Matoran Burials

[Archon~]

I was reading the Red Star topic relating to Jaller's death and it got me thinking, what do MU inhabitants do with their deceased?

[Taria Pakari]

That is a good question. Perhaps they bury them like we do or have some other ritual? We never really saw what they did with Jaller's old body. Maybe the old bodies simply vanish after a while as they are transported to the Red Star.

 

Or maybe they recycle the inorganic parts of beings, as gruesome as that sounds... :v

[Archon~]

Yeah they vanish, but like would you just leave them there to rust for a few days/weeks/months?

[SPIRIT]

A quick search on BS01 reveals a few references to graves:
 
"As leader of the Order of Mata Nui, Helryx had often had to make decisions that sent agents to their deaths. It came with the job. But could she make a decision that would send an entire universe to its grave?"
 
"Did he find a hero's grave in these waters, do you think? Or just a final resting place in the mud for a fool?"

But these could arguably be more figurative than literal.

 

Then there's the Rahi Autopsy Room from Swamp of Secrets, suggesting that at least Rahi don't poof out of existence right away, nor do they get any sort of ceremonial burial.

 

And then there's the death of Jaller, where they put his mask in some column of light.  Everyone seemed cool with that, so maybe it's the norm?  Hard to know whether Takanuva's powers were involved in that -- a lot in Mask of Light goes unexplained.

[Toa Smoke Monster]

They feed the bodies to the local wildlife.

 

Bad joke aside, I honestly have no idea.  I did, however, that something on the Red Star's BS01 page about this subject:

 

 

 

Beings who died in the Matoran Universe were transported to the Red Star,

 

From the way this sounds, it appears that the bodies of those that died in the MU were simply teleported to the Red Star. I imagine there would some exceptions, like the Makuta's antidermis forms, that couldn't be teleported to it. I may be missing something on this, but that may be because I'm not the biggest fan of this particular power of the Red Star and have mentally blocked it out of my head when I think of Gen 1 Bionicle.

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

pretty sure i'm gonna chime in that the "teleported to the red star" is a confusing retcon, as such important people as toa lhikan died, and were presumably put into the equivalent of graves (see above references to the term "grave" which any good story writer would consider before using.

 

and as i feel they wouldn't put people in graves if they knew they'd vanish, and as there is no note to lhikan evaporating at any given point makes me feel that they just left Jaller offscreen on the surface in MOL and only brought his mask, and that when the redstar does the redstar, it creates new bodies via some machine majycks.

 

 

which also makes sense, given one can also die of AGE at which point putting them back in the worn out body is absurd.

[Toa Imrukii]

They tear and cut the flesh from the metal bones and exoskeletons and bury the metal casings in the ground and burn the torn and cut off fleshy bits. Whilst with the mask they keep them locked up in a sacred place. In my head they would eventually take the casings form the ground and take the once sacred masks and make grand underground catacombs from the parts and masks from the long dead. There are places just like this in real life by the way. Catacombs decorated with the bones of the long deceased. Plague victims and dead soldiers mostly.

[Kopekemaster]

I remember reading this tumblr post or something about some ideas someone had about it, and one of them for Le-Koro was that they'd catapult the dead bodies in the general direction of Ga-Wahi. Always cracks me up.

 

Other than that, I dunno. SPIRIT seemed to have some good insights.

[MrSciFiGuy]

I imagine that it is still rooted in a tribal sense. They would honor the mask on the wall or have a carved pillar/post ontop of a viewpoint.

[Archon~]

Follow up wuesfion, when MU beings die of old age are they reincarnated by RS or just let be?

[TheSkeletonMan939]

No MU being has ever died of old age.

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

No MU being has ever died of old age.

 

somehow.

[Toa Imrukii]

 

No MU being has ever died of old age.

 

 

somehow.

Eh... Not all beings. Most or many, but not all. Some beings DO age, but those beings aren't known in anything more than the Dark Hunters.

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

 

 

No MU being has ever died of old age.

 

somehow.

Eh... Not all beings. Most or many, but not all. Some beings DO age, but those beings aren't known in anything more than the Dark Hunters.

 

 

yeah i was adding "somehow" cuz it suspends disbelief that they don't die of age, since death by age is about how well your body can hold up, and given the Toa rotted apart in their own canisters, i don't think Bionicle characters have systems capable of 10000+ years of constant labor.

[toa kopaka4372]

 

 

 

No MU being has ever died of old age.

 

somehow.

Eh... Not all beings. Most or many, but not all. Some beings DO age, but those beings aren't known in anything more than the Dark Hunters.

 

 

yeah i was adding "somehow" cuz it suspends disbelief that they don't die of age, since death by age is about how well your body can hold up, and given the Toa rotted apart in their own canisters, i don't think Bionicle characters have systems capable of 10000+ years of constant labor.

