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.

The working name of the Robot – Core 2 – makes more sense than ever before. 

The legend goes something like this – long ago the Lego company decided to get out of the 90's crisis and prove to the Hasbros and Mattels of the world who the true OG of toys was. To do so they reached to four great martyrs – Bob Thompson, Christian Faber, Martin Andersen and Alastair Swinnerton. The last one is the most interesting one, since the original bible was written under his pen (as a brief summation of his role in Bionicle – he interwove words and concepts from Maori culture into the theme and gave our heroes the names we all know – Lewa, Tahu, Gali instead of the generic Axe, Hook, Sword, etc.).

“The backstory of the Mata Nui robot was detailed by Alastair Swinnerton in the first few Bionicle story bibles. It bears some similarities to the Shattering backstory we got in 2009, but some elements were removed or retrofitted amidst story changes after Mr. Swinnerton’s departure—most notably Makuta’s original backstory, which will be detailed in a later section.

The original concept for the Bionicle universe began with the destruction of a planet. The Great Beings planned to colonize a new world and to this end they created a biomechanical evacuation ship called Mata Nui to transport their civilization, which was held in suspended animation, to a safe haven elsewhere in the universe. Throughout the journey the ship was crewed by the Tohunga, who worked with Rahi to maintain the ship and its systems. The Toa served as security officers. Another part of Mata Nui’s systems was the Bohrok, whose job was to clean the debris from the robot’s exterior once it arrived. Upon reaching the destination world Mata Nui was meant to lay the groundwork for the civilization to thrive once again.

However, something went wrong during the voyage. An entity known as The Makuta sabotaged the mission, infecting the ship with a virus which caused Mata Nui to crash land on the planet with only its head, knees and feet emerging from the ocean. The cataclysm scrambled the memories of the crew, who, sans the Toa, disembarked onto the island of Mata Nui, completely ignorant of their true purpose. Claiming the island as his own, Makuta spread his dark infection from the robot’s interior onto the land, weakening the islanders’ abilities and enslaving the Rahi beasts that now roamed wild. Meanwhile the original inhabitants remained in stasis deep inside the robot, forgotten by all.”

This really gets one's imagination going, doesn't it? To be fair – this little excerpt from Maku speaks for itself and the only thing I can add to this is that it is still amazing. I know people who don't like the original concept and I can perfectly understand them – but, as for me, the summary above is the Bionicle we deserve. Everything has its place, everything has a certain role and motivation. There are only six Toa, Rahi are an alternative for Matoran vehicles, the island is not some really strange form of camouflage... something-or-other but is the base for the rebirth of an entire civilization and the Bohrok are a machine responsible for the total relaunch of the GSR if the GB's decide to move to another planet. Even the size of Mata Nui is explained rather well because the robot houses the population of an entire planet and the resources required to (re)colonize other planets. A very simple and condensed world model, that had the potential to be developed in a totally different direction than the one that was taken after Bob Thompson left the company.

The secret of the Red Star

The Red Star was and remained one of the most difficult nuts to crack with regards to Bionicle secrets for many years. You think that what Greg explained about the RS serving as a resurrection mechanism for old characters was planned from the beginning? That's not entirely the case. 

How about the small planetary map in the house of the Astrologer? If I remember correctly then the the small circle is the Red Star, while the bigger circle is the natural satellite of the Mata Nui planet.

“A few more things of note: the Red Star was present in the story bible, functioning as some kind of orbiting mothership (according to Gordon Klimes of Templar Studios); a post from Greg Farshtey would seem to confirm that the Red Star’s function in aiding Mata Nui’s takeoff was also planned. One line from an early story bible described the Bionicle planet as “a place that might be earth” (Greg).” 

Swinnerton said that there never were any concrete thoughts about the race of the Great Beings. They could've been humans, ancient lovecraftian entities, green plastic army men or reptilian shape-shifters from the White House – that is not important for the story. What is important is what they do and what role they play and not how they look and what they eat for breakfast. And that is the correct way of handling the issue, considering that the unveiling of their identity would destroy their aura of mysteriousness and wouldn't allow us to see them as the gods of Mata Nui – the way it is supposed to be. Not all secrets should be revealed. 

