I have the Freeblood Lair Estate which has a couple rooms with chess board style flooring. I'm setting up one as a life size chess board and would like some ideas on which plushies would best fit which piece on it. Since I'm not fully versed on all the lore, please sort your selections according to good/evil (or white/black) factions.
easiest way to get a look at which factions go where would be to wander through the towns of Norrath and see where folks keep themselves. like, visit the mage, fighter, priest and scout factions in each city for their names and alignments. Harder would be some of the more obscure ones further out, like the factions in Sinking sands lands, kunark, or elsewhere. Those would require reading storylines to decide judgement of alignment. There's thousands of ways you could build a chessboard based on Norrath alone.
Good news is, pawns could be "neutral," I think. Like a hawk plushie, for example, could be either "faction," since we can have Evil Rangers these days. Well, okay, bad example; about the only hawk plushie is a quest reward, I think, but you get the idea: critters of all sorts, walking trees, etc. Nature doesn't care. ;-> Another thing I'd recommend is check out www.EQ2Furniture.com and look under Category->Plushies. There are oodles and scads of them that come up (not all of which are in the game any more, but might still be available on the Broker), all with accompanying pictures, so you can get an idea of Good/Evil/Neutral sides. Uwk
I think one thing you'd want to take into consideration would be availability of plushies, especially when it comes to the pawns, since you need a lot of those. You'll want ones that are easy to come by, inexpensive (if purchased), or that you can get a lot of at once. Right now is a great time to get plushies of various Serilians, since it's Brewday. In the past I've gotten hordes of gnolls, goblins, and kobolds during this event. For example, there is a repeatable quest (Drinks Are On The House! - repeatable every 2 hours) that offers a Bugbear Plushie as a reward. Of course, "lifesize" bugbears are kind of large, so maybe not so useful as pawns (which are usually small). You could shrink them or leave them massive - either way, I would imagine, to comic effect. If you have the Blood of Luclin expansion, there's also an Overseer quest line that rewards a Grikbar Kobold and a Warboar plushie, and if it's like it was during Erollisi Day, you can do the Holiday Overseer quests repeatedly to get more. Do you have any plushies collected already? Any thoughts on which ones you'd like to use? Do you have a preference for humanoid vs animal-type plushies for your chess layout? How about plants? Elementals? With more information, some of us might be able to help you sort factions or make suggestions for future plushie acquisitions. It sounds like a very fun project, and I hope you'll share pictures of the finished build! EDIT: And Uwk snuck in ahead of me - great suggestion to look at EQ2Furniture.com!
This is a cool idea! What about using house actors and sizing them and dressing them appropriately for the piece they are representing?
If you want the chess board color schemed specifically black and white, your options may become pretty limited. If you aren't worried too much about color scheme, but just plushies you would consider good or evil, your options are wide open. There are quite a few different types of skeleton plushies and monsters, and even some adorable and cuddly looking critters you might consider "good". There are humanoid type plushies as well, and mount plushies. Any horse mount might be suitable for the Knight, or even a unicorn, and I think the Gooblin skeleton plushie might make a cool pawn for the evil side, hehe. You could even go non-traditional and use regal dragon plushies as King and Queen.
That actually isn't a bad idea. Using the class specific armor sets from the Kingdom of Sky zones timeline, you could really put those themes to use, although, you might want to reconsider using any of those class armor sets for the pawns as you might just offend that specific class.
Hadn't thought much about the pawns since, as a carpenter, I can craft those specific pieces, but after looking at what I already have set up I checked what else I could make. For Frostfell theme, I can craft a complete set of gumdrop and gingerbread men for pawns, lol. Or for a Nights of the Dead theme, I have tons of rats and spider plushies, as well as can craft pumpkins for pawns. The sablevein crumblers are easy enough to acquire multiples of if I choose to make temp characters for that task. Cannot recall if Faydark has an equally easy plushie for pawn use. But setting holiday themes aside, I was thinking along the lines of Faydark versus Neriak, though I am not sure if a topiaric ripper would be more faydark (plant/nature) or Neriak (ripper). What I have are all the plushies from Snoogle's quest (easy enough to get second set). Complete set of patchcraft plushies (Bristlebane?), couple gnolls, the inebriated couple, Erolissi's teddy, statue of Antonia Bayle, dark marble statue of sisterhood, bat swarm, djinn master and baelon, lively scarecrow, pairs of corrupted dryad and faun, non-corrupted dryads, one flesh golem, a pair of rust monsters, magical felwithe guardian and sorceress, tallonite honor guard, various neriads, turtles frogs, one yellow drake, bugbears including one magical mystic, crushbone warlord, darklight growler, werewolf, succulents, various goblins, one satyr, one treeglider, one grizzly, magical stuffed treants, faydark guardins, one pixie...(remembering all the plushies I can get from the Moonlight event). Probably others in a dozen prestige houses, lol.
there's a guide quest that pops up every once in a while for a ghost orc plushie from greater faydark orc hill area. if you used statues, there are the knights on horseback with the lances from hero's fest
Oh great. Make it harder for me to decide which direction to go with my chess board, LOL. Thank you for pointing that out to me. Having the "how to acquire" simplifies the selection process. I appreciate all the input.
Although I still haven't figured out all the pieces for non-holiday chess plushies, I can happily say that Brewday offers a complete set for both sides (with a little bit of work/time). On the one side, the Ashenfell plushies are your obvious choice for king/queen.Snowfang Thief=bishop, Gnoll Guard=rook, Armored Gnoll=knight, and bugbears are pawns. On the other side, the Strange Cabbage are pawns, Pink Elephant=knight, Small Lizard=bishop, Flying Pig=rook (although pig and elephant could be either), and the Inebriated couple are your king/queen because this totally is Brewday.
I did a chess room with sets for all of the holidays a couple years ago for the Holiday House Exchange. It's in Kamaia's house, Everfrost Portal, Qeynos, on the top floor of the house. There's even a set for Moonlight Enchantments. If you're on AB, stop by and take a look. If you aren't on AB, you really should be. We have cookies. (There should also be a video of the house somewhere.)
Yeah, I think the Elephants could be the Rooks; you see them in historical depictions and fiction and movies with big ol' howdahs on their backs that can carry just about anything from a couple of tiger hunters to a full squad of soldiers. ;-> And Pigs would be move maneuverable, perhaps? Uwk