 

Pretty sure it was specifies that the Toa Mata rotted away from lack of activity. Most people in the MU would never have found themselves in situations where they remained inactive and immobile for tens of thousands of years, so I don't think that really serves as evidence that their bodies can't remain functional for that long.

 

To answer the OP's question, we know that graves exist in the MU due to various references for them, but most graves don't seem to have been for actual inhabitants like the Matoran and the like. Rahi, for example, are not transported to the Red Star, so their bodies are left behind and rot away. This is consistent with all of the Rahi carcasses we have seen throughout the story (dead Rahi throughout Maze of Shadows, dead Visorak in Reign of Shadows, etc.). Also, the Toa Hordika bury a ton of dead Visorak in Challenge of the Hordika, so the concept of burial was known to them likely as a result of Rahi not disappearing upon death. In places like Mata Nui and Voya Nui (after the GC) where the Red Star wouldn't have reached (since they're outside the MU), normal Matoran and the like would have been buried as well. For the most part, though, most sapient beings were not buried since they were transported to the Star. I recall Greg saying at some point that there were some mystical beliefs that they had become one with Mata Nui, or something of the sort. 

[Regitnui]

I recall Greg saying at some point that there were some mystical beliefs that they had become one with Mata Nui, or something of the sort.

Wonder how that held up when the guy reappeared two months later with the same mask and job.

[Alyska]

Mask of Light's novelisation refers to Jaller being placed in a "suva-like grave", though this may not be canon given some of the other stuff in the book.

[toa kopaka4372]

 

I recall Greg saying at some point that there were some mystical beliefs that they had become one with Mata Nui, or something of the sort.

Wonder how that held up when the guy reappeared two months later with the same mask and job.

 

The guy wouldn't reappear. The Red Star malfunctioned very early in its existence, so that the people sent there never returned (hence the reason the Kestora started killing people on it in order to not "run out of room").

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

 

yeah i was adding "somehow" cuz it suspends disbelief that they don't die of age, since death by age is about how well your body can hold up, and given the Toa rotted apart in their own canisters, i don't think Bionicle characters have systems capable of 10000+ years of constant labor.

Pretty sure it was specifies that the Toa Mata rotted away from lack of activity. Most people in the MU would never have found themselves in situations where they remained inactive and immobile for tens of thousands of years, so I don't think that really serves as evidence that their bodies can't remain functional for that long

 

 

Okay ya, toa mata probably not the best example, but what i was pointing to was basically that when your body is ?% organic and ?% mechanical at least one of those two things has a timer ticking away at just how long it can live, hence, death, and death is usually followed by graves. (the mention of graves in the context of people supports this, or, greg had no idea what he was writing when using those phrases. pick yer poison.)

 

 

 

 

I recall Greg saying at some point that there were some mystical beliefs that they had become one with Mata Nui, or something of the sort.

Wonder how that held up when the guy reappeared two months later with the same mask and job.

 

The guy wouldn't reappear. The Red Star malfunctioned very early in its existence, so that the people sent there never returned (hence the reason the Kestora started killing people on it in order to not "run out of room").

 

 

Red  Star 2001: Mystical heavenly body that determines and predicts destinies

 

Red Star 2010: Useless garbage device, breaks the moment you shoot it into orbit.

[toa kopaka4372]

Okay ya, toa mata probably not the best example, but what i was pointing to was basically that when your body is ?% organic and ?% mechanical at least one of those two things has a timer ticking away at just how long it can live, hence, death, and death is usually followed by graves. (the mention of graves in the context of people supports this, or, greg had no idea what he was writing when using those phrases. pick yer poison.)

 

I'm not disputing that the organic and mechanical components of the bodies of MU inhabitants will eventually break down, leading to death; the point is that it hasn't happened yet. Helryx, the very first Toa, is just fine despite being around since the very beginning of the MU's existence. That tells us that the normal lifespan of an MU inhabitants exceeds 100,00 years. No one from there has lived long enough to die of old age yet, so that would have been a non-issue throughout MU history. You mentioned earlier that it breaks suspension of disbelief for them to be capable of lasting that long, but I don't see how that is the case; there's no reason to assume that organic and mechanical material in the BIONICLE universe behaves identically to ours. If the story says they can last that long and remains consistent with that assertion, then that's how it is. The inhabitants of Bara Magna are mostly organic, and yet Gresh, who is older than Mata Nui himself, is considered "young" among the Glatorian. One can only imagine how old you'd have to be on BM to die of age, and that's with people who have almost no mechanical components. 

 

Throughout 10 years of G1 story, we never saw someone actually being put in a grave or visiting a grave of a deceased person, and I recall Greg bringing this up back in 2011 around the time of the Red Star reveal, which was partially meant to explain what happened to dead bodies since the story always avoided the topic. As I mentioned above, though, we do know that Rahi didn't disappear (no RS transport for them) and so had to be buried, and we saw the Toa Hordika burying a bunch of dead Visorak in Challenge of the Hordika, so MUians understood and implemented the concept of graves, just not necessarily for themselves. As such, seeing mentions of them in the story isn't that odd. 

