I just finished the book Time Trap. Thank you to Biomedia project for allowing me to read books I missed.
I think I have found something that should be retconed. In the book Teridax throws The Shadowed one at Voporak. Millenia flow over The shadowed one. He emerges ancient and is unsure of how much time he still has left in his aged body. Terrifying stuff to read.
But. It is said The Shadowed One aged only 3000 years. This is not a lot in Matoran standards. Most Inhabitants of Matoran universe are 100 000+ years old and still in their physical prime. In human years that’s equal of aging about 2.4 years. (3000/100 000= 0.03 ~3%. 3 % of 80 human years is 2.4 years)
It would be more dramatic if The shadowed one aged 300 000 years. He would now be 400 000+ years old.
We do not have exact numbers on how old Matoran can become*. But we have been given estimates on the ages of the agori.
Raanu was born 265 000 years ago on Spherus Magna. BS01 states Raanu would be in his 60s in human years.
Quick math tells us an Agori in his/her 80s would be ~353 000 years old.
400 000 years old Shadowed one would be therefore in his 90s. More than enough to feel like he is close to the end of his life span.
Edit* Matoran are not immortal. Their life spans are just extremely long thanks to their biomechanical nature. It could be their lifespan is longer than Agori since they are more mechanical than them.
Greg was asked if beings made of Antidemis were immortal. He stated all beings die eventually, even if their life spans are extremely long. I assume this statement can be aplied to the inhabitants of the matoran universe as well.
Matoran Universe inhabitants are confirmed to have similar lifespans to Agori and Glatorian (assuming that they don’t get repaired).
Also, Certavus died of natural causes around the age of 245,000; Surel is around 265,000 years old, and he is shown to be nearing the end of his life.
So this gives us a rough lifespan for Matoran Universe inhabitants, and it’s quite a bit less than 400,000. 300,000, tops. So 3000 is a bit more significant, though not by much.
But, at the end of the day, The Shadowed One is just as scared; I don’t think he knows he “only” aged 3000 years.
Also, Certavus died of natural causes around the age of 245,000; Surel is around 265,000 years old, and he is shown to be nearing the end of his life.
Certavus certainly seems to indicate 245 000 years could be their natural life span. Surel sustained heavy damage during the war so he could have shorter lifespan because of it. (edit he lived longer than certavus though )
life span
Could it be Shattering caused a major devolution in medicine and medical technology?
Human life spans were around 50-60 years (same as agori) before the invention of modern medicine. Modern medicine combined with beter quality food and infrastructure of modern cities have rised the average life span of humans to 75 (male) and 85 (female).
Inhabitants of Matoran universe live in ultra modern cities where all of their needs are met. Agori have lived last 100 000 years in a desert with limited resources and low amounts of food. The great beings took the technology with them when they disapeared so it is not a farfetc’d idea that lower living standards could affect life span.
The shadowed one lives most likely like a king with very physical lifestyle. He if anyone could live longer than average.
But, at the end of the day, The Shadowed One is just as scared; I don’t think he knows he “only” aged 3000 years
I do like the idea this uncertainty fueled his rage and paranoia over the years.
But as discussed earlier, 3000 years is not much and he could quickly learn his physical prowess is still 99.999% intact and guess he didn’t age a lot.
I think timeline of 100 000 years was not set in stone when the time trap was written. Author knew history was long but did not know how long.
Aight so Apologies for the potential rambling that this post might be BUT there are some flaws with your analysis:
I think it’s worth noting that equivalent ages are messy. Raanu is, in terms of how other Agori/Glatorian see him, equivalent to a human 60 year old. That does not mean that The Shadowed One is equivalent to a 20 year old because he’s approximately 1/3rd Raanu’s age. He’s still Ancient in terms of the MU - almost as old as the universe, in fact.
Think of it this way. The Toa Mata were created ~100,000 years ago and are some of the oldest beings in the Matoran Universe. It took only 1000 years of floating in the ocean in their canisters for their bodies to essentially break down and require rebuilding, as well as resulted in them losing their memories. While later years of Bionicle greatly inflate the overall age of the universe, the fact is your math would have the Shadowed One aging three times the age of the universe.
Your math is flawed from one simple misconception: most inhabitants of the Matoran Universe are not 100,000+ years old. At best, they are ~100,000 years old, but a quick summary of events via the Timeline available on BS01 shows us that approximately 90,000 years ago is when the Civil War that destroys the Shadowed One’s homeland begins, which is what leads him to create the Dark Hunters. Thus, we can surmise that The Shadowed One is less than 100,000 years old as he was not present at the making of the universe.
