Naghul and His Zeffir

Another character and creature from one of my LEGO Ninjago stories.

Naghul Ghutahn is an ‘ancient’ who hails from the Ever Realm. He is also the warrior prince of the House of Ghutahn, which is why he is bristling with weapons, and the zeffir is his hunter / attack dog.

I imagine the Ever Realm to be this place where Ninjago meets ‘knights and castles’, but with a twist. I can see valleys filled with colorful tents, banners being whipped by the wind, and smoke rising from countless campfires where small clusters of brave LEGO warriors have gathered to encourage each other and steel their hearts for the battle that lies ahead.  

In building Naghul Ghutahn, proportion was key. The ancients had to be no more than about two and a half times the size of a minifig and Naghul comes in at just under that. The reason for the size restriction is that the ancients are supposed to be formidable opponents for the ninja but not crazy big, and since some of their battles take place indoors, they need to fit through doors and inside buildings without demolishing everything everywhere they go. Also, the ninja and ancients talk to each other and establish connections, which doesn’t really work so well when one party is the size of a ‘human’ and the other is as big as a bus. Most importantly, though, I wanted the ancients to be of a size that would take a minifig head without looking like the proportions were all wrong.

Two things that I absolutely love about Naghul are his chainmail cape and his shield. Oh, and his weapon really fits his personality, coz he’s just SO NOT a nice guy.

The zeffir’s proportions were equally important. I originally intended for it to be about waist high to Naghul, but that meant a lot of the features I wanted to add would have to be sacrificed due to the limited size, so I opted to build it up to shoulder height. Fortunately, because the zeffir is a villainous creature, it would have this creeping, slinking body position, which means it ends up being somewhere between waist and shoulder height to Naghul most of the time anyway, and that’s good enough for me.

As for my choice of colors, Naghul is a bad guy, so the colors are meant to underline that ‘bad guy’ vibe and since Naghul had the zeffir created specifically for him, its colors are the same as Naghul’s colors, which are in turn the colors of the House of Ghutahn in the Ever Realm.