Who IS Artakha?

LEGO BIONICLE
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No, not literally. :stuck_out_tongue:

This is a subjective question. Artakha has appeared in the story very little, and as a result his characterization is particularly open to interpretation. Some of the discussion around the entries is fascinating because people are disagreeing about what sort of character he was, and as a result what is/isn’t in character as a build for him.

There are arguments that he was a good guy, or that he really wasn’t a good guy at all, or that he was cold and prioritized his creations over anything else. People are also talking about whether he was a powerful warrior, or he didn’t fight much at all. Was he an elegant, shining artist, or a gruff, secluded blacksmith? I think someone even suggested that he almost had split personalities, or something. :stuck_out_tongue:

So this topic is the place for you to discuss how you see Artakha - whether that’s the interpretation that comes most naturally to you, or the one that you find appeals to you the most.

I kind of perceived him to be benevolent, but also rather bashful, and driven easily by his emotions (as many artists and creators are). He lives on this remote island and nobody ever sees him - and he can’t even bring himself to destroy the Crystal Serpents he created.

After the Brotherhood raid, his response was not one of cold, calculated reaction - I think he’s somewhat intelligent, and if he was less trusting he would have taken action long prior to Kojol’s raid. I see his reaction more as being one of angered, betrayed innocence - he created a protected haven and trusted it to be safe, and then the Brotherhood (a “noble” organisation) just lays waste to his island and steals his creations. He’s shocked and disillusioned, and as a result makes a radical, yet reclusive decision. And he basically shuts the door on the rest of the world and stops trusting people.

This interpretation also makes his powerful, respect-commanding entrance in Reign of Shadows all the more impacting, because he’s not the sort to do that usually. He’s been significantly irked by the proceedings to finally intervene - and now, he’s speaking with confidence and demanding respect instead of running away from everything.

It makes that scene as much about his character development as it was about the subsequent proceedings, and his character has gone on a journey from wise, kind, and shy - to brash, secretive, and cautious - and finally, to a powerful ruler who is willing to live up to his mythic reputation and stand up for that which he truly believes is right.

But that’s just my interpretation. What’s yours? :stuck_out_tongue:

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I suspect that this was inspired by my comment in Poll Twelve, so I’ll repeat what I said here. I think he can be described as being on the side of good, but I don’t really see him as a hero.

I think his entire motivation behind anything he did was to protect the idea of Creation.

When he created the Toa Mata, he did so for the sake of Creation, and at the request of the Great Beings.

Whenever he made an object for someone who asked, it wasn’t out of a sense of duty, or protection. It was because he had the need to Create, and that just gave him an outlet.

When he had everyone who knew about him killed, he was ensuring that he would be allowed to continue to Create, no matter how many innocent lives it cost.

In his debut appearance in Reign of Shadows, he wasn’t doing it to protect the beings in the Matoran Universe. He did it to protect the Universe itself, since it was a Creation.

Also in Reign of Shadows, Artakha threatens to kill Lewa’s body simply because Tren Krom was violating Artakha’s creation.

To sum it all up, his priority is Creation, and that is shown in this quote:

“Creation is my essence,” Artakha replied.

In fact, this suggests that Artakha’s very being is tied to the existence of Creation in some way. And in most pop culture, whenever a being is a physical manifestation of an idea, they tend to be fairly single-minded.

Despite all this, I think he will always be on the side of good, even if that is not his objective, because he knows that Evil Creations will ultimately be used for Destruction.

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You suspect correctly - it was locked by the time I made this topic, aha.

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Although maybe one could reason that Artakha was bluffing?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there originally going to be one more book for the ‘06 storyline where Teridax possesses Matoro’s body by slipping in while Matoro’s mask power was active?
And once the other Toa Inika found out about it, wasn’t the way that they managed to successfully get Teridax out by threatening to destroy Matoro’s body, thus making it so that Teridax believed he would be bodiless either way?

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I don’t know much about his actual appearances in g1 lore so to me he’s just green Ekimu

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Here’s the link to his profile on the BS01 wiki (and after you’ve read it, be sure to read the chapters he appears in on the Online Serials😉):

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I suppose. I’ll admit that that was one of my weaker examples, since it would also mean that Artakha was destroying his own creation. I justified by saying it was because Tren Krom was wrecking it, but it’s a fairly weak justification.

Also, yes, that book was planned, and, even though it wasn’t released, that information is still canon.

To be honest, I got the impression that they were serious about killing Matoro’s body, but it’s hard to tell since we can’t take cues from the rest of the scene.

