#nui stone

Toa Tuyet

As portrayed by The Portrait of Dorian Grey.

Source

Archive Shorts, Entry #1 "The Artifact"

Wind whistled through the desert while the bright mid-day's light cast its glow over me as I continued my march through the sands. After nearly two-hundred years of combing over maps, digging through archives, and trekking across every environment you could imagine, finally I had the lead I had been waiting for.

Just a few weeks earlier, in a village not far from here, some local Toa who passed through this desert reported finding the entrance to some strange old ruin out in the sands, a ruin matching the description of what I've been searching for.

Ok, so I wanted to call this a theory, but is more conjecture that doesn’t technically deviate from canon. So, it’s really more of a headcanon, but here we go. According to BS01, the Nui-Stone was created by an unknown group of beings in the Matoran Universe for unclear reasons. When it is activated, it draws a small but steady amount of Toa Power from any Toa within a 3000 Kio radius to charge up the stone. A Toa can then access this to gain a massive power boost. Once these mysterious beings realized its destructive potential, they tried to destroy it, but they failed and it ended up in the hands of Toa Mangai Tuyet.

I started thinking about the Nui-Stone and noticed it shares a remarkable similarity to another type of stone in the Matoran Universe – a Toa Stone. Think about it; both are stones that hold Toa Power in storage until they dispense that power into another being – Tuyet in the case of the Nui-Stone and Matoran destined to be Toa in the case of Toa Stones. I was also thinking about those mysterious beings that made the stone. Sure, it could be that they made the stone to create a more powerful Toa, and then regretted it when they realized just how well it worked. But I wondered, what if they were trying to create something else?

I think the Nui-Stone was actually intended to be a supercharged Toa Stone. Made to draw a tiny bit of Toa Power from Toa throughout the Universe so as to create a Toa Stone with enough Toa Power within it to transform multiple Matoran into Toa at once when activated. I also think that there is enough evidence in the canon to say that it could have even been designed by the Great Beings as a failsafe for if the Matoran Universe ever suddenly needed a lot more Toa all at once.

We know from things like the design of the Golden Armor being programmed into the Kanohi Ignika in case it was ever needed that the Great Beings would add the designs of their failsafes into the Universe to be actually created at a later date. We also know from the usage of the Staff of Artakha that there exists the technology in the Matoran Universe for a powerful object’s influence/power to be spread to the entire Universe.

So, what I propose is this: the Great Beings program the design of the Nui-Stone into its creators, who then bring it into existence at a later date. The intention was that the stone would be activated and slowly charge up with Toa Power in case it was ever needed. If that day came, it would be taken to Metru-Nui and placed on the Toa Suva, from which its power would be spread across the Universe and transform destined Matoran into Toa all at once all over the Matoran Universe to help deal with whatever threat caused the Nui-Stone to need to be used in the first place. We already know the Toa Suva has the ability to use Toa Stones to transform individual Matoran into Toa, so I think it’s reasonable to say it could act like the cradle of the Staff of Artakha too and transform Matoran into Toa all over the Universe if a sufficiently powerful Toa Stone (e.g., the Nui-Stone) was placed upon it at a destined time.

I think the fact that it could also be tapped into early to give an individual Toa such a massive power boost was an entirely unintentional side effect of its creation, and it was upon discovering this side effect that its creators unsuccessfully tried to destroy it. Extrapolating this line of thinking further, I think it was actually Tuyet’s destiny to bring the Nui-Stone to Metru-Nui and the Toa Suva so that it could be used if needed, but she didn’t know that was its original purpose. Her actions were in line with her destiny, but got twisted along the way. Still activating the stone in Metru-Nui, but not in the way that was intended.

Maybe, if my theory is right and the story had continued, Tuyet could have finally achieved her destiny on Spherus Magna and rebuilt the Toa population given the fact that there were so few of them left by the time of the end of the storyline (and probably would have been even fewer after the Marendar plotline played out).

Toa Tuyet, first to fall

Brought low by dreams of darkness

When the Toa Mangai first arrived in Metru Nui, Tuyet was seen as one of the greatest of the heroes—a paragon of courage and virtue, striding through the white-capped waves to defeat the invading Dark Hunters. While she and Toa Naho were most often paired up to patrol Ga-Metru, the Matoran most often associated her with Lhikan. Both Toa, they thought, fought with a sense of duty, honor, and fairness, as opposed to some other members of their team, who preferred stealth and subterfuge. Needless to say, the city reeled when her treason was revealed—though no one was more shocked and horrified than Lhikan.

Wielding a barbed broadsword through which she channeled her elemental water powers, Tuyet was a skilled veteran of many wars. She wore a Kanohi Zarath, the great mask of intangibility, which allowed her to phase through walls and avoid attacks by reducing her density to almost nill. Originally from a small island in the southern chain called Pokolis, she was recruited by Lhikhan and spent many years living in Metru Nui before it was revealed that she was planning to betray the other Toa, using the Nui Stone to absorb their power and take control of the city. She was defeated by Lhikan and Nidhiki and imprisoned, before Botar carried her away to the Pit. Reportedly, she perished in the Great Cataclysm, either fighting alongside Hydraxon against the inmates, or else trying to escape herself. Even so, dark rumors of her survival persist to this day...