#bionicle rebuilt

[bio-prime]

Bionicle Rebuilt calendar system based on Rebuilt Bionicle.

@rebuiltbionicle

[communicore]

oh.

[downtofragglerock]

I just remembered the time as a kid when I rebuilt my (male) self moc, gave them much more slender proportions, and decided they were a girl now, a good couple years before I started realizing I was trans

Bionicle really is the anvil on which tgirls are forged

[toa-ikari]

So Rahi are pretty messed up right. Multiple MU species eat meat, so there's a finite number of creatures being consumed for their meat, but there's (apparently) no reproduction for the MU inhabitants (we'll come back to this). So either after being consumed the Rahi either spend time regenerating their organic bits (neglecting the damage that would naturally occur to their mechanical bits during a fight or hunt), get rebuilt on the red star after being eaten (I'm sure the Kestora appreciate that), or the Makuta recycle.

But like, this doesn't make any sense, that's too many steps, all of those are. Especially the regeneration one (although that does have some of the body horror elements present in a surprising amount of Bionicle media.)

Let's circle back to reproduction for a second. So we know Rahi build nests, from Matau, and we also know that ussal crabs get bigger as they age. Both of these seem to imply that Rahi (at least) have some sort of mating cycle. Let's also consider that the Po-Matoran kept Mahi and Mukau (which I refuse to call Mata-Nui cows, they had a name before someone at Lego said "eww, cringe.") Think about how difficult it is to keep livestock, in a desert, while under siege from the god of destruction. They can't be keeping them around just for the meat, these Rahi are either being used as beasts of burden (honestly likely), or are also being kept for their milk. Which if you know what causes lactation you might get where I'm coming from here. Otherwise you just have a case of weird and bad worldbuilding: it wouldn't make sense for the Po-Matoran to keep Rahi just for meat when they could just as easily hunt it.

Now a point against me that I can easily think of is that the Toa Mahri thought it was strange and gross that creatures outside the MU laid eggs. It is however possible that Rahi just give live birth.

Love might not be cannon, but there's a decent amount of evidence that fucking nasty style is.

[ctrl-alt-tahu]

A Great Being's Mind

What kind of Great Being allows himself to be "fixed" by Karzahni?

The descriptions of Velika in the Saga of Ignition are clear: he was an odd, broken, clumsily-rebuilt Po-Matoran, as were all the Matoran of Voya Nui. If Velika had not been like those around him, the great surprise of his unveiling after the reformation of Spherus Magna might not have been so surprising, but a surprise it was. So a broken Matoran rebuilt by Karzahni he must have been--but why?

He was not always this way, we have learned. In all the records salvaged from the Great Spirit Robot there were still traces, for those who went looking, of the original Po-Matoran Velika. There was no longer anyone who remembered him, or any record of his assigned duties in the village where he had lived in the Northern Continent: only a single copper scrap that had survived the destruction of Karzahni's realm: the tag with which he had been sent there, only partially legible:

Velika - Po-Mato-- broken arm, uppe-- return to: East Po-Koro, Inner Po-Wahi, Nor-- Signed: Roc-

A broken arm was a minor repair, compared with most of those sent to Karzahni--at least in the later years. Once Turaga across the isles began to wonder why their Matoran never returned from their repairs, they went to greater efforts to repair their broken Matoran, sending only the most irreparably damaged to Karzahni, the realm of no return. In those later years, a broken arm alone would never have been enough. Were there more damages, unable to be read on what remains of the tag? Or was he sent there so early in Karzahni's history that no one had yet become suspicious that none had returned?

The script used on the tag argues for the possibility of the latter option. The square-printed letters include a ligature that was lost in the great time-skip, an early Artakhan script that fell out of fashion everywhere but the Western Arm. While is possible that Velika was not quite the first Matoran sent to Karzahni, it seems he was an early one.

The discovery that, in early years, Karzahni had, in fact, competently fixed and returned Matoran sent a historiographic shockwave through the Bionicle community. Their Agori neighbours understood well enough that it was a surprising unveiling of mysteries when the earliest records of the Order of Mata Nui were unsealed, but they did not understand the smaller therein that, in the first few hundred years or so, every Matoran sent to Karzahni had returned, in perfect functioning order.

What kind of Great Being would allow himself to be fixed by Karzahni?

Why did Karzahni cease to competently perform the role for which he was made?

