Gideon

Nice to see more backstory to why your sigfig ended up in Historica! And illustrated with a nice little MOC as well I think I like the vegetation parts the most. Are those real lego 6 x 5 leaves? In that case I'm jealous

Beautiful statue and nice little figs building it! What struck me however whas how you had managed to use several cheese slopes after each other smoothly with that headlight technique. Even if it may be an established technique I've never noticed it before

True, we would benefit from having someone on the "inside"...

Or a separate sticky presentation thread where all active members can make a post with their sigfig / side characters and some backstory regardless of guild? We can then update our posts if there are major changes, or just to be able to update regularly ourselves without having someone else update for us. If such a thread was made, it should be heavily moderated so only one post would be allowed per member. I think the bar for such a solution would be lower than pointing to the GoH wiki, which is updated irregularly at best...

I think Kaliphlin should be satisfied with consolidating our own lands and seeing to our own back yard if the rumors of rebellion are to be believed. And besides, what would there be to conquer which would provide us with something that we can't get easier and cheper (with a profit even!) by trade? When it comes to the leadership of Kaliphlin, I'm not sure if we need one strong dictator leader. The idea of a council of lords and merchant princes ruling together fits in my opinion Kaliphlin better. I have to add that Sir Gideon is not at the moment interested to become a candidate to the leadership of Kaliphlin, such administrative tasks are way to boring for his restless and adventurous mindset.

Truly wonderful build! I agree with previous comments that is it the best I've seen from you (yet )! The tower itself is gorgeous, but the scaffolding really makes the scene stand out. The ground is also very good, and the snow-flowers is a great touch! What is the half-globe on top supposed to be? Is it just a beautiful roof or is it something like my first impression that it is something magical...? The only possibility of improvement I can point out (and that is a truly minor one, but I always try to find at least one suggestion to improve when I take the time to write a long comment) is that I think the bridge seems to be "floating" a bit. It could have been sitting more snug to the ground when you take such close-up pictures. Pushing the plates/tiles down with some force and maybe covering up the gaps. At the middle, a grey piece with a tile on top in the water would have made the pillar looking more like it goes down into the water. Keep it up, you've got a wonderful style here!

Wonderful build, I really like your japanese style! The backdrop looks very good as well, just remember another time to rotate your MOC when needed so that the camera angle doesn't pick up things to the side of the backdrop ;) I also think some more light when taking the pictures wouldn't hurt. Other than that, your photography is very good!

I really like the water and the foilage, and the lines of the tower also looks good! However, I'm not totally convinced by the base of the tower, what is it supposed to be? I think some tiles or simply some foilage there as well would have made it look better in my opinion.

Get a cheap pavilion tent with transparent roof (or of a white fabric which doesn't block too much light) and no walls and use it to keep out the rain, while enjoying the perfect diffuse photo light the rain clouds produce? I picked up a plastic 10x10 feet pavilion tent with white roof (to use for my 30th birthday party next weekend) yesterday for the equivalent of $30, and that's with Swedish prices and taxes!

I simply love the Norse atmosphere you are conveying here! Great work especially with the water/ice surroundings and the (SNOTed) clinker boat which looks fabulous!

Top notch (as always)! The color palette is maybe the best and most believable Nocturnian one I've seen and really gets my hopes up for what you will be able to create in the Eastern Darklands. Build wise, I especially like the ground and the lower part of the tower. The new upper part unfortunately looks more like lower level of detail than new and unspoiled construction to me... I think tiles on top of the new stones would have worked better. Just out of curiosity, would this have been a Nocturnian or Avalonian MAC entry?

Then continue building and improving! And then if you are not too fed up with the project, revisit the first build and go through them again when your repertoire of techniques have grown

Wonderful cliffs! I also like the simple but effective texturing in the tower walls, it actually reminded me to use round plates in my MAC entry

I thought it was a new build at first, but then I saw the timestamps... I'm not sure that everyone appreciates bumping threads in this way, if you only want to leave a short positive feedback I would suggest doing it on flickr. But on another note, thanks for making a latecomer like me aware of this nice build and great to see you active in the GoH section! Please stay around here, after all most here would proably agree that GoH is much more fun than LotR anyway

I know that dark red is more rare, but as an observer I don't have to factor in such petty constraints as brick cost I would by the way love to have a brick wall with any colors anywhere nearby, still can't understand why TLG won't at least open a store in Stockholm (which at least would be within 250 km)... Anyway, it's a wonderful build and I'm very much looking forward to more modules!

I like the snow and the path, but the green areas could use some more detailing. Some small green plates, flower stalks or small details of other earth colors would look nice. Being from a subarctic country, I think dark tan might work great among the green since the grass appearing underneath a long winter's melting snow rather has that color

Each section looks worthy of being regarded as it's own free-build so I'd say post them separately so we can admire and post constructive feedback on them as you go!

