lynns-bonkle-blog

[lynns-bonkle-blog]

Do you think the reason why a lot of Stone characters had body parts upside down relative to others in their group, or just generally did things a little differently (Pohatu's torso, Avak's arm, Hewkii Inika's thigh armour) is because on Spherus Magna, the Rock Tribe was also the odd one out, with its tendency to produce offshoots (the Skrall, the Bone Hunters, etc)?

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Toa Ahkmou

Toa Ahkmou. I wanted to reference all his previous forms, so he has a McToran disk, waist swivel, and a kanoka launcher.

Kanohi Great Rau, Mask of Translation. No language barrier can stop Ahkmou from attempting to smooth-talk his way out of potential conflicts. Surprisingly, he shares an amenable relationship with several Vorox packs. Able to decipher their crude language with his mask, he's known to trade food and water with them in exchange for safe passage through the Great Barren.

He seems to be carrying a spare mask secured to his hip.

Disk Launcher Ahkmou expected the launcher to feel clumsy in his hands. Instead, it was familiar, and he quickly became a crack shot. He still has no memories from his life in Metru Nui, but playing akilini for millennia left him with an unshakable muscle memory for the weapon.

Comet Flail Acts of bioterrorism aside, Ahkmou's kolhii balls were crafted with expert precision. Perfectly balanced in shape and weight, a well-placed kick could easily send them soaring across the field. Overzealous players had to be careful not to overdo it; they could very well injure or even shatter the masks of their opponents if they struck the ball with full force.

Imagine the type of damage a Comet could do when charged with the power of elemental stone.

Avita's Twilight Break was the main source of inspiration behind this guy. Check it out, it's pretty kino.👌

BigPhan's Great Rau printed/painted by Buryu. Noble Raus are resin casts from 0m3g4. Sir Fangar cape from Capes4Minifigs.

Those brown CCBS feet are from a bootleg set, and this build is heavily reliant on Technic recolors from GoBricks. Here's a studi.io file for anyone interested. In it, you'll also find a Shadow Ahkmou alt.

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Glaivonn.

And his entourage (left to right: bodyguard 1, assistant, personal "chronicler", bodyguard 2)

Glaivonn's fingers from Godfyr's pack.

Heads, Matoran bodies, tablet, hands, left-side Matoran's launcher, Glaivonn's glaive chain, and right-side Matoran's arm from @nattarthetimedragon's packs.

Right-side Matoran's mask by @orc3dprint, from this pack.

Right-side Matoran's buzzsaw and second-to-right Matoran's staff from Scmdex's pack.

Some official parts from Sidopak and Biopack.

Second-to-right Matoran's mask and right-side Matoran's feet are from the Galvapack.

Glaivonn and left-side Matoran's masks from Rothanak's pack.

Second-to-left Matoran's mask is from Evanetic's Legends Pack.

Left-side Matoran's arm and Glaivonn's glaive pommel are from my playset figure pack and VNOG-style weapon pack, respectively.

Colours from the Community Colourpack and Unpixelled's Colourpack (the latter requires K4's Colour and Materials Pack in order to work).

Warning! Possibly slightly incoherent story below. It's long. Uhhhh yeah.

Glaivonn was a Colossus from the Northern Continent who, as is tradition, chose a single weapon to master which then became the basis for his name; in this case, the glaive. His love for the weapon was so strong, he started hand-crafting artisanal glaives using a Mask of Creation given to him by a messenger of Artakha himself. After using one of his creations to save the life of a Xian diplomat, Glaivonn was offered the opportunity to travel to Xia and set up a factory to mass-produce the weapons, and he accepted, with his factories being the safest on the island...

... or at least, that's what he'd have you believe. In actuality, Glaivonn was the head of an elementless Matoran village, having taken control after the Turaga had an. Accident. He then forced the Matoran there to melt down a statue of Mata Nui and forge it into a special glaive, and for the mask-makers to create a powerless Kanohi in the image of Artakha's Mask of Creation (I headcanon that different cultures in the MU have different depictions of Artakha, none of which actually resemble his true appearance). He then had every Matoran in the village make glaives, and even captured any travellers and made them work too.