The fools, they would never know, Velika thought, nor understand, but just has he had given them thought, so too was he able to break it. His own broken arm had been a trivial wound, but he had become bored with East Po-Koro and had relished the opportunity to travel "by chance" to realm of repair. The Matoran Universe was no longer new, exactly, but the remnants of Spherus Magna were now far enough behind that he was willing to venture about and see what his changes to the Matoran had wrought--and where better to meet Matoran from all over the universe than where they were all repaired?

Karzahni had had him prepped genially, the bound-up arm unwound and laid beside him on the sterile surface, and the gentle titan started to knit him together carefully. Velika had smirked to himself, delighted at the fullness of his deception, when something--some tiny, trivial, unknowable, unpredictable instinct had made the titan pause.

"You're a strange one, aren't you?" he mused. Sedated, Velika didn't think he should answer, and maybe the sedation had even worked on him, a little, and he did not think to stop Karzahni as the titan tapped at his head, and the casing that should have housed a melding of silicate tissues and fine circuitry opened to reveal a wrinkled, grey lump of pulsating matter.

Even if he were a half-second slow under the sedation, that half-second had now passed, and Velika was indignant at being discovered. Even as Karzahni stepped back, baffled and a bit horrified at the un-Matoran brain he had discovered, Velika's eyes lit as he "woke" fully, and his good hand clutched at Karzahni's massive hand, and the titan could not break the grip.

"I look the same, don't I?" asked the apparent Po-Matoran, "but I am not--let me show you." And, with a wrench, his grip on Karzahni linked the titan's nervous system to his own, and Velika's thoughts coursed from his brain, through the apparently-Matoran body he inhabited, and into the Karzahni's nerves, leaping to his brain in less than an instant.

The visions Velika showed him awed the titan: visions of raw elemental power, of a knowledge of energised protodermis behind that of Artakha himself, of all that had come before, and of much that had happened since, and even as Karzahni struggled to comprehend the enormity of what he had just learned, Velika reached in and erased the memory of it--and then some.

Karzahni, now and forever more thereafter the Mad Titan, stumbled about, his eyes blinking furiously, and when he had calmed himself, though the world seemed to stop spinning, he saw the half-assembled Matoran on the operating table.

"Where was I…?"

"You were just about to improve me," said Velika. "To restore me."

And Karzahni did: alone of all the Matoran that had come to him yet, he sent Velika away changed from what he had been, and alone of all the Matoran that would come thereafter, he sent Velika away with no defect, though to the eyes of one accustomed to a standard Matoran, he was no longer that. All the Matoran that Karzahni fixed thereafter would resemble him in some form, but covering defects he could no longer repair. Only, in Velika, there was no defect: this was his chosen form.

[makutaservaela]

For some reason, I am godawful at lava-surfing.

Doesn't matter the game, but every Bionicle game with a lava-surfing minigame, that minigame is horrible to me. Only Bionicle game level I've been stuck on longer than the Tales of the Tohunga Lava surfing level was the Bionicle Rebuilt moving platform Toa Kaita level.

[half-man-half-lime]

Fuck you, Bionicle photodump (Part 1)

I went rooting in my parents attic to bring my old Bionicle stuff to my apartment (the Bohrok pictured above were already here, I bought the shelf so odds and ends like them and my old rock collection would look a little less kiddie than on my dresser). Why? Do I have some sense that I'll try building something again? Or put those nasty, dusty relics on display? Who can say?

I bring you some of my classic creations in all their awful glory.

Let's start with my main man, the Guardian of Time. Rebuilt around high school from a design I did in elementary school. Big buff dude, giant poleaxe, Mask of Time.

I wrote some truly awful BZPower fanfic in middle school, a weird prequel to the second movie where he fights this jerk in Metru-Nui:

In retrospect that's clearly a female body type so this one (name long forgotten) I would retcon as a girl, or at least a dude in chest armor and hammer pants. Iunno.

What followed was a fic that highlighted the fact that I was too young to understand that stories are designed to go places and explain mysteries later on, as the story followed basically Mata Nui's & Makuta's dad who got turned into a big demon and sent into a wormhole or something. Behold the king of no structural integrity!

Note the neat wing mechanisms. Actually looks okay for the most part, other than the fact that I just spent like twenty minutes trying to put him back together as he repeatedly fell apart in my hands. The spear is also some sort of snake.

[sepublic]

What if we reimagined all of the other non-Teridax Makuta as eldritch horrors, just as Teridax was initially presented in the early years of Bionicle? What if we used each Makuta as a prompt of sorts; What if THEY were the big villain terrorizing an island, their individual name unknown so they’re just THE Makuta to the local Toa and Matoran? Make each one feel worthy of the title of Makuta, with their depictions in Karda Nui being akin to physical, humanoid avatars meant to interact with others, just as the scheming Teridax is like for the vortex from MNOG?