 

 

 

Red  Star 2001: Mystical heavenly body that determines and predicts destinies

 

Red Star 2010: Useless garbage device, breaks the moment you shoot it into orbit.

 

 

If I recall correctly, the Red Star broke down because Gaardus messed up the system during his time there. It was working fine before then (granted "before then" wasn't all that much). 

Edited May 20, 2016 by toa kopaka4372

[Nidhiki of the Shadows]

Maybe someone has brought this up already in the topic, but didn't Greg say the lack of burials was connected to the Red Star revival process? I'd take Jaller's "grave" or the more figurative descriptions of death in the franchise as nothing more than just artistic interpretations of how it could be done, but canonically its not something that was practiced. That being said, if Jaller's grave was really just a memorial of sorts and not a burial, I could see that kind of commemoration of life being commonplace in the Matoran Universe. 

 

-NotS

[CyclonatorZ]

Reason number one the Red Star retcon was a bad idea: Greg F saying something along the lines of "there's a very good reason you don't see grave sites in the MU." Except for, you know, all the corpses that Matoro resurrected with his literal zombie-making mask.

Edited May 22, 2016 by ~~Zarkan~~

[Nidhiki of the Shadows]

Reason number one the Red Star retcon was a bad idea: Greg F saying something along the lines of "there's a very good reason you don't see grave sites in the MU." Except for, you know, all the corpses that Matoro resurrected with his literal zombie-making mask.

Those were presumably Rahi though. I do not believe Rahi were sent up to the Red Star.

 

EDIT: Heck, they don't have to be Rahi. They could have been organic beasts native to Aqua Magna, since the Pit was above the dormant Mata Nui robot. 

 

-NotS

Edited May 23, 2016 by Nidhiki of the Shadows

[toa kopaka4372]

 

Reason number one the Red Star retcon was a bad idea: Greg F saying something along the lines of "there's a very good reason you don't see grave sites in the MU." Except for, you know, all the corpses that Matoro resurrected with his literal zombie-making mask.

Those were presumably Rahi though. I do not believe Rahi were sent up to the Red Star.

 

EDIT: Heck, they don't have to be Rahi. They could have been organic beasts native to Aqua Magna, since the Pit was above the dormant Mata Nui robot. 

 

-NotS

 

In addition to the above points, Matoro and the other Toa Mahri spent much of their time around Mahri Nui, in the ocean of Aqua Magna, which is beyond the bounds of the Matoran Universe; the Red Star does not revive biomechanical beings that die outside of the MU. So, all the Mahri Nui Matoran that died, for example, remained permanently dead. Matoro would have had plenty of corpses to use. Of course, as mentioned above, the important point is that Rahi are not revived and so their bodies are left behind, so Matoro would have had plenty of corpses to use even if he had been inside the Matoran Universe. 

[CyclonatorZ]

 

 

Reason number one the Red Star retcon was a bad idea: Greg F saying something along the lines of "there's a very good reason you don't see grave sites in the MU." Except for, you know, all the corpses that Matoro resurrected with his literal zombie-making mask.

Those were presumably Rahi though. I do not believe Rahi were sent up to the Red Star.

 

EDIT: Heck, they don't have to be Rahi. They could have been organic beasts native to Aqua Magna, since the Pit was above the dormant Mata Nui robot. 

 

-NotS

 

In addition to the above points, Matoro and the other Toa Mahri spent much of their time around Mahri Nui, in the ocean of Aqua Magna, which is beyond the bounds of the Matoran Universe; the Red Star does not revive biomechanical beings that die outside of the MU. So, all the Mahri Nui Matoran that died, for example, remained permanently dead. Matoro would have had plenty of corpses to use. Of course, as mentioned above, the important point is that Rahi are not revived and so their bodies are left behind, so Matoro would have had plenty of corpses to use even if he had been inside the Matoran Universe. 

 

 

I just checked my personal copy of Bionicle Legends #7, and yeah, you are indeed right about the corpses being specifically described as Rahi or other non-sentient creatures. Regarding the range of the Red Star revival mechanism, I was orginally going to say that felt like a rather huge cop-out, considering that I could have have sworn that retcon was originally pitched by Greg as the method by which he would finally explain Mask of Light's gaping plot holes. But then I remembered that both instances of resurrection in that movie technically happened within the MU - just at the edge of it, to be precise. Man, my knowledge of the Bionicle canon is a bit rusty these days. I guess I'm too busy building my own to worry about retcons that didn't even actually have a chance to happen within the written story. 

Edited May 23, 2016 by ~~Zarkan~~