Grandfather's Tale: Chapter XV

It's been busier than almost any comparable period in my life since Chapter XIV went up, but Chapter XV is up now! It isn't great MOCing, by any means: just minifigs on a sidewalk, but I think it moves the story along nicely.
 
...and the rest of the chapter:
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Grandfather's Tale, Chapter XIV

It's been more than eleven months since the last chapter went up, and Chapter XIV isn't a long one--but I do think it's got a nice surprise at the end. I certainly don't PLAN for it to be another eleven months, but you know never know... In the meantime, here is the link to the Brickshelf folder (which should be moderated as of posting.)


...and the rest of the chapter: 02 03 04 05 06 07

Grandfather's Tale, Chapter XIII

It continues to be slow-going between chapters of Grandfather's Tale, but Chapter XIII is finished! Hopefully, with no more wedding or grad school over the summer I'll get to the next couple/few chapters somewhat more quickly, but I make no promises... In the meantime, here is the link to the Brickshelf folder (which isn't moderated as of posting.) ...and the rest of the chapter: 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11

Grandfather's Tale, Chapter XII

It's pretty embarrassing to realise that it's been half a year almost since I last put up a new chapter of Grandfather's Tale, but it would have been even more embarrassing if it had taken longer. Hopefully, Chapter XIII will be finished relatively quickly, but in the meantime I suggest simply celebrating the fact that *this* one is up. (A link to the Brickshelf folder, once moderated.)



For those preferring deeplinks, here is the rest of the chapter:
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2011: A Year in Review

Inspired by this post on Gimme LEGO, and by the prevalence of "Year in Review" things in general that crop up at this time of year, I've decided to take a look at some of the things that were the best in my LEGO life of the past year.

LEGO Set of the Year:

There can be little doubt, I think, that the most amazing set I acquired in 2011 was Medieval Market Village. Released in 2008, this set is the almost-uncontested pinnacle of LEGO's Castle design thus far. Some of the Kingdoms sets of the past year went a long way towards incorporating some of the magic of Medieval Market Village into the more everyday sets of the theme, but this enhances rather than detracts from the Market Village's prestige.



So why was the Market Village my set of the year, rather than a 2011 set? Were the 2011 sets that bad? No, not at all; on the contrary, LEGO put out some amazing sets in 2011. The thing is, however, that 2011 was not a year about expanding out into new things in my collection, but of consolidating what I had. In the first few months of the year, I rebuilt a number of sets that hadn't been constructed since the Great Take-apart of 2004. In my trips to the LEGO store, I've focused more on smaller sets, mystery bags, and the pick-a-brick, with an eye towards increasing my liquid parts supply than to broaden my set horizon. Medieval Market Village was the only outstanding set that I got that I can say with a high degree of certainty will not be taken apart. This trend towards consolidation was increased in mid-summer when I had a number of minifigs stolen, and my Bricklink orders which had already been focused on finding parts to rebuild long-dismantled sets became additionally focused on replacing lost figs.

LEGO Theme of the Year:

Hands down, the Collectible Minifigs were my Theme of the Year. This was the second year LEGO had been releasing collections, and 2011 was nowhere near as frenzied as 2010 had been, when shortages of Series 1 and 2 led to mad scrambles by LEGO fans and exorbitant repurchase fees on Bricklink. By contrast, Series 3 through 5 were easy to find and remained present in stores for a generous amount of time. That said, however, I only bought two collectible minifigs in 2010, both off Bricklink, discouraged by the difficulty of finding them. In 2011, however, I caught the bug.



The Elf was the one who started it. When I picked him up in January, I was still in "old me" mode, which told me that I was only going to pick up one or two per release. The problem, if I may call it that, is that I did so well identifying him by feel that I wanted to do it again, and believe it or not that was the trick: I got hooked on the success of grabbing the one I wanted... and I've yet to disappoint myself. And the numbers are telling: a year ago I had 2 Collectible Minifigs and today I have 32.

LEGO Minifig of the Year:

This is the hardest category to pick yet... and turning to the Collectible Minifigs is, the last category notwithstanding, not going to provide the solution. As many Collectible Minifigs as I bought, none of them has definitively stood apart as the Minifig of the Year.



Instead, I'll recognise Lucien and Alex from Aquazone Breakfast News as the Minifigs of the Year, for the simple reason that 2011 was the year that my focus on Minifigs and their accoutrements took a significant step from the realm of game-play to the realm of storytelling. Grandfather's Tale, the year before, had already begun the process, but Aquazone Breakfast News took it a step further. More importantly, AqBN has been an ongoing commitment, and because of its weekly nature (daily, in December) was the most constant element in my LEGO life.

