As one of the few Matoran of Plasma on Karzahni, its ruler took a special interest in him. He knew Saback’s body was inferior, like all of his creations, but he wanted this one’s weaponry to be… Special, somehow. It was while idly browsing some of this matoran’s possible futures that he saw something unnerving: a Toa, standing alone in a ruined version of his own trophy chamber.
He summoned Saback to him then, and made the Matoran swear he would never become a Toa. When asked why, he knew full well he couldn’t tell the truth, and instead found another future, far worse. One where the world was dying, and a monstrous Saback was the tyrannical ruler of what had once been an underwater prison.
Saback promised he would never let this come to pass, and Karzahni returned to the task of figuring out how to give seabirds improved firepower, just in case.
But he vowed to himself then and there that he would keep this from coming to pass, not by avoiding any potential destiny as a Toa, but by embracing it, using his strength to protect others and prevent tryants such as the one he had the potential to become from ever rising to power.
One destiny later, he found himself helping a Toa of Fire search through the waterlogged remains of Karzahni’s realm, after the final defeat of Makuta Teridax, for a golden hau: one he had seen in the mad king’s trophy chamber.
Saback is armed with a plasma saber and a pair of lightstone shard repeaters crafted by the weaponsmiths of Xia, and his mutated self from the vision Karzahni showed him carries a heavily augmented plasma saber and a Lightstone Annihilator. His matoran form is based on my mctoran body type, but with… well, a bunch of parts removed and rebuilt Worse, true to canon.
I actually started out with his mutated form, wanting to build a toa with torsos for limbs and limbs for a torso: the only parts of this not entirely visible in the final build are a set of vahki hips in each leg and a hordika lower arm as his spine (with two upper arms forming his shoulders).
Halfway through building him I decided I liked the base character enough to build a more traditional take on him from my Metru Plus body type, the weapons of which then sort of fed back into the Embiggened design. Lore-wise… ¯_(ツ)_/¯ it just seems like a good fit.
just for good measure here are my WIPs of his tyrant form, which sorta just kept getting Bigger as I worked on it:
