What WAS even the Purpose of the Mask of Time?

[TrotterNuva]

The Kanohi Vahi was foretold to exist years before it’s own creation to the point where the Brotherhood of Makuta created a creature who existed SOLELY to find it.

One might speculate that it was foretold via the power of the vahi sending a vision of itself into the Past… yet by your own admission that should be impossible since the Vahi has absolutely no control or power pertaining to going BACK in time. And if it was an idea of the Great Beings, how come NONE of them ever showed any interest in a Temporal Artifact?

Question #1 HOW did this prophecy of the Vahi come to be?

Furthermore, apparently Makuta Teridax wanted the vahi so he could “use the Vahi to speed up the process of erasing the Metru Nui Matoran’s memory with the Matoran Pod.” Yet this purpose is rendered entirely null and void when its revealed that the Matoran Spheres did their job as the Matoran’s memories were all erased and remained that way for 1,000 years until the Turaga told them what their origins even were! Clearly all teridax needed to do was put the captured Matoran in pods and wait for a few days -a month at most! This does not at all fit in with the persona of the scheming, manipulative, PATIENT Teridax we all know so well; it just doesn’t make any sense that he’d be so impatient over something so… frivolous and trivial.

Question #2 What did Teridax ACTUALLY want the Vahi for?

Why would anyone even introduce a relic that is supposed to have control over Time if A) the only time-related powers are ‘Pause’ and MAYBE ‘Fast Forward’ when the mask ISN’T cracked, and B) it has ABSOLUTELY NO relevance to the overall story?! Its pointless the only time its ever relevant and then its never relevant again! It doesn’t even do anything cool!

Question #3 [and this one goes out to the WONDERFULLY ‘creative’ TTV cast] Why even have a Mask of Time at all, if nothing is done with it, and you have no intention of doing anything with it? [And to TTV: Why not have the island LITERALLY frozen in ICE and then set up tension agaisnt the Ice people later on for that precious civil war you guys want so much? Food4Thought]

UPDATE: Then again, maybe TTV DID decide to scrap the Brickonicle Vahi altogether in favor of literal Ice, and I just stopped listening to the podcasts months ago, so I wouldn’t have known that. But they seemed to really be in love with that idea, so I doubt it

[Toa_Heatwave]

@TrotterNuva

Yet this purpose is rendered entirely null and void when its revealed that the Matoran Spheres did their job as the Matoran’s memories were all erased and remained that way for 1,000 years until the Turaga told them what their origins even were! Clearly all teridax needed to do was put the captured Matoran in pods and wait for a few days -a month at most!

Actually, in canon, the memory loss took hundreds of years to take effect (it just seems like less due to the time jumps in the various media), so the purpose of speeding up time with the Vahi is still valid. Plus, even months without its Matoran workers could render Mata Nui’s brain (Metru Nui’s) severely impaired, so speeding up time allows the city to remain intact.

[Wolk]

@Toa_Heatwave

Actually, in canon, the memory loss took hundreds of years to take effect (it just seems like less due to the time jumps in the various media), so the purpose of speeding up time with the Vahi is still valid. Plus, even months without its Matoran workers could render Mata Nui’s brain (Metru Nui’s) severely impaired, so speeding up time allows the city to remain intact.

That is in fact not true. The events of 2004 and 2005 take place in less than a year, and as such, the majority of the Matoran were only in the pods for less than a year. It was weeks, maybe months, but not over a year, and definitely not hundreds of years.

Considering that Mata Nui was still alive, although dying, after the 1000 years the Matoran spent on Mata Nui, skipping a few months would do little.

[RealGregF]

1. To my recollection, there’s no indication that Makuta knew Mata Nui was dying at that point. He had just shut him down. So there is every reason to believe that Makuta would have felt the brain had to be in continuous use (or as near to it as possible), and therefore would have wanted the Matoran in and out of the pods ASAP.

2. Outside of that, I can think of a lot of reason why the GBs would have wanted a Vahi in the system. For example – critical malfunction. Slow down time around it and the Matoran working on it to give him more time to do repairs.

[TrotterNuva]

You answered none of my questions, Greg:

Question #1 HOW did this prophecy of the Vahi come to be?

Question #2 What did Teridax ACTUALLY want the Vahi for if speeding up the pods process was entirely unnecessary as another user helped point out? [quote=“Wolk, post:3, topic:38506”]
That is in fact not true. The events of 2004 and 2005 take place in less than a year, and as such, the majority of the Matoran were only in the pods for less than a year. It was weeks, maybe months, but not over a year, and definitely not hundreds of years.

