What Great Being Build Meetings Must Have Looked Like Shortly Before The Shattering…
Takua was the very first Matoran built by the Great Beings. He was not only a test build to see if their nanotech workers would perform as expected, but a way to test early builds of GSR programming.
Headcanon that Takua's programming was granted administrator privileges to the GSR. The Great Beings wanted to make sure the automated systems would interact safely with an administrator before they tested things themselves. If their test subject was attacked or destroyed, well they could always build another.
Additional Headcanon that when the Great Beings were finished and dumped Takua in with the rest of the Av-Matoran they cleared his memory but forgot to remove the administrator privileges. This played an accidental role in the rest of the storyline.
This explains why only Takua could summon the Toa Mata or enter the Bohrok Nest unhindered. He still retained the privileges as Takanuva but couldn't bypass Karzahni's barrier because he too had overwright privileges on part of the GSR and could exclude anyone he wanted.
Had he gotten past the barrier with the rest of his friends, he would have been able to walk them down the 777 stairs without tripping any of the protection systems. Had he wanted to, he could have also walked straight into the Codrex without the key.
With his access to the GSR systems, he would have been able to walk into Mata Nui's brain if he knew the way. Likewise, if he had known how to code he could have rewritten the traits and personalities of others, not unlike a Makuta virus.
Had the Great Beings gone back to visit the GSR, Takua would have been able to see them despite the programming block placed on non-administrators to render them invisible.
*Great Beings in Metru Nui pre-Teridax Attack, Standing around Ta-Metru looking at various Matoran while 'unseen' by the locals.*
Great Being 1: "Hmmm, the project is progressing well enough, but how did they all gain sapience? We didn't program them for that!"
Great Being 2: "Someone must have interfered..."
Takua: *From Behind Them* "Oh hey, you guys must be tourists! I've never seen anyone like you before. What island are you from?"
Great Beings: *Incoherent Shrieking*
ghost-mantis reblogged
In wake of people suddenly starting to reblog my Marendar design (thanks btw) and just sudden influx of Marendar posting period,I had a realization:
If you think about it Marendar was to Agori what the Toa were to Matoran. A protector created to protect the weak from the wicked.
Granted, it is implied that Marendar was just a cold-blooded killing machine just created to kill Toa were the Toa go rogue but still. The fact that Agori/Glatorian see Marendar as this protective guardian angel figure to the point they named it after their term for SALVATION is such an interesting detail to me, considering how it clashes with both the MU inhabitants and the audience seeing it as a coldblooded killer.
And while we see Marendar killing the toa we know and love as cruel due to killing living beings with their hopes and dreams, from the POV of Great Beings, Marendars mission to kill toa was justified. Since like the Great Beings didn’t intend toa to be sapient. They were just supposed to be machines created to fulfill their duty in the Great Spirit Robot. Not to mention Toa could possess powerful weapons and harness the elements. So like that + the sapience could make toa easily dangerous. Sure Toa were valiant heroes who won’t hurt anyone unless they had to but it’s not like the Great Beings knew that,let alone that the Toa became sentient thanks to Awakening. THey simply created Marendar as a conviency plan in case the Toas AI went rogue or they started act out of control.
But yeah while Marendar was most likely going to just be an antagonistic plot device serving as a source of tension (and possibly as a way to trim down the cast during post canon plot),it is genuinely fascinating how Marendar was this knightly protector in the eyes of the Magnaians.
Two of a Kind
At some point, Velika is going to run across Kapura and panic because he’s 99% sure that he’s another Great Being that decided to download himself into a Matoran body. Kapura is certainly off for a Ta-Matoran, a weird guy who can teleport, speak in an odd manner, and seems to be playing a part in every major event in the Matoran Universe.
Velika panics (oh shit, Oh Shit OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT) because if it is another Great Being, how much does he know and can he interfere with the plan? He can’t kill Kapura outright without being sure, too much risk of attracting attention and spoiling his takeover plans.
Velika spends months nervously walking up to Kapura and hinting about old projects and plans only another Great Being would know about. Kapura never gives a yes or no answer to anything and often switches topics to the weather or some wise advice from the Turaga. Occasionally he gives unnervingly accurate answers to whatever riddle or tale Velika spouts out.
Velika becomes increasingly more paranoid of Kapura and obsesses over new ways to prove he is actually a Great Being. He becomes convinced that every setback in his plans is orchestrated by Kapura because something he said weeks prior somehow ties into each event. By the time the other Great Beings track him down and haul him away, he’s a shaking, eye-twitching mess that spends all his time babbling paranoid nonsense about Kapura.
The other Great Beings can’t be certain he isn’t one of their numbers either, many went missing around the time of the Core War and were never accounted for.
All of Kapura’s friends who see the exchanges don’t have any idea what’s happening but are just happy he seems to have found a friend who shares his odd mannerisms.