So what does that tell us? He’s between 90 to 100k years old, putting him at definitely the higher side of Matoran Universe Ages. To my knowledge, we have no actual account of a MU inhabitant passing strictly from old age, so using Raanu as an example of what equivalent ages look like isn’t exactly 100% equivalent because he IS a completely different species.
Ranu: 265,000 years old (~equivalent to 60)
Matoran Universe: 100,000 years old
The Shadowed One: <100,000 years old.
Take Vakama for example: I’d say most Turaga could be considered equivalent to a 60-80 year old human, but due to how Turaga are created that’s a false-equivalence because it has absolutely nothing to do with age. SO, let’s use the 1000 year baseline from the Mata to form the actual age analysis:
1000 years is enough to completely wipe the Toa Mata’s Memories and cause their bodies to break down while otherwise 100% protected from the elements. The Shadowed One experienced that times three in the span of seconds. Let’s not forget that while the MU inhabitants have incredibly long lifespans, that time does not affect them differently to us. SO, if we assume the Shadowed One, for simplicity, is 95000 years old:
95,000 / 3000 = 3.158 % of his lifespan.
Now if we were to compare that to humans, it’s actually closer to experiencing 2.5 years all at once (if you were 75 years old). BUT time in the MU flows at the same rate as the real world - 1 year there is the same length as an IRL year (with some small degree of difference). The point isn’t what fraction of his life that he’s already lived he experienced in those seconds, it’s the fact that all at once he experienced the next 3000 years of aging.
The Shadowed One may have experienced a fraction of his lifespan, but experiencing that fraction in seconds rather than over the actual time span had to do some damage. His being aged could have easily made him the oldest MU inhabitant in existence maybe even older than the universe itself. I don’t think it’s absurd to say that he could be wondering how much time he had left because of that. More to the point that’s 3000 years without maintenance that he experienced, so I’m sure a lot of the damage that would normally be shrugged off with repairs/exercise is permanent.
TL;DR: Comparing Spherus Magna inhabitants lifespans to Matoran Universe Lifespans to Human Lifespans isn’t really properly comparable. At the end of the day The Shadowed One still experienced 3000 years all at once which would very easily have made him the physically oldest being in the entire MU, possibly even older than the MU itself. While him questioning how much time he had left may have been an exaggeration borne from fear, 3000 years is not trivial to experience all at once.
Imagine experiencing even 1 year of cell death and regeneration and aches and pain in the span of a few seconds - you’d probably be worried for your continued health too.
EDIT: I misrepresented some of my math - fix’d now
It’s a likelihood - Those who were there at the creation of the universe were the Hand of Artakha and some others who were necessary for the creation of the universe itself. Presumably, TSO is not in this camp and would have been created at some point after the fact. Regardless - the available range here is <10,000 years of age and has relatively little effect on the math/analysis. Even if he was present at the founding of the universe, he is not significantly more than 100,000 years old at the oldest. We’re talking years, not thousands of years.
They are certainly little messy since all of the inhabitants of Matoran universe are created with all the skills and knowledge they need to keep the universe running. The shadowed one was never a child so to speak.
Think of it this way. The Toa Mata were created ~100,000 years ago and are some of the oldest beings in the Matoran Universe. It took only 1000 years of floating in the ocean in their canisters for their bodies to essentially break down and require rebuilding.
Do we know it was the 1000 years at the sea? What if it was the overall 100 000 inactivity?
So what does that tell us? He’s between 90 to 100k years old, putting him at definitely the higher side of Matoran Universe Ages. To my knowledge, we have no actual account of a MU inhabitant passing strictly from old age, so using Raanu as an example of what equivalent ages look like isn’t exactly 100% equivalent because he IS a completely different species.
It has been confirmed that Matoran and Agori have similar lifespans. They mature differently but their organic parts start to decay and age at the same time. (assuming no repair is done)
Biologically speaking the species are not 100 % comparable. The Shadowed one is not mentally 20 ish. It might be more accurate to think that from point of view of Raanu: The matoran universe and its inhabitants are a 100 000 year old car/computer which can still function another few hundred thousand years.
is 3000 years a lot to Glatorians?
Biologically and mentally Gresh is 100 000~ years old and canonically 20ish. Kiina is 30 ish. They are tens of thoudands of years apart but Kiina is not that much more mature than Gresh. 10 000 years of experience does not seem to affect their mentality like it would affect humans.
Edit: all in all I see your point. I’m just nitpicking.
3000 years is more than enough time for everything on earth to rust away. I can imagine the horror of Shadowed ones body to wither away this amount of time in seconds.
