Glatorian Age Inconsistencies

LEGO BIONICLE
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Most of you probably know that Glatorian can live VERY long lives. The Glatorian species anatomy is said to be somewhat comparable to humans, but even with Glatorian-human age ratios, their ages don’t seem to make sense. Let’s start by going back 265,000 years ago, when the Agori Lein died of natural causes. I will be calculating Glatorian ages to human years for better context.

BS01 states that, at this time, the Glatorian Surel and Certavus were “very young” at this time, placing them at about <1-6 years old. About 245,000 years later, Certavus dies of natural causes. Surel is still alive at the current point in the timeline but he is very old. Judging by average human life expectancy, Certavus would have been about 70 when he died and Surel is probably about 90 and probably nearing the end of his life. With this information, we see that Glatorian live between 245,000 and 265,000 years or an average of 255,000 years and so for about every 2,833 years that pass, a Glatorian ages 1 human year. Now lets go to the Core War, started between 103,000 and 100,000 years ago.

Surel had fought in the Core War and would have been about 58 years old. BS01 states that Gresh was born sometime before the Core War but was too young to participate. He is the only known Glatorian to be too young to have participated in the war. Of course different armies have had different age requirements throughout history, with Spartan children starting their training as young as 7 years old. For this case, though, I will be using the U.S. army as an example, for which you must be at least 17 to enlist. Assuming Gresh was <1-16 years old by the time the war ended and the Core War lasting between 1-3,000 years, Gresh would have been born between 142,662-100,000 years ago. However, this would mean that he would be between 35-50 years old at the current point in the timeline. Even if Gresh were on the younger side of this range, it seems strange that he would still be a rookie.

With Kiina, she’s always believed that there were other worlds out there with other inhabitants, making her other Glatorian/Agori peers think she’s crazy, making her sort of the equivalent of the alien-visitor conspiracy theorists in our own world… except, with the ratio in time that’s passed since the Great Spirit Robot (a literal planet-sized robot, let me remind you) took off from Spherus Magna, that would be like the same thing happening here on Earth in 1985 and no one remembering it in the 35 years that’s passed since then.

A lot of my calculations weren’t entirely accurate, with the life expectancy and whatnot, but I think they were still close enough to drive the point home. Greg has said they didn’t give them a specific age range so the the story team wouldn’t be backed into a corner, but it seems like that just ended up making other plot holes. It seems strange that SM inhabitants couldn’t have been given an average life expectancy (like say 500-800 years) and just saying the Great Beings had discovered immortality and then gave it to the Elemental Lords or something.

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Implausible though it may be, no one on bara magna knew about the great spirit robot.

And even if they did notice, they probably just assumed it was the great beings’ ship escaping. And they likely know enough about the great beings to know mata Nui isn’t one

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Even if they didn’t notice the GSR, they would have noticed all their valuable plantlife and water being sucked onto two moons which then were launched from the planet, yet people called Kiina crazy for believing there were other better worlds out there.

Now that I think about it, this makes Bionicle’s cancellation even more sad considering she would’ve gotten to see another world (Bota Magna) in the planned 2010 story.

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Interesting. With regards to the first part I think their life spans might just be longer (tho 255000 is a bit crazy) That 2nd part though is a very good point-how could they forget? I think it’s safe to say that 2009 was just full of holes/a bit rushed

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I’d hesitate to say it was rushed, considering how much the story team managed to accomplish and hold the 09 story together. I think it’s amazing how they essentially started back almost from the foundation up within the time span they had. I’m thankful 09 wasn’t as bad as it could have been considering the situation it was in, but the Glatorian ages have always been a large, glaring plot hole to me.

Just realized that BS01 has some ages for quite a few characters, from youngest to oldest: Gresh (mid 20s), Kiina (mid 30s), Tarix (early 40s), Tuma (mid 40s), Ackar (late 40s), Raanu (early 60s). While Gresh’s age seems more reasonable, I find it hard to believe that an old, gruff war veteran like Ackar would only be in his late 40s.