This eventually came back to bite him when it turned out that one of said captured Matoran was there to announce the presence of a member of Xian's council, who soon arrived and accidentally activated one of Glaivonn's many Matoran-trapping cages placed just outside the village, getting stuck inside a cage that, while spacious to a Matoran, was very cramped to a Vortixx. Glaivonn used his glaive to cut through the cage's bars, and proceeded to lie about basically everything happening in the village. The council member, grateful to Glaivonn for having freed her (and also being absolutely fine with the horrible working conditions), offered him the opportunity to expand his operation over on Xia. Glaivonn accepted, and he took his entire. "Workforce". With him.

On Xia, Glaivonn lived at the top of an office tower in the island's Clerical District, directly next to the one that his company's actual offices were located in (someone already lived in the top floor of that one). When away doing product demonstrations, he would always bring along a "chronicler", complete with a custom-made Chronicler's Staff, who would write down everything Glaivonn did and carve it into a Protodermis slab attached to the back wall of his company's offices.

His connections to the council allowed him to get advance notice on any new factories being built, leading to him buying twenty simultaneously; this led to the unofficial designation of them as the "glaive district", though officially they're just part of the secondary weapons-manufacturing district. As you can probably expect, a factory that specialises in producing bladed weapons isn't the safest place to work, and soon the injuries started piling up, and having to hire new workers and pay for the hemolymph cleanup was starting to cost Glaivonn's company a lot of Widgets.

It was then that Glaivonn had an idea.

He knew that the Matoran had legends about an island known as Karzahni, where those who were unable to work efficiently, or who showed dissent, were sent to be "fixed" by a monstrous being. And while he dismissed this as all being Matoran folk-tales... what if he tried doing it himself? The next time one of Glaivonn's workers was injured (their entire left arm, most of their internal gears, and half of their brainstalk), a team of Matoran dragged them into a back area, where a team of surgeons proceeded to replace the damaged parts with mechanical versions, none of which were designed for Matoran. The result left the worker capable of doing their job, but also in constant pain, with unfamiliar limbs and half of their brain still missing. But for Glaivonn it was good enough, and buying a bunch of loose prosthetic limbs was far cheaper than hiring a Matoran directly from the mass-scale constructors, so that's what he did. He even "promoted" a few, using surplus weapons to turn injured workers into bodyguards that he claimed were seasoned mercenaries, while removing their ability to talk so that they couldn't reveal the truth. And, as long as the council didn't know the abject horror of the process and its results, Glaivonn could keep doing this forever...

Glaivonn was very secretive about how his workers never seemed to get injured, claiming it was to do with his factory's "excellent safety standards". However, rival companies soon started sending in spies in an attempt to discover his secret, leading to Glaivonn implementing high-level security measures, though this still was only barely enough. It wasn't until the return of activity in Metru Nui, which had been abandoned for millennia, that he found his solution. Scavengers and arms-dealers who visited the city during its reconstruction had retrieved several robots, known as "Vahki", and started mass-producing imitation ones for very little money. And not only that, but the imitation ones were equipped with lethal weaponry.

Glaivonn knew what he had to do.

He was going to kill Xia's council.

His plan was relatively simple; during their next meeting, he would bring up the amount of security he had to implement in order to ward off spies. Then, he would offer to give the council (who would also be bringing their bodyguards, the Toa Xia) a tour of his factories, so they could see the truth. And then finally, he would sic his army of lethal Vahki on the rest of the council and the Toa Xia after revealing his dark secret, taking over Xia for himself and stealing all the comapnies on the island. After agreeing to do the tour, Glaivonn began setting up the Vahki ambush.

When the day arrived, the council entered the factory, and were horrified by what they saw. However, when Glaivonn revealed the Vahki, the whole plan fell apart; as soon as they had emerged from the places they were hidden, the Toa Xia immediately destroyed all of them. His secret revealed, and his plan failed, Glaivonn was cast out of Xia, moving to Stelt where he returned to his old strategy of slave labour (albeit with Steltian Bruisers rather than Matoran).

Meanwhile, on Xia, the council realised that maybe repairing injured Matoran workers wasn't such a bad idea, and so they started doing it, albeit with limbs that fit the species. And so, slowly, the idea spread. The council's belief that Matoran need to be well-treated in order to be productive (there's a Word of Greg thing along those lines somewhere, albeit without the whole "council-enforced" thing, that's a headcanon I have, as is the Xian council itself) was upheld, and this is how it went until the Kanohi Dragon's rampage resulted in the destruction of half of the island.

