Flipz

I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic...

If that happens, I must finish the Quest 17 quickly so Arthur can get back to the Hall, ask Haldor for dating advice...and then attempt to use it on Jess.

If Wren doesn't manage to break them up, that is...

Oh, one of my plans for Arthur involves the Love Plague...and I don't think anyone is going to see it coming. Trust me when I say, it will drag everyone else in. Though I wish Hinckley was active here so he could help me make it even worse... :devil:

Female orc cleric/mage please! An Orc with Ether! Wait...do we want fries with that?

Seconded!

...woooooooooow... You know, as former leader of the PCG (the rather large LEGO Star Trek fan community on the LU Creation Lab), I thought our stuff was pretty awesome...but you have blown pretty much everything I've built completely out of the water. Some of our other members' stuff is on par with this (we have some very talented young builders), but... Let's just say that I'd feel kind of ashamed to show the things I've built here now. Great, GREAT ship, man, I love it!

Arthur follows Althior down to the kitchens. "Hey, Althior, do you think you could use your Wood gem to make a lemon or two? Ever since we made the gunpowder, I started thinking bout the old phrase...when life gives you lemons, make lemon-ades." OOC: If no one else drops the obvious reference at the top of their lungs, I will.

I vow to make this list next this year. Congrats to everyone who got an award! I look forward to seeing the backstories for all of these as I slowly crawl through the Mafia archives.

