Basiliscus

Really nice work! Love those tan arches and the harvester is well built. The speeder is a really nice design, but I think it's almost too big for the base, it kind of dominates the MOC and not in a good way. Keep up the good work!

The build itself is really well done - love the angled wall panels and the 100% LEGO shots you've created. There's lovely details around the room - the globe, the helmet, the table, etc - that bring the scene to life. As I said on Flickr the floor is a bit overdone to my tastes but it's certainly a novel approach. The story is a little bit garbled to me, it's not the easiest to follow. I think it would be good if you demystified a few things: Why does the father not want to use the name de Cioto? Why is Horus coughing blood? Why did the boy not knock?

Really fantastic brick-built camel and the minifig posing (especially the soldier pulling the chain) is very natural looking. The desert scene is quite simple but works well here, I like the layering of tan and dark tan plates. I'm not too sure about the black base, it's a bit distracting for me. Great job!

Really lovely ship design, great choice of sail, the colours go nicely. The dark blue base presents it well too. Good job!

The house itself is exquisite - the stonework is well detailed and not too overpowering, the walls have some crazy angles, and the roof looks believable and the whole thing uses a fantastic colour palette. I like the colours you've used for the landscape, the dark green grass and light flesh/dark orange road go well together. My only critique is that while the trees look good, those three leaf plants are almost too big for minifig scale MOCs unless you use them as jungle or something. They make it feel like it's a gnome's house or something. You've been way too hard on yourself in the description - this is a top notch MOC and you should be proud of it!

Great effort folks, I've just noticed we have four out of four entries so far, much better showing than challenge I! I am hoping to enter two entries too, I'm a little behind but fingers crossed get them in for the end of January.

Really great MOC! Love the brick built clouds and sky! The concept itself is a great idea and something I had been looking into myself. The benches and surrounding stone statues and tree are really well built and make the scene seem larger than it really is. Probably your best MOC yet!

Really well written story here! Certainly a nice way to introduce your character. The first image is well done and I love that both are 100% LEGO shots.

Really nice work! Love the tan slopes on each side of the road, it looks quite natural as the water would sort of run off like that. I like the architecture of the buildings and the inclusion of the aqua plates - although the ones perpendicular to the wall with studs outwards don't look as good as the ones integrated into the wall itself. Enjoying your story too!

This is a stunning entry to challenge B! Love the all LEGO shots to illustrate the story, they really bring it to life. The arena itself is really well designed, love the bricks in the interior of the wall and the dragon motif above the gateway. The arena ground is really detailed too without overdoing it. Great job!

Well I guess whomever led whomever we're here now! Just like the Conzagas will be saying to the de Ciotos soon - you're trapped now and there's no escape!

Really mysterious opening build! Love the cinematic 100% LEGO shots, these are definitely in vogue currently. Great characters as well, although I'm a little confused to all the names superimposed on the images. Who are all these people and how do they relate? I'm more confused than enlightened currently. Also, it might be worth explicitly mentioning that this is your character introduction for Varlyrio as it doesn't say that anywhere in the text. Other than that it's great to have such a talented builder as yourself in Varlyrio, and I wish you an enjoyable time of betrayal and backstabbing!

@Judge of the Wastelands: given this is the guild of intrigue, I'm reading deeper into your name change. I think it's a cold and calculated ploy to be given this title for real!! Welcome to Varlyrio @W Navarre! It's only taken me about 3 months to persuade you, so glad it finally paid off. Your character introduction is suitably mysterious, but the builds are gorgeous. Look forward to murdering off our characters together!

Can families earn positions not related to their trade? For example, the Conzagas are wine merchants, but can they earn the Minister of War position if I build a lot of military themed builds? The reason I ask is that it's a bit limiting only being able to build wine related builds, I've already built a vineyard (Conzaga Manor) and tavern (Murder at the Golden Flag Inn) so there's limited things left. Most of the intrigue does not necessarily need to be related to wine, but instead is related to power and politics.

Really gorgeous design! Love the dark green colour scheme and the colours used for the base. Great job all round!

Glad you don't object to my suggested storyline @Rogue Angel! I agree the wastelands can have a lot of variety and my question was "will my interpretation make sense in context" rather than "this is how the wastelands would look". It's a large geographical area so while a crusade in all but name is going on in one area that doesn't mean other areas can't have fantasy races living in harmony. GoT is a much better example of the theme I'm going for - in contrast to Tolkien I love GRRM's characters (even the bad ones). In that vein there will be collaborating orcs attacking their own kind, humans who want to help the orcs, etc, because that shows that individuals have their own motivations.

Appreciate things escalated there, but just to be clear that when I said: This was in direct response to: In other words, I was trying to get across that my disdain for Tolkien is because he writes boring characters and makes entire races (e.g. the evil orcs) behave like mindless drones and personally I don't find that wholly believable (being fantasy and all that). I appreciate a storyline largely mirroring events like the crusades and the American old west will be darker than the GoH norm but I just can't read/write stories any other way. For me what makes stories interesting is the characters, and everyone has their own desires which motivate them. Sometimes they do good and sometimes they do evil. I don't think they are universally applicable to entire groups of people. That's how I see the world anyway.

