Jump to content

Origins of the Toa Code


Recommended Posts

I was thinking about the Toa Code and how it prevented them from joining the Order of Mata Nui. Toa cannot kill their enemies, while the Order of Mata Nui frequently kills; even their own members are not safe as seen when the Order killed anyone who knew the location of Artakha. The Toa have a moral code to ensure that they don't let their power corrupt (as Tuyet did). This all makes sense until you consider The Pit, the Order of Mata Nui's ultimate punishment. The Pit is not an execution chamber, but a prison meant to hold beings for life.

Why would an organization who would willingly to permanently silence their own members and refuses to allow Code-Bound Toa to join not be willing to execute their own prisoners? In fact, they go even further by sending Botar to stop them from being executed by others (Tuyet and the Barraki are prime examples) and instead imprison them in a supposedly inescapable prison. Even after the destruction of The Pit, they build a new prison on Daxia instead of changing policy. The Order is nothing if not efficient and secretive, yet this seems like the most inefficient practice of all time and has a high probability of allowing secrets (about The Pit and the Order's existence) to leak.

 

Greg :
Mata Nui was supposed to be a self-sustaining system, and obviously, certain individuals played very important roles in maintaining it. In addition, it necessarily had finite resources for producing new beings to replace any lost in accidents, etc. Hence the red star -- a being who died inside Mata Nui would be teleported to the red star where their essence would be transplanted into another body and they would be sent back. Unfortunately, as with so many things related to Mata Nui's construction, it didn't work very well. The teleporting "to" worked but the teleporting "from" didn't, so a lot of newly revived dead folk were stuck on the satellite with no way to get back home.

from the Eberus topic

I think this brings up an interesting point. Anyone who has played an MMOG knows about the idea of someone killing your character, then staying where the battle happened until you respawn and killing you again, on and on. To avoid something like that, the red star does not send you back to where you started from. They might send you back a long way from where you started from, and who knows what you might encounter there that would prevent you from getting back to where you started from.

 

from Lego Message Boards Link Here

 

The Red Star explains the necessity of The Pit, beings killed in the Matoran Universe would (if the Red Star worked) reappear late . This explains the actions of the Order perfectly: the only way to permanently stop someone is to imprison them, if they are killed they can simply cause havoc elsewhere. Not even Helryx needs to know the true reason, if she knows (from Mata Nui or the Great Beings) that imprisonment is the only permanent solution no one in the Order would question it. Teridax clearly did not know about this when he tried to have the Barraki executed. Mutran would later tell him after learning from Tren Krom, the only being in the Matoran Universe besides Mata Nui who seemed to know.

This brings us back to the Toa Code. For so long we were told that the Code was a matter of morals, that the Toa didn't kill their opponents because they were "above" doing so. This is the view taken by the Toa themselves. But the existence of the Red Star brings up another theory: The Toa Code was a matter of ruthless efficiency. If Toa killed their opponents, they would (in theory) simply reappear elsewhere. I see this as a possible story direction, can you imagine Tahu learning that the law he believed made him not a monster was nothing more than another Great Being contingency. Some Toa would not be very affected (Zaria would probably feel better) but Toa like Tahu would be devastated.

 

  • Upvote 10
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a really interesting thought. But what about the ones that the Order did execute? Assuming the system worked perfectly they would just reappear elsewhere. Perhaps they assassinated by disintegration, as that would be the method which left the least evidence, and kept you from being revived as a bonus. But that only makes the question of when to execute or imprison more confusing regarding which was more efficient. Maybe they hoped to not be totally immoral monsters?

 

Other than that point, this seems to makes sense. I wouldn't see it affecting the Toa very much though. The idea that their more moralistic Code is also the more efficient would probably make them want to stand by it more. Those who killed in the early days (when the system worked) were not only immoral, but wasteful of effort. That can be a good card to play when it comes to talking about the practicality of one approach or another.

 

I thought the Toa Code was developed over time, though =/

~~-BS01 Histories-~~
by Zox Tomana, B.A. - Blog

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very interesting theory N.S.M.8 kudos to you!

 

It actually got me thinking that perhaps the M.U inhabitants don't know how the Red Star works either, I mean Kopaka and Pohatu got their minds wiped after spending all those years inside their canisters and the Matoran of Metru Nui lost theirs too with the Spheres so maybe they knew years ago but nowadays don't.

I guess in the past if, say, a Matoran got killed by and avalanche he would appear a couple days later telling everyone how he isn't completely sure how it happened but it just happened.

Regarding the killing thing, if my assumption is right then nobody knows that kiiling someone meant they would go back thanks to the Red Star because if they knew then there would be no point in the Dark Hunters killing anyone who gets in their way or the BoM or the OoMN, plus, how would they know that the system doesn't work anymore?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting theory!

 

But wouldn't the Order "change their policy" once they found out that the system broke? I guess that they didn't want to take the chance that the system might "get fixed" and all their dangerous enemies came back? :shrugs: It's possible that the Toa Code (or the tendancies that led to it) might have been programmed into the Toa because of this system. Nice. :)

 

Also there might be practical things going on with this though, like if the Order needed to extract information from a prisoner/nefarious villain, they would know where he was. And the Toa were probably meant to stop errant Rahi and misbehaving Matoran for the most part, not destroy them, and it could have come from that too - the Matoran probably wanted assurance that their heroes weren't going to turn on them and kill them Toa Empire-style, for example.