Awesome list, Sandy! Hmm...does anyone feel like going through the list of mages and highlighting their "starter" and "signature" elements? It would definitely be interesting to see which elements get used a lot and which are overlooked. Ooh! We're sharing the meta-backstory of our characters! *cracks knuckles* OK, prepare for the Wall of Text! Arthur's creation story intersects with the origin of my Lego.com username (which is the same as the one I use here; Flipz), so I'll condense that down to the bare minimum. When I was little, the only "real" (i.e. non-Jump Start and the like) video games I had were Lego games, like LEGO Island, LEGO Rock Raiders, and LEGO Alpha Team. The last one is the game I credit with getting me hooked on current, official LEGO themes, as opposed to old, second-hand sets from garage sales. Alpha Team hooked my interest like no other theme had, and, along with a friend of mine, I started building my own backstory and sequels to the official storyline, most of which revolved around our Author Avatars, Agent Flipz and Agent Roller. Fast-forward several years, and our Alpha Team story had stagnated and died. Not only were we separated by distance, but my friend was moving away from LEGO and we hadn't written very much of our story down. I figured that the Flipz of that story had come to an end, and figured my internet username would become just another anecdote like so many other peoples'. That's when I discovered the LEGO Universe Creation Lab (this was in summer 2008). I was inspired by a story I saw there to write a LU story of my own, but I didn't have anything ready (aside from a single character in a disastrous RPG that I'd sworn to erase from my memory--ironically, several elements of that character later ended up in the new one when I needed to come up with a backstory). That's when I decided to reboot Flipz for the LU world. I wrote a short, low-quality, 3-part story called Dr. Destructo's Doomsday Device. LONG story short, the story was a huge hit, and overnight I became one of the most famous users on the Creation Lab. My stories and creations were featured regularly, and a search of my username on the Lab yielded several dozen pages. The fame is really what kept me tied to LEGO while a lot of other childhood obsessions faded. It also kept me interested in LU, and so when I went to look at the LU development news one morning, I discovered the Bradford Rant ARG. The ARG involved seven "Pods" appearing all over the world, supposedly having crossed the dimensional border between our world and LEGO Universe. Each Pod has a number of unique bricks that (at least at the time) had never existed in actual sets; for example, one of my fellow Pod winners has a number of 2x4 tiles in Agents dark blue. Each Pod also came with a few unique printed pieces, a unique chrome piece (mine is a camera/bazooka piece) and, most importantly, a pilot with unique face, torso, and helmet printing. My Pod pilot is a member of the Paradox faction, Tactical Wing Commander AJR7. Of course, as one of the leading storytellers on the LU Creation Lab, AJR7 had to make it into my creations. I released a few creations with him in them, but most of the story remains as untold backstory because I haven't finished a different story that sets up a lot of the plotlines (as well as telling the backstory of the rebooted Flipz). Then the apocalyptic LU closing announcement came, and I gave up hope on that story ever seeing the light of day. Around this time, I found Eurobricks. I had lurked on and off for quite a while, but the LDD set index and this RPG are what finally pulled me in. I wanted to get started in the RPG right away, but, like with LU, I didn't have any character concepts lying around (aside from a few for my Star Trek RPG, which I didn't want to use for obvious reasons). I also didn't want to do another iteration of Flipz, even though by this time I had explicitly spelled out in backstory that he has a counterpart in every dimension and pocket-dimension in existence, save for a select few. Aside from the fact that I wasn't interested in re-treading the same ground, I knew that a character named directly after myself would make me look like a total n00b. So, I set out to make a new character. I knew I wanted a class that dealt with Ether, because I was (and am) more comfortable writing characters with access to the supernatural elements of the realm than I am writing "muggles" and the like, at least as far as main characters. (One day, maybe! ) I originally wanted to go with Ranger, because my original concept involved a very nature-oriented figure, but Rangers had no access to magic (and I wasn't aware of the Advanced Classes at the time). That meant I needed to go with either cleric or mage. I leaned toward Cleric for the longest time, but ultimately I went with Mage because I felt that the Cleric's magic was just a bit too subtle for my taste, plus I wanted a character that could hold his own in battle. I was digging around in my minifigs drawer and bins, but I just couldn't find anything I liked. I originally wanted to do a character themed around sand blue and earth green, but I was too impatient to get started to wait for a BrickLink order, so I went with the regular blue legs from the Kingdoms Advent Calendar wizard to start with. Since I knew I wanted a magical character anyway, so I went with the hat from the same minifig. I almost took the wand as well, but decided it wasn't "cool" enough, so I turned my attention to the Ninjago Venomari Shrine I had just purchased. I had known from the start that Zane ZX's torso would be useful in many different contexts, so I borrowed it for my mage. The last part I needed was a face; I considered using the face I had always used for Flipz after the reboot (it's the face of the Indiana Jones "Enemy Soldier" in the motorcycle chase set, along with several other sets) so I could later on use him as Flipz' counterpart in Heroica, but when I read about the Mopag race I decided it would just be too difficult to write, and I didn't want to go the route of having my character be a half-elf or something like a few others had already done. That's when it hit me: I should use the one face that I knew would set my character apart from all the rest, the face that no one else on the planet had: AJR7. From there, the rest fell into place; the winner of Pod 4 once told me how he had interpreted his pilot's cipher-esque name to be initials, so I decided to go the same way with AJR7, also setting up that he is the counterpart to the character in the LU universe. As for his backstory, originally I was setting up for him to be from the world of a video game rather popular with FOLs, but since then I've tweaked it a bit so that, while it retains a lot of elements from that world, also has a lot of other, more unique elements that tie it in more directly to the wonderful world Sandy has envisioned for us. ...wow. Flipz cast Wall of Text! It's super effective! :laugh: So, if you've stuck with me through all of that madness, thanks for reading! Now, I have a new question for you all: Can you give us a teaser of what you have planned for your character this year? I'll wait a bit before posting my own answer; one Wall of Text is enough for one poat. :laugh:

Wow, more great images! It should be noted that the bone wolf already exists in-game in a non-armored form. As for the story...well, let me just repost what I posted in the "future of ninjago" topic, since no one will see it otherwise... Here is the actual text from LEGO Universe. Page 8 is where the actual LU part of the story picks up: Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Through the missions, you find out that the Skeletons are mining Maelstrom from Crux Prime (part of the exploded Planet Crux) to forge into weapons and armor that will be more resistant to Spinjitsu. Players spend a lot of time and energy wrecking the place, but it is too late; the Skeletons have equipped themselves with Maelstrom-infused weapons and armor, and are attacking the new, larger Ninjago Monastery world. (I'll summarize and post that story later.)

WHOA, hold up--where is the face on the yellow-skin version of Drake from???

Wow, that wall looks great! Did you get that effect with jumper tiles mounted SNOT, or did you use some sort of variation on the lantern brick quirk?

