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Showing results for tags 'Bionicle Paracosmos'.
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[NOTE (Feb. 26 2014): Due to various BZP issues, most of these stories are no longer available but I am planning to work on reposting them. The few that are posted currently suffer from a format glitch; I'll work on fixing that. The following are all the stories currently available (the first is newly launched today and has no such errors) in order from newest to oldest: The Destiny of Bionicle -- a complete retelling (standalone story unrelated to the others here, no need to read any of them first). Bionicle Paracosmos: The Perfect Cage -- second episode of the second Paracosmos Saga -- completed, but some early chapters have the format glitch. Possible to read without having read previous, but some may prefer to have read them to avoid spoilers. Altacosmos Chronicles: The Islander -- third installment in a series of standalone stories, also no need to read any previous ones. A short story. Suffers format glitch. Bionicle Paracosmos: Endless Blue -- first episode of second Paracosmos Saga -- completed, also has glitch. A good starting point if you're not worried about spoilers here and there from the first Saga (especially the nature of the mysterious enemy the first Saga focuses on). Introduces a new enemy for the second Saga, the Kuambu. I plan to repost the first two Altacosmos Chronicles very soon, and then begin posting the next (new) Paracosmos story (already written). I hope to also alternate this between reposting the old Paracosmos stories from the beginning. However, my next top priority is to write the Season 1 finale for the Expanded Multiverse: Cipher Chronicles. Note: A download for the RPG computer game (The Map of Mata Nui) near the start of the first Paracosmos Saga is still available on my blog. This also introduces the mystery of the first Saga's main enemy type and then reveals it midway through the game, parallel to the revelation in the written stories, so if you want to start there and then read EB and TPC while waiting for my revisions of the original stories to go live, that should work out well. I will edit the rest of this post to fix glitches and broken links and such at a later date.] NEW: The Perfect Cage! Her dream was dark. She was floating in nothingness. Sheer void. Faint shadows brushed against her, wisps of cloth.Then she saw something. Something colorful ahead. She swam through the shadows like a fish through seaweed. She emerged to see two long tapestries in front of her, hanging from an infinite roof of black down to an infinite sea of darkness. But the tapestries seemed to be lit as if from daylight. One was more complex than the other, but its core pattern was the same.One felt familiar. But she was drawn to the second, the more complex. This one was intertwined with many strings of pure black. It felt wrong, evil. She swam closer... no, she wasn't swimming. Being pulled. She wanted to turn and flee, but could not. No, this couldn't be right!Her hand touched the cloth. It grabbed her hand and yanked. She was sucked into it.Her eyes opened. She was standing in a forest in a very different Ga-Metru from the one she knew, with the sounds of Rahi all around her, some of them familiar, others not. It had been nothing but a vision, but it made everything clear.She was not inside the Bionicle universe. She was in the Bionicle Paracosmos.Welcome to the Collection Topic for the Bionicle Paracosmos fanfic series and its "spin-offs". All these stories are what I call Adventure Mystery -- a science fantasy 'genre' that focuses on the intense thrill and adventure as the characters unravel deep, grandious mysteries, with innovative science fiction and character-focused secrets behind the mysteries. There are epics, short stories, and even an 4.5-star RPG game! Also, there's a fair bit of art for the stories, since I am as much an artist as I am a writer.All these stories revolve in some way around the Paracosmos, a corrupted parallel universe to the original (official) Cosmos. It was created in the cataclysmic and enigmatic Event in the official Cosmos. Each story is understandable without reading previous stories, so feel free to jump in anywhere. If you want the full thrill of the mysteries, begin at Epic#1, main series, but no obligation. Rating is PG-13 for intense action (no blood/gore). Series are color coded by the above image of Tapestry of Time and all its branches.NOTE: This is a partial reconstruction of the original topic (here). I've left out the sections that didn't yet have content; the Event Journal especially probably won't happen that way, but simply be flashbacks in the final main series epic. I do hope to eventually write the Tales of the Ri-Rali, but not sure.Since the old stories can no longer be posted in, being stuck on the old forum, you can review them here. I may revamp and repost some of them in the future, but it'll be a while if so. Bionicle Paracosmos Main Series Explore the central mysteries of the Paracosmos, starting from the arrival of the Toa on Mata Nui Island. The series tends to center on the six Toa Nuva and the main Matoran characters of the Paracosmos, but has a wide range of both official and nonofficial characters. The main series is the most varied in terms of medium used, using mostly epics, some short and some long, and short stories, and there's also an award-winning RPGMaker computer game.It is divided into three Sagas. The Hidden Enemy Saga Type: Epic #1 | Episode: #1 | Word Count: 16000 | Page Count in MSWord: 30 | Chapters: 11 + prologue and "What Has Gone Before"Setting: Ko-Wahi | Time: Early 2001 | Mainchars: Kopaka, Nijire the Ice-Fisherwoman The Sword is but the Focus: What begins as a simple mask quest turns into a desperate struggle with lasting consequences. Kopaka, Nijire, and others begin to face the mystery of the "hidden enemy" that is infecting Rahi at an alarming rate, while briefly Turaga Whenua discovers the Legend of the Paracosmos. Type: Short Story #1 | Episode: #2 | Word Count: 4800 | Page Count in MSWord: 10Setting: Ta-Wahi | Time: Early 2001 | Mainchars: Tahu, Tlenoh the Ta-Guard The Folly of Fire: Tahu struggles with some interesting plants and his own temper as he searches for a mask, while Tlenoh, a Ta-Koronan guard, Hujo, a mapmaker, and some others, mostly lava farmers, find something that will have great value to Tahu in the future. Type: Short Story #2 | Episode: #3 | Word Count: 5200 | Page Count in MSWord: 11Setting: Onu-Wahi | Time: Early 2001 | Mainchars: Onua, Nuhuri the Rahi Tracker(ess) Emissary of Earth: Onua is asked to deliver a note from Whenua to the other Turaga, carrying news of the mysterious legend of the Paracosmos, though Onua does not know that. But Makuta suspects something is up, and Onua must face Makuta's most desperate attempts to steal the note and read it himself. He's helped by Nuhuri the Rahi Tracker. Type: Short Story #3 | Episode: #4 | Word Count: 5750 | Page Count in MSWord: 12Setting: Ga-Koro and Ninakorr Deep Sea Trench | Time: Early 2001| Mainchars: Gali, Nixie the Astrologer The Noble Deep: Gali is sent off to the Ninakorr Deep Sea Trench in search of a Noble mask for Nokama, but finds the depths far more treacherous than even Nokama could have imagined. Meanwhile, Nixie struggles to understand a new prophecy in the stars that could spell doom for the entire village of Ga-Koro! Type: Short Story #4 | Episode: #5 | Word Count: 7100 | Page Count in MSWord: 15Setting: Po-Wahi | Time: Early 2001 | Mainchars: Pohatu, Kuhauha the Po-Guard Mystery in the Desert: Pohatu, joined by Onua (who has delivered all the notes now) search for a mask... but what they find is something different entirely, a mystery that reminds them of how they came to the island. Is it a treasure, or a death trap? One Po-Koronan guard comes to beleive it's the latter when the Toa do not return for several days. Type: Epic #2 | Episode: #6 | Word Count: 40500 | Page Count in MSWord: 95 | Chapters: 23Setting: Le-Wahi, Mata Nui Island | Time: Mid 2001 | Mainchars: Lewa, Jombu the Kini-Nui Guard/Scribe Agents of Surrender: Lewa receives a mission from the Turaga to seek out the mysterious "hidden enemy" that has been infecting Rahi at alarming rates in recent years. Lewa must piece together this puzzle from mere shreds of clues, and hope against all hope that if he finds what he's looking for, he'll somehow defeat an enemy that has conquered even the most untameable Rahi!Note: Part 1 of the game below takes place before/during Agents of Surrender. while Part 2 takes place after it and contains spoilers from it. Recommended to play Part 1, read Agents of Surrender, then play Part 2. Type: RPGMaker game | Episode: #7 | Setting: Mata Nui Island | Time: Mid 2001 | Hero: Hujo the Ta-Mapmaker The Map of Mata Nui: In this revolutionarily coded RPG, you play as Hujo the Mapmaker, as you try to unravel your mysterious destiny. To make it come true, you must find six stones and place them around a stone map of the entire island. But the only such map, which was in Jala's office, has just been destroyed, so you and a small company must travel the island and face various enemies to make a new map. Features new event-based battle system where you can actually fight on the map instead of with the built in "card game" style system, working minigames, chores, and more! 4.5-star rating in the Software Library, tied for top game with Flow of the River.Note: Part 1 takes place before/during Agents of Surrender. while Part 2 takes place after it and contains spoilers from it. Recommended to play Part 1, read Agents of Surrender, then play Part 2. Type: Epic #3 | Episode: Number Eight | Word Count:78800 | Page Count in MSWord: 185 | Chapters: 21Setting: Mata Nui Island | Time: Late 2001 | Mainchars: Kopaka, Rathoa the Captain of the Rahunga Captain of Treason: The Captain of Makuta's treasonous servants, named Rathoa, steals Kopaka's sword, which now gives the user the power of ice due to being merged with a Btou staff. Rathoa plays on the gameboard of the end of the 2001 story with his own goals in mind, and recalls his lifestory -- the tale of the origin of the Rahunga. As events spiral out of control towards a confrontation between the forces of evil and good, vital clues are unveiled towards unraveling the mystery of the Paracosmos. Type: Epic #4 | Episode: #9 | Word Count: 87000 | Page Count in MSWord: 260 | Chapters: 49 + prologue and epilogueSetting: Mata Nui Island, Twisted Island, Kriitunga Island | Time: Early 2002 | Mainchars: Hujo the Mapmaker, Pohatu Twisted Island: A ghostly enemy known as the Ghomboka are awoken with the Bohrok, and they quickly kidnap Hujo and some others with him. They wake up hours later on a dark island the Ghomboka call Twisted Island, where the sky is pure black, there are traces of an ancient civilization, and dangerous beasts have been released from a zoocraft. Pohatu spearheads the effort to figure out where Hujo and company went and to unravel the mysteries of the Ghomboka. Meanwhile, the entire Unknown people become trapped on Twisted Island and depend on Hujo to unravel its mysteries to free them and rescue the very fate of the Paracosmos. The Rulers of the Sea Saga Type: Epic #5 (divided into 5 Parts) | Episode: #10 | Word Count: 219,300 | Chapters: 50 + prologue and epilogueSetting: Mata Nui Island and many other places, especially Kriitunga Island | Time: Mid-2002 to end of 2002 | Mainchars: Bhukasa the reptilian sea captain, Lewa, Niaka the Ga-Matoran ferrywoman, Hujo the Jahurungi, a mysterious character, and many side characters Endless Blue: A whole fleet of enemy ships has been sighted on a direct course for Mata Nui, as the Bohrok rampage across the island. In addition to the Cosmos-mirroring Bohrok, the Third Faction is controlling many Bohrok for their own purposes, but overshadowing all of this is the mysterious threat of the seafaring Kuambu. Their name is about all our main characters know about them, but they know the Kuambu claim to rule the Endless Ocean.Bhukasa sails out to investigate them and try to get his memories back from a time long ago when he sailed over these very seas, and from ancient times, before the rest of his people went extinct. Lewa investigates the Bohrok, while Niaka leads Eight Matoran to investigate the enemy fleet. Meanwhile, Hujo is finally shown some of the key secrets of the Unknown by Caroha, on a long interdimensional journey to visit the original Cosmos. Each of the five Parts also has a guest side character with their own subplots, as well as a few other related POVs. Type: Epic #6 (divided into 5 Parts) | Episode: #11 | Word Count: 223,600 | Chapters: 48 + prologue and epilogueSetting: Mata Nui Island and many other places, especially Vaurukan's Island and the inside of a mysterious location | Time: Early 2003 | Mainchars: Toa Onua, Ko-Matoran fisherwoman Nijire, and Toa Kopaka The Perfect Cage: Onua has made a deal with the villain Rathoa to travel to an island ruled by an enigmatic mercenary of the Kuambu, where Makuta Teridax has been trapped, to ensure that servants of the Brotherhood will not free Makuta. Also, this same mercenary, Vaurukan, has kidnapped almost the entire population of Ko-Koro, so Onua's group must free them -- Kopaka hopes to help, but someone else has other plans for him. Meanwhile, the Bohrok Kal's shaky alliance with the Toa will be tested and broken by the Kuambu, though the means and motive are unclear.The one thing that appears to tie together these disparate events is a mysterious attack on the Mangai volcano and a secret mission given to Onua by the Unknown. What is really going on... and how do you escape the perfect cage? Paracosmos Bonus Series These stories take place just before and during the finale of the second Saga, during late 2007 to early 2006, but are designed to be readable at any time, without giving away main series spoilers. Many of them were not planned in advance, and in the case of Faces of Shadow are not chronological (but they're listed here in the best order to read them in); they're "ooh I must write this" extra BP stories, though things revealed in them will be important to the second Saga finale and the Paracosmos as a whole.The Bonus series tends to have its own character, mystery, and plot threads carried throughout, and is leading to a finale epic that is in the planning stages, which culminates all the threads. It was originally intended to be purely short stories and epics, but a short storylined arcade-style game was included when a contest inspired it (though it didn't win, it does carry the bonus arc forward). Type: Short Story | Bonus #1 | Main Series Episode: ? | Word Count: 7100 | Page Count in MSWord: 18Setting: Koulshra Island | Time: Early 2006 | Mainchar: Takanuva Sacrifice: Takanuva has been trapped on a mysterious rocky island with several Matoran and a non-Matoran named Bhukasa. The fearsome beasts known as the Koulshra prevent escape, and 'eat' energy from the Matoran. Immediately when the story starts, Takanuva is faced with a horrible choice -- to save someone's life he must make a huge sacrifice. Type: Short Story | Bonus #2 | Main Series Episode: ? | Word Count: Exactly 4000 | Page Count in MSWord: 13Setting: Metru Nui and a secret location | Time: 500 years after Great Cataclysm, 500 years before 2001 story | Mainchar: Bomonga the Onu-RahagaImpetus: S&T#4 Thousand Years Untold Contest Example Entry Faces of Shadow: Bomonga faces a shadowy threat when Visorak make their presence known after 500 years of being disbanded--a group of them claims to have just now learned of their leader's death while planning an attack on the city. Through a translator, they claim to be interested in peace talks. But Bomonga immediately suspects all is not as it seems... Type: Epic | Bonus #3 | Main Series Episode: ? | Word Count: 65400 | Page Count in MSWord: 146 | Chapters: 16 + prologue & epilogueSetting: Destral, Kwarotos Coldmountain Island, Metru Nui, and more | Time: Early-Mid 2006 | Mainchars: Taureko the Ko-Translator (from Faces of Shadow), TakanuvaImpetus: Epics Contest #7: Murder Mystery Top Winner! Mindfire: Taureko arrives on Destral to steal the hinged stone Scroll of Languages to help the side of good in a secretive conflict raging throughout the Paracosmos. But he fails, and during a strange phenomenon called a Cosmos Lurch that alters the physics of the Paracosmos itself, the scroll's fiery power kills Makuta Okrelox, Taureko's former master. As events stampede toward a deadly catastrophe, Taureko forces the Brotherhood to allow Takanuva to prove his innocence, and begins recalling his past adventures as a slave. He must come to terms with his own inner demons before the "mindfire" proves to be the death of his friends and enemies alike.[The short epic: Unseen, was begun as a blog feature, which I failed to finish before the downtime. I am working on finishing it now and will simply post it as an epic soonish. ] Type: RPGMaker Arcade-style game | Bonus #5 | Main Series Episode: ? | Setting: Twisted Island | Time: Mid-Late 2006 | Hero: Enigma, an UnknownImpetus: FCG Contest #1: Arcade entry Enigma Pacman: Inspired by Pacman, and continuing major plot threads left off in Mindfire and Twisted Island, this is a one-map arcade game with a short Adventure Mystery storyline. You play as Enigma, a good-guy shapeshifter with a memory loss disease, collecting energy fruit to get Attack Mode, and earn points to earn more Attack Mode forms and other unlockables. Explores the mysteries of who Enigma really is, and what connection there may be between the Ghomboka and the Mindfire. There are also storyline-fitting cheatcodes, called Lurchcodes, that let you tap into the power of a Cosmos Lurch and alter physics itself in your favor. The storyline parts can be skipped and played later if you prefer to get right to the gameplay. Altacosmos Chronicles Each Altacosmos is its own unique alternate timeline branching off of the official Cosmos timeline. This series is a Bionicle "What If" series, with each Chronicle being a standalone Adventure Mystery short story. Partly inspired by Takuta-Nui's excellent [Etymologies] SS series; see his Absolutity collection topic. These Chronicles exist in tablet form in the Paracosmos Unknown Library -- they're for Unknown eyes only!Here is the intro, included in the first two (but I decided to discontinue it since then as it delays getting to the actual stories): FOREWARD Welcome to the Altacosmos Chronicles. I am Caroha, a seer of visions that transcend all barriers of time and space. Once I was but a humble Ga-Matoran scientist in the original Cosmos; now I rule the Unknown, secretive shapeshifters in the Bionicle Paracosmos.Every dimension can be seen as a tapestry woven together by the strings of souls. Only the Cosmos and Paracosmos are fully real, yet shadow tapestries branch off of them -- possible futures and images of how events could have played out. These Altacosmoses do have value -- by studying what did NOT happen, we can better understand what did, and it is urgent that the Unknown understand the Cosmos, so these tablets study alternate versions of that original realm.NOTE: To disguise my secret methods of gaining this information and to make the account easier to follow, each Chronicle will be written like a short story. Each is given an evocative label to aid memorization.WARNING: If you are not an Unknown or a trusted ally, or if you have been exiled, DO NOT read on. --Caroha Type: Short Story | Chronicle: #1 | Word Count: 5600 | Page Count in MSWord: 18Setting: Metru Nui, outerspace (Ignika flying through it), Vahtoran Universe | Time: Early Teridax Reign 2009 | Mainchars: Toa Nuparu, Mata Nui Bio Code: What if there was another protodermic universe the good guys could take refuge in during Makuta Teridax's reign? Toa Nuparu is sent by Mata Nui on a scouting mission to find out if a newer giant robot will work as a refuge. Type: Short Epic | Chronicle: #2 | Word Count: 9000 | Page Count in MSWord: 26 | Chapters: 5Setting: Various Matoran Universe-related locations, mainly Metru Nui | Time: After Mata Nui Awakening (this universe's version of 2009 MU story) | Mainchar: Toa Ignika The Dynasty: What if Toa Ignika learned of Teridax's Plan and devised an alternative to the Countdown? Toa Ignika deals with the aftermath of that fateful decision, which begins the Dynasty of Mata Nui. Type: Short Story| Chronicle: #3 | Word Count: 5700 | Page Count: 17Setting: Reformed Spherus Magna | Time: unspecified years after the giant robot battle | Mainchar: Kapura The Islander: What if a particular Matoran, overcome by nostalgia for Mata Nui Island, set about trying to bring it back? Kapura faces unimagined troubles when Macku goes back to her old ways.
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Welcome to the review topic for The Perfect Cage, the second epic in the Kuambu Saga – the second Saga of three – in the Bionicle Paracosmos fanfic series.As always, I don't expect reviews but they are greatly appreciated, especially telling me theories you come up with as you're reading, constructive criticism, which parts you liked best, and asking any questions you may have. I cannot always answer questions without giving away future plot but sometimes I can. :)In every Paracosmos story I write I try to experiment with different approaches. Here's a little insight into the approach here compared to past stories.In many of my earlier stories I had only a few POV threads, often alternating chapters with just the main protagonist's POV and various side characters. In the first one, The Sword is But the Focus, Kopaka was the protagonist, and the main side character with POV in it was Nijire. Also, the second short story, Emissary of Earth, took place during that epic, and it was from Onua's point of view. This story takes those same characters but flips the order, so Onua is the main protagonist, Nijire the second, and Kopaka a third. (I consider Kopaka to be one of the top two protagonists of the series as a whole, so he will get more in later stories.)Later stories moved away from the alternating chapters format, mixing different threads in each chapter. I also experimented with having more threads. This culminated in the first episode of the Kuambu Saga, Endless Blue, my longest work yet, with a huge number of threads. To keep it easier to follow I split it up into five Parts with ten chapters each, focusing on different side threads in each one.This time I set out to write just these three threads in the whole story, although there is one exception later on.It is also long, with almost as many chapters as EB, though the chapters are shorter (about 12 pages in my word processing program, versus about 20). I did not begin with the idea of splitting this one into Parts, but because it's easier to write long stories in multiple documents as the computer gets slow when a single massive document is open, I started splitting it into ten-chapter “slices.” As it turned out, the plot kept just happening to fit dividing these into five Parts, so I've decided to use that system for this one again. There are some thematic differences in each of the Parts, though nothing like EB had.So, each Part is ten chapters each, not counting the prologue and epilogue, except Part Five is just 8 chapters. Some of the chapters that end or begin a Part are longer than the average; about 16 pages.Just FTR, the epic that comes after this one has been written for a while – I wasn't sure when it would take place, but now have made some minor edits to put it as the third Kuambu Saga story. It has been retitled Falling Sun, and I'll probably post it immediately after this is fully posted. It's much shorter, and is purely from one character's POV (a new character).Catchup:Here's a summary of past story, mostly focusing on Endless Blue, in case anyone wants it. This should all be clear eventually to a brand-new reader in-story, but this is an option. :)The series began, with the Hidden Enemy Saga, or the Rahunga Saga, taking place during the Paracosmos equivalent of Bionicle's 2001 story, the Coming of the Toa. The six Toa battled the Rahi, retrieved hidden Kanohi Masks of power, and investigated the mystery of why the Rahi were being infected faster than they used to be. It turned out that some 'Tohunga' (as Matoran were called in the Dark Time when the evil Makuta's influence was over the island of Mata Nui) willingly followed Makuta, using the hatred-based black liquid mutagen rahudermis to transform into larger, more powerful versions of themselves.Two secretive organizations were also discovered around this time.The apparently good 'Unknown' shapeshifters, who mystically guided a Ta-Matoran mapmaker named Hujo on a quest to find a Blue Fire Staff, and whose leader, Caroha, was later revealed to have accidentally spawned the Paracosmos. She was once a Ga-Matoran scientist in the original Bionicle 'Cosmos', but she touched a strange shining blue liquid she called chronoserum... and the next thing she knew the Paracosmos existed, a corrupted, expanded version of her world.There is also the malicious Third Faction, who has a more gray-area philosophy of morality but seeks to dominate the Paracosmos, led by another shapeshifter, a female named Arakra. The Captain of the Rahunga, after tempting Toa Kopaka to join Makuta, finally decided to abandon the murderous Brotherhood and instead join the Third Faction, who did not kill. He unleashed ghostly enemies who, to make a long story short, led Hujo to discover Caroha's secret. They also introduced the Toa to an island due east of Mata Nui – Kriitunga Island.The inhabitants of Mata Nui were almost drawn into a war with the Kriitunga, but eventually a shaky alliance was formed.But at the same time, a larger threat of the oceanic surface realm was alerted to the presence of Mata Nui Island, and sent their fleet to anchor off of its southern coast. Little is known about them except their name – Kuambu, that they often fire projectiles called Kuamor spheres with various powers, and they have a powerful Empire throughout the Aqua Magna ocean.The reptilian sea Captain, Bhukasa, who was friends with the Toa, led a quest to learn more about the Kuambu, but he was soon caught up in a deadly struggle with the Lone Captain, a rogue Kuambu ruling a single ship who had a personal vendetta against Bhukasa. Meanwhile, the Toa raced to stop the Third Faction's meddling with the Bahrag, and then to stop the Bahrag themselves. It was discovered that the Bohrok of the Paracosmos have several mysterious purposes besides Cleaning the island. One of those, the Lone Captain tried to take advantage of, risking mass genocide.It was discovered, by Hujo (and he kept it a secret, known only to a few others) that the Paracosmos Matoran Universe – the realm of undersea domes – was very different from the Cosmos one.The giant Great Spirit robot of the canon Bionicle was here, with domes containing places like Metru Nui, but there were far more domes as well. These formed a vast web which connected like chains to the giant robot. Should Mata Nui wake up, the Bohrok would need to sever these chains. If he was taken over – say, by Makuta – he would remain chained to the planet.But there was a problem with this system; the Bohrok would need to go down into the ocean to cut these chains, which were the tunnels connecting the giant robot's domes with different domes with islands in them, and this would flood the Matoran Universe. Now, Bhukasa's people – who had since gone extinct except for him – had a strange type of technology that used black metal with computer programming and various powers contained in it. One of these, it was learned, had long ago helped the Unknown create systems that removed sections of the ocean, making walls of golden light and converting the water inside to air.When a Hole in the Ocean was opened, the Bohrok would cut a 'chain.'But the Lone Captain tried to prevent a system of doors from going down over the two sides of the tunnels, to force the Matoran Universe to flood when the golden walls eventually disappeared and the ocean rushed back in. Thankfully, Bhukasa and others brought him to defeat, and the doors were shut.On his journeys during these events, Bhukasa gathered a small crew, including two beings he had known in the past; Toggler, a shapeswitcher from an icy island, and Sairiph, a small winged being with many powers. Both seemed to be of questionable morals, though Bhukasa learned the truth of Toggler's past in the final chapter of Endless Blue and forgave him his past crimes. Sairiph's true motives remain a mystery.Several other events happened that had yet to be resolved.First, a tiny parasitic being called Haywire possessed the Po-Matoran chef named Korau. A wandering mutant Kriitunga fooled him into being trapped on the coldest part of Toggler's homeland. The cold would make Haywire leave his host, but what she didn't tell them was that it would be free to leave and attack the rest of Toggler's people. The Toa learned of this deception too late, and Korau was not yet freed. He was frozen alive, but could be thawed.Secondly, a Matoran mercenary of the Kuambu suddenly left their service, apparently having remembered her forgotten past, and convinced two Po-Matoran, the carver Hafu and the scout Kuhauha, to leave with her. They had taken a tablet from a group of pirates, which contained all the major events of the canon Bionicle storyline – which the Paracosmos would inevitably always mirror to some extent, as the main characters had learned. For unknown reasons these three Matoran fled the scene and have yet to contact anyone else.Of greater concern, the King of the Kriitunga was trapped by mysterious forces in a Kuambu prison on his island. Due to the Kriitunga's laws, a trapped King is no King at all, and so the political situation there has become unstable. Another group of Toa was encountered who Bhukasa had known once; they had all fallen into comas by being hosts of Haywire. Bhukasa found a way to Awaken them, and they achieved their destiny of stopping the pirates. Now these Toa have remained with Bhukasa as crewmembers, while considering what to do next.Makuta Teridax had been believed to be killed for a while. Rathoa and the other Rahunga had been tasked with reviving him via his mask if this would happen, but Rathoa betrayed him, taking the mask, using another mask to mentally enslave some other Rahunga, and tried to take over the Brotherhood in Teridax's place. He also used yet another mask he had invented to convert himself into a Makuta, so he believed he would be qualified for the position.However, the Brotherhood revealed that Makuta was not actually dead; some of his antidermis had been teleported away by a mysterious being named Vaurukan, and was now held prisoner on Vaurukan's island. He had known this would happen, and contrived a faked death at the hands of the Toa in order to test the loyalty of his Rahunga. For his treason, the Brotherhood put out a kill order on Rathoa, and the remaining loyal Rahunga set about preparing a rescue mission for Teridax. Rathoa grudgingly joined forces with Toa Onua, who agreed to help him find Makuta first and prevent the Rahunga from freeing him.Most importantly, during the events unleashed by Rathoa, the six Bohrok Kal had also formed a shaky alliance with the Toa. They had apparently disbanded the alliance as the Toa tried to capture the Bahrag, abandoning their allies. Their status is currently unknown. Those like Hujo, who know how events went in the Cosmos, know that it is from the Kal that the next great threat may be expected, but what Hujo cannot yet know is the role of the Kuambu, and of Vaurukan, or of the many other strange beings and things in this realm...
