Durnovaria: the village

Well, I have finished the village. But the guide is not over. Originally I had planned to build something twice the size of this, but building huge projects can become tiresome and tedious. Whenever I build something large I always seem to lose interest after a while, due to the fact that I always seem to get really good ideas for other mocs while im building, and so I get bored and want to build the other ideas instead. So I stopped at this size and everything that I didn't cover, I will now do so as individual builds here and there. This basically means that my Guide will no longer be just a village guide, but a Guide for everything medieval.

So there will be more interesting sections of Medieval moccing added to the guide next year.

In the mean time, I present Durnovaria. A peacful country village, located not too far from Albion in Avalonia.

Enjoy

























The pictures are not the best quality, unfortunatly the weather here in the UK is dark and gloomy and not much good natural light.
Thanks to ISC for editing the backgrounds

Chapter Eleven: Towers

Next we are going to add a tower behind the mill. I will not show you how to build the stone part of the tower as I have already covered the techniques used to do it. The stone part is built the same way as the mill, with 1x1 round plates built up with a second wall of normal bricks behind them. So, I will explain the window technique. To start with, we will need a 2x6 dark gray plate with one row of tiles and one row of plates on top like so.


Then we add two 1x4 half fence pieces. These wedge into the studs of the plate as shown in the picture below.


We then connect some headlight bricks to the fence pieces with the top studs sicking outwards, 3 on each side.


Now we add some more headlight bricks with a 1x1 brick stacked between them.


We can then add some tiles which clip on to the headlight bricks. You can do them in gray to match the windows or you can use any other colour you want. Here I have used to shades of green.


Then you add another 2x6 plate on top add add whatever details you wish. I have used some cheese wedges and another half fence piece.


Here you can see the whole stone tower section with the windows in place. Like I said earlier, the tower itself is built using the same techniques as shown in the contruction of the water mill.


As you can see in the next picture, I have used some brown tiles for the floor and added a ladder in the center. I have built up posts using dark brown tiles and 1x1 bricks with studs on either side to attach them.


Next, we place white bricks between the posts, wit the top layer made up of 1x1 bricks with stud facing out.


In the next picture you will see I have added dark green tooth plates to the white bricks and then place a layer of dark brown tiles over the top. I have also added some dark brown telescope pieces around the ladder in the middle and topped them off with tiles. In each corner I have built up some pillars which will support the roof.


We then add a flat roof using dark brown plates topped off with some black plates.


We now need to build the roof. We start off by laying out a triangle shape using wing plates.


Then on the back we need to add some hinge bricks which will allow it to be attached to the tower.


Then some tiles and grill tiles have been added to the front for extra effect. You will need to make four of these!


Once you have made all four, you can then attach them to he roof. They will all fit flush to each other and there will be a 2x2 space left in the middle. In this space you will need to build up a pillar of 2x2 bricks to the top. At the top of the pillar you will need to place a 2x2 round plate/with handle all the way round.


We then need to make 4 lengths of black 1x1 round stacks with a clip at the end, like in the picture below.


These can then be clipped to the handle piece at the top and run down each corner like so.


Now we have the finished tower! I have added a flag and some foliage around the tower.


The tower can now be placed at the back behind the mill. It is attached the same way as the house earlier on in the guide, using tiles and jumper plates.



The next step will be to build some more different houses and shops for the village, as well as more landscape, puddles, well, and gallows.

Thanks for reading

DC

Chapter Ten: off set buildings and a pond

Now we have to place the house on the landscape, but rather than just plonk it anywhere, we are going to place it at an angle overlooking a small pond.

First we need to build the pond. The SNOT technique works well for this as its still water. I have used dark green as it gives a nice murky pond water effect. As you can see in the picture below, I have built a shape out of dark green bricks and then surrounded it in where I can with black bricks. This will keep it locked into place. You may also notice some half technic pins sticking up in the pond, these are merely to attach some plant pieces to.


Next, I have started to add a combination of brown plates and dark gray slopes. This is done the same way as before.