Even all this aside, the idea about the Red Star being a mothership still makes more sense than what was eventually given to us in the web-serials about the resurrection of the dead. And if we know that the Red Star is the place from which the entire journey of Mata Nui is controlled and we know that the Toa arrive from the heavens it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume that it is also the place from which the godlike Papu and Rangi watch over the Tohunga. At least, that is what is suggested by the glossary of Bionicle the Game from 2003: 

«The Toa are six legendary heroes sent to Mata Nui by the Great Beings…»

By the way, that is also said in the comic book “Deep into Darkness” from 2001.

However, the way I see it, the role of the Red Star was never actually fully planned out, at least not by 2001. Maku did point my attention to another interesting moment relating to the Red Star. Greg Farshtey always said that he never remembered any mention of the Red Star or Papu and Rangi in any bibles while Gordon Klimes told the opposite. That gives us reason to suspect that the Great Beings were somehow involved with the RS but were cut out because of the Maori conflict. It should be noted that after 2001 the Red Star didn't appear in any material with the exception of a small 2004 video that recapped the events of the three previous years.

The second appearance would be in 2006, when somehow, it shot lightning at the Matoran and transformed them into Toa Inika, which is the Matoran word for Star Energy. Maku has theorized that this mysterious transformation was Bob Thompson’s idea. Thompson was the story head for Bionicle from 2000-2005 and became famous for his idea about the seven Bionicle books – similar to the books from Avatar: The Last Airbender. We also know that the Ignition story arc was his third book, just after Mata Nui and Metru Nui, but after he left the company the whole idea was reworked with the exception of some major elements such as the Mask of Life and the three main locations – the Floating Island, the Anchor City and the Giant Power Plant. 

Maku’s theory says that the things that the Red Star did are an uncut concept of Bob's and that is because of two reasons. First off – it is the starting point for the entire core and birth of the main heroes of that year – the Toa, that are created through the power of the star. Second, the concept itself (a star that inexplicably allows for Matoran to become Toa) goes against the Farshtey canon and doesn't look natural in his style of writing. 

But what was the Red Star for Bob Thompson? Believe it or not, the early idea about an orbital ship piloted by two Great Beings perfectly fits with the 2006 plot. Mostly because it – unlike earlier years of the franchise – actively explores the theme of the Great Beings. They appear much more often story-wise and are even flashback characters within the novels, while Bob already believed that the Ignika should be a legendary Kanohi made by the Great Beings (it even gives me reason to assume that two Great Beings from Legends #5 are literally retconned Rapu and Rangi). Because of this I can safely claim that the Red Star was supposed to be a ship from where the Great Beings watch what is happening while the flash of lighting and the following transformation could be seen as an in-universe analogue for divine intervention.

Earth Mother Papa and Sky Father Rangi

There are no official pictures so instead have this piece of classical Polynesian sculpture depicting the hugging Rangi and Papa. 

Let's discuss the heroes of our article in a vacuum. Papa and Rangi are the only Great Beings that we know existed from the very beginning of 2001. Another quote from Maku:

“Very little is known about the early characters Papu and Rangi, who were involved with the creation of Mata Nui. The two seem to be based on Ranginui and Papatūānuku, the sky father and earth mother respectively, of Polynesian mythology, hence their immediate removal after Lego was contacted by Māori representatives. Mr. Swinnerton was understandably reluctant to reveal much about them so barring the improbable event that an unrevised 2001 story bible is released, we will never know for sure what they were meant to be. I can say with near certainty that they are the original Great Beings, however there could well have been more than just the two of them.”

First we need to clarify that the Great Beings are a later term introduced after the Maori lawsuit and the retcons of the second half of 2001. But for the sake of simplicity we will still continue to call them that. And if we regard it as a title than we really know only Papu and Rangi, but as a species the GB are the population of an entire planet. If Lego continued to pull from Maori mythology afterwards then Wikipedia would've given them an entire library to pull from while creating new GB's. Who knows, maybe Naho Bay and Fau Swamp were also named after the GB's? We do, for example, already have Papa-Niho reef, referencing father Earth, so it would make sense for all the important locations to be named after the godlike beings. 

Another fun fact – the Great Beings created the Toa. At least, that is suggested by their early descriptions on the original Bionicle website. 

“Tahu is the oldest of the Toa, the fire spirit created by The Great Beings when the planet was first forming.”

“Onua is an Earth spirit, and was created by the Great Beings when the continents of the planet were forming from the fiery molten lava.”

