Like I said, this came about from the base of The Gathering. I believe the first thing I knew was that there was to be a huge gate, with a big drawbridge.

I toyed with the idea of messing with the original playmo ones, but gave that up, and decided to go for the usual sticks.

This is the first recorded draft of the gate:

As you can see, the previous dio is still on...

The part on the rocks was initially to be made of system X, but when I actually got to make an attempt... There are hardly any system X castle parts around here . So, no can do.

When I changed from medieval(ish) to romans, I KNEW I wanted The Tower there. Back in 2013, messing about with steck, I made a romanish tower:

Fortunately, in an amazing display of prescience I documented the thing then, so as to NOT reinvent the wheel now, right?

After many struggles with the base of the tower, I eventually managed to make one of system X - the roman tower would NOT fit on the steck dragon rock - obviously.

The height difference drove me nuts, and I made many attempts of actually making ONE building. Well, apart from the tower - though I actually entertained the thought (and made attempt!) to connect the steck part with the rest! Crazy, I know.

Then went for three pieces - the gate, the tower, and the middle... Here it is, with the drawbridge in progress:

Right. The drawbridge. In my mind, it HAD to work. Why? No idea. Another stupidity.

But after many attempts and planning , I thought I got it, and I did manage to implement it (without changing my anatomy, which is always a plus, right? )

The bridge would have the strings go under the walls, and have these needle containers attached on the other side, to hold it in place.

What I didn't manage to sort were breaks for the wheels - there should be some sort of lever, to stop the wheels from turning. So, in the end, I just used horizontal sticks on the windows. A bit lame, I guess.

But I DID add a place to put them, when not in use - see the holes on the floors? (I mean I chose those floors)

I thought a big mess of crates and boxes would be needed for hiding the containers, but... no, the large yellow crates did it! AWESOME. So, there is one on each division.

The pier also had several versions... and especially the crane - here is a first. I wanted to use an Airgam ship, that I find more impressive than the playmo ones, but, alas, didn't fit. More impressing means also larger (in this case ).

The drawbridge working, and with proper layout underneath!

While putting it away , I did take a pic with the bridge up...

To fill the warehouses, besides the obvious stuff, I used baskets of stones and barrels of arrows. That last one proved harder than I anticipated.

Now, a word of things that took what seemed like forever... though they sure don't look it!

The bird feeding guy - the tray with birdfood was hard enough, but actually posing the tray, the birds about and the vegetation in that area... Gods.

The... climbing roses? Well, that, on the wall of Crassus' house. Took forever, and it was redone more times than I care to remember.

The full shelves on the warehouse... and the garlic bunch hanging there... Actually, most of the warehouse contents!

Then the bed. There was no suitable bed that fit that narrow space, so I had to improvise. Worse than the bed, the fracking bedsheets.

And the towel. You can hardly see it, but I thought it should just... be there.

Choosing the legions was a bit hard. Even after deciding the female ones would not take part, I couldn't fit them all.

Vegetation! I knew I wanted to use the big trees (my favorite), and that it would be summer/spring... It does look great, imo, the flowers spread about

Changing the ship, the crane needed to be smaller. So... another version:

Worked fine, until I got there one day and...

So, final version:

What actually delayed the dio - besides Crassus himself, were the banners.

I tried to playmobilize the Imperator's banners, based on the playmoexisting ox ones, and gave them to all the legions.

I am actually very pleased with my version (I have a real hard time with this sort of stuff). That one went well, after I got it right. However, the ones for the standards... gah. Tried a bunch of times with transparent prints before giving up - the two final options (went with the left one):

Although Crassus was klicked at this time, in truth he was in the works since at least 2013... However, his personal bodyguard (with the ox neckpiece) and the two women outside his house were made for the dio.

Then... well.. I had a very hard time with choosing and organizing these photos. And the language. Language was an issue. Though playkingdoms is not aimed as a site for kids, I do find the language used in the series (that I fracking LOVE) a bit too... strong for a playmobil fansite. So, with much MUCH regret... I didn't include it.

And there. The end. Really.

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Queen Tahra, September 2020