#vahi

[tiredspacedragon]

Don't mind me, just thinking about how Vakama created the G1 Mask of Time and also had the powers of the G2 Mask of Time as an innate ability, and what the heck that might mean.

And also about how Kapura's innate ability seems to work suspiciously similarly to the G1 Mask of Time and how that plays into all this.

[bioniclechicken]

Obligatory because of course

Logo was created by @jampotstudios

[sepublic]

The Vahi's orange coloration being retconned as rust is low key kinda funny. Like I perfectly understand why, it was originally orange, but they made the Vahi golden in 2004 because it's a more dramatic color, and Greg had to once again provide a Watsonian explanation for someone else's Doylist decisions.

But it's also making me imagine Vakama solemnly present a chunk of rust to Tahu and warning him that it could destroy the universe and is low key a bigger threat than Makuta himself. And meanwhile Tahu's just staring at this thing that's been overgrown with corrosion and looks like it's been dragged up from the bottom of a river, and is like "I am... NOT putting that on my face."

Vakama concurs because of how dangerous Time is, and Tahu clarifies it's because it's really grody (I imagine rust is particularly visceral to beings made of metal) and might give him an infection. They should give the Vahi a restoration video. Vakama declares that if the rust will make Tahu hesitate, then he's even more motivated to keep it that way.

There should be more fanart of the Vahi depicting it as completely covered in an obnoxious shade of orange crust, and not just a sleek, glistening orange. The Mask of Time suitably looks as old as time (despite being fairly young in the grand scheme of things). Voporak opts to give the Vahi its long-awaited restoration as he waits out G1’s infinite hiatus and hopes to use the Vahi to skip past it.

[rahiwatching]

One big missed opportunity in Bionicle in my opinion is that they didn’t explore Vakama’s connection to the Vahi more. I mean, he has visions of the future! And he forged the mask of time! Surely there was something there about maybe the mask was reaching out to him his whole life, helping him, guiding its creator down the right path that led to its own forging.

I remember reading once that Greg said that Vakama had visions due to “a glitch in his programming” which never sat right with me, he has a clear connection to the very embodyment of the concept of time right there, why not use it if you are going to give a source for the visions?

This kind of connection would also help with the feeling that the Vahi is strangely underpowered compared to the other legendary kanohi. I’m not saying the Vahi needed to be sentient like the mask of life, but it’s powerset does seem limited compared to the others.

The mask of creation can create pretty much anything that isn’t alive, and the mask of life can manipulate life to a massive degree, and yet there are normal great masks lying around that can do things with time that the mask of time itself can’t do.

There are masks that can give visions of the past or the future, there is a mask that can literally pull a past version of the user to the present, and yet the mask of time can only slow down or speed up time around a target? That just doesn’t seem right. I think a connection to Vakama, an ability to gift time related powers to beings before it was even created, these could show that this was truly a legendary kanohi, not just an unusually powerful great mask that it feels like now.

[xtarart]

i know im slightly late on this but... HAPPY 810NICLE DAY!!! To celebrate i decided to continue my Bionicle G3 system mini figure concepts! This time with the Great Spirits who were sent by the great beings to create the world the Matoran call their home, and the one who was cast aside and now seeks retribution.

[venoblade-bionicles]

I think that the legendary masks should be the 3 main metallic shades.

Time: copper

Creation: silver

Life: gold

Time should be copper like a mask of victory because it was Vakama's victory to even make it, the mask of creation should be silver because before a mask is worn it's silver, representing all the possibilities of creation, and life is gold because Mata Nui is alive.

[krtart]

Art Fight 2023 | 05 - Twilight Meeting

Oscar is going to be so sad that he slept through this encounter, but Lilly wouldn't want to risk scaring Vahi away.

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An attack on @ausp-ice featuring their esk character Vahi! (As well as my own characters Oscar and Lilly. ^_^)

Revenge Chain: (1: You are here) | (2) | (3) | (4)

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[Image description: On the bank of a mountain lake lit by the last light of sunset, a small rat looks up at a floating ethereal spirit as an old man dozes nearby with a book resting on his stomach. The nature spirit is an esk, Vahi, with glowing white eyes, two front legs and no rear legs despite a quadrupedal body plan, horns, flowers and ferns growing from their body and floating around them, and a long tail with the appearance of a dark night sky with moonlit clouds. The rat is Lilly, a fae familiar. The man is Oscar, a fat white man with dwarfism, a receding hairline, and a long beard that joins with his curly hair to form a wild ginger mane. End ID.]

