Great Mask Damage.

[Toa Kayn]

I was thinking about Bionicle masks earlier and I started to wonder if the more damaged a mask it, the less effective it becomes.

 

Say there were two Toa Tahu's standing next to each other, one with a brand new mask, and one with chunks missing out of it with scratches. Would the second mask work less effectively?

[Chro]

It certainly is affected by damage.

However, I don't know if it stops working entirely when damaged, or just decreases in power gradually the more beat up it becomes...

[Toa Smoke Monster]

I remember reading in Bionicle Adventures one that Vakama, while looking for his Great Disk, found a Kanohi that had a small crack at the bottom of it. Because of that, it wouldn't work at all. So I think that a Kanohi also wouldn't work period if it had chunks of it missing.

[NuvaTube]

I suspect it depends on the particular type of damage. A lot of the masks in Bionicle show severe wear and tear and work just fine, which makes sense especially as they are meant to work for thousands and thousands of years.

 

I think there would be a layer of protective Protodermis around the bit of the mask that is responsible for the power. I guess whatever the workings of it are, they are probably very complicated. Think of it as being a bit like a phone. It has a protective case and glass which doesn't affect the phone's workings at all, but protect it.

If you start scratching, bending, shattering, denting etc. the phone's inner workings (like the circuit board, camera, battery), then you will start affecting the phones functions. Because the phone is a complicated thing, the damage you inflict on its functions really depends on what kind of damage you cause and whereabouts on the phone you cause this damage. So it's very easy to stop it working completely, and you can also easily make it malfunction.

Because Kanohi involve power outputs, I imagine you can affect this too -- we've seen Kanohi leaking power due to damage. Brutaka's Olmak lost power due to damage Pit Mutagen, and later made unreliable portals. Like a phone, fixing it is almost impossible without specialist knowledge, e.g. unless your a Mask Maker or something, you've got little chance of fixing any complicated damage (Thinking of Vakama fixing the Vahi).

 

So, scratches aren't really an issue unless they're deep enough to reach the inner layers of the Kanohi. Something like a dent would compromise the inner layers, as would a crack.

 

To answer your question, if the Tahu with a Kanohi with chunks missing tried to use his mask, I think it would probably not work at all. Chunks missing sounds like major damage. If the damage were surface scratches, it shouldn't matter at all.

Edited February 7, 2014 by NuvaTube

[Toa Kayn]

I get it, but I was sure that a Kanohi mask is fashioned entirely out of a Kanoka disk, which by the looks of things is just reshaped without adding any said circuitry or anything like that.

[bonesiii]

Because Kanohi involve power outputs, I imagine you can affect this too -- we've seen Kanohi leaking power due to damage.

Just to be clear, pretty sure that has only been true of Legendary masks, or rather the Vahi specifically.

 

I get it, but I was sure that a Kanohi mask is fashioned entirely out of a Kanoka disk, which by the looks of things is just reshaped without adding any said circuitry or anything like that.

Somewhere several months ago on BZP I posted a detailed theory (in a reply, not as a topic) about how masks probably work, looking both at Great and Legendary. I'm not sure how long ago that was, so it might not have survived the recent data loss. But I am planning to include a version of it in a protodermis theory I'm going to launch coinciding with my Bionicle retelling. Short version for now (for Noble & Great) is that you actually can think of it as "circuitry" -- each protodermis molecule should be like a tiny portion of a computer, plus power augmentor. The physical connections between them in my theory act like wires connecting all the computer parts to make one powerful computer, and at the same time all the parts of what actually generate the power. So it's kind of like a brain.

 

The shape it is in, whether poured directly into a mask mold or first as a Kanoka is technically irrelevant to this (though it may have something to do with the difference in activation method between impact-disk and mental-mask). A significant crack running through "important" connections would both mess up the brain's thinking ability (to manage the power properly, possibly enough that it would just stop working) and ability to actually generate it. It would make sense to make these the interior, so surface scratches shouldn't be a big problem, making NT's answer work.

[Toa Kayn]

 

Because Kanohi involve power outputs, I imagine you can affect this too -- we've seen Kanohi leaking power due to damage.

Just to be clear, pretty sure that has only been true of Legendary masks, or rather the Vahi specifically.

 

I get it, but I was sure that a Kanohi mask is fashioned entirely out of a Kanoka disk, which by the looks of things is just reshaped without adding any said circuitry or anything like that.

