Moctober Week Two: Toa Vespi

Welcome to Moctober week 2! This was an interesting challenge, since I don’t have any trading cards. I ended up going on a Pokemon card generating website for it. Without further ado, let’s get into it. I give you… Vespi, Second Liegeman of the Under King.

Species: Toa (mutated)
Element: Fire
Kanohi: Mohtrek, Great Mask of Time Duplication
Weapon(s): None
Abilities: Pyromancy; Flight; Can summon other versions of herself from the past
Affiliation(s): Makuta Girin’s Toa Hagah

Once a Toa of Fire, Vespi was never exactly the most sane member of her team. In battle she was a bit too vicious, sometimes even seeming to want to kill her enemies. Some of her teammates thought she fought more for the thrill of battle than for the Three Virtues. As she continued to serve as a Toa, she grew increasingly volatile and selfish. In fact, she even began slipping away from her town at night, much to the confusion of her team. What was she doing?

As it turned out, she was meeting with some Dark Hunters to do odd jobs for them. It was during these secret missions that she learned how powerful money was. In the coming years, she accumulated a decent chunk of Widgets through her work, and she desired more. In fact, one night she was followed by one of her Toa sisters. The Ko-Toa knew something was up and wanted to see. Vespi caught her and traded her to the Dark Hunters in exchange for a sizeable payday. That was the deed that sealed her fate, and her greed only grew. This hunger for power and wealth led her to contacting the Under King. Girin doubled her elemental strength and “arranged” for a Steltian Noble to transfer hundreds of thousands of Widgets to her.

Of course Vespi’s teammates soon found out about this and tried to stop her. It was then that the corrupt Toa realized no deal with the Under King ever ends well. During the battle, the flames of her anger burned a little too brightly and she was incinerated from the inside out.

In the Underplane, Girin cashed in on his end of the bargain. Vespi would become one of his Liegemen - what he called his Toa Hagah. She could do little to protest, not that she even wanted to. Girin was giving her a chance to terrorize the innocent. It wasn’t exactly her dream, but it was better than being terrorized for eternity herself. Of course, the Under King wasn’t content to just let Vespi be herself. She would be reminded of her demise every waking moment, constantly kept in a state of internal immolation. And of course, just a normal Toa was not nearly terrifying enough for Girin, so he mutated her into a half-Toa, half-insect creature of nightmares.

Here are the cards I pulled. The first card was a Weedle, so I went with an insectoid moc. The second card was a Sizzlipede, so the moc would be fiery. Lastly, I drew an Absol, meaning the character would be evil. (The Machop I accidentally clicked on while using the snipping tool.)

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Ah the lore you make for these mocs is really interesting. Whoever this Under King is, he certainly doesn’t sound like a very nice fellow…

Now, on to the moc. It’s good, the spikes and wings look very insectoid and I like the shaping used. In addition, I like the colors, they look very ashy and fiery. Nice job.

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Looks nice and spooky, plus those leg spikes really sell the insectoid look

i’ll bet he steals the flames of dead kingdoms

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Dank je wel! I made sure to focus heavily on making the legs spikey for that exact reason.

No, he most certainly isn’t. I’m planning on making a new post for him on Halloween, but if you want to learn more about him you can check here.

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Clever system with the cards, and neat build

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I agree it’s really cool, although I’m not the one who came up with it. I got the prompt list from someone on the Bionicle Amino.

Thanks!

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The model is great looking, and story is also very good. The concept is similar to Nidhiki, in that she is Toa who betrayed her team for reasons of selfishness, and got mutated into an insectoid, but is a fresh take on the idea. Name Vespi is cool. Is it derived from Latin word for wasp?

I find the point about an evil Toa of Fire accidentally burning herself to death an interesting idea in a scarily dark way. I also love Makuta Giriin. He is really interesting and fearsome villain. I personally tend to like nuanced villains more, but Nightmare King Giriin is this cartoonishly evil being and I love it. I just have two suggestions to improve the story:

  1. It seems weird that Giirin would directly give Vespi money. I think he should still make her really rich, but indirectly, perhaps by giving her unnatural luck.

  2. I think it would be better if Vespi was at first just selfish and greedy, not outright evil, giving her a character arc even before the revival. The greed and power-hunger erodes what little morals Vespi has, eventually leading her into selling her teamate, which is when she becomes truly evil.

Also, drawing cards seems really cool way to make ideas. Will you do more randomly generated characters in future?

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Thank you very much!

That it is

Ah, glad you mention this. You wouldn’t know it from these posts, but Giriin does have more nuance as a character and he does have some morals, however contorted they might be. In past stories, he has worked closely with the heroes to stop evil authoritarian regimes from forming. You see, he only has two goals: His professional duty, which is to tend the souls of the dead and seed nightmares in the living; and his own desire for entertainment. In his mind, if the world is already a waking nightmare then tormenting the little Matoran in their sleep becomes much less fun. So he has a vested interest in preventing the world from falling to the claws of evil, even if it’s for selfish and sadistic reasons.

Wouldn’t be a bad idea. The idea I had for when people wished for riches is that Giriin would just influence some rich trader to drop off a bunch of money, but that works too. Maybe even better than my idea.

I admit I hadn’t really put a whole lot of thought into Vespi’s backstory. I focused on design first, backstory second. But I actually really like your suggestion, and I think I’ll incorporate it in the future.

I agree, it’s a very interesting way to do models. I very well might make more in the future, whenever I want to build but don’t know what I want to build.

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