Perfect! Sir Gideon is looking for new adventures after finishing the repairs to the Petraean city walls. While adventuring, he usually only wears light armor (the arms are supposed to be dark red, its just the bad colors of this shot making them look reddish brown): He could however just as well be depicted in full armor if needed, or like this with the elven hair above.

Wonderful build, I especially like the house to the right. The left one is great as well, but maybe a tad too much "standard red" to match the rest of your wonderful color palette.

Thank you all for your comments and kind words! Of course our capital is the mightiest I wanted to try to build something which looked big in minifig scale, and I had this idea in the back of my head for several weeks when away from my bricks in July. I had no idea of if my tan bricks would be enough (and no time to bricklink more). I ended stretched my supply of tan bricks to the extreme, just some table scraps left even after the painful decision to scrap all my previous Kaliphlin MOCs. I could probably barely fill out the damaged parts and would then probably have to use 2xN plates I found a nice tool in Picasa to adjust the color balance to a known white/grey area (like my backdrop sheet), which helps in getting tan to show a bit better. I've also switched to only use flash bounced on a white roof instead of trying to use other sources of light. So a bit of experience helps, compare to my old photo I'm showing below (shot with incandescent bulb lighting, no backdrop and not a very good white balance...). This just proves again that GoH is an excellent way to improve! I was a bit constrained in my design, since I had already hinted at the design of the tower and walls in my introduction post and wanted to try to replicate that: The new tower has roughly the same shape and size, but as with the wall it got the brick bands added and also got an external stair instead of the ladder I used in the old build. The merlons in the new build didn't get the arrow slits though, mostly because I didn't have enough 1x1 with stud on one side in tan (if you look closely you can see that I used light bley ones in the old build) and wanted to dedicate the few I had to arrow slits in the tower and some SNOT damage details. I originally built the wall to the same width as in the old build, but it looked a bit too thin 8-wide so 1 day before deadline I split it and rebuilt it 10-wide, not least to increase the width of the filling. Do I need to say that it took more time than I had expected to do it? Yes it is historically accurate as far as I know, the inspiration for adding brick bands (and to be honest inspiration in general) came from the walls of Constantinople. This particular technique of using periodic layers of brick (40 cm thick) throughout the wall was used there to strengthen the wall's resilience against earthquakes.

With too little sleep the last few nights, and a few hours to spare before the deadline, I have finally finished a MAC entry as well: Repairing the walls of Petraea

Master Architect Challenge: Repairing the Walls of Petraea The walls of Petraea is one of the mightiest structures in Kaliphlin, tall and strong they have protected the city for centuries. Several miles long, they encircle the entire city of Petraea. During the onslaught by the elementals, for example as described here, parts of the walls got damaged and hard work is ongoing to repair them. The wall is faced with cut blocks of the ubiquitous Kaliphlin limestone and has a core of mortar mixed with various solid objects such as bricks, stones, roof tiles and parts of even older structures. In long parts of the walls a clever building technique has been used,where several bands of brick are laid through the whole thickness of the wall. In addition to its decorative value, the brick bands also bond the stone face to the mortar core increasing the strength of the wall. At irregular intervals, depending on the terrain, towers provide defenders with positions to fire upon attacking enemies. A typical tower can be seen here, with a battlemented roof and several floors with windows or arrow slits, depending on the height above the ground. The lower floors of the tower are accessed by a door at the back of the tower, while the top floor and roof platform are accessed from the walkway on top of the wall. Sir Gideon is assisting in this effort by hiring the Arkbri Falcons to repair one stretch of the wall where the tower and top of the wall got damaged. The Falcons are of course doing very little manual labor themselves, but are instead using a group of orcish prisoners of war captured when The soldiers of the Arkbri Falcons seize all the opportunity they can to bully their captured orcs, and everyone turns a blind eye to this practice as former servants of Victor Revolword are thoroughly disliked in Petraea. Ediz Falconi and his men certainly don’t work for free, not even when aiding old friends as Sir Gideon. As with the Arkbri Falcons, the Petraean guards also prefer to idly watch the orcs do the work rather than lending a helping hand themselves. A captain of the Petraean city guard is however patrolling the walls to inspect the progress of the repairs, and he might not be entirely satisfied with his lazy soldiers... Don’t look down! Built in only three days as my time away from my bricks got extended due to extraordinary good weather. This was by far the most forced build and also the most tan-consuming build I’ve made. I’m not entirely satisfied with the photos, so I will maybe re-shoot later but this first attempt is what I had to work with to meet the MAC deadline. Also pardon (and please point out!) any typos and grammar errors as I write this at a time which is way into the night Swedish time...

Nice build, good luck in the MAC! I really enjoy how you are showing how yet another culture is adding its touch and flavour to the already colorful Kaliphlin mix.

45 min is still what I would consider next door But I'm happy for you, just keep GoH in mind when you are expanding your collection and I'm sure we will see more good Mitgardian builds from you!

I will have a couple of days at the start of next week to build something if the weather isn't too good to stay indoors. It would be a shame if we only managed to produce one single Kaliphlin entry!