Other Thoughts...

2011 was a major shifting year for me. This blog was a large component of that shift, as the recognition of Lucien and Alex may already suggest. Also too, the new emphasis on consolidation, rather than expansion, has seen an increase in the time I spend on LEGO, rather than a decrease, as might be expected. Filling out the corners of my existing LEGO-verse and LEGO collection has been a more focused, and more attainable, goal than simply keeping up with each year's new round of themes.

2011 was also the year that I realised that my fiancée (girlfriend, at the start of last year) was not going to be a one-time LEGO purchaser, but that she had it in her to be a rather significant LEGO fan herself. I have yet to visit the Braintree LEGO Store without her, and she's spent probably as much money there as I have. So far, she's more of a collector, especially of the cooler licensed sets, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

And that was my LEGO 2011--what was yours?

Favourite Minifigs: Sir Edmond of Orimault

He's a Lion knight. No... not those new Lion Knights. This fellow belongs to the oldest Lion Knights in the LEGO Castle genre: the 1984-1992 Legoland Castle "Lion Knights."



Of course, as you can see, this guy isn't straight out of a contemporary set, but a customized fig. He's made an appearance on the Internet before, as the rather minor character of Sir Edmond of Orimault, one of Princess Anne's suitors in the early chapters. His sword, helm, and breastplate comes from the now-defunct Little Armory, one of the earliest commercial LEGO customizers.



However, as you can see, the customization on Sir Edmond is not limited to what the Little Armory products I gave him. The pennant on his lance, his shield, and his torso all bear customized arms--based on the gold-rimmed classic Lion shield seen on this torso, and it is by limiting myself to these two colours (with the addition of greys and blacks) that we get this distinctly non-traditional Legoland Castle Lion Knight--a faction that defined itself by wearing red in opposition to its opponents, the Black Falcons.

Although I created the actual stickers seen on Sir Edmond, the templates were based on those created by Anthony Sava on Classic-Castle, and would likely not have appeared without them.


Also, in other news, look forward to daily updates from Aquazone Breakfast News over the next twenty-four days. Starting tomorrow, they present the 2011 City Advent Calendar!

Grandfather's Tale, Chapter XI

It took me the better part of the summer, but I did it: Chapter XI of the story this is blog is named after is now online. (A link to the Brickshelf folder, once moderated.) I took the pictures for both this chapter and Chapter XII in April, before I left Boston, but all the events of the spring and summer conspired to put it on the backburner until now.



For those preferring deeplinks, here is the rest of the chapter:
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CCRP: A LEGO Story-Telling Retrospective - Part 2

Earlier this week I delved back into my initial history as a member of the Classic-Castle Roleplay, and a look at my original main characters. Today I want to run through the main characters that cropped up over the following years (with an eye to whether and how they might appear in Grandfather's Tale).

For the first few months, my characters stuck to themselves, with some light interaction with the other players. The first "local" characters to introduce themselves were Dragon Masters. Elbadar was one of these:



Elbadar was definitely the Dark Horse candidate to become a major character among the ensemble that was my CCRP cast. He was a minor character, second string to another Dragon Master (played by another RPer) who had command of the Dragon Master regiment that the Sorcerer-King acquired. As such, he ought to have been a bad guy, but he turned out to be a wily, mostly honourable character who formed a real friendship with Bernard Quorandis--aka "the guy with Elwen in this picture:http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif



Bernard Quorandis, Captain-General of the Imperial Cavaliers and Viscount of Quoran, was introduced into the plot with the idea that he would eventually be Elwen's love interest. However, he was soon swept away into the massive black hole of a plot called The BloodVaine Epic, which also swallowed up Sir Dractor, Elwen, Elbadar, and most of my characters, completely derailing my original Sorcerer-King/Old Man plot for over six months. This was for the best, though, because Bernard Quorandis and Elbadar would never have become friends otherwise, and it is unlikely that Elbadar would have surprised me otherwise, and become the near-hero he ended up as.

There was also a third new character who joined Elwen and the Sorcerer-King on their quest for the Wizardsbane: Sir Jayko Falconensis:



The CCRP started in 2004, the same year KK2 was released and thus right during the maelstrom of ridicule that line received on Classic-Castle as a result of juniorisation and rainbow-coloured knights. Jayko, as the "baby blue" or "barbie blue" knight--and as the canonical protagonist--came in for what might have been the most criticism. My decision to include him as a character at that time meant that he was a rather buffoonish character--at first. It took over a year, but Jayko was to eventually have a "redemption" plot. This was partly underway when the CCRP collapsed, and would have eventually seen Jayko and Elbadar's plots intertwine as my chief secondary plot (secondary to that of Sir Dractor).

