Vembu Batch 1

 Vembu (from Old Steltial vembulum, to bear, carry, convey; ride) is a vehicle. In this case, they are usually relatively fast builds, with one well-defined idea, modest size, and a goal of letting go of the unnecessary pressure and stress to make super good and professional MOCs. There are dozens of them, made during the last six months or so, and I'm posting them on few batches. Most of them, anyway. The thing is, they're a part of collaborative project where some other folks have come up with the names and the lore. I'm mostly focusing on the building process, leaving most of the madness shrouded.

 Umbra's Endomothopter

 I was building Umbra's parasitoid wasp flyer, so Endomothopter is close enough. The tail wing uses Umbra's sword and the cool Technic mudguards had a yellow print that fit Umbra's colours perfectly. The whole model grew around those mudguard pieces and the bubble cockpit than integrates into it beautifully. The model is obviously inspired by the ornithopters in Dune, but I took a more playful route and went full insect mode. Gorast's wings are beautiful pieces. I like how a brown leather seat gives a real-life vibe to contrast with the weird scifi around it.

Gaggu Walger

This, too, is very close what I intended: a walker for Gaggulabio, who is a warlord and a baker. The working title was Gaggu-koma to refer to machikomas built during Marchikoma. This was probably built in March but I'm not sure. Nonetheless, I was in love with those petal/tongue windscreen pieces from the tulips bouquet set, and purple was perfect for Gaggulabio. Again, there's a normal-looking leather seat, a motif I seem to enjoy. The "head" with the worn cake print is consciously simplistic, but I probably should have added some greeble below the mech chest piece.

Selecius-Moped 2000-X

"[Character]'s Moped" is the Platonic idea of a vembu. This was obviously going to be Tawa's motorbike, again inspired by the tulip windscreens. Furthermore, it is inspired by the countless huge Ninjago motorbikes, and parodises them a bit. It has no steering, the wheels are big... I like the round shapes of this one. It's a simple model, but sometimes building things like this helps to keep the hobby fresh.

Barraki Carapar #8918 Assault Wagon / Megatronius

Here, I was building a neutral tank fitting for any side of the Mysterys Nui conflict. It is inspired by French Renault FT, the light tank from World War I that revolutionised tank design. I'm not much into war history, but I have a soft spot for WWI tanks. Most of them are somehow humorous, and none of them were that efficient human killing machines. Renault FT could be from some Miyazaki movie. This, of course, is not a faithful replica - the turret especially is very different, ans I discovered a neat combo with the pirate cannon piece and the definitely-not-scuba-helmet pieces from Dreamzzz ("cauldrons halves"). The tank rolls and the turret rotates. And shoots 1x1 round bricks, of course.