Considering that Mata Nui was still alive, although dying, after the 1000 years the Matoran spent on Mata Nui, skipping a few months would do little.
[/quote]

Question #3 Why even have a Mask of Time at all, if nothing is done with it, and you have no intention of actually doing anything with it?

Bonus question: If it was an idea of the Great Beings, how come NONE of them ever showed any interest in it [in canon], regardless of how useful you claim they’d find it?

[Willess12]

@TrotterNuva

Yet this purpose is rendered entirely null and void when its revealed that the Matoran Spheres did their job as the Matoran’s memories were all erased and remained that way for 1,000 years until the Turaga told them what their origins even were!

@Wolk

The events of 2004 and 2005 take place in less than a year, and as such, the majority of the Matoran were only in the pods for less than a year.

Here’s the thing you’re all missing: The Matoran still HAD their memories when the Toa Metru freed them from the pods. Over time, though, due to them having been in the pods, their memories faded. We don’t know how long this took – it could be anywhere from a day to 1001 years.

@TrotterNuva

Question #1 HOW did this prophecy of the Vahi come to be?

You’re viewing it as a prophecy. Think of it more as a forgotten set of instructions. The GB’s made plans to build a Vahi, but never did for some reason. But they left the blueprints behind.

@TrotterNuva

What did Teridax ACTUALLY want the Vahi for if speeding up the pods process was entirely unnecessary as another user helped point out?

One last thing: WE know what the vahi does NOW, but how much did the MU inhabitants know about what it could do? Maybe the legend just said “A Mask of Time with many powers, including slowing down time and speeding it up” and Teridax thought it might be able to do more? An maybe he even knows something we don’t, something we never got to see?

Plus, Going back to Greg’s answer, he wanted the Matoran to be constantly working. We don’t know how long the Memory loss took, but the Matoran not working for hundreds of years wouldn’t be a good thing.

~W12~

[Toa_Heatwave]

@Wolk

That is in fact not true. The events of 2004 and 2005 take place in less than a year, and as such, the majority of the Matoran were only in the pods for less than a year. It was weeks, maybe months, but not over a year, and definitely not hundreds of years.

Considering that Mata Nui was still alive, although dying, after the 1000 years the Matoran spent on Mata Nui, skipping a few months would do little.

By hundreds of years, I meant that–as far as I recall–there was a period of time on the island of Mata Nui where the Matoran still remembered their old lives, but that these memories faded over time along with their gradual decrease in size, and the Turaga decided not to make them relearn everything they had forgotten.

This might be different now, but that’s how I first remember hearing it.

[TrotterNuva]

None of this answers my questions

@Toa_Heatwave Where was this fact mentioned?

Edited for Double Post.
~Chronicler

[Chronicler]

Please don’t double post. It’s a rule, you know.

[Toa_Heatwave]

BS01’s timeline feature has the Matorans’ physical and mental degradation starting at 999 Years Ago, coinciding with the end of the one-year peace Vakama and Teridax agreed upon in Time Trap. It doesn’t state how long the memory erasure took, but as the physical decrease in size was mentioned as taking place gradually, it’s logical to assume that the Matorans’ memories also faded over time, until the only one who knew about Metru Nui was Matoro (as he served as Nuju’s translator, and therefore knew everything he said to the other Turaga in their private conversations).

This is just a theory, of course. As for the actual answers, I’d stick with what Greg’s statements imply: that Teridax needed the Vahi to speed up the process of the Matoran Spheres so that the Matoran could both see him as a savior and get back to work quickly, to keep Mata Nui–and the universe–alive. I also think Greg’s explanation of the Vahi’s purpose as a potential contingency works, so you should probably stick with that. It then becomes easy to assume that the GBs implanted the Vahi prophecy within their creations in order to guide them towards making it, in the event that the GSR was critically damaged, so that only slowing down time to permit repairs would save it.

[Surel-nuva]

Exactly. Just to clean this up. The Matoran Spheres—created by Teridax himself— diminished the Matoran’s size and earesed their memory. Originally the matoran should’ve stayed only a few minutes in the spheres so they wouldn’t have remembered anything→Teridax could lie them that he’s their Great Spirit, not Mata Nui, and their sizes remained the same. But the Matoran were in the spheres MUCH longer time, so the spheres affected their sizes as well.
Matoro knew everything 'cause Nuju told him everything. That’s why he should always stay with Nuju.

[RealGregF]

Not sure what you mean by the Great Beings “showing no interest” in the Vahi. They were in a rush to get Mata Nui built and launched – there were probably a lot of things they wanted to create but didn’t have time to get to. The only GB in the MU is Velika, and his plans do not seem to connect to the Vahi. Beyond that, you have no idea how interested or not the GBs are in the Vahi’s possible existence, since they have not figured in story.