#tohunga

Haven't done a Bionicle thing in a while so here's a little piece I did today of Takua. He's just wanderin' about doing his "I'm not gonna do work-work, I'm gonna go out and do actual cool shit" stuff XD

Seems to have come across an Infected Kanohi somewhere in some caves

Also did a Bionicle review over here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slpHB4OLWTA

Gallery: https://www.deviantart.com/warahi/gallery

Bohrok just cleaning the island, plus a maid version.

And this is now on my Redbubble

The protectron needs no explanation, I think. This is the version from 3/new vegas, with a head with a cowboy hat, and legs with cowboy boots, both from Primm Slim. The Bionicle plumbots coming in from the Legend of Mata Nui are the Matoran, initially called Tohunga, are the chosen race of Mata Nui, mostly because they keep him alive and maintain his million foot robot spaceship body by doing all manner of labor. Their elemental powers manifest in the form of passive abilities, like resistance to fire, ice, gravity pressure, strength, ect. Some have latent power that, when triggered, transforms them into Toa. The Tohunga (I'll be calling them that in this instance) come with 13 different heads. The great and noble kanohi masks, and a maskless head. All plumbot pieces require into the future. Please enjoy!

Tohunga SFS: https://simfileshare.net/filedetails/5767376/

Tohunga Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EdP6E18VKZsnm0LzoIAp8h4pNovBwTZv/view?usp=sharing

F3/NV Protectron Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pUflV3iTzbsLCjMYG8UVrUkpJOJPoxjy/view?usp=sharing

Growing up in the 2000s, we were all swept by the Bionicle heatwave. But being foreigners, we had limited access to the development of the story in time, usually getting everything about half a year later. Additionally to that, we never cared about the real life stuff going around.

That led us stranded with the OG story of Mata Nui, speaking of heroic Toa (Mata), noble Turaga, beastly Rahi, and mysterious Tohunga, mentioned in the promo materials but barely addressed and never named.

Then, these appeared. The poster was only available to us as a miniature in promo materials, effectivelly showing us the Tohunga, led by Onepu.

And so we, being the creative kids, developed our own interpretation of the mismatch. While Matoran were the common villagers and Turaga were their elders, the Tohunga to us became a kind of priests or noble shamans (really more in the Ancient Egypt sense than anything tribalistic). Back in the day, going to school meant playing with the Bionicle during the recess and exchange our heard-on-the-grapevine theories as legit canon. And so to us, the Matoran were ordinary villagers while the Tohunga became somewhat priests or shamans to them. Hierarchically beneath the Turaga whom we deemed the high priests, but also kinda set aside from the linear hierarchy.

And then, McDonald's came.

And it fit.

So now, we had the names for the Tohunga.

Onepu, the obvious leader since he was set in the front position in the same fashion as Tahu and Vakama on the game promo - again, that was the main and only source on Tohunga we had.

Jala, the Tohunga of fire (not to be confused with the Matoran Jallar; for us, those were two separate beings).

Kongu, the Le- Tohunga. A priest of air.

Huki, a Po- Tohunga, a priest of stone and desert. (Not to be confused with Hewkii, whom we again deemed a different character).

Maku, a Ga-Tohunga.

And Matoro, a priest of the Ko-Matoran.

For a while I've been wanting to try to make a bunch of tiny dioramas for scenes from MNOG and other 01 era Bionicle media, but doing it with the real sets would be huge, and for stuff with a lot of Matoran, expensive. Since I got a 3d printer recently I though about trying to see just how small I could make a matoran with it, and it turns out it's quite small!

Approximately 1.75cm tall!

Since this is a test I went with the prototype Takua colouring, nicknamed George.