that Gisela's scheming would not be directed at her, so she picked her skirt hem up off the ground a bit more and ran forward another few steps to catch up. "Yes, I believe there are some nearby dwarven communities that are always thirsty," Gisela said. Lady Gwenllian nodded her approval. "We will need plenty of gold to finish the structure." She turned to face the construction and nodded toward the workers. Gisela and Poppa watched the work with her. "Why are the walls so thick, m'lady?" Poppa asked. Lady Gwenllian smiled. "The walls are thick to stop rocks and other devices fired from siege equipment, and to hold all the weight of the stone above." She pointed to the round tower and wall section being constructed in front of them. "The lower part of the wall flares out, and is called a batter. It not only strengthens the construction because the base is wider than the top, but it also deflects missiles dropped from the defenders on the wall above out into the attackers below." Poppa's eyes widened. "The inner and outer part of the wall is solid stone that is held together with mortar, but the inside is filled with gravel, lime, and other small rocks. This provides solidity and also pours out onto attackers if the wall is ever breached, say, with a battering ram." Lady Gwenllian pointed to the scaffolding. "The walls are built with natural placement for scaffolding. The workers call them 'putlog' holes, and logs are stuck into these recesses in the stone wall. These form a ramp upward, and are braced to the ground with other logs. To these are added a ramp and then further supports. Every so often, there is another set of holes. In this way, ramped scaffolding all around the structure allows workers to slide heavy mortar, stones, or gravel up the ramp without having to lift and carry it up stairs." "Putlog holes at the top of the wall are even and allow for hoardings to be installed on the walk in times of war. These project out over the wall and allow cover for defenders to drop missiles and other weaponry onto attackers." Poppa watched the workers for a while, fascinated with all the simple, yet rather ingenious engineering and design principles that went into this structure. Gisela tugged at Poppa's sleeve. "Let us return to Lady Gwenllian's house. You shall remain under constant guard until we are assured the threat from Varlyrio is passed, and that may not be for some time." Lady Gwenllian nodded, and turned to Poppa, bending over and putting her massive hand on Poppa's small shoulder. "I give you my word I will protect you while you remain in my care," she said to Poppa, who smiled up at the enormous warrior. Lady Gwenllian couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw a slight smile of approval on Muhato's leonine face out of the corner of her eye. ---------- Well, it has been a while! After my (hopefully final) move, it took quite a while to get the house fixed up and my Lego collection organized, but I am back in business now and hope to be putting out some more builds soon! It took me some time to learn how to insert images now that BBCode is gone, and I'm still unsure how to do spoilers or if that is even possible, so hopefully this post isn't too cluttered. Glad to have Lady G moving along again, and hope that we can get some new fires lit here in the guilds. As always, C&C welcome!

Beautiful! Love the inlaid mosiac cheese slopes combined with the base of the swivel 2x2, plus some sideways fences for windows. As others have commented, you have a lot of nice texture here without being over-greebled. The vine over the arched doorway is quite nice. The sagging roof is well done, and the cantilevered deck looks nice. I love the stacked windows with grating, looks great. The stone arch is a little open textured. If you don't mind sacrificing width, you can stack cheese slopes and plates inside the arch to make a more detailed stone arch. I love the detail on the brown roof, and your color blocking combined with the varied roof heights makes a very nice, flowing build. The sideways palisade bricks are some fun texture on the bottom of the Tudor too. Well done!

Love the old style castle. It would be really interesting to see the motte and bailey next to all the iterations until the more modern castles of the 13th and 14th c. Nice work!

Love it! YOu did a great job capturing the Scottish castle feel. That reddish color and square tower motif is great. I wish that Lego still made sand red!

Great wagon! The unevenness and run down look to the roof goes well with the whole motif!