[legend-as-old-as-time]

Going from speculation why the Great Beings wanted the Vahi to exist-

(My hypothesis: it was meant as a failsafe if the Spirit Robot became damaged enough that even the Inika wouldn’t be able to repair the damage. So the Vahi was meant to enforce a ‘factory reset’ to several years before the Robot was last undamaged, undoing time. This would sap most of the Vahi’s energy.

Only the carrier / meant user of the Vahi would remember what caused the damage. The Vahi’s last function would be to upload their memory into Mata Nui’s mind before self-destructing.

Both to ensure that the knowledge of the danger would be passed on where it was most needed - so that Mata Nui could avoid it - and that the user couldn’t accidentally use the Vahi any further to become actually powerful.)

I wonder if Vakama was meant to have a destiny related to, but ultimately independent from the Toa Metru if he ever had to use the Vahi?

Like Matoro with the Toa Inika / Mahri.

I’m unsure if this was intended by the writers, but in-universe and narratively it just makes so much sense.

They were connected in some way to Legendary Masks.

Both Matoro and Vakama were sort of the outsiders in their respective teams.

They had single adventures related to their respective Legendary Masks.

Makuta Teridax wanted these masks and had to team up with both toa to retrieve them.

Said Legendary Masks can destroy all life inside the Spirit Robot in some way. The Inika by killing everybody; the Vahi by undoing everything and everybody’s existence.

[kanohi-kualsi]

Gold

[angryraptor13]

I think it would be Fun if the Mask of Time got itself a body somehow (maybe gifted by the Mask of Life, maybe Vakama becomes the Toa of Time, etc.) and just went popping in and out of the time stream, helping people and putting wrecking balls through Evil Plots like the Doctor in Doctor Who.

[supersumc]

Brb, going to do a 5D Chess visualization.

Vakama is baby, but he's done it before

ok so these posts by @crystaltoa and @goattypegirl have been orbiting each other in my brain for the last 36ish hours and finally coalesced into something hopefully coherent

if we run with the idea of the Vahi as a big "TIMELINE RESET" button which ensures both its own creation and un-creation, suppose it could also ensure the creation and un-creation of its own creator as an additional safeguard? suppose that, at the moment of its use, the Vahi reaches backward in its own timeline to trigger the birth/manufacturing of a Matoran imbued with the necessary metatemporal intelligence and potential for Toa-hood just in time for them to fully master the art of maskmaking before crafting the Mask of Time -- and simultaneously, resetting the new timeline to a point just before its maker would have been made. you can't have a metatemporal intelligence just operating freely, after all -- who knows what else a being of that nature might make when left to its own devices?

so: of course Vakama is only like 500-1000 years old when the Great Cataclysm strikes -- that was all the time he needed to master his craft before it was Vahi-o'clock. that's how it goes every time.

but this still leaves some issues unaddressed

canon shows no signs of the Vahi having capabilities like this. BUT we've only ever seen it wielded by Toa, who were not terribly good at it. if it takes higher levels of focus and control to unlock the timeline-resetting capabilities, perhaps it was meant for a bearer with more skill and power, experienced in the use of Legendary Kanohi...perhaps, in the event of a universe-threatening catastrophe, the Vahi was meant for Artakha to use?

but if that's the case, why would Vakama have respawned in Metru Nui instead of Artakha? maybe Metru Nui has better Maskmaking 101, maybe that's where the Great Disks usually manifest whenever the timeline resets, maybe he has showed up on Artakha's island some of the other times.....maybe he lands in whatever region the Disks have ended up by then.

so if it's not necessarily set in stone where in the MU Vakama might appear, master maskmaking, become a Toa, collect & combine the Great Disks, and forge the Vahi, then we'd need a way to ensure that the mask gets to Artakha as soon as possible upon completion no matter where it shows up. and THAT is where Voporak comes into play

inevitably, once a fresh timeline is stable, someone[s] will eventually be like "imagine if there was a Mask of Time, would that be fucked up or what" and imbue somebody else with the power to sense temporal anomalies (there'd probably also need to be a new Voporak after every reset - the Vahi would undo the previous one since someone with time-sensing abilities would likely sense that the timeline has been altered, and you can't risk that knowledge getting out if you want affairs to stay stable. gotta keep things tidy, no loose ends! so who knows how many different beings have been Voporak before our current timeline? there's no reason to assume it was a highborn Steltian every time). for an optimally stable time loop, Voporak would set out directly from Artakha, swipe the Vahi, and hightail it home

so now we can identify where the current timeline started to go askew: the Brotherhood sent our Voporak to Odina instead of Artakha, which leaves us with a Vahi-retriever loyal to TSO. at this point it still would've been possible to course-correct and undo the Cataclysm entirely, but then Vakama wielded the Vahi himself -- which, despite needing to be a Toa in order to successfully forge the mask -- he technically wasn't meant to do