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Welcome to The Perfect Cage, the second epic in the second Saga of the Bionicle Paracosmos, an Adventure Mystery series that mirrors official story but is often different, for reason that are central to the plot. As always, feel free to jump right in without reading past story; if you would like a brief summary see the review topic. My collection topic is here: Tapestry of Time.This story centers on Toa Onua, during early 2003 story, as well as a Ko-Matoran fisherwoman named Nijire, and Toa Kopaka. It has 48 chapters plus a prologue and epilogue. The beginning takes place just after the defeat of the Bahrag, before the Kal attack. To followers of my blog, it should be no surprise that the shaky alliance the Paracosmos Toa and Kal have may be challenged -- expect to see winners of the Bohrok Kool contest here. :biggrin:Enjoy! [Review Here] PART ONE PrologueOnua walked alone through the savannah land of Kini-Wahi. His eyes were barely focused on what was in front of him.All he could think about was how unfair all this was, that this burden was on him.Onua only.Those were the words that had appeared on a mysterious tablet moments ago, as the Turaga concluded their meeting with the Toa and others who were helping them. The tablet had been found the day before, and it was blank. But then messages kept appearing... and changing...The Turaga believed the messages came from the mysterious people who called themselves the 'Unknown.'Along with these words were a map to a spot deep in the Fau swamp, and three more words.Claw of Strength.What did that mean? The right-hand one of his glovelike Toa Tools was missing. Maybe this would replace it? But why couldn't he bring help?Onua was nearly where he wanted to enter the jungle, when he heard loud sounds to his right.Looked.Saw nothing.More. It sounded like huge stones crumbling.Looked up.Saw nothing on the slopes of the volcano to the north. Higher still, at the very top.Huge orange threadlike tendrils were cutting into the rocky ring of the Mangai’s caldera. Pulling the rock inward.Sewing.From the caldera, a constant river of lava flowed into a lava tube, to the east. Ta-Koro sat on an island inside the tube, and the river parted around it, though from here all you could see was the glowing orange hole in the roof of the tube over Ta-Koro. Several other holes along the path hinted at the river, and at the ocean, a constant cloud of steam rose, and faded into the sky.Now, Onua could see hole after hole going dark.Something’s choking the flow off.Ta-Koro's hole went dark.The sounds stopped. The tendrils disappeared, but something that looked like a huge orange-glowing spiderweb now held the rock dome in place where the caldera should be.Something that’s inside the volcano.A twig snapped in the jungle.He whirled.Eyes.Eyes everywhere.Pairs of eyes. Watching him.He looked left, to the east. Eyes dotted the front of the forest for as far as he could see.Looked right. The same.He knew who those eyes belonged to, though nobody had managed to see – or remember – their actual forms. For they had arrived on the island a few days ago and attacked mysteriously from the shadows, kidnapping some. But one thing they did not keep secret. Their name.Kuambu. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A few hours ago...Onua sat heavily down at the table in Kini-Nui Hall.The Turaga and others had gathered here to discuss recent events and plans for the immediate future. Most importantly, proof had been found that Makuta Teridax had been captured alive by a mysterious villain named Vaurukan. A team of loyal servants of Makuta were planning to free him.The Toa could not let that happen. They had to find that villain's prison and stop the servants. But so much had gone wrong lately, and they'd put off dealing with things that normally would be emergencies. Could they put it all off any longer?The others in the room discussed this vigorously.But Onua couldn’t focus.All their words sounded like background noise to him. Occasionally he managed to listen long enough that he could add a tidbit to the discussion, but not much.Onua had been singled out by the cryptic shapeshifter named Surkahi twice with prophetic statements. The first time, Surkahi said Onua would have to leave the island soon.And then Surkahi – along with all the Unknown – had disappeared, saying they would not be seen again for a long time.Except possibly by Onua, he’d added.He hoped he would see the shapeshifter soon. He had a thousand questions.He felt off-balance. Not only because just after the defeat of the Bahrag, the Toa’s bodies had been changed in mysterious ways, but literally off-balance due to his missing glove-Tool.And maybe for a reason more psychological, but he wasn’t sure. He had a quiet wisdom, or so he thought of himself, but the great mystery to him had always been himself. Why he chose to keep quiet when a word of advice could have helped, why he was more interested in the scenery than the endless debates of his fellows.Why he was different.He had started to gain some confidence as the Toa defeated Makuta and then the Bahrag. But then the Kuambu had swept through in a raid too one-sided to really call a battle. They had knocked everyone unconscious. The Toa fell first, and others saw blue sparkling light from strange lanterns be shone upon them.They had changed form. The rules were different now. Onua still wasn't sure he knew what those rules were. And Lewa kept muttering that this wasn't how it was supposed to be.“Onua, are you ready, then?” Turaga Vakama asked.Onua looked up. He remembered the deal he and Rathoa – a villain they were in a temporary alliance with – had made, and assumed that was what they meant.Nodded.“Good. Let’s get going, then.”Everybody stood up, and walked out, as if they all had a purpose and a clear plan. He wished he’d paid attention.Rathoa walked up to him. He was huge, colored black – he was, in fact, a Makuta, though not naturally. Once he had been a mere Matoran. “I’ll meet you at the Seahopper when you’ve got it.” Then he nodded in farewell and walked out. Five of the Turaga left too.Whenua lingered, as did Onua. “What island are you on right now?” the elder asked.Onua shrugged. “Sorry. Just… all of this is too much to absorb so fast.”“Did you even hear, about the tablet?”He frowned. “The what?”Whenua held up the gray rectangular stone. The last contact with the Unknown. It was apparently able to change the message inscribed on it, though he had no idea how.Now, it displayed only five words. Onua slowly absorbed what it said. Only he could come? What was this 'Claw of Strength'? And shouldn't Lewa and Gali come along if he had to go to the horrid Fau swamp?But he had already agreed, hadn't he? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kopaka ran out of Kini-Nui.Pohatu came with him. Kopaka thought the Toa of Stone looked very strange now. The transformation had made him much bulkier than before, and even changed his secondary color to yellow. His main Tools were still attached to his feet and now were silver. His hands each had two silver claws, plus he carried a long brown sword, currently stored on his back.Of course, Kopaka looked strange himself now, he realized. He wasn't much bulkier, but he was more heavily armored, his shield was larger, and he now had two silver skate-tools in addition to his sword.The first thing the Toa had discovered about their changed bodies, besides the different shapes, was that all the other masks they had previously collected were gone, except one per Toa.Each Toa was left with only the one mask they originally had, and one other. Their other powers had previously been fused into one gold-rimmed mask, but now they had two distinct masks only. And the shape of their main mask was changed slightly.On the plus side, they could now share the powers of their main masks with others. That could come in handy, but they all commented that it was disappointing to work so hard to collect so many only to have them disappear.Kopaka especially missed having his own Mask of Speed. He’d learned his lesson about the value of Unity, but he still preferred to work alone.Especially for this trip.Instead he was stuck with the 'Kanohi Nuva', as Rathoa called it, of Vision... and a normal mask of Translation.Not a problem, they had thought.Easily fixed.For recently they had collected many extra masks from a ghostly enemy, including Great Masks, and stored them in Kini-Nui Hall. They walked down the stairs, went to the storeroom...And found it empty.Someone had stolen the extra masks.But they had reason to believe something far more important had been stolen. Really, not things... but people.Now Kopaka and Pohatu arrived at the gates of Ko-Koro.It was deserted.This morning, when the Toa had awoken from being knocked unconscious and changed by the Kuambu – they’d discovered that all the Ko-Matoran who had joined the battle against the Bahrag were gone.Tahu retained perhaps the most valuable mask of all – the one remaining Mask of Telecommunication. He’d tried to contact Ko-Koro, but nobody answered.Gukko scouts had already flown near and confirmed no sign of an enemy, nor of inhabitants.Kopaka turned to the Toa of Stone. “If you don’t mind… I want to go in alone.”Pohatu had an especially serious look on his face, for him anyways. “Understood.”The Toa of Ice tried to ready himself... but there was no readying for this. His own people...So he just took a breath, gripped his sword and his shield firmly, and walked in.The first thing he wanted to see was someone – anyone – perhaps cowering in a corner, perhaps running out to report who had taken the others, or which direction they had gone.This turned out to be a vain hope.The second thing was footprints.The Kuambu’s appearances were kept carefully secret. They’d swept over all their footprints in sand, and tried to walk on plants wherever they went so far. It didn’t surprise him now that he saw no footprints.But he was surprised to not even see any hint that footprints had been erased.And there were little pockets of ice here and there in the snow, where ice shouldn’t be. Looking closer, he saw they were tiny holes that had melted snow, which had later refrozen.In the center of the village, there was a single larger hole, large enough for a Matoran to fit inside. He looked down.Strange threads of glowing orange seemed to be worked into the ice and rock walls of the hole. Down about fifty feet the sides of the hole had collapsed in, sealing it.So... the Kuambu's one rule – no killing – seemed to have held. His people were not dead. He could not be sure, though, so he didn't allow himself to relax. And being captured was nothing to brush aside.“What could do this?” he whispered to himself.“Vaurukan’s creatures,” a voice answered.Kopaka whirled, lifting his sword and shield defensively.There was a small dark red being with wings hovering there.Next to him stood a tall blue and white titan with goat-like hooves, and carrying a sword that looked like Kopaka’s.“Sairiph!” Kopaka exclaimed to the small being, who had spoken. “And Toggler. What are you doing here?”“We heard what happened,” Toggler said. “Sairiph said he had a hunch what did it. He was right.”“What hunch?”Pohatu walked up. “What do you guys want?” He looked on the defensive too.There was something about these two, especially Sairiph, that was disturbing, though they claimed to be on the side of good. They had come to the island as crewmembers of the ship named the Seahopper, and friends of its Captain, the reptilian Bhukasa, on his voyage to investigate the Kuambu, which ended last night.“This orange, this hole,” Sairiph said. “It’s a trademark of Vaurukan’s creatures.”“Who’s Vaurukan?” Kopaka asked.“Weren’t you listening in the meeting?” Pohatu scolded him. “The ruler of the island where Makuta is being held.” Kopaka had meant the question to be more about the person, not the name, but Sairiph's eyes flashed at the word 'Makuta' and he spoke before Kopaka could.“Makuta Teridax, yes. Vaurukan is… a collector.”“But the Kuambu did this!” Kopaka exclaimed. “We have several witnesses who saw Kuambu take Ko-Matoran away at the northwest prison island, and on the Bahrag battlefield.”“Oh, Vaurukan wouldn’t be involved here unless the Kuambu had hired him,” Sairiph said. “The Kuambu are to blame, but surely by now you realize they prefer to work through others?”That made sense. They wanted to keep as much about themselves secret as they could, except that they were the rulers of the surface ocean.The Seahopper crew had dealt with mercenaries already. And when the Kuambu did let you see them, they hit you with energy spheres that blurred your memory of their appearance. Kopaka had such a blurred memory himself from the battlefield.“So, the Ko-Matoran were taken to Vaurukan’s island?”“I’m afraid so,” Sairiph said, though his tone was off – he almost seemed happy about it. “They won’t be easy to free.”“But we will try,” Toggler assured him. For these two, as well as Onua and Rathoa, were all going to try to go there on the Seahopper, though only Sairiph knew the way, to make sure Teridax stayed contained.“If you fear that the Rahunga,” Pohatu said, referring to the Matoran servants of Makuta who used a black mutagen called rahudermis to become powerful, “can free Makuta, then that means it’s possible to free the Matoran too. And you’ll need all the help you can get, so—”“You mustn’t come,” Sairiph said. “One Toa Mata… or Nuva, or whatever you’re calling yourselves now, leaving this island is risky enough.”“Rathoa said it’s a volcanic island,” Kopaka said. “My power will be a great help.”“I have every ounce of your power,” Toggler said, holding up the sword.Just like Kopaka’s sword, it was fused with a Btou staff, which granted the user the elemental power of whatever Toa normally used a Toa Tool. Such Tools looked fancier than their unmerged versions. Toggler's was strangely identical to Kopaka's.“How did you get it?” Kopaka asked, unable to hold back the question any longer.“I found it. At home. In the mountains.”Not helpful. “But it’s just the sword for you. The power is in me, even if I lose the sword, as I have before. You might lose it.”“It shall not happen,” Sairiph insisted.Kopaka stepped forward three times, getting in Sairiph’s face. “Who are you to deny me this? They’re MY people!”Sairiph’s red eyes flashed. The little winged being hovered a little higher. “I have the authority, Toa. There was once a time when I said go, and you went. You may have forgotten, and Teridax may have corrupted it, but the title of Makuta still means ‘you obey me, by the will of Mata Nui.’”As he said it, a crackling sphere of blue electricity appeared in one hand.Kopaka couldn’t help himself – he stepped back in surprise and more than a little fear. “You’re a… you’re…”“My name is Spiriah – I go by Sairiph, for I was exiled from Teridax’s corrupted Brotherhood and to use my real name is more dangerous. But I am true to what we were. Loyal to the Great Spirit, the one you serve.”He was so little, though! How could someone so—Sairiph’s face curled up in anger. “You think size defines strength. I could destroy everyone on this island if I wanted to.”Did he just read my mind?“You said creatures,” Pohatu said, as if this little… disagreement wasn’t happening. “What kind of creatures?”“Creatures that eat molten rock for breakfast, that shimmer with the heat of a thousand suns, that reek of sulfur, that clothe themselves in smoke, before whom the very ground trembles in terror. Creatures neither of you would stand a chance against.”“I’ve heard tales,” Toggler put in. “If the rumors are right, your Matoran friends are lucky the creatures were in obedient moods, to kidnap instead of kill.”Kopaka turned and started marching out. “That’s it. I’m going. I will NOT leave them to the likes of you as saviors.”“Stop!” Sairiph barked. “That’s a direct order.”He kept going, shouting over his shoulder, “Come on, Pohatu! I don’t remember any rank system that says I have to obey a Makuta!”“Uh, maybe we should…”Light and pain.Blue crackling electricity.All over his body.“Wait!” Pohatu objected.Kopaka’s vision faded.Faded back in, to see snow obscuring his vision – he must have fallen on his face.Heard more crackling, but didn’t feel it. Heard someone else – Pohatu, he realized – fall to the ground.He tried to get back up.But more lightning wracked his body.This time, his vision faded to black. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nijire awoke.Ow…There were pains all over the Ko-Matoran's body, as if she’d been burned and dragged through a long, narrow tunnel.Which she had, she remembered, grimacing. Thankfully the burns weren’t bad, though she’d seen the glowing orange tendrils melt ice before capturing her. Whatever had grabbed her had been holding back its heat.The room she was in shook.She jerked to her feet, looked around.Heard a terrifying roar, so deep it shook her bones.She was in a room made of metal, protobronze by the look of it, but with corners made of cool gray stone. A strange green crystal at the top apparently was recycling the air, as she felt a fresh breeze wafting off of it – instantly telling her the room was airtight.Roar again. The room shook so violently she fell on her side.She rolled off of whatever she’d fallen on – the floor was littered with tons of objects of all types. Gearwork clocks, fishing nets, shovels, lightstones, torches with proto-flint lighters, candles, and unlit proto-oil lanterns, and just about anything else you could imagine, if it was small enough to hold with one hand. She recognized all of it from Ko-Koro.A rapid, repeated scraping sound on the other side of the wall in front her.A powerful thump, rocking the room again. In the exact moment the sound rang out, a part of the wall bent inward.Again, and bent in more.The metal started to glow.Orange.She felt heat radiating from it. The chilly room warmed quickly.The fisherwoman turned around, looking at the walls. No sign of a door. The metal portions strongly braced around the rock portions.Trapped.Why am I always getting trapped?Now the monster moved to the left.Pounded now on the stone instead of metal.A piece broke, fell on the floor. She heard more breaking off on the other side.The creature sped up the attacks then, roaring louder. Eager.She looked around frantically. She’d been trapped by enemies before. Twice – and she'd found a way out both times. She was confident she could again, especially with so many tools here of various uses.Shovel?Too slow compared to that. But she grabbed it anyways and slammed it into the opposite rock corner.It bounced off and slipped from her grasp.Not a dent in the rock, but the shovel was badly bent.She picked it up, tried again.This time the scoop bounced right into her face. “Ow!” she cried aloud.ROAR in response, and the creature rammed harder and faster still.No! No!Tried the shovel on metal. It didn’t give.Tried a miner’s pick. Nothing!Tried object after object. Threw a clock with all her might at the metal, smashing the clock, and leaving the metal smooth as a puddle in Ko-Wahi.Nijire turned and stared at the breaking wall, horror frozen on her face, crouched defensively, clutching a proto-iron rod the wall had just snapped in two.There was nothing she could do.Review here
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So, in the interests of this blog not being entirely dead, I'm launching another blog contest. This one will be very simple, with rules designed already into the program LEGO Digital Designer 4. I love using this program and watching the upload gallery, but Bionicle MOCs are rarely made with it. Of course, it doesn't have many Bionicle pieces, but what about something like a Playsets location? There's all kinds of possibilities. So for this contest, you are charged to use LDD4 to make Bionicle locations, nonstandard beings (example: Morbuzahk, who didn't have the typical Bionicle pieces style), objects, vehicles, etc. This is, like all my other MOC contests, a Bionicle Paracosmos contest; so the winning MOCs will be used in future fanfics of mine in that series. Rules: 1) Yes, you must use the current version of LDD (version 4; download here). 2) I'm allowing two separate categories -- in the Standard Category you must use standard mode, so only pieces/colors that may be uploaded to the LDD gallery (the ones backgrounded in green). In the LEGO Universe Category use LU mode to have many more pieces and wider color ranges, but cannot upload to the gallery. Please say which category each entry is in. 3) Please no "normal Bionicle beings" -- I've had plenty of these already winning previous contests, most of whom I haven't used yet. So no beings that would normally be MOCed with Bionicle pieces, but I won't make this an absolute rule per se. 4) You may use locations or beings from the official story, or if you follow my fanfics you could work from descriptions there (you could even use illustrations I've made, etc.) Or you could make up your own stuff but be aware it might be more difficult for me to work these into stories, so simpler may be better for that. 5) Please when you enter, first state what type of MOC it is -- i.e. location, object, being, etc. as well as the name of what the MOC is (ex: if it's a location like Kini-Nui say that name). I'm not going to bother with fancy entries forms, though. 6) You may enter as many as you like in here. 7) Please post at least one screencap of the MOC. (And if you could make sure the image is not huge, that'd be nice. ) FTR, the best screencaps aren't left in the design mode, but viewed in the mode with the background images at strategic angles, the blue background of building guide mode, or the white background as in the images uploaded to the gallery. And be sure to put the pic on brickshelf or the like rather than trying to direct link if you go with the gallery pic. Also, I would greatly prefer if yall would upload the MOCs to the gallery and include a link to your own member gallery (the closest thing it seems to allow to linking to specific MOCs) so that I could download the file, but this is NOT a rule. (It's often difficult to do this with big MOCs, etc. and I wouldn't want to discourage entering if you don't have time for this.) If that doesn't work, you may alternatively email me the file directly at bonesiii@gmail.com (but please only do this if the gallery method doesn't work). Being able to look at the file 3-dimensionally can help in judging winners, though it isn't necessary per se. (Note: Your gallery here means the public side, not the "my gallery" button; once any MOC of yours is approved for public (this usually takes about a day), then click it, and click your member name. The link that appears in your address bar then is the link I mean.) Entry period begins now and closes July 1 2011, at midnight EST. Judging notes: Weight will be given to cleverness of design. Try to shy away from the plain stacked rectangle bricks designs (not a rule ). I don't require that the MOC hold up well in plastic form to win, although that will help (and I can tell ). Yes, mini-scale is fine (ex: the Hau statue in the banner here could see a mini-scale stone statue and the mouth could be a door entrance to some important location).
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Hey, for those fans of my fanfic series, the Bionicle Paracosmos, I figure it's about time I let you know what my plans for the future are, since I haven't finished the series yet, and obviously the end of official Bionicle and subsequent lessening of BZP activity matter to it. I still plan to continue it, but to shorten the number of stories I had in mind. Basically, I now plan to have only three main Sagas, each with roughly the same number of episodes. And really, even had Bionicle not ended, I now believe this would have been the right course of action anyways. A big part of the reason I even started this was I always felt 2001's huge story potential was wasted on very little story officially (that plus I wanted to make my own parallel dimension mystery to center it on). I've been kind of dreading entering the later years because I've never been certain how much I should condense or how long I should drag it out to be consistent with the previous pacing when compared to canon story. This way I think I'll actually be pleasing fans of 2001 more than spending long, tedious amounts of time in the later years. I will instead focus only on the best of the best from those years from the canon. All the stories currently published up till Twisted Island (not counting the Bonus Series) are the first Saga. It's known as the "Hidden Enemy" Saga (or insert the secret name of that enemy if you've read the stories ). That seriously expanded on 2001, and includes a bit of 2002. (Plus it was beefed up with things from other years we later learned in the canon like Metru Nui, the BOM, etc.) The next Saga's name has been long announced; the Kuambu Saga. Basically I plan to seriously condense the official timeline into this, including everything from mid-2002 up till 2007. The Kuambu are an enemy about which pretty much only their name is known originally, except that also they are enemies of the surface of the planet, not the underground domes. 2004-2005 as flashbacks I intend to seriously condense and tell alongside present-day story taking place on the surface, and then of course 2006 went right back to the surface. My original plans would have ended the Kuambu Saga sometime in 2003, and then basically I would have stuffed in a few filler Saga Enemies that I really wasn't all that eager to tell anyways. Instead, I will go right to the final Saga, the main enemies of which I absolutely love and have been bursting at the seams to get to. That will encompass 2008 to the end of Bionicle, probably focusing more on the MU than the canon did in 2009, although it will be involved. Plus, I do plan to (hopefully) finish the existing plans for the Bonus Series, which takes place roughly during 2006-2007, and involves many of the domes and story elements related to Metru Nui. So there's already good reason not to drag out the 04-06 stories in the main series anyways. As for Tales of the Ri-Rali, I do still hope to make short story versions of that sometime, but no idea when. And I hope to at least finish the Altacosmos Chronicle story I have currently started. What I'll do with the series from then, end or continue and if so how much, I really have no idea at this point.