The one character that I would have placed money on not surviving the end of G1 was the Shadowed One. Doubtless most of his, “employees”, would have happily seen him dead or killed him themselves. Two of his most powerful agents, Lariska and Darkness, were openly ready to murder him and seize power the second he so much as stumbled. He was also openly warring with the most powerfulbeings outside of Mata Nui himself and had his youth stolen in his previous encounter with said being.
Doubtless he survived as long as he did by being extremely careful and utterly ruthless, but he was still up against some very long odds. Had G1 continued it would have been interesting to see him go up against Velika and the other Great Beings to see who would win.
Virus 1.0
Headcanon that the software update that made the residents of the GSR sapient is delivered via a highly contagious computer virus. Velika couldn’t risk hacking the GSR systems to deliver the virus as it could have been traced back to him, and the systems have significant firewalls (or else Teridax would have hacked them directly and saved himself a few thousand years of work).
Instead Velika created a virus to deliver the code granting free thought, emotions, and overall sapience. He then installed it within himself, though as a Great Being in a Matoran body he was immune, and began spreading it throughout the local Matoran worker population. The virus probably spread by contact and/or by standing in proximity to beings with ranged mental abilities.
The virus itself is still present in all the GSR beings but dormant in those already infected. However, any complex AI based on Great Being programming can catch the virus if they come in to proximity to any GSR resident.
The Baterra are run off by a Toa team after attacking New Atero. Within a few days the infection they picked up during the attack fully rewrites their coding and they return to the city to apologize for their previous behavior.
ghost-mantis reblogged
There’s a lot about Matoran biology and the Matoran universe that just makes no sense and seems like a lot of unnecessary work for the great beings who created them.
Why do they have lungs?
Why do they have expressive faces- seriously, if you’re building a bunch of robotic soldiers or mechanical laborers, what’s the point in them being able to smile, even if some of them are sapient? Imagine all the artificial musculature involved. Why?
Why terraform jungles and tropical islands and such for them to live in, especially when your own planet is a desolate barren wasteland?
Why do they need to eat AND sleep? Couldn’t they just have a single recharge function that would improve productivity? And do they really need a sense of taste if they rarely eat with their mouths?
It’s possibly reasonable to conclude that the GSR, or at least, the first Matoran were in the early stages of development before the Shattering, given all these unnecessary details. When the Great Beings had plentiful resources, it’s entirely possible that they might try and build artificial life that could mimic a “real” living thing as closely as possible, regardless of efficiency. It could have been just a pet project that they later found needed to be turned into something functional that could fix the planet.
But there’s something else that needs to be considered. At least one Great Being was able to fully transfer his consciousness into a Matoran’s body. Now, how could he be so sure it would work? How could he do it so easily, in secret and with no assistance?
Perhaps it’s because that’s what Matoran were designed for in the first place.
Artificial bodies that don’t age, can be easily repaired if damaged- and- with a system in place that can bring them back from any “death” short of total disintegration. Capable of experiencing almost any sensation that a living being is, so giving up one’s organic body didn’t mean giving up any of the comforts and pleasures of being alive (okay, except one, perhaps, but I’m sure they were working on some hardware mods for that). And also capable of getting upgraded into stronger forms with potential access to all manner of powers, to boot.
The Great Beings’ prior projects had almost always been about body modification, so achieving immortality through artificial bodies was the next logical step (as far as what passes for “logic” among these guys, anyhow.) The shattering gave them the need to reuse their technology for repairing the planet, but it’s entirely possible that Velika wanted to shut off the Matoran’s consciousness so the bodies could be reused for their original purpose.
Yes! Given the restricted timetable it never made sense that they were able to cobble together not one but two robots (after the first exploded) and fill it with all the workers and materials needed before launch. Having all the plans more or less worked out and the test models of all the species worked out would have accelerated their timetable drastically. I always imagined that all the extra bits you listed were an amalgamation of a billion research projects they wanted to run all thrown into one test environment.
The GSR inhabitants being part of an immortality experiment does make a lot of sense. A modular organism that can be easily repaired or altered to suit any need with the ability to upload the mind into new bodies in worst case scenarios, it makes too much sense. The downside appears to be that aging is still a thing, or at least accumulated damage if Helryx’s frail appearance is any indicating factor. And the fact that easy and total memory loss is a repeating issue.
ghost-mantis reblogged
Velika probably started using riddles as a means of testing the Matoran’s sapience when they were first “awakened”. Imagination, understanding of metaphor, abstract reasoning, and signs of emotion were all important facets of Matoran consciousness that warranted close observation, and riddles could be used to evaluate all of them.
He was fascinated when his test subjects, rather than staring blankly for a few seconds then turning and walking away in response to his riddles, began to roll their eyes, yawn and even groan at him. Nonverbal communication! Expressions of emotion! To his delight, some Matoran took enough interest to stop and solve the riddles, others began making up their own (they were largely nonsensical at first, even by Velika standards, but eventually developed to the point where they were coherent enough to be solvable).