Once the rocks and mud have been built up, then we will need to connect the house. First you will need to lay the house roughly in position where you want it. Once you are happy with the angle of the house, you will then need to attach a jumper plate to one of the corners. Then you will need to mark the area of the house with tiles. As you can see in the picture below, I have used dark gray tiles around the rocks and green tiles for the rest.


Now we can place the house on the tiles where it will sit at an angle. Remember to use jumper plates on a few of the corners where you can. This will hold the house in position.


Now, at the far end of the pond I have added a small wooden platform which acts as a sort of bridge where the path passes over the end of the pond. This is simply done using headligt bricks on their side and clipping 1x2 tiles across. Then adding plates and tiles running across the top.


In this picture you can see the finished platform/bridge. I have only pressed down one end of each tile on the bridge. This gives an old warped effect. The trick is to build up the rocks and landscape around the platform so it looks like it really is built into the land.


Now the pond is finished. You can then add foliage where you want to. I have added quite a few bulrushes as they are commonly found in ponds. These are made using brown and tan 1x1 round plates. Building the green landscape should be pretty simple now as I have covered it a few times already earlier in the guide. So in these pictures you can see I have built up the green land around the pond.




Next, we are going to build a small outhouse/storage area next to the house. We start off by laying some dark gray plates as the foundation.


Next we add some tiles for the path and start building some of the walls using 1x1 round plates.


Keep building up the walls to a height of about 5 plates. You can add a few 1x1 brown plates for mud and some tan plates for straw. I have also added a box, a bucket and some 1x4 brown pole pieces clipped to the sides which make good places for the villagers to tie their horses to.


Now we need to make some supports for a small roof. To do this I have used 4 1x1 round cone pieces. In these I have put a 1x4 pole piece. To give the roof a slight slope, I haven't inserted the two poles at the back all the way in. They stick up higher than the front two.


Now we need to make the roof. This is very simple, just a 6x8 plate with tiles attached on top. I have only attached the tiles lightly, so they give an uneven and old warped effect.




Place the roof on top of the pole pieces. The poles should inline with the gaps underneath the roof. It wont be attached, but it will lock into place and only fall off if you turn the whole moc upside down!


In these pictures you can see the completed storage building. I have also added some more string fencing around. This is done the same way as I covered before.




From these pictures it is clear that something needs to be placed at the back behind the mill. Something to give some depth and background. So I have decided to add a tower which will serve as a watch tower. I will cover that in the next section.

Stay tuned!

DC

Chapter 9: The house

Right, the next part of the landscape is going to be built around a house, so first we need to build the house. For this we are going to use some of the techniques I covered earlier, but we are going to take it up a step and make it a bit more detailed and tricky. This house is going to be more of an intermediate build, not to difficult, but not easy. We need to be able to place this house at an angle, so the house will be built separately from the moc. I am not going to be building any interior to this house, as I won't be needing every house to have an interior, but feel free to add your own if you wish.

To start, we first lay some dark bley plates to make the base.


Then we build up a low wall of 1x1 round plates to the height of a 1x2 tile, which we will add in between the rounds. This technique should be familiar as I have covered how to do this part already. On top of the rounds I have layed some dark brown plates for the base of the woodwork and also added some stairs.




Next, we lay dark brown tiles on top of the plates so they are in between the vertical 1x2 tiles below.


Then we can build some upright woodwork. We do this using headlight bricks on their side with a 1x1 brick in between each headlight brick. We can then attach a dark brown tile to the studs showing. This can be seen in the picture below.


In this picture you can see that I have added stacks of light gray bricks which are positioned behind the dark brown tiles and are stacked at a height of 7 bricks.


Next I have added some dark brown half arch pieces which sit on top of the woodwork. These will only be used at the front however.


Then we can add the rest of the light gray bricks. These go behind every tile that on the plates. As you can see in this picture, some of the stacks are only 2 bricks high, this is where the windows will go.


Now we need to build lots more wood work sections, this time they have also got 1x1 clip pieces as well. See the pictures below for how to make them.