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Although I was unable to submit my entry, this is something that I plan to correct in the future. Right now I’m finding out about all that lore that I had ignored until now because personality or “presence” is something that is clearly relevant when you are designing a character. Honestly, my entry was somewhat really superficial in that regard.

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Honestly, I liked your theory. It makes Artakha a much more relatable character.

You just have to decide if that’s what you want. Some people want Artakha be a character that the other characters interact with, and for him to become a main character. Other want him to remain as a figure of legend and myth, even though he exists.

If you want Artakha to be a relatable character, your theory makes more sense.

If you want Artakha to be a pseudo-mythical figure, my theory makes more sense.

And there is no right answer. I’m sure the story would have gone one way or another, but then it froze.

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Artakha is the most complicated character in the story. He has so many different sides in him - and most of them are total opposites. They are: Warrior, Futuristic engineer, Ancient smith, Anti-Makuta, King, Anti-Karzahni, but also Karzahni’s brother, Young voice, Old voice, Good guy, Not a hero, Benevolent once, Mysterious and Closed now, - choose whichever you want! He chages just like his island. Many MOCs (entries) show some of those traits, but many do not capture even half (in my opinion) and I think none show all of them at once (even mine, though I’ve tryed). It depends from the point of view and interpretation on which traits to choose as the main ones. I value Warrior, Futuristic engineer, Ancient smith, Anti-Makuta, Karzahni’s brother, Young voice, Old voice, Good guy, Not a hero most.

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A related question often comes to my mind and that is - what was the thought process that went into designing Artakha?
It seems to me as if Great Beings couldn’t resist an urge to create one of their number. Not literarly, but figuratively. You could say that Artakha is an artificial Great Being. And he came out nice - Great Beings’ skill at creation is reflected in Artakha.
Ironically, the same can be said about the other brother Karzahni. He was meant to mend and repair that which is broken or malfunctioning.
And yet, he is inefficient at this task - just like the Great Beings are when it comes to correcting their mistakes or shutting down rogue projects.

The two brothers reflect Great Beings perfectly.
The Creator excels at his job, the Corrector sucks at it.

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Oh Artakha, we really don’t know anything from you. From a physical point of view, we know he is imposing, so I imagine him like a buff guy (like Dwayne Johnson) but not super buff (like Hafthor Bjornsson).

He is a creator, not a warrior. He has crazy powers (his teleportation is so OP), but in a hand to hand combat, versus the Bruce Lee of the Matoran Universe, he would lose.

He is neutral good. He wants the best for the universe (his island is like a paradise for Matoran) but don’t do enough to make it happend. Like most of us, we want the best for the world, but don’t do everything we could do.

He help from afar upgrating the good guys, and not creating weapons for the bad guys (I think the Nynrah Ghost fit better in the last one). Only when the Universe is about to be destroyed for a crazy old lady, he decide to move his butt a do something.

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The inclusion of Artakha and Karzahni were a missed opportunity because they built on the recurring motif of the creator-destroyer duality that the early lore established, but which was lost when the Makuta was reduced to a Makuta. Their dynamic could have modeled exactly what flaws led to Mata Nui’s fall and Terry’s takeover; the creator and destroyer, both proud and vain and looking down on the other. The former believed he was untouchable, and the latter believed he deserved more than he had, yet these rivals cannot exist without one another.

It would have been neat to see Artakha as a portrait of what Mata Nui was: a hubristic, inattentive god who thought nothing of the common man, whom he believed served him when he really served them. In time, perhaps, Karzahni might have fought him again in such a story and bested him.

This pairing also repeats a parallel vision of the “good god, bad god” duality that ultimately stems from the Christian cultural heritage Bionicle’s creators mostly came from, owing to the pairing of Yahweh/Jesus and Satan. It’s just another missed chance, one which could have been used to reflect on the very traditions from whence these tropes spawn. Without the destroyer soiling Eden and messing with the created people, what would the creator do? Without a creator to make the world, what would the destroyer do? Nothing, for they need each other as much as one hates the other; and, in some capacity, both exist in service to the inhabitants of the world, whom the opposed brothers depend on in turn.

Having recently impulse-bought RPG Maker MV, I’ve tossed around these notions (among others) when thinking about what story I’d want to tell in a Bionicle retelling. I’ve decided that I want Artakha to be a major character, namely a living god whom the Toa turn to as a practical and spiritual guide. Should I ever get around to making this game, the role Artakha and and his fellow gods play in this story is meant to seize these missed chances from the official story.

So, Mazeka?

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:laughing: I was thinking on him as a really good fighter, but I don’t think he could defeat Artakha, just because he is limited being a Matoran. But he transform into a Toa, he definitely would kick Artakha ■■■.

