The gravity actually wouldn’t have to be that strong to affect a projectile, and it probably wouldn’t affect the bearer. For one, the bearer probably has orders of magnitude more mass than the projectile. Second, the gravity would affect the projectile much differently than the bearer, depending on how far it is.
A planet’s surface gravity affects everything equally because everything on the surface is essentially the same distance from the centre of the planet, and gravitational acceleration is proportional to distance squared. But if the source of gravity is on the surface, things get a little freaky.
Say you are taking a shot at a distance of 100m, and you want to bend your shot slightly around a tree, using the gravity of the tree. Say the tree is around the midpoint between you and your target, so it is 50m away from you.
If the bullet passes within 5m of the tree, it will feel a gravitational acceleration towards the tree that is 100 times stronger than what you feel from the same tree.
You might feel something, but not enough to take you off your feet. Especially if you simultaneously increase your own gravity.
One might argue that those deaths could not be prevented. From The Final Battle:
“The Toa Nuva of Fire considered for a split second. It was against the Code of a Toa to knowingly kill an enemy or let one die if it could be prevented. But he knew in his heart that there was no way to save the Makuta now, and trying would only mean the loss of his team.”
Of course, Tahu follows this with: “They lit this inferno”…“Let them burn in it”, which seems unnecessarily aggressive for someone who is making a supposedly impossible decision to let his enemy die. So who knows if they could have been saved.
Either way, I’m surprised that it never comes up in the story, especially considering what happened to Zaria, who committed his killing under necessary circumstances as well.
I would think that 6 deaths is a pretty significant violation of the Code, even if they were not the result of direct actions. But all that happens is Tahu thinks about it for a bit, they let the Makuta die, and it is never mentioned again.
It has so much story potential and I don’t see a lot of people using it. It could be a great character motivation - “I will never break the Toa Code” - or maybe a flaw, because the obsession with not breaking the code leads to devisions between characters. That’s just a couple off the top of my head.
We’re getting off topic tho DM me if you wanna talk story beats
I kind of like that his response is a bit ambiguous. Wouldn’t be appropriate for some of the other characters, but it feels very Tahu to genuinely reason out the logic while still making a comment such as that.
Zaria did actively kill a Makuta though (I don’t recall if it’s specified how, but his Iron powers probably had something to do with it). The Toa Nuva just… didn’t save the Makuta (which would have been very difficult under the circumstances, given that you would have four of them stuck on those tiny vehicles, and some [Gorast lol] would probably still be trying to kill them).
Plus killing through inaction is specifically mentioned in the Toa Code. Tahu even remembers this before deciding to let the Makuta die.
Which, again, is probably ‘necessary circumstances’, since an attempted rescue would have killed the Toa.
Here’s another angle, though: did the Toa really ‘let’ the Makuta die, if it was literally impossible to save them? If we compare it to the trolley problem, could the Toa really have stopped the trolley? Or were they still 50 feet from the switch?
Was it maybe possible to save them? Tahu didn’t seem to think so. But if there was even the faintest glimmer of hope that the Makuta could be saved, the Toa Nuva have violated the Toa Code under unneccesary circumstances, since the Makuta probably would have gone along with the rescue.
Anywho…mask of psychometry plus a Toa of psionics.
Just think of this, if the mask is not solely limited to objects you could completely skip having to dig for traumatic memories. Allowing you to hurt your enemy a lot quicker.
I think it’s more like this:
The Toa nuva couldn’t have saved the Makuta.
Zaria possibly could’ve not killed the Makuta and simply escaped. Maybe; we don’t know the situation.
Also, I think another key difference: the toa. Nuva feel their actions were justified, while Zaria fells guilty about what he did.
He killed a Makuta around or after the time of the Iron/Magnetism genocide. The details are unknown, but it was apparently under ‘necessary circumstances’.
Even though the killing was apparently justified, he still feels like an outsider, and there are rumours he kills all of his enemies now. I don’t think these rumours were ever confirmed to be either true or false.