Like for example, Chirox! You have this swarm of spiders known as the Visorak, led by one massive spider, known as Makuta. The Visorak mutate their victims, before dragging them back to their master.

Makuta is a spider-like entity that emerges from a cave, using his spindly limbs to grapple with and analyze his victims... Potentially drawing upon them for inspiration, before tearing and prying them apart into their base pieces, adding them to his massive collection. From these recycled parts, Makuta creates more Visorak, or dreaded Rahi creatures that wreak havoc on the ecosystem. Like Makuta, they are poison, destruction incarnate; They always inherit his twisted spirit that destroys.

That’s all Makuta does, even when he does create; He inevitably just destroys. Instead of coming up with new things on his own, he relies on Fate to mutate the living into something random, hoping chance will eventually grant him a working design for Makuta to copy. You could say Makuta has no real ideas of his own, and is a gambler, a parasite, betting something will come along for him to take. 

But isn’t destruction the same as creation, isn’t destroying his victims necessary to make things? That’s where the imagery of the spider comes into play; Its long, spindly limbs? They’re fingers. Makuta is not just a spider, he is a hand; The same hand that reaches into the parts bin to make new creations, plays with MoCs before tearing them apart to make something new. Just as Teridax represents the parts bin, Chirox is the builder’s hand, like in the Lego Movie, or Super Smash Bros. 

Each Visorak is like a hand of its own, grabbing victims, reassembling them randomly with mutation. Dragging them back to Chirox, whose hand motif is also inspired from the fact that he is the only Makuta who can fully control his Shadow Hand. And Makuta’s spider-like form? It’s attached to something much, MUCH bigger... It is not just a hand metaphorically, it is a literal hand and when Makuta’s lair collapses around him, it reveals the massive figure he is attached to; His whole, true self, a titan more resembling the Chirox we are familiar with.

The others are different angles and facets to approach the myth, the legend of the Makuta; Different re-imaginings, just as people came up with their own G3 and their own take on Makuta. Just like the Makuta contest we had for G2. Vamprah can represent the animalistic side of Makuta; The raging, kicking, screaming beast he was once described as by Vakama. The apex predator, for if his minions are the Rahi beasts, he is the greatest of them all.

Or Bitil! A temporal entity, haunted by his past selves, constantly summoned by his future self. Always going through different iterations, just as a MoC is frequently edited, redone, rebuilt; You can track his transformation, his evolution across his many selves; Makuta represents the existential horror of the timeline, of the way things change. A ghost of the past, and also a vision of the future. If the Vahi is central to the tale of Bionicle as the Mask of Time, what about Makuta as someone who constantly exploits and distorts this force?

Those are some of my initial ideas. Makuta needn’t always be this faceless force of nature, they can be a humanized figure, like Krika, who can be a sympathetic, tragic villain doomed by the narrative, consigned to his role and aware of it as part of a meta discussion; Miserix is the mighty dragon our knights must slay; The Makuta of Stelt, a land of merchants and commerce, the all-consuming force of corporatism that stifles creativity, or a bargaining devil. Gorast is a fanatical priestess hoping to bring in a new age, Mutran the quintessential mad scientist who played god and flew too close to the sun in his obsession.

Spiriah is a corrupt lord seething over his failures, who transformed and resents his people the Skakdi and must be rebelled against; Tridax is a multiversal collector providing commentary on adaptations; The Vortixx hope to harness the ultimate weapon that is Antroz; Kojol is the arcane keeper of knowledge like Lucifer, who stole the Light of enlightenment from the land of thinkers and is burned for it; And Icarax? A completely straightforward dark lord to conquer, as he always intended to be. Each plays the role of Makuta, as the final villain, the ultimate evil who started this conflict, whom our protagonists must rise to eventually vanquish.

[perrin-aybaras-hammer]

Should I collect all of the lego sets from the Michael Dorn star-vehicle Bionicle the Legend Reborn? Probably not, but I rebuilt the few I have and now i want to.

The nostalgia is so strong. The childlike joy.

[prototype-viro]

Design process: Tilira (2009-2022)

The first version made for my stories at the German Bionicle fanfiction wiki. Second version was never published to any platform and unfortunately as of now the crowded group cutout is the only image remaining of her.

The two distinctly MOCpages versions of her. First step into more custom builds.

The more refinded revamp built for my comic story, Elegy. The tube was meant as a callback to her very first verison.