(on another note, this all could inform Teridax's motivations for wanting the Vahi. perhaps he thought he could alter the timeline further in his favor somehow, in addition to speeding up the brainwashing of the Matoran)

as goattypegirl's writing on the subject already states, whatever Vakama achieved with the Mask of Time did successfully prevent the Cataclysm from destroying the GSR or wiping out all life inside, and the fact that Mata Nui's mission was a success and that Spherus Magna was restored in what should have been a doomed timeline -- essentially a time loop that never got closed -- is frankly a miracle

and the remaining Great Beings are definitely in for a shock when they learn that not only does the Vahi still physically exist, but so do Vakama and Voporak

[matau-the-228th]

The red figure seen watching the Matoran from atop the hills and mountains of Mata Nui has been present since we first set foot on the island.

I have often seen him on the cliff above the Hall of Records in Po-Koro. I swear his armor looks shinier each time I see him, like it's slowly getting newer, somehow.

At first, some of us thought him to be one of the strange new types of Rahi that we have encountered here. Others thought that he was One of the Six Spirit Toa from the stories the Rahaga tell around the meeting-fire.

Rahaga Nokama has assured us that we would know when the Six Toa destined for our Island would arrive, and that this being was not one of them.

The Kai-Wahi Guard were never able to catch up to him. It was Kapura, of all people, who got the closest to him, but the red being still got away from him. Vakama just said Kapura had to practice more, whatever that means.

Whoever he is, he has not reappeared recently, ever since our newest Matoran, Takua, had been named my assistant and the new Chronicler.

Still, I feel as if he is here, watching us. Watching me.

...Even though I know he is not.

[sepublic]

I discussed a few ideas briefly, but I want to dive more into the idea of Bitil as the Makuta of the Western Chain of Southern Islands (AKA Mata Nui’s right leg), and how we could work with what we have on him and his domain in canon to reimagine the character as the quintessential Makuta of HIS story, in another reimagining of the Bionicle mythos.

Something I noticed about Bitil is that he is one of the few Makuta whom we know regarding the Rahi he creates; He specializes in insects, which makes him unique since he’s the only Makuta whose appearance in Karda Nui is relevant outside of there. Gorast and Krika aren’t known to make insects, nor are Antroz or Chirox reputed for constructing bats; But Bitil is an insect.

What are insects? Things of many; Many eyes, limbs, eggs, in other words themselves. Small and puny and insignificant on their own, but we know plenty of how insects can swarm to become much more than the sum of their parts. Bitil is also like this; He’s a fairly puny Makuta compared to the rest, but his Mohtrek allows him to summon several of his past selves to even the odds. On his own, Bitil isn’t much, but with himself...!

And his domain also continues that motif; It’s a bunch of small islands, considered barren and worthless by Kalmah and Bitil. A bunch of smaller things coming together to be more; Isn’t that what Lego is all about? So just as Teridax represents the parts bin, Bitil and his story may be about the nature of Lego as a building element that combines... This can go hand-in-hand with the concept of Kaita and other combiners, which was more prevalent in the early years of Bionicle that these reimaginings are aiming to take cues from.

Additionally, Bitil’s domain is an island chain; A bunch of smaller landmasses in a larger ocean, just like the region Polynesian and Maori culture originated from. And since those cultures influenced Bionicle’s early years a lot, one could return to that vibe, with consultation from actual Polynesian writers and artists. Bitil’s bug motif may not just be for the sake of “more than the sum of its parts” either, we could also take it literally and make the protagonists and bestiary bug-themed, like Hollow Knight for example! 

Again, the Vahi plays a bigger role here; It was one of the first masks ever designed for Bionicle, in fact it may have even been THE first (that was brought into the final product) I believe... Our big bad, Makuta, is a being who uses the power of time to summon echoes of his past selves, creating a clear line of progression for the audience to keep track of. He may want the Vahi to boost his powers, and/or it’s a way to counteract Makuta’s time-bending abilities.

In addition to Hollow Knight vibes, we might also take a bit from, say, Pikmin; Again, another game about lots of tiny little guys coming together to defeat their larger foe. The protagonists encourage the Southern Islands, normally disparate and minding their own business, to band together to rise against Makuta; On their own, maybe they ARE nothing. But together they’re so much more than Makuta! And Makuta, his group solidarity is really just himself; An echo chamber that is unequipped against a far more diverse group.

I also think it’d be cool to explore another post I brought up, involving Bitil’s past self being horrified by the person he becomes... Imagine a storyline where Makuta has this prisoner named Bitil, whom he tries to impress and convince. Bitil, who is isolated from the rest of the world, reflects on his own past and history... And the big twist comes when the viewer finds out that Bitil was summoned from the distant past, and Makuta is in fact the being he will become. 

