Artakha's Location

[Irrie]

Not sure if this has been discussed before since it seems to be kind of an obvious question.
 
But anyway, the map of the Matoran universe released in official material suggests that Artakha was located on the western side of the northern continent, about where one might expect the GSR's shoulder or bicep to be located.

 

The problem with this location is that Artakha, the mythical lost land that hasn't been explored since Tobduk took out everybody who knew how to get there, is a straight line away from the northern continent, assuming that it's on the shoulder. If it's somewhere in the arm, a passage up and over wouldn't be very hard considering how it would still be relatively close to whatever docks or ports would be on the northern continent.

 

And the Federation of Fear gang was able to somehow get to Tren Krom's island without stumbling upon Artakha, or at least if they did it wasn't mentioned in the account.

 

So how is all of this supposed to add up?

[The 1st Shadow]

 

So how is all of this supposed to add up?

Well, first, you take the number of chapters in FoF divided by the number of members on the team. Next, you multiply that result by the number of sapient inhabitants in the MU, then divide by the number of meters in the GSR's height. Then you take the square of the distance between Artahka and the NC, add it to the square of the distance between TK's island and Artahka. From there, we find the square root of that to determine the length of the hypotenuse. Add that result to the number from the previous result and the answer is: Plot convenience.

 

In all seriousness, it's likely that the sea gates leading to Artakha were closed off. That, and you have to consider that the robot is pretty big, and the domes that house the various land masses are not so very small either. There's a lot of sea/ocean to travel through, and if you don't know the exact location of the Artahka sea gates, it's not likely that you'll find them easily, unless you're really bored and have time to sail around the perimeter of all the domes in the MU. And it sounds like after some time, a lot of people in the MU believed the place to be a myth, and so never bothered to look for it. That, or they had other things to do that were more important to them, and so no one ever needed to seek it out.

 

As for why no one would have just sailed right past it, there are multiple sea gates. If you needed to get somewhere without going through another dome, you could just go around it. Also, there's not a lot of important stuff in the robot's right arm, so I doubt anyone would have needed to travel that way.

[Pohaturon]

In terms of proportions, this might be well described with a comparison - if you were to sail from mainland USA to China, is there any guarantee you'll happen upon Hawaii, or any other of the numerous islands littered in between the two?

 

Additionally, I highly doubt killing everyone who knew where the island was located was the only security measure. Likely they had illusions, force-fields or artificial currents set up to prevent anyone from accidentally colliding with Arthaka. 

 

Also, the map released does not show the borders of the domes, or how they are connected. Maybe there is a tributary or other "pipe" leading from the northern continent to the tiny island south of Arthaka from which you physically cannot access Arthaka, and the gates to the Arthaka dome are always sealed and concealed. 

 

[Infrared]

To add on, I think the official MU map is not at all to scale. The islands are shown way bigger than they actually would be. That's because according to BS01's Metru Nui article, Metru Nui is ~40 miles long from north to south, but per lordofthesquids (language is nsfbzp) the MU is ~7,600 miles or ~3,300 miles tall depending on what you go by (~7,600 is the official number and ~3,300 is from Faber's concept art, which is supposedly more consistent with other media). Either way, based on that map, Metru Nui looks way way longer than 40 miles. Also, Mata Nui just about covers the Great Sprit Robot's face, but the map makes it look like the much smaller Metru Nui fills the robot's whole head. All of which is to say that the islands are way smaller than they appear on the map, so there's way more ocean to navigate, and MUans had a much smaller chance of happening on Artakha than the map would suggest.

Also I'm convinced that the map only shows major islands. There are several locations listed on BS01's Locations/Other Locations page that don't reasonably correspond to any islands on the map. Some that stick out are the "Island near Metru Nui" that Naho swam to, the "Island near Stelt," and the "Wooded Island." My bet is that the MU has a whole bunch of minor islands. Even if you made it into Artakha's dome, if there were other islands around you might be less likely to question Artakha on the horizon than if it were the only island around in supposedly empty waters.

tl;dr Don't trust the map.

Edited August 3, 2017 by Infrared

[Icarax16]

Interesting thoughts.