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Welcome to the Results for the Bohrok Kool contest! NOTE: Due to time constraints, from now on I will not include extensive comments with blog contest results. I wish I could, but if I try, I'll never get them, or anything else, finished. Also, in the blog entry results, I won't include honorable mentions; only the single top place winner for each Kal. However, those, and non-winners, are included in the downloadable Powerpoint file. Slideshow Results Download The Honorable Mentions may be briefly featured as stages in a mutation from the original Kal shapes to these six winning shapes, as explained on the first slide of the above. by Carakki by Rhunn by ~Legoman~ by ~~Zarkan~~ by Millennium by Shadow Destroyer Congrats to the winners!
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It took a long time, but we finally have the results of the Blue MOCs contest ready. This contest asked the members to post old or new MOCs that used the color scheme blue mostly. Winning MOCs would either get featured in the upcoming Bionicle Paracosmos epic Endless Blue, about a sea quest by Bhukasa to solve the mystery of a ship-based enemy on Mata Nui that seems to know deep mysteries about the Paracosmos Matoran Universe. Many may also get used in a later story, since blue characters are more common in the Paracosmos than other colors (BTW, the reason for that could now be easily deduced from recent revelations, if anyone wants to get kudos for guessing right ). Originally we said the top four MOCs would get major featuring in Endless Blue; we have expanded that to six. In this blog entry, I will show only the winners, including the top six but also some other MOCs, plus brief mention of a handful of honorable mentions. The results were originally written as a Powerpoint file, which is available for your viewing here. In the slideshow, since this contest had such quality, we have decided to honorably mention every single non-winning MOC! So view the slideshow for the rest of the honorable mentions. (The HMs I'm including here in the actual blog entry are the ones I plan currently to actually have much importance.) All the bios of the HMs are only in the slideshow. I will start with the top six winners. We had two categories; Second Chances (old MOCs), and New MOCs. Several of the bios are edited, including some of the names, species type, and moral type when Ojhilom and I deemed it necessary (especially, of course, for those the enterer left open for interpretation). If you want to know what is original text and what is added by us, see the Powerpoint file. Host comments were included in the powerpoint file, unless in brackets here. Second Chances Top 3 These three MOCs are guaranteed major plot relevance and feature time in Endless Blue. 1st Place! Member: Distorted Entry name: Knife-Tail Species: Shvontuk (uk as in book) Moral Type: Troubled hero Knife-Tail is the nickname of this troubled centauroid hero on a small chain of islands dominated by an underwater Tarakava Nest. He’s one of several members of this fairly weak, humble species that has joined their heroic defense force, using Kuamor Spheres to defend against the Tarakava. He has been a member of this team for a long time, and he’s seen many of his fellows die at the hands of these beasts. Wild Tarakava are dangerous enough as it is, but these Tarakava are now all infected by Makuta’s evil influence. They are the same Tarakava that Makuta sent against Mata Nui Island often. Knife-Tail, or Udmijok as he’s called by his civilian friends in their native language (Ud rhymes with good, and the “j” is only a slightly pronounced “eej” sound, so it sounds a bit like Udmyok), blames himself for some of their deaths. But beyond this, bouts of intense sadness come over him sometimes. The only thing that really distracts him from the sadness is the adrenaline of battle or practice sparring. The power of all their Kuamor is called simply “Destiny”. They have inborn powers to sense destiny and alter it slightly. Similar to Rhotuka launchers, their launchers generate soulsong orbs with this power. The launchers use a secret method that the Kuambu also use to activate the inherent powers of Kuamor spheres (which normally do nothing except store copies of soulsongs), which is their greatest secret. Not known how they got it. Recently, Knife-Tail was captured by the Kuambu and imprisoned in one of their Hunting Pens. Host Comments: Knife-Tail is a brilliant MOC. He’s not even up to the average size of the MOCs entered in this contest -- although there were several tiny entries smaller than him – yet he is our top pick due to, quite simply, brilliant use of the pieces that are there. Cohesive, unique color scheme, something beyond mere humanoid (he’s centauroid, in my terminology), good use of “emotive building” that makes him look at the same time humble and yet strong, and the Bionicle symbol on the ammo is a nice touch. What really did it for me is that this is a System Fusion MOC, but you wouldn’t know it at first glance. Other than the chest piece, the other pieces blend so well into the Bionicle style that it might take an expert on official sets to know they aren’t Bionicle pieces. When you look closer, you can spot some familiar System pieces, though – and the chest piece works too. This is the type of limb building that MOCers call “custom”, and it uses the tire technic that’s become a tradition in that style well. And, although this image doesn’t show it very well, the knife-tail of the character’s nickname gives him a cool, almost scorpion-like look. Finally, the mask completes the set aspect of this that is why it’s a winner. The mask of light gives it an expression that fits what little story aspect Distorted included; troubled hero. Storywise, there wasn’t much detail, but the idea was cool enough it didn’t hurt the MOC’s ranking any, and to be clear, we judged mainly on MOC quality anyways. I mixed this character/species with a location Ojhilom and I had invented in 2001 planned to be a major locale in Endless Blue, and took the power idea from the logo symbol, and went from there for the bio I generated for him. [unfortunately, this is the only image of him; I am trying to include multiple images of the best MOCs.] 2nd Place! Member: Primus Entry name: Cap'n Gar-Korr Species: A mutant Vortixx Moral Type: Villian After being horribly mutated as a young Vortixx, Gar-Korr left the Island of Xia to begin his career as a pirate. He is the Captain of the flying ship The Apax, and is known for his skills with his sword. The mutation was done by Oracle Industries, the famous company of the Oru-Vortixx. Gar-Korr was not an Oru-Vortixx, and was brought into the experiments against his will. Via unknown techniques, his essence was altered to share some of the “essence parameters”, as he remembers his captors calling them, of a Bohrok Va. As such, he has a strange, subconsious mental link with the Bohrok Swarms, which haunts him in his nightmares, but doesn’t otherwise seem to give him any advantage or disadvantage in terms of his physical or mental abilities. One disadvantage does plague him, however – he lost the ability to speak or make any sounds. He is just as intelligent, and communicates with his crew via a form of sign language he has invented, but to strangers he must either have a translator, or use other methods to communicate. He can understand Matoran language just fine, and write it. In recent years, he found an open sun-hole, and began pirating the Endless Ocean. Host Comments: Picking the best of Primus’s three entries was difficult. We loved all three of his MOCs, but the brilliant story helped this one win out; plus we felt it a cooler looking and more cohesive MOC than the other two (which were both robots with little to no story bio). That was the easy part, but deciding between this or Wolf Rahi for the Number Two spot for this category was much harder. In fact, we liked both MOCs so well, plus we had the same problem in the other category, we decided to expand the number of top winners to six, so three per category. That problem out of the way, we selected Captain Gar-Korr about half for the MOC and half for the story. Gar-Korr is different enough from a humanoid to make us very happy with it, although to be clear, humanoids were not ruled out for this contest. He’s also, however, a good example of a semi-humanoid done right. The limbs, torso, head, and hands and feet flow perfectly together, despite using what can often seem like wackily different styles of pieces. For example, the blue pieces from the Bohrok handshields on the head and shoulders compared with the blue technic pieces on the arm have fairly different textures, but they’re used in a “descending order” of styles from elegant to practical. This effect is also carried down the torso and legs as blue become black… and then there is a larger blue piece on the feet to balance it out. This is near perfection in both color scheme tactics and texture tactics. And, the end result is, in my view, a character that feels like a pirate captain of an airship. Hard to explain, but it extremely works. In this case, the dark blue parts don’t quite work for me, but it’s okay. Also, storywise, MOC fitting it or not, the idea of an airship captain villain, plus the Vortixx origin story, struck as one of the best story inclusions in the whole contest (though a few others compete). It’s not, granted, the most original concept ever, but combined in the way it is, I freakin’ like it. And that was enough. In my bio, I expanded on the short paragraph that was included, mostly just adding detail. Part of what’s in there is a major hint to some Paracosmos mysteries, though, which I plan for Endless Blue to first hint at. The Va part we added is, of course, inspired by the obviously Va-like head here, and partly just because EB takes place during the Bohrok story. 3rd Place! Member: xccj Entry name: Wolf Rahi Species: Rahi Moral Type: Beast Highly intelligent Rahi, the wolves live in large packs, usually headed by an alpha male or female. They rely on their strength and sharp teeth, but are also very cunning. Many experienced beings have fallen victim to a wolf ambush before. There was a pack of these wolf Rahi in Le-Wahi, but some may have been displaced overtime. Host Comments: After sorting all the other members’ entries fully into win or “lose” statuses, this was the best remaining MOC in this category besides Knife-Tail and Gar-Korr, in our opinion. Now, we did feel that there were one or two better MOCs originally entered in this category, but all of them were dropped into the Honorable Mention status by an even better MOC by the people who made them. So, all that aside, this is still one of our top five or so favorites of the MOCs in this category. It wins third place because of, on the plus side, it’s the best use of pieces to create the coolest look of the remaining winning MOCs in this category, we felt. The contrast of dark blue and normal blue looks striking, and the specific pieces of the limbs, tail, rib cage area, and jaws look awesome. Also of course it wins points for us for not being humanoid at all. On the other hand, it wins this place behind the other two MOCs for a number of reasons. Firstly, I don’t quite like most of the head. It’s alright, and the jaw, like I said, looks nice. But the chin piece, the Toa foot at the neck, and top of the head look clumsy to me. It does succeed in creating a wolflike head, though, so it was good enough. Another set nitpick is more of a technicality that maybe is unfair of us to bring up, since this is a fictional Rahi – but technically according to normal dog/wolf anatomy, the elbow and knee joints of the front and back legs are backwards. I don’t mind it at all with the back legs – an awesome alien animal look there, but the front legs’s knee appearance instead of elbow gives me an impression of this creature’s running style that is frankly quite silly. Still, who says a top predator can’t look silly, as long as he takes the prey down? It could also contribute to the alien feel, so whatever. Didn’t hurt it too much. Also, it does appear that on this MOC, the front legs –could- bend like an elbow. More importantly for why it’s only third, as a mere animal without much extra given to it, we’re kinda limited in what story role we can use for it, so this knocked it down below Gar-Korr. But, it really doesn’t matter, ‘cuzza the whole six top winners decision. It should get just about as much story role as the other five top winners, in Endless Blue. There’s a particular chain of islands where we can make great use of them, plus they can get cameos in Le-Wahi. New MOCs Top 3 These three MOCs are guaranteed major plot relevance and feature time in Endless Blue. 1st Place! Member: Ultimate_Kardas Entry name: The Krulak Species: Rahi Moral Type: Beast A vicious amphibious fish creature, the Kuambu found it while searching for more beings to capture on a far away island. It was one of the smaller ones they found and they thought it would be amusing to have it as a guard dog so to speak. It now guards the bases of the islands and will try to rip apart any boat or being who comes by. Strangely, it will not attack the Kuambu when they come by. It can breathe air and water, but is very sluggish and slow on land. Host Comments: Wow. Wow. Wow. … Wow. Can you tell I’m impressed? This is pretty much the epitome of a perfect MOC, IMO/IMT. The heavy use of the glowblue contrasts well with the darker blue, the shape is unique but familiar (a big thing I always loved about Rahi), the story gets heavily into the world I put forward for the contest in a way that will be very useful for me… it’s all good. I’m sure I could think of a negative if I sat here staring at it for hours… Hey, I just might stare at it for hours… [i love it so much, I "put it" underwater as an art pic for Endless Blue. ] 2nd Place! Member: LORDS_tekneon Entry name: Azh’yuuros, Guardian of the Sapphire Vault Species: Giant Glatorian Moral Type: Noble guardian, good, but desperate A lone Guardian guarding a very important, secret treasure. He's noble and moral, but works alone. He's suspicious and only trusts himself... Was sorted by the Kuambu into the Darkminds half of a Hunting Pen by accident, and is furious over the insult. Desperate to return to the “Sapphire Vault”. Wields Blue Fire, the only being other than Hujo known to do so. A mysterious incident in the Core War enlarged him, and made him seek this Sapphire Vault, to become its guardian. It ended up on Aqua Magna after the Shattering. Has an energy pack to store swords. Host Comments: This is a great custom, very fitting, I felt, with the style of several Glatorian such as Strakk with the shoulders, and a nice take on a helmet-less Glatorian. And the Blue Flames are a nice touch. The choice of weapons is good. It’s pretty much all good. We took some big liberties in adding to the story of this guy, since he fit so well in concept and appearance with some Paracosmos secrets, and because L_t had left some parts up in the air. And, I really don’t have much else to say – I think the pics pretty much speak for themselves as to how cool this guy is. A few nitpicks – the feet could have been more inventive, depending on what pieces were available. The color scheme stops contrasting below the knees, which seems a bit off, but on the other hand, it could also be seen as boots, perhaps. A helmet may have been desirable, but I really think it works as is there. So… basically I bring these up purely to be objective; I don’t really mind them. Ojh likes the feet, BTW. 3rd Place! Member: Potu Entry name: R’yn Species: Matoran Moral Type: Questionable, possibly leaning very very slightly to good. R’yn is a fierce mercenary specializing in stealthy assassinations and dirty jobs. She will do almost anything for the right price and is currently working with the Kuambu. She is cold and clever, but respectful and is extremely resilient, completely determined to complete a mission. It is not known where she came from, but it is known she washed up on a beach in Kuambu territory, somewhat altered by an unknown mutagen. She has no memory of her past, not even her real name, and without purpose, resorted to bounty hunting. She has many skills in survival, marksmanship, and can wield a sword. She carries two SHP (Super-heated plasma) Pistols and a Model 49 SHP rifle. Host Comments: Another custom, this one small and pretty simple. Now, in this case, I must confess we biased towards storyline slightly. The next three MOCs were about on the same level of quality in technical terms, and are even in our tastes a bit cooler looking. But, we did NOT want to be biased against this one just because it was small. It’s probably the perfect example of a simple custom Matoran. And, in story purposes, the next three weren’t as useful for us in Endless Blue. Since we upped the number of guaranteed-featuring in each category from two to three, this worked perfectly, and this character is actually the first of these contest winners to be featured in the story – right in the prologue, although not by name yet there. R’yn will be essentially the public face of the staying-hidden main antagonist of the story, leading the Kuambu’s opposition to Bhukasa’s attempts to discover their secrets. We’ve also added a secret backstory that she has forgotten that is tied in with one of the most important mysteries in the Paracosmos. That, I plan to only hint at in EB. Potu entered three MOCs, and we chose this of the three mainly for story reasons. His two other MOCs were also excellent customs, with excellent stories, which we do intend to cameo, but they were designed to go together, and we felt the best solution to avoid that problem was to go with this. Besides, this way we get a major character, not a side character. Second Chances Other Winners These MOCs will get fairly major featuring either in Endless Blue or in future Paracosmos story. 4th Place Member: Bitter Cold Entry name: Blue Species: A Dark Hunter; Blue is her agent codename Moral Type: Questionable Blue is a Dark Hunter whose native island is far away from Odina in one of the Paracosmos Matoran Universe’s many underground domes. She joined the evil organization in a typical way, for the adventure – and had no moral qualms. But when she was immediately hired by a secretive being to venture up onto the surface ocean to seek out the secrets of the Kuambu, she realized she could not stomach the moral ambivalence being a Dark Hunter requires. So ever since, she has been wandering from island to island, trying to survive… and stay far away from her former boss, The Shadowed One… or the one who hired her. But she is not to be trusted – she still clings to some of her old tactics when she thinks she must. Host Comments: Lemme get the “bad” news out of the way first. I was sliiiiightly disappointed that, after we selected out the multiple-entries-per-member the way we wanted them, this MOC was the best we could pick for fourth. It was much, much harder to pick the top few winners in the New MOCs category than here. But, if you think about it, this is really just the reverse of our last contest like this. In the Beasts MOC contest, the vast majority of good entries were in the 2nd Chances category, not many New MOCs. This time, it’s simply reversed. And that’s fine. If you notice, none of that is really about this MOC, though. Now, true, it’s a humanoid, but again, we tried not to weigh too heavily based on that in this contest, and besides, it has wings. Also, the swords create a sort of single-claw, “ice-pick” look that goes well with the wings giving it an almost creatureesque look. Not really sure why the feet had to be cut off in this pic, but the rest of the MOC is high-quality, and overall creates a really cool Dark Hunter. I especially like the heavy use of tubes here. They create a very detail-beneath-armor look, like a car that has only half its engine coverings, which is an awesome style, and very fitting of Bionicle. On the downside, most of the pieces aren’t used in very original ways. The upturned mask, creating the impression of a new mask or face, is a style I use a lot in my own MOCs, though, so although it might not be the most brilliant head style, it’s very Paracosmos, and at least it’s something unique, yeah? Storywise, very little was given, so for the bio I added, I pretty much expanded on what was given, as well as using this character to fill a role that will fit into the EB plot background well. I also have another important background role in mind to be revealed later. Overall, if you want a guide to how to do a mostly humanoid Bionicle MOC without getting too obsessive about radical originality or size, this MOC fills that role. This is what I imagine the LEGO set designers have in mind for the sorts of MOCs a target audience member would make (although they don’t often MOC, but I mean with the mostly snap-together easy style that uses pieces pretty much in the obvious ways only; the originality comes in the overall style and shape). And even better, it is the first MOC in any of my blog contests that has so well created that details-between-armor biomechanical look, and that is awesome. 5th Place Member: -Zaxvo- Entry name: Sikara Species: Lariska's species. Moral Type: Dark Hunter. Ruthless. Evil A ruthless, determined dark hunter who will stop at nothing to get what she wants. Was fused with a Zatth at one point, can now summon rahi within a limited distance. Can also control them. Has limited control over the "poison" power. Host Comments: Sikara is another good example of the Bionicle target audience style of MOC, mostly using snap-together pieces. This MOC doesn’t add anything as innovative as the detail-under-armor style of Blue, but it’s still a very cool looking MOC. I don’t plan to use it in Endless Blue, but it will be a nice addition to some future Paracosmos story. Specifically, the head style, weapon, extra limbs, and Toa-foot leg armor are my favorite parts. The color scheme is very cool too, although I would personally prefer it lose the black pieces so there’d only be three colors (but there’s very few of those and the shapes look good, so I’m sure black was all that was available). The thick torso design with the double Nuva armor pieces, combined with the thick up to thin legs, combined with the other four thinner limbs, creates a very cool “tree” style. Makes the character look “planted firmly” on the ground, like it’d be hard to knock it over. Also, the wide shoulder style combined with the double-Nuva makes it look like a “strong man”, so on both counts plus those nasty-looking extra limbs, this looks like a formidable enemy. Storywise, it’s decent. We’ll find roles. Could even get very fun with the Rahi-summoning ability. My writing style can take that concept and go crazy with it. Plenty of other stories worked better for EB, though, so yeah. 6th Place Member: Valenti Entry name: (Bi)Polar (Shark)Ray [We're calling it Sharkray; pic below is top view.] Species: Ocean-dwelling predator Moral Type: Beast Having been in Aqua Magna’s oceans before even the Shattering, sharks and rays underwent a mutual mutation, of some unknown type. This created the shark-ray. These evolved predators are highly intelligent and they know how to work together to take down their largest prey. Host Comments: I’ve mentioned many times before that in these contests, we are aware of many different styles of MOCing, and all are valid. We try to judge them all equally. This MOC is a good example of what I like to think of as the 2001 Extra Rahi style. There’s a mix of very structural, non-stylish functional pieces combined in clever ways to create a cool impression of a shape (such as 2001 Ruki fish), and here and there a more stylish piece such as the Bohrok shields and Nuju Hordika tools (reminds me especially of the Maha goats). This style is probably my least favorite, but because we judge as objectively as we know how to here, its clever use of pieces, complexity, and cool impression of a shape made it a winner. On the downside, if I got my hands on this MOC and had a fair range of extra pieces of the right color available, I’d balance out the metalblue pieces in the middle (top view) with a bit more white, also filling in gaps around those pieces, and also add a biiiiiit more metalblue on the thin part of the tail. And as cool as they are, I might go without the blue Pahrak shields in the middle of the MOC – the color just feels out of place to me. I realize that several minor pieces used it, probably unavoidably, and I didn’t mind that, but that big exception clashes IMO. All that aside, picture this thing coming at you from undersea – it would be a terrifying sight. In a way, I almost think its style flaws (or what strike me as flaws in my tastes) make it cooler because it creates that monstrous machine-beast look that if you met one in real life, would be disturbing as well as cool. (Or at least you could call it cool if you were safe from its jaws. ) Also, it’s hard to spot, but there’s a lower-jaw combined with a mandible effect in the mouth area, which I love. Storywise, again as a creature there isn’t all thaaat much we can do with it, but it works for EB, and the origin mystery will tie in nicely with something we’ve been planning. Note that in the Paracosmos, we’re gonna call it the Sharkray, no dash. 7th Place Member: Dwight Schrute Entry name: Rembathsis Species: ? Moral Type: Hero Rembathsis has boisterous and friendly personality (think Alex Louis Armstrong from FMA). He is incredibly strong, exceeding both Krekka and Makuta in raw power. He can control water in all states of matter and influence the behavior of Rahi. He does not believe in the use of conventional weapons such as swords and spears however in times of extreme danger he will take up his orange shield. He has recently come to Voya Nui, after living on a strange undiscovered island somewhere between Voya Nui and Mata Nui. Host Comments: It’s Bones Blog colors! Wheee! That aside, this is a clever MOC. The best parts IMO are the double-Nuva-shoulder head, and the sort of Faun leg style. I especially love the view with the orange shield. Mostly blue with a sparing use of orange, and the hunchback “strong Faun” with a lizardlike head is a very original combination of features that you wouldn’t expect to flow well together, but it does, IMO. As far as style goes, I would classify this as a rare type of MOC that I only know to describe as “Old School Bionicle.” All the piece shapes come from 2001-2003 with a few exceptions, and it uses the detail-in-limbs but not fully custom style that I associate with the sorts of MOCs that were most common back when I first joined in 2003. Turaga head, Rahkshi back, Bohrok limbs, etc. There are very few “snap-together” pieces in this; the shape is formed by combining many smaller parts in clever ways. Hence it is a winner. On the negative side, we felt this and the Sharkray were about equal and not quite up to the quality of the first five winners in 2nd Chances category. I’ve gone back and forth and back and forth on which of the two to rank higher, but ultimately decided that the Sharkray was overall a more clever use of the “imply shapes” style that Bionicle used so much with things like Ruki, while this was, again, a bit more of a typical MOC. Specifically, I would have improved the hip and lower arm parts, and while the lower leg design is clever albeit hard to make out, I would have opted for something more coherent and without the light blue pieces. And while this is admittedly sheer bias, I really prefer longer arms normally. To me, a hero with short arms is going to be very limited and looks a bit silly. If you imagine the legs stretched up to full height, the arms would look even shorter. To be fair though, a lot of people see things the opposite way, and why should there not be a hero with certain limitations? So none of these things were enough for it not to win. Storywise, in terms of powers and fighting style, this is the best perhaps in the whole contest. Now, because 1) we have so many characters in EB already and 2) I liked the pic of him next to Axonn (), we’ve decided that he not be in Endless Blue. Although our characters will be going around Voya Nui, we don’t plan for any of them to actually go there during this story. Voya Nui will play a flashback role in the story that comes after EB that’s already written (the title I’ve recently decided for it is Falling Sun, although that’s still tentative)… and then in the story after that which focuses on Onua (untitled so far), it would make sense to go here. Since Rembathsis was clearly not on VN in the Falling Sun flashback, which is just a few days before the present, we’ll say he went there just in the last days (yes, we’ll have a reason for the timing.) 