Well, I guess until the beyond unlikely event that this somehow gets retconned and (most) Spherus Magna inhabitants are given more reasonable life spans, I’ll just say in my headcanon that no one around in the current point in time was alive during the Core War and any reference to someone having fought in it would be talking about a more recent war.

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The timeline of characters in bionicle and the universe as a whole always seemed to boggle me. I am also not a fan of the whole thing happening in a giant robot.

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I mean, that was planned from the very begining, even before 2001. In fact, 2001 was originally going to be Bionicle’s first and final year, ending with the Great Spirit Robot being awoken.

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In my opinion, it would have made much more sense if the Toa and Matoran are at least a bit similar to the Glatorian and Agori, or even the Okotans and Toa of G2. Like what would happen if, all of a sudden, all the Matoran die out? They can’t reproduce like Agori or Okotans, so the Matoran will go extinct, as well as the possibility of any new Toa or Turaga. It also does not make sense to me how the characters have ridiculously long lifespans (Matoran living for 10,000 years?? that’s just absurd)

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I beg to defer. Human life spans are pathetically short and we accomplish little in our fleeting lives, it’s still unknown why our bodies just stop making new cells etc and start slowing down until death. The Matoran being biomechanical can have parts swapped out easier, there seems to be less diseases plus the matoran would probably be built to last to avoid the resource cost of making new matoran, so the long life span is explainable and reasonable. And they may not go extinct as red star is still semi-operational and could be repaired to be two way transport. And for the case of this all being set in a giant robot-I think it fits the metaphor of cancer very well plus as said previously it was planned from the start :confused:

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But we aren’t talking about the Matoran. We are talking about Bara Magnans, who are organic beings.

@akirk47

You could also base the age range off of the Core War, rather than on Surel and Lein.

Greg has stated that Ackar is the human equivalent of about 40 years of age. It seems reasonable that he would have been around 20 human years when the war started. That would mean that 100,000 years is the equivalent of 20 human years.

This also allows us to make sense of Gresh. If he was born right at the start of the War, he would be around 20 human years old now, which makes sense.

Of course, that also means that these beings are dying at the equivalent of 50 human years, but that is plausible.

As for nobody remembering the robot, I’m pretty sure that they do. They all just assumed that it was the Great Beings screwing around and leaving them all to die. Which, given the Great Being’s history, is a reasonable assumption.

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I guess that makes sense that their life expectancy would be in the 50s, considering we only live to our 70s-90s because of advanced healthcare, which the inhabitants of Bara Magna likely don’t have.

Although, it still doesn’t make sense that the Bara Magna inhabitants had almost all of their lush greenery and water disappear, then have two massive green and blue moons appear in the sky and everyone still calls Kiina crazy for thinking there are better worlds out there. Like… did no one ever wonder, “Hmmm… I wonder if that green moon is where all our plantlife went and that blue moon is where all our water went…” Even if they didn’t have a way (they knew of) to get there, it would have at least been tantalizing or made them curious.

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The Bara Magnans likely would have never seen Bota Magna or Aqua Magna, since they became their own planets. Their depiction in The Legend Reborn does not fit with the canon.

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Oh. Then what’s the canon depiction.

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Each planet developed its own orbit around Solis Magna, the central star of the solar system.

Additionally, Aqua Magna developed its own moon.

Now, a lot of this stuff got changed around midstory, so there are a lot of different depictions of it. Obviously, The Legend Reborn intended to show Bota Magna and Aqua Magna as moons of Bara Magna, before they were specified to be their own planets. However, even without contradicting the later canon, this depiction makes no sense. If Aqua Magna was right there, then why did the Mask of Life pass by so many other planets before finding Bara Magna?

I think the official explanation of that scene is that the two objects orbiting Bara Magna were indeed moons, just not Aqua Magna and Bota Magna.

But the symbol of The Three Virtues that was recreated in TLR still represents The Shattering. This is one of those odd things that came with changing the canon after media had already been made.

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Very interesting.

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