All three of these characters have yet to appear in Grandfather's Tale, but it is safe to say that if I ever visit their factions in any detail in that story, they will soon appear. Jayko, in particular, because he already exists as an official LEGO minifig, will certainly appear if KK2 does--the only question is whether KK2 will appear. Elbadar is likely to appear as one of the marshals of the Dragon Master army, although I don't know when; and Sir Bernard has been the unofficial general of my Classic LEGO Castle armies for years.

In the next CCRP update, I'll look at the second generation of heroes.

CCRP: A LEGO Story-Telling Retrospective - Part 1

Having packed all my LEGO up for the summer (to sit, well-packaged in my future father-in-law's barn) while I return to Canada without 99% of it has made it difficult to come up with topics to write about--and the crazy humidity that comes with living on the ocean from the perspective of a deep-inland prairie boy has utterly drained me of any sort of ambition.

Fortunately, my lazy wanderings in the past few days took me back to a place in my LEGO history that bears writing about, namely the Classic-Castle Roleplay (2004-2006).

The Classic-Castle Roleplay--the first, and most successful, of what would actually be three roleplayed stories under that name--was started on Classic-Castle's Gaming Forum in 2004, only a month or two before I joined the forums as a user. By the time I got involved in the Roleplay, about a month after I joined the site, it had gone through its first major phase (the "Misfits" era), and was ramping up towards what would eventually be its most massive--although in most opinion NOT most enjoyable--epic. Now, I don't plan on giving a blow-by-blow of a five-year-defunct online story written ostensibly about LEGO people (its completed epics are available in the Archives, anyway); rather, I want to look at its role as a major part of my storytelling history.

The Roleplay (and it was the Roleplay for a good year and a half for me) came to me at a time when my LEGO-writing projects (a series of stories in homemade book form that spanned my late childhood and adolescent years) was coming to an end. Given that the Roleplay absorbed massive amounts of my creative output over the next couple years, it's very easy for me to say that it succeeded and replaced my earlier, private LEGO world, and was in many steps clearly a forerunner to the public, LEGO-based storytelling I now attempt in the form of Grandfather's Tale and Aquazone Breakfast News.



The three figures just pictured were my initial protagonists, and looking at where they came from, it's clear that my initial ambitions were simple: get my toes wet in the collaborative-writing pool, and not work too hard at anything TOO serious. From left to right, the characters are: Sir Aethelred Dractor, "the Old Man," and Elwen dan Raleigh. They were joined by my initial villain, the Sorcerer-King:



The Sorcerer-King is a name that will be familiar to readers of Grandfather's Tale, because it was the name I assigned to the evil wizard from the 2007 Castle line. The Roleplay character, however, although he gave his name to the later wizard when I being lazy, was originally an import from my "epic"--my only serious and non-LEGO attempt at creative world-building. The Old Man was an import from the same world, though I called him "the Old Man" specifically to avoid using his real name in my epic, because I didn't want the name stolen. Although it was not a LEGO-based epic, I did have a go at recreating its characters in LEGO form, as can be seen in this Brickshelf gallery. I should warn anyone curious enough to go there that it was http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifmy very first Brickshelf subfolder, and contains my oldest surviving attempts at LEGO photography.

Because the Old Man and the Sorcerer-King were both on loan non-canonically from my non-LEGO epic, it was inevitable that they would eventually leave Dametreos (as the world of the CCRP was known, in honour of its creator), but it would be take me close to a year before I was finished with their plots--partly because I took my time, and partly because they got swept into other stories along the way. Neither was a particularly memorable character: the Old Man was a fairly standard old wizard and the Sorcerer-King was your garden variety evil-wizard king (albeit he was the Dragon rather than the Big Bad, to link to TV-Tropes. Their main saving graces, in my opinion, is that I didn't try to go over-the-top with either of them, but made their plot more of a private battle than an all-out, Lord of the Rings-esque war. Whether their "mysterious pasts" (kept mysterious so as to preserve the solitude of my non-LEGO epic) helped them or not, I don't know.

Sir Dractor and Elwen were also imports from the non-LEGO epic, according to the backstories I gave them for the CCRP, but neither had ever belonged to it before. Elwen was a freshly-minted character, with a vaguely-LotR-sounding first name, and a last name borrowed from a Royal Knight character. She was included in an early attempt at gender-balanced not only the LEGO-verse, but my stories. Unfortunately in that respect, she was approximately as run-of-the-mill as the Old Man or the Sorcerer-King. As a 17-year-old boy, and a nerd at that, I certainly had no idea how to write a woman--let alone a warrior woman with a bit of a tragic past. To my credit, I can reread most of what I wrote, and not cringe... but the flipside of that coin is that most of what I reread about Elwen is rather forgettable.