Somewhere several months ago on BZP I posted a detailed theory (in a reply, not as a topic) about how masks probably work, looking both at Great and Legendary. I'm not sure how long ago that was, so it might not have survived the recent data loss. But I am planning to include a version of it in a protodermis theory I'm going to launch coinciding with my Bionicle retelling. Short version for now (for Noble & Great) is that you actually can think of it as "circuitry" -- each protodermis molecule should be like a tiny portion of a computer, plus power augmentor. The physical connections between them in my theory act like wires connecting all the computer parts to make one powerful computer, and at the same time all the parts of what actually generate the power. So it's kind of like a brain.

 

The shape it is in, whether poured directly into a mask mold or first as a Kanoka is technically irrelevant to this (though it may have something to do with the difference in activation method between impact-disk and mental-mask). A significant crack running through "important" connections would both mess up the brain's thinking ability (to manage the power properly, possibly enough that it would just stop working) and ability to actually generate it. It would make sense to make these the interior, so surface scratches shouldn't be a big problem, making NT's answer work.

 

 

I see, so it would be possible for a mask to have a level of activity that is somewhere between working normally and not working at all? So a Hau could be at the point where the shielding would be extremely weak or flickering.

[Katuko]

It sounds likely, but the margin of error between a working and an inert mask is probably very small. By the point you scratch it enough to disrupt its power, you are causing enough damage to just break it outright. I mean, scratching the paint won't do much, and while I don't view the masks as easy to break they are still kinda thin once you do start tearing into them.

 

I doubt there would be any notable power leakage from a cracked Great Kanohi. As bones' mentions, only Legendary masks have been mentioned to have this trait. If 5-6 levels of Kanoka power leaks out during the mask-making process, what is left is much less than what you started with anyways. If Matoran can do mask-carvings "barehanded", it stands to reason that having the resulting mask cracked would be even less of an issue as far as energy leaks go.

[Zox Tomana]

I remember reading in Bionicle Adventures one that Vakama, while looking for his Great Disk, found a Kanohi that had a small crack at the bottom of it. Because of that, it wouldn't work at all. So I think that a Kanohi also wouldn't work period if it had chunks of it missing.

If I remember this scene correctly, wasn't the mask in question *created* with that flaw? The maker threw it out because it was damaged during the process, not because it was damaged afterwards. If so, then masks which are in the process of being forged are very much susceptible to slight damage, but masks which are finished are much more resistant.

[Pupwa21]

I just thought of this as an excuse for Lego to convince kids not to put them in their mouths or something.

[Katuko]

I just thought of this as an excuse for Lego to convince kids not to put them in their mouths or something.

While that would have been somewhat funny, the company could never rely on such a tactic. We've had much smaller pieces that could be eaten (the Toa's gears, for example), and the given target group is pretty much beyond the "om nom plastic parts" stage anyways. It's possibly a bit interesting to note that the Nui-Jaga sets had such powerful stingers that they could dent the Kanohi, and for a kid like me such a function would register purely as "that's awesome" and "I want to see what it can break" -- which would be far more of a danger than eating Kanohi ever could be. It's probably for the best that I never got a Nui-Jaga set. While I was always very careful not to scratch or break parts, I do have some regular LEGO bricks that have black marks from when I used one of those Technic motors to slam a propeller blade into them.

 

What I'm saying is that if LEGO invented the "scratched masks don't work" line as a reason to keep kids in check, they did a bad job at following up given the sheer amount of focus there was on knocking masks off with gear and stinger functions during the first few years.

[Chro]

I just thought of this as an excuse for Lego to convince kids not to put them in their mouths or something.

Something tells me that people who would try to eat masks wouldn't quite care about the in-story value of having intact Kanohi.

[Toa Of Anarchy]

Or maybe they loved the story so much they wanted to become "one" with it

More on topic, I believe the mask you all are discussing is the one made by Nuhrii in Metru Nui, the mask had a small hairline fracture in its chin. For further note, this was a powerless mask, designed for Matoran use, not going to be infused with power. I assume that a hairline fracture would make the mask unusable, whether it was just being used for breathing or for channeling power.

[Dralcax]

I believe it becomes more difficult to control when damaged because the power starts leaking. When Brutaka sent Takanuva to Karda Nui, poor Takanuva had to go through several random dimensions first because of the bad condition of the Olmak. Also, when the Vahi got cracked, it started to cause trouble for some nearby fish by aging random stuff that got too close. As well, when the Ignika started to crack, I recall Pridak held a random fish up to the crack and it started mutating. Although less-powerful masks probably wouldn't have the strength to affect things near the fracture, it would almost certainly become unusable.