Meanwhile, over in Stelt, Glaivonn was still doing his thing. He even survived the destruction of the Matoran Universe, though by that point, it was widely known that he tried to kill the Xian council, and that he had committed horrible acts to his workers. He was banished from all major settlements (and a few minor ones) on Spherus Magna, his remaining workers and bodyguards all abandoned him, and after many millennia, Glaivonn finally met his end when he was captured by a pack of rogue Vorox who cracked him open like a lobster and ate his organic components, with the pack's leader taking his glaive and mask.

[lynns-bonkle-blog]

Glaivonn.

And his entourage (left to right: bodyguard 1, assistant, personal "chronicler", bodyguard 2)

Glaivonn's fingers from Godfyr's pack.

Heads, Matoran bodies, tablet, hands, left-side Matoran's launcher, Glaivonn's glaive chain, and right-side Matoran's arm from @nattarthetimedragon's packs.

Right-side Matoran's mask by @orc3dprint, from this pack.

Right-side Matoran's buzzsaw and second-to-right Matoran's staff from Scmdex's pack.

Some official parts from Sidopak and Biopack.

Second-to-right Matoran's mask and right-side Matoran's feet are from the Galvapack.

Glaivonn and left-side Matoran's masks from Rothanak's pack.

Second-to-left Matoran's mask is from Evanetic's Legends Pack.

Left-side Matoran's arm and Glaivonn's glaive pommel are from my playset figure pack and VNOG-style weapon pack, respectively.

Colours from the Community Colourpack and Unpixelled's Colourpack (the latter requires K4's Colour and Materials Pack in order to work).

Warning! Possibly slightly incoherent story below. It's long. Uhhhh yeah.

Glaivonn was a Colossus from the Northern Continent who, as is tradition, chose a single weapon to master which then became the basis for his name; in this case, the glaive. His love for the weapon was so strong, he started hand-crafting artisanal glaives using a Mask of Creation given to him by a messenger of Artakha himself. After using one of his creations to save the life of a Xian diplomat, Glaivonn was offered the opportunity to travel to Xia and set up a factory to mass-produce the weapons, and he accepted, with his factories being the safest on the island...

... or at least, that's what he'd have you believe. In actuality, Glaivonn was the head of an elementless Matoran village, having taken control after the Turaga had an. Accident. He then forced the Matoran there to melt down a statue of Mata Nui and forge it into a special glaive, and for the mask-makers to create a powerless Kanohi in the image of Artakha's Mask of Creation (I headcanon that different cultures in the MU have different depictions of Artakha, none of which actually resemble his true appearance). He then had every Matoran in the village make glaives, and even captured any travellers and made them work too.

This eventually came back to bite him when it turned out that one of said captured Matoran was there to announce the presence of a member of Xian's council, who soon arrived and accidentally activated one of Glaivonn's many Matoran-trapping cages placed just outside the village, getting stuck inside a cage that, while spacious to a Matoran, was very cramped to a Vortixx. Glaivonn used his glaive to cut through the cage's bars, and proceeded to lie about basically everything happening in the village. The council member, grateful to Glaivonn for having freed her (and also being absolutely fine with the horrible working conditions), offered him the opportunity to expand his operation over on Xia. Glaivonn accepted, and he took his entire. "Workforce". With him.

On Xia, Glaivonn lived at the top of an office tower in the island's Clerical District, directly next to the one that his company's actual offices were located in (someone already lived in the top floor of that one). When away doing product demonstrations, he would always bring along a "chronicler", complete with a custom-made Chronicler's Staff, who would write down everything Glaivonn did and carve it into a Protodermis slab attached to the back wall of his company's offices.

His connections to the council allowed him to get advance notice on any new factories being built, leading to him buying twenty simultaneously; this led to the unofficial designation of them as the "glaive district", though officially they're just part of the secondary weapons-manufacturing district. As you can probably expect, a factory that specialises in producing bladed weapons isn't the safest place to work, and soon the injuries started piling up, and having to hire new workers and pay for the hemolymph cleanup was starting to cost Glaivonn's company a lot of Widgets.

It was then that Glaivonn had an idea.