An unreleased revamp intended to address the stability issues and the use of Nuva shoulders from the previous version. Though as this version still had some stability issues as well as movability problems, she was never posted online.

WIP stage design process, continuing from the unposted revamp. While starting out trying to rebuilt certain sections, the entirety of the MoC was gradually replaced with better techniques. The arms in particular took a long while to get right. During the build progress focus shifted to make an accurate remake of the first ever version instead of a reinterpretation.

The newest version. Remake of the original from 2009. One of my personal favorite builds. More pictures can be seen here.

[arr-jim-lad]

AYO I FINALLY MET KARZAHNI 👁️👁️

I LOVE his entire deal so far omg bc like.... suddenly we are faced with an entirely new god-like creature, and this creature is... not aware of two VERY MAJOR deities, one of which carries the entire universe within him, and the other who has been terrorizing that universe for 1000 years.

this is unsettling bc like, these gods are not just myths, makuta and mata nui are REAL within the universe. And yet this creature is so far removed from that reality that he has never heard of them, which really puts into perspective of how unnatural and wrong it is for Jaller & CO to even be there to meet him

Put very plainly, Karzanhi essentially seems to be Bionicle Satan, but he's not exactly depicted as entirely evil or malevolent? He's definitely on the darker side, but there's so much curiosity to him, and he's living his reality, trying to fulfill his job, which may or may not have been given to him as opposed to chosen by him

And then there's this part that filled me with so much awe I had to stop reading for the evening lmfao;

full disclaimer that i get like unreasonably emotional about bionicle lore at least three times a week but this new addition to it was like, completely overwhelming to me in how unbelievably cool and unique and interesting it is augh

like....... IF i understand this correctly... Karzahni was supposed to fix 'defective' Matorans, but he didn't exactly do a great job at it, as his 'fixed' Matorans were smaller and weaker. Judging by what he said earlier, this kinda evokes empathy in me because it's either 1) a job he wanted to do, but wasn't very good at, or 2) a job he was told to do, but wasn't properly skilled for.

but then also.. he realized obviously that his rebuilt Matorans are weaker, so he gave them absurdly strong weapons, like, Dalu has what is practically an insanity-inducing eldritch ability.

lastly, i like that both matoran types are like... convinced that they got the better deal. neither of them is suffering in their form, so Karzanhi was actually like.. not doing a bad job at all? He changed them, but not exactly for the worse, because he gave them the means to protect themselves

i realize i could very likely be completely off the mark bc all i have to go on atm is his introductory chapter and the initial revelation, but to me he reads like an angry and frustrated artist who just couldn't deliver on the job he was supposed to do, and decided to stop showing his 'broken' works to the world, which is why he started keeping the Matorans in his realm

it made me feel things & i needed to get them off my chest 😭

[lightsprouts]

TOA HAIDA: A New Toa Team!

My concept for a story in the BIONICLE universe that deals with Velika and a buncha other stuff - Led by Toa Krakua, who has trained and rebuilt himself over time, the Haida must find the remaining Toa and keep Spherus Magna safe. Meanwhile, on the Red Star, the Toa Nuva must work together with heroes of old to restore the return function and get back home.

Toa Haida (Left to right, top to bottom):

Vohon, Varian, Amaya, Tahapu (center), Akahi (left), Lhihai, Krakua

Vohon & Amaya were Matoran from the MNOG, and this is my original concept for Varian!

Tahapu, Akahi, & Lhihai are my OCs!

[nitrosodiumrapidproto]

Art Assets

Yesterday I made this basic dwarf character. After a lot of... mishaps... I managed to position his hammer correctly on the figure. It's blacked out right now, as I need to decide what it will look like. It needs to have contrasting colors to both the dwarf and the background - that is to say, something not especially brown or grey. Being that is the Hammer of Heaven, I did not plan for it to look like a standard weapon anyway. My first idea was pure Minas Tirith white, but it looked censored above anything. My other inspirations, to create both a dwarven and a heavenly/celestial look, were the Ebony and Dwarven weapons from the Elder Scrolls.

This, the Ebony Warhammer from Tamriel Rebuilt, resembles an ancient Greek pot turned into a blunt weapon.

This, the Dwarven Warhammer, looks very striking with the golden elements while also being very mechanical (in the lore, the dwarves/Dwemer were great engineers and alchemists, before they grew so intelligent they realised the boundaries of the universe and promptly disappeared without a trace.)

Daedric Warhammer also looks cool, but it's far too demonic to be a holy weapon.

Taking all this into account, I may create a golden hammer with blue crystalline motifs. Something akin to Ekimu from G2 Bionicle, which was a great inspiration to me throughout childhood.

