Since the Vahki were released, people have wondered what the greebly-looking pistons on their Stun Staffs are for. They all suggest various points of articulation, but this aspect of the Staffs was never really explored.
I wanted to see what these articulated Staffs might look like, so I took the six Staff models from stud.io, chopped them up into individual parts, and animated them:
Bordakh, Staff Of Loyalty
The Staff Of Loyalty was the trickiest to figure out; despite the obvious piston near the tip of the Staff, this one doesn’t really have any obvious points of articulation. I ended up guessing at a sliding tip, perhaps for some kind of extended reach. Luckily, the other five Staffs all have very obvious points of articulation.
Another idea I had is that, when the piston shortened, the entire Staff would bend in like a spring, somewhat like this:
Ultimately I abandoned this idea, partially because it didn’t really make sense and mostly because it would have been too difficult to animate.
Keerakh, Staff Of Confusion
The primary function in the Staff Of Confusion is to adjust the angle of the serrated blade, perhaps to optimize the grip of the teeth on top of the icy towers of Ko-Metru. The back end of the Staff can also slide back and forth, but I have no idea how this might be useful; maybe that piston was meant for something else.
Nuurakh, Staff Of Command
The Staff Of Command features a large claw, perfect for carrying heavy loads. The position of the articulating claw can also be adjusted to accommodate loads of varying sizes, even allowing the Vahki to pick up small objects with the tips of the claw.
Rorzakh, Staff Of Presence
The Staff Of Presence can also serve as a jackhammer, which would be useful in digging under the city to expand the Onu-Metru Archives. Similar to the Staff Of Confusion, the back of the Staff Of Presence has some articulation with a function that I can’t figure out.
Vorzakh, Staff Of Erasing
The Staff Of Erasing is by far the simplest of the six Staffs, featuring a single very obvious function: a large cutting tool. While it’s unlikely that this would ever be used against Matoran, it would be perfect for cutting through the tangle of cables over Le-Metru.
Zadakh, Staff Of Suggestion
In contrast to the Staff of Erasing, the Staff Of Suggestion is the most complicated Staff, featuring three points of articulation for grabbing a variety of items.
Unfortunately, I had to massively reduce the file size of the six animations above in order to upload them to TTV, but the original versions can be found at the following link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1OW79lipXRn1PvGF1Ia2rFyhfZaGkute7?usp=sharing
(If anyone can come up with a better idea for how the piston on the Staff Of Loyalty might be used, I’d love to hear it)