He knew that the Matoran had legends about an island known as Karzahni, where those who were unable to work efficiently, or who showed dissent, were sent to be "fixed" by a monstrous being. And while he dismissed this as all being Matoran folk-tales... what if he tried doing it himself? The next time one of Glaivonn's workers was injured (their entire left arm, most of their internal gears, and half of their brainstalk), a team of Matoran dragged them into a back area, where a team of surgeons proceeded to replace the damaged parts with mechanical versions, none of which were designed for Matoran. The result left the worker capable of doing their job, but also in constant pain, with unfamiliar limbs and half of their brain still missing. But for Glaivonn it was good enough, and buying a bunch of loose prosthetic limbs was far cheaper than hiring a Matoran directly from the mass-scale constructors, so that's what he did. He even "promoted" a few, using surplus weapons to turn injured workers into bodyguards that he claimed were seasoned mercenaries, while removing their ability to talk so that they couldn't reveal the truth. And, as long as the council didn't know the abject horror of the process and its results, Glaivonn could keep doing this forever...

Glaivonn was very secretive about how his workers never seemed to get injured, claiming it was to do with his factory's "excellent safety standards". However, rival companies soon started sending in spies in an attempt to discover his secret, leading to Glaivonn implementing high-level security measures, though this still was only barely enough. It wasn't until the return of activity in Metru Nui, which had been abandoned for millennia, that he found his solution. Scavengers and arms-dealers who visited the city during its reconstruction had retrieved several robots, known as "Vahki", and started mass-producing imitation ones for very little money. And not only that, but the imitation ones were equipped with lethal weaponry.

Glaivonn knew what he had to do.

He was going to kill Xia's council.

His plan was relatively simple; during their next meeting, he would bring up the amount of security he had to implement in order to ward off spies. Then, he would offer to give the council (who would also be bringing their bodyguards, the Toa Xia) a tour of his factories, so they could see the truth. And then finally, he would sic his army of lethal Vahki on the rest of the council and the Toa Xia after revealing his dark secret, taking over Xia for himself and stealing all the comapnies on the island. After agreeing to do the tour, Glaivonn began setting up the Vahki ambush.

When the day arrived, the council entered the factory, and were horrified by what they saw. However, when Glaivonn revealed the Vahki, the whole plan fell apart; as soon as they had emerged from the places they were hidden, the Toa Xia immediately destroyed all of them. His secret revealed, and his plan failed, Glaivonn was cast out of Xia, moving to Stelt where he returned to his old strategy of slave labour (albeit with Steltian Bruisers rather than Matoran).

Meanwhile, on Xia, the council realised that maybe repairing injured Matoran workers wasn't such a bad idea, and so they started doing it, albeit with limbs that fit the species. And so, slowly, the idea spread. The council's belief that Matoran need to be well-treated in order to be productive (there's a Word of Greg thing along those lines somewhere, albeit without the whole "council-enforced" thing, that's a headcanon I have, as is the Xian council itself) was upheld, and this is how it went until the Kanohi Dragon's rampage resulted in the destruction of half of the island.

Meanwhile, over in Stelt, Glaivonn was still doing his thing. He even survived the destruction of the Matoran Universe, though by that point, it was widely known that he tried to kill the Xian council, and that he had committed horrible acts to his workers. He was banished from all major settlements (and a few minor ones) on Spherus Magna, his remaining workers and bodyguards all abandoned him, and after many millennia, Glaivonn finally met his end when he was captured by a pack of rogue Vorox who cracked him open like a lobster and ate his organic components, with the pack's leader taking his glaive and mask.

[lynns-bonkle-blog]

Bionicle has a strong emphasis around bodies, mostly their alteration and mutation through time, but not on gender. The identity intrinsic to the characters is marked predominantly through name and color scheme, respectively their individuality and the symbol of their community, which remain similar throughout their near constant evolution. Change comes inevitably; despite everything, it's still you.

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Yo yo

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Kahau, reclusive Toa of Ice (He/Him).

Kahau lives in solitude a fair distance away from his koro, and is often seen as intimidating or even scary for his reclusive nature and appearance. In truth, he is simply adverse to social interaction and lacks people skills, prefering the company of his beautiful ice sculptures. While most matoran avoid him, one young ko-matoran has recently convinced him to take her as an apprentice and teach her to sculpt and chisel ice into new shapes. She claims hes actually quite friendly once you get to know him.

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I haven't read Federation of Fear so I don't know how accurate this is.