Now we place them all around the house in between the gray bricks.


Then we add the window ledges on each of the lower stacks of Gray.


In this next picture you can see I have put the windows in place, with some 1x2 plates/with handle on top of the window piece and some white bricks.


Now we need to make a door. For this, we simply get a 4x8 plate, then place tiles on it, leaving gaps to place the handle and hinges.


Now add the handle and hinges. I have used black tooth plates for hinges, but there is lots of different parts that also give a good effect.


Now we need to build an attachment on the back of the door so it will stand in place. To do this we add two 1x4 bricks at the top and bottom of the door. Then we lay 4 headlight bricks on their side and stack some 1x4 bricks on top with a 1x4 brick with studs on the side at the very top.


This can now attach to the door and allows the door to be placed flush up against the arch of the doorway.






Now comes the tricky part. We are going to cover those gray bricks with upright standing tiles, and they are not going to be standing flat, they are going to be standing at their side. Now, stacking tiles like this will only work as long as it is done within an even number of bricks, 2, 4, 6 etc. Otherwise they won't fit exactly.


Then we clip on some dark brown tiles in front of the white tiles to hold them in place. As you can imagine, this works best if you use all 1x8 size tiles for the wall. Here however, I have added in bits of brown as well, but the tiles are surprisingly snug and they don't actually fall out easily. Obviously if you tipped the house on its side the small tiles would fall out, but the bigger ones are held in place.


Now we do this same technique all around the house to finish up with something like this.


Next, we then lay more dark brown plates at the top and build a whole layer of bricks with studs facing out from the side. We can connect the rest of the dark brown tiles to these to complete the horizontal woo work.


Then I have added some tooth plates to fill in the remaining gaps between the wood work. The tooth plates also over lap the white tiles which adds extra hold to stop them falling out.

You can then cover the whole top in dark brown plates.

In the next picture, you can see I have started building a small wooden framed window box. This is done using the wood effect 1x2 bricks.


Then I have added some dark brown plates which are attached to 1x4 bricks with studs on the side. These should allow the plates to sit level above the tooth plates like in the picture below.


I have now added 1x4 dark brown slopes which line up with the wood work and will provide the supports for the overhanging roof pieces.


Then in between the slopes I have added some white tiles and jumper plates with 1x1 clip plates to add a bit of decoration.


Now we can start laying the roof. For the first row I am using 3x3 roof pieces as they over hang enough to cover the supports.


In the next pictures you will see I have built up the roof and also made a siding effect using headlight bricks and white 1x1 wedges. This is the most easiest way of doing this effect and not very challenging. It also doesn't look as good as the other way using tiles, but I will cover that way later on in the guide.




I have now topped off the window box with some 3x3 corner roof pieces.


I have now started to build another wooden window box on the side of the house in the roof. This is built the same way as the other one and is very simple.


In this picture you can see I am building up the roof and I've added in arches as supports for the roof. It is very important to add supports for the roof as it will easily cave-in if you don't. Also note that I have left a 3x3 gap in the roof for the chimney.


Here is another shot showing the supports inside the roof, and I have also started building up the back wall using headlight bricks and white wedges.


Now we need to add the gable sections which will attach to the clips sticking out from the top of the roof as seen in the picture below.


Here are the two gable sections. When you build these you have to measure them against the roof so you can build the right size for whatever size roof you have.


Now you can fit them in place like so.


Do this for every part of the roof and it should look like this.


Now we place a row of 1x2 plates with handle along the top of the roof facing out on either side. On top of this we will place jumper plates spread out with tiles in between.


Along the jumper plates we can place a central row of plates with tiles on top, then at each end we can build up an interesting effect using curved slope pieces with 1x1 rounds underneath.


Finally we can add the chimney in the space left in the roof. The chimney is built using 1x1 round plates with some tiles attached to headlight bricks.


Now we have the finished building, all that's left to do is attach some pole pieces to the various clips in the wood work.





Next we will be looking in at how to attach the house at an angle on the landscape overhanging a swampy ditch.

Thanks for reading!

DC