8th Place Member: Bfahome Entry name: Slugg Species: Whatever Moral Type: Uh… it's a slug… that's poisonous? ._. Host Comments: Of a handful of tiny MOCs entered in this contest, this is the only one we picked as a winner. Why? Well, let’s back up for a second. Among the myriad MOCing styles, there is a definite style of MOCing that goes purposefully small. In typical MOC contests, especially BBC, these MOCs do not win. Why? Because typically voters go for the most complex MOCs, which is usually either a heavily custom normal sized MOC, or a titan. But, in my opinion, the purposeful small MOC style is perfectly valid, and while I can’t fairly compare it with more complex MOCs, it deserves at least some recognition. This MOC is the winner of the tiny ones in here, for most brilliant use of pieces. I mean, just look at the thing. Even without the construction pic (conveniently included too), it’s clearly innovative. The wrench pieces inside further back this up. Now, I could whine about the four colors, but one of those is eye-color which IMO shouldn’t count, and really, with so few pieces, color schemes aren’t that relevant, so I didn’t mind that. Other than that, not much else to say setwise. Storywise, really nothing was included that helps us out, and we couldn’t think of anything. So yeah. It’s a slug. New MOCs Other Winners These MOCs will get fairly major featuring either in Endless Blue or in future Paracosmos story. 4th Place Member: ~~Zarkan~~ Entry name: Nagurr Turtle (Rahi species) The Nagurr Turtle is a rare being, in that it can safely stay in the mutagenic sands around Kriitunga Island for extremely long periods of time. By observing it, the Kriitunga have found that by floating on the surface of the sands, the Nagurr Turtle manages to avoid the ill effects of the mutagens. Its shell is incredibly buoyant, which has led some Kriitunga to create rafts with abandoned ones, for use in the river and occasionally along the coast. They are not actually immune to the sands, so if a wind gusts, they could be affected, but only very rarely because their shells are immune. They have good sensory instincts and quickly retreat into their shells at the slightest wind. Host Comments: Canister lid worked into MOC. Freaky cool feet. Contrasting style of head making it very turtlesque. And cool overall shape. This MOC has everything! Again, we had to rank 3-4 by story use to use in Endless Blue in the end, because all four MOCs are just so good, which is why judging this category was haaaard, man! But I ain’t complainin’! There is a bit of room for improvement here, mainly the head could be cooler. But, it’s using a style that’s perfectly valid in Bionicle, established by many 2001 Rahi, the Turaga’s bodies (obviously), etc. So that’s minor. Zarkan entered three MOCs all of which were also good. We chose this because it’s a more inventive MOC. Also, one of the others was another humanoid, and the other was very small. The use of the canister is the best part of this IMO. 5th Place Member: Veq? Entry name: Torkax Species: Whatever Moral Type: A guardian of sorts. So, I think questionable. He guards... something. I'll let you decide if it wins. Torkax is a confused soul who seems to be a fusion of a mostly robotic biomechanical being from the Matoran Universe, and a fleshy biomechical being native to Aqua Magna’s islands. He does not remember his origins, but he knows one thing. He must guard the Memory Stone. He’s never actually seen this, but he believes it to be an artifact in the caves of the small, mostly barren island he now lives on. He believes the stone has the power to restore lost memories – a common affliction in the Paracosmos – but at a terrible cost. None may use it, he insists – not even himself. Especially not… visitors… Host Comments: A Sah-Hweet nonsymmetrical MOC. Again, this MOC was chosen partly for storyline reasons. He ranks lower than the turtle because he is, after all, just another humanoid, albeit a very distinctive one. This MOC accomplishes the biomechanical look well, and the layered shoulder armor on the robo-arm is a nice touch too. Reminds me of the long-nose spy on Tattoine in Star Wars. I like how in the close-up view on the head, there’s a particular bump built into the piece that resembles an eye in the way the piece is used. He too will have a major use in Endless Blue, although not with all that much total story time as far as I have planned. As you might guess if you know that the main character has lost his memories, this guy will be a major obstacle earlyish in the plot. As you see, I ironically also used the memory loss feature in his bio (since Veq left room for interpretation). Memory loss is a very common phenomenon in my fanfic universe, even more so than in canon – and yes, there’s a reason. This guy will be step one in finding that reason, though it won’t be found in EB. He could easily play a role in future BP story. Not much to say in the way of criticism. 6th Place Member: Blue Diamond Entry name: Haywire (tail pic) Species: Techno-organic virus Moral Type: Villian Haywire, is a microscopic, techno-organic virus, that invades biomechanical beings. Once in the system, he fuses with the mind, gaining complete control of the victim's mind and body. Haywire is extremely calculating with a vast intelligence beyond normal beings. This massive intellect allows for superb calculation abilities, extremely enhanced memory, and advancedunderstanding of mechanical engineering, bio-engineering, and other applied sciences. Haywire was originally created to better civilization, but his hunger for power & knowledge led him to commit dark experiments & crime. Since Haywire is unable to perform anything significant with his small size, he must find hosts. He invades the body through water. Once inside, he leaks chemicals in the brain which slowly absorb life energy. After the host's body is no longer usable, he absorbs the chemicals with the new life force. If repeated periodically, it basically grants him immortality as long as he can find new host bodies and keep the host alive. Note: the draining of the life force does not kill the host, but leaves them in a coma. Often permanent. Host Comments: Brilliance. This is the fourth of the four MOCs we had trouble ranking, and I put it here because, as brilliant as it is, you do have to admit it’s a simple MOC compared to the other ones. But it’s a very nice concept that will probably play a big story role in EB. I don’t have much else to say about it. It’s awesome, and it speaks for itself. 7th Place Member: Kayru Entry name: Data Sora Species: Unidentifiable - unknown technology. Moral Type: Hero A shifty fellow - he appears to be looking for his friends. An error in an extremely distant world led him to be transported to this new world, and his physical composure was turned into a projection built entirely out of data. As this is a technology completely unknown to the world of Bionicle, few can grasp exactly what this means. Sora is good-natured and will help whoever he meets in need - but his ultimate goal is to find out how he got here, and how he can escape and return back to his normal self. His weapon is called the Keyblade, but no one knows what exactly its power is - it can only be called and used by Sora. Unbeknownst to him and most others, his appearance here was tied in with a deep secret about the Paracosmos, but in what some see as a minor way. Host Comments: A very cool Fusion MOC between Bionicle and System pieces. Kayru entered two other MOCs, and we chose this one for being a better MOC than the undersea creature MOC, and the other wolflike MOC was too similar for our purposes to the wolf MOC ranking 3rd in the Second Chances category. Plus, this one fits in our story better. However, we don’t plan to use him in Endless Blue. Not yet sure where we will use him, but his bio fits in perfectly with a major Paracosmos secret, so he’ll be important! He ranks down here mainly for being humanoid and because there were just so many awesome MOCs in this category. 8th Place Member: Toa Bors Entry name: Johke (pronounced JAH-kah) Species: from Stelt Moral Type: Questionable. (Will fight heroes or villains.) Johke (pronounced more or less JAH-kah) is purely a fighter. He worked on Stelt under a relatively unknown smith, and at the end of his apprenticeship, he was allowed to forge himself a weapon to take with him (his master knew he never would have stayed as a smith). He ended up forging twin "hooks," as he calls them. He has no desire to be either good or evil (the mix of gunmetal vs. silver armor is supposed to symbolize this). His skill in fighting is all that matters to him. One thing is for sure: he hates feeling hunted. And he will do anything to get back at his captors. His constant urge to fight makes others extremely wary of him. The Kuambu captured him via their random “reach out and grab” teleportation Kuamor sphere power, and imprisoned him on one of the Chain Islands. He has tried everything to escape or fight back when the Kuambu come, but failed always. Host Comments: A fairly simple MOC, but it’s well-made. I especially like the tools. He will play a medium role in Endless Blue. The torso design is pretty nice. The limbs leave a lot to be desired, at least compared with the previous winners, so that’s why it ranks here. But again, that’s okay – for the simple snap-together style, this is an exceptional MOC. Specifically, the Pohatu Nuva claw pieces on the back of the legs seem out of place to me. There are no such gaps in the construction of the rest of him, not counting the tools. Perhaps if they could have been flipped around, but they may not have fit that way. 9th Place Member: Maxilos.Bolso Entry name: Heria (Mutant) Species: female mutant repaired matoran Moral Type: Beast Strong. Agressive. Can fly short distances. Still intelligent, this mutant Voyatoran is trapped in the Lightminds half of a Kuambu Hunting Pen. But don’t let her good morals deceive you; she’s a beast now, and she can get very angry very fast. Host Comments: Two versions of this character were entered – one was a Matoran, and one was this mutant. The mutant is far more interesting, and is a complex and definitely monstrous “Rahi” MOC. I especially like the “antlers” on the head. The wings are a bit incoherent and may have been better left off, but that’s okay. We have a use for her in EB. 10th Place Member: Kanohi Zatth Entry name: Kwadrika Species: ? Moral Type: Villain An unknown remain of a failed experiment of the Great Beings, Kwadrika tried to earn respect in many lands for millennia. Its appearance made all shudder at him, making it hate all living creatures. Was a General in the army of the Barakki. Escaped soon after, never to be seen again. Left vowing to make all creatures that shunned him suffer. Has four arms, which can be used to climb walls or as front legs. Bulky and not too silent, but very powerful. Seems to work for Kuambu. Host Comments: Probably the worst of the winners we chose. But we like it. It’s clearly of the “snap-together” style, not a more traditional MOC. What it has going for it is being the only four-armed guy, and looking like a cyclops. I heart cyclopses. (Well, apparently six-armed, but yeah.) Will have a very minor role, not sure if it will be in EB or not, but probably. Might get a somewhat expanded role in the story two after EB. Honorable Mentions These are only a few of the non-winning MOCs we commented on in the Powerpoint file; these are the ones likely to get cameos either in Endless Blue or in future Paracosmos story. Here I am only mentioning them and summarizing my comments; full bios and comments in the slideshow. Old: Gahlok Va by Distorted. We will either just use this as the BP version of Va, or as a special Blue-only type of Va; we haven't decided yet. Pulsar by Primus. We'll use it as a crewmember on (our version of ) Gar-Korr's airship. "Lavabot" by Primus. We plan to use this robot to tie in with a location we invented in 2001, and also ties in with one of these other MOCs by in a secret way (one of the top six). ("Lavabot" is what we're calling it, probably to be a nickname given it by observers who do not understand what it is for.) Meeka (Rahi species) by Kayru. We plan to cameo this species here and there in EB. Iza Wolf Rahi by Kayru. We will probably use this as an important leader of the Wolf Rahi of xccj's 3rd Place winning (old) MOC. Heria (Matoran) by Maxilos.Bolso. We will use this in Bhukasa's flashbacks as the non-beast-mutated version of the beast character who is later involved in the present-day EB story. New: Krutuska by Zarkan. We'll cameo her somewhere; a mutant Kriitunga. Crazolga Slug by Zarkan. As his bio said, we will use the slime of this slug as what causes the power-dampening effect of the Kuambu prisons' wooden fences. Ekieigo and Razor Cat by Potu. We plan to have an island inhabited by these guys where Bhukasa will go. Mytaht the intelligent Cyaho Crab by the Bionicle Hamster. We are saying this Rahi species (before this one was mutated to become smart) is related to our Fawa crabs.
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Welcome to the next Bones Blog MOC contest! One of the most frequent set-related complaints I have seen posted on our forums is that certain Bionicle parts are supposedly "unMOCable" -- impossible to use in a Bionicle building creation in any way other than the original way the part was intended. Victims of this accusation range from Rhotuka spinners to Piraka spines. I challenge that anti-imagination claim, and you should too. Here's your big chance to prove the naysayers wrong -- even if you are one of them! I believe that the amount of uses of just about ANY part depends more on our own imagination and willpower to experiment than on such snap judgements. Just about every part I've heard them call unMOCable, I have found uses for, and I've seen many others do it too. On the other hand, some pieces have eluded even me as to MOCability, such as Kanoka disks. Your job? Make a MOC (or post one you've already made) using at least one "unMOCable" part, showcasing ways to use it besides the original purpose in the official set. And the more such parts the better. The best MOCs as picked by me and my brother Ojhilom will be used in upcoming Paracosmos stories, especially a Bonus Series epic coming soon (untitled at this time, possibly to be titled Lifeless). The bonus story will involve the traveling backstory of the Raogahk "Trickster" archer villain featured in Unseen, a return to the Koulshra Island of the first Bonus story, Sacrifice, the return of the Rahaga, and the continuation of the Turaga Dume plot developing in Unseen. Valid pieces (and example uses I happen to know of): Rhotuka spinners (a plus rod in the launch area hold it just fine) Piraka spines (upside-down, as limb decoration, etc.) Bohrok gear-bars Mata torsos Pohatu toes, Lewa Ax, Turaga staffs, etc. Nui-Rama bodies Bohrok canister grip pieces Inika swords, torsos, heads Zamor, Kanoka, squids, etc. Rahkshi spines (one end can stick in some plus-rod sockets) Vahki braincases Visorak headbodies Piraka "guns" Cordak, squid launchers, etc. Gadunka headplate Karda Nui Makuta wings Pohatu heliblades Avtoran/Agori torsos Glatorian heads (NOT a complete list) (Yes, HF leg armor, weapons, etc. are fair game, maybe some B10 pieces too) ENTRY PERIOD Begins now. Ends at midnight Wednesday August 4th EST. RULES: 1) MOC must include at least one "unMOCable" piece. 2) Said piece must be used in a way other than the original way it was used in the set. Please briefly describe how you used it if it's not obvious from the pics (such as how exactly it is connected). 3) Piece must be approved by bonesiii as "unMOCable so-called". Either on the above list, or asked and approved in comments. Feel free to link to posts you've seen calling it unMOCable if you can find 'em. 4) We're not using categories for this one, but both old MOCs and new MOCs ARE allowed, with the following exceptions: BBC contest winning MOCs are not allowed, and neither are MOCs already submitted to a Bones Blog contest. 5) Each member may enter any number of MOCs. Yes, I said any number. 7) The "one win per member" rule has become too much of a hassle in the previous contests, so we're dumping it, but we WILL factor it in terms of placement. So, if contestant A has two good MOCs, and contestant B has one good MOC, the placement would be ABA, etc. ENTRY FORM Member: [the name you want permanently cited] MOC name: [optional] UnMOCable piece(s): [identify the piece and if needed explain how it's connected] MOC bio: [optional storyline aspect of MOC] STORY DETAILS The unnamed epic these MOCs will be for has flashbacks taking place all over the Paracosmos version of the MU. So any MU species is fair game. I'll include some details specific to the story here; if any of this inspires you go for it. And you can do humanoid, non-humanoid, trans-humanoid, whatever the heck you feel like. Weapons, vehicles, etc. are even fair game in this. Let your imagination run wild! I'll put the rest of this in spoilers: » Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «The main character, Raogahk, is from the island of Goulmarui. That species is the height of a Toa, with shortish legs, long arms, and heads made of upturned Visorak body pieces (the Rhotuka launcher forms a loudspeaker mouth, with a big gear over it; have a somewhat lock neck attaching to a MOCed braincase part behind the Vis. eyes area, and can bend the head forward to look very hunchback; mouth area should hang down over torso hunchback-Tohunga-style). Goulmaruians are archers and weilders of Sonics power. Their loudspeaker mouths enable them to project deafening sound and to control where exactly it goes over a short distance, and can make it act like a solid wall or a pushing force easily. Come in all six standard colors and elemental associations with various secondary colors. They hold metal, unbending bows in their left hands, usually, with switch-off-able energy elastic strings. Right hand usually has an energypack and single "stickyfield blade", where they store and reload arrows into the bow. Goulmaruians use Kanoka Arrows as projectiles. They are made of this piece (Kanoka material, activate power on impact, often a simple stun power, depending on the arrow they load, and this piece would suffice), connected to one of these (or these), connected to a long plus rod. Color of the arrow is irrelevant; they come in many colors depending on the maker, etc. Rahi will play a major role in the story both with Raogahk and with the Rahaga (who met each other before the Great Cataclysm, BTW). Raogahk has a yellow beetle-like pet with four legs, native to his island. Called a Runthrough Beetle because it moves intangibly through stuff, even the ground, and are trained by Goulmaruians to retrieve their arrows. Visorak have attacked Goulmarui at least once in Raogahk's memory (BGC) and left many mutant Rahi there, and Raogahk also visited some other islands populated only by venom-mutated Rahi. Raogahk is a Fire Goulmaruian. No need to MOC him, I have a MOC (and have finally found a way to make my Stupidcam take mostly non-blurry pics, plan to upload soon), but for story detail purposes... Raogahk is called the Trickster. He's a collector of rare and powerful artifacts. He was involved in the Toa Metru's battle with Makuta and some other new enemies. At one point he was their ally... or so they thought. He always uses clever deceptions pretty much no matter what he's doing, and his true morals have been unknown. In this epic, I will reveal how he came to be who he is, and what he's really up to. Generally speaking, he's a villain. He has made some enemies -- both nice and mean -- on his home island, most of whom aren't established yet, so you can make 'em up if you want. He has also swindled and deceived countless others across the MU. Most of the artifacts he's stolen are not established either. Koulsha are a species nobody has yet MOCed or drawn, but they are described in Sacrifice (first Bonus series story) to have round mouths on the end of monstrous foreward-aimed conical heads, and three eyes. Bulky titans. Probably something similar to webbed feet and hands. The Koulshra live on a barren island with something very important and secret in its center (which will be revealed in the epic). All of them can shoot blue orbs of energy, which activate a pulling power from the thing at the island's center, making whatever the orbs hit be pulled directly towards that island center for a few moments. Until the events of Sacrifice, they were preventing anyone from escaping their island; they feed on the life energy of their victims (not killing, but knocking into short comas). Now they are allied with Metru Nui and have taken to absorbing the energies of fish and villains instead. Also of note is the Third Faction, the main enemy organization in the Paracosmos. (The good guys especially the Unknown shapeshifters and Toa are the First Faction, the Brotherhood is the Second Faction; these three are primarily involved in a three-way struggle for dominance of the MU.) The faction is led by a female shapeshifter named Arakra, but for the most part its members are of any species. Arakra (also called Nhayaka) alone knows the top secrets of her organization and some secrets of the Paracosmos that nobody else knows. The Third Faction has been laying the groundwork for what they have called the Question War -- to war against the good shapeshifters the Unknown who are allied with the Toa, as well as against the Brotherhood, DH, etc. Why they call it that is a secret only Arakra knows. A major 3F species are the Oru-Vortixx. How this species differs in appearance from normal Vortixx has not been established, so you can try for that if you like. What's known about them is that they seem to be able to sort false rumors from true ones, and so the Oru-Vortixx company Oracle Industries often designs weapons for future conflicts before the sides of the war even know they'll go to war. The Oru-Vortixx also never miss a shot they fire. They all appear to loyal to Arakra, who has in the past disguised herself as the Oru-Vortixx weapons designer Nhayaka. (Arakra's normal form is already known so I don't recommend trying to make her except in Oru-Vortixx form, although she IS a shapeshifter so it doesn't matter.) One male red Oru-Vortixx character that's known wears an exo-suit with giant Scoop Cannons mounted on robotic arms off the back (scoop meaning it can scoop up any solid or liquid to use as a projectile). In recent years, the Third Faction has been famous for its Competition. Arakra has yet to select her top leadership, especially not her second in command. She refuses to fill these positions on mere trust -- she wants those who would take these positions and learn her secrets to prove themselves by doing something huge that dramatically alters events in the Third Faction's favor. (For example, in Twisted Island, the Ghomboka enemies tried to kill the Toa Mata, and use their escaping energies to gain immense power thanks to their home island's mutagenic sands. In Mindfire, the fiery enemy tried to overthrow the Brotherhood and smash Destral into Metru Nui. In this epic, Raogahk will also be entering the Competition... and he very well may succeed.) You could MOC random low-ranking 3F members, or even make some who are Competing. NOTE: Some of the spots for Arakra's "middle management" HAVE been won already by Competition. None are established yet, so you can include that in bios if you wish too. As far as I have established, no Oru-Vortixx has ever entered the Competition, although it's not a rule. ION: The Bones Blog is taking a two-week break from the Unseen Monstery Mystery results story. This week is for this new contest. The Blue MOC contest results are ready in a Powerpoint file and I am getting the blog entry for that ready as a draft, which I hope to go public next week. After that, I'll return to the final chapters of Unseen with the Monster Mystery contest results! Bohrok Kool contest has not yet been judged due to the work involved in getting these things done. We'll get to that; the results won't be used in my stories for a while, so for me there has been no rush. But of course for yall we don't want to delay too long so will try to get to it soon.