Thanks for clarifying gents! What does this rift look like then? Is it a bottomless chasm, a step change in the landscape, or is it just marked for convenience and the mountain range is the only physical manifestation? South works for me! Eventually hopefully we can have a more detailed map as I am terrible at remembering this stuff. That's more or less how I imagined it - maybe one or two predominantly human-centric city in the wastelands (e.g. @Andrew Spader's town of Gromm) but otherwise just scattered orc, minotaur and Scarlet Marauder encampments. To be fair, I really just leveraged @Andrew Spader's storyline and expanded it a bit for my own needs. Totally agreed on the race equals character thing. That's basically why I despise Tolkien (controversial I know) because he characterises entire races and to me this is childish and inhibits good storytelling. I think that, albeit fantasy, races such as orcs and minotaurs would have their own reasons for doing good and evil. I was planning on having humans who want to destroy all the non-human and marauder settlements a la the crusades, but are limited by a lack of manpower and support from the wealthy eastern families, orcs/minotaurs who collaborate with the humans because they want other enemy tribes defeated, humans who live amongst the orcs/minotaurs and want to trade with them, etc. A mixture of the crusades and the American old west is probably about right. Thanks for that! Yes, I can't stand the mix of yellow and flesh either, so hence why I was asking. I'll have a look through my figs later and see what I can do.

Really nice challenge entry, and great to see Varlyrio take first blood! Love those windows, that's a fabulous design, will need to steal that. Unlike @Garmadon, I' not a fan of the Ninjago brick, I think the orange stands out too much from the otherwise muted colour palette. I think the cobblestone technique works great though. I've enjoyed your stories so far but this one was definitely the hardest to follow - I'm glad you clarified a few things. Character bios would really help, and since it's a guild challenge will earn you extra kudos amongst your fellow backstabbers Varlyrians. I think the civil war within the Marauders is a great idea and I like the way you're settings up the wastelands to be an untamed wilderness, that makes it rife for stories and gives an outlet for some military action in lieu of official challenges on the matter. Great work!

Really lovely micro build, the variety of buildings is impressive. I agree with @Drunknok that a trans-clear part holding the ISD in place would be a nice solution. I also think the water could have been better as trans-blue, I always feel that looks more realistic. Great job!

Thanks! One small issue I have is that I am using yellow minifigs for my builds, whereas you are using flesh, if I did include one of your characters would you object if I found a close yellow equivalent? I think I will try and include the marauders and/or your Black Lodge Trading Company in one of my builds. Thanks! Tergiversa is a long way from Mychel's story arc, but glad to know I can use your characters if need be. I'm a bit confused to where Tergiversa is though - you say it's on the coast north of the capital, but then that it's the dot below it? Also I've never understood what the large S-shaped line is going north to south through the middle of Varlyrio is? Can you elaborate? The Conzagas, being wine merchants, don't really own a city as such, they have predominantly agricultural holdings (and a few inns here and there), so I've no city claims. However, I did have an idea to run past you all. I was thinking that since the wastelands are being pacified against the marauders, that it could be a frontier of sorts. I was thinking it could be a little like a crusade - rich families send their sons to serve and also buy adventure hunts of orcs and so on. As part of Meiyo/Mychel's story I was hoping to have him fall in with soldiers raiding an orc village, presumably internal conflict within Varlyrio is fine as long as it's not out of hand?

Lovely little scene, love the elevated ridge and the rain effects. Those crate designs are really cool too!

Lovely little scene there @Kwatchi! Really love the custom gun design, it looks great, and lovely integration of the new magic wand part. I like the minifig posing over his kill, it strangely reminds me of the Cecil the Lion story from a few years back! I like the landscape, but I feel that the regular green bits stand out a little from the otherwise muted colour palette. I think using olive or sand green plates and cheesers would have been a better choice, although I aooreciate they are rarer and thus more expensive.

Right, so I haven't made as much progress as I'd like to have recently, my daughter has finally succumbed to the chicken pox so that's been a bit of a setback. I've been thinking about Mychel's storyline and how I can fit it in to the Challenge II categories. I'm hoping to post my Challenge C entry this weekend, which shows Staffen (Conzaga family head) taking a bribe from the queen to distribute wine for free to keep the populace subdued and distracted. You may remember that Mychel left the Eastern lands after an attempt on his brother's life. I primarily created this story so Mychel could travel across Varlyrio and I could build a bunch of things to satisfy the Guild Challenge. I also hoped to include some other people's characters on these builds too, to foster cooperation. So with that in mind could folks give me an idea of whether they'd be happy for me to include their sigfigs (or family members) in my builds and if so can you please give me a brief idea of where they are currently and whether they'd be friendly or hostile to Mychel? Thanks!

I don't know your normal setup or how much you know about photography (I hardly consider myself an expert!) so apologies if this is patronising, it's not intended that way. More lights will definitely help, preferably soft (diffuse) lights as these will not cast as obvious shadows. If you have a DSLR the key is to fix the aperture (depth of field) and ISO (ideally to 100) and let the camera choose the exposure (which can be as long as you like given you're using a tripod and LEGO doesn't move). Hope that helps and I'd be happy to help further if you let me know more details about your setup. Again, sorry if you already know all of this and apologies if I've offended you. You're building some really sweet MOCs and it's a shame that the photos aren't allowing the viewer to get maximum enjoyment of them.