All of which left Sir Dractor as the most successful of my original four characters. Like the Old Man and the Sorcerer-King he pre-existed the CCRP, but unlike them he did not originally belong to the world of my non-LEGO epic. Instead, he was imported almost directly from the world of my earlier LEGO stories, based directly on the sets. Sir Dractor, you see, was originally a Royal Knight, who came with my 6090 Royal Knight's Castle. Sir Dractor was the knight in red, on the brown horse, and because he was a Royal Knight character with a Dragon Master head, he had a long history in my LEGO legendarium of standing out in the crowd. In some very early games or stories, he was the villainous rebel against the Royal Knight king's rule; in later years, he was something of a Worf-esque Klingon: a noble barbarian who had joined the good guys.

It's kind of funny looking back to think that Sir Dractor was the character who was most successfully written, because he was every bit as much of a cliché as the others: he was a talented warrior with almost unbelievable skills--and tough as nails. In one memorable crowning moment of awesome, he was hit by a catapult stone and got back up to fight.

Sir Dractor is also the character from the CCRP most likely to reappear in Grandfather's Tale at some point--not counting the reappearance of the Sorcerer-King's name. This is not so much because of his success as a CCRP character as it is because of his original roots: as he was originally a knight with my Royal Knight's Castle, it is probable that he will return there if/when Grandfather's Tale brings me in the direction of the Royal King's court. The Old Man is going to make an appearance in the background of Chapter 12 (which, with Chapter 11, has already been photographed and will be finished some time this summer), but is unlikely to have a speaking role.

Grandfather's Tale Character: Marcel of Flamond

Since one of the major purposes of this blog was as a vehicle to discuss my LEGO stories--a selfish purpose intended to help motivate me to stay on track with it a bit more--today's post introduces a new theme of posts that will appear from time to time: a discussion of the characters in the titular story, Grandfather's Tale.



Marcel of Flamond was introduced in Chapter 1 of Grandfather's Tale as the Lion soldier who comes with the 1463 Treasure Cart, who is doing what he does: carting treasure to Castle Montjoie, King's Mountain Fortress. He arrives there in Chapter 3 at the same time as the adventurers who bring news of the bad guys' impending attack, and so he is swept up in the story as the soldier who lucks into escaping the castle with Princess Anne and the adventurers, Giles and Humbert,

Thus far--that is, Chapter X, the extent of the published story--Marcel has sort of just been riding along, while the real leadership has been provided by Giles and later Rebecca. Princess Anne is equally inexperienced and untried, but because of her royal station she's been taking some stands of leadership already. Even in battle, Marcel has yet to do much, since he gets told to stay close to the Princess while Giles and Humbert deal with the Fright Knights, or to stand back while the Forestmen shoot down the enemy.

So what is the point of having Marcel in this ensemble-cast story?

Well, first of all, Grandfather's Tale is being written as I go along. I have ideas of where it'll end up, ideas that are changing as I go along, but it's hardly fully formed. Thus, originally, Marcel got included because I needed someone's point-of-view to follow, some fairly normal character in a world of heroes, royalty, and magicians who could provide a starting point for me. The decision to include Giles and Humbert, which came about a chapter later, meant that when they got thrown together directly in the flight from Castle Montjoie, it made dramatic sense to have Marcel and Giles clash--and since Giles was clearly an experienced hero, Marcel quickly became the young, inexperienced hero.

This was a bit of a turn-around, because Marcel was never intended to be inexperienced, precisely. He was intended to be a competent, disciplined soldier--young enough to have a story-arc and even fall in love (although I didn't decide if that would be with the Princess), but the inexperienced part fits. After all, why would a soldier whose chief duty is to cart taxes to the king's castle have a broad experience of an adventurer or royal? Thus, by the time we get to his inactivity in the Dark Forest, Marcel is deliberately being cast as "not contributing much," to provide a deliberate contrast for later chapters (as yet to come...) where he will grow into one of the main heroes. And, yes, the door for romance is still open.