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Today the Bones Blog continues with the final few chapters of Unseen, the Bionicle Paracosmos short epic slow-reveal of the winner of the Monster Mystery Art contest. Chapter 9 reveals for the first time the top three winners. Note that the order they're presented here has been randomized three times, so you can't know which was top winner yet. Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 Chapter 9 In Ta-Metru… Hujo awoke to a prodding in his shoulder. Blinked his eyes open. The Mapmaker was laying on his back on the ground, looking up at red-tinted skyscrapers and passing airships. He sat up. Five Ta-Matoran stood nearby. “You missed a message for you,” one of them said. Hujo realized the Songsphere was laying on the ground in plain sight. Hastily, he touched it and energized it into his pack. Phew… I have to be more careful… that thing could be dangerous. If a villain got it, they could get to places you couldn't get to any other way... places that could benefit the villain in powerful ways... "I want all of you to swear to me you'll never tell anyone about that sphere," Hujo told the Ta-Matoran. All five swore it.. and even managed to avoid asking what it was. The Blue Fire staff was also laying on the ground. He picked it up, and used it to help himself stand up. His mind felt normal again. But he dreaded knowing he would have to return to the Unseen’s lair, without the use of his powers. Hujo sighed. “How do you know about the message, then? What do you mean?” The Ta-Matoran pointed at one of the city screens. “Taureko and Mohrook broadcast on the citywide. They said you should send up a Blue Fire flare and they’ll meet with you. They have important news about the Unseen, I guess. But then something attacked the studio.” Hujo looked towards the Coliseum. Even from this distance, he could tell a window had been blasted out. He hoped they were okay. “Thanks for telling me,” he said, as he sent up the flare. But Taureko and Mohrook were busy climbing up stairs inside the Coliseum, away from any windows. So I return to Surkahi’s perspective, just outside the Turaga Meeting Room in the Coliseum... The potted plant turned into a sand-colored bulky version of a Matoran, and ran to catch up with Jerabu’s group of guards. The choice hurt his pride. But it was the wisest choice, he knew. If only Caroha had been more specific about what her vision had shown her – which guards was he supposed to follow? Tlenoh and Vira, on the maddeningly secretive missions Turaga Dume sent them on? Or Jerabu, going to investigate why Taureko and Mohrook’s broadcast had been cut short? In the end, he chose Jerabu’s group because he knew they would be in the most danger, assuming the Trickster himself had attacked the studio. It was the wisest choice, but he hated himself for making it. He also realized that if Volitaos hadn’t whispered in his ear, he probably would have been tempted to just remain in the potted plant form, and try to get back into the Meeting Room. Caroha might not have cared which guards he followed, as long as he did something helpful. One of the guards with Jerabu glanced back, noticed him, and touched Jerabu’s elbow. The female Po-Matoran looked back. “Hello, Surkahi.” He nodded, and they continued in silence. When they reached the studio, Surkahi could only think of one word to describe the sight. Warzone. Remains of wooden desks, tablets, and unconscious Matoran were piled all over the place. The camera and decorative stone desk were missing, as were Taureko, Mohrook, and most of the glass of the huge window behind the missing desk. Jerabu moved to look over the windowsill, but Surkahi held a hand in her way. “Let me do it,” he said. The floor under the window looked to have been damaged. If whoever checked was at risk of falling themselves, better to be a shapeshifter. Far below, he saw a crater, stone and glass dust, the crushed remains of the camera… but no sign of Mohrook or Taureko. The Ko-Matoran’s mask had probably saved them. “They’re all alive,” Jerabu reported a moment later about the reporters and five other guards that had been in the room. “Stunned, I think.” Surkahi nodded. They’d probably been hit with the same Kanoka Arrow stun power he’d been hit with earlier… maybe even the same re-used arrow. But what did the Trickster want? The answer seemed obvious. To interrupt Taureko and Mohrook’s broadcast, and interfere with their ability to meet up with Hujo. Thus delay the solving of the Unseen mystery, and the freeing of the two captives. But this was the Trickster. The obvious answer was usually wrong. In the Gukko room atop the Coliseum… Taureko and Mohrook walked between Gukko nests to the empty nests for outsiders’ birds. He walked up to Jhianau’s nest, and reached his hand out to touch the invisible bird. His hand met air. “Jhianau?” he called. “Isn’t he there?” Mohrook asked. Taureko checked the other empty nests. He found nothing but air. He stood still and listened. Jhianau had been trained by Ito to send a thin beam of sound towards his friends when the bird was out and about, so they could know what direction he was in if he was nearby. Taureko heard nothing. “He’s gone!” “Maybe he got hungry?” Taureko pointed at a bin of Ruki fish. “The Gukko eat right here. No need to hunt.” There was only one other conclusion. He and Mohrook looked each other in the eye. They both realized it, but neither wanted to say it. The Trickster stole their ride. In the Turaga Meeting Room, Dume was acting paranoid after kicking Surkahi out, believing the invisible Unknown named Volitaos was still inside. On the other hand, maybe paranoid isn’t the right word, because Volitaos WAS there… Volitaos held the form of an impossibly thin, invisible surface layer over the the huge window that acted like one of the room’s four walls. Dume had indeed started throwing his staff around, and ordered the other seven Turaga to do the same, clearly hoping one of them would bounce off an invisible Unknown. But in this form, even though staffs had bounced off of him several times, he was indistinguishable from glass. “Ow!” Onewa exclaimed as one of the staffs hit him on the shoulder. “Sorry,” Takanuva grimaced. “Enough,” Dume said. “I know right where he is.” The elder ran right at the window, holding his staff high. Volitaos wanted to shake his head in amazement. As silly as it was to kick the Unknown out, at least Dume’s mind was able to think clearly. But he had an easy solution. If Volitaos could have been seen at the moment, he would appear like a massive, rectangular Kanohi Volitak, stretched over every inch of the glass. With a mouth. Volitaos opened his mouth. There was no back of the throat in this form. Dume’s staff smashed through the glass, going right through the hole in Volitaos. Broken glass erupted out and fell away. Volitaos let the huge hole’s corners turn up in an open-mouthed smile. Dume stood there, confused, for a moment. Then the elder swiped the staff up. There was a part where more glass had fallen away than anywhere else. The staff slid up into this gap… Then stopped. Bounced off Volitaos’s invisible lip. His unseeable eyes widened. You clever little Kofo-Jaga… “Gotcha,” Dume said, grinning wildly. “Now get out. And let me see you out, or we do this all over again.” Volitaos was flabbergasted. He’d been outwitted fairly… and couldn’t quite come to grips with it. Out of sheer spite, he turned his mask power off while in the form of a giant face, and chomped down on Dume’s staff, keeping all emotion out of the face. Then turned invisible again, taking the staff with him. He noticed Dume and several of the other Turaga jump a bit at the sight. He grew long legs which reached out the glass hole, taking care not to break or disrupt any more glass in the slightest, and oozed the rest of his form out the hole. Once outside, he gave himself a single massive eye, a mouth, and kept the seemingly random legs radiating out from him in all direction, holding him out of reach of the other Turaga. Made a single arm out one side to hold Dume’s staff. Then he added about twenty huge, elegant ears, radiating around him just as randomly. Turned visible. “You’re smart, Dume,” he said, “But have you not realized you just made a hole I can hear you through?” He expected to see Dume scowl… but realized he didn’t see Dume at all? The elder had walked back to the computer console in the far wall while Volitaos had been oozing out and taking his form. Dume pressed a button. Metal slid across Volitaos’s sight. SLAM! Volitaos almost dropped the staff in surprise. A huge panel the width of the room, just inside the window, had just slid down from the ceiling. Fast. He had not even known it was there – its edge must have been very flat into the ceiling to not show a gap. Dume had tricked him into being locked out. Worse, for all his huge new ears, he realized he didn’t hear a single sound from inside the room. The new panel, like the other walls and the entrance, was soundproof. Back in Ta-Metru… Hujo waited for several minutes, and saw nothing. So he sent up another flare. This time, he was rewarded a few minutes later with the sight of a Gukko winging over the Metru. From this distance, he could only tell one passenger was white and the other black – that told him enough. Taureko and Mohrook landed next to him moments later. And told him their news. The two captives were alive. “That makes this a lot more urgent,” Hujo said. “And it rules out my best theory.” The Foliage Monster killed its victims. He could also rule out the Windrock, an invisible beast made out of solid air that crushed its victims and turned them into more solid air to add to its mass. That left only three. Hujo pulled out Jorthao’s tablets again, and re-read them in random order. The Nui-Phryno. A ruthless, illusion-powered reptilian Rahi that Jorthao had observed to kill its victims, but usually not right away. First it would kidnap them and let them imagine their fate for a while. Colored green, it would blend in well in Le-Metru even without its illusions. The Happy Salesman. A sentient gift bag whose owner had unfortunate brushes with Makuta and the Mask of Life long ago, with an animated zipper chain as a tongue. It was really just a legend Jorthao had heard in Le-Metru long ago, but it supposedly hated life, sometimes eating Matoran and leaving them to slowly suffocate and starve to death in its cloth belly. It usually left a gift behind as payment for those it killed. And the Makuta Wolf, a top predator that normally only hunted at night, but fit the size and shape Hujo had just barely witnessed. Hujo honestly doubted this one, since he couldn’t see any Le-Metru-related clues in Jorthao’s notes, but then the choice of Le-Metru could have been random. The fact that it was used to eating only at night could explain why, for now, the two Matoran had only been captured, not killed immediately; a side effect of having been turned into one of the Third Faction’s Unseen. All three fit what little he knew. All three meant the captives wouldn’t last long. Hujo wondered why he had heard no reports of any other attacks. From Taureko and Mohrook’s tales of Dume’s stupid mask smashing move, or the Trickster’s apparent attacks on the city broadcasting systems, he realized other attacks could have happened without his knowledge. But the Jahurungi realized, as he explained his plan to shop for many Matoran weapons to his two friends, that most likely the Unseen had simply not digested its current meal. Which meant… If news of another kidnapping by the Monster came, it would mean Kuhauha and Tamaru were dead. In the news studio… Surkahi held a hand on the mask of Jofo. The unconscious Po-Matoran newscaster flashed with dim white light briefly. This would hopefully disrupt the stun energy and awaken Jofo early. Then Surkahi started looking through the wreckage. “Look for anything unusual,” he told the others. Soon they started piling the debris they’d gone through already in one corner, sorting desk, chair, and other non-informational pieces from the broken tablets. Finally, Jofo awoke. “What happened?” he exclaimed. “That’s what we were going to ask you,” Jerabu said. “I was attacked first! Just because I’m a reporter doesn’t mean—” “By who?” Surkahi interrupted. “The Trickster?” “What? Oh. Yes! And where’s Taureko and Mohrook? My desk… my camera? Oh my,” he added as he noticed the broken window. “Don’t go over there,” Surkahi warned, pointing at the unstable floor. But Jofo was headed for a locked closet, pulling out a key. Inside, Surkahi saw several other cameras. “Hold on,” he said, “I want to look through there.” He found a few walkcart platforms for the cameras, a lot of extra wiring, and a lot more tablets and orange crystal hexagons. Nothing out of the ordinary. Surkahi closed the closet, and looked at Jofo, who was setting up another camera. “When you’re done there, could you look at these broken tablets? Tell us if anything’s missing?” Jofo nodded. “Could somebody get another desk from the room across the hall?” “No,” Surkahi ordered the others. “Nobody splits up.” “It’s a news tradition!” Jofo protested. “You have to sit behind a desk! Can’t you shapeshift a long arm to pull one in or something?” Surkahi blinked. It was an odd request, but yes, he could… so he did. Standing in the door, he sent an elongated arm stretching into the other room and dragged a wooden desk towards him, screeching on the floor. Jofo walked with one end of a wire towards the wall. He stopped abruptly. “What is that?!” Surkahi jerked his head to where Jofo pointed, letting go of the desk halfway. There was an… object mounted on the wall. Surkahi tilted his head, trying to make sense of the electronics he saw there, and the object itself. Just below the object was a metal box mounted in the wall. There were wiring sockets in the box, which Jofo was presumably going to plug the camera into. A wire ran straight up from this box into the ceiling. This wire had been severed. Surkahi recognized the telltale pattern of a Goulmaruian Kanoka Arrow rip power; the lower half of the wire simply bent down, the other hung straight down from the ceiling, and both ends were frayed. The Object was small, round, and dimly glowing blue. It was smooth, blueish metallic, with crisscrossing curved lines carved across its surface. The indented lines glowed slightly brighter blue. There were also tiny blue gems sliding along the indentations at seemingly random but rhythmic paths. A short stylized metal clamp atop the round part connected it to the wire that ran up into the ceiling. Surkahi walked closer. How had he not noticed it? Blue indicator lights. On the metal box, just below it. He’d probably looked right at it before and just assumed it was part of Jofo’s equipment. But he must not have looked very hard – it was unlike anything Surkahi had ever seen. Just the sort of object the Trickster might collect. But what was it for? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feel free to review, theorize, ask questions, etc. by adding a comment to this chapter blog entry, and stay tuned for the next chapter as a new blog entry. Next Chapter: Coming Soon
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Today the Bones Blog continues with the final few chapters of Unseen, the Bionicle Paracosmos short epic slow-reveal of the winner of the Monster Mystery Art contest. Chapter 8 is 8 pages long, rather than the 6 average of the previous chapters. There will most likely be three more chapters plus an epilogue. Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 Chapter 8 Taureko and Mohrook have just been blasted out of a Coliseum window by the Trickster villain, after trying to send a citywide broadcast to me… Taureko took only a second to get a snapshot of his surroundings. A stone desk fell just above him. A cloud of broken glass obscured his view of everything but the Coliseum. Mohrook? The Onu-Matoran had to be falling below Taureko. The Ko-Matoran called on his Noble Mask of Flight – which he could use thanks to a Brotherhood experiment from the days when he was a Lab Matoran – and sped up his fall. He flew downwards faster than the glass. His mind took another snapshot, a still image of Mohrook below him against a rushing, terrifying background. Mohrook grabbed his right hand, and Taureko flew to the side, afraid of the desk. But the ground was coming up too fast. Taureko reached out for the Coliseum’s wall. Left hand scraped against it. Absorbed impact energy. That added to the impact he’d absorbed from the Trickster’s Kanoka Arrow. Held his hand down. Shot impact energy downward, slowing their fall. The desk hurtled past. Knicked Mohrook. “Aaah!” Both Matoran spun, midair. Taureko lost sight of Mohrook. Felt his hand slip. In the next moment, Taureko saw only the zooming side of the Coliseum, and knew he didn’t feel Mohrook’s hand anymore. Just a split second later, a hand clasped his right foot. But the danger wasn’t over. Mohrook doubled his weight – the Noble mask wasn’t designed to handle this much of a load. They continued to fall, just a bit slower. Taureko tried to fly upwards to counter the weight now that the desk was no longer a threat. This slowed their fall still more. He glanced down. The ground around the Coliseum was a crisscrossing mess of canals, bridges, and small buildings. The canals! Flew sideways. Over a canal, just barely. A bridge whooshed up, just missed them. SPLASH. Taureko surfaced moments later, blowing water out of his mouth. He saw brown stone canal walls looming over dancing water. Saw a dustcloud over the top of the wall closest to the Coliseum – the crash of the stone desk, he presumed. One of the suns glared off the water downstream, so he couldn’t see if Mohrook was that way… he wasn’t anywhere else… Then there was a sputtering sound behind him. Taureko kicked the water to circle, and saw Mohrook treading water behind him. “Are you okay?” he asked. Mohrook took a moment to answer, breathing deep for a moment. “I was out for a moment when we hit, but yeah.” They swam to the nearest metal ladder and climbed out. Once atop the canal wall, they surveyed the impact of the stone desk. There was only a crater in a patch of garden by one of the Coliseum’s entrance, plus a darker dust settled atop the brown earth of the crater. The scene glittered from hundreds of pieces of glass. Mohrook turned his scoped mask to the skyline. “You think Hujo got our message?” Taureko sighed. “If he did, I didn’t notice any Blue Fire flares while I was falling… not that my mind was on that… We probably missed any response he gave us.” But I was still unconscious in Ta-Metru after narrowly escaping the Unseen monster. So before I return to my perspective, we rejoin the unfolding events revolving around Turaga Dume, atop the Coliseum, as seen through the eyes of the cloaked Unknown… Volitaos watched the apparently insane red Turaga pace the room in silence for several minutes. He had watched a confusing and shocking turn of events in the last few moments, which Dume refused to explain. First, he’d seen Dume alerted to the attacks of the Unseen in Le-Metru, and seem not to care. Then he’d seen the Turaga obsess madly over a strange blocky key he’d retrieved from his quarters. Then the Trickster’s pet Throughrunner Beetle, Kobahko, had stolen, apparently, another key just like it… and Dume retrieved the third. Dume then had the Turaga turn their round meeting table on eight spokes, and went on a smashing spree – smashing a mask right on Vakama’s face, smashing potted plants. As if this wasn’t crazy enough, when Taureko and Mohrook had arrived, Dume had refused to let them carry out their mission, begging them to retrieve two vats for him. What’s in the vats? He walked up to the other Unknown in the room. Caroha had warned him a moment to say this would come, though he never could have predicted the events that would lead up to it, simple as it had seemed when the Unknown leader had told him of her vision. “Caroha says follow the guards,” Volitaos – the invisible Unknown – whispered in the ear of Surkahi – the visible Unknown. The Miru-wearing shapeshifter gave a tiny nod none of the Turaga noticed. Volitaos stepped away, satisfied… and curious to find out what his message even meant. Dume finally stopped pacing. “Taureko and Mohrook may disobey my orders… I will be lenient, since neither are Metru Nui citizens… This time. But the vats MUST be retrieved.” “I will do it,” Surkahi volunteered, “if you simply explain what they’re for.” Dume’s face turned into rage in an instant. Volitaos cringed. Surkahi shouldn’t have pushed. “GET OUT OF HERE!” Dume shouted at the shapeshifter. “This is my business, the business of this city! If outsiders will not play by my rules, then GO OUTSIDE!” Surkahi tried to look apologetic, but Dume just stared at him, finger pointed (arm shaking madly) at the door. Volitaos took a guess based on Caroha’s warning, and whispered in Surkahi’s ears again. “Leave. I’ll watch him.” “Very well,” Surkahi said, sighing. “But I will be in the Coliseum if you choose to summon me back.” “I won’t. Go.” So he left. Dume slammed the door shut behind him. Then turned to the other Turaga, who all looked like they were trying to hide their honest feelings of disgust for their superior’s actions. “Let wisdom alone play the role of the wise,” Dume muttered. “So as I was saying. We will handle this ourselves, as a city. No more Unknown, no more ‘Freers.’” “Sir,” Turaga Takanuva started. Vakama held up a hand sharply, giving the younger Turaga a look that said, ‘wrong time, wrong speaker.’ The elder of light fell silent. “Thank you,” Dume said to Vakama, smiling faintly. “Let’s all remember our places.” “Now that we’re amongst ourselves,” Turaga Nokama said softly, “do you advise telling us any part of your plan to thwart the Trickster that we can help on, sir?” Volitaos shook his head, rather pointlessly, in amazement at how tactful the Water elder could be, after Dume’s behavior especially. But Dume just waved a hand dismissively at her. “I think we all know we’re not really alone. Right, Volitaos?!” The elder spun in a circle, looking around the whole room, as if expecting to see a faint outline of the Unknown. Volitaos clenched his fists. As a more powerful version of the Mask of Stealth, the Kanohi Volitak he was named for made him literally, totally, undetectable. Dume did not see him, thankfully. But to what lengths might Dume go to make sure they were alone? He started to get his answer the next moment. “Line up on one side of the room,” Dume ordered the others, “And join hands. We’ll walk across the room.” The others reluctantly obeyed. Volitaos had to admit, it was a clever plan, although easily foiled by becoming a ceiling-climber creature. He moved up the opposite wall, gripping the room’s bulkheads gently, and hung from the girders that held up the wide ceiling. As the Turaga cross the room, climbing over the table when they reached it, Volitaos had to admit, if Dume was sane enough to come up with this plan… if misdirected… maybe the elder actually was sane enough to understand and plan for the Trickster situation? But what about the Unseen? Dume claimed the Unseen monster was only a distraction. And knowing the Trickster from his deceptive history with Metru Nui, that made sense. But to the Matoran captured by the monster, it was hardly a distraction. Tamaru and Kuhauha deserved all attention being turned to their rescue. The problem for Volitaos, really, was that Dume refused to give him all the pieces to the puzzle the fire elder knew of. What was the table? What were the keys for? All he knew about such things was that there was a keyhole in the table, and Dume had combined the two keys he had into one interlocking key, put it in that keyhole, and turned. This had triggered the table’s eight spokes to reveal themselves mechanically… then the Turaga had turned the table. His chain of reasoning was cut short by the Turaga crossing the room. “Well,” Dume said, “If he’s here, he’s on the ceiling. I have a plan to get him now.” The elder gripped his staff tightly. For a moment, Volitaos feared the Turaga would actually start throwing his staff around… Then the elder turned to a computer console mounted in the wall behind him, and pressed a button. He spoked quietly into the Coliseum intercom system. Volitaos couldn’t hear what he said from here. Had all the drama been meant only to keep Volitaos’s ears away? Volitaos became a long-legged insectoid form, and walked over to the huge window that formed one of the four walls of the room. He had an idea of a form that would probably fool a possible staff-throwing plan. When he was against the window, he spread himself out, widening and thinning, against the glass. More, and more. He also actually compressed his volume, though his actual weight stayed the same. Soon he was simply a paper thin, invisible layer added to the glass. It would take an extremely careful eye, even if a hand was pressed against the glass, to realize the layer was even there. The door opened. If Volitaos had wanted to slip out, he realized, he was about to lose his opportunity. Five guards entered. One was a Miru-wearing Ta-Matoran he recognized as Tlenoh, one of the most skilled guards among all the Metru Nui Matoran. Dume whispered something in Tlenoh’s ear. Volitaos shapeshifted an invisible ear on a long, flexible stalk. Stretched the ear towards the unexpected huddle… “…a direct order.” Dume was saying. Whatever the order had been, Tlenoh’s face registered confusion, or some similar emotion, only for a split second. Then the guard stood there, looking Dume calmly in the eyes. Volitaos couldn’t be sure since Dume’s back was to him, but he sensed that the Turaga actually feared the skilled guard. “Yes, sir,” Tlenoh said. The Ta-Matoran held Dume’s gaze for a moment, then calmly turned away, motioning at the other four guards to follow. Should I leave? No. Caroha had probably been talking about this very moment in her vision. Surkahi was to follow the guards. Volitaos was to remain. But were those the guards to be followed? Surkahi had been kicked out by a plant-smashing Turaga. He was now a potted plant, just outside the door. The ancient being had to admit he was being a bit childish and spiteful by taking this form. Caroha would certainly say the choice was unbecoming of a wise, grandfatherly being like himself. But it had been about that long since he’d been so disrespected by anyone. In any case, he now had a dilemma. Two groups of guards had just come into his sight. First, Tlenoh and four other guards had come, entered the Meeting Room, then left. Three remained posted at the door, while Tlenoh and one other guard left alone. But before they left, five other guards ran up, led by a female Po-Matoran named Jerabu. “Stand aside!” she told the other group of guards. “We have news for the Turaga!” “Dume has forbidden any entry into this room for the moment,” Tlenoh said. “It’s urgent. Taureko and Mohrook are here, and they just tried to broadcast on the citywide! We saw the broadcast on one of the hallway screens. Then something cut them off!” Tlenoh looked worried. But he replied calmly, “Dume insisted even if there were rumors of an attack in this building, nobody may enter. I assume he fears the Trickster is going to try some deception… shapeshifting maybe.” As far as Surkahi knew, Raogahk did not have shapeshifting powers. But then, the Trickster was always collecting strange artifacts… it was worth preparing against, he supposed. “Well,” Jerabu said, “According to Dume’s new roster, you outrank me. What shall we do?” Surkahi knew that was a difficult statement for the sand-colored Matoran to make. She didn’t like answering to any rank, not even Dume. But all guards believed in Duty. “The five of you investigate it,” Tlenoh said. “And Surkahi? If you’re still around here somewhere, I recommend you go with them. I doubt it’s the Unseen, but if it’s the Trickster, it’s just as much a threat.” Surkahi almost nodded… then thought better of it. “Why aren’t you coming?” Jerabu asked. “Dume sent me and Vira on a secret mission,” the Ta-Matoran said. And with that, he walked away. The Le-Matoran Vira followed. Jerabu and the four guards left too, heading the opposite way in the hallway. Surkahi answered to no Matoran rank, but he agreed with Tlenoh’s motives for telling him to go with Jerabu’s group. Whatever happened in the broadcast studio, they might need someone with his powers for protection. But the childish, suspicious side of him… the side that both shocked him and made him feel alive… told him to find out what Dume’s mission was. Who to follow? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feel free to review, theorize, ask questions, etc. by adding a comment to this chapter blog entry, and stay tuned for the next chapter as a new blog entry. Next Chapter: 9
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Artwork topic for Twisted Island, with a lot of new pics, just posted. Enjoy! Some of the art, just to give you a taste (this is NOT the best art in there, so view the topic ): A topic for many new BP masks (greats of nobles and vice versa) is coming soon, maybe next week.
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The two lost in the Dataclysm are back (well, the second, as a short epic, is not fully posted yet). Both have been improved from the original. AC#3 is coming soon.
