“A Rahi with a head shaped like an axe blade smashed its way up through the cave floor, bowling over the four Toa.”
“The axe-headed beast tossed Matau aside like he was made of seaweed.”
“The axe-headed marine creature had crushed the last Kralhi into a jumbled mess of machine parts.”
BIONICLE Adventures 5: Voyage of Fear
This is my entry for the large category in Duckbricks’ Rahi free-for-all fanon contest.
The Nui-Toki (Big Axe in māori ) is one of the First Rahi: a collection of massive marine beasts freed from the Archives by Mavrah when Turaga Dume ordered them to be eliminated due to the treat they represented and later encountered by the Toa Metru in the caves inside the Great Barrier.
The Nui-Toki is an anfibious creature that, as seen in canon, can live both on land and sea. It can swim quite fast, but it prefer to stalk the bottom of the sea where it makes its nest, tunnelling in the rocks of the seabed with its claws.
Like the Tahtorak (with which it scales quite well), it dwarfs the inhabitants of the Matoran Universe.
My main sources of inspiration for this model are Star Wars’ Sando Aqua Monster and Monsterverse’s Skull Crawler. For the head, I almost immediately discarded the idea of using Axonn’s axe blades in favor of the weapon that appeared in the ccbs Legends of Chima figures and after many design changes (battleaxe, double bit, etc.) I settled for a simple bearded axe look (quite literally). I also gave it an heartlight, which is one of my favourite design choices from the movies.
I tried to design it with as much articulation as possible and I think all the joints should be strong enough for it to be built in real life, I also build a part of the tail like a foot (a flat undeside with lots of rubber pieces) and it should be able to stand (at least with some help from one of its claws) but I’m no mockist and this is my first attempt at something of this size.
All the 650 pieces come in the colors used (I also tried to avoid over expensive/rare pieces).