This was the first Imperial BioniWars MOC that I came up with, just barely preceeding the StormToaper (and before people start asking what he’s doing in the top picture, he’s deflecting a blaster bolt with his hand, just like he did in Cloud City). I’d found a $10 TECHNIC® Darth Vader set at the local K-Mart, and I ended up with a temporary surplus of the pieces used to make the lightsaber (that didn’t last long). I was casually chaining them together when I suddenly had the idea of building a TOA-sized Darth Vader. The head was easy to design, since the ONUA eyes are the darkest, and the HAU NUVA has already generated many discussions of how much it resembles Darth Vader’s helmet. That really only left two problem areas: the chest box, and the cape.

Fortunately, I had a few ideas staring me right in the face. The Darth Vader set includes a sticker for the chest box, so all I had to do was build something to stick it on. As much as I hate putting stickers across multiple parts, it seemed the logical thing to do in this case. The set also came with a nice big black cloth cape…but it was way out of scale, as demonstrated by Count Bohrokula . I measured a nice arc to match the original hemline, and cut about 6 inches off the bottom. I then had to trim back the lower corners about 1.5 inches (I’ve got another unused cape that will probably show up in a similar form sometime in the future)

Once I had all of that done, I realized that Darth Vatoa was too short. He stood exactly the same height as the StormToaper, and that couldn’t be tolerated. My solution was to replace the #3 plus-rod in the neck with two #2 plus-rods and a plus-rod joiner. The neck is still a bit skinny, but it’s mostly unnoticable with the bulk of the cape surrounding it.

Of course, he wouldn’t be much of a Sith Lord if he couldn’t use the Force to lift randomly shaped mechanical things and throw them at unsuspecting Jedi. Here he shows off his great talent (pay no attention to the clear plastic stick), as he hoists…well, I’m not sure what it is, but I’m sure it would hurt very much if he dropped it on your toes.