Actually, SOPA puts the U.S. government in charge of pushing for prosecution, at least the last time I checked. One of the two also made copyright infringement a criminal offense, though I think that provision might have been changed as well. And how do you know that it's only a "small percentage" of legitimate use? Do we have solid numbers indicating the percentage of illegal uses versus legal uses of Megaupload and similar sites? (If so, the U.S. government would probably offer a nice reward if you could direct them to it.) Even if you (like me) believe that piracy is wrong and that copyright holders have the right to be compensated for their content, there's such a thing as being majorly overzealous. The cure (a complete loss of freedom and free speech on the Internet) is worse than the disease. This action was a major overreaction fueled by the same misguided philosophy that drives SOPA and PIPA; if those bills pass, things will only get worse. Even if you ignore the gross violation of U.S. constitutional free speech principles (not to mention the blatant violation of prior restraint), on the level of international law it is a clear-cut case of one country interfering in the sovereign affairs and legal processes of other nations--remind me again how the U.S. has the authority to arrest a Dutch citizen in New Zealand over a copyright claim over a Hong Kong-based company? I know my country's constitution pretty well (I've always made a point of knowing my own rights, and I even took some political science courses over the last semester as part of my general ed), and SOPA and PIPA are direct violations of both its written words and its general spirit. The only way these laws could be "legal" would be if they were passed as a constitutional amendment, and that's (thankfully) pretty much impossible considering the vocal opposition and the sheer number of skeptical people the supporters would have to convince. Getting back to EB and the relevance to LEGO, what is EB's plan in case these bills do pass? Will EB, in order to stay open, ban all outside links (including images)? As the bill is written now, that would be the only way to be safe, and even then there would have to be a lot of heavy-handed (read: permaban) requirements enacted in order to prevent any copyrighted material from being posted in text form. Actually, it would probably be easier for EB to just block all access from American servers, but then they could get caught up in legal battles anyway if someone decides to try to use a proxy to access EB...

Arthur immediately freezes the cigar in midair at the cost of 1 Ether. "Be more careful, man, this could be our best, last defense against the Elves!"

"*Sigh*...it's a basic alchemical reaction: •2 parts sulphur •3 parts charcoal •15 parts saltpetre Makes a powerful substance that we can put to all kinds of nefarious purposes." EDIT: "...which the voice in the sky calls 'gunpowder', like I do. I'm not sure if the people of this land refer to it by that name, though, so I wasn't certain. In the meantime, I'm going to the Kitchen to mix these together, in the proportions I mentioned a second ago."

Arthur suddenly has another brain wave. He builds two more copies of the cauldron framework, this time nailing a couple of spare barrels to them instead of a cauldron. He then fills the barrels with stones. "Althior! Where should I set these up??" While he waits for Althior's response, he goes back to sifting through the manure pile looking for small crystals of saltpeter. "Boy am I glad my ice "armor" (SP:0) protects me from the mess!"

Um...am I a bad person for being glad Doc got lynched so he has more time for Heroica?

You all realize that if these bills pass, Eurobricks could be shut down entirely if ANYONE posts a SINGLE leaked set photo, right? And considering how often that happens, "could be" should be read "will be".

Oh, man, I SO wanna play around with these in Blender...but the link isn't working. Any chance of a direct link to the file download?

... My thoughts exactly! Only more so, since I've been playing since Alpha! Indeed!

"Ah, I see. I'd rather just keep the elves from getting to the doors in the first place, we can set up traps for inside the fort IF they manage to bring down the walls."

"We don't have doors on the outside of the fort. That'd be just silly. Besides, these elves are determined to take us down, no matter the consequences. If they could be intimidated into leaving us alone, they wouldn't be coming for us, and yet we can see they are on their way. "Also, we can set these up to a tripwire or some other such remote trigger. The voice in the sky already told us we can set them off whenever we need to, without wasting manpower. "I'm not saying your idea of making the wall appear deserted is a bad one, but letting them walk right into the fort is not the best plan right now. If the Elves manage to break down the fort walls, perhaps THEN we should worry about setting traps inside the fort."

Arthur sighs. "Well, worth a shot." He grabs a old, rusty shovel (OOC: read: unsuitable for treasure-digging) and starts scooping through the large pile of manure at the stables. He is careful to stay out of range of the elven horse, but just to be safe, he coats himself in a thin, protective layer of ice for cleanliness. OOC: For clarification, saltpeter is easily found as the crystalline deposits around and underneath aged piles of manure. If this fort has been used for any length of time at all, there should be a lot of it.

From looking at the episodes, I'd actually have to say that the reddish-brown hair IS the right color--neither dark orange nor the dark brown seem to match properly. The dark brown looks better on the minifig as a placeholder, though.