Mainly inspired by @avita-anarchy's Twilight Break and artwork by @dogesterone.
Red Tridax pod from Nynrah Forge.
Mask modeled by Rothanak and printed/painted by Buryu. Based on Dogesterone's artwork. Props to Kardas for being the one who originally commissioned that mask!
Kanohi
Kanohi Avsa, Mask of Hunger. Capable of draining another being of their vitality and positive emotion. With no Makuta left to create Shadow-Leaches, it remains the only way of draining the inner light from a being.
Talon Sickle
Forged to resemble the claws she had as a Kra-Matoran. A reminder of happier times.
Hollowed Longsword
A hefty blade that's surprisingly light thanks to its carved-out center; perfect for those who prefer to keep their load light during long flights.
Wings are from a bootleg Smaug bigfig and were stained with iDye Poly Black. This MOC also utilizes GoBricks recolors, gold HF bits from a knockoff set, and black double-sockets that can be found on AliExpress.
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This always kind of made me feel bad for Gavla, and what makes me enjoy reading her wanting to still be a Shadow Matoran something analogous to bad coping mechanisms. I wonder what direction if any it could've gone had Bionicle kept going.
(Probably not very far seeing as she wasn't a main character but who knows.)
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One of my favourite things to do is take a character and work backwards.
What would have to happen to a person for them to become this?
For instance, Gavla is easy. She's a smart-mouthed, vicious little peacock who felt more at home lording over the other Matoran as the Makuta's lackey than she ever did among her own.
The most likely story there is that she was never really accepted among the Av-Matoran. They might have tried to, but something about her personality or the way she did things just rubbed them the wrong way, and even if they were trying not to show it, she could tell. It wound its way through every interaction until she grew to deeply resent them all. But the same thing that kept her siblings at arms length was accepted and encouraged among the Makuta, add in that she was allowed to take her out frustrations properly now, and of course she would end up like that.
Krika's a self-fulfilling, self-loathing, self-defeating prophesy, so he's not hard either. He never thought he could be good, so he never really tried, and envies people who are or do to the point of violence.
That's the result of an environment that constantly told him there was something inherently wrong with him- probably the other Makuta too- and an internally grown jealousy problem that never got addressed because that would require admitting that he could improve, and his only comfort in being the way he is, is that it's not his fault. At some point, he probably lashed out and hurt someone very badly, no one around him was surprised, and this worldview was cemented as a way to defend himself from both of these things.
A challenge, is Gorast.
She is a manic ball of hatred, anger, and sadistic retribution, but at the same time, she is also a steady bedrock of loyalty, duty, and devotion. The first are pure animal brain, raw emotion running rampant, and as such could have any number of sources, but the latter, those aren't just feelings, those are patterns of behaviour. Patterns that, if you think about it, directly contradict what she currently stands for.
The Makuta had a duty before Teridax' rule, they had a ruler before him. You can cultivate loyalty, you can encourage devotion, you can instill duty, you can inflame all of them until they become destructive and irrational, but you can't do those things in someone who doesn't already value them. So there's our first clue. Before Teridax, Gorast would have been directing these things somewhere else, to Miserix, the Brotherhood, Mata-Nui, or some combination of the three.
Antroz says at one point that Gorast used to be beautiful. At face value, she's stuck as a giant bug now, but Antroz is a member of a species that has full control over their own anatomy. Physical beauty would be cheap to them, put on or taken off at their whim, certainly not something to bring up as a defining feature of someone. So that's another clue. There was something about who she was that was strong enough for even the other Makuta to take note of and admire her for it. Something that's gone now, and probably has been for some time.
When Gali first confronts Gorast, trapping and threatening her, Gorast tells her that whether or not she dies is in her own hands, no one else's. For a lot of characters this would be a boast, given from a place of strength. Gorast tells Gali this from a place of bitter defiance, Gali fully believing Gorast is about to die, and Gorast pushing her to prove that she is willing to kill her before she'll fight properly; and not once does she deride Gali for potentially breaking from the Toa Code. Not only does that imply no small level of suicidal impulse in her, but it's our third clue, and our first one that paints a direct wound. She's been in this position before, and whoever did that to her chose whether she lived or died regardless of what Gorast may have wanted. Given she's alive in Karda-Nui, they chose that she live. And she hates them for it.
So we have our patterns, she has always valued her Duty, she has always searched for someone or something to place her Devotion on, she has always been drawn towards systems that ask for her Loyalty. We have our wound, someone took her agency in these things away. We have what changed, she used to be beautiful.
Gorast used to be Good. She used to be profoundly, steadfastly Good, so much so that even the other Makuta admired her for it. Gorast was a Hero.
So how do you take someone so good that even after millennia, even after casting aside the very idea of good or evil, the most ruthless of her fellows still call it "beautiful," and turn her into a pyre of vicious hate so strong that she not only abandons her Duty, but burns it down on the way out?
