Emma

Book II Challenge I Category A Dragon’s Blood The human Nimueh and her companion the Dark Horse have been traversing Nocturnus with warnings of the oncoming war. The Black Spire has spewed forth legions across the Darklands, destroying everything in their path. Very few of the smaller villages have any chance against the vial hordes. Nimueh: “They will be here before nightfall. You must leave now and make for one of the more defensible cities. Remain here and you will only meet death.” Village Elder: “We will not flee like cowards! We would rather stay and die then run!” “Wait…” a feeble voice whispered from the shadows. An old woman stepped forward and with a shaking hand held out a small vial. Nimueh took it carefully from her out stretched hand. “What is it?” With a gnarled finger, the old woman gestured towards Dark Horse, “The changeling can save us… with help from this, the blood of a dragon.” “How…?” Nimueh didn’t have time to wonder how the old woman new of Dark’s powers, the Spire horde was nearly upon them. The dragon’s blood would give Dark the extra power he would need to shift into something as great and powerful as a dragon. And with a dragon, they would decimate the Spire’s troop. Taking out her dagger, Nimueh approached Dark. He lowered his head in assent and allowed Nimueh to run the dagger along his shoulder, a small stream of blood flowed freely. She opened the vial and poured a single drop of the contents into Dark’s open wound. Drawing power from dragon’s blood, Dark’s form twisted and convulsed and stretched, black wings stretched above the villagers, and hot flames burst from his mouth. The old woman’s eyes gleamed “Go, crush our enemies and save our village.” Dark flew off to meet the horde. Nimueh and the villages followed to pick off the stragglers, and pile the burning bodies. C&C always welcome. Larger pictures on flickr.

Great story - although it's sounding a bit dire for the Ardethains . I like the colour scheme and the design of the wall facade, also the Sleepyhead head works really well for a dead/injured character.

This is a nice clean build - lovely colour choices. You also used old and new grey bricks together very effectively, not always an easy thing to do. I also think it would have been nice to somehow cover up the bottom of the leaning bridge - maybe with some more swamp plants.

20. gazumpty - 1 27. Galaktek - 1 28. Simon_S - 1 38. vecchiasignoraceppo - 1 53. Cara - 1 Really great work everyone - I had to be very picky in order to narrow down my list of favorites to just five.

Lol, I think the Minecraft bacon is a hit. Thanks so much for the comments . You should, you really should .

Nice work! I really like the irregular base, and the cage design is great. The Black Spire doesn't stand a chance .

Thanks for the comments/feedback everyone . lol yep - I thought it weirdly appropriate. Eeps! you're right, I'm usually so careful about conforming to the rules, I don't know how I missed that - I'll try to get it modified before the deadline. Thanks for pointing that out .

Time for a little taste of Canada in the winter village market. The trees have been tapped and the sap is a-boil. Visit the maple syrup stand for a selection of delicious treats; perhaps a sample of maple sugar candy for the little ones or buy a bottle of syrup to take home... a plate of hot pancakes and Canadian bacon doused in syrup might just hit the spot... It's also nice to warm up by the fire and watch as the tree sap transforms into sweet syrup. (A light brick lights up the fire, as well as the small stove inside.) One final look at the maple syrup stand: Thanks for having a peek at my entry, comments and critiques are always welcome. Good luck to everyone entering, there's lots of great Winter Village Market MOCs so far, and I'm sure many more to come . (Edit: MOC has been modified so that it now follows the contest requirements) (Edit2: I swapped the first and last images, 'cause I think the last one was a bit better for the voting thread - but I realize that I might be too late changing them - if that's the case, I'm cool with that)

Woohoo! My name popped up on the list for the LR figures - Thanks CopMike/Sinner/EB for organizing/running the raffle and all the hard work that entails!

Congratulations to the winners and all the participants, great builds . And thanks Jim for organizing this - it inspired some great builds - also seeing all the contest info was very interesting.

Awesome stuff! I really like the overall shape of the fortress, very unique, and the details are lovely. I'm not sure if there is enough light in the build to make this even feasible, but a shot that was lit entirely from the lava lights would be really neat (get the build on a dark backdrop, in a really dark room, and use a really long exposure...) The Black Spire doesn't stand a chance.

14: 4 18: 1 22: 1 23: 4 Really awesome builds everyone , and best of luck!

Love the colours going on here, everything goes together so well. Also, the architectural style, fig posing, and photography are all excellent too. A sure fire contender for winner of the category 1 challenge...lol

Nice work! The dragon is very organic looking; the curvy body is definitely my favorite aspect of this build with the really nice shaping and the details you were able to incorporate. I also like how Kaliphlin-y it looks with the sand and trees.

I too really like the curvy sandscaping, and the fig design is excellent -> it just needed to be whittled down to 10x10...

Lovely micro-build . I especially like the use of the dark green tooth pieces and the river running through the city. And the card-version is superb!

Awesome prizes . Thanks so much CopMike/EB for hosting this again, and good luck to everyone who entered.

Got my first title a little while ago but forgot about posting it here. Backin' the Drakarkan: very likely from ZC back when he first got his super powers, in reference to these guys.

I really like how it's nestled in amongst the rocks, it feels so cozy - a great location to build barracks. Looking forward to phase III, and thanks for the tree tutorial, I will have to give that a try.

Those angle are insane, I can't even imagine how it all fits together . This is a really beautiful build, but I'm super curious as to what the inside looks like (and feel slightly sorry for the chief living there, lol).

Great work SK! My favorite part is definitely the snow drifts, very realistic - we just got our first snow storm of the season, and it almost looks like that outside my window.

Nice work with the tower, it's got some nice textures going on and the angle of the build adds a nice touch A little bit of scrubby vegetation on the ground might be a nice addition, the tower has so much great detail, it almost feels like the ground isn't quite complete. Also, if possible, turn off the flash on the camera -> this will get rid of the glare, and avoid funny shadow effects.

Thanks all for the kind comments ! And Gabe, I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Anyone else building something for the L&DiK mini-challenge? Ska came up with some really neat ideas for it...

Thanks guys! I'm glad the card version of the scene is well-liked @mrcp6d -> the subtitle of this could have been "a small scale study in angled rockwork." I've really been inspired by a lot of the rock landscaping here in GOH, and so I wanted have a go at something a bit more complex than what I've done so far. Also the arch/portal thing was intended to allude to the idea that this is a scene from a card (it's the outline of the card, integrated into the build)

Great job with this story (both the written part and the pictures) - I have a feeling Vladivus ain't going to be too pleased when he finds out what Zurias has done. Also, I really like how you have Corocus' eyes closed.