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LoL,:rofl: and incredibly true.:slightly_smiling_face::+1:

I personally believe that the great beings, while not all of them,- heck, probably very few of them, are genuinely malicious, nonetheless evoke that quality found in “mad scientists” as exemplified by Tony Stark in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and John Hammond in Jurassic Park of being “so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

I share your opinion in that Artakha and Karzahni are probably the beings in the MU most like the great beings.:+1:
Heck, Mata-Nui himself wasn’t even as near of an accurate representation as those two:

  1. Pretty-much all he does is correct, as opposed to create, and he pulled it off pretty darn tootin’ well, too;
  2. He actually commands mythical or monolithic powers for pretty much all of the story, no-matter what body he’s in (Mata-Nui Robot has massive, physics-breaking powers, Toa Body has the Mask of Life, and Protype has pretty similar (albeit downsized) abilities to his first form), as opposed to the great beings, whose true identities were much less physically powerful than the legends would have you believe; and
  3. Mata-Nui was so much more noble than the great beings, given that his biggest mistake was not noticing the goings-on of what weren’t made to be truly living, sentient beings in the first place, being under the belief that the MU inhabitants would all work as designed, and not ever rise up against him; but, once he sees the error of his ways after Terry’s takeover, he immediately corrects course, becoming what was portrayed as a being with no character flaws in very flawed and violent world (I’m not saying everything he did on Bara Magna was necessarily right,- but I am saying it was portrayed that way), to the point of him being a Gary Stu.
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Right, I don’t think Mata Nui is truly to blame when it comes to his indifference toward the nanotech.
The fact that he felt guilt and obligation to help his people at all, just goes to show how much he has grown as a character.
Perhaps he took some clues from the various societies he observed?

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Technically, what you just described is the Yin-Yang belief of far-eastern religions.

In the Bible, only Yahweh is the One True God, and the devil was essentially a rebellious worship leader who got blasted out of Heaven quick as lightning for his crimes, and thus, since he can’t outsmart or overpower God, he resorts to using deception and such to try and do things like take man down with him.
Also, in the Bible (as opposed to “Yin-Yang”) good and evil are not interdependent on each other, but good is the way things should be, and originally were, whereas evil never should’ve even existed, and is described as being completely taken out at a future point in time, where God and all in His family live perfect lives that don’t in any way lack completeness or purpose now that evil has been done away with.

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In a sense, yes; but Daoism and related religions aren’t part of Denmark’s cultural heritage. The country ultimately has a Judeo-Christian upbringing, being European and all that.

In terms of a strict Biblical description of the War in Heaven and its results, sure–but the popular image of the God-Devil split has morphed beyond that into something a bit closer to…well, Artakha and Karzahni. Satan has been inflated into something more than just some incompetent rabble-rouser, and is now seen almost like an anti-God of sorts (though not equal to God in terms of influence or power).

I didn’t say they were, but rather that Bionicle missed the chance to insinuate that they were, and perhaps the view that good and evil are absolutes and one must overcome the other isn’t quite right.

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To be accurate, the BIONICLE story doesn’t really have any Christian influence. The earliest lore is an adaptation of the Maori creation myth, which is particularly obvious in MNOG, which was conceived early in the story’s development.

The Makuta is based on Te Kore (The Nothing; Void), the original darkness / destruction from which the world emerged.

“You cannot destroy me. No more than you can destroy the sea, or the wind… Or the void.”

"I bore you, for I am Nothing. And out of Nothing you came.
–Makuta, MNOG

Mata Nui is based on Te Ao (the Light) which originally emerged from the darkness.

“I stand with Mata Nui side by side. I am his brother.”
–Makuta, MNOG

(Note that Makuta mentions the sea and wind, which are the two primary aspects in Maori mythology to emerge from the light.)

The last bit of strong evidence is the reference to Papu and Rangi as creators of some sort, who clearly reference the mythological Papa and Rangi, the parents of various lesser deities in Maori mythology. (Although it seems references to the two were only left in MNOG accidentally.) It’s possible they were reworked into Artakha and Karzahni as the story developed.

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Not on purpose, but the concept of “Good God, Bad God” isn’t really from Maori religion AFAIK. The way Terry is implemented as the “traitor/trickster god” in the mythology is closer to western concepts and fantasy tropes, which often tie back to Satan in some way.

This kind of ties into what I’m talking about: here, the darkness isn’t the cosmic womb from which all things are birthed, but the enemy of light and goodness–and that duality is influenced by Christianity (if only subconsciously), with the idea of light = God = good. While humans have an evolutionary inclination towards A CONSTAT FEAR THAT SOMETHING’S ALWAYS NEAR, this doesn’t always translate to this particular theological perspective.