 

But that doesn't eliminate this factor from consideration.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A second thought that came out of this: this depends somewhat on how long it has been since the system broke. If it broke a LOOOOONG time ago, and I mean long for them and not us, then it could be that they did notice people began to not reappear, that lethal damage was "really lethal". The Toa Code, like you said, may have developed out of an efficiency protocol, but instead of it being "the most effective way" it is a backup "most resource saving way."

 

My other thought that came along with this was: The Order would have a pretty hard time containing a creature like a Makuta, so imprisonment for them was probably never an option. As regards the Artakha Massacre victims: the Pit was supposed to be inescapable, but on the slim "what if" chance that people in the Pit did break out... would you really want ticked off, former OoMN members who know where Artakha is running around? In this case, killing them all is more about being sure to be definitive about erasing all of the knowledge about Artakha's location. This, of course, depends on the system having been broken for a long, long time such that they are quite aware that lethal damage means permanent removal from the system.

~~-BS01 Histories-~~
by Zox Tomana, B.A. - Blog

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Seems reasonable, and would definitely make for an interesting story direction like you said. Two thoughts came to mind that make it possibly not the main consideration, though:

First, the part of the Toa Code's reasoning we were given about how killing enemies who may potentially have information you need is unwise would always apply, Red Star or not. This applies to the Order too -- so we wouldn't ever expect them to execute all of their enemies.

Second, we have known for a while there's at least one way to kill people without the RS being able to revive them, and Greg has now confirmed another. If there's no body left at all, or if the brain is destroyed. Of course, that doesn't mean the Order knows that. But if they do, they could execute whoever they wanted whether the RS Sendback teleporter was working or not.

Although, Greg also said that if the person had died before and had been revived and sent back*, and then died without brain intact (unclear if there has to be a bit of body left here), they could still be revived based on the record of the previous revival, just with a memory gap. So, possibly there were some enemies the Order actually couldn't execute reliably at all. (Which makes me think that if the Sendback did used to work, some enemies might have actually committed non-brain-injuring suicide early in life as insurance! Freaky...)

*We don't actually know if anybody was ever sent back. He's implied Lesovikk's team probably was (although that seems problematic considering they were killed with Zyglak, who have disintegration staffs, which presumably would leave no body). And the situation with Gaardus seemed to imply it worked before he came to the RS. But Greg's original revelation quote seemed to say it had never worked.


Anywho. It's still possible the revival thing could have been the main original reason for the Code, although in some cases it would be obvious they needed information. But in the ones where that isn't obvious, they might not have yet thought of the many other practical reasons Greg has mentioned besides the morality of it (like keeping the Matoran's respect). And if they don't know of the way to kill unrevivably, etc. (Possibly the Order does but the Toa don't.)

My other thought that came along with this was: The Order would have a pretty hard time containing a creature like a Makuta, so imprisonment for them was probably never an option.

Depends on what they know; we do know that imprisoning Makuta has to be possible since Miserix was imprisoned. If the Order knew about that, they could study how it was done and replicate it (maybe). And it seems that Makuta may only have access to their powers when their antidermis is in a body of some sort; we never saw the antidermis in the vat on Voya Nui using its powers. Possibly all you'd have to do is destroy their armor (though no easy task!) and put them in a strong vat somewhere. :shrugs:

  • Upvote 2

The Destiny of Bionicle (chronological retelling of Bionicle original series, 9 PDFs of 10 chapters each on Google Drive)Part 1 - Warring with Fate | Part 2 - Year of Change | Part 3 - The Exploration Trap | Part 4 - Rise of the Warlords | Part 5 - A Busy Matoran | Part 6 - The Dark Time | Part 7 - Proving Grounds | Part 8 - A Rude Awakening | Part 9 - The Battle of Giants

My Bionicle Fanfiction  (Google Drive folder, eventually planned to have PDFs of all of it)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

(Which makes me think that if the Sendback did used to work, some enemies might have actually committed non-brain-injuring suicide early in life as insurance! Freaky...)

If death and revival happened often enough, you could likely gleam some information about the system by observing who returns and not. If someone was willing to take the risk, they might suicide just to see what happens. I doubt that anyone was ever meant to see much of the Red Star, though, just a flash as their consciousness returns and the body is teleported back to the MU. As such, it'd take a lot of deaths and respawns in your vicinity before you could confirm that you can return after being killed in a "permanent" way, if you have been revived before. Even if it occurred to you that you might be revived from disintegration, you would forget that that is how it happened because you would respawn with no memories of anything past the last "proper" revival. If you remembered your death, you would remember the one where you died from a stab wound or something, not disintegration beams.

 

So yeah, interesting thought, but I don't think anyone would have been able to cross reference enough deaths to realize how revival works in detail.

 

If you did know, though, and revival took less than a day, then committing suicide once a week to save a "backup" would actually be kind of useful. Macabre, but useful.

 

 

 

Depends on what they know; we do know that imprisoning Makuta has to be possible since Miserix was imprisoned. If the Order knew about that, they could study how it was done and replicate it (maybe). And it seems that Makuta may only have access to their powers when their antidermis is in a body of some sort; we never saw the antidermis in the vat on Voya Nui using its powers. Possibly all you'd have to do is destroy their armor (though no easy task!) and put them in a strong vat somewhere. :shrugs:

There are many powers in the MU that can affect metal, so if they could take the Makuta by surprise they might go down as easily as Tridax did. Then they could seal the antidermis somehow, perhaps with some form of Shostbusters-styled device or a vacuum cleaner. :) Tridax is pretty much proof that the Makuta can not use powers when outside of their shells, by the way. He tried a mental attack or something, but if he could it would probably have been more efficient to teleport away or use some other physical power to incapacitate Trinuma.

Edited by Katuko
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...