The Grimm's army Vulture Fighter
LEGO by: Justin R. "Saber-Scorpion" Stebbins
Weight Range: Medium
Speed: Fast
Flight Capability: Air and Space, Long-range (Interstellar Drive)
Armaments: 2 quad blazer machine gun arrays, 2 small missile racks, 2 medium lasers
Capacity: 1 pilot

When the now-notorious Stormflyer Corporation was first first going out of business, they were desperate to sell the high-end fighter design they had been producing. But when it was unveiled at the Daggarech Showroom for the first time, the Big Four turned it down, decrying it as too dangerous, reckless, and expensive to produce. Desperate for any way to keep afloat, the company sought the only means left to them: the illegal ones. So it was that they secured top secret contracts with the Helexith Coalition... and Grimm's Mercenary Army, which was more than happy to buy the very prototype fighter that the wealthier nations had turned down, since an up-close and dirty fighter was more Grimm's style, and a ship with built-in Starlight drive was necessary for the army, which lacked a sizeable capital ship fleet.

This is the vehicle that Stormflyer sent to Grimm's Army: the Vulture Aerospace Fighter. Its was not designed for beauty or innovation, for Grimm asked for neither of these. He simply asked for a fast, tough, powerful and effective aerospace fighter, a no-nonsense craft. The Vulture is exactly that.

The Vulture is a much sleeker and less junky-looking vehicle than most of the things in Grimm's Army. This is because Grimm originally had almost no aerospace craft. When he earned enough money to afford one, he purchased this special design. Since they were so expensive, Grimm makes sure his troops keep them nice and neat. They have to fight with the Victorians a lot, so it makes sense to have a good fighter.

And the Vulture is a good fighter. It's tough and heavily armed, yet fast and extremely agile, with additional boosters used for turning, as well as a tail flap for atmospheric flight. All of this makes it as agile as some lighter fighter craft.

The machine gun array on the wing is an especially deadly weapon. Capable of dishing out a shower of Blazer bullets on enemy fighters, the Vulture is the ultimate anti-fighter fighter. This was Grimm's purpose in purchasing it, since it is now the main fighter of his army.

One of the things I couldn't incorporate into the ship was retractable landing gear. The front foot retracts, but the two feet on the back have to be detached and reattached when necessary. By the way, this fighter was originally called the Cloudbreaker, but I changed its name to the Vulture, something I considered in the first place, after giving it a lot of thought. Vulture just fits it too well.

The tail is much beefier than on my original design, and it actually looks like it serves a purpose. I like for things to serve a purpose, even if sometimes I'm sort of just making up excuses. But I think they're pretty good excuses. Take my Fox Ear Radar dishes on the Fox and Manegarm for example.

The engine is split in half by the tail. The body of this fighter is an odd number of studs wide, which made it rather difficult to build since most LEGO parts are an even number of studs long. But this design was necessary for the tail and the split cockpit to look right. Basically I wanted it to look like it had a blade running through the middle of it.

The blade has a green outline on top, as if it has been cutting into aliens. Some people didn't like the green streak, but I think it looks pretty dang sweet, myself.

Here's the pilot. As you can see, the windshield opens up just like the cockpit on my Xarkon Thrym Siege Tank. I liked the idea and wanted to use it again. No neural link helmet this time! Isn't the pilot cool, with his classic LEGO sunglasses head? LEGO had made a lot of pseudo-cool heads now, like the punks in Alpha Team, but none of them match the pure coolness of a classic smiley with sunglasses.

The cockpit. This one's a bit strange, since the pilot sits sort of off to one side. It think it turned out great though, heh. What? You wanted a chair? Well apparently this pilot didn't. Grimm's pilots get to customize their fighters a lot, you know. Most of the Vultures now have some crazy patterns painted on them like shark jaws and stuff.

I could have sworn I already wrote a caption for a picture from this very angle. Bah, I snapped too many. It's hard to write captions for pictures that look just the same.
Here's an attempt though:
LEGO DARK GREEN IS PEOPLE!

Unless I'm not counting something that I should technically be counting, this ship is COMPLETELY STUDLESS once again! Haha! I've gotten to the point where I start building studless things reflexively now. It's a new thing for me.

Oh no! HIDDEN STUDS! But the wings don't come up like this normally, of course. And they wouldn't stay down at the proper angles if I covered the studs with tiles. Anyway, the missiles. They're necessary, because some ships are still even more maneuverable than the Vulture. When it can't catch them in a storm of machinegun fire, out come the missiles.

The belly of the beast.

Some people fussed about this ship not being unique enough. Well, if you're looking for some bizarre, multi-winged, asymmetrical spacecraft, look elsewhere. Sometimes simple, sleek coolness works best, in my opinion. This design (with forward-curving wings and a long tail) has always been one of my favorites, and you can expect to see me use it on other ships in the future as well. I think it looks way cooler than something totally weird that hardly even looks like a fighter.

Another desktop image for the collection.