Bitil in G1 has a major inferiority complex and thinks everyone’s out to get him, hence his bad lot in life, when in reality it’s because he’s incompetent and there isn’t much to him. So we can play up the jealousy angle for Makuta here, and how he still wants approval even from himself in a sense.

As I said, the Mohtrek showing successive versions of Bitil could also connect to the idea of the evolution of Lego and a MoC, how you upgrade and change it constantly; So there can be a discussion of transformation, which is topical to bugs who are known for their pretty extensive metamorphosis. Perhaps Makuta is a being who regularly undergoes metamorphosis, indecisive about the form he takes; But this just makes him stronger, since when summoning past selves, he has even more to choose from!

He’s constantly evolving, hoping to reach a perfect version… but maybe there isn’t a perfect version, maybe creativity, diversity, is the spice of life! Makuta’s group is monotonous, the protagonists’ are different. There is no end goal or right way, things keep going, just as time marches on.

Change is probably a big theme, because Lego constantly transforms. Makuta reassembles himself, and since the Vahi has such prevalence, let’s thrown in some time shenanigans too; Like time travel or time loops, temporal distortions bring echoes of the past that haunt the setting, so perhaps past versions of Makuta each terrorize their own island, tempt people with the nostalgic past or a bright future. The Vahi is necessary to seal the holes in time that allow Makuta to summon long-extinct monsters and other threats, sending them back to where they belong, fixing events left unfulfilled, and repair time before it collapses.

Makuta may hope to exploit the stream of time to summon from the future, too… Eventually reaching the ‘end of time’ he believes in. And there’s a time limit for our heroes, since the longer Makuta exists, the more past selves he has to summon. In the end, Makuta puts up a big fight by combining all of his past selves into a massive kaita, necessitating our protagonists to form their most ambitious one yet. There could be a twist about time travel akin to the Masks of Power: Legacy fan game, like maybe the Toa were summoned from the past or future, and the Turaga are themselves from another point in time.

I don’t think we’d have the Great Spirit Robot twist, but maybe there’s an homage such as… A giant mountain island that resembles the bent knee of a Titan, referencing Bitil’s domain in G1 being the right leg of Mata Nui. This could be Makuta’s lair.

I guess the story could be described as… Ocarina of Time x Hollow Knight x Pokemon Gen 7. Maybe Pokemon Gen 8 too, based on what I’ve heard about Paradox pokemon.

[krsnaradhika]

Quick note : Hindus did not demolish the Babri masjid. We deconstructed it. There's a difference in there. The report of KK Mohammad Sir and he himself in multiple interviews say that he stands with the OGness of Rama Lalaa on his birthplace. The mosque very much did have temple remains and the appearance of Rama Lalaa in there wasn't a right-wing move. The supreme court of India has anyway given land for the mosque at some distance from the janmabhoomi so it's a win-win for both the communities now ig. All the butthurt people crying over the deconstruction should also note that Rama Lalaa isn't some non-violence icon of our religion so kindly shut up. Saying that - "He wouldn't have wanted the temple because a mosque stood there once and y'all broke it" is plain stupidity because he himself said - "Janani janmabhoomishcha swargaadapi gariyasi." Both his mother and his motherland are more dear to him than any heaven. Shri Rama did hold up weapons in the favour of what is right when fighting numerous demons and proceeded to threaten the ocean into drying it lest it doesn't heed to him, after a three day penance. The prev governments here were very minority appeasing. One of them even got as far as to saying Shri Rama was fictional when we have plenty evidences of him being a venerated ancestor of ours. All of them fell on their fours when Rama Lalaa won his case in the supreme court. They don't give a shit about the majority sentiments here being oppressed (Hindus have a history of being oppressed even when we're in majority, in our homeland. Are we debating on that now? Oml). Babar should not have done what he did, so yeah like Hindus were just taking back what is rightfully ours. (For the sake of secularism and brotherhood, shouldn't they be understanding our sentiments as well? It has to go both ways, no?) We have been waiting for around 500 years for our god to come back to a palace from a tent and the pseudo-liberal meltdowns are personally very enjoyable to me. You should prolly save those tears for Mathura and Kashi case too. Ram mandir kisi ke baap ke paison se bana nahi hai. Hindus contributed to it. Temple towns were a thing in ancient India, still many of them exist in the south because the north has suffered voraciously due to invasions, never forget. No tax money has been used in the construction of the Rama temple. Hope that helps.

[mountainsound64]

Someone should photoshop the OG mask of time with this one to see how they fit

It might be fake, but… Get hype!

[arzeron]

A couple Makutas