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Today the Bones Blog brings you Chapter Seven of this Bionicle Paracosmos blog-exclusive "Adventure Mystery" short epic, which serves as a slow-reveal of the winner of the Monster Mystery Art contest. Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 Chapter 7 In a tunnel near the apparent lair of the Unseen monster, I was barely conscious in a strange state similar to shock and moments away from certain defeat… Hujo lapsed in and out of consciousness as the blue energy bubble of the Songsphere carried him back towards the cavern. The unstoppable sphere was pushing the Unseen monster out of the way. If the Ta-Matoran had been fully awake, he could have beheld the monster's true form. But he was laying on his back, almost knocked out from the sudden impact with the bubble’s inside wall when it formed and took off. I MUST be awake when it’s time! Hujo willed his eyes to open all the way. The sphere would drop the impenetrable bubbleshield the moment it arrived at the cavern – that was simply how it worked. And with the dampening field having taken away all his powers, the Jahurungi had only one chance. Trying to wake up fully worked… for a second. Then his eyelids bounced back like a pendulum. Closed. He felt like his consciousness was a ball of gelatin that was being pressed and rolled back by a massive hand, distorting it and rearranging it mercilessly. Somewhere deep inside, he still wanted to survive, but he just lacked the willpower. I’ve never come this close to sheer panic, Hujo thought. And yet… His mind continued to work at a mile a minute, like lightning sizzling through the squished geletinous mass. He thought through every detail of what he would do next in a split second. So fast he couldn’t even remember the thoughts a moment later. The next moment, he was standing next to a lava flow. The torches of Ta-Koro, his old home on Mata Nui Island, scented the air with a pleasant aroma. Hints of lurking infected Rahi – or worse – peeked through the trees. Then he saw it as a wasteland, leveled by a volcanic eruption. At the slightest whim, he was flying through the air, wearing a strange suit. And he flew into space. Looked down upon the planet. The planet became the Songsphere, and he his own ghost, looking upon his dead body thrown like litter on the ground next to it. The doom he was about to suffer. Hujo jerked awake. Blue light faded. Songsphere bubble disappeared. He stood up, swinging the dead Blue Fire staff like a club. Bounced it clumsily off a stone column. The downward-facing ‘flower petals’ of the Songsphere folded up, and the globe hovered down to float next to him. Instantly, he tapped the Song of Ta-Metru – almost Ta-Koro by mistake. A shadow loomed near him. The Unseen. Sphere hovered higher. Unfolded. Seemed to take hours. Blue energy radiated… And a bubble formed around him! Once again, he clumsily bounced off the inside of the energy wall, and slipped onto his back. This time, he tried to sit back up in time to twist around and see the monster… The Songsphere flitted through the cavern and into the exit cave like it was nothing. All Hujo saw was a silhouette. But at least I know the size and overall shape, he thought. As the sphere continued out into the trees of Le-Wahi, past the Destral Rock, and into the air towards Ta-Metru, Hujo’s trance-state mind ran through what he’d read in the tablets. He just barely remembered to cloak the Songsphere in flight. There had been a kind of Unseen once that hovered by windows at night and reached a long tongue in to cause damage, then fled the scene before witnesses arrived. He could rule that out. A snake Unseen that shot Rhotuka from a distance. Ruled out. Down the list of known Unseen, and monstrous creatures that Jorthoa the Unknown zoocraft owner had catalogued as possible future Unseen, his mind ran, eliminating. The Unseen was not humanoid. That cut out a lot of candidates. Was of a certain size. Four legs, a wolf, lizard, or other beastlike quadrupedal design. Did it have a tail? He wasn’t sure. Five candidates stood out most to him. One especially, though he couldn’t pin down why, beyond one obvious fact. There had once been an Unseen in Metru Nui that had attacked only in Le and Ga-Metru. It had stayed hidden among the thick foliage for a very simple reason – but a reason that was so strange to the Metru Nui Matoran and the Unknown that it had eluded Turaga Dume’s assigned investigators, including Volitaos, for months. It had killed over thirty Matoran before it was caught. The reason? It had green fur. That combined with its woody mechanical components had made it blend in exceptionally well in the forests. The attacks of today happened in Le-Metru. Hujo tried to continue reviewing the other possibilities, but his mind just kept on running faster and faster, while his body got more and more tired. His last thought was that he needed to stock up on tons of weapons -- ones that would work without powers, like bombfruit launchers. He'd once routinely carried such weapons, but had been relying on his staff for a long time. And he'd have to keep them materialized; he could no longer rely on the energy pack. Then he fell asleep. In the Coliseum, Turaga Dume had vehemently insisted the two Freers delay their mission to free the Unseen monster's captives, claiming the Unseen was merely a distraction for the Trickster's true motives... then the elder took his insistence into shocking action... Taureko stormed out of the Turaga meeting hall, Mohrook following. “How DARE he smash that mask like that!” “Come back here!” Turaga Dume’s voice called down the hall. “The city needs you!” The Ko-Matoran ignored the fiery elder. All he’d wanted to do was quickly tell Hujo that the two victims of the Unseen monster were still alive. But Dume had been obsessed with his personal mission… whatever it was – the elder refused to explain – and smashed Turaga Vakama’s Rikaori Mask of Telecommunication. Enough was enough. Hujo and the two captives needed the Freers’ help. So help they would bring. Forget the insane Turaga. “Maybe he has a point,” Mohrook said quietly as they neared the Gukko nests. “This enemy they call ‘the Trickster’… if Dume is right about what he wants, whatever it is, then we’re playing right into his hands by walking away.” Taureko wanted to lash out angrily against this logic. But he respected Mohrook far too much for that. “All I know is, Caroha herself, and the Jungledweller, told us what we’re here to do, and that it’s urgent. It didn’t involve being Dume’s delivery Matoran.” The Onu-Matoran shrugged. “I can’t argue with that.” Taureko stopped halfway to the Gukko nests. “You know, we should think this through, though. Where are we going to go? We don’t know where Hujo is by now.” “We know what tunnel he ventured into.” “Doesn’t this city have a telecommunications system, though?” Mohrook nodded. “Let’s ask someone.” As it turned out, that wasn’t hard. A group of guards was running towards them. “You two should not be alone!” one of them exclaimed. “Hujo instituted a five-mininum group rule during this crisis!” Taureko gave a small smile, and willed himself to hover off the ground. The five guards all stopped, their eyes wide. “That’s just one power the Makuta gave me when I was their lab Lefeiru Rat,” Taureko said. “Mohrook is safer alone with me than any of you are without me here.” They walked closer. “Where can we broadcast a citywide message?” Mohrook asked them. One of them spoke up. “This way. The systems don’t seem to be working properly, but the basic citywide function is working – our news broadcaster has been giving what updates he knows of.” They followed this Ta-Matoran, who introduced himself as Tiribomba. He explained that normally, the city’s wirenet system enabled two-way calls or even one-way localized transmissions to specific videoscreens in the city, and recorded video footage of most of what went on. Those functions had been damaged in the Great Cataclysm, and until the return of the Matoran, only fixed for a few buildings including the Coliseum. For about two-thirds of the city they were now fixed... But just a minute ago, they suddenly went offline again. “It’s the Trickster’s doing,” another guard said. “He’s cutting off our communication, slowing down the solving of the Unseen mystery.” Taureko didn’t really care at the moment. Hujo could be anywhere – a citywide broadcast was all he needed. They entered a news studio with a decorative stone desk in front of a huge window that showcased the skyline. To the left were some wooden desks with a handful of Matoran working on news script tablets. A particular Po-Matoran who wore a brown Matatu looked up at them when they entered. Taureko recognized him as Jofo, a storyteller, Kolhii player, and overall a high-energy guy whom the Turaga had agreed would fill well the foot armor of a news broadcaster. “Do you have news?” Jofo asked, smiling cautiously. “We’ve got a lot going on and not much to report right now. City’s restless.” “I…” Taureko paused. Telling the whole city the captives were alive might put their lives in more jeopardy. “I’m afraid I can’t reveal much. Look, we just need to use your citywide broadcast system real quick. We’ve been sent here to help Hujo.” Jofo’s eyes brightened (literally). “THAT is news! Fahofa, write it up,” he said hurriedly to a Le-Matoran. “You don’t understand,” Taureko said, trying to be patient. “We have to broadcast our own message. Now. Lives are at stake.” Jofo clasped his hands together. “Well… this is highly irregular… but I suppose it’s an emergency. Come.” The Po-Matoran sat them down behind the stone desk, and went to fiddle with a camera device. “What will we say?” Mohrook asked. “Nothing about… what Ito said,” Taureko replied, unsure when the cameras would turn on. “Just how to meet up. I have a plan.” “Alright.” “Your face is citywide on my cue!” Jofo said. He held up his left hand, and with his right, pressed a button. A lid flipped up off of a tiny lightstone. Left hand pointed at them. “Hujo,” Taureko said. “This is Taureko. Mohrook and I have come to help you with the Unseen mystery. We need to meet up. Wherever you are, wait about ten minutes, then shoot Blue Fire into the sky.” He paused, trying to form the words. Staring at the round black eye of the camera was more disconcerting than he’d expected. “We’ll be… well, our friend from Nhoakrus lent us a… transportation method that… you know, shares a power in common with your flight method… transportation method… anyways, we’ll fly… go to your spot.” Frostbite, I didn’t want to reveal it was flight related. He moved on. “It’s about the status of the two captives. It might…” The lightstone’s lid had flipped down on the word ‘status.’ He’d heard a faint crashing sound, he thought. From where? “Standby,” Jofo said. “We’ve gone offline…” A shadow crossed into the room. Taureko’s eyes widened. A whistle, and a line crossed the room. Hit Fahofa, bounced off. The Le-Matoran slumped over his desk. Taureko saw now that another Matoran was already slumped over. Jofo shrieked, as did the others in the room. More projectiles whirred, more Matoran dropped. Kanoka arrows. The dark red and yellow being standing in front of them was a Goulmaruian. As tall as a Toa, with a somewhat Tohunga-like shape of torso, short legs, and long arms. A head that resembled a Visorak’s body, but upturned so the Rhotuka-launching area was the giant round mouth, not unlike the giant round mouth of the Le-Matoran Fahofa’s Matoran Rikaori mask or the real Rikaori Turaga Dume had smashed. In the being's left hand was a huge silver bow that doubled as a bi-blade, with a thin string of blue energy. The bow itself did not bend; the energy string instead stretched like elastic. His right hand was replaced by a sphere-like device with a single blade sticking out the front. Raogahk the Trickster – for Taureko had no doubt who this was – had fired his first shot at a wire that the camera broadcast to. It was severed in a small explosion. His next shots took out the other Matoran in the room so fast nobody could react. Stun powers. An arrow stretched back by a "sticky" power of the right hand's blade. Aimed at Jofo. Let go. Jofo down. Raogahk fired, reloaded, fired, reloaded, again and again in seconds Taureko stood up fast… but felt slow. Pushed Mohrook behind him. A yellow beetle ran intangibly through the room, picking up the shot arrows with its mandibles, and brought them back to Raogahk. But the Trickster had plenty already; the device in place of his right hand was an energy pack. Arrows materialized as fast as they flew. Strung just as fast. His right hand was a blur, his left held steady but that arm pivoting gently to aim true at his targets. Other weapons flew from launchers the guards had. Tiribomba landed a bombfruit blast on Raogahk’s head. The Goulmaruian roared in anger. The sonic blast from his huge loudspeaker-mouth was visible, like a tornado of sound, and knocked the guards backwards. Most of them didn’t stand back up. A final arrow downed the last of them. Raogahk turned his bow on Taureko, who just stood there, waiting. Arrow flew. Hit him on the chest. He stood, unaffected, armor absorbing the impact energy and the stun power. Raised his hand. A stun beam flew out at the Trickster. Raogahk snapped into a defensive stance with his left arm held straight out. The bow spun like a fan. Energy beam hit the silver blur, white rays shining off of it. Raogahk stood, just as unaffected. Taureko tried to talk sense into him. “What do you want with—” BWAAAAAAAAAWAAAAAAAAWAAAAAAAAWAAAAAAAA! came the response, drowning out all other sound. Sonic waves filled the room, slammed into the camera, desk, and the two Matoran, and knocked it all towards the window. Glass shattered, as the desk rammed them through the giant window. Camera slammed into Taureko’s mask. Only the absorbing power kept it from shattering, but he was still dazed. A moment later his mind snapped into gear to feel the updraft and weightlessness of falling. Half of his mind knew he was safe thanks to his Noble Kadin power; half of him panicked. Mohrook was lost among a cloud of broken glass. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feel free to review, theorize, ask questions, etc. by adding a comment to this chapter blog entry, and stay tuned for the next chapter as a new blog entry. Next Chapter: E I G H T
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Today the Bones Blog brings you Chapter Six of this Bionicle Paracosmos blog-exclusive "Adventure Mystery" short epic, which serves as a slow-reveal of the winner of the Monster Mystery Art contest. Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 Chapter 6 In a dark tunnel under Le-Wahi, I was running for my life from the Unseen Monster… Hujo managed only one thought as he ran in terror, as sounds of stomping on broken glass shards echoed throughout the chamber… as an unimaginably deep-pitched growl made all the glass littering the floor shake. I’m just glad my feet have armor… but will it even matter? He fired another Blue Fire bolt backwards. He glanced forward, leaped over the sharp glass ‘teeth’ stuck to a metal chute ring. Glanced back. Saw the Blue Fire bolt fizzle, much closer this time. The power-dampening field was almost to him. Frantically, he gave a mental command to his energy pack. The Songsphere materialized in his left hand. A moment later and the energy pack probably wouldn’t have worked. He tapped the Song of Ta-Metru. Messed it up in his haste. The Songsphere did nothing. That was probably a blessing in disguise. Once it started on its path, the Songsphere could not be stopped, so if he’d just tapped in the song of, say… the hottest furnace in the world, he could die when he arrived. Tried the Song of Ta-Metru again. This time the sphere hummed, shaking as if trying to activate. But then went quiet. No bubble of blue energy. No travel. The Monster was almost onto him. He fired a flame bolt. The Edge of the dampening field hadn’t passed him yet. So the Songsphere should have worked – but there was simply no way out. Hujo felt his heart turn into a dark stone. He knew what was coming. The tunnel ahead was blocked. So he just ran. He became sheer animal for a minute, as the dampening field passed him. The three bolts of flame between the prongs of his staff dimmed. They did not go out, but he couldn’t send flames out beyond the prongs now. He clung to the one hope that he could at least burn the monster a little, maybe make it think twice… The flames went out entirely. Desperately, he tapped the Song of Ta-Metru again. A hum. Then nothing. But the Songsphere itself still worked. There was something the field didn’t dampen. He glanced back, knowing the beast was right on top of him, hoping to at least see it in the dim light cast by his eyes and heartlight. But all he saw was a vague four-legged beast. Later, he couldn’t explain what happened next. The sight should have terrified him into total beastlike panic, but instead, something snapped inside of him. Now he felt no fear in his mind. He was about to die anyways, assuming the monster killed its prey – not a chance he wanted to take, but what choice did he have? His legs kept running – indeed, he lost control of them and they ran even faster, though pain racked through his body from his screaming, exhausted muscles. But in his head, all he could do was think. And his thoughts became crystal clear. Maybe it was just his nature as the Jahurungi, but he didn’t dwell on it. Why had he felt a breeze earlier if the tunnel was blocked? Answer: The tunnel isn’t totally blocked. Just too small for him to fit. He could have fired enough blue flames through earlier to vaporize a big enough hole. But he hadn’t been thinking. It was too late. On Destral, Hujo had once traveled through a small space by willing the Songsphere to form mere tendrils around him instead of the full-sized bubble, and pull him along behind it, as if it was the head of a snake and he was the body. He wanted to try that now, but he knew it wouldn’t work. The Songsphere hadn’t truly done that on Destral because he willed it; it did that on its own because a path was open. Now, the path was simply not wide enough. It was only a coincidence that he’d thought of what the Songsphere would do before it did it. He knew that now, with his increased mental clarity. He only had time for one desperate last move. What should it be? He briefly considered trying his energy pack again. If the Songsphere still worked, maybe it would. Beings could actually store themselves inside the packs. Maybe he could suddenly disappear, leaving the monster to puzzle where he went. What if the beast was intelligent? It had lured him into this trap despite all his caution. What if it figured out he was in the backpack he would leave laying on the ground? All it would have to do is shatter the stonelike object, and Hujo – and all his stuff – would materialize in the tunnel. He couldn’t risk it. Rapidly his mind zoomed around ideas and objects and questions in his head. Finally, he had an idea, in the last second. And there was no more time to debate it. Songsphere in hand. Song of the Unseen itself. Gave the song a tinge of the conglomerate song of the beast’s home in the cavern, but still mixed with the living song of the monster itself. Tapped it in. The Songsphere hummed. It started to unfold like petals of a flower… hesitated. He had confused it. On purpose. Told it to take him to the very monster blocking the only exit. But the monster was right behind him – he could feel glass shards kicked up by its feet bouncing off his back. The Songsphere didn’t understand why he would want to travel to where he already was. But the Song of the Unseen didn’t exist only right behind him – it was spread throughout the lair behind the monster itself. So was “here” really “here”? Hujo took his final chance. Poured every ounce of energy he had left into his tortured leg muscles. Ran faster. Not right next to the monster now. Songsphere unfolded. Became a metal flower, aimed down. Hovered higher. Blue energy came out. Formed a bubble. In the next second, Hujo lost his balance as the bubble yanked him forward and inside, and also flew backwards, so he rammed into the other side of the bubble wall. Fell to his feet, dazed. The Ta-Matoran lay there at the bottom of the bubble of light. He couldn’t see what happened next because his eyes closed from sheer exhaustion and from the collision, but he understood it. Now that the Songsphere was in motion, it had changed things because of simple physics. The bubble filled up the whole tube of the tunnel. Hujo had dimly noticed earlier that the tunnel’s diameter was identical to that of the standard bubble the Songsphere formed; he hadn’t consciously realized it until his mind snapped into the strange state. As it zoomed towards the Unseen, it made its own wind. Pushed all the air between the Unseen and the bubble back. This slightly pushed back the Unseen itself. Instantly, the Songsphere stopped humming in confusion, and set its destination. It was going to the cavern, because now it ‘realized’ it could simply push the Unseen out of the way. So it did. It rammed into the beast, and bumped and rolled it backwards. The Unseen roared in fury, but it could do nothing. When the sphere reached a metal ring, it simply shrunk slightly, letting out some air, passed through, and let in more air to return to standard size after passing through. But its shield remained solid to the monster, pushing it forward mercilessly. Soon the monster itself was running. But it was angry, oh so angry, and when the Sphere reached the cavern beyond and dumped Hujo out, he knew he would have only seconds. So he rested… but tried desperately to hold onto consciousness. In the Coliseum, Taureko and Mohrook the Freer had just witnessed Dume and the other Turaga turn a table like a wheel, which the city leader claims bought them time. “Where can we find Hujo?” Taureko asked. “We have to tell him the missing Matoran are alive.” “I am not finished,” Dume said. “And now that you’re here, I need your help.” “Help doing what?” “I need you to collect some things for me.” “With respect, sir,” Mohrook said, “We are here on Caroha’s orders herself, and our focus must be freeing the two captives. Is this part of that?” Dume scowled. “There is more to this than mere captives, you fools! The Unseen is just a distraction the Trickster sent! He wants what’s in this table. We must stop him!” Taureko narrowed his eyes. He didn’t appreciate the elitism. I was a captive once. Is this why Metru Nui never lifted a finger to help me then? The elder had a point, but… “What’s in the table?” Surkahi asked. The Turaga stabbed the floor loudly with his staff. “That is NOT for you to KNOW! Stop questioning me!” Taureko understood the urgency, but his mission was urgent too. “Sir, the captives’ lives are still in danger! We cannot delay!” He called him ‘sir’, but they all knew neither Freers answered to Dume. They were not Metru Nui citizens. Dume seemed to get that message, at least. He calmed down. Slightly. “Both of you can fly. Mohrook, you can take the invisible bird. Taureko, we all know the Makuta’s experiments let you use your Noble Kadin. So I need you. Two vats. Bring them, and then you can go find Hujo.” Vakama gave a small cough, and switched his mask. The Suva teleported a Great Rikaori to his face. The mask of Telecommunication – and the elder held a Btou staff that enabled him to use it. “They don’t have to physically find him, Dume. This will only take a minute.” But Dume just got more adamant. “Skyscraper T34, westernmost tip of Ta-Metru, Taureko. Mohrook, O17, eastern Onu-Metru.” “I can fly,” Surkahi said, shapeshifting himself a pair of wings, “And I’m not the only Unknown nearby. But what are the vats for?” “Ingredients!” Dume spat. “And I refuse to let the Unknown in on this. Get out, Surkahi! This is not your city!” “For what?” “For MEDDLING!” The shapeshifter seemed totally calm, but answered quickly. “I mean, ingredients for what?” Dume just roared back at the shapeshifter, and pointed at Taureko and Mohrook. “GO! NOW!” Taureko held up his hands. “Calm down! I just want to send a quick message first—” Suddenly Dume was a blur. He raced up to Turaga Vakama, staff held high, and jumped into the air. Taureko had no idea the elder could move so fast. And he realized what would happen. He jerked into flight. Reached out. Too late… The staff slammed into the Kanohi Rikaori. Shattered it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feel free to review, theorize, ask questions, etc. by adding a comment to this chapter blog entry, and stay tuned for the next chapter as a new blog entry. Next Chapter: 7
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Today the Bones Blog brings you Chapter Five of this Bionicle Paracosmos blog-exclusive "Adventure Mystery" short epic, which serves as a slow-reveal of the winner of the Monster Mystery Art contest. Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Chapter 5 In and around the apparent cavern lair of the Unseen Monster, I was busy triangulating the source of a wide-range power nulling field that blinded my Soulsong sense… Two borders found, one to go. Hujo had carefully snuck along one of the broken chute tunnels, and found the edge of the nulling power. The trip there and back had been uneventful… but still spooky. The only light source in the tunnels was his staff. Now he ventured into the opposite tunnel. The parts of the defunct chute that were in the cavern still held a mostly intact hollow tube of crystallized protowater. But right where the chute entered the rock tunnel and inside the tunnel, falling debris – presumably during the Great Cataclysm – had broken all the sections. So the floor of the tunnel was now littered with broken glass-like shards, dirt, and rocks. Every few meters one of the old magnetics projector rings encircled the cave. These were the most dangerous parts; the crystal tube sections just inside the metal were intact, leaving jagged round knife-crystals sticking out both forward and backward in the tunnel. The jagged rings reminded Hujo of giant shark mouths, wide open to eat him. Hujo had been using his blue flames both to light the way and to partially melt these knife-edges and the other broken shards, creating a heavily textured but safe path to walk on. Every few seconds, he glanced back at the dim entrance to the cavern. It wouldn’t do to be snuck up on in here. Every minute, he made a firecage and slipped far enough into a trance to try his soulsong sense. Finally, he found the border. Fifty regular steps out, he thought, scratching his findings onto a tablet map. He did some quick math in the margin and found his answer. The origin of the nulling field was in the chute station tower in the center of the cavern. The tower was a bit frightening too, with several rooms and broken open walls, but… at least it wasn’t the pipes. Atop the Coliseum, in the Turaga Meeting Hall, where moments ago, Turaga Dume activated something in a secret panel of the meeting table… then walked up to a potted plant and smashed it… “Are you going insane?” Surkahi chastised the fire elder. The shapeshifter had heard the Unknown’s accounts of Dume’s downward spiral over past months as he faced oncoming disaster after oncoming disaster, underscored by the imminent death of Mata Nui. “I’m as sane as you,” Dume spat back. “And I’m the only one who has a plan. This beast is out there terrorizing my city, eating my people, and what use were you? What use are the Unknown? I have a secret of my own, and it alone can save us now.” Surkahi didn’t waste time reminding him that Hujo had a chance of stopping the Unseen, or that the Toa Nuva or Inika had a chance of saving Mata Nui. He just got to the point. “Then tell us how.” “You are all fools! You cannot understand.” “Try us,” Turaga Nokama said, but she said it softly and respectfully. Surkahi wished he could convey so much emotion and wisdom in two simple words. Dume actually paused at that. “Bah.” “You hold an interesting artifact,” Surkahi said. “I’ve never seen any record of it. It’s obviously a key, but to what? And why is it in two parts?” “It should be in three parts, but this city of fools let the Trickster get the third piece,” Dume said. “Alright, what do the first two parts do?” Dume said nothing for a moment… he just glared. Not at Surkahi alone… at everyone. “Do you mean to stand in my way if I don’t explain?” Surkahi held his gaze now. “Dume, you have stood in the way of my people and your people as they tried their plans, claiming they wouldn’t work, and you were wrong.” “I am ruler of Metru Nui—” “In the thousand years I led Ta-Koro,” Vakama interrupted, “which is admittedly nothing compared to your honorable reign… I found that sometimes trust and respect were impossible if I did not—” “No time!” Dume interrupted back, pushing past Surkahi. He hobbled over to the table. Surkahi saw with surprise that it had changed shape. Not in the way a shapeshifter could, but more hidden panels had opened. On the sides of the blacksheen table, all around it. And out of these new openings, metal spokes were slowly moving out. Handles – turning the entire table into a giant version of a sailing ship steering wheel on its side. There were eight of them. “Turn it! Quickly!” Dume said. He grabbed one spoke and started pushing. The table didn’t budge. Surkahi and the other elders just stood there. “Will something bad happen if we do this?” Surkahi asked. “More pointworthy,” Matau added, “Will badstuff happen if we don’t?” “Yes!” Dume said, looking at Matau as he strained against the iron spoke. “Very bad and very soon if we don’t act! I think it’s why the Trickster is here! Hurry!” Grudgingly, the other Turaga Mata and Surkahi moved toward it. “Not you, Surkahi! It must be all Turaga! Takanuva, you!” The elder of Light looked surprised for a moment, then hobbled over, and took the eighth spoke. Together, the eight Turaga pushed with all their might. And the wheel finally began to turn, clounterclockwise. In the air over the Silver Sea, off Metru Nui’s southeast coast… Taureko and Mohrook flew on Jhianau’s back towards the city. They had journeyed over a lot of ocean in the past hour, and had passed through the sea gate into Metru Nui’s dome. The invisible bird was a spectacular sight – a statement that was only noncontradictory when you touched the bird. Jhianau was totally colored translucent white, with white energy flowing out in waves from every feather, and across Taureko and Mohrook too – who were also now translucent to each other. Elegant white feathers formed three crests from the back of the head down the longish neck, from a medium-length white beak, and two eyes that were distinguished only by shining more brightly white. The wings were a blur – hovering silently. Taureko found the experience of being invisible thrilling. Especially when he spoke – he discovered that he could mentally decide whether to speak so only Mohrook heard him, or speak to the outside world with a voice that seemed to come from everywhere, not just his mouth. “Where do you think we’ll find Hujo?” the Ko-Matoran spoke, using the ‘omnivoice’ method because he found it fun. “He could be anywhere,” Mohrook said. “Investigating. We should go to the Coliseum. Ask the Turaga.” “Coliseum it is.” Taureko manuevered the reins to aim Jhianau at the Coliseum, and the bird gladly obeyed. The bird even gave a caw that made Taureko feel like it understood. It had been here before, after all, bunking in the Gukko nests of the tall tower. Minutes later, they arrived, and Jhianau settled down in a Gukko nest. Taureko and his Onu-Matoran friend walked through the hallways to the throne room. Dume wasn’t there. Probably in the meeting room. So they went there. Indeed, all eight Turaga were there. Taureko tilted his head at the sight of them turning the round meeting table on metal spokes. “What’s going on?” he asked Surkahi, who was standing near them. “Dume hasn’t explained yet,” Surkahi replied. “Welcome back to Metru Nui, Taureko and Mohrook. I hope you’re not here for pleasure… kind of a bad time.” Taureko waved his concerns aside. “Caroha herself sent us, as did Ito. We know about the Unseen. And we have news from Ito, for Hujo.” Surkahi looked like he understood. With a guarded expression, he asked, “Does Ito say the missing Matoran are alive?” Mohrook was the one to bring relief to the room. “They’re alive. But maybe not for long.” Taureko explained about the Freer organization they had formed. Finally, the table clicked to a halt. “That’s it,” Dume said, standing back. The other Turaga followed suit. “What was that for?” Taureko wondered aloud. “That,” Dume replied, “bought us some time.” Back in the defunct chute tunnel, I was heading back to the cavern, my eyes on the dim circle of light ahead, when I saw… An eclipse. Hujo froze as he saw it – a dark shape had just slid silently over the dim light of the cavern. Against the brightness of his own flames, Hujo could now no longer see any light at all there. Something was coming. Hujo was still somewhat in his trance. So he sensed the soulsong. It was the Unseen. And then it wasn’t. There was no song. The nulling field was moving. With the Unseen. Oh no… Loud crunching. The sound of glass breaking, again and again. Heavy thumps. And a slight wind in Hujo’s face. The Unseen was running at him. Fast. Scared, Hujo energized the tablet into his energy pack, and swiveled the Blue Fire Staff to aim down the tunnel. Commanded three bolts of blue fire – a perfectly normal attack for him, essentially the minimum of his power – to fly. Time seemed to slow down as the three perpetual bolts of Blue Fire that spun in a circle between the prongs of his staff changed. The front of the three – the biggest, doubled in size. So did the next smaller one, and the next smaller one. Then each split in half, and a split second later these three new bolts were flying down the tunnel, a bright blue cast light flying with them along the cave walls. Hujo waited for the light to shine on the Unseen. Running was an option, but first he had to stand strong, and more importantly see his enemy. One bolt like this would probably not take it down, but he purposefully kept his power low to test the enemy, and have the maximum advantage later when he brought more power to bear. The flames flew true… And then the large lead one shrunk. Fizzled. The other two followed suit. All three winked out. In that moment, Hujo felt a terror unlike any he’d been able to imagine. His heart’s beating gained in strength as fast as the flames fizzled, his eyes dilated, and his very sense of balance tilted. And for once, the Jahurungi did not stop to even think the obvious conclusion. He was too busy bursting into a run, keeping his eyes on the broken glass littering the floor, leaping over the glass knife-rings every few meters, glancing back. Running. In under ten seconds, he was running as fast as his rebuilt Matoran legs could, and the Edge was still gaining. The nulling field was strongest near its source. The Unseen was the source. And no power Hujo had could ever harm it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feel free to review, theorize, ask questions, etc. by adding a comment to this chapter blog entry, and stay tuned for the next chapter as a new blog entry. Next Chapter: 6