Some of them still turned and walked off in the opposite direction, of course, but far more quickly than before. Some started to leave upon merely seeing Velika, before he even got the riddle out.
Velika was somewhat disappointed with this peculiar glitch. He wondered if it was possible to write a patch for it…
Testing their capacity for abstract thought quickly becomes an exercise in frustration as they apply their skills towards avoiding or throwing the tests. Many of his subjects quickly learn to shout a random answer and then quickly walk away before Velika can make them try again.
Of course before full sentience set in they probably responded with “404 solution not found”.
Perhaps Velika wanted to test just how far their skills at communication and abstract thought had come and began encouraging them artistically. A few cans of paint and some modeling clay yielded splattered messes at the start, but slowly evolved into an early Impressionism period.
Total Recall
AU where Takua is a Great Being in disguise like Velika, but took over the body of the first Matoran built just prior to the launch of the GSR. He was using it as an excuse to skip out on boring lab work back home while still “keeping an eye on things.” Eventually he developed a genuine affection for the other Matoran and became best friends with Solek, but forgot who he was after being captured and mindwiped by the Order of Mata Nui. His personality remains the same after losing his memories, but he can’t access or understand most of the vast store of knowledge and power he had as a Great Being.
Had G1 continued with the Civil War of the Great Beings there could have been a story arc where Takua finally recovers from his three bouts of amnesia and remembers who he is. He and Angonce team up to protect the residents of New Spherus Magna and fights to keep the Biomech community free from being stripped of their free will/sapience and used as cannon fodder in the war between his old family members.
After the war he remains and Toa and lives with all his Matoran and Toa friends, because they’re more like family to him than any of the Great Beings ever were.
Ignore Me!
AU where the Great Beings could never actually hide themselves from being seen and heard by their creations. Everyone in the GSR knew who they were and that they were standing right there, but pretended not to see them because they either felt bad for them (they were trying so hard to be invisible), or figured pretending they weren’t actually there would get them out of the way faster and they could get back to work.
Great Being 1: (Walking Into GSR Supply Depot) “Do you think we have enough supplies to finish the foundation to this island?”
Great Being 2: “Probably.”
Matoran Welder: “Actually we’re going to run a bit short on protodermis support beams on the south end.”
Great Beings 1 and 2:...
Matoran Welder:..
Matoran Welder: *Loudly* I appear to be running out of supplies, I’ll just go get some more, right now. *Hurridly walks away*
Great Being 1: ...You don’t think he actually heard us do you?
Great Being 2: Of course not, no one noticed when we dug those 777 stairs did they?
Great Being 1: Well, they did spend the day covering their ears and glaring at us while we did.
Good Things in Small Packages
In the infinity of parallel universes, there is a Bionicle storyline where character sizes on Spherus Magna were the opposite of their canon counterparts. Glatorian were small and Agori were big, and tiny Glatorian were still made to fight for access to resources. Zesk were pack leaders over Vorox, and Skopio were the size of RC toy cars (though still incredibly deadly.) The Great Beings were probably gnome sized.
Tuma was the shortest and most adorably murderous Skrall leader of all time.
ghost-mantis reblogged
I’ve invented ‘The Knife-Wielding Tentacle'👍
brot8o-chip
“if anybody would like to volunteer to come and turn it off, that would be just fine by me”
osseus-custos
@lanternlighting When did your brother get an english accent?
It Was Aliens!
Every piece of advanced technology and achievement of the Agori was the direct result of technology given to them by the Great Beings. Likewise, all of the GSR and it’s inhabitants were directly created and directed by the Great Beings as well.
The Great Beings as a species are implied in canon to originate from somewhere other than Spherus Magna.
The show “Ancient Aliens” would be a highly accurate historical documentary series if it were produced in the Bionicle universe.
ghost-mantis reblogged
“Anxiously, the Great Beings studied the substance…”
“and they Fucked Up…”
Far too accurate.
404 Idea Not Found
The deeper you delve into the Bionicle lore, the more apparent it becomes the Great Beings plans for the Mata Nui Universe were hastily thrown together after a long night of drinking and an hour before they had to present their proposal.
The Great Beings Explained
“I took natures most perfect killing machine, and needlessly turned it into a robot.”
Quote Source: Sealab 2020 Episode: Tinfins,.
ghost-mantis reblogged
Virtually everything the Great Beings built in canon ended up going haywire in one way or another. Most robots they built outside of those dwelling within Mata Nui ended up turning into unstoppable killing machines or exploding. Was this always so, or is it a side effect of their mental contact with Annona?
In my headcanon even their smaller simpler machines eventually develop malicious sentience. A Great Being must approach their coffee makers with extreme caution and a raised hammer.
themugbearer
I think that there’s an opposite effect tbh. Before contacting Annonna all they built were malfunct and/or mad machines. Her influence on their minds made them realize just why their creations did so.
Well now I’m curious, did the writers ever establish on the timeline when the contact was made? It always seemed to me to be before the war and the shattering which would predate many of the most lethal inventions.