You betray her. And not just that, you betray her in a way that punishes her for every single thing that made her good, you do it in a way so vicious and cruel that she could never have even imagined it before it happened. You take everything that she ever believed in, and you destroy it in front of her, you take away even the option to fight it happening.
Someone turned the Toa's Crystalline Protodermis Cage on her. They did it to destroy something she fought desperately to defend. They forced her to live in the shattered world they left in their wake. Someone she trusted did this to her, someone she believed in with all her heart and soul, and they did it all in the name of Mata-Nui.
Then they abandoned her, and no one cared; no one but Teridax. Who, for the record, also did not care, he just saw something he could use.
If you're still up for requests may I please suggest Vhisola/Gavla being the most incredibly normal about each other (hope you feel better Random mwah)
The Ga-Matoran scampered through the openings in the rock, struggling to regain her footing for a moment. Her head darted left and right frantically, in a desperate search of her objective that seemed to have vanished into thin air; she eyed the steep walls with a certain creeping terror, realizing how small the space she'd crammed herself into was only then. A lance of light, thin and barely enough to shed light into the alcove, struggled through the only exit behind her: dust particles danced lazily inside its feeble ray with the sort of out of place tranquillity that made her predicament all the more disquieting.
Then darkness overcame her, and she found her back slammed harshly against the rough stone.
Claws pinned her to the ground, pressing on her arms almost hard enough to snap the protodermis bones. Right above her, where the ceiling should have been, shimmered darkly crimson stars.
"Found you," Gavla hissed.
She felt the little body beneath her be wrecked by a shiver.
"Don't play coy now, little thing," she continued, shifting her weight forward to better crush the other's limbs underneath her and prevent her escape. She tilted her head in a slow, poised manner, mimicking one of Vamprah's more elegant mannerisms: "I know you've been watching me. Following me. You're nowhere near as subtle as you think you are."
Her prey's feet scraped against the gorund as she whined, guilty as charged and as powerless against the accusations as she was defenseless in her grip.
The mutated Av-Matoran lowered herself until their masks almost grazed each other, watching closely as the other did her best to put some distance between them but only found herself stuck between the deformed body and the cold hard ground.
Fear shimmered enticingly within the Komau's sockets.
"I know what you think of me - of this," she growled, wings arching as if to gesture at her unusual frame. "I know you find me revolting, abnormal, unnatural... And it piques your interest."
She huffed in bitter amusement when the Ga-Matoran attempted to avert her eyes.
Tsk.
Coward.
With a harsh flinch Gavla doubled the pressure onto the smaller limbs, tearing a yelp from them as she settled heavily on the other's stomach with all her weight to knock the wind out of her.
"I'm not some freak experiment for you to gawk and laugh at when you think I'm not there to hear it - and I assure you, I am always there," she snarled right in her audio receptor. "So listen carefully, and mark my words: the next time I find you spying on me, near or far that you may be, I will sneak into your home while you sleep and rip your throat out with my teeth so quickly that you won't even have the time to scream."
"Wrow," the Ga-Matoran peeped, flustered.
Both froze.
Clearly.
That was not meant to be vocalized.
After what felt like five hundred thousand years, with heartlights flashing wildly and dark blue masks now turning almost hot white from sheer embarrassment, Gavla coughed to the side and clumsily peeled herself off of the other Matoran, who was far too deep in the throes of mortification to bother even just attempting to scuttle away or move in any manner.
"So," the mutated female babbled, stumbling back into the exit of her hideaway on unsteady legs, "If you- just- I, I think I've made myself, uh, clear. Remem- remember what I said. About... Yes."
Her prey gave a high pitched hum in confirmation, and she made her less than graceful exit in a hurry.
-
"Forgive me if it comes out of nowhere, but has Vhisola been asking you about... Bats?"
"Hm? Vhisol- oh, yes, actually, she did come to me about them! She was rather interested in learning about their teeth, and also the caretaking of their wings specifically - which reminds me, by the way, did you know that the Bara Magnan sand bat is not actually a bat? They call it like that solely because of the shape of the wings! It doesn't have any relation to proper bats at all! Apparently it's because they are 'mammals', which means that they-"
Nokama very gently stopped her fellow Turaga by wrapping her hands around his own.
"Please don't encourage her." she said, tone exhausted.
Whenua blinked, looking back and forth between her Rau and the grip she had on his fingers. Softly, he dared ask: "Is there something I should be worried about...?"
His sister sighed deeply: "She has another shrine."
"... About bats?" he tried.
Nokama pivoted him to look at a colorful group of Matoran just a few bio away. The only blue armored being in the ensemble sported a pair of spindly, bony wings and was keeping the others away from herself by snapping aggressively and threatening them with her claws.