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Lot of folks seemed to like my Botasaur MOC, so here, have a few more!

This one doesn’t have a name yet but it’s been done for a while. Obviously it’s an Ankylosaur. What I’m most proud of is the head. The way the pieces of the jaw just flow together work so perfectly.

This little guy is a tiny theropod based on the Alvaerzsaurs like Mononychus. It was more or less a challenge to see if I could make a MOC as small as possible. Much as I like this little guy he might be subject to change, mainly with the head.

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I'm in a god damn Zoom call with Christian Faber :0 :0 :0 :0

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I'm in a god damn Zoom call with Christian Faber :0 :0 :0 :0

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Matoran society concepts in my head that I need to flesh out more:

Group of Le-Matoran traders who live exclusively on a fleet of airships that sail wind currents throughout the MU. All of their trade with the world below is done via cranes and elevators, it's a point of pride for them that they never touch the ground

Village of De-Matoran who live in a cave system specifically carved to have perfect acoustics inside and perfect soundproofing from the outside. Their culture is built around a never ending musical performance that they all take turns maintaining, which can be heard with no distortion or muffling anywhere in the cave system.

An outpost of Ce-Matoran who live around a natural outcropping of memory crystals, the main job in their village is to commune with the crystals and try to interpret the memories they find in there, as well as cultivating new experiences and memories for them to add to the crystals themselves. Some of these crystals form part of the GSRs long term data storage, with many of the memories they see in the crystals being observations Mata Nui made of the other worlds he visited.

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Idk how well it holds up with canon but playing through MNOG really has me thinking about how much the matoran of Mata Nui were RELIGIOUSLY awaiting the arrival of the Toa Mata and like... Honestly that could explain the narrow selection of masks the matoran there have? Maybe in Metru Nui they all wore a far wider array of masks, but as masks broke, wore out, whatever, and replacements were needed, the matoran wanted masks representing either their beloved turaga or the fabled heroes they knew would come save them.

[lynns-bonkle-blog]

Here's the Bohrok teaser in HD :)

Sourced from a 35mm film print.

The film was digitized by Kineko Video, then we handled the post processing / color correction. More details in the news post!

https://www.maskofdestiny.com/news/hd-bohrok-teaser-and-bohrok-vhs-with-english-subs

[lynns-bonkle-blog]

The myth, the man, the legend... Dezalk.

With the exception of the legs, head, eyestalk, mask and tools (and also the colours of like half the pieces), this design was made using pieces from Balta, Garan and Piruk, for. Reasons (the cut Garan/Balta hybrid sprite from VNOG's files that the fandom seems to have latched onto as being Dezalk, plus the fact that, in canon, Dezalk was the first Matoran to be enslaved by the Piraka, and the Matoran slaves in VNOG are slightly-modified Piruk recolours. And then the tools are based on the weird VNOG Pulse Bolt Generator sprites).

Custom parts used:

Articulated Matoran legs from Godfyr's pack.

Head from @nattarthetimedragon's custom head pack.

Some official parts from Sidopak and Biopack.

Colours from the Community Colourpack and Unpixelled's Colourpack (the latter requires K4's Colour and Materials Pack in order to work).

Also an alternate version based on the Matoran Slave sprites.

[lynns-bonkle-blog]

A reminder on this most blessed day. May you all have The Dream tonight. Bonks be with you.

[lynns-bonkle-blog]

The myth, the man, the legend... Dezalk.

With the exception of the legs, head, eyestalk, mask and tools (and also the colours of like half the pieces), this design was made using pieces from Balta, Garan and Piruk, for. Reasons (the cut Garan/Balta hybrid sprite from VNOG's files that the fandom seems to have latched onto as being Dezalk, plus the fact that, in canon, Dezalk was the first Matoran to be enslaved by the Piraka, and the Matoran slaves in VNOG are slightly-modified Piruk recolours. And then the tools are based on the weird VNOG Pulse Bolt Generator sprites).

Custom parts used:

Articulated Matoran legs from Godfyr's pack.

Head from @nattarthetimedragon's custom head pack.

Some official parts from Sidopak and Biopack.

Colours from the Community Colourpack and Unpixelled's Colourpack (the latter requires K4's Colour and Materials Pack in order to work).

Also an alternate version based on the Matoran Slave sprites.