MNOG Chronicle – Chapter VI – The Culture and Meaning of Tohunga and Turaga

Before the 2004 storyline

Matoran into Toa, Toa into Turaga, Turaga into Legend. This model of understanding the way of the Bionicle was taught to us in our childhood, when the grass was greener, Miramax was still alive and the trilogy was but a duology. Vakama uttered the now sacred words "You are not the first Toa" at the end of 2003, leading us into the 2004 – 2005 prequel storyline about Metru Nui and the Toa Metru, the original forms of the current Turaga. However, according to the words of Alastair Swinnerton, this twist was a later addition and was missing from the original story bible when it was first written in 1999. So, the entire system of Matoran (back then Tohunga) becoming Toa and the Toa becoming Turaga wasn't part of the canon at the time. Those three were actually different species. The idea of making the Turaga former Toa came to be during 2003, when the next year's story was being developed.

MNOG Chronicle – Chapter V – The Rahi breeding cycle

The role of Rahi in the GSR world then and now

During the release of the first generation of Bionicle (2001-2010), Rahi were extremely interesting and rich invariety on the one hand and a very debatable topic qua their role in the general canon on the other. At this present moment we are left with an unsolved issue – in the modern canon, the existence of Rahi isn't justified by any means. They are just inhabitants of a fictional world that Makuta created from Viruses and Protodermis to inhabit the Matoran Universe and for personal reasons, e.g. to serve as guards. How the Matoran Universe's wellbeing was improved by this high population of creatures was never explained. It seems sometimes that the creation of Rahi was an end in and of itself for the insane Makuta, but explaining it bysaying that the Great Beings work in mysterious ways is too simple – which is why this question remains so prevalent in the general fan community. 

MNOG Chronicle – Chapter IV – Secrets of Kaita

The concept of the Kaita today

Before we start, I should note that the concept of the Kaita as they appeared in 2001 has some differences from the one we saw in 2003–2010. To begin, I’d like to talk about how Kaita work in the new, Greg-approved, sacred canon. 

MNOG Chronicle – Chapter III – Sky Father Rangi and Earth Mother Papu

The original legend of Bionicle 

Before we start digging for clues about the existence of the Great Beings within MNOG I want to introduce you to the deepest and most obscure pieces of lore, the kind that will completely flip your perception of what Bionicle is and will explain why I love 2001-2003 so much; I'll be referring in this to the investigative work by Maku from BZP, I really recommend you to read the entire text. I, personally, downloaded it, printed it out, bound it in Technic pieces and now pray to it every night in front of a shrine dedicated to 2001-2003.

MNOG Chronicle – Chapter II – The Hidden 7th Tribe

А word from the creators

Let’s first ask the guys from Templar Games (the studio that gave us both installments of MNOG and the 2002-2004 animations) what for info about what tribe this is and where it came from. 

MNOG Chronicle – Chapter I – Lhii the Surfer

Instead of the preamble 

I would like to dedicate the first article of this series to who perhaps might be the most mysterious Tohunga on the entirety of Mata Nui. He is not known by a lot of people, but his history kept on changing, twisting and turning throughout the entirety of G1 and even after its cancellation. While some of us were buying Piraka and forcing our parents to purchase battery pack after battery pack for some godforsaken purpose, the true fans were reading the small tidbits released about this mysterious character. And today, we will walk down their lonely road and become a bit more informed as a result. 

MNOG Chronicle. Prologue

I’ll say it right away without complicated introductions – it's all because of Maku aka The Shadow Emperor. This guy with his document “Early & Unused Story Concepts in Bionicle” showed me the other side of the Bionicle, the one that I always dreamed about and which I always tried to comprehend, considering the fascinating concept-arts by Christian Faber. This is a document that I highly recommend checking out before reading my articles. Since Maku and I accidentally found out about each other, thanks to Peri, we share with each other the finds of the original story. The resulting symbiosis is very important to me, and I sincerely hope that these articles will also infect someone with the idea of ​​an early Bionicle.

MNOG. The game that many fans rightly consider the best media in the history of the franchise. And I also love this little piece of art madly. But this block of articles will be devoted not so much to the game itself as to the secrets that it hides. MNOG for me is not a reason, but an occasion to tell about the very original lore from the Story Bible, written by Alastair Swinnerton and Bob Thompson. Many people stereotypically believe that the early Bionicle was a naive tale and nothing more. To some extent, yes, since it is still the backdrop for the sale of toys, and we need to keep it in mind all the time. But we also cannot ignore the fact that Bob Thompson with his famous Seven Books of Bionicle wanted to create a complex and large world in which its study prevails over the narrative. Everything was built around the idea of ​​the Big Secret and was strung on it by a huge number of small details and secrets. It is hard to deny that the 2001–2003 Bionicle made a strong bet precisely on the atmosphere of mystery and the fact that “everything is not so simple here”.

2001–2003 was the first book among the cycles of Bob Thompson, and it is logical that this book was to lay the foundation for the subsequent disclosure of the world. We were shown a huge number of strange and incomprehensible things, many of which, after Thompson left the company in 2005, were not justified, but forgotten or repelled. And in this block in each article I will take one of the elements of the game and carefully examine it with the help of Kanohi Akaku, extracting for you a grain after grain of an untold story.