Bladorthin the Short

 

Blandorthin the Short! My last entry for Summer Joust, for the Going Big category, the one match made for a character builder. To get the humour out of it I wanted to build something that is small by name, aka a Dwarf. I've built lot of dwarves but nonne in scale this big - this is my biggest character so far. And brother this was a fast build. I made the head, helmet and the first version of the beard, along with the separate shoulder armour shells in June. The chest armour and part of the arms was built yesterday and the rest - hands, skirt, boots, scepter - today.

The colour was mostly based on the dark red pentagonal tiles, which I got from LUGBULK a year (or two?) ago and somehow never managed to use, until now. I also wanted steer clear from greys, which are very common on castle builds. So Blandorthin's armour is very dark red with some gold touches and bits of black leather visible underneath. I had recently disassembled my Samurai mech from 2019 and had plenty of dark red around so the colour wasn't a problem.

Thematically I wanted to avoid violence, another overused theme on castle builds. The dwarf still has a heavy suit of armour - it's a cultural thing and armours are fun to build. However, I gave him a scepter instead of an axe or a battlehammer. I suppose he's an ambassador of sort, wearing a symbolic ritual armour (that is nonetheless very useful in battle). The armour was designed very much on spot, but I knew I wanted big shoulder pads (that hide the shoulder joints) and bit of golden chainmail visible, somewhere. In the end I ended up building a big chest plate and a tall armoured skirt with the maille filling the gap. The gap had to be small, as the golden chains are of the short type. The armoured skirt is built around large chain links.

The hands deserve a special mention. Each finger moves separately despite the two-stud-wide finger plates. Each finger save the thumb had two joints. He's also able to hold the scepter - with its stalk made of 32L axles tied together with small tyres - quite firmly without a connection. The legs have naturally less movement, as they're holding the bulk of the big short man!

-Eero.