Issa, the Collector of Stories
Hello there, I present you my entry for a contest organized by Christian Faber and DuckBricks 
Meet Issa:
Issa was supposed to be a true breakthrough in the history of biotechnology development - one of the first humanoid machines with a laboratory-grown copy of the human brain in its head. The success of the project was supposed to be a milestone on the way to developing mechanical implants for people suffering from diseases that were beyond the capabilities of contemporary medicine to cure, as the possibility of conducting experiments on artificially created organisms deprived of the ability to feel pain would allow for the bypassing of moral and legal restrictions. Unfortunately, as a result of funding being cut, the project fell through, and Issa remained the only one produced.
The scientist responsible for the project decided to make Issa his personal archivist. Her above-average memory, surpassing all known machines and organisms in its capacity, data processing speed and cataloging ability, was an indescribable help. Over the years, Issa had collected hundreds of yottabytes of research data in her head, becoming a walking library of medical, technical and computer knowledge.
One day, however, an accident occurred that tore Issa from the shackles of routine. She herself does not remember the details. Only a split second before the loss of consciousness, which the accident led to. And then… darkness. This activated the data recovery program, which, due to the amount of information stored, took months, if not years before whole data has been restored. When Issa finally woke up, the world looked completely different from how she remembered it. It was completely dominated by nature, and there was no trace of people.
Without new orders or any imposed goals to achieve, Issa undertook to explore the world on her own, this time being the one making the decisions about what kind of knowledge she would pursue. It did not take long before she collected an entire collection of data carriers about the world outside her creator’s laboratory. Then, among the hard scientific facts, which until now constituted almost all of her knowledge about the world, something new appeared: fiction, fantasy, fairy tales and novels telling about events that had no right to be true. But which, for some reason, were written down anyway. And even video materials were created based on them. And… their interactive alternative, the name of which she only learned with time.
A new type of knowledge began to shape Issa’s personality, giving her a new calling - collecting fictional stories in which she saw universal truths about life considered by her to be much more valuable than the dry facts she had been fed so far. She saw hope in them. Faith in existence of goodness. And ideas for inventions that were impossible to develop at the current level of technology. All this gave rise to a new philosophy of life which she embraced.
This is how Issa, the Collector of Stories, was born.
Character:
Issa has developed the soul of an artist. She loves to learn about the works left by humanity and break them down into prime factors, analyzing the characters’ personalities and their potential motives. After reading the entire work, she can spend hours pondering what the author was trying to convey through their story, how events could be played out differently, what could have happened if a given character had made a different decision at a given moment, where author missed an occasion to make use of his previous plot points…
She is particularly interested in unfinished stories, which for some reason have been abandoned before the plot reached a satisfying conclusion. When such a story falls into her hands, Issa, trying to imitate the author’s style, undertakes to complete the story herself with subsequent chapters, because she feels that it is inappropriate for something that a person has put a lot of work into to be simply abandoned.
Issa is also a great storyteller, but due to the lack of a human audience, she has never been able to use this talent.
About MOC:
I based Issa’s model on the Egyptian god associated with the afterlife - Anubis. In my mind, this was supposed to symbolize the fact that Issa lives in the world dominated by nature, which is in a way an afterlife for the old world, from before the event that drastically changed the face of the planet.
At the same time, since the aquatic environment is an important motif in the world of Rebel Nature, I decided that it would be worth adapting Issa to search for remnants of human civilization at the bottom of the oceans. To this end, I constructed an attachable module for her in the shape of a dolphin tail, which, when attached to Issa’s back, allows her to swim at great speed, thanks to which she can avoid encounters with sea predators.
In order to make the model not look too boring and in order to give the MOC more character, I decorated her armor with sharp spikes, thanks to which the whole thing has that BIONICLE vibe, and at the same time, looks more menacing, which is undoubtedly useful when someone is considering attacking her.
Of course, anyone who knows me, knows that everything I do has a BIONICLE touch to it. After all, most of my online activity is aimed at keeping the BIONICLE fandom alive, attracting new people to it, and fighting for the series’ return in the future. Because I refuse to accept the fact that we’re not getting any sets targeted at fans of Technic buildable action figures. That’s why I couldn’t resist putting a sculpture of the Great Spirit on the surface of the diorama, which has been eaten away a bit by the ravages of time 
Fun fact: I didn’t use any discontinued bricks here, which proves that even with the current pool of bricks available, there’s nothing stopping LEGO from introducing BIONICLE to its offer once again, even if the only new molds will be the Kanohi Masks. That was the challenge I set for myself when I started building my contest entry.
The idea for a cyborg character who collects and tells fictional stories came to me during my fourth viewing of “Rebel Moon - Part 1: Chalice of Blood”, or more precisely, it was suggested to me by a scene in which a robot known as Jimmy (voiced by Anthony Hopkins) tells a young village girl the story of the princess he was created to defend.
I then imagined the cyborg sitting on the edge of an oil platform overgrown with vines, accompanied by a human girl, who listens to the philosophical musings of a cybernetic creation of a fallen civilization.
I think that such a companion who helps the protagonist solve various problems by telling her fictional stories appropriate to the situation could, with the right scenario, turn out to be something exceptional.
Here you have a closer look at the Issa:
And at the diorama under her:
Below, I am attaching links to video materials where you will be able to take a closer look at Issa from all sides:
Issa without the Tail Module:
And with it:
~ Taohe Netrus ~