The Great Beings in MNOG

So, what about MNOG? Papu and Rangi were featured in the game multiple times, during which they brought alongside them some interesting lore only to be deleted after the lawsuit. But since when has that stopped us? 

For example, our old friend Jala says the following about the main city of Ta-Koro:

“Ta-Koro is the city in the great Lake of Fire, which was chosen by Papu and Rangi as the place of fire.”

Did the Great Being walk amongst the Tohunga and chose the places to build to villages? To be fair, it would make sense from their perspective – despite the cataclysm, the island needs to be prettied up so that the newly awoken citizens would have a good land to inhabit. However, it could also be nothing but another superstition on the part of the Tohunga – remember how they consider the Toa to be Gods, and anthropomorphize the nebulous force of darkness that was 2001 Makuta? On the other side, Tohungan superstition is usually rooted in fact, so what were Papu and Rangi originally? My theory is that the ideas about the both of them and where they believed the Koro should be are integrated into the programming of the Tohunga, which is why they see it as an enactment of the will of their gods but does not necessarily mean that they were there physically. 

Papu and Rangi are further mentioned by Turaga Nokama after the village is rescued from the Tarakava. After we ask her who we are she responds with the following:

“I think Papu and Rangi have plans for you that are greater than your stature would suggest. Perhaps you are to be a hero like the Toa. I do not know. The Matoran have forgotten their civilization. Even the Turaga do not have record of all that has come before.” 

Creation of the island of Mata Nui

Circling back to the idea that the Great Beings directly influenced the creation of the Mata Nui island I would like to suggest looking into a, or so it would it seem, not so obvious source – the Myst adventure game series. 

The point is that Christian Faber revealed on his blog that originally there was not simply a website with MNOG located on it, but a uniquely complicated interactive website that would allow the users to fully engage themselves with the world of Bionicle. To achieve this effect the Myst game series was used for inspiration. The website idea later evolved into a fully-fledged Myst-like game and I believe it could've been a much bigger influence on the original Bionicle concept than we realize. 

I should also note that a lot of media, starting with the Toa animations in the Nestlé CDs contains an atmosphere that reminds me of Riven (also known as Myst 2 from 1997) when I tried to finish it in my childhood. (Pretty much all the 3D media from that period has its own unique aesthetic.) They work with very similar surroundings and design tricks. Most of the media – similar to MNOG – don't have any kind of music, just the silent blowing of the wind and an excellent (for the time) aesthetic of 3D rocks, mechanisms, futuristic temples overgrown with vines and pieces of technology sticking out of the sand.

The design of the world itself also gives the impression of an artificial island, as it is with most islands in Myst – stuck in an endless ocean. The Mangai Volcano filled up with pipes regulating the lava flow, technic pieces spread here and there and integrated into the nature – like the Ga-Koro pump or the Bohrok lair portal with the chisel key. Even the design for the Koro villages is reminiscent of the design of the Riven islands. 

The core concept of the Myst franchise revolves around these great creators (similar to real humans, but much more developed) that have the power of writing their own unique world (“Art”) that bear a huge resemblance to the synthetic and biomechanical landscape of Mata Nui. The symbols used in Riven also bear more than a passing resemblance to the Tohunga language, also being based upon the concept of circles. 

Why do I even touch upon this topic in my article? I believe that, through getting inspired by these games the makers inserted certain elements from it into Bionicle. The Great Beings, akin to the creatures from Myst, could have helped to create Mata Nui. They could've been the ones to install the Great Telescope and the sundial (since without them there is simply no explanation for how they got there), could've shown the amnesiac Tohunga where to build the villages (like they did with Ta-Koro). They might not have done it directly, but through hints and half-truths, in the vein of the early Bionicle storyline. We should also remember the road of prophecies, that was created by some ancient artisans, if the Po-koro trader is to be believed. 

“Po-Wahi is... well, there's not much to it, really, mostly sand... lots of sand. But there are the canyons, which are real pretty to look at, if the sun or the Rahi don't get you first... and the Path of Prophecies, which the ancient carvers made.”

The Kini temples, the Suva with masks, all of that could've been created by either Papu and Rangi themselves or by their command while the island was being terraformed and then leaving the island to be, becoming its silent watchers. A pretty funny coincidence, but in MNOG and Myst II, the player begins his journey on the beach next to a large telescope.