Now, on the dwarvish character. I knew I would need some sort of fantasy race being that this is a fantasy world, and dwarves are a staple, even going further back than Tolkien to the time they were called Nibelungs. They are immediately recognisable, and given that I was going to be using 16-bit I needed a character design that could be identified at a glance. Short, stout and bearded is immediately recognisable as a dwarf, and I also needed a character who would look right using the Hammer of Heaven. I was inspired mostly by Mjolnir, and given that it was crafted by dwarves in Norse myth, it fits. Also that dwarves usually carry heavy weapons like axes and hammers - an elf with a giant warhammer doesn't seem quite right. And I also needed a traditionally 'good' race, so an orc or goblin wouldn't work.

Lore-wise, I also wanted to make him appear standard and not too powerful. In my own mind, this world's dwarves are the humble servants and craftsmen of the gods, forging holy relics and weaponry in the Crucible. However, now that the Crucible is overtaken and their faith obscured, many dwarves are now wanderers; their purpose gone. Once again the forces of heaven have selected a champion, and while he appears unassuming, it is his willpower and spirit that has led to the Hammer selecting him as its wielder.

This was my final choice, a golden hammer.

[jaymilepland]

HEHEHEHA, I MADE A SELF MOC

BEHOLD

Warden Suhri, Toa of Plasma

Oh, have some story for Suhri (and bionicle au I guess)

So, after mata nui rebuilt spherus magna (he stays alive (i also have no idea if he dies)) he gave Teridax a new body (he got turned into a turaga), and himself one, but, as more toa ended up being created they couldn't really make teams, so, a lot of toa ended up as wardens... or protectors... they just protect valuable, important artifacts and people... and guess who Teridax's warden is... it's Suhri... oh lord...

Have some pictures of grandpa Teri and Suhri

[magicalgirlartist]

[ID: photo of a pencil sketch of Matoro's rebuilt Matoran form from Bionicle, facing front. Next to it is a phone showing a picture of the same thing as sourced from the Mata Nui Online Game 2. End ID.]

Trying to figure out how to draw Bionicle characters as, like, actual robots. Someday I'll learn.

[beefriender]

Today i went to a lego convention that was in town, but i lacked the foresight to actually sign up to display anything. So instead i will be posting photos i took at home of the stuff i brought there to display online

now this first one is perhaps my largest moc whom i built roughly exactly a year ago. i had been watching gundam with a couple friends and. really. really liked the guntank. his shoulders can open up and this thing is by no means complete, as evidenced by the haphazard color placement and awkward leg joints (he can transform, kinda.) i am mostly proud of his arms and especially his gun. he weighs like 5 pounds hes a really really big guy

next one and maybe my favorite is an old bionicle MOC i had created 2-3 years prior, in the spirit of halloween actually. can you tell that skullman is one of my favorite robot masters? i think its kinda obvious. im particularly fond of the shape i was able to make with his whole like spine ribcage thing going on, but it doesnt hold up spectacularly to time as i have to replace some of the parts frequently. such is the life of style

as for this one, this is my oldest moc, and what got me ultimately back full swing into lego again. he is (heavily) based on swordman from megaman 8 as i think he just has an awesome concept and design. this is especially apparent in the VERY unusual way his torso and hips connect, as to kindof mimic the weird magnet thing sword man has for his body and of course his giant sword arm. i dont really display it here but his hands are fun and can kinda articulate but they never make "natural" looking poses, but they make one hell of a fist shape and can hold objects. i mentioned this guy is my oldest but that is merely "the oldest moc i havent scrapped apart" and has a very long (relatively) history. i built him long ago in mid 2016 and he actually had most of the same looks as he does now. his legs for instance havent actually been changed once since i built them and the right arm shares the same fate. his torso used to be one big part but i completely rebuilt it with a bunch of smaller parts in 2019 and even though it looks basically the same im satisfied i was able to accomplish that look completely on my own. and of course his strange connection in the middle has always been there, though they used to not have those friction extensions, which made him hilariously floppy, but he still could stand on his own with good balancing. his sword arm used to be a regular arm and he just carried two very large swords, that sword arm i actually finally built much later in 2019 when i finally had the cash that let me buy a sword worthy of such an important build in my life. he likely will persist through my life and i will never be truly done but this is a great milestone to show off to others right now

coming off of that massive block of text for a time long gone, we have a silly little ride armor once again inspired by megaman that i quite enjoy. there isnt a whole lot to say but that gun can spin and i think that is the most important thing any toy could have and finally.

crab