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Today the Bones Blog brings you Chapter Three of this Bionicle Paracosmos blog-exclusive "Adventure Mystery" short epic, which serves as a slow-reveal of the winner of the Monster Mystery Art contest. Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 Chapter 3 Le-Metru, at the Destral Rock... Hujo walked over to Surkahi. "Are these past Unseen incident records?" he asked, pointing to the bag the Unknown carried. Surkahi nodded. "And many notes Jorthao made about various creatures that could act as Unseen if the Third Faction wanted." Hujo took the bag. "Alright. Any particular creature stand out to you so far?" "I didn't get a good enough view to even guess." "Alright. I'll go over the scene before reading them." The Ta-Matoran walked away from the others and stopped. After looking around to make sure the surroundings were calm, Hujo closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He slipped into his dreamlike trance and reached out to detect soulsong traces. He heard the song of Ta-Koro where Turaga Vakama was standing. Various songs from the Matoran here. A unique song from Surkahi that was heavily tinted with themes from Mata Nui Island and Metru Nui, since Surkahi had lived near those Matoran for so long. He also sensed strong traces of the brutality, slavery, and turmoil associated with the Destral rock. Behind this there was a backdrop of Le-Metru's song. There. Hujo sensed five other distinct soulsong traces. One was from Le-Metru, presumably Tamaru. The next was from Po-Metru -- Kuhauha. The songs of those two continued into the cave beneath the Destral Rock. As far as he could tell from here, they had not been killed, at least not immediately. The three other songs were extremely varied. He detected hints of soulsongs from across the Matoran Universe. Two of the songs were simpler than the other. One was a lot more muted than the others, and shared many common themes with the more advanced one. The more advanced song was in a single spot in the distance. It had not circled the rock. This must have been an intelligent being, a servant of the Third Faction, who had unleashed the monster. The monster's song itself was unmistakably violent and dark. It chilled Hujo to the protometal bone to listen to it -- its traces were stronger than any other, as if it possessed more of a presence than a normal being. Whether that meant it was as intelligent as the Faction servant but in a different way, or something else, Hujo wasn't sure -- he'd never heard a soulsong like it. Its path followed the exact route Surkahi had described for the Monster, and then continued along the cave. The other two mystery songs didn't follow it, but the two Matoran victims' songs did, but faintly, as if they were being carried so they hadn't touched the ground. Also, the intelligent song was faintly detectable in the cave, from farther back in time. The third song interested him. It appeared to be a simple Rahi, loyal to the Third Faction servant, and not frightening enough to serve as a monster. Though, judging by the spacing of its "song footprints" -- where its legs touched the ground and left a stronger trace -- it was a fast runner. As he sensed where this Rahi had walked, Hujo realized two very interesting things. He pulled out of the trance. "I have two big conclusions already," he told the others as he walked back to them. Nuhuri and the other Matoran with her were on their way up, so he waited for them. "One," Hujo continued, "There's an Unseen monster, a Third Faction servant or associate that I've never met before, and also a less dangerous Rahi that is loyal to the servant. All three were travelers before coming here." Vakama tilted his head. "How does this Rahi behave?" Hujo looked at the Turaga. "Intangibly. The Rahi climbs through the ground as if swimming through water. And come here," he said, walking over to a spot in the Destral rock, and pointed. "I don't see anything," Nuhuri said. "I know. But I heard the servant's soulsong here distinctly, and I also hear a faint trace of it on Surkahi. A projectile, which bounced off Surkahi, and landed here. Then the Rahi's song comes up through the ground to this point, and leaves carrying the projectile intangibly through the ground." "Oh no..." Vakama made a face that said he knew who this was. Hujo nodded grimly. The Turaga had met a being that would fit this description back when they were Toa Metru, and had told of him during their tales after the defeat of the Rahkshi. "Raogahk?" one of the Matoran asked. "Yes." "A Kanoka Arrow," Surkahi said. "That's what hit me?" "Silent, non-fatal, activating a stun power on impact, then bouncing off," Hujo replied. "And then his Runthrough Beetle retrieved it when it landed." He saw Vakama visibly stagger back a bit. "Raogahk had always been questionable... he's been our enemy before, our ally at other times. Never has he sided with the Third Faction." "Who is this?" one of the other Matoran said. "I must have missed this part of your tales, elder." "Raogahk the Trickster," Vakama replied. "He's an archer, a master of sonics, collector of powerful artifacts, a mastermind with his own goals." "Toa of Sonics?" "No. A different species. Tall head, big round mouth -- you can't mistake them. Goulmaruian. He was exiled from his home island. I don't know much else about his origins." "If the Trickster has sided with the Third Faction," Surkahi said, "he's desperate. But things are never what they seem with him. Maybe all of this is a ruse. What could he be after?" Nobody said anything for a few moments. "Nuhuri?" Hujo asked. The female Onu-Matoran shrugged. "The Unseen is huge. Every time it stepped, it trampled the smaller bushes so I can't make out any clear tracks. It runs on all fours. I can't figure out how it got into the cave, but there's no dirt on the cave floor -- it's all been swept away recently." "Probably by Raogahk," Hujo said. "I did detect faint hints of him down there." "None of this makes sense," Surkahi said. "I have read Volitaos' tablets about Raogahk. He would never willingly work for the Third Faction. And as far as I know, Unseen can only be protected from our Sight by the Faction. Could they be framing Raogahk?" "Well, it would help if I could see some artifact you know for sure belonged to him. I've never met him, so I don't know if the soulsong I heard is really his or not." "More importantly," Vakama said, "What could the monster itself be?" Nobody had an answer. Just an hour later, atop the Coliseum, the Unknown named Volitaos was invisible, watching the leader of Metru Nui... Turaga Dume was sitting on his throne, staring at a key in his hand for hours, when he heard the screams. Dume listened to the piercing sounds for a moment. Hearing their pitch, their almost rhythmic repetition. He looked back at the metal key in his hand. It was very hard, made of a special type of protosteel with the additional ability of being totally unable to channel electricity or magnetism. It was carved in a beautiful pattern of rectangular prisms and cube jutting sections. Many others would think it was utilitarian, but no. No. No, Dume could see through that. He saw beauty. The key is the key, Dume thought. Turaga Dume threw his head back and roared in hilarity, adding his chorus to the screams in the lower levels of the Coliseum. It was a beautiful song, the only song Dume had heard for a thousand years. Misery after mistery. False hope after false hope. He had tuned them all out. All that was left was the key. Dume slid off the throne and curled up on the floor, staring in adoration at the key, tuning out the screams now. He wanted to cry. Instead, he just kept staring at the key. Lower in the Coliseum... Four Matoran ran from a monster they couldn't see through the hallways of the Coliseum. There had been five -- everybody in the city was staying in groups of five or more as the Mapmaker had advised. One, a Ta-Matoran named Janoku, had gone into a kitchen to prepare a quick meal. He was a cook who had been working on setting up a new eatery here. His food had been legendary on Mata Nui Island, so none of the others had objected to his making a quick lunch before they started their next patrol. Then there was a crashing sound in the kitchen. Janoku screamed. Now, Janoku didn't scream. Everybody on Mata Nui was familiar with the terror of Rahi raids, Janoku especially. Infected though the Rahi had been, they were still animals, and they couldn't resist the smell of delicious foods. His old eatery had been attacked often, and Janoku could defend himself just fine. He didn't scream then. He wouldn't scream now unless it was the monster in the kitchen. So when the others heard it crashing through a door after them, they didn't stop to look and see what the monster looked like. They fled, screaming. One of them got the idea that they'd done exactly the right thing. "Don't look at it," Tiribomba said, "and it will let you go. It only eats those who see it!" So on the others ran, hearing its crashing footsteps right behind them, getting closer and closer. They ran towards a common gathering room where they knew many other Matoran were guarding. The Unseen would leave them alone if they reached it. Suddenly, one of the Matoran screamed louder than the others. Then there were only three screamers. The others didn't look as their friend was eaten, or captured, or killed... or whatever happened to him. They just ran all the harder. Tiribomba pulled ahead of the others. He felt guilty for a moment, as if he should hold back and help them run faster too. Then he just felt glad when first one, then the other screamed one final time. He ran past a security camera in front of a locked door. After a moment, he realized the monster wasn't following him. The camera. It wouldn't cross its line of sight. Tiribomba glanced back. There was no sign of the monster now. But he saw the other two Matoran laying unconscious on the ground. Not eaten? Now my account switches to Volitaos's point of view... Volitaos walked up to the shaken Tiribomba, doing his best not to get angry. "I saw the whole thing," the Unknown said. "That was NOT an Unseen. That was Kobahko." "Raogahk's Runthrough Beetle?!" "The Trickster tricked you. You're all so frightened you're running from a Rahi that's never harmed anything." "Then why'd it stop at the camera?!" "It turned and ran intangibly through the locked door. Whatever is kept there, it got, thanks to your..." He was going to say foolishness, but stopped himself in time. He couldn't blame them for being scared. He was too. "I just came from Le-Metru," Volitaos added, as he motioned Tiribomba to come back to the others, who laid on the ground alive but stunned by the Beetle's weak venom. "Hujo has confirmed there IS a Monster, but it wasn't here." They carried the two Matoran to the third, and Tiribomba watched them while Volitaos got Janoku. When the cook awoke, he was embarrassed. "I've never screamed because no Rahi has ever slid out of the wall right in front of me before!" Volitaos waited until the others were all awake, then headed back to watch Turaga Dume. As he left, he left them with advice. "Next time, look." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feel free to review, theorize, ask questions, etc. by adding a comment to this chapter blog entry, and stay tuned for the next chapter as a new blog entry. Next Chapter: 4 --------------------------THIS STORY BROUGHT TO YOU BY:--------------------------
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Today the Bones Blog brings you Chapter Two of this Bionicle Paracosmos blog-exclusive "Adventure Mystery" short epic, which serves as a slow-reveal of the winner of the Monster Mystery Art contest. Previous Chapter: 1 Chapter 2 I, Hujo, got the call moments after the most important mission in recent Paracosmos history began, so important we dare not inscribe the nature of it in this record. Metru Nui was in trouble -- and there was a mystery I needed to solve... The Ta-Matoran with red arms and an orange mask waved as the six Toa Nuva and an army of strange creatures disappeared in a wave of intense purple-white light. One of the creatures was a little different from the others, and it carried a tablet with fiery letters glowing across its surface. The Matoran looked on for a moment, taking in the scene of Voya Nui’s volcano looming over a landscape of barren rock. Then Hujo turned and smiled at the six Toa Inika. “The Paracosmos has a chance now,” he said. "Taureko will be overjoyed," Toa Matoro said. Indeed, Taureko the Ko-Matoran translator had risked everything to get that unique tablet, which made this mission possible. “Will you stay on Voya Nui?” a Turaga standing by the Inika asked. “No, I must begin the other half of the same mission the Nuva are on. I need to return to my Xia basecamp for a while, organize help… I’m not sure when I’ll return. You,” he indicated the six Toa, “might be Toa Mahri by then, if events follow the original Cosmos.” “Can the Blue Fire work in water?” Toa Hahli wondered. “It sure came in handy against those Nektann back there – we’d love to have your help against these ‘Barraki” we’re supposed to face then.” “Oh, yes,” Hujo said, tapping the Blue Fire staff in his hand. This was a silver and orange two-pronged staff, with three tiny balls of blue flames whirling around in a trailing circle pattern between the prongs. It gave him Toa-like control over blue fire, and it also had a more psychological power in that it helped him unravel mysteries. “Well, I gotta get going.” Hujo climbed towards a clearing in some especially tall rock spikes. He was halfway there when the voice came. ”Hujo, can you hear me?” It was Turaga Vakama. The elder was thousands of miles to the north in the underground city of Metru Nui, but he was using a mask of telecommunication. “You’re a little quiet,” Hujo said, “But yeah. Is something wrong?” “This morning, two Matoran were attacked in Le-Metru,” Vakama said, speaking louder this time. He summed up what he'd been told by Surkahi. “Alright, well, have everybody work in groups of at least five and stay armed. And, please contact my Xia team, let them know of the delay. Some of the Nynrah Ghosts can begin right away, but only in the local area.” “Granted. Hurry.” Hujo agreed, and continued to the clearing in the taller rocks. The Piraka were still powerful on this island; he didn’t want any witnesses to his unique and top-secret method of travel. When he reached the clearing, he took a moment to slow his breathing and close his eyes. His heart rate slowed, and his mind tapped into the Blue Fire Staff’s more unusual powers. In return, his mind was given a deep sense of peace. He pulled himself out of the trancelike state. Yes, this spot was secure. Then he reached out his hand, and materialized a dark gray metal sphere from his energy pack. When he let go of it, it hovered on its own. He tapped a musical pattern onto it, and it unfolded, hovering higher. Then it enveloped him a bubble of blue energy and flew away, carrying him over the ocean. He used an extra power of his staff to project an illusion around it, making it invisible. As he flew, he mulled over the account Vakama had given. Surkahi had been hit by something he didn't see coming. It couldn't be a Rhotuka or anything else that gave off much light, or made much sound. Lightstone rifle was out of the question. It didn't sound like a mindblast. And since Surkahi was watching the area where the Unseen was hiding, it couldn't have come from the monster. Which meant the monster wasn't working alone. On Nhoakrus... "So I was thinking," Taureko continued -- he was telling Mohrook his first plan for the new Freers organization -- "since the Unknown aren't using these teleporting outposts anymore, or at least not most of them, why not have one taken into the Field of Shadow?" "It's a great plan," Mohrook said. "Do you know for sure that the teleportation would work out of the Field?" "Not for sure, but there's only one way to find out." Just then, there was a knock on the door. Mohrook got up and opened the door. But he didn't say anything -- just looked around. "Who is it?" Taureko asked. Mohrook closed the door and looked back at him. "There's nobody there." The Ko-Matoran just blinked. "What's that mean?" "It means we have to go out into the jungle." "What? Why?" "Just come. You'll see." "Does this have to do with the voices?" "No." So the two Matoran walked out, and got into the blimp. Taureko untied the ropes, while Mohrook started the engine. Fanblades began spinning, and the blimp pulled away. They flew deep into the jungle, past several other blimps, walkways, and huts, until they reached an area where nobody else was. Mohrook brought the blimp into a clearing, in the exact center of the island. Here was a strange sight -- one of the other big mysteries of Nhoakrus. It was a single stump, bigger than the entire boat he'd come here on, yet apparently cleaved off by a single swipe of some unimaginably massive blade. Stranger still, the tree itself was still alive, laying on its side without a root. The massive trunk, wider by a lot than any of the others, was laying across the other half of the island, where no Matoran lived. No Matoran, that is, except the Jungledweller. This brown and green Le-Matoran, named Ito, was standing atop the stump, looking at them. Waiting for them. Standing next to him was a blue and silver female being. She looked like a Matoran, except her armor design was fancier. Now Taureko understood why they had to come out here, away from everybody, although he didn't understand how Mohrook knew that. This was Caroha -- the leader of the Unknown. She began talking in a somewhat loud voice before the blimp even reached the giant stump. "First," she said as they stopped the blimp and tied it to a branch of a smaller tree right next to the stump, "I know about your plans for the Freers. You are doing as I had hoped. And when the mission I'm about to send you on is over, I will help you transport a teleportation outpost into the Field. In fact, I can tell you that I've had a vision that you will soon be needed there to help one of my own people." Hello to you too, Taureko thought as he and Mohrook walked up. Caroha wasted no time. She smiled. "You do recall I can hear your thoughts, yes?" Taureko grinned nervously. "Uh... yeah. You were saying?" "Second, Metru Nui has been attacked by something we call an Unseen." She explained what this term meant. "I want you two to go there and help the Jahurungi solve this mystery." "Why us?" Taureko asked. "We already have a plan for the Field of Shadow. You said yourself it's important. Can't we choose where to go?" "My visions have already told me what you'll choose. And there's more to the story. Ito?" The Jungledweller stepped forward. "Two Metru Nui Matoran are sadgone. But they yet-live." "How do you know?" Mohrook asked. Ito hesitated. "I have the deathsense. When anybeing dies, I fast-know. I haven't deathsensed anything from Metru Nui. They live." Taureko would have liked to ask how Ito got that sense, but he knew it was pointless to ask the Jungledweller about his secrets. "And this monster has trapped them?" Caroha and Ito both nodded. Then Ito reached out a hand to his left, and suddenly he disappeared. Taureko understood how 'nobody' had knocked earlier. Ito had a loyal friend -- an invisible bird. Whoever touched this Rahi turned invisible too. "Jhianau will take you, and help you on this mission," Ito's voice said. It seemed to be coming from all directions around them. "I'll take your blimp back." Then Ito appeared again and lowered his hand. "Will you go?" Caroha asked. Taureko looked at Mohrook. The Onu-Matoran shrugged. "We're the Freers. Somebody needs freeing. Why not start today?" So Taureko agreed, and off they went. Over Mata Nui Island... Hujo watched as the icy landscape of Ko-Wahi whizzed by below. Then the Journeysong sphere brought him over a giant round hole in the ground, and flew down into it. Far below, he saw Metru Nui. The songsphere zeroed in on Le-Metru, then on the chunk of Destral rock. The sphere traveled by tapping into the 'soulsongs' of living beings, and the traces of this telepathic energy that attached to whatever beings touched. It would travel to the location that had whatever soulsong you tapped into it. Hujo could not steer the sphere in flight, but he had grown so good now at sensing the little variations in songs that he'd targeted this spot -- by mixing the song of Destral with the song of Le-Metru. He landed, and the songsphere folded back up. After putting it back into his energy pack, he turned off the cloaking illusion. Waiting on the rock was Surkahi, three Matoran, and Turaga Vakama. Surkahi held a bag full of tablets -- probably records of past Unseen incidents. Vakama nodded at Hujo, and pointed to the trees below. Five Matoran were walking among the trees. The lead of the group was a female Onu-Matoran -- Nuhuri the Rahi Tracker. Good. If this monster left tracks, she'll find it. Hujo walked up to the others on the rock. "Have you found anything else here? Some kind of a projectile for example?" The shook their heads. Hujo looked around. "Alright then... I'll get started." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feel free to review, theorize, ask questions, etc. by adding a comment to this chapter blog entry, and stay tuned for the next chapter as a new blog entry. Next Chapter: 3 --------------------------THIS STORY BROUGHT TO YOU BY:--------------------------
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Today the Bones Blog brings you Chapter Four of this Bionicle Paracosmos blog-exclusive "Adventure Mystery" short epic, which serves as a slow-reveal of the winner of the Monster Mystery Art contest. Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 Chapter 4 In Le-Metru, I had just entered the cave that the Unseen Monster used to leave the scene of its kidnapping… Hujo ran down the cave, holding his Blue Fire Staff up for light, and staying partly in his trance state so he could sense the Monster’s path. Five minutes over. As he’d been doing every five minutes, Hujo stopped, flared the blue flames brightly for a moment, then, seeing no threat, closed his eyes. Sunk deeper into the trance state. He ‘saw’ the Soulsong traces on the floor and walls of the cave, and then reached ahead with his sense. Soon he would enter a large cavern, he saw. The monster’s Soulsong was all over this place. Its lair? Hujo pulled out of the trance and ran forward. Finally he reached the entrance to the cavern. He slowed, flared the staff again, and entered. Blue light cast upon a jumble of sights. First, the cave was also the intersection of two chutes. Only one of the two transportation tubes was in operation, magnetized protowater flowing along it with various pieces of cargo floating inside. Where the two tubes met, there was a large raised structure that looked like a long-unused chute transfer station. Bits of rubble from this ancient structure and from the broken second chute littered the ground. Second, there were a number of pipes on the far side of the cave. Dirt piled underneath that part. Hujo gathered that something – the Unseen perhaps? – had dug there, expanding the reach of the cave to this pipe structure. Some of the pipes were almost as big as the chute. Either type of tube could probably be used by the Unseen. Third, to the right of the pipes, there was a corner of a foundation of one of Le-Metru’s skyscrapers. This too looked like it had been dug open. The protocrete in one part had been shattered, perhaps by the Unseen, perhaps by the Great Cataclysm a millenia ago, and this hole too was big enough for the Unseen. Fourth, there were many stalactites hanging from the roof, the pipes, and the chutes, as well as stalactities and columns clogging the cavern. In some places these formations were so thick and numerous they resembled a jungle, especially by the cavern walls. If the Unseen dug out those pipes, Hujo thought, looking at the stalactite buildup there, it’s been here a long time. It was possible. The Matoran had only just returned to Metru Nui days ago, and from what Hujo had read in the Unknown’s tablets, whatever the monster was, it could easily have been a normal, if rare, Rahi until now. The Third Faction altered every Unseen before sending them on their rampages. Hujo pushed these thoughts aside. There would be time for analysis later. Was the Unseen here now? Hard to tell… he thought, looking at the countless shadows cast by all the stuff here. And ‘here’ could be inside that skyscraper, along the chute tunnels, in the pipes… There was only one easy way to tell. Time for another soulsong trance. Meanwhile… Volitaos snuck back into Turaga Dume’s throne room… The room was empty. He ran around behind the throne – his feet making no sound thanks to the hoversandals, and he stayed invisible. No Dume. He couldn’t help it – the shapeshifter wondered if the Unseen had been here. But was the Unseen actually in its lair? Hujo created a firecage around himself, then slipped halfway into his trance state. He heard no active soulsongs… And no traces. He opened his eyes. Even though he’d sensed the Unseen’s traces abundantly before he’d entered, once he was inside, he couldn’t sense it at all. Why? Answer: Something must be dampening his sensory power – but not affecting the Blue Fire, thankfully. Hujo carefully retreated to the cavern’s entrance, and stepped outside. Made another firecage. Trance. Nothing. The dampening effect must have a range… So he ran back the way he’d come, to where he’d sensed the cavern before. Firecage. Trance. There. He sensed it all again. But the problem was, it was so complex and he was so far away, it was like trying to read a tablet full of small text from across a village. He couldn’t tell if he heard only soulsong traces, or if among those traces, the real thing lurked. So I’ll have to do it the hard way… Great. Back in the Coliseum… Volitaos found Turaga Dume, alive and unharmed… physically, anyways. The elder was wandering the halls alone, in direct defiance of Hujo’s advice to remain in groups of five. But then, Dume was the ruler of this city, and long ago, Hujo was just another Ta-Matoran under the Fire elder’s watch. Volitaos could only imagine what Dume felt towards the Jahurungi giving out such advice… or orders, arguably. Resentment? Jealousy? But Dume had been honorable in his time. Volitaos for one had never expected this psychological downward spiral, even with all the hardship Dume had suffered. What could be done about it? He didn’t know. From Dume’s perspective… Where was that safe? Dume thought to himself, as he walked from room to room. It had been well over a millenia since he had considered opening it, so it was understandable that he’d forget it. Finally, he found it. Still locked, just as he’d left it. Dume went up to it, and unlocked it with the key. Inside, he found… “Nothing?!” The elder stared at the empty inside of the room. The other part of the key was missing… He looked down at the key in his hand. Beautiful, yes, but