Then, if we get back to the origins of the Great Beings, we can look to the origin of the names for Papu and Rangi. Papu and Rangi in Maori legend are the most important gods. After they were separated by their own children the sky and earth were created – it is basically a creation myth. Wouldn't it make sense for their namesakes to do the same for the Bionicle world? 

Of course, you can see all these things as the ramblings of an oldfag gone mad but another hint towards the truth of this theory is... the G2 story bible. It is known that the G2 reboot used a lot of the original 2001-2003 concepts, even going so far as to use the great Rahi hunger as a plot point with the Skull Creatures working off the same principle. Lego Club tells us that they experience an enormous hunger and constantly feed off mask energy – not unlike what happened with the Rahi.  

So, the original 2015 bible gives us a timeline (how handy is it when the source material is written in your native language) that shows an era of the Great Beings, during which the island was created. I think this idea could be specifically borrowed from the original story bible, which gives credit to my theory about role of Papu and Rangi in creating the island. 

The Myst inspiration, the characters named after the Maori gods that have created the physical world, G2 based upon the original concepts of G1 as well as the origins and the purpose of the Great Telescope, the Sundial and other similar buildings are for me a row of hints towards the role of Papu and Rangi in the Bionicle backstory.

A bit of philosophy

I personally love Bionicle because of what I mentioned in the very first paragraph of this article – a universe built around the concept of a human body. IMHO, 2004-2010 did that terribly, just creating a bunch of island-spheres and reducing the various organs in the body to one and the same (just islands) which is sad, parasitizes on the concept of Mata Nui as an island and makes the entire Matoran Universe a lot less interesting than the potential organism of a GSR designed to rebuild an entire civilization. 

So, if all the new characters were purposeful for the Great Spirit organism (similar to Rahi and Bohrok) then we would've seen a bunch of conceptually more interesting races than Skakdi, Dark Hunters, Vortixx and other useless races only serving to create conflict but without any stylistic or plot-related reasons for existence. Admit it, it would make much more sense for the GSR to have a canister-sized species of "island builders" on the GSR surface, or creatures resembling white blood cells or maybe a cult killing Rahi in order to give power to the GSR. An enormous potential and a great starting point for building a unique and interesting world around Faber’s original concept of an anatomically correct super-robot wasted on...what exactly? Savage murderers à la orcs from Warcraft (Skakdi), an evil queen of a gigantic evil army of spiders (Roodaka and Visorak), evil mutated kings of made-up kingdoms (Barraki) and other similar clichés. I know that right now I am criticizing the holiest of holydoms – the childhood of the fans, but that is just my position and I want what’s best for Bionicle like others. And what they started out with is for me much better than what happened with the series post-2006 when it just transformed into another generic sci-fi setting with politics, secret organizations, simple islands and a "scientific" explanation for pretty much everything. This whole scenario resembles what happened with the SW prequels. Then again, how can you imagine the continuation of the original story without its main idea source in the form of Bob Thompson? Greg, finally, had the right idea – he used his creative freedom to the max and just rewrote everything from scratch. That's sad, but that's what I have to live with. 

And I will still love Bionicle more as an idea than a history with a clear timeline. They weren't created for that – they had other priorities. A children's toy will remain a children's toy, the story behind it will remain just a story and the core concept is what gives both the toy and the story purpose and creates the motivation to buy it – similar to a fish hook with bait. Fans are starting to forget that the lore of Bionicle is not in its timeline and history but in the basic framework wherein a child can play and the experience of exploring a world alien to you.  The beauty of Bionicle is not in the 905.6 pages of books and comics but in the simple and concise concept of a human body and those who live there and how they come into conflict because of predetermined factors. The conflicts were not born because of how one faction was good and another was evil but because they all were part of a greater plan for the rescuing of "humans" and all of them have their own purpose and direction. The Toa protect the Matoran and the Bohrok must demolish their homes, Makuta fights against the Matoran to allegedly save his brother (see Peri's post about the MoL for more information about that) and that for me is what makes the Biological Chronicle so Biological and so Chronicle. 

Original

Special thanks to my friend Frozen Death for the translation, and a big thanks to Maku for editing. I also highly recommend Maku's document that includes a lot of useful information about early Bionicle lore.