Terry Pratchett's Discworld

      Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels are undoubtedly among the greatest ever works of fantasy and are more than deserving of a Lego tribute. Despite having fewer on-screen adaptations than, say, HP or LOTR, many parts of the Discworld are described in marvellous detail, none more iconic than the Discworld itself. For the uninitiated, the Discworld is, unsurprisingly, a world in the shape of a disc. Inspired by Hindu mythology, the Discworld is carried by four giant elephants named Berilia, Tubul, Great T’Phon and Jerakeen, themselves standing on the back of an even more giant turtle, the World Turtle (Chelys galactica) know as Great A’Tuin. The centre of the Discworld (the Hub) is dominated by Cori Celesti, a ten-mile-high mountain atop which sits Dunmanifestin, the home of the gods. All around the edge of the Discworld (the Rim), the ocean cascades off into space in a great waterfall known as the Rimfall. In a less extreme part of the world lies Ankh-Morpork, the Discworld’s greatest (or at least biggest) city, located on the Sto Plains on the Hubward side of the Circle Sea. All of these features and more can be found in the build (Ankh-Morpork is marked as a red dot), although the Circle Sea is unfortunately square, for which I sincerely apologise.

           I was inspired to build the Discworld after seeing the work of BrickHammer, who submitted two versions of the Discworld, one large and one small. Notably, the large version reached 10,000 supporters but was not approved, hence leading to the submission of the small version. For my own build, I targeted an intermediate size (the final count is 1637 parts). I also aimed for a clean studless build, or at least as studless as possible. No part of this build was particularly easy, since nothing is square. The Disc itself is mercifully flat, but the Rimfall took some time to figure out. The elephants also took a bit of time, particularly their heads. However, the turtle shell was probably the most time-consuming part of the build, since it had to be curved somewhat realistically, but not too much otherwise the elephants wouldn’t be able to stand on it securely. The elephants are studded to the shell, but the Disc is simply resting on the elephants. The flippers and tail of Great A’Tuin were pretty straightforward, although I do have to acknowledge Spartan0712, whose submission “Grean Seaturtle Kinetic Sculpture” helped me enormously with the head.

           The gender of Great A’Tuin is the source of much debate among the Discworld’s greatest minds. The easiest way to determine the gender of a turtle is usually by the tail; males typically have long tails, while females have little to no tail. To preserve the mystery of Great A’Tuin’s gender, I have gone with a small-medium tail, which is (hopefully) rather ambiguous.

           Despite numerous engineering challenges, I had a lot of fun on this build. I’ve never really made animals before, so it turned out much better than expected. I hope it is a fitting tribute to the Discworld.