The Dark Tower - The Foundation

WARNING: This post may contain spoilers from Stephen King's The Dark Tower (series of books).

I'm taking on a rather daunting task for my first MOC: Stephen King's The Dark Tower.

The Dark Tower naturally has been portrayed and can be imagined in a variety of ways, and this flexibility was something I found very desirable for my first project as an AFOL. I have found myself paying very close attention to Stephen King's descriptions of the Dark Tower, rather than just focusing simply on a piece of artwork inspired by it.

The first challenge naturally was deciding the foundation and shape of the Dark Tower. While towers in history typically are circular, and indeed, while the Dark Tower is described as having a spiral staircase, I determined early on that a truly circular tower would be too daunting a task for me, and would require too many pieces.





So I have settled for an octagonal shape using Hinge Brick Swivels to connect eight 1x16 bricks, which while seemingly simple, did bring several design challenges along the way.

Most importantly, to maintain as close to a regular octagon shape as possible, I had to use 2x1 Jumper plates to make it so the overall shape of the octagon would fit in a 40x39 stud square (not counting the 5 steps leading up to the entrance of the Dark Tower).



My plan was to use that foundation to build hallways, rooms and spiral staircases going up 4-5 levels, with perhaps 1-2 points where the Tower could be separated in order to appreciate the inner workings.



Front to back (from the entrance to the back), the Dark Tower was very stable, being supported by bricks underneath and connected by plates, but side to side, because of the jumper cables, I had to take extra precautions as I built higher, ensuring that jumper cables were used at ideal locations to reinforce the structure, and that there were sufficient support bricks below it so that the floors and spiral staircases wouldn't bend or break.



The build's working fairly well so far, especially considering the fact that due to limited work space, I must transport the entire thing in one piece from the table where I build to the top of a shelf (out of reach of the kids) where it rests during the day. The entire piece so far can be moved without breaking, and can even be layed down on its side to work on the support pillars underneath.

My big challenge from here will be figuring out how to add on a 2nd module of roughly the same shape (or slightly smaller, to give the Tower a more striking visual effect) that will sit on top of what I've already constructed.

From there, the Dark Tower would sit on top of a hill, surrounded by a field of roses.