incomplete. There are still ways, though… The elder started walking. Towards the next safe. Volitaos followed him… The invisible shapeshifter walked along, wondering what Dume had expected to find in the safe. Whatever it was, Raogahk’s intangible pet had just stolen it. Volitaos had worried the move had just been a distraction so the Unseen could attack Turaga Dume. But now it looked like Dume knew something important, and Raogahk was after it too. And the Third Faction, if the Trickster was truly working for them. Suddenly Dume stopped at a window and roared in laughter violently again. Volitaos stopped abruptly, honestly a bit scared at the outburst. “Oh Trickster!” Dume shouted out the window. “Bright minds think the same! HAHAHAHA!” Then Dume started walking again, as if he was acting perfectly normally. He nodded at a group of five Matoran guarding another safe – they just stared at him – and he unlocked it. Dume looked in for just one second, then grabbed the shoulders of one of the Matoran, his muscles tight. “THE BEAUTY IS MORE COMPLETE!” He ran in, laughing so hard it could really only be described as a cackle, and grabbed another key. Then he placed both keys together – some of the various and seemingly random cubelike shapes on them interlocked. “Stop guarding this spot now,” Dume announced to the Matoran, suddenly in a calm, authoritative mode again. “Nothing left to guard.” Then he launched into his giddy mode as if someone had flipped a switch. As Volitaos watched the Turaga practically dance down the hallway – and pause once to smash a perfectly innocent potted plant – he couldn’t help but wonder… Maybe the keys were safer with the Trickster. Back in the apparent lair of the Unseen… Hujo had spent several minutes searching through the cavern to no avail, when finally something happened. A dark shape, a blur of motion. It was among the jungle of pipes and stalactites. Hujo sent tendrils of Blue Fire that way, hoping to illuminate the shadowy corners. He called on his mask of Precision, using the Btou staff in his pack to activate its powers, and the flames expertly avoided touching or melting the pipes. He saw nothing. The Ta-Matoran froze in indecision. He could move in himself and search every corner directly… but he was afraid. The Blue Fire Staff couldn’t protect him if he was knocked out in a surprise attack. The pipes were so closely packed, he knew he’d have to actually crawl through portions. And who knew how many holes there were in the pipes on the sides not facing him, making the pipes themselves hiding places for the Unseen? Yet, who else could explore it? A Toa certainly wouldn’t fit, if any were here – and they weren’t. Then he had an idea. A better approach would be to triangulate the source of the dampening power. Since the Blue Fire still worked, he could just destroy that source, presumably some kind of artifact, and then his ‘soul-deafness’ would be lifted. Triangulation meant he needed to find the borders. But the borders were probably all outside this cavern. The cave entrance formed one point of the triangle… now he needed two more. He looked at the dark tunnels of the defunct chute. That will work. And back to the Coliseum… Surkahi knew that Volitaos was nearby. How he knew was a secret he tried not to focus on, in case of a telepathic spy. But he did indeed know that the other Unknown was trailing Dume invisibly. Yet Surkahi was totally visible, in his normal sand-colored bulky Matoran form, standing in the Turaga meeting room, when Dume entered. At any other time, this contrast would be a contradiction... but this was a time of change for his people. From Unknown, they were becoming Known... but still only 'becoming.' The other Turaga were there as well, even Turaga Takanuva, although Dume had forbidden Takanuva from joining in normal elder meetings. This was not a scheduled meeting; this was just where the Turaga had decided to stay as long as the monster was loose. Surkahi was acting as a guard, of sorts. Dume came in, holding a strange key. But he didn’t speak. Instead, he just went up to the table in the center of the room, and banged hard on it. “What was that for?” Turaga Nokama exclaimed. But then they all saw. Dume had banged the table so hard, a hidden panel had bounced up. Dume had then slipped a finger under it before it fell back down. And lifted it totally open. Surkahi stared, amazed that he had never seen that panel before. What was going on? Dume placed the key in a hole inside the panel, and turned it. “That,” Dume said, “was what the Trickster didn’t want me to be able to do. Just the first part in the only plan we have left now.” Then the elder calmly walked up to a potted plant near the door. Tilted his head at it, as if admiring its beauty. Smashed it with his staff. Surkahi jumped a bit. The other Turaga glanced at each other. Clearly, they hadn’t been included in this 'plan.' ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feel free to review, theorize, ask questions, etc. by adding a comment to this chapter blog entry, and stay tuned for the next chapter as a new blog entry. Next Chapter: 5
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Today the Bones Blog brings you Chapter One of this Bionicle Paracosmos blog-exclusive "Adventure Mystery" short epic, which serves as a slow-reveal of the winner of the Monster Mystery Art contest. No need to read previous stories to understand it; if you want to though, see here (this story does contain Mindfire spoilers -- my Epics-Contest-winning murder mystery; that would be a good single story to read before starting this). Bionicle Paracosmos Bonus Episode #4 unseen Chapter 1 This is the account of the Unseen incident in Metru Nui, by Hujo the Jahurungi -- the Unraveler of Secrets. These events occured one week after the "Mindfire" incident on Destral, on the island of Metru Nui. Portions not witnessed directly by myself were either observed by a member of the secretive shapeshifting Unknown species, or were told to me by the Freers involved in the investigation. Any comments by myself are in bold and italic. This account is logged in the annals of the Unknown city. Deep in a forested portion of Le-Metru... "It definately took out at least one building," a Po-Matoran named Kuhauha said. He and a Le-Matoran were standing where a giant portion of rock had slammed down upon part of the city. The Po-Matoran wore a dark brown Matoran Fiuwa Mask of Ductility. The huge rock had once been part of the Makuta's teleporting island of Destral, but recently a different villain had caused a chaotic series of events that led to Destral being teleported into the air over Metru Nui. To make a long story short, this tip was broken off and slammed into the city while the rest of Destral was teleported away, sparing the vast majority of Metru Nui from harm. Another tip had crashed in Po-Metru, where these two had already checked and found no evidence of Matoran deaths. The Po-Matoran checked the identity numbers etched in the surviving buildings. "According to the accounts of the evacuation, the only building missing here was emptied before it happened." "Happybright," the Le-Matoran said. His name was Tamaru, and he wore a lime Matoran Mask of Translation. He checked the tablets he was carrying. "Danksad, there were many Rahi that tree-lived here, though." The two Matoran looked sadly at the flattened trees sticking out from under the edge of the giant rock for a moment. They were about to head home, when they were suddenly confronted by a monstrous beast of some kind. Nearby, an Unknown was watching these Matoran... Surkahi saw these events from a ways away. The good shapeshifter normally looked like a bulky, tan-colored version of a Matoran, but today he was shaped like a single leaf atop a tree. He'd long been assigned by the Unknown leader to watch over the Metru Nui Matoran -- his very name meant Watcher, in fact. Yesterday he had been a small rock, watching these two records-keepers check on the northern Destral tip. Today, the leaf watched them finish their check of the southern tip. If you looked closely, you'd see that the tip of the leaf had an eye on a stalk that bent whichever way it wanted, to Watch. And the center of the leaf had a strange circular shape -- an advanced ear. "Let's go," Kuhauha was saying. Surkahi watched the two start to walk east towards the nearest working chute... then suddenly stop. "What is THAT?!" Tamaru said, pointing ahead of him. Surkahi couldn't see -- there were too many trees in the way. Whatever it was, the two looked terrified, and they started running west. What is it? A Dark Hunter? A wild Rahi? He watched for it to cross into the small clearing where they had been, but it didn't. Instead, it ducked behind several trees behind that clearing from Surkahi's angle. He caught a faint darkening of the ground and the sense of something rushing by through the thick foliage there, but nothing clearer. The Matoran were still running -- his ear could hear them though they were now out of sight behind other trees. Surkahi had a terrible feeling. Why would some predator take care not to be seen by Surkahi, though Surkahi was so well hidden? He knew of only one concept that could explain it, but that didn't speak at all to the identify of the monster. It was an Unseen. The leaf turned into a bird. In this form, Surkahi flew over the forest towards the rock. He could see the two Matoran clearly now -- they were running and leaping over the felled trees right alongside the chunk of Destral, staying right against the rock. There, the monster had the least cover. It was smart, Surkahi thought. They didn't know the Unknown legends of Unseen monsters, which took care not to be seen by anyone other than their victims, but they were obviously tactical thinkers. In fact, both had previously been guards when this island's population had been on the island of Mata Nui. Surkahi caught more glimpses of some shape running alongside them in the trees that still stood about forty feet away from the Destral rock. But nothing clear enough to give him a sense of what kind of beast it was. It could be anything -- Unknown had encountered Unseen monsters that turned out to be insane Rahi, semi-intelligent mutants, and even intelligent murderous villains. All of them shared two things in common, though. They all tried to keep their specific identities a secret... and they all ended up having something to do with the Third Faction in the Paracosmos -- the sworn enemies of the Unknown. It was the only explanation for how the beasts could avoid the sight of even the best Unknown spy. So what was this Monster? What was the reason it was sent? This was definately the sort of thing the Jahurungi would be needed for. But Surkahi's first priority was making sure these two Matoran survived. On and on this chase went, with the Matoran running and leaping over the downed trees, and the monster running right next to them, and Surkahi flying above them. After a while Surkahi knew any pretense was over, and he turned into his bulky Matoranlike form, except with two big wings. The Unknown were already well on their way to becoming Known, and in the Destral incident Surkahi had been seen by the whole city in this form anyways. Tamaru spotted him first, and waved. "Help us!" he shouted. The Matoran were tiring fast -- obviously the strategy of the monster. Surkahi hesitated. Unseen monsters had been known to carry secret weapons that activated when Unknown got too close. Many Unknown had died this way in the past. If he had to, he'd risk it. But by now he'd thought of another way. The tip of Destral came to a point on one end. Here, the rock was so low to the ground, the Matoran should be able to leap onto it, then easily run up the widening rock to the highest part of the rock. Here Surkahi could carry them to safety. And they could tell him -- and the Jahurungi and all the other inhabitants -- what this monster looked like. He called back down, "Tamaru, climb onto Destral at the low--" His shout was drowned out by a scream. Kuhauha was gone. Surkahi had taken his focus off of him to talk to Tamaru, who was a little bit ahead. Both he and Tamaru came to a stop, staring in terror at the spot Kuhauha had last been. There was nothing but what looked like a black hole underneath the trees. "The cave!" Tamaru shouted, running towards it. "We jumped over it many times!" he shouted up at Surkahi. "I should have known! What do I do?" Surkahi answered instantly, "STOP!" Tamaru did, thankfully. The monster must have gotten into the cave and grabbed Kuhauha as he ran over it -- it might grab Tamaru too. "If you want to live, keep running to the low part of Destral's tip and run up as high as you can!" Tamaru did that. Surkahi hovered in place for a moment longer, watching the hole. He saw nothing. Was Kuhauha dead? Unseen often killed their prey, but not always. This isn't the time to think about it, he reminded himself. Tamaru had seen the monster too, and it knew it. Surkahi considered diving down now and plucking Tamaru from the ground like a Rahi hawk. If the monster was still in the cave, the weapon wouldn't be an option. But he could have sworn he'd seen a glimpse of The Shape in the trees just before Kuhauha was taken... so it must move incredibly fast. No, he couldn't risk it. He was flying towards Tamaru to stay above him, when he felt a sudden impact, and instantly was knocked unconscious. Meanwhile, being watched by the invisible Unknown named Volitaos, two Matoran formed an organization that would soon become entangled in these events... Eternal shadow. That was what the Ko-Matoran Taureko had once been trapped in -- the Field of Shadows, the Realm of the Zivon monster. Before that, he'd been trapped in it metaphorically as a slave of the Brotherhood of Makuta. After the Mindfire incident, when he'd been framed for murder of several Makuta, he'd found himself facing it again in a different way. He simply felt... unfulfilled. He was helping people. He had uncovered astounding secrets recently. He was involved in the three-way struggle between the good side, the Brotherhood, and the Third Faction -- he wasn't just doing nothing. But he felt like it. Trapped. That was how he felt -- trapped not because of a lack of freedom, but because he knew so many other beings were out there, trapped. He felt for them. He wished he could free them. When he was a slave, he had become known as Taureko the Freer and helped many other slaves escape Destral. He missed that goal for his life. So that was why he was just now arriving by boat to the jungle island of Nhoakrus. He had a friend from his days as the Freer he wanted to talk to. Taureko stepped onto the tan wooden dock, and turned back to wave goodbye to his friends on a metal boat, which hailed from Metru Nui. He planned to see them again some day, but who knew what the future could bring? The large motorboat pulled away. He turned back to face the island. Calling Nhoakrus a jungle was redundant -- not to mention a slap in the face to the mystery it represented. The island was relatively small in terms of landmass, a circle no bigger than all of Ko-Metru. But the trees had massive trunks, and reached up to dizzying heights -- at least four times the width of the island. And standing right next to the island as he was now, that width didn't seem so small. Smaller trees and a ton of seaweed and green reeds extended out into the water several miles, punctuated only by the few long wooden docks reaching out to open waters like the one he stood on now. Thick foliage filled many areas, running like a network around various gaps. Through the gaps he could see two things that were signature Nhoakrus. The first was Matoran-made blimps, of a beige colored cloth, with hanging wooden baskets carrying pilots, passengers, and cargo beneath the cloth balloons. The second was the fire tendrils. From random places in the bark, strange fingers of fire erupted, and curled around, branching and forming beautiful, almost fractal shapes, then quickly faded away. The bark from where they started did not bear a single clue afterwards that fire had come from it -- in fact all Nhoakrus plants were inexplicably fireproof. As Taureko walked closer, and came amongst the green reeds and small trees in the water, he heard the Songs, and it chilled him to the bone. This was one of Nhoakrus's many mysteries, and the main reason Taureko objected to the word "jungle" alone being used to describe it. Music and strange, tribal voices faintly floated through the air of the island. Yet nobody had ever seen a single being singing the songs, or had any other idea of why the songs occured. Taureko couldn't help but fear the voices. He even recognized the language -- the language of the Unknown, which he'd "learned" due to a Brotherhood experiment back in his slave days. And yet the words made no sense. Right now the voices sang, "green our yonder angle candle vector pathway cry tears tied-to dry eight red round fork flip ship letter tied-to organics." Sheer nonsense. Yet as those same lines were repeated as a chorus and he focused on the sound of the Unknown words themselves, he couldn't help but feel the deeply passionate way it was sung, as if it was a song of true love or deep meaning. "Leketa onuiteo kiangori kiaratu uha hrikut hrungor, trali tralnui whaketi ti-gakua-teh, kwa whaihror, tarak ubu nahehi TEHWHAKEI omganura, wakulrao whaketi kignin'nui." Even which words they emphasized made no sense. Why our, vector, trail, flip, and the final nonsense phrase of letter tied to organics? As a translator, it just plain bugged him. If he had some clue as to who the unseen singers were, he could form theories, but he had none. But it was a mystery, and mysteries were for the Jahurungi, so Taureko shrugged it off. Over the next few minutes, Taureko followed the wooden walkway that began as the dock up, curving around a tree, branching off into many elevated walkways at various points, past blimps and hanging wooden huts, past many Matoran of all kinds, and finally to a particular hut. This hut was made of the same tan wood as the walkways, looking something like a multi-facted crystal in shape. If you looked closely, you saw that the edges of the polyhedral faces were all of one piece, a big network of wood made from a giant sphere of wood hollowed out and then with holes drilled in it. Planks filled most of the holes in the faces, with tiny gaps for ventilation, and some holes held windows and doors. The whole thing was about as wide in diameter as two Muaka giant tigers. Anchored with ropes like a boat to the walkway in front of this hanging hut was a small cargo blimp. An Onu-Matoran was busy checking the blimp over. "Hi, Mohrok!" Taureko said. The Onu-Matoran turned his black Mask of Vision and smiled wide. "Taureko! What brings you here, my old friend? Come to try to translate the Songs again?" Taureko grinned. "I wish. But no, I... I had a... proposition. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about old times and... Well, I have a prepared pitch to make. Can we go inside?" Mohrok faced him directly. "As in, a job?" "Yes. Sort of. A... mission. A life-goal." Mohrook turned back. "Well, let me finish this quick checkup first. These blimps lose levitation vapor slowly, and---" "Drag the whole walkway down with them?" "Right. How'd you know?" Taureko shrugged. "Something I'd always wondered about this place. That's one mystery solved, about twenty to go." Mohrook laughed. "Indeed, my friend." He was silent for a moment as he continued his check, pumping more vapor from time to time into internal cells of the balloon from a special tank he carried. "I've been doing some thinking of my own," he added after a moment. "About old times?" Mohrook just nodded. "Sounds like I already have some idea of where this is headed." He finished his check, and they went inside. Taureko gave his speech, about the shadow of the Field and of slavery, and ended with a line he thought would come in handy as a by-phrase, a slogan of sorts. Something the oppressed could pass along. Mohrok nodded slowly. "So we would be starting an organization of Freers. I have had the same idea myself, Taureko. As much as I love this cargo blimp job, I can't help but wonder if it's really my... destiny." "So are you in?" Mohrok nodded, and repeated the by-phrase. "If you're enslaved, trapped, oppressed, we're you're hope -- we're the Freers." Back in Le-Metru... Surkahi awoke with a yelp of surprise, and shifted form randomly in his shock. He was asleep?! The shapeshifter turned back to his winged Matoranlike form, and stood up. He was atop the Destral rock in Le-Metru. There was no sign of Tamaru. The suns had gone far across the sky. He'd been out for several hours. Already fearing the worst, he flew around the rock, trying to keep an eye out for anything that might suddenly shoot at him again, while looking frantically for any sign of Tamaru. He saw nothing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feel free to review, theorize, ask questions, etc. by adding a comment to this chapter blog entry, and stay tuned for the next chapter as a new blog entry. Next Chapter: 2 --------------------------THIS STORY BROUGHT TO YOU BY:--------------------------
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Everybody knows the Bohrok Kal sold horribly. They were clones of the original Bohrok. This is bad. Not everybody hated them, but yeah. Coincidentally (okay not so much ) the Bionicle Paracosmos is going to have an opportunity soon to include both the original Bohrok Kal, identical to canon, AND six further-mutated Bohrok Kal. The only guideline I have is that these mutated Kal are larger than normal Bohrok, and each is mutated in a different way. That's what this contest is all about. Redesign the Bohrok Kal. The winning six entries will be used in upcoming Paracosmos stories, (probably by the end of the next epic, Endless Blue, a short story to take place during that epic, and the epic after that). Rules: 1) There are three main categories; MOC, Comp Art, and Drawing. Two winners will (most likely; depending on amounts entered) be chosen from each category. 2) There will be six total winners; one for each of the Bohrok Kal. 3) Each person may win only once, however: 4) You may, for this contest, enter up to six entries. This can be six different Kal, variations on the same Kal, even a generalized design entered with up to six variations (such as different handshields and coloration). You can mix and match, enter multiple categories, whatever -- as long as you have only six maximum entries. 5) The one thing you may NOT do is use the standard Bohrok design. 6) You may enter either new or old MOCs, but this contest won't have separate categories for new vs. old. Same could go for art -- old or new are welcome, doesn't matter. 7) This contest is for the appearance, not the storyline of it. I'll have my own (classified) explanation for the existence of these six different Kal. Guidelines: 1) Aim for larger than the original Bohrok. They don't have to necessarily be titans, though that's cool too, but they should be biggish. 2) Aim for "cool" appearance, whatever that means to you. 3) Scary is good too. 4) Whether you want to keep the silvery appearance is up to you. Anything goes, as long as it is somehow "elite" compared to a normal Bohrok. How will winners be chosen? Well, two ways. One, Ojhilom and I will arrange the entries in their categories in order from best down, as we deem them. Two, if there are multiple best ones of a single Kal, we will reserve the right to rearrange and possibly even contact the members in question and ask them if we can convert a Kal into a different Kal (if it would fit). We'll try to judge the MOCs and art as objectively as we can, so enter what you like best. Entry Period: Contest Begins now, ends noon August 3 (a Monday). That's threeish months to enter. Entry form: [img=Put entry image URL here] Member Name: [your name] Entry Name: [which kal is it?] Topic Link: [if applicable] Category: [MOC, Comp Art, or Drawing] Explanation: Sig Banner: [url="http://www.bzpower.com/forum/index.php?automodule=blog&blogid=39&showentry=63671"][img=http://www.majhost.com/gallery/bonesiii/BonesBlog2/bohrokkoolsig.png][/url]
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Bionicle Paracosmos: Enigma Pacman Inspired by Pacman, taking place in the Bionicle Paracosmos location Twisted Island (from my fanfics), this is a one-map arcade game with a short "Adventure Mystery" storyline. You play as Enigma, a good-guy shapeshifter, collecting energy fruit to get Attack Mode, and earn points to earn more Attack Mode forms and other unlockables. The storyline parts can be skipped and played later if you prefer to get right to the gameplay. After the story end you can keep playing for as long as you want. I have beaten it in exactly one hour; about a third of the unlockables and about nine+ minutes of gameplay are available in the first ten minutes. There are also storyline-fitting cheatcodes (entered with arrow keys in onscreen keyboard) that change gameplay in various ways, and a fair range of settings in the pause menu, further increasing replay value. Have had two versions up, and fixed some things people brought up. Version Three is available now in the topic. Here's some printscreens: The members whose MOCs from the Twisted Island Beasts MOC blog contest are included are: Bundalings: Kofo-Leke War Slug (smaller version I made up of his Kunu Leke), Kamitsu's Pain -Zip Er-: Zu Rama The Pointy-Haired Boss: Pack Munchers kyuubi: Rahi Traps Atako: Nui Chiropt bats Toa Talvak: Scorch Ants TOA BIONUI: Macrovirus Vaka-Nui: Mahvoki Enjoy! Banner: [url="http://www.bzpower.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=307390"][img=http://www.majhost.com/gallery/bonesiii/SigStuff/bpepbnr.png][/url]
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Attention all Paracosmos fans! Twisted Island is now fully reposted up to where I had left off before the "Dataclysm". The never-before-seen Chapter 18 is up! Speaking of Twisted Island, Ojhilom and my FCG contest entry, Enigma Pacman, is coming along great (it is set on TI in late 2006 story). The gameplay is pretty much finished; I just have to complete graphics, especially enemy graphics. For that, the smaller winners of the Beasts MOC blog contest (the creatures used in the epic TI) will be included as charset versions. A few smaller beasts invented by me will be featured, especially Deconstruction Raptors (from a not-yet-posted TI chapter), and both Bohrok and Visorak will be included. (Also, the Ghosts of the Kanohi will be the main enemies besides the various Rahi.) The only small one not to be included will be Twayivl, who is slated to leave TI in Endless Blue (2002 storyline). Possibly two of the large winners will be included, and a smaller "Kofo Leke" version of the top winning MOC, the War Slug, will be included. All those who entered the relevant MOCs will be in the credits. For the sake of others entering the FCG contest, Ojh and I will put up the previous version of TMOMN (since our newest version isn't finished enough), and include the graphics of Visorak and Bohrok (and Krana BTW) that I am doing for my FCG entry. All graphics in this upload, I authorize yall to use in your FCG entries (if you are using RPGMaker), as long as you cite me (bonesiii) and my brother (Ojhilom) for credit. I'm Mr. Freeware, but pixel art is truly hard; for that I prefer cred. NOTE: the Bohrok will be full-sized (so a little shorter than an RPGMaker 2003 charset maximum), and aren't drawn yet, but the Visorak are more like "Kofo-Visorak." They will be officially called that in Enigma Pacman. This is because I'm only doing single-event baddies (for the most part), and someone requested single charset versions of Visorak. Normal Visorak would be about twice as large as the ones I'm drawing, but I did make 'em as big as possible while still being set-accurate. When will that be up? Depends on when I finish the Bohrok and Krana art. Could be as early as tomorrow, but ehhhhhh. The "Kofo-Vissies" are drawn, though. Now go review the epic.
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Alright, got tons of updates. TMOMN, Twisted Island, Endless Blue, Monster Mystery, FCG entry... tons. I've also had a Dreaded Real Life delay... well, two if you count the garage door opener that conked out, but I'll save that for a later entry; got photos to upload for it. 1) TMOMN. We were a-gonna wait to re-upload after the "Dataclysm" till we finished V4, but we've given in and just put up V3.2 again. See the edit added to the firstpost of the topic: BP: The Map of Mata Nui. (Begins with the redbold part after the intro.) That has two download links, plus one Emzee was kind enough to provide while I was busy. Also, the walkthrough links are included in there. 2) FCG contest graphics -- if any of you want to use the graphics from TMOMN, or some bonus ones (Bohrok, Visorak, mainly, as I mentioned in previous blog entries), in your own FCG contest entries, Ojhilom and I are fine with it. You don't need to ask permission (for content entries ONLY!); just remember to give us credit. And if you're gonna, hurry up 'cuz the contest's almost over. 3) Twisted Island. I've rapidly posted several new chapters this week, up to chapter 24. In case any of my readers had been waiting till I had a fair chunk of new content up to read, now I do. It's at a good cliffhangery stopping point for this week now. Here's the link for Chapter 18, which is what I thought was the first new chapter up, though at least one person had seen it already so yeah. And I've been heavily revising later TI chapters. Chapter 23 got the most editing -- I even added several new paragraphs after posting it lol. 4) I have started writing the opening of Endless Blue, trying out some different ways to do it. Before I can get too far Ojh and I have to choose the Blue MOCs winners, heh, but he's away for now. Will do soon... Got several awesome new ideas for some of the key scenes in that epic. It's going to get very scifi. One of my rules for every epic is to try to have an original scifi idea (and to make it mysterious), and I've got several for this'n. Should be fun. The best way I can hint at what you can expect in that epic, aside from mysterious sailing voyages on the Endless Ocean, is that I'm taking some of the main things Greg is doing in official story lately, and approaching it from a very "terrifyingly grand-scale mystery" angle. I'll let y'all puzzle over that for now. 5) I've also started writing the Monster Mystery SS (well, short epic ), as promised in past blog entries. I'm hoping to get that posted either before or shortly after the FCG entry; it takes place before the new game. 6) And, the vast majority of the hard work for our FCG entry is done. Now I just need Ojh to work his coding genius magic on a few things when he gets back next week. I think we'll get it done right on schedule. Of course, I've been wrong about schedules many times before. We'll see... I can't wait to see everybody else's entries lol.
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This is just a reminder that the Bohrok Kool blog contest has an art category. Not all entries have to be MOCs. (All so far have been.)