So why did I pick Marcel specifically to be my hero? Obviously, I wanted to start with the classic Lion knights, which were my first Castle faction (King's Mountain Fortress was my first Castle set), but why did I start with the little fellow from Treasure Cart? Why not one of these guys:



The answer is that Marcel came with a sword. This made him the "favourite" of my Lion soldiers growing up, since my brother and I had a strict hierarchy of soldiers: swordsmen, axemen, spearsmen, archers, crossbownmen. Within this schema, Marcel (who only received a name when I started Grandfather's Tales) was the most highly favoured soldier. It was also a chance to introduce Treasure Cart, the set, for a brief moment of completion. As of Chapter X, we've also seen King's Mountain Fortress, Wolfpack Renegades, and Dungeon Master's Castle. Although the point of the story is not to focus on the sets; rather to use the sets to tell the story, I enjoy having the opportunity to include the sets, as integral nostalgic elements of my mental LEGO landscape.

Finally, although I King's Mountain Fortress and Treasure Cart, my brother only had Treasure Cart. Thus, for six years (six highly important years of childhood), until we each got the Guarded Inn, this soldier had a huge place in his collection as THE Lion soldier, and was eventually augmented with parts from an accessory pack or two to become a proper knight--a story arc or trajectory that may not be so different for the character in Grandfather's Tales, so it seemed appropriate.

Grandfather's Tale, Chapter X

Today has been a productive day. Granted, it's another chapter of a LEGO story that being published online that makes it feel thus, but that is no reason to dismiss my sense of accomplishment. Chapter X of the story this is blog is named after is now online. (A link to the Brickshelf folder, once moderated.)



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Grandfather's Tale, Chapter IX

Although I've already introduced Grandfather's Tale, my introduction only covered the introduction, and skipped over the eight chapters that I'd finished. I'm going to skip over them completely, because today I finished and uploaded Chapter IX (Brickshelf link to the folder, once it's moderated).

Although I'm sure there's no one reading this blog (yet? ever?) who is also unfamiliar with my LEGO Castle-illustrated epic, but for the sake of completeness, let me recap... just a little. In the last chapter, the Forestman leader, Rebecca Hood, was convinced to lead Princess Anne's company through the Dark Forest, safeguarding their journey against the attacks of the Fright Knights, who want to get their hands on the Princess.

The new chapter begins with this journey...



Here are the rest of the deeplinks:

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I'm not entirely happy with this new chapter, in terms of photography. Part of the problem is that I had a good system going for backgrounds in the Dark Forest, but now that I've move out of the woods, I can't just paint the background with the underside of a green baseplate. This chapter experimented with taking pictures in a LEGO tub to give a smooth blue background, but I don't think I'll stick with it. I'm not sure what I will do, though.

On top of that, I got a new computer for Christmas, and while it was a much needed step, I still haven't adapted to the new programs entirely. The learning curve for the GIMP is kind of steep when the last photo-editing tool you used was ACDSee from ca. 2001.

Still, the story moves along, and it's not a complete wash in terms of pictures.

Grandfather's Tale--An Introduction

Having named this blog after the LEGO epic I've been working at with an erstwhile schedule, and having said that I plan to use it to promote that same epic just a little bit more, I feel like I ought to give a proper introduction to Grandfather's Tale.

The premise of the story is simple enough: an elderly minifig gathers the village whippersnappers, and tells them the story of some great hero of their past.



(It's worth noting, as an aside, that I think my minifig photography skills have improved since the epic started. In the mythical "someday" that everyone has, I'd like to redo the opening here... but we all know that will never happen.)



Who is this old geezer? Why does he want to entertain these silly children? Does his story have a nice beginning, middle, and end? Or is it just some long ramble that will last as long as I have interest?

All of these are good questions, but they're not really germane to the story. The story is about Marcel of Flamond, about Princess Anne daughter of Charles, about Giles and Humbert. The grandfather is an excuse for me to use a more personal narrative voice, and to interject more exposition in a dialogue form with the kids.



Of course, I'm an English student, and one of the things they teach us English students is that the narrator is never neutral, never completely free of bias. S/he might be reliable... but that doesn't mean s/he doesn't add a slant.

Mind you, the grandfather isn't a "s/he." He's a he--and he's an old he who's been kicking around Liondom (as I call the Kingdom of the Lions and Falcons) for some time now. I actually do have a bit of an idea in the back of my mind concerning the grandfather, but it's something I'm only toying with and haven't made my mind up. Until and unless you hear otherwise, ignore him and and the kids, except as instances of humour and exposition.

Speaking of exposition, that's really all that Chapter One of the Tale is about. Here we learn just enough about Lion history to get some context for the story and get the ball moving--and to get a brief introduction (and I do mean brief!) to two of the major characters: Marcel and Anne. We'll meet the two other major characters of the first several chapters, Giles and Humbert, in Chapter Two, where the action really begins.