The construction of the Universe takes place over such an impossibly short amount of time that I consider anything between the time of the first parts of the Universe being assembled to the time of the robot leaving Spherus Magna to be “at the start of the Universe”.
The memory loss and bodily decomposition were almost certainly caused by the same malfunction, and, in turn, they were both almost certainly caused by the same thing that stopped the canisters from immediately going to Mata Nui to awaken Mata Nui.
But whatever that event was, we don’t know when it happened.
Maybe the canisters were faulty from the start. Maybe it was the Great Cataclysm. For all we know, Jovan’s team could have screwed something up while saving Mata Nui the first time.
So we can’t say for sure whether the decomposition was caused by the total 100,000 years in the Codrex, the final 1,000 years in the ocean, or something in between. It might not even be a time-based thing. Maybe there was a single, brief, event that caused everything to go wrong.
Agreed, we don’t know how long they were actually decomposing. I was just clarifying that we knew how long the canisters had been floating in the ocean, which is 1000 years.
Very interesting theory.
I think it could be any number of things, but a likely one is probably just that of “stuff happens” as far as the great beings’ work is concerned (this would definitely not be the worst mishap having to do with their creations).
As for what caused the Mata’s decay, my guess would be the 1,000 years adrift. (Making stasis canisters that do a crummy job of preserving those inside even when not malfunctioning, thus causing them to need to reassemble themselves and re-learn from scratch to work as an effective team unit after arriving at where they’re needed, just seems like a really unnecessary extra step in hero deployment.)
They probably decayed over the years in the ocean, but the question is: why did they decay at all? The canisters were supposed to keep them safe.
To elaborate on the Jovan theory, here’s the simple version: Jovan and his team show up. For one reason or another, Jovan uses his Elemental Power to crack open the Codrex. Perhaps for safety, since the Energy Storms were still happening at a low level. Then, after the sacrifice is made, the Energy Storms regain their intensity, triggering the Codrex to close itself again.
But, at some point between the Energy Storms revving back up, and the Codrex closing, an energy bolt enters the Codrex and just fries the heck out of everything inside (or at least everything at the top level; the vehicles remain safe).
Such a blast could easily fry the Toa’s memories, as well as trash the electronics in the Canisters. Then, with the electronics malfunctioning, there is nothing keeping the Toa safe, and they start decaying from that point forward.
At the end of the day the Toa’s Canisters were meant to protect them on their journey from the Codrex to Mata Nui. They were meant to protect them while in the Codrex so it’s simple enough to say that whatever Stasis field or power affected the canisters only effected them while within the Codrex.
More to the point, the story specifically points to the thousand years spent adrift as the reason for the Mata’s degeneration. The Canisters were intended to protect them for tens of thousands of years within the codrex, and days at most outside of it. We don’t actually have any evidence to suggest that the canisters in and of themselves are capable of stasis - just that they’re tough enough to facilitate rapid transportation.
That said, outside of it’s use as a metric for how fast MU characters age, the discussion is starting to get a bit off topic
I just found out that we actually do, as per these two excerpts from Swamp Of Secrets:
But there would never be any long argument between Lewa and Tahu. The special mechanism that put the six Toa to sleep in their canisters would damage their memories as well. When, 100,000 years later, they found themselves on the shore of Mata Nui, they would remember only a long and fitful sleep disturbed by dreams and nightmares.
“Now you know,” said Helryx. “We were aware the Toa Nuva would lose part of their memory in the time they spent in the Toa canisters, the better to keep our existence a secret. But we could not foresee how complete the loss would be.
We know when the malfunction occurred, but we still don’t know exactly how or why; it seems unlikely that it was a simple manufacturing error, or else it wouldn’t have affected all six of them the same. It seems more likely that the mechanism was implemented without full knowledge of what it did, but that doesn’t explain where the mechanism came from.
The other important question that this brings up is this: where was the “special mechanism”? Is this sleep/memory wipe function a part of all Toa Canisters; was it in the Codrex; or is it perhaps inside the physical brains of the Toa Mata/Nuva themselves, presumably specially-added by Artahka?
I’m also still curious about whether this malfunction is also what caused them to decompose. I still think it probably is (because what are the odds that two entirely separate malfunctions would occur), but I haven’t found anything definitive.
It could be just a mistake on authors part or another retcon.
Personal understanding/headcanon of mine is that they expected long term inactivity to cause some temporary memory loss or partial memory loss.
They did not forsee that canisters would have a system failure.
Edit: to add, no biomechanical creature had been cryofreezed for 100 000 years before. They could guess it was a possibility but didn’t realise how severe it would be.
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