Great document! It’s really given me a whole new perspective on the early years of Bionicle. It’s amazing how much more sense everything makes in 2001-2002 compared to the later years. I wish they had stuck closer to that direction than they did.
The Kini-databases idea has caused me to reconsider the meaning behind one of the lines that Vakama says at the end of MNOG:
“Our Prophecies said the Makuta’s defeat would end our troubles. But the Prophecies have changed.”
Where exactly are these Prophecies (note the capitalization) coming from? And how can they suddenly change?
Consider also one of Makuta’s lines in the Mask of Light film:
“The Seventh Toa has begun its approach. Again the prophecies of the Matoran oppose my will.”
Perhaps these Prophecies were actually notifications/directions that the
Turaga obtained from the Kini temples. Maybe some could even have been transmitted to the temples by Papu and Rangi themselves.
Or, considering the whole constellations + Red Star + Great Telescope thing in MNOG, perhaps that’s where the Prophecies came from. Perhaps the positioning of the Red Star in various constellations acted as an indicator of major events, so when the Bohrok were awakened, the Red Star, either on its own or via the control of Papu and Rangi, moved to form a constellation that signaled the arrival of the Bohrok.
This would explain how the Prophecies could “change”. The Red Star constellation was indicating that the Toa were about to awaken Mata Nui. And in the early versions of the story, they certainly tried. But when that didn’t go quite as planned, the constellations changed to indicate the arrival of the Bohrok, and so the Prophecies changed accordingly.
On a related note, if Papu and Rangi were on the Red Star, I wonder if they had become trapped there with limited tools at their disposal. After all, you’d think they would be on Mata Nui themselves to help fix things if they could. Perhaps they could still transmit info to the Kini temples somehow? Or perhaps they retained limited navigational control, allowing them to move the Red Star into position for various constellations.
If the Toa canisters were originally supposed to come from the Red Star, I assume that Papu and Rangi weren’t able to launch them themselves, so they had to wait for Takua to send the summoning signal.