Locke Lamora Chess Set

This page contains my lego chess set based on the book The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. This is the first book in the series The Gentleman Bastards.

Spoilers: there are various hints of major plot points and spoilers from throughout the first book, but none from the remainder of the series.

You can view the files either through the gallery below or the individual image links just below the gallery (since the gallery scripts occasionally break). Below that, I have included a discussion of the builds and some of the customization involved, followed by copyright and use information. If you're on mobile, the menus are at the bottom of the page.

Gallery

Individual image links

• White pieces
• Black pieces
• Board, diagonal view 1
• Board, diagonal view 2
• Board, diagonal view 3
• Board, diagonal view 4
• Board, top view 1
• Board, top view 2
• Board, side view 1
• Board, side view 2
• Board, side view 3
• Board, side view 4
• The Elderglass burrow
• The Echo Hole and salt devils
• Fishies
• The Satisfaction

About these builds

This build only used one custom-printed item: Doña Sofia's torso, which I designed and had printed by Bricksanity.  However, I did use a lot of third-party minifigure accessories: two martini glasses (BrickForge), the Falconer's sleeves (BrickWarriors), two money pouches (BrickWarriors), two pipes (BrickWarriors), a folded-back hood (LeYiLe Brick), a hairpiece (LeYiLe Brick), a cape (Arealight), and Raiza and Cheryn's loincloths (Arealight) and armor (BrickWarriors).  There are also two bottles from BrickForge and a few accessories from BrickWarriors in the Elderglass burrow, and the horse urine in the Echo Hole is from BrickForge.

I love chess sets because they are great showpieces for a book.  I get to display 32 characters and four scenes in the side dioramas, and there are lots of opportunities to work in references.  This one ended up a lot bigger than I had first envisioned, though, mostly because the reef in the interior needed a lot of space to let everything be visible and to not feel cramped.  I almost always take builds apart after I finish photographing them due to space constraints and cost, but the chess sets are ones I'd really want to keep intact if I could.

Legal stuff

The artwork on this page is copyright 2020 by Richard Martin. The source material is copyright 2006 by Scott Lynch.

Feel free to download the images in this gallery and to use them for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to re-post them online, you may do so as long as you give me credit by either citing me (Rick Martin) as the artist, linking to this site, and/or linking to my Facebook page or Twitter account.