Grand Designs...

Well this post has been a long time in the writing! I had the designs drawn up some time ago and have been cracking on with the build since then. Unfortunately a lack of a scanner at home and literally not having a minute to myself at work has meant that I haven't had a chance to scan in my somewhat colourful plan.

Anyway, for what its worth here it is in technicolour! 

As you can see I'm going for a staged build with each floor as a separate element. That way I can stack up the Shrine to have an impressive looking building and when the action spreads to multiple floors, they can be split up and laid side by side on a separate table to allow game play to continue.

Here's the floor plans as included in the Shrine of Rigg scenario on the Second Citadel Compendium.

The Ground Floor - actually its a basement level with a side and back entrance. This floor houses the armouries, storerooms, Koka Kalim guardrooms and dorms and Mother Samantha's offices.

I intend to carve a rocky outcrop out of pink insulation foam (£5 for a massive slab at B&Q by the way!) that will be part of the base for the building. This will go all around the Shrine in the hatched out areas you can see in the pic below.

Because of the sloping walls the ground floor has to be rather large - for every 3" of wall height you lose 1/4" of floor space on the floor above. This meant I had to chop the piece of 6mm plywood I'd bought into two - and actually as the thing is going to be rather heavy it'll be a bit more portable in two sections! The partly built section is the front of the Shrine and you might just be able to make out the outline of the rear of the building drawn out on the sheet of ply stood up in the background.

A few more closer views of what 5kg (there's a load more bricks all bagged up that I don't need yet!) of Crystacal R can make.

The ladies seem fairly happy with the work on their new gaff so far...

At the moment I've been arranging the bricks so that the Egyptian symbols are on the outside as the walls of the whole of the ground floor will be buried behind the rocky outcrop. I think I'll have to alternate which way they're facing on the upper floors - don't think they'll look too out of place?

Bearing in mind that this is only half of the ground floor and that there'll be another five floors above I'd better double the slaves' working hours and break out the bullwhips...

At least some of the upper floors are confined to the towers which have a slightly smaller footfall.

I hope to follow the plans as closely as possible although the squared off bricks that come in the mould have loads of Egyptian symbols and will look out of place for the interior walls for the rooms. I'll have to have a ponder about what to do about them. There are some likely looking 1/4 inch wide blocks on the Egyptian tomb mould that are unadorned and look like they'd make decent interior walls, but that does mean forking out for another mould.

Anyway, here's the rest of the floor plans -



First floor - the main temple area housing the statue of the Goddess Rigg. Also on this floor are various anterooms, priestesses' dressing rooms and Mother Samantha's study.

Second Floor - The Great Chamber or meeting room as well as Mother Samantha's private quarters and the Shrine's strongroom - Mmmm lots of gold here!

Third floor - The library and reading rooms and rooftops of the smaller towers at the front of the building - lots of roof top action here!

Fourth and Fifth floors - these are the top two floors of the two larger rear towers. One is a store room and the other a watchroom.

Actually having read the descriptions of the floors a little more carefully it seems that the third floor of the forward towers and the fifth floor of the rear towers are in fact just details of what is on their rooftops, which I'd have modelled in anyway while building the floor below! My build just got a little smaller, which is no bad thing! Mind you removable roof tops will be a must and I think I'll include a wall around them - much like castle ramparts but without the castellation of course.

The other thing to puzzle over is how to make the floors interlocking but stable so they can stand on their own and what to use as a base for each floor. I'm leaning towards something thin and light like plasticard as the walls and floor will provide the structural strength while the plasticard won't be too thick and show up as an unsightly layer in the exterior of the walls.

Luckily my next order of 25kg of Crystacal made it through the snow so work should resume once I've given the slaves a good whipping!