#gaardus

I thought that he had some potential I could make use of, and also I needed one of Velika's hand to hand victims to survive so he could spiral into insanity over his work being imperfect and him being unable to fathom that happening.

But then I didn't have any story for Karzahni, and in turn his death brought up much better ideas. Like what his brother would think, knowing that he hasn't seen him in 100k years and now never will ever again.

And I realised that there is another victim of Velika that has even more missed potential in life. Tren Krom, the Matoran Universes old god.

So now Karzahni is staying dead.

2001-style Gaardus

Y’know what? I made a mock-up for an alternate Stars combiner, and with this ask, I finally decided to just buy all six Stars sets and make it a reality; So here it is!!!

Consider this a different take on Gaardus, based on how he’s depicted in the story; He’s a carnivore and a hunter, meant to be a living weapon, and Pohatu suggested Gaardus must’ve blended in with actual Rahi during the evacuation to Spherus Magna. So I worked with that prompt to create something that actually looked bestial, and had a proper mouth… Alas, the mouth can’t move but there aren’t exactly a lot of pieces to work with here! Hence Gaardus’ hind feet being Glatorian hands.

I had a lot of fun coming up with this design, first on paper and then applying it in-person, and changing it up as I experimented with the actual pieces in hand. I’m particularly happy with how I managed to upgrade the wings from my original draft, so now they’re actually big and prominent enough to fly with, as described in The Powers That Be. Speaking of…

Here’s Gaardus next to a Mata build, my own take on Takanuva based on the pieces I had. So here’s a general idea for scale against Kopaka and Pohatu, and the wings are posable and big enough to go around two more figures, to reenact the scene where the trio are teleported to the Red Star.

My main objective, other than the ones stated above, was just to make a combiner that actually felt like it was having fun and trying to be creative, rather than slapping limb pieces onto Tahu and calling it a day. Apologies if I’m bragging, but I’m quite chuffed with how Gaardus turned out, especially with the color scheme, since making him not a rainbow eyesore was also another goal of mine. I find it ironic how the official Gaardus combiner is just Tahu at its core, whereas my version uses only one piece for Gaardus’ upper jaw.

Technically it’s two pieces if you include Gaardus’ sword, which I did add because of a brief mention in the story itself, though Gaardus’ legs are admittedly standard-length and not long as they’re described. His weapon being a ‘sword of fire’ also gave me an excuse to add another piece from Tahu, in a way that didn’t jeopardize the color scheme too jarringly. Keeping the colors I chose -gray, black, white, silver, and lime green- distributed evenly was another fun challenge.

Since this was supposed to be a Stars combiner, I made sure to include as many pieces as I could from every set. These are all my leftover pieces;